Chapter 5 is a case study, further pursuing the conclusions of Chapters 3 and 4, and analysing an example of ‘hard-to-integrate’ foreigner: southern Italian sailors were imagined by British officers and policymakers through the lens of substantial racial stereotypes, compounded by cultural, linguistic, and religious differences, mutual unfamiliarity, and the Mediterranean’s geographical distance from the British world. This did not mean that it was deemed impossible to turn these seamen into useful and respected crew members. However, it did mean that, if this was to happen, they needed to be completely removed from the structures of their own state, and particularly from the influence and perceived corruption and inefficiency of Neapolitan and Sicilian officers. The imbalanced power dynamic between Britain and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, which during the French Wars came to depend entirely on the Royal Navy, led to frequent manpower exchange, and affected the interactions between British and Neapolitan officers. Collaboration and patronage flourished, but so did acrimony and rivalry. This tense undercurrent offered British officers a chance of separating the seamen whom they were reclaiming as perfectly good recruits from the stereotypes of corruption and unreliability that they associated with those seamen’s country.

The present chapter continues the discussion about Neapolitan maestri/operisti who produced instrumental compositions, focusing on Domenico Cimarosa and Pietro Alessandro Guglielmi. The surviving instrumental works of Cimarosa and Guglielmi favor keyboard genres (solo and ensemble), reflecting the preferences of Maria Carolina. The evidence also includes larger forms such as the concerto and sinfonia, the latter bearing clues regarding possible performances by the Cappella Reale. The pieces examined in this chapter reveal the distinctive imprimatur of Neapolitan pedagogy, namely the presence of melodic schemata not only as a principal technical resource but also, and more importantly, as the fundamental core of a distinctive style.

The establishment of Naples as an independent kingdom in the eighteenth century not only drew the European diplomatic corps to the city but also initiated a broad civic renewal and beautification of the city. Although Naples had been a cultural and musical capital of Europe since the previous century, the coalescence of political stability and social renewal with the intertwined network of artistic institutions (conservatories, theaters, churches, and patrons) propelled the kingdom into continental prominence. The city became a destination point for the vast number of travelers moving across the continent in search of pleasure, leisure or of “knowledge” (particularly regarding the reclamation of antiquity), or simply to follow prevailing fashions. These travelers – often young, affluent, educated, and with ties to aristocratic birthright – headed south for the “Grand Tour.” As a “must see,” Naples became an obligatory stop, and the experiences of travelers were immortalized in numerous books, journals, periodicals, travelogues, memoirs, visual arts, etc. Their reflections often merged around the broad themes of natural phenomena, the patrimony of ancient civilizations, and the unprecedented diversity of entertainment (above all, opera). Through these wide-ranging sources, this chapter documents how Naples entered the public imagination as a broad ideal of culture.

The last twenty-five years of the eighteenth century in Naples witnessed a profound transformation. At the center of this process of innovation, change, and upheaval was Queen Maria Carolina, the consort to King Ferdinand IV. Thanks to the influence of her mother, Empress Maria Theresa, Maria Carolina was not to be a mere spouse or observer; rather, she was destined to be the driving force for sweeping change within the Kingdom of Naples. Despite her well-documented limitations and even ineptitude, Maria Carolina established a formidable presence within contemporary artistic life. Unlike her husband, she possessed cultural sensibilities that were astute, and she was an engaged patron of art, music, and dance. This chapter focuses on Maria Carolina within the artistic sphere of her reign, namely as a cultural icon, with a specific emphasis on her role as a musical patron. Working from diverse sources – including historical research, surviving diaries, and personal correspondence, as well as related documents – this chapter establishes a portrait of Maria Carolina’s musical interests, with a specific focus on the cultivation of instrumental music at court, thereby shedding light on a largely unknown, yet important, sector of Neapolitan artistic life at the end of the eighteenth century.

It was in the nineteenth century that a philosophical enterprise begun in the eighteenth century was first identified as ‘Scottish philosophy’, and arguably, philosophical discussion and debate were more intense and more culturally prominent in nineteenth-century Scotland than it had ever been before. Yet, while philosophy in the eighteenth-century Scottish Enlightenment is now studied to the point of being a major academic industry, Scottish philosophy in the nineteenth century is virtually unknown. Hutcheson, Hume, Reid and Smith are names familiar to almost all philosophers, Brown, Hamilton, Ferrier and Bain to hardly any. This chapter aims to explain why one period of Scottish philosophy should remain perennially interesting and intensively studied and the period that followed it should fall so nearly into oblivion. It elaborates an answer couched in terms of the story of Scottish philosophy itself and argues that the nineteenth century saw the unravelling of the great philosophical project that had animated the eighteenth.