Between the two European revolutionary waves of 1830 and 1848, the spreading of socio-political violence lead to an increase in the celebration of political victimes and in the flows of political exiles. Both of these practises constituted tools of politicization, within liberal movements built around convergent demands and which took advantage of transnational circulations. While political exile has been a particular moment of reconfiguring political mobilizations abroad, it contributed to the circulation and the consolidation of political victims’ memories, increasingly considered as martyrs. By building images of suffering political beings, such a process takes from the religious area a tool recognized as pedagogically efficient, being able to embody abstract political ideas. The analysis will lean on two societies where such a practice knew a specific increase in the first half of the 19th century, linked with the building of liberal and democratical movements. The Italian States, first of all, generated massive flows of exiles which used to give rise for a relevant victimary literature, such as the Neapolitan Antonio Gallotti, established in France in the early 1830s, or Giuseppe Mazzini who played the role of an intermediary by spreading in Great Britain the memory of recent Italian martyrs, for instance the Bandiera brothers, executed in 1844. Spain, then, saw from the 1810s massive political migrations towards France and Great Britain. If such a process knew a massive decrease after the liberal transition of 1833, it contributed to the outreach of local martyre experiences, such as the executed Malagan liberals of 1831 or the victims of the first student riots in March and May 1848 in Madrid. The Italian and Spanish communities in Marseilles will be the main observatory to study such practices, compared with other ones in France and Great Britain. Leaning on some well-informed cases (police and justice documentation, memorial literature), we aim to enlighten the repertory of celebrations in favor of revolutionary martyrs in the lands of exile, between elaboration of a literary pantheon devoted to consolidate fragmented national or ideological comunities, staging of commemorations abroad and expressions of political brotherhood towards foreign martyrs.

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