Abstract
In the wake of the resurgence of ethnic tensions, the last twenty years saw the development of a burgeoning interest in the origin of nationalism. The argument that the growth of the modem state was a decisive factor in precipitating nationalism commands wide consensus across the ethnosymbolist/modemist divide. The exact nature of the relationship between nationalism and state formation, on the other hand, is yet to be adequately understood. The centrality of state schooling systems in defining the modem state as an institution and nationalism as a practice renders it a privileged standpoint to address the relationship between nationalism and state formation. The thesis examines the relationship between the rise of Italian nationalism to dominant ideology and the growth of the state schooling system in Piedmont between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The thesis shows that in the central part of the nineteenth century Piedmont witnessed an exceptional development of the state schooling system. Multi-causal analysis is employed to show that nationalism played a key role in explaining Piedmont's particular trajectory of schooling development. The argument is supported through an analysis of the nationalist purposes behind schooling reform, including an examination of policy and practice of language as a medium of teaching and the teaching of history. In accounting for the positive impact of Italian nationalism on Piedmont's schooling developments, the thesis seeks to move beyond the limitations of arguments relying on the constructed nature of modem nations, and shows that the development of nationalist ideology and associated conceptions of citizenship was instrumental to legitimise the development of the state schooling system amid difficulties experienced by Piedmont with legitimising the practice with the language of the social contract. These difficulties are traced to tensions between the logic of state formation entailed by postmercantilist thought, underlying the growth of the state schooling system, and the definitions of society and subjective rights associated to the tradition of the social contract.