Appunti per un modello della modernizzazione politica della “periferia occidentale”: dall’”imperialismo atlantico” alla genesi dello Stato liberale (1760-1848)

Towards a Model of Western Periphery Modernization: from Atlantic Imperialism to Liberal State Formation, 1760-1848. The article lays out a model that aims to integrate the “external dimensions” of political change highlighted by transnational history into the political modernization theory traditionally used in the comparative analysis of political development and democratization. The origins of the historical path leading to the formation of the Liberal State in the “Western Periphery” (an area including Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Italy as much as Canada and South Africa) are traced back to break of Ancient Regime structures brought about by the French, British, and American expansionism between 1760 and the end of Napoleonic wars. The withdrawal of the “Atlantic Imperialism” after 1815 leaves behind a network of bourgeois elites that endorse the civilizing project of liberalisation and modernization and elaborate their own local “national projects”. The latter originate the establishment of the “first wave” of liberal regimes in the area between 1840-1873.