Lorenzo Bonomelli

FR/EN

My research is a comparative study of five French military interventions in Portugal, the Papal States, New Granada, Mexico, and the Rio de la Plata in the 1830s and 1840s. Through these case studies, I aim to understand how, after the July Revolution of 1830, France strove to restore its position as a world power, and especially how this impacted its relations with States on the margins of the “Family of Nations” in the Atlantic and Mediterranean spaces.
The July Monarchy, often seen as a peaceful and business-oriented regime, in fact, committed itself to a policy of global power. More than acquiring new territorial colonies, it mainly tried to achieve this goal by expanding its leverage over weaker countries through economic, cultural, political, and military means. The interventions addressed in my thesis are revealing moments to shed light on the underlying features of this global policy: a profoundly hierarchical and civilizational juste milieu worldview; the attempt to create a transnational alliance with Britain, also englobing moderate liberal élites in smaller states; and the resort to military force as an imperial instrument of global governance.

Education

• From 2020 : Ph.D. candidate in Global History and Governance à la Scuola Superiore Meridionale (Naples), in cotutelle with the Ph.D in History at Sciences Po (Paris).
• 2018-2020 : Master's double degree in History and compared civilisations, University of Bologna and Université Paris Cité.
• 2014-2018 : Bachelor's degree in History, University of Milan. 

Publications

Articles in peer-reviewed journals

• ‘Il colera del 1836 e il corpo francese d’occupazione di Ancona. Tra gestione dell’epidemia e rappresentazioni politico-culturali’. Il Risorgimento, LXVIII, 1 (2021): 34-66. DOI: 10.3280/RISO2021-001003.

Other publications

• Book review: ‘Miquel De la Rosa, French Liberalism and Imperialism in the Age of Napoleon III. Empire at Home, Colonies Abroad, Cham, Palgrave Macmillan, 2022’. Rassegna storica del Risorgimento, 109, 2 (2022): 205-208.
• Book review: ‘Benoît Pouget, Un choc de circulations. La puissance navale française face au choléra en Méditerranée, 1831-1856, Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2020′. Il Risorgimento, LXVIII, 2 (2021): 180-185.

Conferences

• Panel ‘Politiche imperiali e occupazioni militari nell’Italia dell’Ottocento: pratiche, connessioni, narrazioni’ (Cantieri di Storia Sissco, 11ème édition, 16 septembre 2021). Paper: ‘L’occupazione francese di Ancona (1832-1838). Aspirazioni imperiali tra juste milieu e memorie rivoluzionarie’.