This article stresses the valuable inputs that Agostino Bistarelli’s book on Italian exiles has provided for a better undestanding of political exile in the 1820’s. The quality and accuracy of Bistarelli’s anlysis of the individual trajectories of exiles (from their «communities» of origin to their associations abroad and their political beliefs) show how the experience of exile can, in the end, make these initial links more fragile and often impossible to maintain. C. Brice suggests that this book can be an excellent starting point for a study of political exile under different points of view, including the economic logics at work in this 19th century «adventure».
Keywords: Exile; cultural history of politic; social and ecomomic history; Italy; Risorgimento.