The claim that history is written by the winners has become axiomatic. But when an established narrative shifts, to the point that an opposite version of events emerges and is widely accepted, does that mean we now have a different winner? As empire is no longer viewed as the noble pursuance of the white man’s burden, the statues begin to topple and there is talk of reparations, can yesterday’s victims be seen as having the upper hand? In the USA people continue to argue about the rights and wrongs of the Civil War, the implication being that a new vision of the past would alter the distribution of power and wealth in the present. The past matters now.
Let me cite a case from my adopted country, Italy. For more than a century after its achievement in 1861, the unification of Italy was generally presented as a triumph of liberalism and constitutionalism, a great step forward in the emancipation and democratisation of a major European people. However, since the late Nineties, following the end of the Cold War and a general tendency in the West for nations to re-examine their founding presumptions, this notion has been constantly challenged and previously submerged counter narratives have come to the fore. In the south of Italy, proponents of the Neo-Bourbonist movement began to present the collapse of the old Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (43,000 square miles, ruled by a Bourbon dynasty), as an act of imperial aggression by the north of Italy on the south.
