Il medioevo italiano e la professionalizzazione degli studi storici in Gran Bretagna (1857-1923). Tra storia universale e scienza della politica

This essay forms the first part of a wider survey of the diverse presence of the Italian Middle Ages in British historical literature between the Risorgimento and the first post- war period. It focuses on the various models of treatment of the Italian past which may be found in the works of some specialists of Venetian history (R. Brown, H. Yule, H. Brown, W. Miller), authors of general histories of Rankean inspiration (T. Hodgkin, M. Creighton, Lord Acton), advocates of a nomothetic approach aiming to make history a branch of the science of politics (E. Freeman, J.R. Seeley, J. Bryce, A.J Toynbee). The attitudes showed by these scholars towards medieval and Renaissance Italy prove pe- culiarly revelatory of contrasts and uncertainties about the exact meaning of the trans- formation of historiography into a would-be scientific discipline which accompanied its professionalization in Great Britain.