University students after Italian Unification.Riots, organizations and political engagement (1860-1885)

A study of the different episodes of university riots, analyzed in their different kinds and contexts, as they emerge from ministerial sources, from the parliamentary debates, from contemporary local and national press, helps point up the development of an intellectual élite, fighting for its status and full involved in institutional and cultural modernization of the country. Despite the repeated bans on student organization and political activity within the university, students played a key role not only in the formation of political parties, but also debating about a new idea of citizenship. Combining different points of view, we can look inside and outside the university: on the one hand, we focus some important changes in attitudes and behavior patterns of students, where the long wave of revolutionary voluntarism is running out; on the other hand, the dynamics of conflict – sometimes violent between students and academic authorities and / or the policies are the mirror of delays, contradictions and distortions of the process of nationalization' universities and the problematic transition from old to new in Italian Nationbuilding process.