Historical-political writings in exile
Foscolo wrote some political interventions on the Ionian Islands, which had become a British protectorate after the end of the Venetian Republic and a period of instability, as soon as he arrived in London, when he still planned to move to Greece. Three interventions entitled Stato politico delle Isole Ionie (Political status of the Ionian islands), Mémoire sur l’education publique aux Isles Ioniennes (‘Memoir on public instruction in the Ionian Islands’) and Come ottenere modifiche alla Costituzione delle Isole Ionie (How to obtain amendments to the Constitution of the Ionian Islands), which address specific issues and make suggestions for the constitutional make-up the insular territory should be given, were collected in Edizione Nazionale (XIII, I, pp. 1-582) under the title of Scritti sulle Isole Ionie (Writings on the Ionian Islands).
The longest and most significant piece, however, is an article entitled On Parga, published in October 1819 in the “Edinburgh Review”, in which Foscolo used a review of three articles on the debate about the Albanian city to condemn the behaviour of the British who, after the payment of a major sum, had handed over Parga to Ali Pasha of Ioannina. The city's claim for independence is also at the centre of a book prepared for print but incomplete and never published called Narrative of Events Illustrating the Fortunes and Cession of Parga.
The most significant of the articles from the English period devoted to Italian history is An Account of the Revolution of Naples during the Years 1798, 1799, published in the “New Monthly Magazine” in 1821, a work which takes on a more extensive, articulated form in Commentari della Storia di Napoli and makes a claim for the Neapolitans right to self-determination and opposes the interference of the French and British.
The article The Women of Italy, a fresco on the role of the woman in contemporary society published in 1826 in “London Magazine” stemming from a polemic on the stereotypes given by English travel literature, is his final intervention in the Italian ambit.
