Indian-Italian Connections in the Risorgimento. The Cases of Lazzaro Papi and Leopoldo Sebastiani

The article explores the connections between Italy and India in the nineteenth century, through the cases of two eminent Italians who travelled to India at the time of Risorgimento and provided significant accounts of the country. The first is Lazzaro Papi’s "Lettere sulle Indie Orientali", an informed, erudite and enjoyable narration of India’s history, geography, manners, and religion, unfolding within an epistolary frame, which was first published in 1802 and revised in 1829. The second is Leopoldo Sebastiani’s "Storia universale dell’Indostan dall’anno 1500 avanti G.C. epoca la più remota della sua memoria in fino all’anno 1819 dell’era nostra", published in Rome in 1821, which the article reads as an interesting specimen of cultural mimesis.