The nation as seen from below: Rome in 1870

When Rome joined the Kingdom of Italy in 1870, its symbolic importance played a large part in its role as the new capital of the nation-state. That very symbolic weight, though, left but a small space for the Romans themselves, particularly the lower classes. While recent scholarship on Italian nation-building has explored the cultural project underlying its political developments, it still remains to be understood how the lower classes first experienced and responded to their incorporation into the nation. Courted by the new nation-state, its clerical opposition and its radical opposition alike, their Risorgimento was different from that of the Romantic tropes informing the new national politics.     

Journeys to the other spaces of Fascist Italy

In the essay, 'Of Other Spaces', Michel Foucault contends that every society constructs sites which can be defined as effectively enacted utopias (heterotopias), sites where social policies are articulated and where ideals of social ordering are physically performed. The article examines how a number of places in Fascist Italy, which conformed entirely to the principles of the heterotopia that Foucault sets out, were perceived by a selection of prominent writers and journalists. It examines the recorded journeys to the cemeteries of the First World War, to various renovated prisons within Italy and finally to the new towns south of Rome. It explores the kind of mental and physical sensations which the different writers evoked as well as examining the ways in which their written accounts of their imaginative experiences interacted with the myths of identity and social control which were central to Fascist ideology.     

Dealing with the past and planning the future: the urban renewal of Rome and Barcelona through the Olympic Games

Is there a link between Rome and Barcelona's past and their Olympic legacies? This article sheds further light on the two cities' urban renewals through the Olympics on the basis of a historical and comparative analysis, as well as through the lenses of regime theory. It argues that Rome's modest outcome and Barcelona's success can be linked to their capacity to deal with their controversial past. The article shows that this capacity played a major role in shaping the composition and equilibrium of the two cities' informal networks of local elected officials, bureaucrats and entrepreneurs who planned and implemented the Games (‘growth regimes’). The difficulties of Rome in coping with the Fascist experience resulted in a growth regime in which weak and divided public actors – split along the Fascist/anti-Fascist and Communist/anti-Communist lines – were unable to counterbalance private agents' interests. In contrast, Barcelona's ability to reconcile itself with the past – facilitated by the Spanish entry in the European Economic Community and by the end of the Cold War – eased the Francoist/anti-Francoist and the centralist/Catalan divides, hence allowing the public actors to promote a coalition around a project of ‘democratic restoration’ of the city which involved planners, local businessmen and citizens.     

Rome’s Uncomfortable Heritage: Dealing with History in the Aftermath of WWII

Rome is a city famed for its outstanding cultural heritage stretching back two and a half thousand years. However, the events of the Second World War raise particular problems in dealing with this patrimony. This article examines the issues raises by the monuments built during the Fascist period and the Roman remains excavated by the Fascists. It also examines how commemoration throughout the city since 1945 reflects the changing attitudes to the war. The article argues that Rome has not yet come to terms with its Fascist past and that this constitutes a barrier to a sustainable heritage plan.     

The prefects and party‐state relations in Fascist Italy

Abstract

This is a study of the prefects, the arm of central government in the provinces, under the Fascist regime. Using the author's own survey of those appointed prefects after the decision to establish the ‘totalitarian’ state, it considers the phenomenon of the ‘Fascist prefects’ in relation to the progress of career officials, methods of recruitment and the prevailing bureaucratic culture, in order to assess the extent of the ‘Fascistization’ of the Interior Ministry. It then looks at how both career and ‘Fascist prefects’ actually operated on the ground and their relations with the Fascist Party in the provinces. The article concludes, on the evidence of continuing party‐state conflict throughout the 1930s, that there was a ‘totalitarian’ regime in the making.     

The great divide? Notions of racism in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany: new answers to an old problem

ABSTRACT

One of Michele Sarfatti’s greatest accomplishments has been to challenge the notion that there was a fundamental difference between the biological racism predominant in Nazi Germany and the ‘cultural racism’ of Fascist Italy. I examine how this dichotomy took shape and the meaning it acquired over time. My basic argument is that this division is the result of dialogue between Italian and German population experts during the interwar period, and that making a sharp distinction between a ‘German’ and an ‘Italian’ style of racism helped them to construct their own identities. In other words, the debate on racism was a vehicle for defining what it meant to be a ‘true’ Nazi or Fascist. In this way, differences in racist ideology can be understood as a product of struggles over meaning. Ultimately, my aim is to de-essentialize the meaning of race in research on both Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.     

On the use of Nazi sources for the study of Fascist Jewish policy in the Italian-occupied territories: The case of south-eastern France,November 1942–July 1943

ABSTRACT

This article discusses the use of Nazi sources for the study of Fascist policy towards Jews in 1940–1943. By exposing the gap between the Nazi perception of and the reality of the Fascist policy towards Jews in Italian-occupied south-eastern France, the article demonstrates that Rome’s refusal to hand over Jews for deportation did not contradict the fundamental anti-Semitic nature of its Jewish policy in that context. Thus, the article highlights the risks for historians to read Fascist Jewish policy through Nazi lenses and thereby fall prey to stereotypical characterizations of the Italians as insubordinate, scheming and driven by what an S.S. official disparagingly labelled a ‘Jewish-friendly attitude’. At the same time, the article shows that, when combined with Fascist sources, Nazi sources can help shed light on the conceptual divide that underpinned the Axis partners’ disagreement over the means by which the ‘Jewish problem’ should be ‘solved’, thereby exposing the analytical limitations of the current prevailing understanding of the Fascist refusal to hand over the Jews as purely the outcome of ‘pragmatic’ opportunistic considerations.     

The Institutionalization of Propaganda in the Fascist Era: The Cases of Germany,Portugal, and Italy

Almost a century after the emergence of right-wing dictatorships in twentieth-century Europe, a consensual regime paradigm has yet to be found. The debate always gets bogged down by ongoing attempts to find the definitive and complete definition of the two most common regime types: fascism or generic fascism, and totalitarianism/authoritarianism. This article claims that, although definitive nomenclatures are unlikely to be found, it is more useful to think of regimes as more or less approximating their ideal type than to posit their typologies in abstract terms. It therefore analyzes a key aspect of three dictatorial regimes: the functioning of the consensus-building institutions in Nazi Germany, in Fascist Italy, and in Salazarist Portugal. Propaganda is central to an understanding of these regimes, because it constitutes their ideological footprint—revealing what it aims for (inputs) and its capacity to impose those goals or make them popular (output). The three regimes examined here were very different from each other, and these differences can help us verify the degree to which each of them attained the standard of the totalitarian ideal type.     

The Millennial of Castile (1943): the historical culture of Spanish Fascism

The creation of new symbols and historical myths were common practices of nationalist politics, especially in Fascist regimes. In 1943 the Franco regime organized the most impressive historical commemoration celebrated in post-war Spain: the Milenario of Castile. With its heterogeneous mixture of history and spectacle, the Milenario of Castile was by far the greatest historical commemoration promoted by the State during the 1940s. Taking the commemoration of the Milenario as a case study, this article examines the historical culture of Spanish Fascism, as well as the attempts of the Falangist intellectual elite to impose a concrete national narrative in post-war Spain. At the same time, the article analyses the historical discourses and aesthetics displayed throughout the commemoration, underlining its Fascist character, and consequently the transnational dimension of the Fascist politics of the past. Finally, the article reflects on the scope and limits of the process of Fascistisation in Franco's dictatorship, especially in its commemorative culture.     

南北朝交聘使节行进路线考

南北朝时期为南北对峙的局面,双方除了军事冲突,也有和平的外交往来。交聘使节通常是由本国国都出发,前往他国国都进行访问与交涉,由于事属公务,交通路线大致上是比较固定的。不过,由于北朝政权更迭,曾经数次迁都,因此,交聘的路线也随之改变。本文根据正史与诗歌中有关使节行迹的资料,逐一考证“平城—建康”、“洛阳—建康”、“邺—建康”与“长安—建康”这四条路线,希望能将当时使节穿梭往来的具体路径勾勒出来。     

The Fascist racial turn: the view from the Italian-American community in the United States

ABSTRACT

This article examines Italian-Americans’ reaction to the Fascist embrace of anti-Semitism in 1938, primarily by means of a perusal of the Italian-language press in the U.S. It argues that the newcomers and their offspring usually failed to distance themselves from the regime’s racial turn because of pre-existing rivalries and resentment towards U.S. Jews. It also holds that, although Italian-Americans hardly subscribed to the Fascist ideology, which cannot be confined to anti-Jewish theories only, the notion that the Italian people were a race of their own helped the immigrants and their descendants strengthen a sense of ethnic identity based on their common national extraction and, thus, further allowed for the penetration of anti-Semitic propaganda into the Little Italies.     

Public works and municipal government in two Italian capital cities: Comparing technical bureaucracies in Turin and Rome, 1848-88

The article draws a comparison between nineteenth-century Turin and Rome, linking the growth of technical bureaucracies in the municipal institutions of both cities to the local struggles for control over urban space. In both post-1848 Turin and post-1870 Rome, the implementation of new institutional reforms offered local city councils an opportunity to gain more power and autonomy than they had enjoyed in the recent past. The organization and the role of municipal technical services were therefore affected, with quite opposite results, by the conflicts opened with the state about the redefinition of the province of local government     

Transatlantic Catholic responses to Fascist anti-Semitism: the Racial Laws of 1938 in the Jesuit press of America and Civiltà Cattolica

ABSTRACT

This article examines the Catholic responses to the Fascist Racial Laws in a transatlantic and comparative perspective. It looks specifically at two foremost publications of the Jesuit press in Rome and New York: Civiltà Cattolica and America, respectively. The comparative approach helps to comprehend the variety of factors behind editorial choices: readership, political context, Vatican directions, censorship, and silence. Jesuits on both sides of the Atlantic interpreted the anti-Semitic turn of the Fascist regime as an imitation of Nazi Germany and with the persistent hope that Italian policies would be milder and more ‘civilized’. The shaping of the myth of the ‘good Italian’ was an early process in which Church voices, including the Pope himself, took a significant part. This article argues that despite contextual differences, both Jesuit publications demonstrated a transnational pattern of Catholic relation to the Jews: endorsing Pius XI’s statements, they spoke out against racism but did not extend their condemnations to a full rejection of anti-Semitism in its religious and secular components. The disapproval of Italy’s Racial Laws was not a defense of the Jews of Italy.     

The shifting evocations of squadrismo: remembering the massacre of Palazzo d’Accursio in Fascist Bologna

The massacre of Palazzo d’Accursio is considered one of the first events in the rise of the Fascist squads. This article analyzes the ways in which the event was described in Bologna during the twenty years that followed it. It is believed that in the first few years, commemorations that emphasized the role of the Fascist squads were not very common. Instead, they concentrated on the life of Giulio Giordani, a murdered lawyer and opposition councilor, who became a martyr. Members of the city’s ruling class, especially lawyers, developed their own rituals of commemoration, but the establishment of the regime led to the acquisition of the commemorations of Giordani by Fascism, reflecting the shift of the local elites towards Fascism. In the 1930s, the massacre began to be described with detailed reference to the violence carried out by the Fascists. This process coincided with a much more incisive occupation of the area of commemoration.     

Environment and leisure in Italy during Fascism

While vacation colonies, camps for children and young people, well-equipped beaches and playgrounds, and the first national parks were conceived in Italy during the Liberal period, it was not until the late 1920s/1930s that they were created and transformed by the Fascist regime. This article will analyse the purposes of the use of the environment and protected areas by Fascist organisations during the Fascist regime by different social groups and classes. It will try to answer several questions: how did Fascist mass organisations (youth organisations such as the Opera Nazionale Balilla (ONB) and Gioventù Italiana del Littorio (GIL), leisure organisations like the Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro (OND), sports associations) relate to environmental space? Which popular activities were conceived for open-air, urban and national parks? How did the relationship between outdoor leisure and the environment develop in the ‘new’ middle class in the 1930s? How did Fascism conceive of the relationship between human beings and nature? The Nazi regime and the US New Deal were the strongest models at that time in terms of the politics of land conservation and leisure time. Did Fascism look to those experiments; did Fascism find its own modern ‘conservative’ relationship with the environment? This article will try to answer some of these questions, mindful of the lack of studies on Italy in comparison with the expanding historiography on the German and American cases.     

Making Italians out of rocks: Mussolini's shadows on Italian mountains

In this article I use the case of mountains to explore the ways in which the Fascist regime articulated its vision of nature/human relationships. I will show how mountains were considered as creative environments which could produce a special type of people: the montanari (mountaineers), meaning with this word mountain villagers rather than mountain climbers. The Fascist regime praised people from the mountains – especially from the Alps - as the true and better stock of Italians; that environment made them strong, healthy, pure, and disciplined, as the rhetoric of the Great War had supported. The Fascist regime celebrated the virtues of montanari by birth, those who were born and raised in the mountains, but it also aimed at employing the creative power of nature in its plan to shape the new Italian. In the article I show how the regime employed mountains in its discourses and practices of ‘bonifica umana’ (human reclamation) which involved both body and soul. In the Fascist narratives, mountains were the open air gymnasium for building a stronger man, a living archive of ruralism for reproducing the true Italian, and the secular church of the collective memory for the making of national subjects. The blend of nature, culture, and politics in the Fascist discourse on mountains and people is at the core of this article.     

The myth of Aeneas: The Italian Archaeological Mission in Albania, 1924–43

Abstract

The development of archaeology in Italy during the first decades of this century led to a partial rejection of positivist principles of experimentation in favour of a historically-based idealist philosophy. Under the Fascist regime archaeology was used to create and sustain the political mythology of Romanità. Excavations in central Rome sought to highlight the physical connections between the Rome of Augustus and that of Mussolini as well as emphasising the links between the chain of ‘great men’, who had created and sustained the Roman state.

The Italian archaeological mission to Albania was established against this background, with the aim of reinforcing Italian hegemony to the east of the Adriatic. The means of achieving this varied from reinforcing Albanian historical preconceptions to emphasising the mythological connections and traditional civilising mission of Rome in the Balkans. Within these political objectives, the mission was able to follow a serious scientific research programme, although full publication was prevented by the outbreak of war. Thereafter, the changed political situation enforced the abandonment of the project.     

The ‘indomitable’ Pignatellis

The fall of Fascism generates contrasting feeling in Italy, now liberated by the Allied troops. In this new scenario, the search for new forms of democratic gathering coexists with its opposite: the aim to recreate an experience now historically ended (the Fascist regime). Indeed, many southern Italians still believe in Fascism and, despite Mussolini's execution in Piazzale Loreto, they kindle the hope of a new Fascist era. Arguably, they see the death of Mussolini as an opportunity to refashion the Fascist ideology, by returning to the myths of its origins. They envision a new form of Fascism, free from political contamination and compromise, and a new regime able to realize the programmes that the old regime has failed to realize. Maria and Valerio Pignatelli represent the dream of a Fascist revival, characterized by innovative and original characters. They find many supporters in the southern regions, especially in Calabria, reversing the stereotype of an ‘apolitical’ and passive south. Therefore, the aim of this article is to reconstruct the Fascist revival in post-war southern Italy through the history of its main exponents.     

Italian anti-Fascism in London, 1922–1934

Between the end of the Great War and the start of the Second World War, various Italians living in London, who for the most part had migrated there around the start of the twentieth century, started their own particular determined opposition to Fascism. Their initial aim was to counter Fascist monopolisation of London’s Italian community, contesting control of the community’s main associations, institutes and cultural bodies by the Fascio, which had been established in London in 1921. Subsequently, these anti-Fascists also sought contacts outside London’s Little Italy, on the one hand with British political bodies and the British press, and on the other with anti-Fascists in other countries. While strong links were formed with the latter, British society showed only a muted interest. This is in part explained by the positive response to the Fascist experience by the Conservative press and various eminent British politicians, at least until the mid-1930s.     

To Make Live or Let Die? Rural Dispossession and the Protection of Surplus Populations

Abstract: A biopolitics of the population, when it succeeds in securing life and wellbeing, is surely worth having. It has become urgent in rural Asia, where a new round of enclosures has dispossessed large numbers of people from access to land as a way to sustain their own lives, and neoliberal policies have curtailed programs that once helped to sustain rural populations. At the same time, new jobs in manufacturing have not emerged to absorb this population. They are thus “surplus” to the needs of capital, and not plausibly described as a labour reserve. Who, then, would act to keep these people alive, and why would they act? I examine this question by contrasting a conjuncture in India, where a make live program has been assembled under the rubric of the “right to food”, and Indonesia, where the massacre of the organized left in 1965 has left dispossessed populations radically exposed.