The foreign policy of First Republic Italy: new approaches

This introductory article deals with the most recent contributions by Italian historians on the Italian Republic's international role. It aims mainly to demonstrate that a new generation of younger Italian historians is successfully offering new views and interpretations on First Republic Italy's role in the international system, and is also focusing on aspects such as the culture of Italy's political parties, the economic dimension, the role of public opinion, and the influence of external actors on domestic Italian politics – in short, that there has been a turn away from traditional diplomatic history based upon the archives of the Foreign Ministry.     

GLOBAL INTELLECTUAL HISTORY BEYOND HEGEL AND MARX

Recent years have seen the growing prominence of “global history” as a subject of research, especially in North America and Europe. However, there is no consensus on what the contours of the subject are, or what the appropriate research methods for it might be. Further, there are quite a few skeptics among historians with regard to this trend. The appearance of a volume on the subfield of “global intellectual history” is an occasion to reflect on all these issues, especially when the volume in question suggests that “the future of intellectual history as a discipline lies in this direction.” This review essay, while appreciative of the effort to lay out the contours of the field, as well as to point to possible future directions for research and reflection, is nevertheless somewhat critical of the actual execution of the project. It is found to be lacking in chronological depth, and also highly uneven in quality, as well as excessively centered on a few “great thinkers” such as Hegel and Marx. A greater attention to the centuries between 1500 and 1800, when a polycentric global regime of knowledge (however tenuous it proved) was established, would have been particularly helpful. Most important, there is the question of whether a history claiming to be “global,” as distinct from “universal,” should not pay closer attention to questions of space and geography.     

The challenges to democracy and citizenship surrounding the vote to Italians overseas

In 2003, a presidential decree enacted legislation guaranteeing Italian voters overseas the right to postal voting as well as parliamentary representation within their respective electoral constituency. The electoral weight of the overseas-based constituent had a remarkable effect on the 2006 election results. In the tightest vote in the Republic's history, the vote of overseas Italians, which was one of the decisive features of the election, helped provide the winning centre-left coalition with a slender majority in the Senate. Election results notwithstanding, the question of whether to grant the vote to Italians overseas has faced challenges of a procedural, normative and political nature. What may have been initially seen as a democratic right may well be cast aside as it poses challenges to overseas electoral relationships with the Italian national polity, Italian citizenship and multinational allegiances, diasporic identity, electoral participation and political representation in homeland political institutions. The overseas vote for Italians may be contested further in the near future, which could translate into a radical rethink of its validity and democratic global extension.     

Italy and the politics of European defence: playing by the logic of multi‐level networks

The article looks at the role of Italy in the decision‐making arena of the EU Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), analysing the initiatives it put in place to address and influence the construction of a common defence. The article aims to explain the ability or inability of Italy to build up a consensus around its proposals. By studying two initiatives in the field of European defence and security, it seeks to determine the factors which resulted in the differing outcomes of Italian actions at the European level.     

Italian Jews from Emancipation to the Racial Laws,by Cristina M. Bettin

The recent argument that the notion of ‘transition’ should be set aside in attempting to explain the trajectory of Italian politics in the past two decades is to be welcomed, but does not go far enough in explaining why we, as Italianists, got our case wrong and how exactly we might get our case right today. The transitional ‘myth’ was born and maintained despite growing evidence of its inherently problematic nature, in both conceptual and empirical terms. The concept of ‘transition’ needs more serious conceptual treatment and empirical application, but even with this work it is unlikely to be concluded that Italy is in transition. Freeing Italy and Italianists from this conventional wisdom, while, at the same time, not abandoning the idea that something exceptional happened to Italian politics in the early 1990s will help enrich the debate on the nature of the political change that Italy has experienced in the past 17 years.     

Foucault and the French tradition of historical epistemology

A recently published volume – edited by Walter Tega and Luigi Turco – celebrates the Italian historian of philosophy Antonio Santucci. One of the founders of the neoilluminismo (new-Enlightenment), Santucci blended strong civil commitment with rigorous textual analysis and contributed to the popularisation of British and American philosophy in Italy. The book describes Santucci's contribution to the historical research on empiricism and stimulates a reappraisal of the heated cultural debate which flourished in Italy after the Second World War.     

Constructing a national identity from a created literary past: Giosuè Carducci and the development of a national literature

Giosuè Carducci's conception of Italian literature differed from those of Francesco de Sanctis and Benedetto Croce. He argued that Italian literature, together with a concomitant cultural identity and political mission, developed along a continuous, progressive and evolutionary path. This study analyzes Carducci's creation of an Italian cultural and political identity through literary history and his construction of a plausible model for its historical development by incorporating literary,scientific and political theories. Carducci gave Italians a past of which they could be proud, proof of Italy's leading role in Europe's civilizing mission, and a strategy to accomplish it. Carducci's conception of italianitÀ, defined in terms of a historic mission of grandezza , was one of several brands of Italian nationalism. His linking of literary history to aspirations of national unity and aggrandizement implied that the mantle of the Risorgimento now belonged to the educated elite. This linkage of literature and national identity to aspirations of cultural and political hegemony explains why Carducci was so popular with the Nationalist Party whose leaders invoked his literary history to legitimize their political program and to discredit their political opponents prior to World War I and under Fascism.     

Italy and Africa: how to forget colonialism

Abstract

The debate on colonialism places great emphasis on the composite set of transformations put in motion by colonialism fully to give birth to what became the post-colonial state in independent Africa. Many authors suggest that Italian colonialism in the Horn of Africa was too weak to perform this task. The present article intends to review the influence and effects of the Italian colonial experience for state making in the Horn of Africa. This also brings about one of the main anomalies of the Horn of Africa, where colonialism ended without a process of true decolonization, in the sense of a confrontation between colonized and colonizers in the transfer of power from metropolitan rule to African representatives. The present Italian foreign policy in Africa is similarly conditioned by its colonial history: besides its focus on the Horn of Africa, which was the centre of Italy's colonial expansion as well as the only post-Second WorldWar administration (Italian Trust Administration of Somalia – AFIS), the relations between Italy and Africa reflect the many inconsistencies and uncertainties of the colonial experience.     

The Board of Deputies of British Jews and the initial phase of the Italian Racial Laws: reactions and strategies (1938–1940)

ABSTRACT

This article aims to reconstruct the activities of the Board of Jewish Deputies, the central representative body of British Jewry, in support of the Italian Jews affected by the Fascist Racial Laws of 1938. By analysing the institution’s documents and examining the most widely read Jewish newspaper in the U.K., the Jewish Chronicle, this research investigates how the initial phase of the Italian anti-Semitic campaign was received in Great Britain, and what measures were put in place by British Jewry in their attempts to help the Italian Jews. The Jewish historian, Cecil Roth, played an important role during this phase, in active collaboration with the leadership of the Board and the staff of the Jewish Chronicle, gathering as much information as possible on Italy and its history in order to shed light on the events that were taking place during the first years of the Racial Laws and until the entrance of Italy into WWII (1938–1940). The involvement of certain members of the Foreign Office with links to the Board, and the shared goal of helping Italian Jewry, was also fundamental in this period.     

The institutional odyssey of the Italian Parliamentary Republic

This article examines the Italian foreign policy of the second Berlusconi government. The first section focuses on the episodes that critics have used to argue that, under the second Berlusconi government, there has occurred a process of ‘Americanization’ of Italian foreign policy, and provides an interpretation of their significance. The second section looks at these episodes against the historical background of Italian?–?American relations since the end of World War II and argues that, from this perspective, very little, if anything, has changed in Italian?–?American relations or Italian foreign policy in general.     

The history of modern and contemporary Italy: Made in France (from the late 1970s to the late 1990s)

Abstract

Over the past three centuries Italy has been the focus of numerous studies by French historians, who have taken advantage of the great wealth of sources available there. While no new synthesis has yet been achieved, we can identify certain main lines of development in French historiography. In the late 1970s and into the 1980s international relations and, especially, the relations between France and Italy were given the greatest attention, before a new focus on forms of sociability and political pedagogy began to be more common. However, the shifting of focus of historical studies to the centres of political decision making often coincided with less attention being paid to social stratification. Beyond these major themes, some researchers have reconstructed ‘global’ historical models, which have been characteristic of the renewal of post‐war French historiography.     

The battle of Turin, 1933–1936: Carlo Rosselli,Giustizia e Libertà, OVRA and the origins of Mussolini's anti‐Semitic campaign

This study draws attention to the intensity of the conflict between Carlo Rosselli and Giustizia e Libertà (the Italian liberal‐socialist anti‐Fascist organization) and the highest ranks of Italian Fascism, including Mussolini and OVRA ‐ the Fascist secret police ‐between 1933 and 1936. The activities of Rosselli and Giustizia e Libertà can be considered in the light of their secret attempts to organize the assassination of Mussolini and their efforts to disseminate broader anti‐Fascist sentiment in Italy. The militants of Giustizia e Libertà in Turin were key figures in the second of these operations. But the success of agents of OVRA in infiltrating Giustizia e Libertà resulted in three waves of arrests in Turin (in 1934, 1935 and 1936). However, Rosselli and GL showed a great capacity for recovery. By focusing on the struggle between Giustizia e Libertà and Fascism which had all the features of a civil war, and on the events in Turin in the period 1933–6, this research shows that the conflict between Fascism and anti‐Fascism was a central feature of the history of Italian Fascism even at the height of the regime's power. The article also offers a specific but incomplete study of the activities of OVRA. Since many of the members of Giustizia e Libertà in Turin were Jews, it also shows how OVRA's efforts to dismantle Giustizia e Libertà in Turin were closely linked to Mussolini's first anti‐Semitic campaign in 1934.     

Sender,those who have not returned: Carlo Salsa and his ‘Trenches’

Abstract

Carlo Salsa’s book ‘Trenches: A foot-soldier’s tales’ (Trincee. Confidenze di un fante, 1924) was one of many published in Italy after the end of the First World War. It describes the facts of the war as they were lived by officers and soldiers on the Italian front line. The article tries to compare the book with the contemporary war literature in Italy and in Europe, without forgetting the use of the international historiography on the matter. Thus, it is analysed the way an Italian author described to his readers the brutal carnage of the war in years when Fascism was the rising star in Italian policy and the censorship was becoming the more and more a thornily factor for every writer of those days. From this analysis it is possible to note the quality of the volume both from the literary point of view, and its historical value as a reliable testimony of the facts, stepping up our knowledge of what the war literature was for the Italian public opinion after the 1918. As it is possible to note, the book puts under test our notions of the role played by this kind of literature in shaping the Italian political life at the end of the 1910s and at the start of 1920s, when Italy was becoming a country lead by the Fascist regime.     

Renaissance and ‘Made in Italy’: marketing Italian fashion through history (1949–1952)

Until 1950, Italian fashion did not exist: there were able tailors and creative designers, but they were known only as individuals and not as part of a wider movement that identified with a specific Italian style. Despite the existence of advanced skills, with the potential to realize an Italian fashion in its own right, there was neither a cultural identity to bind them together nor an international legitimization that would allow the new form to compete with the dominant haute couture of Paris. The revival of the Renaissance and its invention as an intangible asset was fundamental in resolving this ‘dual’ absence, and it therefore became a key factor in the international success of Italian fashion. From the 1950s to today – the period of increasing international success of the ‘Made in Italy’ label – in the rhetoric of entrepreneurs, managers and marketing experts, the Renaissance has become almost an integral part of the DNA of Italian fashion, itself at times represented as the direct descendant and legitimate heir of the excellence of Renaissance taste. This is a link, now taken for granted, for which a term has even been coined: the ‘Renaissance effect’. The fundamental argument that supports this so-called Renaissance effect is in fact that of the continuity between the craftsmanship of the Renaissance age and today's fashion houses; a continuity, however, that has been elaborated through ‘manipulations’ of history which are in part simplistic and in part distorted.     

Italian history and gli italiani nel mondo,part I

Abstract

Italian historians have not yet seriously grappled with the emigration of twenty‐seven million Italians as an interpretative theme. This article reviews the methodological challenges to such an undertaking. Existing works suggests that ‘Italy‐outward’ research strategies, exploration of Italian connections to its ‘diaspora’, and attention to labor recruitment and militancy, and return migration are promising approaches. Since most interpretation of Italian migration still occurs within the histories of receiving nations, Part I also provides a review of the historiography on Italian immigrants in the English‐speaking world, to be followed in Part II by a comparable review of Italians living and working in France, South America and central Europe.     

THE GEOGRAPHER AS PRACTITIONER: THE CHALLENGES, OPPORTUNITIES, AND DIFFICULTIES FACED BY THE ACADEMIC CONSULTANT

As a professional and academic geographer in a Canadian university for the last fourteen years, I have become increasingly aware that there is a growing dichotomy between pure and applied research in physical geography. This breach has been discussed by numerous prominent figures in the field. Yet it is disquieting that many published statements amount to defences of the one or attacks on the other of these two aspects of the discipline. For example, Chorley has written: 'Utilitarian approaches to geomorphology will either result in large-scale work of which the intellectually-sterile taxonomic mapping is the most depressing precursor, or in a piecemeal concentration on small-scale realist systems. The construction of [realist] models in geomorphology may not be a secure base for geomorphological theory.' To Hails, by contrast, 'There seems little doubt that geomorphologists will be asked to resolve problems created by technological innovation and engineering design in the future … [Thus] the contribution of geomorphologists might be increased if the subject was taught in such a way that students were acquainted with the necessary techniques for scientific applied studies and the needs of the market place.'     

The cultural construction of Italy in Albania and vice versa: Migration dynamics,strategies of resistance and politics of mutual self-definition across colonialism and post-colonialism

This article analyses the shifting ways in which Italy has been strategically represented in Albania during the different key passages of the latter's relatively recent history as a sovereign independent state. As a parallel narrative, the article also examines the way Albania has been equally strategically represented in Italy before and during the two periods in which Italy has been militarily involved in Albania, and the way this has been consistent with an attempt to elaborate and sustain a politically strategic definition of Italian identity and culture. The history of the asymmetrical relationship between Albania and Italy is deeply embedded in the social, cultural and political environments that are on the two shores of the Adriatic Sea. The cultural construction of Albania in Italy and vice versa of Italy in Albania should be linked to seemingly independent instances of domestic reforms. The dynamics of projective identification or dis-identification stemming from these instances should be seen as intertwined within two parallel processes of mutual definition encompassing both the colonial and the postcolonial relations between and within the two countries.