Italy

Within a few months, paramilitary Fascist squad leaders controlled many rural areas of central Italy. Local bosses built power bases in various areas—e.g., Italo Balbo in Ferrara, Roberto Farinacci in Cremona, and Leandro Arpinati in Bologna. These men became known as ras (meaning “provincial viceroy” in Ethiopia’s Amharic language) and exercised considerable local power throughout the Fascist period. The Fascists had become a major political force, backed not only by landowners but also by many members of the urban middle class, including students, shopkeepers, and clerical workers. In May 1921, when Prime Minister Giolitti called new elections, 35 Fascists were elected to parliament as part of a government bloc of 275 deputies. In October Mussolini abandoned republicanism, and in November he formed his movement into a proper political party, the National Fascist Party (Partito Nazionale Fascista; PNF), which by this time was well-financed if ill-disciplined and extremely disparate. Local bosses remained paramount in their areas. The Fascists also organized their own trade unions, the Fascist “syndicates,” among strategic groups such as postal administrative workers and taxi drivers, to replace Socialist or Catholic organizations, to provide mass membership, and to control labour. These unions never managed to penetrate the organized working class but did have some support among the lower middle class and small landowners.

Mussolini manipulated this volatile situation in the next few months to his advantage, and the Liberal political establishment sought to conciliate him and the Fascist thugs. The police, the army, and much of the middle class sympathized with Fascist destruction of Socialist unions. Mussolini, as duce (leader) of fascism, gradually made himself indispensable in Rome, and the squads took over more cities in the provinces. Only a very few areas were able to resist the “Blackshirts” in street fighting, including Parma and Bari in 1922. Attempts by the left to organize defense squads against the Fascists were, in general, a failure. A major anti-Fascist protest strike, called by the Socialist-led Confederation of Labour in August 1922, quickly collapsed, strengthening Mussolini’s bargaining position even further. Fascists used the opportunity to inflict further damage on the left and union institutions, and the offices of L’Avanti! were again attacked and razed. In October 1922 Mussolini organized a “March on Rome” by Fascist supporters. Fascist squads, numbering about 25,000 men altogether, began to converge on the capital from all over Italy on October 26, occupying railway stations and government offices. Prime Minister Facta asked the king to declare martial law, but Victor Emmanuel III eventually refused in order to avoid possible army disloyalty or even a possible civil war. Instead, he asked Mussolini to form a government on October 29, hoping to tame him by constitutional means.

Mussolini became prime minister, therefore, in a more or less constitutional manner, but only after three years of near civil war in the country and an armed invasion of Rome. He was appointed by the king, and he headed a coalition government that included nationalists, two Fascist ministers, Liberals, and even (until April 1923) two Catholic ministers from the Popular Party. For 18 months he ruled through the usual government machinery, pursued a policy of “normalization,” and gradually concentrated power in his own hands. The Fascist squads were incorporated into an official Voluntary Militia for National Security. Ordinary middle-class job seekers flooded into the Fascist Party, making it more respectable and amenable; the nationalists also merged their organization into it, bringing with them much respectable backing in the south. In 1923 the electoral law was changed once more, so that a group of parties with the largest vote—even if only 25 percent of the total—would receive an absolute majority of the seats. This enabled the Fascists to attract most of the old Liberal deputies into a “national alliance.” In April 1924 elections were held under this system. In a climate of violence and threats, the Fascist-dominated bloc won 64 percent of the votes and 374 seats, doing particularly well in the south. The opposition parties—by now including the Popular Party—remained divided but won a majority of the votes in northern Italy. The Socialists, indeed, had by this time split again, and the left now consisted of three rival parties, which spent much time criticizing one another: the Communists, the Socialists, and the reformist Socialists. The Popular Party was disowned by the Vatican, and its leader, Luigi Sturzo, resigned at the Vatican’s request. The end of constitutional rule

Mussolini’s relative success as leader of a “normalizing” constitutional government did not last long. When the new parliament met, Giacomo Matteotti, leader of the reformist Socialists, denounced the recent elections as a sham and claimed there had been widespread intimidation of opposition voters. On June 10, 1924, Matteotti disappeared. His body was recovered on July 16, and he was later found to have been murdered by Fascist thugs led by the assistant to Mussolini’s press office, Amerigo Dumini. The “Matteotti crisis” aroused public distrust in Mussolini and the Fascists. Mussolini was suspected of personal complicity in ordering the murder to eliminate a troublesome opponent. The press denounced the government, and the opposition parties walked out of parliament. However, Mussolini still had a majority in parliament, and the king backed him. For some time Mussolini hung on, but by autumn his Liberal supporters were drifting away, and in any case the “normalization” policy infuriated Fascist extremists in the country—especially the local bosses who were threatened with dismissal by the new militia commander, an army general. They demanded a showdown, and Mussolini—who was too weak by this time to rule by constitutional means—had to agree. On Jan. 3, 1925, he made a famous speech in the Chamber of Deputies accepting “political, moral, and historical responsibility” for Fascist rule and Matteotti’s death and promising a tough crackdown on dissenters. The king made no move. On January 4, orders were given to prefects throughout Italy to control all “suspect” political organizations. Searches, arrests, and the elimination of several offices and organizations followed.

During the next two years, which included several failed assassination attempts, Mussolini disbanded most of Italy’s constitutional and conventional safeguards against government autocracy. Elections were abolished. Free speech and free association disappeared, and the Fascist government dissolved opposition parties and unions. At the local level, appointed podestas replaced elected mayors and councils. Freemasonry was outlawed—a real blow to most non-Catholic anti-Fascists. A Special Tribunal for the Defense of the State, run by militia and army officers, was set up to try anti-Fascist “subversives”; it imprisoned or sent to exile on remote islands thousands of political opponents, including the Communist leader Antonio Gramsci, and it imposed 31 death penalties. Other opposition leaders, such as the Liberals Piero Gobetti and Giovanni Amendola, died at the hands of Fascist thugs. Severe controls were imposed on movement into and out of Italy. Although the repression was carried out essentially by old state institutions such as the police and the army and not by Fascist bodies, in 1927 Mussolini established the main information network of spies, the Organizzazione di Vigilanza Repressione dell’Antifascismo (Organization for the Vigilant Repression of Anti-Fascism; OVRA). This network extended abroad, where the OVRA organized assassinations of those hostile to the regime—such as the brothers Nello and Carlo Rosselli, anti-Fascist intellectuals, in France in 1937.

The prefects—mostly still career civil servants—retained their traditional dominance over local government, and the new podestas were nearly always landowners or retired army officers rather than Fascist enthusiasts. The Fascist party itself was soon swamped by more than a million job seekers and clerical workers, and thousands of the original Fascists were purged. The party, and the militia, soon had little to do except engage in propaganda and parades. The Fascist regime was mostly run by the traditional elites in the military and civilian bureaucracy, which were linked, as previously, to landowners and the court. That said, it was much more authoritarian and also much more nationalistic and interventionist than the Liberal governments had been. By the 1930s the Fascist Party dominated all aspects of daily life, from the workplace to the schools to leisure activities. However, many of the regime’s opponents merely went along with its formal elements to procure space for protest and underground activity.

Fascist indoctrination was never really successful, but the press was tightly censored, motion picture newsreels were largely government propaganda, and the regime controlled the new radio broadcasting. It also ran semicompulsory Fascist youth movements, and new textbooks were imposed on the schools. Moreover, the government provided mass leisure activities, such as sports, concerts, and seaside holidays, which were genuinely popular. These attempts to create consent went hand in hand with the coercion imposed by the regime through the OVRA and its enormous network of spies. The fear of arrest, imprisonment, or economic marginalization hung over thousands of anti-Fascists and former oppositionists, and silence replaced the propaganda of the biennio rosso. Fascist control of daily life reached right down to the most basic levels. In 1938 the government imposed the use of Voi as the formal pronoun instead of Lei and banned handshakes in all places of public work. Foreign words and names were replaced. Bordeaux became Barolo, film became pellicola, and German place-names were Italianized. The walls of offices, schools, and public buildings were covered with slogans and murals paying homage to Mussolini and fascism, such as “Mussolini is always right” or “Better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep.” Anti-Fascist movements

For a long time, organized anti-Fascist movements remained weak, divided, and illegal and had no access to press or radio. The Communists were soon the most significant of these movements, as they had an underground organization and some Russian support and finance, but even they had only 7,000 members at most and had great difficulty in spreading their propaganda in Italy. Spies within the movement exposed many of the underground networks before they even had a chance to put down roots. New anti-Fascist groups were founded occasionally, but the secret police soon cracked down on them. Apart from the Communists, only Justice and Liberty, an alliance of republicans, democrats, and reformist Socialists founded by Carlo Rosselli and others in 1929, managed to build up a clandestine organization in Italy and a strong organization abroad, above all in France and Switzerland. Most prominent anti-Fascists were in prison, in “confinement” on remote islands, or in exile and had little contact with Italian reality. Mussolini had disbanded unions and replaced them with new syndicates with little bargaining power. Strikes were illegal and more or less ceased to occur. Employer power was reimposed in both the countryside and the city after the union victories of the postwar years, although the welfare corporatism of the Fascist regime allowed workers important economic benefits.

The only strong non-Fascist organization in the country was the Roman Catholic Church. The Vatican implicitly supported Mussolini in the early years and was rewarded in February 1929 by the Lateran Treaty, which settled the “Roman Question” at last. Vatican City became an independent state, Italy paid a large financial indemnity to the pope for taking over his pre-1870 lands, and a concordat granted the church many privileges in Italy, including recognition of church weddings as valid in civil law, religious education in secondary as well as primary schools, and freedom for the lay Catholic organizations in Catholic Action. However, the government soon began curbing Catholic Action, seeing it as a front for anti-Fascist activity by former members of the Popular Party. The Catholic youth organizations were closed for a time in 1931. When they reopened, they had to avoid sports, but, even so, they grew considerably in the 1930s. They were a serious rival to the Fascist youth bodies and trained a new generation that often managed to avoid Fascist indoctrination. The 1929 concordat remained in force until the 1980s and was the legal basis for continued church dominance of Italian society after World War II. The Fascist regime could easily enough repress forms of local opposition such as demonstrations and strikes, but anti-Fascist feeling became more widespread after the mid-1930s.

Nonetheless, Italy sent some 60,000 “volunteer” militiamen, as well as about 800 warplanes, 90 ships, and 8,000 jeeps, to fight on the side of Mussolini’s ideological cohort, Francisco Franco, in the Spanish Civil War (1936–39). This Italian force was defeated in 1937 at the Battle of Guadalajara. By the end of the war, some 4,000 Italian troops were killed and 11,000 injured. Italian anti-Fascists also fought Mussolini’s troops in Spain, a rehearsal for the civil war in Italy after 1943. Many of these Italian anti-Fascists joined the Spanish Republican armies (notably, four Italian companies in 1936), inspired by Carlo Rosselli’s cry “Today in Spain, tomorrow in Italy.” In all, at least 3,000 Italians fought on the anti-Fascist side, about 200 of whom had traveled directly from Italy. Some 500 Italian anti-Fascists were killed and 2,000 injured in the war. Leading Italian Communists and Socialists were Togliatti and Pietro Nenni.

Italy’s increasingly close alliance with Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany was resented and feared, even by many Fascists. So too was the shocking decision to impose sweeping Nazi-like anti-Semitic laws in 1938. These laws followed a long racist campaign organized by the Fascist press and media. Under these laws and decrees, signed by the king, Jews were condemned as unpatriotic, excluded from government jobs and the army, banned from entering Italy, and banned from attending or teaching school. In addition, all Jews had to register with the authorities, limits were placed on their economic activities, and they were forbidden to marry “Aryans.” In 1939 all books by Jewish authors were removed from the shops. Many Jews left Italy, while others were marginalized within Italian society. It had become clear that the Fascist government was likely to involve Italy in a disastrous European war, as indeed it did in 1940. Economic policy

Fascist intervention in the economy was designed to boost prestige and military strength. In the early years the Fascists compromised with the business establishment and rescued failing banks. However, in 1926 the lira was suddenly revalued for political reasons, and Italy suffered all the usual consequences of an overvalued currency. Exports fell sharply, unemployment rose, wages were frozen or even cut, and prices fell. The steel, electricity, and chemical industries expanded, for their markets were domestic, and they were helped by cheaper raw material imports; industries producing textiles, food, and vehicles, which depended on foreign markets, declined.

When the Great Depression came after 1929, these deflationary processes were accentuated, although the government increased spending on building roads and on welfare in order to provide employment. The leading banks, which had lent heavily to industry, had to be rescued in the early 1930s, as did many large industrial companies. Two new state-run holding companies, the Italian Industrial Finance Institute (Istituto Mobiliare Italiano; IMI) and the Institute for Industrial Reconstruction (Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale; IRI), were set up to bail out failing firms and to provide capital for new industrial investment; they also provided trained managers and effective financial supervision. Italy thus acquired a huge, state-led industrial sector, which was especially important in banking, steel, shipping, armaments, and the supply of hydroelectricity. However, these firms were not nationalized. Instead, they operated in the market as private companies and still had many private shareholders. In the long term they gave Italy a modern infrastructure—including roads and cheap energy—a sounder financial sector, and some efficient modern industries in expanding sectors such as chemicals and synthetic fibres. Most industrial development, and most workers, remained in northern Italy, although by this time large steelmaking and shipbuilding plants had been started at Naples and Taranto. After 1931 vast tracts of land were reclaimed through the draining of marshes in the Lazio region, where gleaming new towns were created with Fascist architecture and names—Littoria (now Latina) in 1932, Sabaudia in 1934, Pontinia in 1935, Aprilia in 1937, and Pomezia in 1938. Peasants were brought from the regions of Emilia and the Veneto to populate these towns. New towns, such as Carbonia, were also built in Sardinia to house miners for the revamped coal industry.

After October 1925 the Fascist syndicates, or trade unions, were the sole recognized negotiators for workers’ interests. Strikes and lockouts became illegal, and wages fell between 1927 and 1934, but the syndicates had considerable political influence. They secured a shorter workweek (40 hours in November 1934), higher welfare benefits (such as family allowances, also introduced in 1934), and public works schemes, and they also helped run leisure and social activities. In 1934 the Fascists also set up “corporations”—mixed bodies of workers and employers—to resolve labour disputes and supervise wage settlements. Despite much rhetoric and propaganda about them, they had little impact in practice and virtually none on industrial management or economic policy making.

In agricultural policy, the government aimed at self-sufficiency by encouraging grain production after 1925 (“the battle for wheat”). Mussolini was filmed and photographed as he cut grain, bare-chested, in fields throughout Italy. Grain was grown for symbolic reasons in city centres such as Milan’s Piazza del Duomo (Cathedral Square). A high tariff was reimposed on imported wheat, and grain prices were kept artificially high. Production rose sharply as northern farmers used more chemical fertilizers. In much of the south the climate was less favourable for growing wheat, but vineyards and olive groves were nonetheless plowed up, especially after 1929 when the world price of olive oil halved. The real beneficiaries of this policy were the large farmers of the Po valley and of the southern latifundia. These men also benefited most from the government’s land-reclamation schemes, forming their own consortia and receiving government money to drain or irrigate their own land. Moreover, during the Depression they could buy land cheaply from the smaller landowners because many of the peasants who had acquired land during and after World War I were forced to sell after 1926.

After Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935–36, the League of Nations subjected the Italian economy to sanctions. This led to a more extensive drive for national self-sufficiency, or autarky; imports were replaced where possible by native products, and most exports were diverted to Germany and Switzerland or to Africa. Ethiopia, once conquered, became a vast drain on resources. The government expanded its intervention and licensing role, encouraged official cartels and quasi monopolies, and shifted resources from above to heavy industry and armaments. All this led to budget deficits, big tax increases, and capital levies, which were hugely resented because they mainly went to pay for wars in Africa and Spain. Resented too was the obvious corruption of the Fascist governing clique, without whose permits—available at a price—nothing could be done. Among the members of the various conservative groups, including those in the army, the civil service, the law, and the church, which in the mid-1920s had looked to fascism to protect their interests, some had realized by the late 1930s that fascism was unreliable and began to withdraw their support.

American restrictions, European recession, and Fascist economic nationalism combined to curtail emigration drastically in the 1930s, from more than 600,000 people per annum before 1914 to fewer than 50,000 per annum. The closing of emigration outlets hit the south particularly badly. Because they could not go abroad, rural Italians moved to the cities. Rome doubled in size between 1921 and 1940, and northern cities attracted many rural emigrants, especially from the south. Fascism attempted to halt these movements through an anti-migration law in 1938. This measure banned migrants from moving within Italy without a job at their intended destination, and made many Italians “clandestine” in their own country. However, the law had little practical effect in preventing migration. Meanwhile, government policy encouraged population growth by providing tax incentives to have children and excluding the childless from public jobs. Admittedly, all this had little effect before 1937. Italians married later than ever and had fewer children than previously, so much so that in several northern and central regions the birth rate dropped below replacement level in the 1930s. Foreign policy

As time passed, Fascist foreign policy became more expansionist. In particular, Mussolini aimed at acquiring territory in Africa and in the Mediterranean, for which he adopted the ancient Roman term mare nostrum (“our sea”). Even in 1923, in his first year in office, he briefly invaded the Greek island of Corfu to avenge the murder of four Italian nationals forming part of an international boundary delegation. During the next decade he played the European statesman, and in 1924 he reached an agreement with Yugoslavia that gave Fiume to Italy. He also continued to strengthen the Italian hold on Libya, to build up the armed forces, and to plan further expansion in Africa—particularly in Ethiopia, where the defeat at Adwa in 1896 still needed to be avenged. In October 1935 Italy finally invaded Ethiopia—one of the first conquests was Adwa—and by May 1936 had conquered the country and proclaimed the Italian king, Victor Emmanuel III, emperor of Ethiopia. Ethiopia had been the only remaining country in Africa to escape colonization. Nearly 400,000 Italian troops took part in the conflict. The army employed brutal methods, including massacres and poison gas bombs. After an attempt in February 1937 on the life of the “viceroy” of Ethiopia, General Rodolfo Graziani, Italian forces arrested and shot hundreds of Ethiopians. However, the war was popular at home and among Italians abroad, especially in the Italian American community. Racist propaganda depicted the Ethiopians as backward barbarians “civilized” by the Italian army. The colonial wars coincided, not by chance, with the period when the regime enjoyed its maximum popularity.

Italy made further colonial gains in April 1939 with the invasion of Albania. Italian control over Albania already had been growing throughout the 1920s through agreements with the Albanian regime. Moreover, in 1933 Italian had been made obligatory in Albanian schools. When Albania’s King Zog refused to accept a trade agreement, however, the Italian army took control of the main strategic centres of the country and installed Italian loyalists in the civil service. Victor Emmanuel was made king of Albania. King Zog escaped to Greece.

The Italo-Ethiopian War antagonized the British and French governments, led to sanctions by the League of Nations, and isolated Italy diplomatically. Mussolini moved into Hitler’s orbit, hoping that German backing would frighten the British and French into granting further concessions to Italy. However, the policy failed to bring further territorial gains in Africa. Furthermore, Italy became the junior partner in the “Rome-Berlin Axis,” and in 1938 Mussolini had to accept Hitler’s annexation of Austria, bringing the German Reich right up to the Italian border. In May 1939 Mussolini entered a formal military alliance with Hitler, the “Pact of Steel,” which further reduced his scope for maneuver. Not only was each country committed to take part in any conflict involving the other, defensive or otherwise, but each leader was to consult the other before taking any military action. Even so, when the Germans unexpectedly invaded Poland in September 1939, Mussolini insisted on remaining neutral. World War II Military disaster

Only in June 1940, when France was about to fall and World War II seemed virtually over, did Italy join the war on Germany’s side, still hoping for territorial spoils. Mussolini announced his decision—one bitterly opposed by his foreign minister, Galeazzo Ciano—to huge crowds across Italy on June 10. Italy’s initial attack on the French Alps in June 1940 was quickly cut short by the Franco-German armistice. The real war for Italy began only in October, when Mussolini attacked Greece from Albania in a disastrous campaign that obliged the Germans, in 1941, to rescue the Italian forces and take over Greece themselves. The Germans also had to lend support in the hard-fought campaigns of North Africa, where eventually the decisive second battle of El-Alamein (October 1942) destroyed the Italian position and led to the surrender of all of Italy’s North African forces in May 1943. Meanwhile, the Italians had lost their extensive empire in eastern Africa, including Ethiopia, early in 1941; and 250,000 Italian troops in Russia, sent to help the German invaders, suffered untold hardships. The epic winter retreat of the Alpine division left thousands dead. In all, nearly 85,000 Italian troops failed to make it home from Russia.

In short, the war was an almost unrelieved succession of military disasters. Poor generals and low morale contributed much to this outcome—the Italian conscripts were fighting far from home for causes in which few of them believed. In addition, Italy had few tanks or antitank guns; clothing, food, vehicles, and fuel were all scarce; and supplies could not safely be transported to North Africa or Russia. Italian factories could not produce weapons without steel, coal, or oil, and, even when raw materials were available, production was limited because the northern Italian factories were subject to heavy Allied bombing, especially in 1942–43. Heavy attacks destroyed the iron ore production capacities on Elba, off the Tuscan coast, and damaged several industrial zones, particularly in northern Italian cities such as Genoa, La Spezia, Turin, and Milan. Naples and other southern cities also were bombed, as was the San Lorenzo district of Rome. (The San Lorenzo air raid, carried out by U.S. forces in July 1943, killed more than 3,000 people.)

Bombing indeed was one of the causes of the first major strikes since 1925. In March 1943 the leading factories in Milan and Turin stopped work in order to secure evacuation allowances for workers’ families. By this time civilian morale was clearly very low, food shortages were endemic, and hundreds of thousands of people had fled to the countryside. Government propaganda was ineffective, and Italians could easily hear more-accurate news on Radio Vatican or even Radio London. In Friuli–Venezia Giulia, as in Italian-occupied Slovenia and Croatia, the local Slavic population supported armed Resistance movements, and anti-Italian terrorism was widespread. In Sicily landowners formed armed bands for possible use against mainland interference. On the mainland itself the anti-Fascist movements cautiously revived in 1942 and 1943. The Communists helped to organize strikes, the leading Roman Catholics formed the Christian Democratic Party (now the Italian Popular Party) in 1943, and the new Party of Action was founded in January 1943, mainly by republicans and Radicals. Leading Communists began to reenter Italy, and their party began to put down deep roots across the country. By this time most of the leading clandestine parties were more willing to work together to overthrow fascism. In March 1943 they signed an agreement to do so.

A further consequence of the war was the internment of hundreds of thousands of Italian emigrants across the world, especially in Britain and the United States. Italians, even with strong anti-Fascist credentials, were rounded up and sometimes stripped of their citizenship. This draconian policy left a legacy of bitterness and recrimination which lasted for years on both sides. End of the regime

By the summer of 1943 the Italian position was hopeless. Northern and eastern Africa had been lost, the northern Italian cities were being regularly bombed, war production was minimal, and morale had collapsed. So too had the Fascist regime, which could no longer command any obedience. Court circles began sounding out Allied terms, which of course included the removal of Mussolini. In July 1943 the Allies invaded Sicily, and within a few weeks they controlled the island. On July 24–25 the Fascist Grand Council met in Rome for the first time since the beginning of the war and passed a motion asking the king to resume his full constitutional powers—that is, to dismiss Mussolini. In a dramatic decision, a substantial majority of the members voted against the duce. The king dismissed Mussolini the same day and installed Marshal Pietro Badoglio, an elderly World War I veteran who had fought in Ethiopia, as prime minister. Spontaneous demonstrations followed throughout the country, in which statues of Mussolini were torn down, Fascist symbols removed, and political prisoners released. At first the authorities did not react, but, in the five days after July 25, troops shot dead 83 demonstrators. The army took over the key positions in Rome, the duce was arrested, and the main Fascist institutions, including the Fascist Party, were dissolved. On July 27 Badoglio formed an interim government that consisted mostly of ex-Fascists.

Badoglio assured Germany and the Italian people that the war would continue, but he also attempted, rather feebly, to reach armistice terms with the Allies. German troops began pouring into Italy. Heavy Allied bombing continued over most Italian cities. Strikes broke out throughout the country. Allied troops arrived on the Italian mainland in early September but met heavy resistance from the Germans at Salerno. The Badoglio government agreed to an armistice with the Allies, and U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Allied commander in chief in the Mediterranean, announced it on Sept. 8, 1943. Under this agreement (the so-called Short Armistice), the Italian government promised to cease hostilities against the Allies and end its alliance with Germany.

The Germans immediately took over Rome. In the previous few weeks, they had already taken over most of central and northern Italy. The Italian army, left without orders even to defend Rome, was disintegrating despite some brave spontaneous fighting (the official beginning of the Resistance) at Porta San Paolo. The king and his government fled south to Brindisi, leaving Rome to the Germans. Chaos reigned among Italian troops, and thousands deserted, while others joined the Resistance forces. At Cephallenia, a Greek island, Italian troops refused to obey German orders to give up their arms, and thousands of them were shot or deported. In late September the Badoglio government signed a “Long Armistice,” which virtually gave up military and political control over Italy, as well as control of the mass media and financial institutions, to the Allies. This agreement was not made public during the conflict.

Badoglio officially declared war on Germany on October 13. Italy became a war zone. For 18 months the Allies fought the Germans up the peninsula, wreaking untold devastation throughout the land. The Allies took Naples in October 1943 but reached Rome only in June 1944, Florence in August, and the northern cities in April 1945.

The Allies ruled the south after September 1943, and Badoglio’s government had very little influence on events. The anti-Fascist parties, which detested Badoglio and wanted the king to abdicate, refused to join the government until April 1944, when the Communist Party leader Palmiro Togliatti agreed to do so. Scholars disagree on whether this decision was autonomous or came in response to orders from Moscow. When Rome was liberated, Victor Emmanuel was replaced by his son, Umberto, as “lieutenant general of the realm,” and the leading anti-Fascist parties formed a nominal government led by the reformist Socialist Ivanoe Bonomi, who had been prime minister from 1921 to 1922. The republic of Salò (the Italian Social Republic) and the German occupation

In the meantime the Germans had rescued Mussolini from his mountain prison and restored him in the north as ruler of the “Italian Social Republic,” a last-ditch puppet Fascist regime based in Salò on Lake Garda. The republic tried to induct those born in 1923, 1924, and 1925 into its army, but only 40 percent of young men responded. Many others deserted soon after the call-up. In a congress held in Verona in November 1943, the “republic of Salò” seemed to take a leftward turn, calling for an end to the monarchy and a more worker-oriented ideology, but this program never went into practice. Some of the leading Fascists who had voted out the duce in July 1943, including Mussolini’s son-in-law, the former foreign minister Galeazzo Ciano, were tried by a Fascist court and shot. Meanwhile, Fascist officials collaborated with the German army and essentially followed Hitler’s orders as the war continued in the north and centre. Official and unofficial armed bands roamed the big cities arresting suspected partisans (members of the Resistance) and terrorizing the local population.

The German occupiers ruled through violence and the aid of the local Fascists. Throughout German-occupied Italy, Jews and oppositionists were rounded up and sent to detention camps or prisons. Many Jews were sent straight from Italy on trains to concentration and extermination camps in Poland and Germany. In all, nearly 9,000 Jews were deported under the Germans. Only 980 returned. The biggest deportation occurred in Rome in October 1943, when the Germans gathered more than 1,000 Jews from the city’s ghetto and sent them to death camps. The Jewish community had been forced early on to hand over gold and money to the German army. One concentration camp on Italian soil, near Trieste, also had an oven for burning bodies. Some 8,000 Italians (of whom 300 were Jews) were deported to Mauthausen in Austria. Only 850 came back alive.

The German army responded to partisan activity with violence and reprisals. A series of massacres of civilians and partisans accompanied the German occupation and gradual retreat up the peninsula. In March 1944, after a partisan bomb attack killed 33 members of the occupying forces in Rome, the German army shot 335 people (Jews, Communists, and others) in the Fosse Ardeatine, caves located outside the city. This massacre was one of the biggest of the war in Italy and has inspired controversy ever since. (In the 1990s a former Nazi captain, Erich Priebke, was arrested in Argentina and, after two dramatic trials, was convicted in Rome for his role in the massacre.) Elsewhere the German army carried out frequent brutal and random massacres of civilians as they retreated northward, above all in Tuscany and Emilia, where German troops destroyed an entire village of some 1,800 people at Marzabotto in 1944. In addition, the Germans deported hundreds of thousands of young men to work as forced labourers in Germany and elsewhere. Fiat workers struck against these deportations in March 1944. Many of those deported died en route.

Mussolini faded from view and appeared less and less in public, making his last speech in Milan in December 1944. As defeat became more and more likely, he made plans for his escape and tried to negotiate a deal with the Allies. In April 1945 Mussolini and his government fled to Milan, and later, disguised as a German soldier, he attempted to cross the border to Switzerland. Discovered by Communist partisans, he was shot in a small town on Lake Como. His body was taken to Milan and displayed for a time in Piazzale Loreto, along with the bodies of several other Fascist ministers and leaders, hung by their feet at a service station in front of huge festive crowds. These events have generated controversy and debate ever since. Other leading Fascists were executed across Italy during the days of liberation. Mussolini’s remains, after being interred in various places, were finally buried in 1957 at his birthplace in Predappio, in the Romagna. The partisans and the Resistance

After September 1943, partisan Resistance groups were active throughout northern and much of central Italy. Often they were former soldiers cut off from home and still in possession of their weapons. Many were young men fleeing Mussolini’s attempts to conscript them. Others were urban evacuees or released prisoners of war. Many were recruited, organized, and armed by the anti-Fascist parties or at least owed vague allegiance to one of them. They were most active in summer in the hills and mountains, where they were usually supported by the peasants, and they tied down thousands of German troops. In some areas they were a virtual armed uprising against not only the Germans and Fascists but also against the local landowners. Partisans were fighting three types of war: a civil war against Italian Fascists, a war of national liberation against German occupation, and a class war against the ruling elites. Communist Party groups fought all three types. Catholic or monarchist partisans, on the other hand, fought only one or two of these. There were also terrorist groups operating in the cities, and major strikes in industrial areas sabotaged war production. Sometimes, different partisan groups came into conflict with each other, but in general the Resistance was united. Nonetheless, those who actually fought as partisans were a small minority of Italians, and most civilians and ex-soldiers simply waited for the war to end. In all, about 200,000 partisans took part in the Resistance, and German or Fascist forces killed some 70,000 Italians (including both partisans and civilians) for Resistance activities. Ultimately, however, these figures do not indicate the extent of civilian participation in the Resistance, which scholars continue to debate.

The various political parties organized most of the partisan units, but they also cooperated with one another and the Allies. The Communist Party, although still very small in 1943 (about 5,000 members), led the largest group of partisans (at least 50,000 by summer 1944), drawing on years of experience in underground organization and on Yugoslav support. Success in the Resistance transformed the Communists into a major force in postwar Italian politics. The new Party of Action was also very active in the Resistance, constituting about one-fourth of all partisan units. It had a strong commitment to radical political change (including the change to a republic and a purge of officials) as well as to military victory. The Christian Democrats included roughly 20,000 partisans, and both Socialists and Liberals had significant armed bands in some areas. Partisans of different political persuasions normally worked together in local Committees of National Liberation (CLNs), which coordinated strategy, cooperated with the Allies, administered liberated areas, and appointed new officials. Above all, they organized the uprisings in the northern and central cities, including Milan in April 1945, which fell to the partisans before Allied troops arrived. In some cities the partisan liberation appeared to be a revolution—as in Genoa, Turin (where the Fiat factories were occupied), and Bologna—and red flags, Italian flags, and American flags greeted the “liberating” Allied troops. Some smaller zones actually became “republics” for weeks or even months, such as Alba and Val d’Ossola in Piedmont. Many radical partisans expected there to be a revolution in postwar Italy and failed to hand in their arms at the bidding of the Allies in 1945. Still, the partisans’ cooperation in the CLNs had laid the foundation for postwar political collaboration. Italy since 1945 The first decades after World War II Birth of the Italian republic

When World War II ended in Europe in May 1945, all the anti-Fascist parties formed a predominantly northern government led by the Resistance hero and Party of Action leader Ferruccio Parri. The CLNs continued to administer the northern regions and the larger northern factories for a short time. Up to 15,000 Fascists were purged or killed, and in some areas (such as Emilia and Tuscany) reprisals continued through 1946. Women “collaborators” had their heads shaved and were paraded through the streets. A commission was set up to purge Fascists throughout the country. (A similar body had been operating in the south since 1943.) The purges caused much alarm, as virtually anybody with a job in the public sector had had to be a member of the Fascist Party. Soon there was an anti-purge backlash, supported by the Liberals. In reality, the purges were short-lived and superficial, and even leading Fascists were able to benefit from a series of amnesties, the most important of which was backed by the Communist minister of justice, Togliatti. In November 1945 Parri was forced to resign and was replaced by the Christian Democratic leader, Alcide De Gasperi, who formed a more moderate—and “Roman,” or southern—interparty government. It soon gave up attempts at a purge, returned the large industrial firms to their previous owners, and replaced the partisan administrators in the north with ordinary state officials. In general, the Italian purges went much less far than those in Germany, and there was considerable continuity in many areas, including the judiciary, the police force, and the body of legislation created in the 1920s and ’30s.

In May 1946 King Victor Emmanuel III finally formally abdicated. His son briefly became King Umberto II, but the royal family was forced to leave the country a month later when a referendum decided in favour of a republic by 54 percent of the votes cast. (When the new constitution was adopted the following year, it stated that no male members of the Savoy family could live in Italy; the rule was rescinded in 2002.) Many southerners, including 80 percent of Neapolitans, voted for the monarchy, but the centre and north opted overwhelmingly for the republic. The “May king,” his father, and the monarchy in general had been punished not only for supporting Mussolini but also for their cowardly behaviour in the face of German occupation.

At the same time, a Constituent Assembly was elected by universal suffrage—including women for the first time—to draw up a new constitution. The three largest parties—the Christian Democrats, Socialists, and Communists—took three-fourths of the votes and seats and dominated the assembly. The Christian Democrats, with more than one-third of the votes and seats, began their postwar dominance as the most powerful party, although the Liberals, whose deputies included several constitutional lawyers, had a major impact on the new constitution, as did the Communists and Socialists. Over the next three years, the assembly discussed (in 170 sessions) what form the new Italian state should take, in a climate of democratic debate and collaboration. The constitution was finally ready and signed in December 1947 and took effect on January 1, 1948.

The Constitution of the Republic of Italy established a parliamentary system of government with two elected houses (Chamber of Deputies and Senate). It also guaranteed civil and political rights and established an independent judiciary, a constitutional court with powers of judicial review, and the right of citizens’ referendum. Many of these measures, however, were not implemented for several years. The Constitutional Court was not set up until 1955, and the first abrogative referendum was held only in 1974. The president was to be elected by parliament and had few real powers. The electoral system had a high level of proportional representation. Legislation had to pass through both elected chambers, but decrees could be issued by the Council of Ministers. The 1929 Lateran Treaty with the church was recognized in a Communist-inspired compromise. Autonomous regional governments were promised and were soon operating in the outlying zones—Sicily, Sardinia, Valle d’Aosta, Trentino–Alto Adige (including South Tirol), and (after 1963) Friuli–Venezia Giulia—inhabited by populations with linguistic or ethnic differences from those in the rest of Italy. In short, the constitution was an “anti-Fascist” document, providing for weak governments and individual liberty—exactly the opposite of what Mussolini had attempted. The Cold War political order

In 1947 the Cold War began to influence Italian politics. De Gasperi visited the United States in January 1947 and returned with $150 million in aid. He had excluded the Communists and their allies, the Socialists, from his government the previous May both to placate the Vatican and the conservative south and to ensure that much-needed U.S. aid continued. As parliamentary elections approached, U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall threatened that aid would be cancelled if the Communists and Socialists came to power.

Alcide De Gasperi (at microphone) addressing a huge crowd after the Christian Democratic Party's victory in the April 1948 elections, Rome.AP

In the campaign leading up to the first parliamentary elections of the new republic in April 1948, the United States provided huge backing for the Christian Democrats and their Liberal, Social Democratic, and Republican partners, including funding for party propaganda. Anti-Communist and anti-Catholic propaganda dominated the Christian Democrat campaign. Numerous civic committees were formed throughout Italy to get out the anti-Communist vote. The Christian Democrats, also backed by the church, won more than 48 percent of the vote and more than half the seats. The Communist-Socialist alliance won 31 percent of the overall vote and was the biggest vote-getter only in the “Red Belt” central regions of Emilia-Romagna, Tuscany, and Umbria. An extraordinary 92 percent of Italians who were qualified to vote did so.

The election dashed the hopes of many former Resistance fighters for radical change. One more key event was to follow in 1948. In July the popular Communist Party leader, Togliatti, was shot by an isolated right-winger on the steps of parliament. Togliatti survived, but the assassination attempt sparked off strikes and demonstrations all over Italy. In some areas, such as Genoa and Tuscany, Communist supporters seemed to put into practice a plan for revolution, taking over tram lines and occupying key communication centres. Togliatti and Communist leaders called for calm, and after a week the movement petered out. The Christian Democrats accused the Communists of preparing an insurrection to overthrow a democratic government, and the spectre of a Communist coup d’état hung over Italian politics for years to come. Those who had kept their arms after the war saw their hopes of revolution disappear. The Communists continued to elaborate an “Italian road to socialism” that ruled out violent insurrection and called for progressive reforms.

Another effect of the 1948 election was the division of the trade union movement into three competing federations, the “red” (Communist and Socialist) Italian General Confederation of Labour, the “white” (Catholic and Christian Democratic) Italian Confederation of Workers’ Trade Unions, and the moderate Italian Labour Union. These divisions were to be overcome only briefly in the waves of strikes after 1969.

Italian politics set for the next 40 years into its “Cold War” mold. The Christian Democrats, backed by U.S. military and financial muscle, shared power and patronage with their smaller pro-Western coalition partners. They had a strong social and religious base in northern regions, could count on anti-Communist sentiment in the south, appealed to peasant landowners and women voters everywhere, won about 40 percent of the vote at successive elections, and held the key posts in government, including that of prime minister. The Socialist Party broke off its alliance with the Communists in the late 1950s and began to cooperate with the Christian Democrats. Vested interests blocked the ambitious reform programs promised by the Socialists time and again, but the centre-left administrations under Amintore Fanfani in the late 1950s and early 1960s managed to pass important measures in the fields of education reform, nationalization, and public housing. Beginning in 1963, under Nenni, the Socialists joined centre-left coalition governments, acquiring control of some of the key ministries and public-sector enterprises. The Christian Democrat Aldo Moro led several such coalition governments during the mid-1960s.

The Communists, excluded from central government, gradually made themselves more respectable but never quite shook off their Soviet links. They won 25 to 30 percent of the vote (reaching a peak of 34 percent in 1976), were particularly strong among industrial workers, agricultural labourers, and sharecroppers, ran local (and, from the 1970s, regional) governments in central Italy, and controlled the major trade unions. Even so, international factors dominated domestic politics and outweighed the old Resistance anti-Fascist alliance in a system known as blocked pluralism or polarized pluralism. Parties and party factions

All the major Italian parties had large memberships (the Communists had more than two million until 1956, the Christian Democrats almost the same by the early 1970s), recruited from organizations such as Catholic Action, cooperatives, and trade unions. These organizations often provided tangible benefits—jobs, disability pensions, and cheap holidays—to their members. Distinct subcultures—based on a wide range of institutions, including newspapers, bars, theatres, and schools—grew up around each major party. The “white” subculture dominated parts of the south and northeast; the “red” subculture prevailed in Emilia, Tuscany, and Umbria, as well as the industrial heartlands of working-class Turin, Milan, and Genoa. Every city had its “red,” “white,” and “black” (neofascist) zones.

Most parties were groupings of organized factions, each with its own leaders, deputies, regional or ideological base, sources of finance, and journals. Within each party, and in particular within the Christian Democratic Party, these factions contended for power and for control of lucrative firms and agencies in the public sector to secure financial backing and jobs for supporters. One of the key reasons why governments between 1945 and 1994 were short-lived, with an average life of 11 months, was that governments had to be reshuffled regularly in order to allow different faction leaders to obtain posts, partly due to an electoral system that was so highly proportional. Another reason for the frequent changes was the need to form new coalitions excluding the neofascists and the Communists, who could never be allowed to govern in the Cold War world. The constitution also allowed for frequent and often inexplicable government “crises” that often ended with very similar governments forming and reforming. Giulio Andreotti alone presided over seven governments.

Government instability also stemmed from secret voting in parliament, which enabled deputies from dissatisfied factions within the coalition parties to bring down governments without attracting blame. However, instability was more apparent than real—top politicians often held the key government posts semipermanently—and it was mitigated by the secretaries of the leading parties, whose role it was to negotiate acceptable deals among faction leaders. Indeed, the party secretary was sometimes more significant than the prime minister, since the latter had no direct mandate from the electorate and was often not even the most prominent member of a party. Despite periodic shifts in the composition of the government, the same group of parties, dominated by the Christian Democrats, remained in power in the postwar period.

The Christian Democrats had to find coalition partners after 1953, when they lost their absolute majority in parliament. The need for coalition government gave exaggerated power to the smaller coalition parties, who could demand key ministries and benefits. In addition, the option of allying with the monarchists or the small but stable neofascist party, the Italian Social Movement (Movimento Sociale Italiano; MSI), was blocked by the anti-Fascist consensus among the major parties and in the country at large. When the Christian Democrats tried to bring the MSI into the coalition, they faced mass demonstrations, as at Genoa in 1960. The neofascists remained “untouchable” until the 1990s.

At parliamentary elections voters could select not only a party but also particular candidates from that party. Deputies therefore needed to win favours for constituents, which could include suitable pieces of legislation or pressuring ministers or managers of state enterprises—themselves often political appointees. The state sector of the economy, already large in 1945, and the welfare services were both expanded after the war, and the new jobs were often given to party members or sympathizers. In turn, state firms financed the parties or particular factions of the parties. In many areas, especially in the south, party-controlled agencies came to dominate economic and social activity. The leading politicians used patronage to build power bases in particular regions, such as Fanfani did in Tuscany and Andreotti in Sicily. Local government could rarely operate without favours and finance from central, party-controlled agencies. The civil service, never very prestigious, was bypassed by politicians and government agencies and became increasingly demoralized.

Clientelism and patronage penetrated all areas of political, social, and cultural life. These features were strongest in the south, in part because of the domination of the Christian Democratic Party in that part of the country. As a result, southerners increasingly predominated in government posts, even in the north. State employees received generous benefits, often without real controls, and some public pensions allowed for retirement after only 20 years of service. This proved a huge drain on public finances. A series of little laws, or leggine, determined the precise distribution of state resources, jobs, and taxes among parties and factions, including those in the opposition, in a system known as partitocrazia (“partyocracy”). Although this system was obviously corrupt, it commanded a broad public consensus, and there were few Italians who did not participate in some way in the system. In the worst cases, in parts of the south, the links between organized crime, political patronage, and government contracts were built up and maintained throughout the postwar period. This brought the destruction of many of the most beautiful cities of Italy through the construction of vast swaths of ugly cement housing. The so-called “rape of Palermo,” under Mafia–Christian Democratic control in the 1960s, was one of the most tragic examples. Parties and their clients also siphoned money and resources meant to aid victims of natural disasters, such as earthquakes. Foreign policy

The Cold War political system had one major advantage. Italian foreign policy ceased to be adventurous. De Gasperi had to accept the harsh Treaty of Paris in 1947, in which Italy gave up all African colonies and relinquished some Alpine territories to France and the Dodecanese islands to Greece. But thereafter Italy joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and became a respectable member of the Western alliance. NATO—in effect, the United States—guaranteed Italy’s political stability and security. Italy also joined the European Coal and Steel Community (1952) and in 1957 was a founding member of the European Economic Community (EEC; later succeeded by the European Union).

The Paris treaty left unresolved the most thorny and difficult territorial question, that of Trieste. Yugoslav troops had taken the city and its surroundings from the Germans in 1945, claimed the region (which was populated by both Italians and Slovenes) for Yugoslavia, and embarked on a large-scale purge in which thousands of Italians were killed and then dumped into deep caves. The Paris treaty divided the region into two zones: one, including the mostly Italian-speaking city of Trieste, administered by the Western Allies and the other by Yugoslavia. The divided region became a focus of Cold War tensions. Finally, in 1954, the city of Trieste and a narrow coastal strip to its north came under direct Italian rule, while the remainder of the region was ceded to Yugoslavia. The economic miracle Industrial growth

The republic enjoyed economic success for many years. Initial U.S. support, especially food, oil, and Marshall Plan aid, helped to rebuild basic industries, including steel. The government abandoned the controls that had existed under the Fascists and the attempts at autarky, and all parties and trade unions approved the “reconstruction” program of 1945–47. Prewar industrial production levels were regained by 1948, and production for the Korean War (1950–53) provided further stimulus to growth. Italy became fully integrated into European trade and took an increasingly active part in Middle Eastern oil exploration and engineering development. Until 1964 (and in particular in the boom years of 1958–63) the country enjoyed an “economic miracle,” with industrial growth rates of more than 8 percent per year. Its most prominent industries, still in the northwestern industrial triangle, produced fashionable clothing (especially shoes), typewriters, refrigerators, washing machines, furniture, plastics, artificial fibres, sewing machines, inexpensive motor scooters (the Vespa and the Lambretta), and cars (from economical Fiats to luxury makes such as Maserati, Lamborghini, and Alfa Romeo). Italian firms became famous for their combination of elegant design and inexpensive production techniques. An extraordinary network of superhighways was constructed across Italy. The country was transformed in less than two decades from a largely agricultural backwater into one of the world’s most dynamic industrial nations. Economic success gave politicians additional resources to maintain their political support.

The postwar recovery and subsequent expansion benefited from a stable currency from 1948 onward and from Italy’s cheap access to raw materials, especially Middle Eastern oil. The dynamic policies of Enrico Mattei, president of ENI (Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi, the state-owned energy group), were central to this development. The petroleum company AGIP (Azienda Generale Italiana Petroli), which became a division of ENI in 1953, discovered natural gas in the Po valley and sold it at low prices to industry. Labour was inexpensive, as rural migrants flooded into the cities, trade unions were weak and politically divided until the late 1960s, regulatory agencies were even weaker, and taxes were low and easily avoidable. All this encouraged investment, especially as businessmen could borrow cheaply from state-owned banks and credit institutes. The IRI, founded under Mussolini in 1933, continued to dominate much of the economy, including not only heavy industry but also telephone service, air transport, and highway construction. The “economic miracle,” therefore, did not rest on market principles alone; government agencies played a vital role in it. Land reform

In agriculture the major postwar change was the land reform laws of 1950, which made it possible for land reform agencies to expropriate large, badly cultivated estates, mostly in southern or central Italy, improve them, and sell them off to new peasant owners. The aim was to create a settled society of peasant cultivators, but this was achieved only in a few areas, because normally there was not enough land to go around: only 117,000 families actually acquired farms. Landless peasants moved abroad or to the cities instead. A major consequence of land reform, however, was that the reform agencies—run by central politicians in Rome—became economically dominant in many rural areas, controlling, among other things, land allocation, loans, and improvement grants. They thus undermined the traditional power of local landowners and became transmission belts for the political patronage of the Christian Democrats, especially in the south. Mechanization and modernization gradually replaced many of the traditional jobs in the Italian countryside. Seasonal women rice workers disappeared from the north, as did most day labourers and sharecroppers. Smaller, well-managed farms prospered, in part through EEC subsidies, and rural towns grew. The south

The major economic problem was still the relatively underdeveloped south, where there was little industry and where per capita income in 1950 was half that of northern Italy. Initial policy stressed land reform and irrigation. For a while it seemed as if southerners were taking control of their own destiny for the first time since the Risorgimento. The huge, organized land occupation movements that swept across the south in 1949 and 1950 involved hundreds of thousands of landless peasants and politicized a whole generation. But the state intervened, sometimes lethally, to end the occupations on behalf of the powerful landowners. Because the land reforms that followed the occupations actually transferred little land to the peasantry and left many of the south’s inequities intact, millions of young men and women decided to migrate to the north.

The special Southern Development Fund (Cassa per il Mezzogiorno), established in 1950, financed roads, schools, electrification, water provision, and land reclamation. After 1957 it began to invest in industrial development as well, helped by a government policy that directed the expansion of state firms southward and by credit and tax breaks for private investors. Other agencies were founded to develop specific sectors. Promising areas of the south were selected for industrial development, and key plants were built there, together with the necessary infrastructure. The result was the establishment of a number of large, capital-intensive plants—for example, steelworks and heavy engineering at Taranto and oil refineries at Porto Torres—that were hugely expensive, often produced nonmarketable goods, and employed little local labour. These factories quickly became known as “cathedrals in the desert.” Although a few areas did take off (notably the Puglian coast north of Bari), the industrialization policy soon faced widespread criticism. Northerners resented having to pay for it, and southerners could see little benefit, especially as small firms received few incentives. The environmental costs were also enormous. Funding was gradually shifted, therefore, to subsidizing labour costs—especially social security contributions—and training and, by the 1980s, to making selective grants available for small and medium projects. The fund spent $20 billion between 1950 and 1980, but it did not industrialize southern Italy. Southern unemployment remained at three times the northern rate, and wages were still 40 percent below the national average.

The south did benefit, however, from some of the fund’s original activities, such as providing decent roads, clean water, much improved health services, and secondary schools, as well as eradicating malaria. It also received many state welfare benefits—often derived from friendly politicians in need of votes—and subsidies to agriculture. The social impact of automobiles, television, and processed foods was as great in southern Italy as elsewhere. The south also benefited from emigrants’ remittances as large-scale migration to western Europe and the northern cities resumed from 1950 onward. More than three million people, mostly able-bodied young men, left the south between 1955 and 1970. Some rural areas became seriously depopulated, whereas Rome and many of the northern cities virtually doubled in size, with the immigrants being crowded into bleak housing estates on the outskirts or into improvised shantytowns. Italy from the 1960s

Beginning in the 1960s, Italy completed its postwar transformation from a largely agrarian, relatively poor country into one of the most economically and socially advanced countries of the world. One consequence of these changes was that migration from the south slowed after 1970 and, by the 1980s, even reversed, as jobs became scarcer in northern Italy and northern Europe. Other demographic, economic, technological, and cultural changes transformed Italian daily life and fueled social unrest. After the Cold War ended in 1989, pressures for political and economic reform, European economic unification, and globalization exposed Italy to a new range of challenges. Demographic and social change

In general, population growth in Italy had slowed dramatically by the 1960s. The birth rate in the north had already been low in the postwar years and dropped below replacement level in the 1970s in most northern and central regions. Even in the south, birth rates fell sharply after 1964. By 1979 there were only 670,000 live births in all of Italy and by 1987 some 560,000. Italians had one of the lowest birth rates of any industrial country by the 1990s, and there was a growing tendency toward families having only one child and adults remaining single.

The reasons for the dramatic decline in births are complex. Contraception became readily available after 1971, and most Italians were now urbanites living in apartments and thus not in need of a large number of children to help till the soil. Women were now better-educated. Girls in general began going to secondary schools only in the 1960s, and by 1972 there were a quarter-million female graduates. They could now pursue satisfying careers or at least readily find gainful employment that gave them financial independence from men and alternatives to lives as homemakers and mothers. In 1970, following a campaign led by the Radical Party and opposed by the church and Christian Democrats, Italy’s first divorce law was passed. It was confirmed in a nationwide referendum (called by the Christian Democrats) in May 1974 by 59.1 percent of the voters—a real victory for secular groups against church and Christian Democratic dominance of society. In 1975 many antiquated provisions in family law were altered or abolished, and in 1981 another referendum confirmed by 67.9 percent of the vote the 1978 law permitting abortion. Meanwhile, civil marriage became more common (almost 12 percent of all marriages by 1979), as did unmarried cohabitation.

Legal contraception, divorce, and abortion provided dramatic evidence of a more secularized society. Regular church attendance fell sharply, from about 70 percent in the mid-1950s to about 30 percent in the 1980s. The membership of Catholic Action fell to about 650,000 by 1978, about one-fourth of its figure in 1966, and in the late 1960s Catholic trade unions allied with their erstwhile Communist rivals. Broadcasting in 1976 ceased to be a state monopoly dominated by the Christian Democrats. Furthermore, many church-controlled charities, especially at the local level, were taken over by regional governments in 1977 and 1978 and run as part of the state welfare system by political appointees. Although the Christian Democrats still held most government posts, Italy by the 1980s was indeed markedly “de-Christianized,” as Pope John Paul II said. In 1985 a new concordat that recognized many of these changes was ratified by the Vatican and (significantly) a government led by the Socialist Bettino Craxi. Roman Catholicism ceased to be the state religion, religious instruction in schools became voluntary, and the state stopped funding priests’ salaries. Economic stagnation and labour militancy in the 1960s and ’70s

After 1963, when the Socialist Party entered government, an increasing number of political appointments were made in the firms and agencies of the public sector, and trade unions became more powerful. Soon inflation began creeping up once again, as governments printed money to pay for higher wages and welfare. Many firms had to be rescued by the IRI at public expense, the balance of payments deteriorated, and the official economy began to slow down, although the black-market economy of domestic textile workers and self-employed artisans, among others, continued to flourish.

This economic slump led to the “hot autumn” of 1969, a season of strikes, factory occupations, and mass demonstrations throughout northern Italy, with its epicentre at Fiat in Turin. Most stoppages were unofficial, led by workers’ factory committees or militant leftist groups rather than by the (party-linked) trade unions. The protests were not only about pay and work-related matters but also about conditions outside the factory, such as housing, transport, and pensions, and they formed part of a more general wave of political and student protest, including opposition to the Vietnam War.

The stoppages forced employers to grant large pay raises—at least 15 percent—and factory councils were set up in nearly all major plants. Often, migrant urban newcomers were at the head of the struggles. In 1970, legislation—the Statute of the Workers—ratified these developments and established rights never before codified in law. In 1975 most pay scales were indexed to inflation on a quarterly basis for wage and salary earners, thus guaranteeing the big pay raises of the previous few years. Jobs too were virtually guaranteed in the official economy, and trade unions became influential on a host of planning bodies. The firing of workers became extremely difficult in many sectors.

Labour militancy continued throughout most of the 1970s, often led by unofficial “autonomous” unions. Many firms therefore chose to restructure themselves into smaller units employing part-time or unofficial workers on piece rates, who could be dismissed easily and did not enjoy guaranteed wages. This was particularly true in the areas of textile production and light engineering. Unemployment rose sharply, especially among the young. By 1977 there were one million unemployed people under age 24. Inflation continued, aggravated by the increases in the price of oil in 1973 and 1979. The budget deficit became permanent and intractable, averaging about 10 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP), higher than any other industrial country. The lira fell steadily, from 560 lire to the U.S. dollar in 1973 to 1,400 lire in 1982. Student protest and social movements, 1960s–1980s

Student protests in Italy had also begun to take off in 1967, and the movement continued right through the 1970s. Universities, from Pisa to Turin to Trento, were occupied, lecturers and schoolteachers were challenged in the classroom, and alternative lifestyles began to dominate youth culture. A whole generation was radicalized. Students challenged both the church and the Communist Party, as well as the ubiquitous consumer society and the traditional power of the family. One of the slogans of the movement was “I want to be an orphan.” However, after an initial phase of creativity and democratization, the movement fell under the shadow of various small and ideological groupings who often used violence to communicate their message.

A new group of student movements emerged in 1977, known collectively as autonomia (“autonomy”). The best-known of these, Autonomia Operaia (“Worker Autonomy”), took a more violent approach. Other branches of the movement, such as those calling themselves “Metropolitan Indians,” were more creative and interesting. This time, the movement saw the traditional left as an enemy. Trade union leaders were shouted down and attacked. Ritualistic and violent demonstrations occurred in 1977, and some of the followers of the movement carried guns. The state arrested most of the leaders of the movement in 1979, while others fled abroad to escape trial. The autonomia reemerged in the 1980s and addressed environmental issues; squatted in vacant buildings, partly to protest the shortage of affordable housing; and set up alternative spaces known as “social centres.”

The feminist movement also invigorated society in the mid-1970s, making its arrival in Italy later than in most other Western countries. Feminists challenged the rigid Catholic morals of society and a legal system that gave women little defense against male oppression, rape, or even murder. The feminists also challenged the male dominance of politics right across the spectrum and even within the far-left political movements. The great victories in the referendums of the 1970s and ’80s on divorce and abortion would have been impossible without the agitation of the feminist movement.

Even the church began to open up to social and cultural change. The Second Vatican Council (1962–65), called by the reformist Pope John XXIII and implemented by his successor Pope Paul VI, provided a framework for the partial liberalization and democratization of the church. This process of liberal reform and the hopes that it raised for a transformation of the church declined, however, with the succession of the more conservative Pope John Paul II in 1978. Terrorism

When economic, social, and political stability suddenly collapsed after 1969, one of the most alarming results was terrorism. Initially, neofascist groups backed and armed by some members of the security services carried out most acts of violence. They began planting bombs and derailing trains as part of a “strategy of tension” to undermine the labour advances of 1969–72 and encourage a right-wing coup. The “strategy of tension” began in earnest with a series of bombings in Milan and Rome in December 1969. In a Milan bank, a bomb killed 16 people and wounded more than 90. Initial police suspicion fell upon the far left, especially the anarchists. One anarchist, Giuseppe Pinelli, died in mysterious circumstances after “falling” from a fourth-floor window of Milan’s central police station. Another anarchist, Pietro Valpreda, was arrested and charged with the Milan bomb attack. The Valpreda and Pinelli cases split Italy and radicalized large sectors of the student and workers movements. Many on the right continued to believe the version put out by the police and the state, while vast swathes of liberal opinion saw the affair as a mixture of conspiracy and cover-up. The inability of the state to find or prosecute those responsible (the eighth trial relating to the case began in 2000 and eventually ended in acquittal) only increased the disaffection with the authorities. Meanwhile, evidence emerged—which the police had ignored—that suggested that neofascists had planted the bombs with the active support of sectors of the Italian secret services. Valpreda was not acquitted until the 1980s and spent three years in jail awaiting trial. The Pinelli case was never resolved. The “strategy of tension” continued until 1984. The most deadly incident occurred in August 1980, when a bomb placed in a crowded waiting room at a Bologna railway station killed 85 people. Neofascists were later convicted of planting the bomb.

By the mid-1970s left-wing terrorism had begun to attract many young people unhappy with U.S. foreign policy, the failures of centre-left governments, and the Communists’ recent collaboration with the Christian Democrats. It was carried on by hundreds of former militant students and unemployed workers in a host of small groups. The “red” terrorists began by kidnapping factory supervisors for brief periods of time. Soon they began kidnapping and killing politicians, judges, and journalists. The “red” terrorists were relatively popular on the far left at first, but after 1977–78 the extra-parliamentary movement began to distance itself from them. The best-known organization, the Red Brigades, kidnapped and murdered former prime minister Aldo Moro in 1978; for 55 days the Red Brigades held him in Rome as Italy held its breath. Since then a series of mysteries have emerged over secret service blunders and possible complicity with the Red Brigades. After Moro’s murder the police were reorganized and given special powers, the courts gave captured terrorists every incentive to provide evidence, and by 1981–82 the terrorist threat was greatly reduced. Politics in the 1970s and ’80s

The political system survived with the assistance of the Communists, whose trade unions had helped to restrain wage claims after 1972 and who took a firm line against terrorism. In the face of the twin crises of the economy and terrorism, as well as the example of the recent military coup d’état in Chile that had toppled a Marxist government, the Communist Party, led by Enrico Berlinguer, adopted a policy in 1973 that he called the “historic compromise.” It entailed more or less formal alliances between the Christian Democrats and the Communists for the good of the country. The Communist Party won 34.4 percent of the vote and 228 seats in the Chamber of Deputies in 1976. However, Berlinguer’s “historic compromise” alienated many Communist supporters. Although the Communists never actually joined a coalition government, they supported (mainly by abstaining during votes of no confidence) ones led by the Christian Democrats from 1976 to 1979 and were given several key institutional posts, including speaker of the Chamber of Deputies. The Communists also accepted Italy’s membership in NATO. This period saw the elaboration of networks that spread patronage across the political system. It was these corrupt networks that were to cause a political crisis when they were exposed in the 1990s. Communist cooperation ended, however, in 1979 as international tensions increased, and in the elections of that year the party’s vote declined to 30.4 percent. After 1979 the Communists went into opposition again. By 1987 their share of the national vote had declined to about one-fourth.

Governments in the 1980s were usually four- or five-party coalitions in which the smaller parties played a more significant role than hitherto. The Christian Democrats, weakened by secularization, factional disputes, and successive scandals, also saw their vote decline from 38.3 percent in 1979 to 32.9 percent in 1983. In 1981–82 the Christian Democrats had to give up the prime ministry temporarily, for the first time since 1945. The forceful Socialist leader, Craxi, was prime minister from 1983 to 1987.

Socialists, in fact, secured many key posts in the 1980s, not only in government but also in economic agencies, broadcasting, and health services. The Socialist vote rose, but only to 11.4 percent in 1983 and to 14.3 percent in 1987. Disputes among and within the leading parties over the allocation of jobs and resources became more prolonged and often paralyzed effective government. Public debt rose to unsustainable levels. All this fueled popular resentment of partitocrazia, increasingly frequent corruption scandals, and the clandestine influence of Masonic or other shadowy pressure groups. The system could no longer deliver the patronage that once sustained it, and the state-dominated economy was falling behind those of other European countries.

The 1980s were also a decade of a general “withdrawal” (il riflusso) from politics and political activism after the upheavals of the 1960s and ’70s. All the parties and unions began to lose members, and election turnouts dropped. Protest movements attracted far fewer people than in the previous two decades. The ideologies that had held the Cold War system together—communism and anticommunism, fascism and antifascism—began to lose their appeal.

While even the Communists had accepted Italian membership in NATO in the 1970s, Italy frequently stood apart from U.S. overseas military actions from the Vietnam War onward. The continuing strength of the Roman Catholic Church in Italian society and the power of the Communist Party made active participation in “American” wars a political impossibility. Only after the Cold War did the Italian army actually participate in a NATO military intervention, with its involvement in the conflict in Kosovo in 1999. Regional government

During the 1970s, elected regional assemblies and governments, which had previously existed only in the five outlying regions given special powers at various times (Sicily, Sardinia, Friuli–Venezia Giulia, Trentino–Alto Adige, and Valle d’Aosta), were finally set up throughout Italy, as the constitution had required. They acquired extensive devolved powers of legislation and administration, especially over agriculture, health, social welfare, and the environment. Many national agencies were dissolved in 1978, and their powers were allocated to the regions. In 1984 even the Southern Development Fund was abolished and its planning and investment powers transferred to a complex set of institutions, including the southern regional governments. Elections were held at five-year intervals, and after 2000 the president of each region was elected directly under a new law.

The effects of regionalism were profound. The regions became the main bodies responsible for welfare and for organizing the health services, which, in turn, decreased the influence of central politicians. (The political nature of appointments to these services in the regions, however, often drew much criticism.) In the north politicians became more conscious of regional interests and more intent on running their own affairs without interference from Rome. This was less true in the south, where continuing poverty ensured a steady need for subsidies from the central government. Conflicts began to emerge between local and national interests, especially in the large and rich regions of the north. The economy in the 1980s

Economic growth revived in the mid-1980s, once terrorism had ended and the 1979 oil crisis had subsided. In autumn 1980 Fiat laid off more than 20,000 workers in Turin, and the unions’ protest strike quickly collapsed. The long season of protest that began in 1969 was finally at an end. Other employers followed Fiat’s example, and the power of trade unions went into decline. Big industry began to slump all over Italy but especially in the industrial northwest. Historic factories, linked to mass production and class struggle, closed or scaled down their operations. A 1985 referendum markedly reduced the indexation of wages, despite a strong Communist campaign against this action. However, northern Italy prospered in the financial boom years of the middle and late 1980s, helped by the low price of oil, and people spoke of a “new economic miracle.”

The Italian economy began to develop along new lines. In central and northeastern Italy—collectively known as the “third Italy,” alongside the less-developed south and the northwest, with its older industries and financial centres—small businesses flourished. These firms mainly produced quality goods for export and were often family-run. New industrial districts in these regions specialized in particular products, from taps to ties. New industries, such as fashion, began to replace traditional businesses in the northern cities. Milan became one of the world’s fashion capitals during the 1980s, bringing in billions of lire in business and advertising. With the diversification of the media at the end of the 1970s, private television took off under the influence of a dynamic entrepreneur, Silvio Berlusconi.

However, serious problems persisted. Budget deficits remained large and, given the political system, untackled. By 1989 the accumulated national debt exceeded the annual GDP. The economy continued to depend heavily on decentralized, “unofficial” work done by casual workers in small firms and service industries (the so-called black-market economy), as well as on a handful of successful international entrepreneurs. The south, moreover, did not participate fully in the country’s economic recovery, aside from pockets of growth in Puglia and Abruzzi. The rise in oil prices in the 1970s and the world steel glut devastated industry in the south except for a few areas of light engineering and textile production. In December 1992 the system of “extraordinary incentives” was abolished, just as welfare payments were being reduced and state industries privatized. The south, however, maintained a thriving black-market economy supported partly by organized crime activity. As emigration diminished and mass education expanded, living standards began to rise in line with, but always well behind, the more affluent north. The most worrying aspect of the southern economy was, as ever, youth unemployment, particularly in poverty-stricken cities such as Naples, Palermo, and Reggio di Calabria.

Public services remained an economic and political quagmire and a target of growing public resentment. Despite centres of excellence, the state’s postal, transport, health, legal, and financial services were top-heavy with bureaucracy, inefficient, and corrupt, and they cost Italy’s citizens hundreds of hours each year in (often pointless) queuing and interminable document collection. Most attempts to reform the system confronted massive resistance from well-organized trade unions armed with contracts protecting their members. It was almost impossible to dismiss a civil servant, and the role of political patronage in public hiring only complicated matters.

Italy had some of the best state nurseries in the world and some of the worst secondary schools. Its universities were full of students who rarely saw their lecturers or actually finished their courses. Not only did Italians pay more taxes than most other western Europeans, but the services they received in return were often comparable to those of eastern Europe or the world’s less-developed countries. Still, some benefited from this system—above all, those working within it or those able to avoid tax through corruption or inefficiency. For the vast majority of ordinary Italians, however, their daily dealings with the state brought frustration and anger. Some of this anger was to explode in the crisis of the 1990s. The fight against organized crime

Organized crime dominated whole regions politically, socially, and economically by the 1980s. In Campania and Naples the Camorra controlled whole swaths of the urban landscape and the underground economy. Several politicians were linked to the Camorra when it siphoned off huge sums of state relief funding after the 1980 earthquake. The ’Ndranghetta organization in Calabria specialized in kidnappings and drug smuggling. In Puglia the Nuova Sacra Corona held sway, while the Mafia dominated Sicily. In Sardinia, bandits continued to operate in some regions, and, although anti-kidnapping laws had been somewhat effective, high-profile kidnappings dominated the news for months.

In addition, organized crime used violence to block enforcement of environmental protection laws and the establishment of public parks (which reduced opportunities for illegal construction) in Sicily and Sardinia in particular. Throughout the south, illegal construction was rife, and successive government amnesties—the last in 1994—further encouraged these builders. It was only after 1996 that the state began to act seriously against illegal construction, and it demolished houses and villas in natural parks in Sicily and Rome.

During the mid-1980s the state and civil society began to move, finally, against the hegemonic control of organized crime. After a series of high-profile Mafia assassinations of major political and institutional figures, above all prefect-general Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa (and his wife) in Palermo in 1982, local elites began to evolve a strategy for combating the Mafia. A key Mafia figure, Tommaso Buscetta, turned state’s evidence in 1984 in defiance of the organization’s code of silence. Buscetta was the first to provide detailed information on the workings and plans of the Mafia. His testimony led to hundreds of arrests of key Mafia leaders and henchmen. Soon other mafiosi turned state’s evidence that helped prosecutors win convictions of important Mafia bosses. In addition, the Mafia families became involved in a damaging internal war in the 1980s that left more than 1,000 dead. Finally, there were moves from within the Christian Democratic Party itself against the Mafia after the murder in 1980 of the Christian Democratic Sicilian regional president Piersanti Mattarella, a traditional politician who had decided to lead a campaign against corruption in Sicily. The state passed strong anti-Mafia laws for the first time, and several trials in 1986 condemned hundreds of mafiosi to long prison sentences.

The Mafia took its revenge in devastating yet counterproductive fashion. In 1992 Judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, who had both presided over anti-Mafia trials, were killed in horrific bomb attacks that left another nine people (bodyguards and relatives) dead. These murders galvanized the anti-Mafia movement. Even parliament—which had been stalled on the election of a new president, leaving Italy in a sort of power vacuum—came out of its stupor to elect Oscar Luigi Scalfaro in the aftermath of the Falcone bombing.

Beginning in 1993, authorities arrested several remaining key Mafia figures. Corruption investigations in the early 1990s permitted the prosecution of previously immune political figures who had links to the Mafia. In 1993 seven-time prime minister Guilio Andreotti was charged with collusion with the Mafia, a move that shook the political system to its foundations, although Andreotti was later absolved after a long and dramatic trial. Giancarlo Caselli continued the work of Falcone and Borsellino. Leoluca Orlando, an anti-Mafia campaigner, was elected mayor of Palermo in 1993 and 1997 with huge majorities. The city and the region began to stabilize, although no one believed that the Mafia had been entirely defeated. In Naples as well, the judges began to break down the powerful Camorra organizations, which were engaged in a bloody internal civil war that had left hundreds of young people dead. Leading politicians and Camorra bosses were arrested and charged.

In the late 1990s, however, the Mafia appeared to be making something of a comeback, although it seemed to have abandoned the tactics of direct confrontation with the state. The right—and in particular the new party called Forza Italia (“Go Italy”), led by Silvio Berlusconi—made continual attacks on anti-Mafia judges and the use of supergrass evidence (ex-mafiosi who turn state’s evidence), especially after leading members of Forza Italia itself were implicated in Mafia corruption. These attacks resulted in the ouster of one of the most prominent anti-Mafia judges, Giancarlo Caselli, in 1999. These events suggested a return to previous patterns of government noninterference, albeit much less overt than in the past. Italy at the turn of the 21st century Emergence of the “second republic”

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 ended the Cold War pattern that had marked Italian politics since the 1940s. Meanwhile, in the wake of growing economic prosperity and the challenges of globalization, most Italians had come to resent the corrupt and costly system of patronage and the large state economic sector that hampered Italy’s competitiveness and tarnished its political culture. With the bankruptcy of Cold War ideologies and partitocrazia, the party system itself began to appear outdated, politicians experimented with new forms of organization and communication, and shifting alliances replaced the solid blocs of the Cold War world.

The end of the Cold War had an immediate impact on Italy’s two biggest parties. Ongoing scandals and the loss of anticommunist appeal brought a further decline in the popularity of the Christian Democrats, who won only 29.7 percent of the vote in the 1992 elections. Under its new leader, Achille Occhetto, the Communist Party adopted a more moderate program and, in 1991, even took a new name: the Democratic Party of the Left (Partito Democratico della Sinistra; PDS). In the same year, a small group of die-hard Communists split off to form the Communist Refoundation Party (Partito della Rifondazione Comunista; PRC), which became one of the more important small parties, gaining about 5 percent of the vote in the national elections of 1994 and 1996. The collapse of communism in eastern Europe after 1989 undermined the communist subculture in Italy, and the PDS vote declined further to 16.1 percent in the 1992 elections. Nonetheless, the PDS remained the most important centre-left party.

Public protests against political corruption had little effect until 1992, when investigating magistrates in Milan began uncovering a series of bribery scandals. The city soon became known as “Bribesville” (Tangentopoli), and under “Operation Clean Hands” many leading politicians, civil servants, and prominent businessmen were arrested and imprisoned. Nearly all of Italy’s political parties were involved, but the Christian Democrats and the Socialists were the heart of the system. Craxi, the former prime minister, was eventually convicted on multiple charges and escaped imprisonment only by fleeing to Tunisia, where he died in 2000. By mid-1993 more than 200 deputies were under investigation, as were several former ministers, in a series of televised and closely followed trials. Protests about irregularities in the investigations fell on deaf ears at first but gradually began to pick up support.

Apart from the PDS, whose role in the corruption was limited, the main political parties dissolved in disgrace in 1993 and 1994, some to reappear under new names and with new leaders. The Christian Democrats became the Italian Popular Party (Partito Popolare Italiano; PPI), although some former Christian Democrats left the party to form several smaller Catholic-inspired political groupings. Members of the neofascist MSI (which had remained largely outside of the system of corruption) formed the new National Alliance (Alleanza Nazionale; AN). The Socialists, so important to the political system since the 1960s, became irrelevant. It was an extraordinary, unprecedented reshaping of an entire political system.

In 1993 voters approved several referenda, later ratified by parliament, to alter the electoral law so that thenceforth three-fourths of deputies and senators would be elected from single-member constituencies rather than proportionally. Socialist Prime Minister Giuliano Amato (1992–93), whose government had been rocked by the corruption scandal, resigned shortly after the passage of the referendum, and President Scalfaro asked Carlo Azeglio Ciampi to step in and form a government to implement the electoral reforms and stabilize the economy. The collapse of the existing party system and national elections under the new law the following year marked the end of partitocrazia and the beginning of a new political order. Economic strength

Economic problems increased sharply after 1991, as Italy felt the effects of a global recession that hit most European economies. In 1992 the budget deficit rose to more than 10 percent of GDP, and industrial production fell by 4 percent from 1992 to 1993. In September 1992 the lira was temporarily forced out of the European Monetary System, in which several nations had linked their currencies. In an effort to reduce the budget deficit, Amato’s government abolished the indexation of wages, rapidly decreased welfare spending (especially on health and pensions), and drew up a program to privatize leading state firms, although the privatizations were to occur only very gradually. Amato’s successor in 1993 as prime minister, Ciampi, was not a politician at all but a former governor of the Bank of Italy. Committed to privatization and continued government austerity, Ciampi was chosen to reassure investors and to prevent a disastrous flight from the lira. Although a prosperous country, Italy was still a junior partner in the new Europe and could no longer resist northern European pressure for financial prudence. Furthermore, Italy’s voters strongly supported the common European currency outlined in the 1991 Maastricht Treaty on the European Union, and Italy needed to implement a program of fiscal discipline to qualify for inclusion in the common currency zone. One facet of the new rigour was that the country’s deficit could not breach more than 3 percent of GDP.

During the late 1990s the economy resumed the strong growth of the previous decade, led by the flourishing design and manufacturing small-business networks of the centre and north. Living standards throughout Italy rose to the levels of the most advanced economies, although large pockets of youth unemployment and poverty remained, particularly in parts of the south and on the bleak peripheries of the northern cities. Immigrants from outside Italy also tended to have much lower living standards than Italians.

Italy participated in the Maastricht Treaty and all subsequent agreements on European political and economic union. The European Union remained far more popular in Italy than in many other European countries. Moreover, the strong desire of many Italians to participate in the common European currency enabled the centre-left government of Romano Prodi (1996–98) to pass a series of austerity budgets that dramatically reduced Italy’s chronic budget deficits. Under the Prodi government, privatizations began in earnest, and inflation was reduced to record lows. This fiscal discipline allowed Italy to meet the strict requirements for adoption of the common European currency, the euro, which replaced the lira as Italy’s unit of exchange on January 1, 1999. A new political landscape The rise of Berlusconi

While electoral reforms failed to produce the desired political stability after 1993, they nevertheless helped transform Italy’s political landscape from one of multiple national parties that formed shifting parliamentary coalitions to one of parties, often with a distinct regional basis, that formed electoral coalitions, which then often failed to withstand the rigours of parliamentary cooperation.

In the north, and especially in the Veneto and Lombardy, local or regional “leagues” had developed in the early 1980s to protest corrupt party rule by the central government in Rome, as well as high taxes, poor public services, organized crime (which they often blamed on southerners), and immigration (especially from Africa but later from Albania). These leagues united in 1991 to form a federation, the Northern League (Lega Nord). In 1992, when numerous Socialist and Christian Democratic leaders were being arrested and the Communists were seeking a new identity after the failure of state socialism in eastern Europe, the Northern League secured almost 20 percent of the northern vote in the parliamentary elections. Later it advocated a new constitution with a federal Italy divided into three autonomous republics that would have separate responsibility for everything except defense, foreign affairs, and monetary policy. The northern part of this system was to be known as “Padania.”

The decline of Italy’s major political parties as a result of the corruption scandals of the early 1990s created a political vacuum. The Northern League filled part of this vacuum, as did the “post-Fascist” National Alliance led by Gianfranco Fini, which in Rome and the mainland south became the party of continuing Italian patriotism as well as of continuing state subsidies and economic interventionism. Above all, the political vacuum was filled early in 1994 by media entrepreneur Berlusconi, who controlled three national commercial television channels, much of the press, and the highly successful A.C. Milan football (soccer) club. Berlusconi hastily founded an ad hoc political association, Forza Italia, with a message of populist anticommunism, and formed an equally ad hoc electoral alliance with the Northern League (in the north) and the AN (in the south). This loose right-wing coalition won a majority of about 50 seats in the Chamber of Deputies (although not in the Senate) in the March 1994 parliamentary election, the first held under the new electoral law.

Berlusconi, who became prime minister, had pledged to cut taxes, lower public spending, decentralize government, and generate a million new jobs. However, the new government—which had neofascist ministers for the first time since World War II, as well as a Northern League interior minister—was just as faction-ridden as previous governments. During huge protests against AN-led inheritance and pension reforms, the trade unions managed to mobilize more than a million people onto the streets of Rome. In July 1994 Berlusconi himself became the subject of anticorruption investigations that he was unable to halt. The allegations weakened Berlusconi’s government, as did his attempts to control the state-owned media, which not only had criticized the government but also competed directly with his privately owned media outlets. Berlusconi promised at various times to sell his television stations or leave them to be managed by a “blind trust,” but they continued to broadcast propaganda in his favour. Finally, in December 1994 the Northern League ended its alliance with Berlusconi, and his government fell. Shifting power

Once again, President Scalfaro invited a banker to head the government, this time Lamberto Dini, the former chief executive of the Bank of Italy and previously Berlusconi’s treasury minister. In January 1995 Dini formed a government of nonpolitical “technocrats,” supported by the Northern League and by the left-wing parties in parliament (the losers in the 1994 elections). This new government, known on the right as the “turnabout” (ribaltone), reached a long-term agreement on pensions and limited the budget deficit. Dini’s government lasted until the spring of 1996, when President Scalfaro called for new parliamentary elections.

In the period of electoral alliances and unstable governments that followed the collapse of Italy’s party system—a period that became known as the “second republic”—the president assumed a more powerful role. Powers that the parties had previously exercised—such as the decision to dissolve parliament—rested increasingly with the president. Scalfaro adhered to his constitutional responsibilities in times of crisis, but his disquiet with aspects of the new populist right was clear, and he was often accused of favouring the centre-left at key moments.

Like the right-wing parties, a group of left-wing parties including the PDS had formed an electoral alliance. After the failure of this alliance in the 1994 elections, Massimo d’Alema assumed leadership of the PDS and began to build alliances with the centre. In 1995 Romano Prodi, a former Christian Democratic minister and former head of IRI, proposed to lead a new centre-left alliance known as L’Ulivo (“the Olive Tree”). Promising to enable Italy to adopt the euro and to reform the bureaucracy and civil service, Prodi won the support of the PDS and the other major left and centre parties. With a few exceptions, such as Milan, the left managed to take control of most important city governments in the 1990s. Some of these cities proved to be important laboratories of stable government and reform, including Venice under Massimo Cacciari, Rome under the Green Party’s Francesco Rutelli, and Naples under Antonio Bassolino.

Meanwhile, the bitterness inspired by Northern League leader Umberto Bossi’s “betrayal” of Berlusconi in 1994 kept the right divided in the north. Berlusconi went into the 1996 elections supported by some smaller Catholic parties and the AN but without the support of the Northern League, which did better than expected in the north. Encouraged by these results, the Northern League issued a symbolic declaration of independence for the northern “Republic of Padania.” However, polls showed that the vast majority of the league’s voters did not want complete separation, and the league, without the media power of Berlusconi behind it, began to lose ground.

At the same time, the division on the right in 1996 allowed the Olive Tree to win a surprise victory, and Prodi assumed the premiership. However, the Olive Tree coalition’s small majority in the lower house made it dependent on the cooperation of the Refounded Communists (the PRC). In October 1998 PRC dissatisfaction led to a narrow defeat in a confidence vote that forced Prodi to resign. D’Alema, leader of the Democrats of the Left (Democratici di Sinistra; DS), as the PDS had renamed itself, assembled a working majority and became prime minister.

D’Alema’s government continued the fiscal discipline of Prodi’s administration but with less conviction and under continual pressure from various allies. It remained unpopular in the country, while on the right the division and resentments of 1994 were beginning to subside. A new law regulated television time for all parties, but nothing was done about opposition leader Berlusconi’s huge media advantage. The left began to hemorrhage votes and, in a highly symbolic defeat, even lost “red Bologna” in 1999 to the centre-right after 50 years of communist city governments. Another heavy defeat followed in the European elections. D’Alema limped on until April 2000, when a new electoral alliance between Berlusconi, the Northern League, and the AN crushed the centre-left in regional elections. D’Alema resigned, and Giuliano Amato assumed leadership of a further weakened centre-left government, which fell in 2001 when Berlusconi led his centre-right coalition back into power and began his second tenure as prime minister, one of the longest in recent history.

In the contentious and close elections of 2006, Prodi returned to the national spotlight to lead his centre-left coalition against Berlusconi, whom he replaced as prime minister. Just 20 months later, in January 2008, Prodi lost a vote of confidence in the Senate and resigned once again. Italian Pres. Giorgio Napolitano called for the formation of an interim government, charged with revising the country’s problematic electoral law that had been pushed through parliament by Berlusconi just months before the 2006 elections. Many cited the law, which overturned changes to the electoral system made in the 1990s, as the reason for Prodi’s downfall. Attempts to form an interim government failed, however, and Napolitano dissolved parliament in February. In the national elections held in April, Berlusconi—heading a new party known as the People of Freedom (Popolo della Libertà; PdL)—clinched a third term as prime minister. Martin Clark John Foot Scandal and the struggling economy

When an earthquake devastated the historic town of L’Aquila in April 2009, Berlusconi focused attention on the area by visiting victims of the temblor and relocating a Group of Eight summit to the city. His popularity suffered, however, as he became embroiled in a sex scandal involving a teenage model. Berlusconi took another hit in October 2009, when Italy’s Constitutional Court struck down a law that protected the prime minister from prosecution while in office. The ruling meant that Berlusconi could be tried on outstanding corruption and fraud charges, as well as other unrelated charges that would accrue over the following years. Italy’s economy sagged in 2009 as the global economic crisis drew the country into recession. The unemployment rate approached double digits throughout 2010, and disagreements between Berlusconi and former AN leader Gianfranco Fini triggered the departure of Fini and dozens of supporters from the PdL.

Fini retained his position as leader of the Chamber of Deputies, and, despite his differences with Berlusconi, Future and Freedom (Futuro e Libertà per l’Italia; FLI), the breakaway party that Fini formed, proved instrumental to Berlusconi’s political survival, as the embattled prime minister faced three votes of confidence in the latter half of 2010. In February 2011 Berlusconi was mired in yet another scandal when prosecutors alleged that he had solicited sex from an underage prostitute and had abused the powers of his office in the subsequent cover-up. That case was adjourned in April 2011, pending a review by Italy’s Constitutional Court. Berlusconi faced another confidence vote in June 2011 following crushing losses for the PdL in local elections. He survived that test, but the country’s ongoing political uncertainty, along with a host of economic factors, caused euro zone economic ministers to turn their attention to Italy’s public debt market.

For more than a year, financial markets had responded with trepidation to the debt crisis that had escalated for the so-called “PIGS” (Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Spain) countries, as the EU and IMF called for the enactment of austerity measures in those countries and provided financial bailouts for Greece and Ireland, primarily to preserve the stability of the euro. Italy’s outstanding public debt, which approached €2 trillion, amounted to more than that of the four PIGS combined, causing some economists to label the country as “too big to fail.” In July 2011 the Italian legislature approved a basket of austerity measures, including massive budget cuts, in an attempt to calm markets and restore confidence in the Italian economy. Investors judged these efforts to be insufficient, however, and a public feud between Berlusconi and finance minister Giulio Tremonti put additional pressure on the Italian bond market. Interest rates on benchmark 10-year government bonds surpassed 6 percent, and in September 2011 labour unions responded to the proposal of an additional round of austerity measures with a one-day general strike that paralyzed the country. The ratings agency Standard & Poor’s downgraded Italy’s sovereign credit score, and Berlusconi narrowly survived a vote of confidence in parliament, as even his allies began to question the viability of his administration.

On November 8, 2011, Berlusconi effectively lost his parliamentary majority on a key budget vote, and he announced his intention to resign after the passage of his proposed budget reforms. Italian bond yields topped 7.5 percent before the market began to respond to the news. The Italian parliament sped the approval of Berlusconi’s austerity measures, and he resigned within hours of their passage on November 12, 2011. Italian Pres. Giorgio Napolitano selected former European commissioner Mario Monti as Berlusconi’s replacement, and Monti began to assemble a government with the intention of assuaging fears about the Italian economy.

Monti’s technocratic government enacted a series of reforms during 2012 that resonated with financial markets, and the Italian benchmark bond yield receded to less dangerous levels. Among the austerity measures passed were a reinstatement of the national property tax, a pension freeze, and a dramatic hike in automotive fuel taxes. Although a majority of the Italian public continued to express approval and respect for Monti personally, support for his government declined throughout the year. Unemployment stubbornly remained above 10 percent, and consumer confidence plunged as Monti struggled to turn around an Italian economy that was saddled with €2 trillion (about $2.6 trillion) in debt.

Skepticism regarding the effectiveness of austerity—and of politicians in general—manifested in comedian Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement. Espousing views that were broadly populist, critical of the EU, and antiestablishment, Grillo used the Internet and social media to amass legions of followers. The protest party won victories in local elections in Parma and Sicily, as traditional parties, such as the Northern League and the People of Freedom, saw their influence slip amid financial scandals. Berlusconi, who was convicted of fraud and sentenced to four years in prison in October 2012, reinserted himself into the political scene in December of that year in a move that upset the delicate balance that had characterized Monti’s administration. Promoting a populist agenda and decrying Monti’s austerity measures as too harsh, Berlusconi declared himself a candidate for prime minister, and the People of Freedom withdrew its support from the government. Without a clear majority in parliament, Monti resigned as prime minister but remained in power in a caretaker role. Early elections were held in February 2013, and the result was a deadlock. Pier Luigi Bersani, the leader of the centre-left Democratic Party (Partito Democratico; PD), commanded a majority in the lower house of parliament. However, surprisingly strong showings in the upper house by the Five Star Movement and parties affiliated with Berlusconi meant that Bersani would not be able to form a government on his own. Monti’s centrist party failed to win enough seats to play a significant role in the formation of a coalition government.

Two months of political maneuvering ensued, and no clear consensus emerged. Grillo rejected a proposed alliance with the PD, caustically characterizing Bersani as a “dead man talking,” and a “grand coalition” that would have united the forces of Bersani and Berlusconi failed to materialize. Uncertainty gripped Italy, and presidential elections held in April 2013 initially did little to settle matters. A pair of candidates advanced by Bersani—former Senate speaker Franco Marini and former prime minister Romano Prodi—were resoundingly defeated when PD delegates staged an internal rebellion. In the wake of these reverses, Bersani announced that he would resign as leader of the PD upon the election of a president. In the sixth round of balloting, the PD, Berlusconi’s PdL, and Monti’s supporters aligned behind incumbent Pres. Giorgio Napolitano, and he was reelected by a wide margin.

The 87-year-old Napolitano became the first Italian president in history to win a second term. Napolitano tapped Enrico Letta, a prominent figure within the PD’s moderate wing, to form a coalition government. Letta was tasked with the formation of a cross-party cabinet that would resolve the political deadlock that had been afflicting Italy since the February 2013 general elections.

The stability of Letta’s government was threatened in August 2013 when Berlusconi’s conviction for tax fraud was upheld by the Supreme Court of Cassation. The decision marked the first time that Berlusconi had been definitively convicted of a crime. In addition to a one-year prison term, the PdL leader faced an additional political ban of five years; that part of his sentence, however, was suspended, pending review by a lower court. A parliamentary committee was convened to determine whether Berlusconi should be stripped of his Senate seat, but, days before a scheduled vote on the matter, Berlusconi withdrew the support of the PdL from the ruling coalition. Financial markets recoiled at the news, and Letta criticized the move as irresponsible. Berlusconi’s efforts to topple the government backfired, however, when a sizable PdL contingent indicated that it would support Letta. Facing a possible rebellion within his own party, Berlusconi dropped his challenge, and on October 2, 2013, Letta easily survived a vote of confidence.

Berlusconi relaunched the PdL as Forza Italia, while the moderate faction that had supported Letta broke away under Angelino Alfano to form the New Centre Right (Nuovo Centrodestra; NCD) party. Berlusconi moved Forza Italia into opposition, but Letta successfully weathered another vote of confidence on November 26, 2013. The following day Berlusconi was officially expelled from the Senate, but, as Forza Italia leader, he remained an influential figure in Italian politics. Meanwhile, Letta continued his efforts to revive Italy’s struggling economy, and he endured another round of confidence votes in December 2013 as he brought forth a budget that cut spending and repealed an unpopular housing tax that had been introduced by the Monti government. Dissension within the PD about the pace of reform led to a leadership struggle in February 2014, however, as Florence mayor Matteo Renzi called an intraparty vote to challenge Letta. PD members overwhelmingly backed Renzi, and Letta submitted his resignation to Napolitano on February 13. Renzi was given approval to form a government, and he was sworn in as prime minister on February 22, 2014. At age 39 he was the youngest person in Italian history to hold that office. The migrant crisis and the growth of populist movements The Renzi and Gentiloni governments

Renzi immediately embarked on a bold reform program in an attempt to revitalize Italy’s stagnant labour market and to stimulate economic growth. While the IMF applauded the move, Renzi faced opposition from Italy’s labour unions as well as from members of his own party. Italy’s economy emerged from recession in 2015, but it still lagged behind the rest of the euro area, and unemployment remained stubbornly high. Meanwhile, Europe’s migrant crisis continued to loom as a pressing foreign and domestic issue for Renzi’s administration. Thousands of refugees died attempting the hazardous Mediterranean crossing in barely seaworthy craft, and Italy’s Operation Mare Nostrum, which had rescued more than 150,000 migrants in 2014, had been terminated in October of that year because of a lack of support from other EU members. After an estimated 800 people were killed in a single shipwreck in April 2015, the EU voted to dramatically expand its multinational Triton sea rescue operation.

Renzi, MatteoMatteo Renzi at a press conference in Rome, February 2014.Rex Features/AP Images

The refugee crisis sparked a political showdown for Renzi, as opposition politicians characterized it as “an invasion” and suggested housing the migrants on abandoned oil rigs off the Libyan coast. Renzi’s popularity declined as populist parties such as the Northern League and Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement capitalized on anti-immigrant sentiment and the slow pace of economic recovery. Renzi staked his political future on a constitutional referendum that he claimed would enhance the stability of Italy’s central government, which had changed hands 63 times since World War II. Passage of the referendum would see the power of the Senate, the legislature’s upper house, significantly reduced, and Renzi claimed that the changes would make the legislative process more efficient. Critics countered that disproportionate power would accrue to the prime minister’s office, and Renzi vowed to resign if the measure did not pass. On December 4, 2016, voters overwhelmingly rejected the proposal. Renzi announced his resignation, and Grillo, who was the most visible face in the “no” campaign, called for snap elections to be held.

Forgoing fresh elections, Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni attempted to form a new government. On December 13, 2016, Gentiloni handily won a vote of confidence in the lower house, and his government was confirmed by the Senate, albeit by a narrower margin, the following day. Gentiloni’s term was marked by political stability and modest economic growth, but the governing PD could boast relatively little public support to show for it. Strong anti-immigrant feeling boosted the fortunes of far-right and populist parties, but a new election law passed in October 2017 changed the allocation of parliamentary seats in a way that favoured mainstream parties and those that could build effective coalitions. The Five Star Movement, which had consistently ruled out a governing alliance with other parties, claimed that the law had been passed by the political establishment in an attempt to keep them out of power. In December 2017, with the PD having completed its five-year term, Gentiloni dissolved parliament ahead of general elections that were scheduled to be held in March 2018. The victory of populist parties

On March 4, 2018, Italians went to the polls and delivered a sharp rebuke to traditional parties. The Five Star Movement was the clear winner, claiming nearly one-third of the vote, but it lacked an obvious path to forming a coalition government. Support for both the ruling PD and Berlusconi’s Forza Italia plummeted; although the PD secured just enough votes to theoretically forge a coalition with Five Star, representatives from both parties adamantly ruled out such a possibility. The League, the Euroskeptic anti-immigration successor to the secessionist Northern League, captured a stunning 18 percent of the vote. This result was especially remarkable because support for the League was largely confined to a relatively narrow band north of the Po River. Also gaining representation was the Brothers of Italy, a descendant of the neofascist National Alliance.

EuroskepticismLeaders of several Euroskeptic parties—(from left) Matteo Salvini of Italy's Northern League, Harald Vilimsky of Austria's Freedom Party, Marine Le Pen of France's National Front, and Geert Wilders of the Dutch Party for Freedom—after a meeting at the European Parliament in Brussels, May 28, 2014.Geert Vanden Wijngaert/AP Images

Coalition talks dragged on for two inconclusive months, and on May 7 Italian Pres. Sergio Mattarella delivered a televised address urging parties to appoint a nonpartisan caretaker government under the threat of fresh elections. Five Star vowed that it would not take part in a unity technocratic government, and League leader Matteo Salvini called for a new election that would double as a de facto referendum on Italy’s membership in the European Union. In an effort to resolve the impasse, Berlusconi—as head of the right-wing bloc that included the League, Forza Italia, and the Brothers of Italy—gave his blessing to Salvini to pursue negotiations with Five Star. Days later the ban on Berlusconi holding political office was lifted by a Milan appellate court. As talks between Salvini and Five Star leader Luigi Di Maio proceeded, there emerged the possibility of a Euroskeptic, left and right populist coalition that EU officials dubbed the “nightmare scenario.”

The two parties agreed on an administration to be led by Giuseppe Conte, a law professor and political neophyte. On May 27 Mattarella vetoed Conte’s government, however, on the grounds that proposed finance minister Paolo Savona was a Euroskeptic who would seek to “provoke Italy’s exit from the euro.” The move triggered howls of protest from Five Star, with Di Maio calling for Mattarella’s impeachment, and Italian bond yields soared at the prospect of continued political instability. On May 29 Mattarella sought to calm markets by nominating former IMF executive Carlo Cottarelli to serve at the head of a technocratic caretaker government ahead of early elections. Cottarelli was known as “Mr. Scissors” for his reputation as an opponent of public spending, but his appointment failed to assuage investors. In the end, Cottarelli surrendered his mandate after just 48 hours when Five Star and the League again proposed Conte as prime minister at the head of a reshuffled cabinet. Mattarella approved the government on May 31, and Conte was inaugurated the following day. Salvini was named interior minister, and he immediately began working to fulfill his promise to expel migrants from Italy. Di Maio became labour and economic development minister, a post that allowed him to pursue his campaign pledge of enacting a universal basic income scheme in Italy. The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Immigration and foreign policy

The economic growth that had begun in the 1980s transformed Italy by the 1990s into a host country for immigration. Emigration from Italy and south-north internal migration had all but disappeared by the 1980s. From the mid-1970s onward, immigrants from all over the world, but in particular from North Africa, the Philippines, and eastern Europe, had begun to appear in the big cities. Most worked in the service sector or in small-time street trading. Italy took a long time to react to this trend, and immigration became a national crisis. By 2000 Italy had more than one million immigrants, many of whom found it difficult to procure documents for legal residence. Racism emerged in Italian society and politics, and immigrants were stereotyped as criminals, just as southern Italians had been in the 1960s. However, this cheap labour was essential to the Italian economy.

In 1993 Italy ratified the Schengen Treaty, which eliminated passport controls between its European member states and mandated rigorous controls for persons arriving from nonmember states. Italy implemented these controls and joined the Schengen zone in 1997. Because of its position at the edge of prosperous western Europe and, after 1997, of the exclusive Schengen zone, Italy played a frontier role in immigration, with immigrants every day attempting the perilous sea crossings from Albania and North Africa despite Italian authorities trying to stop them. In the early 21st century, international attention focused on Lampedusa Island, located some 70 miles (approximately 110 km) from the Tunisian coast. Tens of thousands of prospective immigrants and asylum seekers made the treacherous crossing to the Italian island; hundreds were killed in accidents at sea, and the processing centre on Lampedusa was often filled beyond its capacity. As the flow of immigrants continued in the wake of the Arab Spring, Pope Francis visited the island in July 2013 to bring attention to the issue. The stream of immigrants and refugees quickened to a flood as the Syrian Civil War intensified, with more than 100,000 people seeking asylum in Italy in 2015 alone.

Economic dislocations after the Cold War had brought massive immigration from Albania in particular, especially in 1990 and 1991. Italy sent troops to Albania twice at times of crisis, and the huge boatloads of Albanians arriving on the coast of Puglia became symbols of pressures that some Italians perceived as a threat. Only the first Albanians were welcomed. Thereafter Italy adopted a policy of expulsion and began nightly patrols up and down the coast.

The end of the Cold War and growing European political and economic integration also had combined to erode Italy’s long-standing resistance to overseas military action, as the interventions in Albania demonstrated. In 1999 Prime Minister Massimo D’Alema faced the Kosovo crisis on his doorstep, and, in contrast to Italy’s complete inaction during the four preceding years of war in the Balkans, Italy permitted the use of its bases to bomb targets in Yugoslavia. This intervention, however, proved unpopular in Italy, both on the left and among Catholics.

Italy in the 21st century was far richer and more developed than it had been a hundred years previously. Many problems remained, however, including continuing political instability and corruption, the historic but persistent economic and cultural divisions between the north and the south, and the new challenges of immigration and European economic and political unification. These challenges dominated Italy’s political and economic agenda early in the new century. Martin Clark John Foot The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Citation Information

Article Title: Italy

Website Name: Encyclopaedia Britannica

Publisher: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.

Date Published: 14 August 2019

URL: https://www.britannica.com/place/Italy

Access Date: August 20, 2019

Additional Reading Geography General works

Comprehensive descriptions of many geographic aspects of the country are found in Mario Pinna and Domenico Ruocco (eds.), Italy: A Geographical Survey (1980). Rinn S. Shinn (ed.), Italy: A Country Study, 2nd ed. (1987), is a comprehensive survey of both the geography and the history of the country. People

National, social, and demographic characteristics of the country, with a look at regional differences, are discussed in David Willey, Italians (1984); William Murray, The Last Italian: Portrait of a People (1991); and David I. Kertzer and Richard P. Saller (eds.), The Family in Italy from Antiquity to the Present (1991). Other works include John Agnew, Place and Politics in Modern Italy (2002); and Tobias Jones, The Dark Heart of Italy, rev. ed. (2007). Economy

Broad surveys are offered in Peter Groenewegen and Joseph Halevi (eds.), Italian Economics Past and Present (1983); and Russell King, Italy (1987). Russell King, The Industrial Geography of Italy (1985) analyzes the location of industries. Raffaella Y. Nanetti, Growth and Territorial Policies: The Italian Model of Social Capitalism (1988), focuses on regional disparities and the role of local government in economic development. Alan B. Mountjoy, The Mezzogiorno, 2nd ed. (1982), briefly reviews economic conditions in southern Italy. Other special studies are Pino Arlacchi, Mafia Business: The Mafia Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. by Martin Ryle (1986; originally published in Italian, 1983); Peter Lange and Marino Regini (eds.), State, Market, and Social Regulation: New Perspectives on Italy (1989; originally published in Italian, 1987); F. Pyke, G. Becattini, and W. Sengenberger (eds.), Industrial Districts and Inter-Firm Co-operation in Italy (1990); and Vera Zamagni, The Economic History of Italy, 1860–1990 (1993). Russell L. King Paola E. Signoretta Government and society

Comprehensive historical introductions to political institutions and processes are presented in Paul Ginsborg, A History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics, 1943–1988 (1990, reissued 2003), and Italy and its Discontents: Family, Civil Society, State, 1980–2001 (2003); Frederic Spotts and Theodor Wieser, Italy: A Difficult Democracy (1986); and Joseph LaPalombara, Democracy, Italian Style (1987). Useful insights into the machinations of the power system are provided in Alan Friedman, Agnelli and the Network of Italian Power (1988). The dynamics of various political forces are the subject of Paolo Farneti, The Italian Party System (1945–1980), ed. by S.E. Finer and Alfio Mastropaolo (1985); Geoffrey Pridham, The Nature of the Italian Party System: A Regional Case Study (1981); Grant Amyot, The Italian Communist Party: The Crisis of the Popular Front Strategy (1981); and Judith Chubb, Patronage, Power, and Poverty in Southern Italy: A Tale of Two Cities (1982). A full analysis of the political, social, and economic crisis of the 1970s and the radical transformations that resulted from it is found in Sidney Tarrow, Democracy and Disorder: Protest and Politics in Italy, 1965–1975 (1989). Giuseppe Di Palma Cultural life

Anna Laura Lepschy and Giulio Lepschy, The Italian Language Today, 2nd ed. (1988, reissued 1992), offers a survey of modern Italian and its dialects. A well-illustrated discussion of popular culture and social customs, with a look at rustic decoration and ornament, is found in Catherine Sabino, Italian Country, rev. ed. (1995). David Forgacs, Italian Culture in the Industrial Era, 1880–1980: Cultural Industries, Politics, and the Public (1990), is a history of popular culture and politico-cultural dynamics. John Julius Norwich (ed.), The Italians: History, Art, and the Genius of a People (also published as The Italian World, 1983, reprinted 1989), surveys developments from Roman times to the 20th century. James Hall, A History of Ideas and Images in Italian Art (1983, reissued 1995), traces the inspiration behind Italian art from Etruscan times. Italy’s contribution to modern motion pictures is examined in Peter Bondanella, Italian Cinema: From Neorealism to the Present, 3rd ed. (2001). Russell L. King Melanie F. Knights History General works

A comprehensive survey of Italian history is Reinhold Schumann, Italy in the Last Fifteen Hundred Years: A Concise History, 2nd ed. (1992). A good compendium is George Holmes, The Oxford Illustrated History of Italy (2001). Italy in the early Middle Ages

Comprehensive discussions of medieval Italy are provided in the first three volumes of The Cambridge Medieval History: The Christian Roman Empire and the Foundation of the Teutonic Kingdoms, 2nd ed., vol. 1 (1924, reprinted 1967); The Rise of the Saracens and the Foundation of the Western Empire, 2nd ed., vol. 2 (1924, reissued 1967); and Germany and the Western Empire, 2nd ed., vol. 3 (1924, reissued 1968). Giovanni Tabacco, The Struggle for Power in Medieval Italy: Structures of Political Rule, trans. by Rosalind Brown Jensen (1989; originally published in Italian, 1979), is a major survey of sociopolitical history. Also of interest is Chris Wickham, Early Medieval Italy: Central Power and Local Society, 400–1000 (1981, reissued 1989).

Specific political and social topics of early periods are studied in A.H.M. Jones, The Later Roman Empire, 284–602: A Social, Economic, and Administrative Survey, 2 vol. (1964, reprinted 1986); T.S. Brown, Gentlemen and Officers: Imperial Administration and Aristocratic Power in Byzantine Italy, A.D. 554–800 (1984); Thomas F.X. Noble, The Republic of St. Peter: The Birth of the Papal State, 680–825 (1984); and Barbara M. Kreutz, Before the Normans: Southern Italy in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries (1991). Chris Wickham, The Mountains and the City: The Tuscan Appennines in the Early Middle Ages (1988), is a regional study. Socioeconomic analyses include Bryan Ward-Perkins, From Classical Antiquity to the Middle Ages: Urban Public Building in Northern and Central Italy, AD 300–850 (1984); and appropriate articles in Richard Hodges and Brian Hobley (eds.), The Rebirth of Towns in the West, AD 700–1050 (1988). The art of this period is examined by Richard Krautheimer, Rome, Profile of a City, 312–1308 (1980, reissued 2000); and Richard Hodges and John Mitchell (eds.), San Vincenzo al Volturno: The Archaeology, Art, and Territory of an Early Medieval Monastery (1985). Christopher John Wickham The High Middle Ages, 962–1300

Works embracing the whole period include Contest of Empire and Papacy, 2nd ed. (1924, reissued 1968), vol. 5 of The Cambridge Medieval History; and Chiara Frugoni, A Distant City: Images of Urban Experience in the Medieval World, trans by William McCuaig (1991; originally published in Italian, 1983). The reform era is studied in Uta-Renate Blumenthal, The Investiture Controversy: Church and Monarchy from the Ninth to the Twelfth Century (1988, reissued 1991; originally published in German, 1982). The role of medieval Italy in Mediterranean commerce is examined in David Abulafia, Italy, Sicily, and the Mediterranean, 1100–1400 (1987); and Gerald W. Day, Genoa’s Response to Byzantium, 1155–1204: Commercial Expansion and Factionalism in a Medieval City (1988).

Examinations of social and cultural life in the 12th and 13th centuries include Lester K. Little, Liberty, Charity, Fraternity: Lay Religious Confraternities at Bergamo in the Age of the Commune, ed. by Sandro Buzzetti (1988); James M. Powell, Albertanus of Brescia: The Pursuit of Happiness in the Early Thirteenth Century (1992); and Albert Rabil, Jr. (ed.), Renaissance Humanism: Foundations, Forms, and Legacy, Humanism in Italy, vol. 1 (1988).

A broad comparative analysis of the communes is presented in Lauro Martines, Power and Imagination: City-States in Renaissance Italy (1979, reissued 2002); and Daniel Waley, The Italian City-Republics, 3rd ed. (1988). Histories of individual city-states include George W. Dameron, Episcopal Power and Florentine Society, 1000–1320 (1991); Robert Brentano, Rome Before Avignon: A Social History of Thirteenth-Century Rome (1974, reissued 1990); and Frederick C. Lane, Venice, a Maritime Republic (1973, reissued 1991).

The Papal States are addressed in Peter Partner, The Lands of St. Peter; The Papal State in the Middle Ages and the Early Renaissance (1972). The history of the kingdom of Sicily is explored in Norman Housley, The Italian Crusades: The Papal-Angevin Alliance and the Crusades Against Christian Lay Powers, 1254–1343 (1982, reissued 1999); and Donald Matthew, The Norman Kingdom of Sicily (1992). James M. Powell Italy in the 14th and 15th centuries

General outlines of the period, together with references to important works in Italian and other languages, are to be found in Denys Hay and John Law, Italy in the Age of the Renaissance, 1380–1530 (1989). An excellent work of reference is J.R. Hale (ed.), A Concise Encyclopaedia of the Italian Renaissance (1981). Wallace Klippert Ferguson, The Renaissance in Historical Thought: Five Centuries of Interpretation (1948, reprinted 1981), is useful for periodization.

Works that consider the social background of high culture are George Holmes, Florence, Rome, and the Origins of the Renaissance (1986, reissued 1988), and The Florentine Enlightenment, 1400–50 (1969, reissued 1992). Influential discussions of the subject are Paul Oskar Kristeller, Renaissance Thought: The Classic, Scholastic, and Humanistic Strains (1961, reprinted 1980), and Renaissance Thought and the Arts, expanded ed. (1990; originally published as Renaissance Thought II: Papers on Humanism and the Arts, 1965). The artist in society is discussed by Martin Wackernagel, The World of the Florentine Renaissance Artist: Projects and Patrons, Workshop and Art Market, trans. by Alison Luchs (1938, reissued 1981; originally published in German, 1938); and Bruce Cole, The Renaissance Artist at Work: From Pisano to Titian (1983).

Most writings in English have concentrated on the republics. Valuable works on the great Tuscan city of Florence are Gene A. Brucker, Renaissance Florence (1969, reissued 1994); Richard C. Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence (1980, reissued 1991); Richard A. Goldthwaite, The Building of Renaissance Florence: An Economic and Social History (1980, reissued 1990); John N. Najemy, Corporatism and Consensus in Florentine Electoral Politics, 1280–1400 (1982); David Herlihy and Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, Tuscans and Their Families: A Study of the Florentine Catasto of 1427 (1985; originally published in French, 1978); and, on the great ruling family, J.R. Hale, Florence and the Medici: The Pattern of Control, new ed. (2001).

Interesting contributions on the Serenissima are in Robert Finlay, Politics in Renaissance Venice (1980); and Edward Muir, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice (1981, reissued 1986).

The Papal States are treated in the work by Partner cited above (in the section on the High Middle Ages); and studies of its signori include Trevor Dean, Land and Power in Late Medieval Ferrara: The Rule of the Este, 1350–1450 (1988, reissued 2002). Works on the southern kingdoms include Denis Mack Smith, Medieval Sicily, 800–1713 (1968, reprinted 1988), vol. 1 of A History of Sicily. John Larner Early modern Italy (16th–18th centuries)

Two magisterial works frame this period in its European perspective: Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, translated from French by Siân Reynolds, 2nd rev. ed., 2 vol. (1966, reissued 1995); and Franco Venturi, Settecento riformatore (1969– ), with English translations of 2 vol., The End of the Old Regime in Europe, 1768–1776: The First Crisis (1989) and The End of the Old Regime in Europe, 1776–1789, 2 parts (1990–91).

General surveys of the period include Eric Cochrane, Italy 1530–1630, ed. by Julius Kirshner (1988); and Dino Carpanetto and Giuseppe Ricuperati, Italy in the Age of Reason, 1685–1789, translated from Italian by Caroline Higgitt (1987). Other studies are Stuart Woolf, A History of Italy, 1700–1860: The Social Constraints of Political Change (1979, reissued 1991); and the relevant volumes of The New Cambridge Modern History, 14 vol. (1957–79); and of The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, 2nd ed. (1966– ).

Studies of the individual states include, on Savoy, Geoffrey Symcox, Victor Amadeus II: Absolutism in the Savoyard State, 1675–1730 (1983); on Venice, the work by Lane cited above in the section on histories of the individual city-states; and the work by Muir cited in the section above (14th–15th centuries); on Florence, R. Burr Litchfield, Emergence of a Bureaucracy: The Florentine Patricians, 1530–1790 (1986); on Rome, Hanns Gross, Rome in the Age of Enlightenment: The Post-Tridentine Syndrome and the Ancien Regime (1990); on Naples, Antonio Calabria and John A. Marino (eds. and trans.), Good Government in Spanish Naples, trans. from Italian (1990); and Rosario Villari, The Revolt of Naples, trans. by James Newell (1993; originally published in Italian, 1967); and, on Sicily, the work by Mack Smith cited in the previous section, along with its companion volume, Modern Sicily, After 1713 (1968, reissued 1988).

Topics of special interest are addressed in Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller, trans. by John Tedeschi and Anne Tedeschi (1980, reissued 1992; originally published in Italian, 1976), and The Night Battles: Witchcraft & Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth & Seventeenth Centuries (1983, reissued 1992; originally published in Italian, 1966); Jonathan D. Spence, The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci (1984); Guido Ruggiero, The Boundaries of Eros: Sex Crime and Sexuality in Renaissance Venice (1985, reissued 1989); Mario Biagioli, Galileo, Courtier: The Practice of Science in the Culture of Absolutism (1993); Peter Burke, The Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Italy: Essays on Perception and Communication (1987); Paul F. Grendler, Schooling in Renaissance Italy: Literacy and Learning, 1300–1600 (1989, reissued 1991); and Margaret L. King, Women of the Renaissance (1991). John A. Marino Revolution, restoration, and unification

Works covering this period include David Laven and Lucy Riall (eds.), Napoleon’s Legacy: Problems of Government in Restoration Europe (2000); John A. Davis and Paul Ginsborg (eds.), Society and Politics in the Age of the Risorgimento (1991), a collection of essays; Frank J. Coppa, The Origins of the Italian Wars of Independence (1992); Clara M. Lovett, The Democratic Movement in Italy, 1830–1876 (1982); Denis Mack Smith, Cavour and Garibaldi, 1860: A Study in Political Conflict (1954, reissued 1985), and Mazzini (1994, reprinted 1996); Benedict S. LiPira, Giuseppe Garibaldi: A Biography of the Father of Modern Italy (1998); and Paul Ginsborg, Daniele Manin and the Venetian Revolution of 1848–49 (1979). An essential work on Garibaldi is Lucy Riall, Garibaldi: Invention of a Hero (2007). Entries on major events and figures may be found in Frank J. Coppa (ed.), Dictionary of Modern Italian History (1985). Useful introductions to new debates concerning the Risorgimento are Lucy Riall, The Italian Risorgimento: State, Society, and National Unification (1994); and Martin Clark, The Italian Risorgimento (1998). Other aspects of the period are dealt with in John A. Davis, Conflict and Control: Law and Order in Nineteenth-Century Italy (1988); and Lucy Riall, Sicily and the Unification of Italy: Liberal Policy and Local Power, 1859–1866 (1998). Clara M. Lovett John Foot Italy since 1870

The fullest one-volume studies in English are Denis Mack Smith, Modern Italy: A Political History (1997); Martin Clark, Modern Italy, 1871–1995, 2nd ed. (1996); Christopher Duggan, A Concise History of Italy (1994); John Foot, Modern Italy (2003); and Jonathan Dunnage, Twentieth Century Italy: A Social History (2002).

Denis Mack Smith, Italy and Its Monarchy (1989, reissued 1992), covers particular aspects. Christopher Seton-Watson, Italy from Liberalism to Fascism, 1870–1925 (1967, reprinted 1981), is excellent on the first half of the period.

Foreign policy before World War I is the topic of R.J.B. Bosworth, Italy and the Approach of the First World War (1983). The early socialist movement is discussed well in Richard Hostetter, The Italian Socialist Movement (1958); and Louise A. Tilly, Politics and Class in Milan, 1881–1901 (1992). The army is treated in John Gooch, Army, State, and Society in Italy, 1870–1915 (1989). On Giolitti, A. William Salomone, Italy in the Giolittian Era: Italian Democracy in the Making, 1900–1914 (1960), is still very useful. An excellent overview of economic history is given in Gianni Toniolo, An Economic History of Liberal Italy, 1850–1918 (1990; originally published in Italian, 1988).

David Forgacs (ed.), Rethinking Italian Fascism: Capitalism, Populism, and Culture (1986), is a good collection of articles; while Luisa Passerini, Fascism in Popular Memory: The Cultural Experience of the Turin Working Class (1987; originally published in Italian, 1984), is an interesting social history. Denis Mack Smith, Mussolini (1981, reissued 1994), is indispensable; more detail is available in the monumental and controversial work of Renzo De Felice, Mussolini, 4 vol. in 8 (1965–1997), in Italian. The best biography available in English is R.J.B. Bosworth, Mussolini (2002). The rise of fascism in particular is examined by Adrian Lyttelton, The Seizure of Power: Fascism in Italy, 1919–1929, 3rd ed. (2004). Other aspects are dealt with in Jonathan Dunnage, The Italian Police and the Rise of Fascism: A Case Study of the Province of Bologna, 1897–1925 (1997). A look at the “forgotten” class of shopkeepers in an urban setting is Jonathan Morris, The Political Economy of Shopkeeping in Milan, 1886–1922 (1993). The diversity of fascist ideas is revealed in works by R.J.B. Bosworth, The Italian Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives in the Interpretation of Mussolini and Fascism (1998), and Mussolini’s Italy (2006); and Philip Morgan, Italian Fascism, 1919–1945 (1995); and in biographies of leading fascists—e.g., Claudio G. Segrè, Italo Balbo (1987, reissued 1990). The collection by R.J.B. Bosworth and Patrizia Dogliani (eds.), Italian Fascism: History, Memory and Representation (1999), reflects some of the new historical work in these areas, particular in the area of memory. The impact of fascism is discussed by Victoria De Grazia, How Fascism Ruled Women: Italy, 1922–1945 (1992); and Doug Thompson, State Control in Fascist Italy: Culture and Conformity, 1925–43 (1991). Now available in English is research by Emilio Gentile, The Sacralization of Politics in Fascist Italy (1996; originally published in Italian, 1993). An important local study is Perry R. Willson, The Clockwork Factory: Women and Work in Fascist Italy (1993). Useful documents and commentaries can be found in John Pollard, The Fascist Experience in Italy (1998).

Church-state relations are examined in Peter C. Kent, The Pope and the Duce: The International Impact of the Lateran Agreements (1981); and John F. Pollard, The Vatican and Italian Fascism, 1929–32: A Study in Conflict (1985). Anti-Semitism is treated in Susan Zuccotti, The Italians and the Holocaust: Persecution, Rescue, and Survival (1987, reissued 1996); and Alexander Stille, Benevolence and Betrayal: Five Italian Jewish Families Under Fascism (1991, reissued 1993). Fascist foreign policy is the subject of Denis Mack Smith, Mussolini’s Roman Empire (1976, reissued 1979); R.J.B. Bosworth, Italy and the Wider World, 1860–1960 (1996); and Richard Lamb, Mussolini and the British (1997).

Charles F. Delzell, Mussolini’s Enemies: The Italian Anti-Fascist Resistance (1961, reprinted 1974), is still useful on the Resistance period. David W. Ellwood, Italy, 1943–1945 (1985), is strong on diplomatic history. The best history of Italian communism is Paolo Spriano, Renzo Martinelli, and Giovanni Gozzini, Storia del Partito Comunista Italiano, 7 vol. (1967–98). An English work on this topic is Alexander De Grand, The Italian Left in the Twentieth Century (1989). For the biennio rosso, Gwyn A.Williams, Proletarian Order: Antonio Gramsci, Factory Councils, and the Origins of Italian Communism, 1911–1921 (1975); and Martin Clark, Antonio Gramsci and the Revolution that Failed (1977), remain useful. A neglected aspect of the period has been studied in detail by Carl Levy, Gramsci and the Anarchists (1999).

Resistance history has taken a new lease on life since the end of the Cold War. A key study, Claudio Pavone Una guerra civile: saggio storico sulla moralità nella Resistenza (1991), is, unfortunately, unavailable in English; but debates can be found in Jonathan Dunnage (ed.), After the War (1999); and in Philip Cooke, The Italian Resistance: An Anthology (1997). Other aspects are covered in Jane Slaughter, Women and the Italian Resistance, 1943–1945 (1997); and Alastair Davidson and Steve Wright (eds.), Never Give In: The Italian Resistance and Politics (1998).

The best study of postwar Italy is without doubt Paul Ginsborg, A History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics, 1943–1988 (1990; originally published in Italian, 1989). Ginsborg followed with an analysis of recent decades in Italy and Its Discontents: Family, Civil Society, and State, 1980–2001 (2001; originally published in Italian). The early Cold War years are discussed in Christopher Duggan and Christopher Wagstaff (eds.), Italy in the Cold War: Politics, Culture, and Society, 1948–1958 (1995).

The best accounts of the postwar political system are in Donald Sassoon, Contemporary Italy, 2nd ed. (1997); Frederic Spotts and Theodor Wieser, Italy: A Difficult Democracy (1986); and David Hine, Governing Italy: The Politics of Bargained Pluralism (1993). P.A. Allum, State and Society in Western Europe (1995), an exhaustive work; and Giulio Sapelli, Southern Europe Since 1945: Tradition and Modernity in Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, and Turkey (1995), put the Italian system in comparative perspective. An extremely useful selection of articles can be found in Mark Donovan (ed.), Italy, 2 vol. (1998). The classic text on regionalism is now Robert D. Putnam, Robert Leonardi, and Rafaella Y. Nanetti, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (1993); and good studies on contemporary regionalism can be found in Carl Levy (ed.), Italian Regionalism: History, Identity, and Politics (1996).

The “new” view of southern history is in Robert Lumley and Jonathan Morris (eds.), The New History of the Italian South: The Mezzogiorno Revisited (1997); and Piero Bevilacqua, Breve storia dell’Italia meridionale: dall’Ottocento a oggi (1993), which has been described as a manifesto for the new southern historians. Among the many interesting publications on the south is Marta Petrusewicz, Latifundium: Moral Economy and Material Life in a European Periphery (1996; originally published in Italian, 1989). Other work includes John Dickie, Darkest Italy: The Nation and Stereotypes of the Mezzogiorno, 1860-1900 (1999), an important study; and Silvana Patriarca, Numbers and Nationhood: Writing Statistics in Nineteenth-Century Italy (1996). Frank M.Snowden, Naples in the Time of Cholera, 1884-1911 (1995), is a marvelous and original work.

A collection of essays on the role of the family is David I. Kertzer and Richard P. Saller (eds.), The Family in Italy from Antiquity to the Present (1991).

Discussion on the left is in David I. Kertzer, Comrades and Christians: Religion and Political Struggle in Communist Italy (1980, reissued with changes, 1990), and Politics & Symbols: The Italian Communist Party and the Fall of Communism (1996). Luciano Cheles, Ronnie Ferguson, and Michalina Vaughan (eds.), Neo-fascism in Europe (1991), deals with the far right.

On the Mafia and organized crime, particularly noteworthy are Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia: The Business of Private Protection, (1993; originally published in Italian, 1992) and Henner Hess, Mafia and Mafiosi (1973, reissued 1998; originally published in German, 1970); and Giovanni Falcone and Marcelle Padovani, Men of Honour (1992; originally published in Italian, 1991). Dramatic developments of the 1980s and ’90s are detailed in Alexander Stille, Excellent Cadavers: The Mafia and the Death of the First Italian Republic (1995). Renate Siebert, Secrets of Life and Death: Women and the Mafia (1996; originally published in Italian, 1994), is a fascinating study of a little-known aspect of this subject. Regional studies include Tom Behan, The Camorra (1996); and James Walston, The Mafia and Clientelism: Roads to Rome in Post-war Calabria (1988). P.A.Allum, Politics and Society in Post-war Naples (1973), remains a prescient and classic account of urban life and political corruption. An evocative account of the 1990s can be found in Peter Robb, Midnight in Sicily (1996).

The student and worker movements of recent decades are discussed in Robert Lumley, States of Emergency: Cultures of Revolt in Italy from 1968 to 1978 (1990), a local study (of Milan) with general relevance; and Sidney Tarrow, Democracy and Disorder: Protest and Politics in Italy, 1965–1975 (1989). Interviews of movement participants are used to illuminate the field of oral history in Alessandro Portelli, The Battle of Valle Giulia: Oral History and the Art of Dialogue (1997). The feminist perspective may be seen in Luisa Passerini, Autobiography of a Generation: Italy, 1968 (1996; first published in Italian, 1988); and Judith Adler Hellman, Journeys Among Women: Feminism in Five Italian Cities (1987).

Trade unions and labour problems are discussed in Miriam Golden, Labor Divided: Austerity and Working-Class Politics in Contemporary Italy (1988); and Roberto Franzosi, The Puzzle of Strikes: Class and State Strategies in Postwar Italy (1995).

Cultural history, which has become a key part of the bibliography on Italy, is dealt with in David Forgacs, Italian Culture in the Industrial Era, 1880–1980: Cultural Industries, Politics, and the Public (1990); David Forgacs and Robert Lumley (eds.), Italian Cultural Studies: An Introduction (1996); Robert Lumley (compiler), Italian Journalism: A Critical Anthology (1996); Zygmunt G. Barański and Robert Lumley, Culture and Conflict in Postwar Italy: Essays on Mass and Popular Culture (1990); John Foot, Milan Since the Miracle: City, Culture, and Identity (2001); and Gino Moliterno (ed.), Encyclopedia of Contemporary Italian Culture (2000).

The best studies of terrorism in the 1970s are David Moss, The Politics of Left-Wing Violence in Italy, 1969–85 (1989); and Raimondo Catanzaro (ed.), The Red Brigades and Left-Wing Terrorism in Italy (1991). Leonardo Sciascia, The Moro Affair, trans. from Italian by Sacha Rabinovitch, extended ed. (2002; originally published as The Moro Affair; and, The Mystery of Majorana, 1987), is a biting account of one if Italy’s great mysteries.

Coverage of the 1980s and post-1992 crisis is in Robert Leonardi and Raffaella Y. Neanetti (eds.), Italian Politics: A Review, an excellent yearbook; Stephen Gundle and Simon Parker (eds.), The New Italian Republic: From the Fall of the Berlin Wall to Berlusconi (1996); Martin Bull and Martin Rhodes, Crisis and Transition in Italian Politics (1997); Vittorio Bufacchi and Simon Burgess, Italy Since 1989: Events and Interpretations (1998); and a special issue of Modern Italy: Journal of the Association for the Study of Modern Italy, “The Italian Crisis, 1989–1994,” vol. 1, no. 1 (1995). Patrick McCarthy, The Crisis of the Italian State (1997), is a very useful one-volume account. Two other useful studies are Donald Martin Carter, States of Grace: Senegalese in Italy and the New European Immigration (1997); and Jeffrey Cole, The New Racism in Europe: A Sicilian Ethnography (1997). Donna R. Gabaccia, Italy’s Many Diasporas (2000), looks at the Italian world community in historical perspective. On the Berlusconi government, see Paul Ginsborg, Silvio Berlusconi: Television, Power, and Patrimony, 2nd ed. (2005); Geoff Andrews, Not a Normal Country: Italy After Berlusconi (2005); and David Lane, Berlusconi’s Shadow: Crime, Justice, and the Pursuit of Power (2005). Russell L. King Melanie F. Knights Martin Clark John Foot

Italy

ancient Roman territory, Italy

Alternative Title: Italia

Italy, Latin Italia, in Roman antiquity, the Italian Peninsula from the Apennines in the north to the “boot” in the south. In 42 bc Cisalpine Gaul, north of the Apennines, was added; and in the late 3rd century ad Italy came to include the islands of Sicily, Corsica, and Sardinia, as well as Raetia and part of Pannonia to the north.

The first major power in the peninsula was the Etruscans. From Etruria, Etruscan power spread northward to the Po River valley and southward to Campania, but it later collapsed to Etruria itself. Where the Etruscans failed, the people of Rome gradually succeeded in the task of unifying the various Italian peoples into a political whole. By 264 bc all Italy south of Cisalpine Gaul was united under the leadership of Rome in a confederacy; its members were either incorporated in or allied with the Roman state. The status of the allies gradually changed until after the Italian, or Social, War (i.e., the war of the socii, or allies) of 90 bc, when Roman citizenship was extended to all Italy. But political unification was achieved more quickly than was sentimental unity: Romans and Italici did not immediately coalesce into a nation. Cicero might talk of tota Italia, but Italy was not finally united in spirit until the time of Augustus, and Romanization was still slower in superseding local differences. In the meantime Cisalpine Gaul, which had received Roman citizenship in stages, was incorporated into Italy in 42 bc.

For administrative purposes the emperor Augustus divided Italy into 11 regions: (1) Latium and Campania, including the Volsci, Hernici, Aurunci, and Picentini, from the mouth of the Tiber to that of the Silarus (Sele) River, (2) Apulia and Calabria, including the Hirpini (the “heel” of Italy), (3) Lucania and Bruttium, bounded on the west coast by the Silarus, on the east by the Bradanus (Bradano) River (the “toe” of Italy), (4) Samnium, including the Samnites, Frentani, Marrucini, Marsi, Paeligni, Aequiculi, Vestini, and Sabini, bounded on the south by the Tifernus (Biferno), on the north probably by the Matrinus (Piomba) River, (5) Picenum, between the Aesis (Esino) and Matrinus rivers, (6) Umbria, including the ager Gallicus, bounded by the upper Tiber, Crustumius (Conca), and Aesis rivers, (7) Etruria, bounded by the Macra (Magra) and Tiber rivers, (8) Gallia Cispadana, limited by the Po River, from Placentia (Piacenza) to its mouth, and by the Crustumius, which was substituted for the Rubicon, (9) Liguria, bounded by the Varus (Var), Po, and Macra, (10) Venetia and Istria, including the Cenomani around Lake Garda in the west, and (11) Gallia Transpadana, bounded by the Alps, the Po River, and the Addua (Adda) River. This arrangement was retained almost unchanged until the emperor Diocletian’s reorganization (c. ad 290–300), when the diocese of Italy included the islands of Sicily, Corsica, and Sardinia, as well as Raetia and part of Pannonia to the north. In practice this diocese was divided into two areas, each under a vicarius: that of Italy with the four northern regions and that of Rome with the seven southern areas and the islands.

Citation Information

Article Title: Italy

Website Name: Encyclopaedia Britannica

Publisher: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.

Date Published: 23 November 2018

URL: https://www.britannica.com/place/Italy-ancient-Roman-territory-Italy

Access Date: August 20, 2019