Abstract

The birth of a revolutionary European consciousness, with the passage from primitive forms of revolt to real revolutions, was one of the crucial themes in Rosario Villari’s historical research. This paper aims to propose an examination of this problem through the long career of the great Italian historian, with a historical genealogy dating from the most recent Un sogno di libertà. Napoli nel declino di un impero (1585-1648) to Villari’s first essays, in which the theme of the transition from rebels to revolutionaries already reveals its centrality.