Da liberali a criminali. I patrioti del Risorgimento meridionale

The essay reconstructs the representation of liberal-democratic patriots in the context of the securitization policies of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, fitting into the recent field of security history studies. In particular, the article focuses on the construction of the threat to security represented by liberal revolutionaries in the way in which it was elaborated in police practices, namely through a process of criminalization and delegitimization of the political enemy. The intersection of registers of suspects, political biographies, secret agent reports reveals the trend to overlap the profiles of liberal patriots with those of common criminals and, consequently, the state security issues with those of collective security. The essay also highlights how the various subjects in charge of the political control of the Kingdom - from the central and peripheral authorities of the High Police to the consuls and secret agents abroad - used, both in interventions related to political communication and in the administrative documents, a language strongly characterized on a political and ideological level, which shared - and contributed to structure - stylistic elements and topics of the broader reactionary public discourse of the time.