Kingdom of Italy

The Kingdom of Italy (Italian Regno d'Italia) was a state in southern Europe, which existed from 1861 to 1946 on the territory of the present Italian Republic and parts of its neighboring states. During this period, Italy (formally also during the period of Italian Fascism from 1922 to 1943) was a centrally organized constitutional-parliamentary monarchy based on the monarchical principle.

The foundation of the Kingdom in 1861 took place in the course of the Risorgimento movements, in the final phase of which the proclamation of the Sardinian King Victor Emmanuel II as King of Italy on March 17, 1861 in Turin had created the first modern Italian nation-state under the rule of the House of Savoy. In 1866 he declared war on the Empire of Austria and acquired Veneto with Friuli, followed in 1871 by the Papal States with Rome, thus ending the Italian Wars of Independence.

During a long more liberal political phase, the Kingdom of Italy rose to great power status under King Umberto I in 1878 and, from the 1880s onward, participated in the colonial race for Africa, where it fought several colonial wars in East Africa and, from 1911 to 1912, a war against the Ottoman Empire over what later became Italian Libya. In 1882, the alliance of the Triple Alliance was formed with the German Empire and Austria-Hungary. By the beginning of the 20th century, Italy had transformed itself from an agricultural state, similar to France and Austria-Hungary, into the most important industrialized country in the Mediterranean. Under Umberto's successor Victor Emmanuel III, there was a rise of organized labor and the bourgeoisie, as well as mass associations and parties, in the large industrial centers of northern Italy from 1900 onward. In the south, by contrast, the economic upswing was slow to take hold.

With the start of World War I in 1914, Italy declared its neutrality. After the Treaty of London of 1915, in which comprehensive territorial concessions were agreed upon, the entry into the war on the side of the Entente followed in the same year. After the Battle of Vittorio Veneto in 1918, which contributed significantly to the dissolution of the Habsburg Empire, the Kingdom was one of the main victorious powers and held a permanent seat in the Council of the League of Nations.

The end of the World War triggered a severe national crisis in 1919. In this, the National Fascist Party under Benito Mussolini took power with the March on Rome in 1922 and gradually eroded democracy until 1926. The fascist regime began an aggressive foreign policy after a period of alignment with Western democracies and internal consolidation marked by an enormous economic boom and the reconquest of Libya, which had been underway since 1923. After overcoming the world economic crisis of 1929, the Italian conquest of Ethiopia began in 1935, and the West responded with economic sanctions. Italy was internationally isolated.

From 1936, Italy turned to Nazi Germany. In 1936, the later Axis alliance was established, and until 1939, the two states intervened together in the Spanish Civil War in favor of the putschists under Francisco Franco. This process was accompanied by an increasing ideologization and radicalization of the regime. In 1937, the Italian Racial Laws for the Colonies were enacted, which mainly disenfranchised the indigenous population in the colonies, and the forced Italianization of ethnic minorities was intensified. In 1938, the anti-Semitic racial laws followed.

After the annexation of Austria and the Munich Agreement in 1938, Italian troops occupied Albania in 1939. In World War II, Italy formed an important member of the Axis powers. After initial successes, the rapid succession of defeats in East Africa, North Africa, and the Soviet Union beginning in the summer of 1941 led to a loss of popular support for the fascist regime and the monarchy. The Allied landing on Sicily in 1943 brought about the fall of the fascist dictatorship in July, and in the Cassibile Armistice Italy left the Axis alliance. On October 13, 1943, Italy re-entered the war on the side of the Allies. The Wehrmacht then occupied the north of the country and established a puppet government, the Italian Social Republic, which existed under the formal leadership of the old fascist regime until the spring of 1945.

After the end of the Second World War, the Italian monarchy had to accept the loss of its colonial empire and the possessions in Istria and Dalmatia by Yugoslavia and had to overcome an economic crisis caused by a considerable decline in industrial production, food shortages and the destruction of large parts of the infrastructure in northern and central Italy. In May 1946, Victor Emmanuel III abdicated in favor of his son Umberto II. The latter reigned for only 40 days. On June 2, 1946, the monarchy was abolished after a referendum and the Italian Republic was proclaimed, which in 1947 gave up all claims to Istria and the former colonies, legally abolished the Italian nobility in 1948 and sent the Savoy family into exile.

Unification Process (1848-1871)

The creation of the Kingdom of Italy was the result of a joint effort by Italian nationalists and monarchists loyal to the House of Savoy to establish a unified kingdom in the Apennine Peninsula.

After the revolution of 1848/49, the revolutionaries Giuseppe Garibaldi and Giuseppe Mazzini established themselves for the time being as leaders of the Italian unification movement. Garibaldi was known in the world mainly because of his extremely loyal followers and his military achievements in South America. He sought the unification of southern Italy into a constitutional republic, but this was in opposition to the northern Italian monarchy of the House of Savoy in the Kingdom of Sardinia, which had been the last significant and militarily powerful Italian state after the Congress of Vienna. The Sardinian government, led by Count Camillo Benso of Cavour, also had ambitions to realize a unified Italian state. Although the monarchy had no political, cultural or historical connection with Rome, it was nevertheless considered by Cavour to be the natural capital of Italy.

Compared to Garibaldi, the Kingdom of Sardinia had an important power-political advantage with the elimination of the influence of the Empire of Austria in the Second Italian War of Independence in 1859 and the annexation of Lombardy from the Austrian crown land of Lombardo-Venetia. In addition, Cavour had secured his country with alliances with Great Britain and France that would serve to improve the possibilities of unifying Italy. In the Crimean War of 1853-1853, Sardinia had backed this up with the intervention of its own 15,000-man expeditionary force in favor of France and Britain against the Russian Empire. Moreover, most of the insurgents and revolutionaries in Italian constituent states such as the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the Duchy of Modena, and the Duchy of Parma were loyal to Sardinia. To strengthen its foreign policy alliance, Sardinia ceded Savoy and the county of Nice in 1860 as a thank-you to France in the Treaty of Turin, but this met with resistance from Cavour's government.

In the spring of 1860, Garibaldi's revolutionary movement gained strength in southern Italy. In February 1861, his free-army men ("Platoon of a Thousand") succeeded in completely occupying the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and they forced Francis II to flee. The Sardinian government then wanted to occupy the peripheral regions of the Papal States in order to forestall the revolutionaries. The plan led to the annexation of some smaller peripheral areas. Thus, Rome and its environs remained under the control of Pope Pius IX. Despite the setback and the ideological differences between the Sardinian royal family and Garibaldi, the latter relented and resigned his claim to leadership. Sardinia then occupied Umbria and the Marches, and southern Italy joined the North. The Sardinian Parliament subsequently proclaimed the creation of the Kingdom of Italy on February 18, 1861 (officially proclaimed publicly on March 17, 1861). On March 17, 1861, King Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia-Piedmont, of the House of Savoy, was proclaimed King of Italy in the first all-Italian Italian Parliament.

After the unification of Italy, there were renewed tensions between monarchists and republicans. In April 1861, Garibaldi demanded Cavour's resignation in the Chamber of Deputies of the Italian Parliament. The reason for this was Cavour's uncompromising actions against Republican guerrilla fighters in the brigand war in the south. When Cavour died on June 6, 1861, several political camps formed among his successors in the ensuing political instability. Garibaldi and the Republicans became increasingly revolutionary in their demands. Garibaldi's arrest after a skirmish between royal Italian troops and his supporters on August 29, 1862, at Aspromonte was the cause of a worldwide controversy.

In 1866, Prussian Prime Minister Otto von Bismarck offered King Victor Emmanuel II an alliance with the Kingdom of Prussia (Prussian-Italian Treaty of Alliance). Italy accepted it and declared war on the Empire of Austria in the Third Italian War of Independence on June 20, 1866. However, the new Royal Italian Army and Navy fared poorly in this uncoordinated parallel war with Prussia. Attempts to conquer Veneto and Friuli failed. However, since Prussia won its war against Austria, Italy was able to occupy the two territories and annex them on July 25, 1866. The main obstacle to Italian unity, however, remained Rome.

In July 1870, the Franco-Prussian War broke out between Prussia and France. In order to keep the large and powerful Prussian army in check, the French Emperor Napoleon III had the French troops in Rome withdrawn. Victor Emmanuel II then ordered Rome to be attacked from September 11, 1870. On September 20, 1870, Rome and the rest of the Papal States were taken (the so-called "Breccia di Porta Pia"). The enterprise met little resistance, except for the troops of the Papal Swiss Guard. Italian unification ended with the proclamation of Rome as the capital on January 26, 1871, and the solemn entry of the king. The government then moved its seat from Florence to the new capital.

Although by 1871 the unification of the Kingdom of Italy had met with widespread approval among Italians and had been legitimized by referendums in the individual regions, the conditions for building the new state were poor. The economic situation was catastrophic. There was no industry or transportation, and extreme poverty ("mezzogiorno") prevailed in the south. Because of the high illiteracy rate and the rule that the right to vote was linked to a certain income threshold, only 2% of the total population had the right to vote in 1861. In the first parliamentary elections in January 1861, only 419,938 out of 26 million people were able to vote. In the end, the valid votes were reduced to 170,567 people, of whom about 70,000 were employees of the state, 85 princes, dukes and marquises, 28 officers, 78 lawyers, doctors and engineers.

The new state adopted the Sardinian-Piedmontese constitution of 1848, which established a constitutional-parliamentary monarchy. Italy was given a very centralized administration and was divided into provinces similar to France.

After the conquest of Rome in 1870, relations between the Kingdom of Italy and the Vatican were at a low ebb for the next 60 years. The popes referred to themselves as "prisoners in the Vatican." The Catholic Church frequently protested actions and moves by the secular and sometimes anticlerical-influenced various Italian governments and refused to cooperate with any emissaries of the king or the Italian state. It was not until 1929 that the so-called "Roman Question" was resolved with the signing of the Lateran Treaties.

Italian unification process


Count Camillo Benso of Cavour, first President of the Council of Ministers (Prime Minister) of the Kingdom of Italy

Structure of the state

In many areas, the Kingdom of Italy adopted the state structures of its predecessor, the Kingdom of Sardinia, which were gradually transferred to the entire country. It was not until the late 1870s that there was a cautious departure from these structures, which (as, for example, by retaining the constitution of 1848) remained in essence, however, until the end of the monarchy in 1946.

A major challenge for the prime ministers of the new state was to integrate the political and administrative systems of the seven different predecessor states into a unified policy and to create a centralized unitary state based on the French model. The predecessor states were proud of their own historical patterns, and a pronounced regionalism prevailed. The social, societal, economic and political predecessor structures were difficult to adapt. Prime Minister Cavour began planning the unification of the state system before 1861, but died before it was fully developed. The easiest way proved to be the harmonization of the administrative division of the Italian regions. They virtually all followed the Napoleonic administrative pattern of the first French Empire. The second challenge was to develop a stable and vibrant parliamentary system. Cavour and most liberals admired the British system of a parliamentary monarchy and applied it to Italian day-to-day politics. The harmonization of the Royal Army and Navy was much more complicated, mainly because the systems of recruiting soldiers and selecting and promoting officers varied greatly among the states. This disorganization also lead to the defeat of the Italian Navy and Army in the War of 1866, so it took several decades for the Sardinian military system to be slowly transferred to the Italian regions and for the former predecessor armies to be integrated into the new Royal Army. There were also few unifying elements in the educational system and in the field of law.

Territory

The Kingdom of Italy included the whole territory of present-day Italy and parts of its direct and indirect neighbors France, Greece, Albania, Montenegro, Croatia, Slovenia, Tunisia and Libya. The country also had several changing neighbors throughout its history due to its European colonial territories: France to the west and northwest (1861-1946), Switzerland to the north (1861-1946), Austria-Hungary to the northeast (1861-1918), Austria to the north (1918-1938 and 1945-1946) the German Empire to the north (1938-1945), Yugoslavia to the east (1918-1941 and 1945-1946), Croatia, Serbia, and Montenegro to the east (1941-1945), Greece to the southeast (1939-1945), Bulgaria to the southeast (1941-1945), French Tunisia to the southwest (1939-1942 and de jure 1943-1946), Egypt (1939-1943 and de jure 1943-1946), and French Algeria (1939-1943).

The territorial development of the kingdom continued until 1870 during the Italian Wars of Independence and the Risorgimento. This was followed by a long period of peace with only small territorial acquisitions in Europe (annexation of the Dodecanese Islands in 1912, occupation of the Albanian island of Sazan on October 30, 1914). During this period, the Italian state was not in possession of the Italian-populated territories of Trieste and Trentino-Alto Adige, both of which belong to Italy today. During the Irredentist period, nationalists demanded additional territories in order to complete the unification of all Italians within Italy. Thus, the annexation of Istria, Corsica, Nice, Savoy, Monaco, the Swiss cantons of Ticino, Valais, Grisons and Geneva, Dalmatia, Malta, San Marino, Montenegro and Albania was still demanded, which led to conflicts with neighboring states, especially with France, Austria-Hungary and Serbia (see also Greater Serbia).

In the 1915 Treaty of London, Italy was promised Trentino, Tyrol up to the Brenner Pass, Trieste, Gorizia and Gradisca d'Isonzo, Istria and northern Dalmatia (without Fiume) and Albania by France, Great Britain and the Russian Empire. After World War I, Italy was able to secure Trentino and South Tyrol from the territory of the collapsed Habsburg monarchy in 1919, plus the coastal land with parts of the Duchy of Carniola and some Dalmatian islands with the town of Zara. The claims to Northern Dalmatia and most of the Dalmatian islands, which had also been promised to Italy, had to be given up by the Kingdom in the Peace Treaty of Versailles in 1919 under pressure from US President Woodrow Wilson, who propagated the right of self-determination of peoples and insisted on a compromise of Italy with the new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. During the period of fascism, a renewed phase of territorial expansion began with the aim of establishing a Greater Italy (Italia Imperiale). In 1924, with the Treaty of Rome, Fiume, and in 1939, after the Riconquista della Libia, Northern Libya and Albania were annexed and declared an integral part of the Italian nation. In the course of World War II, parts of southeastern France followed (see Western Campaign), in 1941 most of Slovenia (combined into Ljubljana Province (Italian Provincia di Lubiana)) and Dalmatia (combined into Dalmatia Governorate (Italian Governatorato di Dalmazia)) and the Greek Ionian Islands (Italian Isole Ionie), and in 1942 Tunisia (combined with Libya to form the Fourth Coast (Italian Quarta Sponda)). After World War II, the Kingdom of Italy had to return all these territories and was restored de jure to the 1938 borders, with parts of its territory under the partial or total control of Greece, Yugoslavia, France, and Great Britain.

The Kingdom of Italy also possessed several non-European colonies, protectorates, puppet states, and militarily occupied territories such as Italian Eritrea (gradually occupied from 1882, united as a colony in 1890) Italian Somaliland (gradually occupied from 1888, initially there was indirect rule), Italian Libya (acquired from the Ottoman Empire in 1911 and united in 1934 after the reconquest of Libya), Antalya and environs (occupied from 1919 to 1923), Ethiopia (occupied from 1936 to 1941 and part of Italian East Africa), Albania (de facto Italian protectorate from 1917 to 1920 and since 1925 (see Kingdom of Albania), occupied in 1939), British Somaliland (occupied from 1940 to 1941 and annexed to Italian East Africa), the Hellenic State (occupied from 1941 to 1943, de facto protectorate (see History of Greece), the Independent State of Croatia (Italian Stato Indipendente di Croazia) (Italian protectorate from 1941 to 1943, occupied together with Hitler's Germany), Kosovo (part of Italian Albania from 1941), the Independent State of Montenegro (Italian Stato Indipendente del Montenegro) occupied from 1941 to 1943, protectorate), and a small 46-hectare concession in the Chinese city of Tianjin.

The Italian Republic had to renounce all colonies and protectorates at the Paris Peace Conference in 1946 and in the subsequent peace treaty of February 10, 1947, except for Italian Somaliland, which was under Italian control as a UN trust territory until 1960, when it was absorbed into the state of Somalia.

·         Territorial Development of the Kingdom of Italy in Europe

·         Territorial Development of the Italian Colonial Empire

Political system

The Kingdom of Italy was, in theory, a constitutional monarchy. Executive power belonged to the monarch, and he alone appointed and dismissed all ministers, and they were theoretically responsible to him alone. In practice, however, no Italian government was in office without the support of Parliament. De facto, the Kingdom of Italy was a British-style parliamentary monarchy from 1876/78 at the latest.

The right to vote, initially limited to selected citizens, was gradually extended. In 1911, the government of Giovanni Giolitti introduced universalsuffrage for male citizens. At the beginning of the 20th century, many observers saw Italy as a modern and largely stable parliamentary democracy compared to other countries.

Between 1925 and 1943, Italy was a quasi de jure fascist dictatorship, as the constitution officially remained in force without modification by the fascists; however, during the fascist period from 1922 to 1943, many laws were enacted that were constitution-breaking in nature.

Constitution

The constitution of the Kingdom, officially the Basic Law of the Kingdom of Italy (Italian Legge organica del Regno d'Italia), was based on the Fundamental Statute of March 4, 1848, the constitution granted by King Charles Albert to the Kingdom of Sardinia. The form of government was representative-monarchical. Individual liberty was guaranteed; the home was inviolable; the press was free; the right of assembly was recognized. Every citizen had the right of petition to Parliament.

During the late 1800s and early 1900s, the constitution was amended several times and its interpretation liberalized, so that the king hardly interfered in day-to-day politics and all governments needed the support of parliament. However, the monarch was still considered the "guarantor of stability and continuity," and he still retained a strong position in foreign and military policy and in times of crisis. The constitution remained formally in force during fascist rule and was replaced only in 1948 by the current Constitution of the Italian Republic.

Monarchs

The King of Italy was the holder of the state power, but he could exercise the right of legislation only in association with the National Parliament. According to the Salic Law, the throne was inherited in the male line of the royal house of Savoy. The king professed with his house the Roman Catholic Church. He came of age when he reached the age of 18 and, on his accession to the throne, took an oath to the Constitution in the presence of both Houses. His title, according to the law of March 17, 1861, was "By the Grace of God and by the Will of the Nation King of Italy and King of Albania (only from 1939-1943) and Emperor of Ethiopia (only from 1936-1943)." He conferred the five orders of chivalry of Savoy and exercised sovereign rights constitutionally. He commanded the land, sea and air forces; he declared wars, concluded treaties of peace, alliance, commerce and other treaties, of which only those involving a burden on finances or a change of territory required the consent of the Chambers to be effective. The King appointed to all offices of state, sanctioned and promulgated the laws, which, as well as the acts of government, had to be countersigned by the responsible ministers, and issued the decrees and regulations necessary for the execution of the laws. Justice was administered in his name, and he alone had the power to pardon and mitigate sentences.

#	Image	Name (Life data)	Dominion		Coat of arms
			Start	End
1		Victor Emmanuel II. (Father of the Fatherland) (1820–1878)	March 17, 1861	January 9, 1878
2		Umberto I (the Good) (1844–1900)	January 9, 1878	July 29 1900
3		Victor Emmanuel III. (the Soldier King) (1869–1947)	July 29 1900	May 9, 1946
4		Umberto II. (the May King) (1904–1983)	May 9, 1946	June 12, 1946

Government and ministries

The executive power was exercised by the king through the responsible ministers, who met in the Council of Ministers (unofficially known as the Royal Italian Government (ital. Gouverno italiano reale)). In addition to this, there was a Council of State, which had consultative powers and ruled on conflicts of jurisdiction between administrative authorities and courts and on disputes between the state and its creditors. It consisted of a president, three section presidents, 24 state councillors and the service staff, and was appointed by the king on the proposal of the Council of Ministers. The supreme administration of the State was divided among the following ministries, with their headquarters in Rome:

• the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (with the Council for Diplomatic Disputes);
• the Ministry of the Interior (with the Chief Medical Officer);
• the Ministry of Grace, Justice and Worship;
• the Ministry of Finance and Treasury;
• the Ministry of War (under it are the Committees for the General Staff, the Line Arms, the Royal Carabiniers, for Artillery and Genius, for Military Medical, and the Supreme War and Naval Tribunal);
• the Department of the Navy (with the Chief Naval Council);
• the Ministry of Public Instruction (with the Chief Instruction Council);
• the Ministry of Public Works (with the Higher Council for Public Works and the Railway Council);
• the Ministry of Agriculture, Industry and Trade (with the Mountain Council and the Central Statisticalgiunta);
• the Ministry for Colonies (since 1937 Ministry for Italian Africa);
• the Ministry for the Liberated Territories (for the territories occupied and annexed after World War I);
• the Ministry of Transport;
• the Ministry of Aviation;
• the Ministry of Education;
• the Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs;
• the Ministry of Labor;
• the Ministry of Agriculture

Due to the war, a number of other short-lived ministries emerged during World War I and World War II.

The Court of Audit of the Kingdom had an independent position.

Parliament

The popular representation ofthe Kingdom of Italyconsisted of two chambers, the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. The Senate was composed of the royal princes and of members appointed by the king for life from certain categories of citizens (holders of certain offices and dignities, men deserving of the fatherland and persons who paid 3000 lire a year in direct taxes) at the age of at least 40. The second chamber was the Chamber of Deputies and had 508 members, who were directly elected in 135 constituencies (2-5 deputies in each constituency) for a period of five years by means of the list crutinium. Voters were all Italians who enjoyed civil and political rights, had reached the age of 21, could read and write, and paid 20 lire in direct taxes or were eligible to vote because of a certain personal position or qualification. Women's suffrage was not introduced until 1946. All voters over the age of 30 were eligible for election as deputies. Not eligible were pastoral clergy, civil servants (with the exception of ministers, secretaries general, senior officers, university professors, but even these only in the number not exceeding 40), Sindaci, provincial deputies, and persons who received salary or remuneration from subsidized societies. The King called the Chambers together every year; the meetings were public. The presidency of the Senate was appointed by the king, that of the Chamber of Deputies by the latter. The latter possessed the right of impeachment of ministers, in which case the Senate acted as a court of justice. The provinces had self-government, the exercise of which was entrusted to the Provincial Council, elected for five years by the municipal electorate, and to the Provincial Deputation appointed by the latter. The municipal bodies were the Municipal Council, elected for five years, the Munizipalgiunta, elected from among the Municipal Council, and the Sindaco, the head of the Municipal Administration.

After a brief multinominal experimentation under Prime Minister Agostino Depretis in the 1882 elections, large, regional, and multisensorial constituencies were introduced after World War I. The Socialists won a majority in the 1919 and 1921 elections but failed to form the government. In November 1923, Mussolini replaced this system with the Acerbo Law, an electoral reform that awarded two-thirds of parliamentary seats to the party with the most votes, provided it won at least 25% of the vote.

·         Parliament of the Kingdom of Italy

Political parties

From the founding of the state until the 1890s, Italy was dominated by the two main groupings of the historical right (ital. Destra storica ) and left (ital. Sinistra storica). These did not form actual political parties, but rather rallying movements for a group of prominent politicians with similar political ideas. These two factions were considered the two poles of the incipient liberal era. On the left of the spectrum were the Republicans (Italian: Estrema Sinistra Storica), who represented the extreme parliamentary left until 1892 and did not organize themselves into a real party until 1895.

With the foundation of the Socialist Party (Ital. Partito Socialista) in 1892, the Kingdom of Italy lived a remarkable experience, rich in political and democratic practices, from 1890 to 1946.

The political landscape at the turn of the century was dominated by three political groups, the Liberals, the Republicans, and the Socialists, who always saw themselves as direct heirs to the currents of the Risorgimento. Each grouping felt connected to a particular Risorgimento figure: the Liberals to Cavour, the Republicans to Mazzini, and the Socialists to Garibaldi.

From the beginning, the Italian Socialists acted as a mass party and opened up to the general public. The Catholics followed suit after 1900, first with Romolo Murri's Democrazia Cristiana Italiana, then with Luigi Sturzo's Partito Popolare Italiano. Both the Socialists and the Christian Democrats achieved considerable electoral success until the establishment of the fascist dictatorship and were instrumental in the loss of strength and authority of the two old rallying movements of the liberal ruling class, which could no longer give weight to their concerns with the formation of no new party.

In December 1914, Benito Mussolini, together with Alceste de Ambris, founded the Fascio d'azione rivoluzionaria movement, which advocated Italy's entry into the war. After achieving this goal, it disbanded again in 1915. In 1919 the FasciItaliani di combattimento followed, which in turn gave rise to the National Fascist Party in 1921. In the same year, the Italian Communist Party (ital. Partito Comunista Italiano) emerged from the split of the Socialists. At the time of its founding, the PCI was no different from other European communist parties. It was much smaller than the Socialists or Social Democrats in terms of voter share and membership. These newly emerging extreme currents complemented the previous party landscape and sealed the irrelevance of the old liberal parties. The three new movements, Catholic, Fascist and Communist, emerged in the short period between the end of World War I and the beginning of the era of Italian Fascism and can be seen as the second generation of Italian parties. The common designation for these three major mass parties at the time derived from their party colors and was White for the Christian Democrats, Black for the Fascists, and Red for the Socialists and Communists.

With the dissolution of the Partito Nazionale Fascista as a result of Mussolini's overthrow in 1943, only the Christian Democrats and Communists achieved pre-war prominence after the end of World War II in the parliamentary elections of June 2, 1946. The Communists benefited especially from their key role in the resistance to the German occupation regime in northern Italy from 1943 to 1945. Even after the end of the monarchy, the Democrazia Cristiana remained the dominant force in Italy until 1994.

State symbols

The first national coat of arms of the Kingdom was adopted from Sardinia-Piedmont. It included in the center the coat of arms of the House of Savoy and four Italian flags, which date back to 1848. On May 4, 1870, by royal decree, two lions in gold were added to the coat of arms, which now included a crowned knight's helmet bearing around its collar the Military Order of Savoy, the Order of the Crown of Italy, the Order of Knights of St. Maurice and St. Lazarus and the Order of the Annunciates. The motto FERT was deleted. The lions carried lances holding the national flag. From the helmet fell a royal mantle, which was supposed to protect the nation. Above the coat of arms was the Star of Italy (Italian Stella d'Italia).

The newly adopted national coat of arms of January 1, 1890 eliminated the fur coat and the lances and the crown on the helmet was replaced by the Iron Crown of the Lombards. The whole group stood under a canopy crowned with the Italian royal crown, above which was the banner of Italy. The flagstaff was carried by a golden crowned eagle.

On April 11, 1929, the two Savoy lions were replaced by Mussolini with lictor bundles. Only after his dismissal, in 1944, the old coat of arms of 1890 was restored.

·         Coat of arms of the Kingdom of Italy

The national colors of the monarchy were green, white, red in vertical stripes. In its center was the Savoy coat of arms. This flag was used for the first time in 1848 as the war flag of the army of the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont. On April 15, 1861, this flag was declared the flag of the new state. This formed the first Italian national flag and was the flag of Italy for a total of 85 years until the founding of the Republic in 1946.

In 1926, the fascist government tried to redesign the national flag by inserting a lictor bundle. However, this attempt met with strong opposition, especially from the old elites and the army. As a compromise, the black flag of the fascists was officially flown alongside the national flag at home, but it was not given any greater significance.

·         Flags of the Kingdom of Italy

Administrative organization

The Kingdom of Italy adopted the so-called Rattazzi Law (also called the Savoy Provincial Law), which was issued by the then Sardinian Minister of the Interior, Urbano Rattazzi, on October 23, 1859, and was modeled on the administrative division of France. It prescribed the organization of the territory into provinces, districts, counties and municipalities. The representatives of the territorial authorities were to be elected by the people for a fixed term. The first elections for this purpose were held - even before the establishment of the state - on January 15, 1860. In 1929, elections at the municipal level were abolished and were not reintroduced until April 1944.

The Kingdom of Italy was divided administratively into provinces, counties (circondari), districts (mandamenti, these only for the administration of justice) and municipalities. Each province was headed by a prefect. The prefect represented the executive power and was assisted by the prefectural council, which consisted of a number of councilors, secretaries and subaltern officials. In each district a sub-prefecture was established, whose head, the sub-prefect, under the direction of the prefect, took care of the administrative business of the district. By 1914, there were 69 prefectures, 137 sub-prefectures and 78 district commissariats throughout Italy. Under the prefects and sub-prefects (district commissars), municipal heads (sindaci, see above) acted as government officials. The security police were headed by prefects, sub-prefects (or district commissioners) with attached inspectors and delegates, and in twelve large cities by quaestors (with inspectors). In each province there was a sanitary council, a school council, a post office directorate, a finance directorate, and a building office; for larger areas there were 9 telegraph directorates, 34 forestry departments, and 8 mining offices. As far as the supervision of the provinces and municipalities by the state was concerned, the prefects had to examine the minutes and resolutions of the municipal and provincial councils; the provincial council was also responsible for the supervision of the budget of the municipalities and the like. Appeals were possible against the decisions of both. The king could dissolve the municipal and provincial councils, in urgent cases even the highest provincial official. Within three months of dissolution, however, a new election had to be ordered. If the provincial council was dissolved, the prefect and the prefectural council stepped in; if the municipal council was dissolved, a royal commissioner stepped in.

Unlike today's Italian Republic, which includes partly federal structures, the Kingdom of Italy was a very centralized state. There were no autonomous or independent regions. Today's Italian regions existed only as an aggregation of provinces for statistical purposes and economic planning. This repeatedly led to uprisings and revolts, such as the Brigate War in southern Italy (1861-1868) or the Fasci siciliani movement (1891-1894).

The first Statute of Autonomy was given to the island of Sicily by Royal Decree 15. of May 15, 1946 by Umberto II.

·         Provinces of the Kingdom of Italy

Military

The King of Italy was commander-in-chief of the Royal Italian Army from 1861 to 1940 and 1943 to 1946. The monarch possessed extensive powers in the military. Parliamentary control was exercised only through the appropriation of financial resources. The king had the right to determine the strength of the presence, to determine the garrisons, to establish fortifications, and to provide for uniform organization and formation, armament and command, as well as training of the enlisted men and qualification of the officers.

The highest military rank in the Royal Italian Army was First Marshal of the Empire (Italian: Primo maresciallo dell'Impero), which only King Victor Emmanuel III. (1938), Benito Mussolini (1938) and Pietro Badoglio (1943, de facto).

The Royal Italian Army was divided into the three branches:

• Regio Esercito (Royal Army or Army)
• Regia Marina (Royal Navy)
• Regia Aeronautica (Royal Air Force)
• Milizia Volontaria per la Sicurezza Nazionale (Voluntary Militia for National Security, known as Blackshirts, loyal to Benito Mussolini, abolished in 1943).

Demography and society

Italian society after unification and through the liberal period was strongly divided along classical, linguistic, regional, and social lines. Common cultural traits in Italy at this time were socially conservative in nature, including a strong belief in the family as an institution and patriarchal values. Aristocrats and middle-class families were very common in Italy at this time. There was a strong emphasis on honor. After the unification, the number of nobles had increased to about 7400 noble families, with the nobility divided into the "white nobility" (Italian nobiltà bianca) loyal to the king and the increasingly insignificant "black nobility" (Italian nobiltà nera) loyal to the pope. Many wealthy landowners (especially in the south) held feudal-like control over "their" peasants.

Population trends in the Kingdom of Italy (1861-1946):

Year	1861	1870	1880	1890	1900	1910	1920	1930	1940	1946
Inhabitants in millions	22,182	25,766	28,437	30,947	32,475	34,565	37,837	40,703	43,787	45,380

The economy of southern Italy suffered greatly after Italian unification. The process of industrialization took place there only hesitantly, and only at the turn of the 20th century was there a slight economic upturn. The poor economic situation of the South favored poverty and organized crime. Italian governments believed they could counter this with repression. The poor social conditions led to the rise of the brigands, who in the 1860s waged a guerrilla war in the south against the central government in Rome that lasted almost a decade. This and the ruthless actions of the army destroyed much of the existing infrastructure in the south. This triggered a massive Italian emigration that led to a worldwide Italian diaspora (especially in the United States and South America). However, many southern Italians also settled in northern industrial cities, such as Genoa, Milan, and Turin. Politically, too, the south was often at odds with the north, as in the 1946 referendum on the form of government, where the majority of the population in the south voted to preserve the monarchy.

After the end of the liberal era, the fascists, beginning in 1922, pursued the concept of a totalitarian unitary state, which was to include all social classes. Italy became a one-party dictatorship. Mussolini and the fascist regime oriented Italian culture and society to ancient Rome and to some futuristic aspects of some intellectuals and artists. Under fascism, the definition of Italian citizenship was based on a militaristic attitude and an idealized "new man" ideal. Personal individualism had to be subordinated to the state and the community. In 1932, the fascists presented their ideology in La dottrina del fascismo: Features included extreme nationalism, a world power position for Italy sought through war, emphasis on the "will to power" (Friedrich Nietzsche), the authoritarian leader principle (Vilfredo Pareto), "direct action" as a "creative design principle" (Georges Sorel), and a fusion of the state and the sole ruling party. The prescribed unity organization of workers and entrepreneurs in cooperatives was intended to prevent class struggle. In order to gain not only power but also hegemony in the sense of Antonio Gramsci, the state also took over the sports movement. This was to promote the cult of the body, the glorification of strength, masculinity, and the demonstration of Italian superiority in body-related activities such as sports, the World Cup, and the Olympic Games. The Comitato Olimpico Nazionale Italiano was nationalized and top-level sports were made internationally competitive with state amateurs. Women were encouraged to become mothers and prohibited from participating in public affairs.

Initially, Italian fascism was not anti-Semitic in orientation. Mussolini repeatedly distanced himself publicly from the racism and anti-Semitism of the National Socialists. It was not until 1936, as a result of Mussolini's alliance with the German Reich, that there were anti-Semitic agitations, which then also led to the enactment of the anti-Semitic race laws in 1938.

Italy's fascist "New Order" differed markedly from the Nazi regime in its etatism, in that Mussolini's strong state incorporated the old elites. However, several attempts to integrate the old elites as well as officers into the party failed. The influx came primarily from the civil service. The military leadership, in turn, remained strongly monarchist and traditionalist. Thus, the Italian fascist party never achieved dominance over all sectors of society, as did the NSDAP in Germany or the CPSU in the Soviet Union. Fascist Italy's efforts to create a new culture also proved less successful than those of other one-party states such as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union.

Mussolini's propaganda stylized him as the "savior of the nation". The fascist regime sought to make his person omnipresent in Italian society. Much of the appeal of fascism in Italy was based on the cult of personality around Mussolini and his popularity. Mussolini's passionate eloquence at grand rallies and parades served as a model for Adolf Hitler. The Fascists spread their propaganda through newsreels, radio, and a few feature films. In 1926, a law was passed that made it mandatory for movie theaters to show propaganda shows before every feature film. Fascist propaganda glorified the war and promoted its romanticization in art. However, artists, writers, and publishers were not subject to strict control. They were censored only if they had blatantly opposed the state.

In 1860, Italy had no established national language. The Tuscan dialect, on which the modern standard Italian language is based, was spoken only around Florence, while regional languages or dialects dominated in the other parts of the country. Only two percent of the population knew the written Italian language. Even King Victor Emmanuel II spoke almost only Piedmontese and French. Illiteracy was high: in 1871, 61.9 percent of Italian men and 75.7 percent of women were illiterate. This illiteracy rate was far higher than that of Western European countries during the same period. Because of the diversity of regional dialects, a national popular press was not initially possible.

Italy had few public schools after unification. Italian governments in the liberal period tried to improve literacy by establishing state-funded schools where only the official Italian language was taught.

The Fascist government supported a strict educational policy in Italy aimed at eliminating illiteracy once and for all and strengthening the population's loyalty to the state. The first Minister of Culture in the Fascist government from 1922 to 1924, Giovanni Gentile, directed educational policy toward indoctrination of students to Fascism. The fascists educated youth to be obedient and respectful of authority. In 1929, the Fascist government took control of the approval of all textbooks and forced all high school teachers to take an oath of allegiance to Fascism. In 1933, all high school teachers were required to join the National Fascist Party. From the 1930s to the 1940s, the Italian educational system had an increasing emphasis on history, which was used to portray Italy as an important force in civilization. Intellectual talent was rewarded and encouraged in Fascist Italy in the Accademia d'Italia, founded in 1926.

Although the standard of living of Italians improved steadily after unification, it remained below the Western European average, especially in the south. Southern Italy saw outbreaks of various diseases, such as malaria, and some epidemics. The mortality rate was 30 persons per 1000 inhabitants in 1871, but was reduced to 24.2 per 1000 by the 1890s. The mortality rate among children was also very high. In 1871, 22.7 percent of all children born that year died, while the number of children who died before their fifth birthday was 50 percent. The proportion of children who died in the first year after birth fell to an average of 17.6 percent in the period from 1891 to 1900. An effective social policy was lacking in Italy during the liberal era, however. It was not until 1912 that state social insurance was introduced. Unemployment insurance was created in 1919. Italian social policy achieved great success in fascist Italy. In April 1925, the Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro (OND) was founded. The OND was the largest state-run recreational organization for adults. The organization was so popular that by the 1930s there was a clubhouse run by it in every Italian city. The OND was responsible for building 11,000 sports fields, 6,400 libraries, 800 cinemas, 1,200 theaters, and more than 2,000 orchestras. Membership was voluntary and non-political. The enormous success of the organization led to the founding of the Kraft durch Freude organization in Germany in November 1933, which adopted its model.

Another organization was the Opera Nazionale Balilla (ONB), a youth organization founded in 1926 that gave young people cheap access to or organized clubs, dances, sports facilities, radios, concerts, theaters, circuses, and hikes.

On September 20, 1870, the Royal Italian Army occupied the Papal States and the city of Rome. The following year, the capital was moved from Florence to Rome. For the next 59 years after 1870, the Catholic Church refused to recognize the legitimacy of the Italian royal rule in Rome, and with the bull Non expedit in 1874, the Pope forbade Italian Catholics to participate in elections of the new state. This was increasingly disobeyed by the Catholic laity, which is why it was relaxed in 1909 and finally lifted in 1919, when the state and the Church began to converge again after the First World War. The Partito Popolare Italiano emerged as a Catholic party that immediately became one of the most important political forces in the country and can be considered the forerunner of Christian Democracy.

Liberal governments generally followed a policy of limiting the role of the Catholic Church and its clergy. Masses of church land were confiscated, processions and Catholic festivities were sometimes banned and otherwise required state approval, which was often denied. The kingdom's leaders were secular and anticlerical in orientation; many were positivists or members of the League of Freemasons. Other religious communities, such as Protestants or Jews, were given legal equality with Catholics; as in other European countries, new religious movements and areligious movements such as socialism and anarchism emerged. However, Catholicism remained the religion of the vast majority of Italians. Relations with the Catholic Church improved significantly during Mussolini's regime. Mussolini, once an opponent of the Catholic Church, formed an alliance with the Catholic Partito Popolare Italiano after 1922. In 1929, Mussolini and Pope Pius XI reached an agreement that ended the stalemate. This process of reconciliation had already begun under the government of Vittorio Emanuele Orlando during the First World War.

Mussolini and the leading fascists were not devout Christians, but they recognized the opportunity to build better relations with the influential church and to stage it propagandistically as an ally in the fight against liberalism and communism. The Lateran Treaties of 1929 recognized the pope as ruler of the small state of Vatican City within Rome and made the Vatican a more important hub of world diplomacy. A nationwide referendum approved the Lateran Treaties in March 1929. Nearly 9 million Italians, or 90 percent of registered voters, voted yes and only 136,000 voted no. The treaties remain in force today.

The 1929 Concordat declared Catholicism the state religion, obligated the Italian state to pay the salaries of priests and bishops, recognize marriages contracted in church, and reintroduce religious education in public schools. Again, the bishops swore allegiance to the Italian state, which was given veto power over their selection. A third agreement resulted in the payment of 1.75 billion lira (about $100 million) for seizures of church property since 1860. While the church was not officially obligated to support the fascist regime, it did support aggressive foreign policies, such as support for Francisco Franco's coup plotters in the Spanish Civil War and the conquest of Ethiopia. Conflicts persisted, however, especially over the Catholic Action youth network, which Mussolini wanted to merge with the fascist youth group. In 1931, Pope Pius XI issued the encyclical Non abbiamo bisogno ("We have no need"), in which the Church criticized the Italian state's decades-long persecution of the Church and the "pagan worship of the state" under the Fascists.

Economy

Throughout the period from 1861 to 1940, despite several economic crises and World War I, Italy experienced a considerable economic boom. Unlike most modern nations, where this industrial boom was due to large corporations, industrial growth in Italy was due to mostly small to medium-sized family businesses.

Political unification did not automatically bring economic integration, because Italy faced serious economic problems in 1861 and the different economic systems and different economic development of the predecessor states led to sharp contrasts at the political, social and regional levels. In the liberal period, Italy managed to industrialize strongly in several steps, although it was the most backward country among the great powers after the Russian Empire and the Empire of Japan and remained very dependent on foreign trade and international prices for coal and grain.

After unification, Italy had a predominantly agricultural society, with 60 percent of the labor force working in agriculture. Advances in technology increased export opportunities for Italian agricultural products after a period of crisis in the 1880s. Industrialization reduced the percentage of the labor force in the agricultural sector to less than 50 percent at the turn of the century. However, not everyone benefited from these developments, as southern agriculture in particular suffered from hot summers and the arid climate, while the presence of malaria in the north prevented the cultivation of low-lying areas on Italy's Adriatic coast.

The overwhelming attention to foreign and military policy in the early years of the state led to the neglect of Italian agriculture, which had been in decline since 1873. Both radical and conservative forces in the Italian Parliament demanded that the government examine ways to improve the state of agriculture in Italy. The investigation, launched in 1877, lasted eight years and showed that agriculture was not improving due to the lack of mechanization and modernization, and that landowners were not contributing anything to the development of their lands. Moreover, most of the workers on the agricultural lands were not peasants, but inexperienced short-term laborers (braccianti) who were employed for a year at best. Peasants with no steady income were forced to live on meager foodstuffs. Disease spread rapidly and a major cholera epidemic occurred, killing at least 55,000 people. Most of the Italian government was unable to deal effectively with the precarious situation because of the strong position of the large landowners in politics and the economy. This fact was confirmed in 1910 by a renewed commission of inquiry in the south.

Around 1890, the Italian wine industry - almost the only successful sector in agriculture - also experienced a crisis. Italy suffered from the overproduction of grapes. In the 1870s and 1880s, viticulture in France suffered from a crop failure caused by insects. As a result, Italy rose to become the largest exporter of wine in Europe. After France's recovery in 1888, Italian wine exports collapsed, resulting in even greater unemployment and numerous bankruptcies of Italian wine growers.

Beginning in the 1870s, Italy invested heavily in the development of railroads, and there was more than a doubling of the existing network of lines between 1870 and 1890.

During the fascist dictatorship, enormous sums were invested in new technological achievements, especially in military technology. However, large sums of money were also spent on prestige projects such as the construction of the new Italian ocean liner SS Rex, which set a transatlantic sea voyage record of four days in 1933, and the development of the Macchi-Castoldi M.C.72 seaplane, which was the world's fastest seaplane in 1933. In 1933, Italo Balbo completed a flight across the Atlantic in a seaplane to the World's Fair in Chicago. The flight symbolized the power of the fascist leadership and the industrial and technological progress of the state, which it had made under the fascists.

Gross domestic product of the Kingdom of Italy according to Angus Maddison (1861-1946):

Year	1861	1870	1880	1890	1900	1910	1920	1930	1940	1945
Gross domestic product in billions of U.S. dollars (1990)	37.995	41.814	46.690	52.863	60.114	85.285	96.757	119.014	155.424	114.422

Il Mezzogiorno in Southern Italy

Southern Italy remained more or less an economic and political problem zone during the entire period of the Kingdom of Italy. There were repeated uprisings and revolts, the economy remained rather backward compared to the north, and the population suffered from a high illiteracy rate and organized crime. Most of the inhabitants of southern Italy were peasants or agricultural laborers. The 1881 census found that over 1 million day laborers were chronically underemployed in the south and were very likely to become seasonal emigrants to secure economic security. Southern farmers, as well as small landowners, were often at odds with them.

The unification of Italy led to a growing economic divide between the northern provinces and the southern half of Italy. In the first decades of the new kingdom, the absence of effective land reform, heavy taxes and other economic measures imposed on the south, together with the elimination of protectionist tariffs on agricultural goods imposed to promote northern industry, led to a huge drop in production of southern Italian agricultural goods. Many farmers, small entrepreneurs and landowners emigrated, especially from 1892 to 1921 there was a strong wave of emigration. This circumstance occupied, from the 1870s, numerous intellectuals, scholars and politicians who wanted to study the economic and social conditions of southern Italy (Il Mezzogiorno). This group (Meridionalismo) gained increasing influence under Giovanni Giolitti from 1900.

The rise of brigands and the mafia led to widespread violence, corruption and illegality. Prime Minister Giolitti once admitted that there were places where the law would not work at all. After the rise of Benito Mussolini, the "iron prefect" Cesare Mori tried to combat the already powerful criminal organizations in the south with some success. However, when links between the Mafia and the Fascists became known, Mori was deposed and Fascist propaganda declared the so-called "battle against the Mafia" over and won.

Under the Fascists, there was also a major economic upswing in the south. Economically, Fascist policy was geared toward the creation of an Italian world empire, giving greater weight than the previous governments of the liberal era to the strategically important southern Italian ports, which were to become the starting point for Italy's colonial expansion. Naples in particular experienced an economic and demographic boom, but this was mainly due to the personal interest of King Victor Emmanuel III, who was born there.

Per capita income in northern and southern Italy since 1861 compared


Election poster of the Partito Socialista Italiano for the parliamentary election 1897


Army battle flag


Gold Italian lira with the portrait of King Victor Emmanuel III. (1931)


Mass emigration from Italy by region, 1876 to 1915


Dialects and languages in Italy and its surroundings according to Clemente Merlo (Lingue e dialetti d'Italia, Milano 1937, p. 4). tuscan southern italian northern italian corsican sardinian gas cognitive Franco-Provençal catalan Rhaeto-Romanic romanian german Slavic languages albanian Griko


Degree of industrialization of the Italian provinces in 1871 according to Banca d'Italia (average 1.0). above 1.4 between 1.1 and 1.4 between 0.9 and 1.1 under 0.9


Royal and Imperial Standard


The Kingdom of Italy at the time of its greatest expansion in Europe, 1943

Early years

The new Italian nation-state faced major domestic and foreign policy problems in its early years. As a result, state-building began slowly and hesitantly. These early years, from 1861 to 1876, were dominated by mostly short-lived governments of the conservative monarchist party Historical Right ("Destra Storica"). This party won most of the elections from 1861 to 1874 and provided nine of the eleven governments until 1876. Its members were mostly large landowners and industrialists as well as military officers (Bettino Ricasoli, Quintino Sella, Marco Minghetti, Silvio Spaventa, Giovanni Lanza, Alfonso La Marmora, Emilio Visconti-Venosta) from northern Italy.

Within the kingdom, state-driven secularization intensified the conflict with the Catholic Church from 1867/68 onward; the war with the Brigantes in the south reached its climax in 1864/65; centralism, which ruthlessly suppressed centuries-old regionalisms and linguistic distinctions, led to separatist tendencies in the south, and there was a severe crisis in agriculture. In foreign policy, the new nation was initially isolated. Only with the second French Empire did the young nation-state maintain good relations. With Great Britain, Italy had discredited itself by ceding Nice and Savoy to France.

Nevertheless, Cavour's successors managed to calm the situation. However, the brigand war ("brigantaggio") overshadowed the reconstruction again and again. It was carried out by several thousand insurgents organized in gangs and supported by the majority of the population in the mountainous areas of southern Italy. They were initially also supported by the Papal States and destroyed and looted the new state institutions. They also successfully managed to attack entire army battalions and police detachments. The causes were the lack of improvement of the conditions in the south (in the former Kingdom of the Two Sicilies), where there was no reform of the national administration and there was an increase in taxes.

The Royal Italian Army, which numbered around 100,000 men, was initially unable to eliminate the guerrilla fighters. At the height of the war, they dominated several important cities and entire regions of the south. The state therefore acted with extreme severity. Exceptional and martial law was imposed, and there were summary executions, destruction of villages, and deadly collective arrests, with a total of 130,000 deaths. On August 15, 1863, the government of Marco Minghetti imposed the so-called Pica Law, which provided for the suspension of constitutional rights in the provinces affected by brigandage. The war lasted from 1861 to 1865 and from 1866 to 1870.

In 1865, under Prime Minister Alfonso La Marmora, civil and commercial law and the code of criminal procedure were unified. In terms of foreign policy, Italy and France guaranteed the integrity of the rest of the Papal States in the September Agreement of September 15, 1864. In return, the treaty provided for the withdrawal of French troops from Rome within two years. In return, Italy undertook to support the Papal States in times of crisis, to allow the establishment of a corps of volunteers, and to assume a share of the papal national debt. An additional protocol, secret for the time being, regulated the change of the capital of Italy within six months. At first, the capital was to be moved from Turin to Naples. Later, Florence was chosen, despite protests from King Victor Emmanuel II and bloody demonstrations in Turin. However, the relationship between the king and the pope remained tense. Also because in May 1874 the Italian state banned all ecclesiastical orders and confiscated their property.

A treaty with the German Customs Union followed in 1865 and a secret alliance with Prussia on April 6, 1866, which brought Italy out of isolation. However, the monarchy remained effectively dependent on France until 1871.

The new state also faced a difficult financial situation. The financing of the Risorgimento had exhausted the finances of the Sardinian state (creation of a modern army by Cavour and Alberto La Marmora), added to which were the costs of military undertakings in Italy and the Sardinian participation in the Crimean War. Despite the tax burden rising from 82 million lire in 1850 to 145 million in 1858, the Sardinian government had insufficient funds. The public debt grew from 420 million lira in 1850 to 725 million in 1858, and by 1866 the budget deficit had risen rapidly to 721 million lira. To prevent bankruptcy, the convertibility of notes into gold was suspended after the German War of 1866, and a government-fixed rate for the lira was introduced through the "corso forzoso." Starting in 1868, there were massive tax increases and the sale of some state monopolies, which led to violent social protests. However, the decision to introduce compulsory military service in 1872 worsened the situation considerably.

In order to restructure the ailing state finances, King Victor Emmanuel II again appointed Minghetti as prime minister on July 10, 1873. In his second term, the latter pursued a strict balance sheet policy that led to the balancing of the budget in 1876. He also wanted the state to act as a "key set" in the foundation of economic modernization. He focused primarily on railroad construction, which had grown to about 8,000 route kilometers by 1879. However, because of too little investment in education and because private or foreign investment in the still young industry was largely absent, state spending could not be compensated, and there were tax increases in the consumer sector and reductions in real wages in state-owned enterprises. Italy ended up being, for a time, the country with the highest consumption taxes and lowest wages in Central and Western Europe. At the same time, the increasing import of foreign agricultural products triggered a crisis in agriculture. There was a rural exodus to the big cities and overseas emigrations increased. Rome was therefore extensively remodeled after its proclamation as the capital.

Military postcard of the "reggimento lancieri di Montebello" to commemorate the fight against the brigands (c. 1861-1863)


Marco Minghetti

Liberal Era (1876-1922)

After the death of King Victor Emmanuel II in 1878, Italy developed into a de facto parliamentary monarchy on the British model under his successors Umberto I and Victor Emmanuel III. The next four decades of the new nation-state were characterized by a long liberal period.

This was characterized (in terms of domestic and foreign policy) by the actions of individuals; the parties were unable to develop a politicizing and nation-building force due to the extreme census electoral law. There were three phases: From 1876 to 1887, the left-wing liberal Agostino Depretis began reforming the state system, paving the way for Italy's rise to become the sixth major European power. His successor Francesco Crispi sought to strengthen the state. Until his fall in 1896, he pursued an aggressive and militaristic foreign policy aimed at the conquest of East Africa and Italian domination of the Mediterranean. From 1900, Giovanni Giolitti largely dominated political events and initiated a slow democratization of the class system.

The early years of the liberal era were marked by the economic crisis of the 1880s (which ruined southern Italy economically), unemployment, and an intensifying wave of emigration. These problems put great strain on the relationship between the state and society and led to the emergence of two major opposition groups: the Socialist-Anarchist and the Catholic. In the process, the Socialists and Republicans gradually succeeded in entering parliament as early as the 1880s, while the Catholics organized themselves into non-political organizations. Pope Pius IX had forbidden Italian Catholics to participate in democratic elections in 1874 in the bull Non expedit. Pius X, who took office in 1903, relaxed the rule for the first time in the 1904 parliamentary election.

The beginning of Italian imperialism from 1887, with which the various Italian governments wanted to divert emigration to their own colonies (social imperialism), went hand in hand with the simultaneous advance of high industrialization in northern Italy. From around 1900, Italy was one of the world's leading industrial nations. The rise of nationalism and irredentism at the turn of the century increasingly strained relations with the allies in the Triple Alliance. In 1911, Italy conquered Ottoman Libya.

After World War I, a deep crisis followed for years. Mussolini's march on Rome at the end of October 1922 ended the liberal era.

The Left in Power

On March 18, 1876, the opposition overthrew the Minghetti government in a vote in Parliament. The reason for this was the attempt to nationalize the Italian railroads, which had been sold to private companies in 1865.

The king feared a minority government and entrusted the left-liberal opposition leader Agostino Depretis with forming the government on March 25, 1876. Depretis was the undisputed leader of the Party of the Historical Left ("Sinistra Storica") and had much political experience. It was also the first time in the new Kingdom of Italy that a government was led only by left-wing men.

However, the party that came to power was divided. The ideological matrix of the grouping was progressive-liberal, but it was also influenced by the ideas of Giuseppe Mazzini and Garibaldi. Depretis therefore formed a government that, in addition to the support of the left, could also count on the support of part of the right, which had helped to overthrow the Minghetti government. During his years in government, Depretis always sought broad agreement on individual problems with parts of the opposition, leading to the phenomenon of "trasformismo" (transformation). However, despotic and corrupt actions, reflected in authoritarian measures such as the banning of public meetings and the banishment of individuals deemed "dangerous" to remote penal islands throughout Italy, also characterized Depretis's reign.

The November 1876 elections confirmed Depretis's policy of stabilization and détente and were a success: 414 deputies were elected from the lists of the left, and only 94 from the right.

Rise to great power and new foreign policy

In foreign policy, Depretis cautiously pushed through a rapprochement with the new German Empire in his first government to counter the current French policy of restoring the power of the church and ultramontanism under President Patrice de Mac-Mahon. This Francophobic attitude deepened in May 1877, when the government of Albert de Broglie was formed in Paris, which favored clerical positions. The political crisis in France and the uncertainty in the Balkans because of the Russo-Turkish War prompted him to send the president of the Chamber of Deputies (Camera dei deputati) Francesco Crispi on a fact-finding mission to London, Berlin, Paris, and Vienna to win new allies for Italy. The mission proved unsuccessful, and a new German-Italian alliance against Austria-Hungary also failed due to the resistance of the German Chancellor Bismarck.

The slow stabilization of Italy's domestic politics, the small economic upswing and the expansion of the Royal Italian Army into a powerful armed force soon enabled Italy to rise to become one of the major European powers. This upgrading was confirmed at the Congress of Berlin held from June 13, 1878 to July 13, 1878. Nevertheless, Italy remained isolated and could not acquire Ottoman Albania, Tunisia or Libya. Instead, the kingdom had to accept the administration over occupied Bosnia and Herzegovina granted to Austria-Hungary, the new British rule over Cyprus, and guarantees to France regarding Tunisia. A failed assassination attempt by the anarchist Giovanni Passannante on Umberto I in Naples provided the opportunity to bring down the first Cairoli government on charges of weakness on December 19, 1878.

Depretis returned to office on December 19, 1878, and because of Italy's still fragile international position, he also took over the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He did not pursue a clear strategy in Italy's relations with foreign countries, despite Italy's relatively favorable position resulting from the slow consolidation of alliances in Europe (Dreikaiserabkommen, Dreikaiserbund, Zweibund). However, it was difficult to establish a lasting foreign policy direction because of the mostly short terms of office.

Italy's foreign policy situation deteriorated, however, when France seized Tunisia in 1881, in which Italy was also interested. The so-called blow of Tunis ("schiaffo di Tunisi") was the last act in a series of foreign policy failures by the second Cairoli government (in office since July 14, 1879), whose open irredentism cooled relations with the Habsburg Empire and strained relations with France due to competition between the two powers over Tunisia. Despite promises by French Prime Minister Jules Ferry not to annex Tunisia, French troops marched into Tunisia on May 1, 1881, and in the Bardo Treaty made Tunisia a French protectorate on May 12. The Cairoli government, overwhelmed by public criticism and indignation in Italy, resigned on May 29. The king commissioned Quintino Sella to form the new government but, after unsuccessful attempts, resorted to Depretis. The latter, in his fourth term, prioritized foreign policy and now set a strict and consistent direction. In fact, after the dispute at the Congress of Berlin and the blow of Tunis, he decided to resolve the question of alliances. In this regard, King Umberto I was inclined to an understanding with Austria-Hungary and Germany, which would strengthen the monarchy in a conservative manner. In October 1881, the monarch and he went to Vienna, where there were the first attempts at rapprochement.

However, the rapprochement with the later Central Powers was unpopular among large parts of the population because of the earlier wars with Austria. Depretis, too, was inclined toward an alliance with Paris, contrary to the king's expectations. He believed the consequences of the occupation of Tunisia would not be threatening to Italy and argued that there were 400,000 Italian immigrants living in France around 1880. However, the foreign minister Depretis had chosen, Pasquale Stanislao Mancini was in favor of an alliance with an economically and militarily strengthening Germany. Bismarck did not trust Depretis's government, however, because it was close to the ideas of the new revisionist French prime minister, Léon Gambetta. Instead, he first convinced those inside the monarchy in early 1882 of the usefulness of an alliance, provided it did not mean war with France. On May 20, 1882, the Treaty of the Triple Alliance was signed in Vienna, breaking Italy's isolation and allowing the country to be integrated into the European balance of power. The alliance determined Italian foreign policy for the next 20 years and protected Austria-Hungary from Italian territorial claims for the time being.

A few months later, however, the first crisis arose within the alliance. This was triggered by the execution of the Italian Guglielmo Oberdan in Trieste on December 20, 1882, accused of an assassination attempt on the Emperor and King Franz Joseph I. The execution of Oberdan was the result of a series of protests in Italy. In Italy, the execution triggered protests and the Triple Alliance continued to lose popularity.

Depreti's government had to cope with a wave of anti-Austrian sentiment among the people, which resulted in violent demonstrations and attacks on Austrian offices and consulates in Rome, and remained neutral. However, despite all the government's efforts at reconciliation, Oberdan's death dug a strong rift between Italy and Austria. Thus, relations with the Austrian ally remained difficult. Also because Austria-Hungary was favored by Germany and the two powers did not recognize Italy as an equal partner.

Domestic reforms

The long reign of Depretis made possible numerous reforms. On July 15, 1877, a law was presented by the Minister of the Interior, Michele Coppino, establishing two years of free compulsory and secular primary education and voluntary six to nine years of schooling for children. Compulsory religious education ended for it, demonstrating the fierce anticlericalism of the left. However, the reform led to criticism because of its high cost. In December 1877, Depretis was in danger of being overthrown by his more radical domestic party rival, Cairoli. However, King Victor Emmanuel II backed Depretis's program and kept him in office. It was the last important political act of the monarch, who died on January 9 of the next year. The new second government, in which Crispi, ready for more reforms, became Minister of the Interior, enforced the abolition of the Ministry of Agriculture. Promoted industry and commerce and created the Ministry of Finance to gain better control over government spending. Such decisions and decrees, however, were made without the participation of Parliament, which was actually needed. The mitigation of the hated tax on flour on June 24, 1879, on the other hand, was approved by the Senate. After the elections of May 16, 1880, in which his party melted down from 414 to 218 seats, however, Depretis depended on parliamentary support in all matters and continued his reform policy as minister of the interior and prime minister in personal union. In January 1882, he extended the right to vote. Thus, all men who were at least 21 years old, who had attended two years of elementary school, or who could raise an annual tax of more than 19.80 lire had the right to vote. Under this law, the percentage of eligible voters grew from 2.2% of the population in 1879, 621,896, to 2,049,461, or 6.9%. That is, more than a quarter of the adult male population at the time.

With the approach of the first major elections, held from October 29 to November 5, 1882, the rise of the extreme left ("Estrema sinistra") accelerated the disintegration of the traditional political parties. The two old political parties reacted to such upheavals by decreasing ideological conflicts and overcoming their differences. As a result, the concept of trasformismo prevailed, in which Depretis was able to bind parts of the moderate opposition to himself and to control the progressive advances of the Radicals and Republicans in Parliament through a new, moderately reformist, centrist political camp.

Within the Left, this concept had provoked strong tensions. When Depretis was threatened with overthrow in May 1883, the leader of the Right, Minghetti, decided to give Depretis special support in order to curb the extreme wings of parliament and thus slow down the emergence of popular sovereignty, in fear of anarchy and despotism. Nevertheless, beginning in 1885, Depreti's term was drawing to a close. The May 1886 elections brought Depretis only a small gain in votes, and several right-wing deputies refused to support him after the death of Marco Minghetti in December 1886. This was followed by the agrarian crisis, which led to the abolition of the meal tax in 1884.

Economic modernizations

Economically, Depretis pursued a protectionist policy, pushed the industrialization of Italy and the modernization of the Royal Italian Army and Navy. In 1878, he made it easier to import raw materials than finished products in the customs tariff, and in 1883 he abolished the compulsory exchange rate for the lira. The protectionist measures were intended as preparation for adaptation to the climate of international competition and brought an increase in industrialization in the North, especially in the textile and steel industries. The years of Depreti's governments were also marked by a significant increase in the road and rail network, which by the end of the 1880s included a route network of 12,000 km. In 1882, the Gotthard tunnel with Switzerland was opened.

Agriculture was plunged into a severe crisis during the same period by the remarkably strong growth in U.S. grain production. Italy's annual production of corn and wheat fell by a fifth from 1880 to 1890, and prices dropped by a third. In exchange, there was a significant increase in imports of grain. As a result, agriculture in the South collapsed. The crisis led to a wave of emigration, resulting in the emigration of 3.6 million Italians by the end of the First World War. Nevertheless, it relied on conservative southern landowners and their anachronistic latifundia economy. Modernization proposals, such as those put forward by the 1877 parliamentary commission under Stefano Jacini in 1884, were not followed. Instead, the enlargement of the army, the navy and the creation of heavy industry were pushed forward. To this end, numerous large-scale enterprises were founded in the north by mostly private companies. Because of the backward starting position and the lack of raw materials and capital, a rapid upswing was only possible with state help, and this immediately led to a close alliance between political power and organized capitalism. The merger of the Rubattino shipping company with the Florio company to form Navigazione generale Italiana in 1882 had already been supported by state subsidies. The large railroad companies received a similar subsidy from the state. In 1884, the entrepreneur Vincenzo Stefano Breda founded the steelworks in Terni. The Group was able to gain control of the large shipyards in Genoa and Livorno and remained the main supplier to the Italian navy until the First World War. Iron production rose from 95,000 tons (1881) to 176,000 (1888), while steel output increased from 3,600 to 158,000 tons in the same period. A building boom in the major cities accompanied this upswing. However, the profits benefited only a small stratum of society, and without an effective social policy, class divisions were only exacerbated. The increasingly protectionist tariff of July 1887 triggered a ten-year tariff and trade war with France. The crisis in agriculture, which lost large markets and from then on had to buy expensive domestic machinery for production, triggered increased state intervention in economic life and led to further public debt.

Beginnings of colonial policy

In the two decades following unification, Italy began its own colonial policy. Initially, this was directed at the still few free Asian territories, especially Thailand, Burma, the Sultanate of Aceh, the islands of Andaman and Nicobar Islands. In 1880, the Italian government wanted to establish a penal colony in Sabah, the Malaysian part of the island of Borneo, but decided to give a free hand to Great Britain, which was also interested and established the colony Federated Malay States.

The origins of the Italian colonial policy were already in 1861. Cavour, shortly before his death, in order to keep up with the powers of France and Great Britain, tried to create a small colony, initially on the coast of Nigeria and on the Portuguese island of Príncipe in the Gulf of Guinea. In 1869, the explorer Emilio Cerruti was sent to New Guinea by the Italian Foreign Ministry to establish relations with the local population. The explorer returned to Italy with good results for the creation of a trading colony and/or penal colony, and submitted to the government in Florence draft treaties signed by the Sultans of the Aru Islands and Kei Islands. Cerruti even took possession of some territories on the north coast and west of New Guinea on behalf of Italy. In 1883, therefore, Italy asked the British government of William Ewart Gladstone through diplomatic channels to accept an Italian colony in New Guinea. The British refusal and the opposition of the Netherlands forced Italy to abandon colonization in the Pacific Ocean and Asia.

In 1884, General Cesare Ricotti-Magnani was charged with raising an expeditionary force for a possible occupation of Turkish Libya in the event of French action in Morocco. But Italy's attention continued to focus southward. On February 5, 1885 October, its troops occupied the Eritrean Massaua. Already in 1882 the Italian government had acquired Assab from the Rubattino shipping company, which became Italy's first colony. From 1885 to 1890, Italy established itself in East Africa. In 1885, the entire coast between Massawa and Assab was conquered and some Sudanese outlying areas were occupied. In the Mediterranean, Italy was content with the status quo and concluded an agreement on this with Great Britain on February 12 with the Mediterranean Duck. Austria-Hungary joined on March 24, 1887, and Spain on May 4.

In 1886, Italy declared war on the Empire of Abyssinia. The so-called Eritrean War (Guerra d'Eritrea) began with some Italian victories. However, due to inexperience and superficiality, the Italian troops suffered a decisive defeat in the decisive battle of Dogali from January 25 to January 26, 1887. This and the high cost of the war led to criticism from large sections of Parliament and marked the end of the Depretis era. On April 4, 1887, he still formed his eighth and last government.

Crispi and the "politics of national prestige".

After Depretis' death on July 29, 1887, King Umberto I appointed Francesco Crispi first as foreign minister and then as prime minister on August 7. The king sympathized with his positions for the support of the Triple Alliance and for his conviction to establish a strong army.

Crispi significantly determined Italian domestic and foreign policy from 1887 to 1896. He admired Bismarck and stood for an authoritarian domestic policy and an imperialist "great" foreign policy that would absorb Italy's internal problems and make the country more "weighty" as well as more active internationally. However, his term in office ("Crispi era") was also marked by the regular overstepping of the constitutional powers of the head of government (so-called "democratic dictatorship") and exacerbated the nation's internal antagonisms, leading to serious labor disputes.

Reinforcement of militarism

In his new cabinet, Crispi was also both minister of the interior and foreign affairs. With this concentration of powers, he arrived at Friedrichsruh on September 30, 1887, for his inaugural visit with Bismarck. On this occasion, the chancellor and prime minister spoke in favor of maintaining the international balance of power and a rapprochement with the Ottoman Empire. A separate German-Italian military convention was also agreed upon for the Triple Alliance, which was to be activated in the event of war, assuring Germany of Italy's support in the event of a possible establishment in North Africa, while Italy would help the German Empire in the event of a war against France. In East Africa, the chancellor supported Crispi's policy of ending the Eritrean war with Ethiopia and suggested that Britain be brought in as a mediator.

The trip had considerable political value: Italy's position among the great powers was strengthened, but it led to great irritation with the Russian Empire and France. In Italy, on the other hand, King Umberto I was excited by the prospect of a military plan with Germany.

After the Friedrichsruh meeting, Bismarck asked the British government to put pressure on Ethiopia's Emperor Yohannes IV to make peace with Italy. British Prime Minister Salisbury obtained some concessions from Ethiopia, and Crispi was able to announce in the spring of 1888 that his policy in Africa was aimed at securing peace. This allowed for the consolidation of the forces of the Royal Italian Army, much of which could now remain in Europe, and for extensive modernization, which was to be achieved with the expansion of heavy industry and the massive extension of the Italian road and rail networks.

On December 12, 1887, Italy, Great Britain, and Austria-Hungary, at the instigation of Bismarck, signed a second Mediterranean agreement in which Crispi and Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister Gustav Kálnoky pledged to maintain the status quo in Eastern Europe and the Balkans as well, and Austria-Hungary promised Italy compensation for any changes in the Balkans.

The rising nationalism in Italy, which Crispi stirred up and used for his irredentist ideas against France, aimed at the reclamation of Nice and Savoy and an expansion of the Italian territory to the Rhone, Corsica and Tunisia, led to strong disagreements with France. Bismarck, however, demanded that Italy maintain peace in Europe as conditions of the German-Italian military agreement of January 28, 1888. Crispi nevertheless assured the German Empire of sending a 200,000-strong expeditionary force to the Rhine to support the German army in the event of conflict with France.

France began to prepare for the worst and increased its activity in the Mediterranean. Crispi, who knew the limits of the Italian fleet in relation to the French, successfully tried to persuade Austria-Hungary to provide political support. In return, Crispi was able to persuade the Kingdom of Romania to formally recognize Hungarian sovereignty over Transylvania. The conflict with France eventually brought both countries to the brink of war in 1888-1890. When the outbreak was nevertheless repeatedly prevented, Crispi began to push for an increase in Italian military spending during this period in order to prepare the army and fleet for a possible preemptive war. The visit of the new German Emperor Wilhelm II to Rome in 1888, which was of great symbolic importance for international recognition as Italy's capital, had encouraged him in this endeavor. In December of the same year, he presented a bill in Parliament that would increase military spending to one-third of government spending. Crispi referred to the exceptional nature of the situation in Europe and the fact that all nations were arming. The law was passed, but it led to growing social tensions in the country. Eventually, he had to force the unpopular Finance Minister Agostino Magliani to resign and replaced him with Costantino Perazzi, who announced tax increases in February 1889. Representatives of the right and far left joined forces to oppose the new measures and the prime minister, who was also forced to dismiss his new finance minister on February 28. Crispi decided to undertake a major government reshuffle and was able to count on the backing of the king, who renewed his confidence in the next government, heavy industry and the irredist movement. The prime minister was also able to rely on a broader base in Parliament and continue his aggressive foreign policy and militaristic course.

After the small government crisis, Crispi accompanied King Umberto I on his state visit to Wilhelm II in Berlin in May 1889. During a meeting with Bismarck and the Chief of the General Staff Alfred von Waldersee, the latter confessed to Crispi that the German army was not prepared for a war against France. Crispi then decided to end his aggressive foreign policy towards France and to concentrate on Africa again.

Reforming administrative and social policy

Crispi also achieved notable successes in Italy's interior. On December 9, 1887, in the Chamber of Deputies and two months later in the Senate, his law "Reorganizing the Central Administration of the State" was approved. It strengthened the role of the head of government and established the ultimate role of the executive branch vis-à-vis Parliament. At the same time, it gave it the right to decide on the number and functions of ministries. However, it always had to obtain the king's consent to do so. Another point regulated the appointment of parliamentary undersecretaries in each ministry, who were to reinforce the political character of the government. As early as September 4, 1887, a Secretariat for the Prime Minister had been established, which was to review his bills and statutes before they were submitted to Parliament, and to keep him constantly informed about the state of the nation. 1888 saw the liberalization of the penal code, which abolished the death penalty and formally legalized the right to strike. The "Zanardelli Code," named after Justice Minister Giuseppe Zanardelli, was based on the Piedmontese penal code of 1859, but softened its class character in exchange for lowering the penalties for property crimes. Another liberal reform in the same year was the extension of suffrage at the municipal and provincial levels. It was passed in July 1888 and nearly doubled the number of local voters. It also allowed municipalities with populations over 10,000 and in all provincial capitals, as well as those of counties and boroughs, to elect their own mayors and introduced administrative courts. This expansion of regional powers, however, was coupled with a strengthening of the powers of the state at the supraregional level and of the heads of the administrative provincial councils. This reform was approved by the Senate in December 1888 and came into force in February 1889.

In order to improve the social conditions of the majority of the population, Crispi enacted a law in 1888 that began a state health and hygiene policy. Under the principle that the state was responsible for the health of the citizens, he established a Directorate of Public Health in the Ministry of the Interior, in which doctors also participated in decision-making. Also, medical visits or inspections became obligatory for all social histories. This was preceded by the outbreak of a cholera epidemic between 1884 and 1885 in southern Italy, which killed between 18,000 and 55,000 people.

In March 1889, Crispi enacted a law to protect citizens against violations of state law. It regulated the creation of a new post in the Council of Ministers to arbitrate or resolve disputes between concerned citizens and the bureaucracy.

In order to finally put the state on a secure footing, Crispi still reformed the state budget and the education system starting in 1891. When it came to balancing the books, however, only tax increases could be tackled. Because of the banking crisis that began in 1890, the corso forzoso was introduced for a time and the powers of the state bank Banca d'Italia, founded in 1893, were expanded; the credit system was reorganized and the Banca mista, modeled on the German universal banks, was introduced. In the education system, Paolo Boselli, the minister of education, focused on standardization and greater integration of technical education into the curriculum.

Increase in internal tensions

Crispi's authoritarian policies led to an intensification of internal conflicts in Italy. A scandal involving the Banca Romana exposed the corruption of the leading classes and discredited them in the eyes of the Italian population. Crispi's radicalizing anticlericalism led to the legal suppression of the Catholic Church in the field of social welfare and the expropriation of its last foundations, but secured the state monopoly in this field. He reacted to the upsurge of organized labor and intensifying labor struggles with exceptional laws and increased repressive measures.

In 1889, the first major wave of repression took place. In particular, activists of the Italian Workers' Party (Partito Operaio Italiano), which had been banned since 1896 and was now operating underground, were arrested. In 1890, Crispi obliged all municipalities to take care of their local poor and charities and to accept financial donations only with the authorization of the provincial government, completely eliminating the influence of the Church. Pope Leo XIII condemned this policy in December 1899 as anti-religious and encouraging devout Italian Catholics in their defensiveness toward the Italian state. The elections of November 23, 1890, however, were an extraordinary success for Crispi's policy. Of 508 deputies, 405 belonged to his political camp. But as early as January 1891, the situation worsened because of the large budget deficit. On January 31, Crispi was finally forced to resign.

The fall of Crispi brought two short-lived governments to power. The first right-wing government of Antonio Starabba di Rudinì was unstable and in 1891 could only push through the extension of the Triple Alliance. It was propped up in May 1892, and on May 15 Giovanni Giolitti became the new prime minister. The first Giolitti government, however, could rely on only a slim majority and was embroiled in the Banca Romana scandal in December 1892. Giolitti was accused of acquiring ill-gotten gains. The king was also compromised and a return of Crispi seemed inevitable. After a judicial investigation of the Banca Romana exonerated him and the financial crisis came to a dangerous head in October 1893, Umberto I reappointed him to office on November 25. Giolitti had already resigned the day before.

Crispi presented his new government on December 15. He also headed the Ministry of the Interior. In the process, he was confronted above all with the rise of the Italian Socialist Party (Partito Socialista Italiano (PIS)), founded in September 1893, which took up the fight against the bourgeois nation-state, anarchism, which was widespread in Italy, and the organizing Catholic opposition. Also, the militancy of the workers, which had particularly severe repercussions for the island of Sicily, forced him to deal primarily with domestic politics during his second term.

The insurrectionary movement of the "Fasci siciliani", which included agricultural and mining workers from all over Sicily, forced Crispi, as prime minister, to restore state order on the island. The latter declared a state of siege on the island on January 2, 1894. An army of 40,000 soldiers was sent under the command of General Roberto Morra di Lavriano. It established military courts, banned public meetings, confiscated weapons, introduced press censorship, carried out massacres of sympathizing peasants, students and teachers, and denied entry to the island to all suspected citizens.

Initially, Crispi's measures received considerable support in parliament. In February, parliamentary support began to wane, and Crispi attempted to legitimize the action by invoking the defense of national unity; when it became known that the rioters showed openly separatist intentions, he prevailed, and the movement was dissolved and its leaders arrested later that year.

The fight against the insurgents put a great strain on the state budget. In February 1894, Finance Minister Sidney Sonnino noted a deficit of 155 million lire. However, public spending was only cut by almost 27 million lire because Crispi did not want to make cuts in military policy. Then he and Sonnino called for tax increases, but wanted to burden both the wealthy with an income and property tax, but also the poorer with an increase in the salt tax. The proposals of the prime minister and finance minister met with stiff parliamentary opposition. The blockade policy forced Sonnino to give up his ministerial post on July 4. On June 5, Crispi followed suit and announced the resignation of the entire government.

The king returned the job of forming the government to Crispi on June 14. The latter made Paolo Boselli the new finance minister in place of Sonnino and announced that he would abandon the introduction of a tax on land. His improved political position and a failed assassination attempt by the young anarchist Paolo Lega, who fired a bullet at Crispi at point-blank range in Rome on June 16, 1894, enabled the prime minister to push his fiscal policy through parliament quickly. This also favored the passage of the law on the 20% tax on interest on government bonds, the most important provision of Finance Minister Sonnino's law. Under his successor, Boselli, there were still tariff increases and an increase in taxes on electric power, sugar, cotton and town gas. It slowly led Italy out of the crisis and prepared the way for a full-scale economic recovery, but it made the government increasingly unpopular.

With the financial problems solved, Crispi devoted himself to fighting the opposition, which was growing stronger. On July 10 and 11, 1894, two laws were passed that, among other things, allowed the arrest of people who opposed the social order and restricted the work of the extreme left. Thus, almost 800,000 votes of the left were erased from the electoral roll of the 1895 elections.

In 1894, Giovanni Giolitti presented a few documents to Parliament in order to discredit Crispi. However, they were the papers of a loan taken out by Crispi and his wife at the Banca Romana. The documents were examined by a parliamentary commission of inquiry, and its exculpatory findings were published on December 15. Riots then broke out in Parliament, and Crispi presented the king with a decree dissolving Parliament. Giolitti was then forced to flee to Berlin because his parliamentary immunity had expired and he ran the risk of being arrested on Crispi's charges. On January 13, 1895, Parliament was dissolved.

Entry into overseas imperialism

To underpin Italy's position among the great powers of the late 19th century, Italian colonialism achieved a new momentum under Crispi. Although Italy was still rather weak in military and economic resources compared to Great Britain, France or the German Empire, Crispi managed to consolidate and expand Italy's previous possessions. However, it proved difficult to pursue an effective colonial policy because of the great internal resistance, the high military costs and the low economic value of the spheres of influence.

Italy was supported in its colonial ventures by Great Britain, which wanted to contain French influence in Africa, and by the Triple Alliance. This provided Crispi with the necessary foreign policy backing to win the support of Italian nationalists at home, some of whom sought the establishment of a new Roman Empire. Also, because of the long-established large Italian communities in Alexandria, Cairo, and Tunis, or the sending of missionaries to unsettled areas to be "prepared" for possible Italian colonization, the Italian government felt emboldened in its endeavor with the king.

Crispi turned his attention to East Africa, where the Empire of Abyssinia under John IV was threatened by Mahdists from Sudan. John IV refused to end the Eritrean war with Italy, which had been going on since 1885, and was killed by Mahdists in March 1889. Already at the end of 1888, Crispi instructed the Minister of War, Ettore Bertolè Viale, to go on the offensive and occupy Asmara. However, the occupation was preempted by the Treaty of Uccialli of May 2, 1889, which King Umberto I concluded with the new Ethiopian Emperor Menelik II. In the treaty, Abyssinia ceded sovereign rights over the city and a large part of the Eritrean plateau and also accepted, for the time being, the establishment of an Italian protectorate over Ethiopia in exchange for the continuation of Italian development and military aid to stabilize Menelik's empire.

Crispi did not think it necessary to submit the treaty to Parliament, since Italy was still at war and the king was constitutionally free to act. Some deputies of the extreme left and right, however, questioned the colonial policy and still threatened to stop it at the turn of the decade. Crispi, however, banked on the rapidly spreading enthusiasm for expansion in Africa in Italy and was able to persuade prominent opponents of colonialism such as Giovanni Giolitti to change their stance. Asmara was finally conquered in August 1889 and the first major Italian colony of Eritrea was officially established in 1890. The possession of the ports of Massawa and Assab closed Ethiopia's access to the Red Sea and made the country, in effect, economically dependent on Italy. Trade between the two powers was encouraged by low tariffs. Italy exported finished products to Ethiopia and imported coffee, beeswax and animal skins in return.

In 1888, Italian land grabs in Somalia also began. Italy gained protectorates over the Hobyo and Majerteen sultanates through agreements between the Italian consul in Aden and several sultans. In 1892, the private Italian trading company Filonardi leased the ports of the Banaadir region (including Mogadishu and Baraawe) from the Sultanate of Zanzibar. It served the Kingdom of Italy as a base for expeditions to the mouth of the Juba River and the establishment of a protectorate over the city of Lugh. In the same year, the Italian government forced Zanzibar to lease Merka and Warsheikh to Italy and later sell them. The town of Kismaayo, acquired in 1887, was sold to the British and annexed to British East Africa.

In the summer of 1894, the Mahdists attempted to invade Eritrea but were stopped at Agordat. The regional military commander, General Oreste Baratieri, moved his troops to the Sudanese border and on July 16, 1894, ordered an attack on the Sudanese town of Kassala, which was taken after a short battle. The city was to serve as a springboard for a campaign against the Mahdi Empire and to extend the Italian sphere of influence. However, the British, who supported the Italians, refused Italian aid for fear that Italy would annex all of Sudan. The Italian garrison in Kassala was withdrawn in December 1897 and the city was returned to the new Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. The Mahdi uprising was finally ended with the Battle of Omdurman on September 2, 1898.

Crispi refocused Italian colonial efforts on Ethiopia after the successful intervention in Sudan. General Baratieri advanced into Ethiopian territory in December 1894 and conquered the Ethiopian region of Tigray by January 1895. In March, Barattieri also occupied Adigrat and moved toward Adua. At this point, Crispi had the Italian advance suspended because of the high military cost of over nine million lire.

The elections of May 26, 1895, brought Crispi a final high victory. By mid-1895, however, Crispi was facing serious difficulties in colonial policy: France and the Russian Empire were supplying substantial amounts of modern weapons to Menelik, and Germany and Britain had no intention of helping Italy militarily. Bismarck's withdrawal from political life in 1890 had weakened Crispi's international position for many years, and in the fall of 1895 it became clear that the Ethiopians were preparing a major offensive against the Italians. Abyssinia denounced the Treaty of Uccialli that same year and continued to refuse to follow Italian foreign policy. Crispi used this as a reason to subjugate all of Ethiopia. The now effervescent Italian militarism and nationalism gave him a tailwind against the restraining opposition.

In December 1895, when an Italian outpost on Mount Amba Alagi was attacked by the Ethiopian army, Crispi replaced Baratieri with Antonio Baldissera and prepared to send another 25,000 troops to the crisis area. This increased the cost of war by another 20 million lire and forced the Italians to go on the defensive for the time being. However, when another Italian outpost in Mek'elē was encircled and captured by the Ethiopian army on January 7, 1896, the Royal Italian Army continued the offensive.

On February 8, Crispi charged Baratieri with planning a decisive strike against Ethiopia and gave him command of another 10,000 soldiers sent to Eritrea. The latter first proposed the opening of a second front, decided on February 28 to attack Menelik's forces at Adua. The Battle of Adua on March 1, 1896 ended with a heavy Italian defeat. In the process, the small Italian army had been overwhelmed by the vastly superior Ethiopian army, and Italy was forced to retreat to Eritrea. The failed Ethiopian campaign was an international embarrassment for Italy, as it had been decisively defeated by a developing country.

When news of the defeat reached Italy, serious unrest broke out, especially in Lombardy. On March 4, 1896, Crispi went before his cabinet and announced his resignation. The next day, this was accepted publicly and by Umberto I.

Italy made one - for the time being last - colonial acquisition in China in 1900. After an occupation of the Chinese province of Zhejiang failed in March/April 1899 under diplomatic pressure from other great powers, Italy participated in the suppression of the Boxer Rebellion as part of the United Eight States Alliance from November 2, 1899 to September 7, 1901. On September 7, 1901, it received a concession in Tianjin from the ruling Qing Dynasty for this purpose. On June 7, 1902, this was officially taken possession of by an Italian consul.

Politics at the turn of the century

The end of the Crispi era eased domestic and foreign political tensions. His successor, Antonio Starabba di Rudinì of the historical right, appointed by Umberto I on March 10, 1896, under pressure from the Socialist Party, ended the first Italian-Ethiopian War in the Peace of Addis Ababa (October 25, 1896) and, of necessity, recognized Ethiopia's sovereignty. He issued a general amnesty for all prisoners of the Fasci siciliani movement and gave impetus to the humanization of labor. Under him also began the process of integrating the lower classes into the state. This laid the foundation for an effective social policy and social legislation, which began with the emergence of old-age and disability insurance, as well as the obligation of health insurance for industrial workers.

In foreign and colonial policy, Starabba di Rudinì and his foreign minister Emilio Visconti-Venosta began a process of détente with France, which courted Italy again after Crispi's fall. The Italian government did not want to support the increasing estrangement between Great Britain and the Wilhelmine German Empire. Social contrasts also warned against this: only the conservatives around Umberto I adhered to the Triple Alliance, while the more liberal, irredentist and ultranationalist social groups under his son Crown Prince Victor Emmanuel were more pro-French or British. In 1896, therefore, Italy concluded a trade treaty with Tunisia in which it recognized the French protectorate, contrary to the interests of the Italian settlers there. This was followed in 1898 by a trade treaty with France and, despite fierce opposition from the Italian colonial movement, the return of the city of Kassala to British-occupied Khedivate Egypt, which improved relations with Great Britain.

Italy's financial difficulties after the Ethiopian War had plunged the unitary state into a crisis of unprecedented proportions; this even threatened the monarchy. To end it, Starabba di Rudinì tried to decentralize the state. His policy, however, was rejected by the Chamber majority, whereupon, at the beginning of 1897, Parliament was dissolved. The March 1897 elections, however, gave a boost to the socialist and far-left opposition. It also strengthened the forces that had supported Crispi and wanted his authoritarian policies to continue. Sidney Sonnino even argued for a return to constitutional monarchy on the German and Austro-Hungarian model.

The domestic political situation deteriorated even further in the summer of 1898. In May, violent riots broke out in the south and the industrial centers of the north. A state of siege was declared in Milan, Naples, Florence and Livorno. In Milan, the crisis reached its peak. There was a proclamation of a general strike, which turned into an open revolt (moti di Milano). Starabba di Rudinì had it suppressed on May 7-8 by army units under the command of Fiorenzo Bava Beccaris. About 100 people were killed in the Bava Beccaris massacre. Afterwards, all regional unions and socialist organizations there were dissolved and hundreds were arrested. The massacre in Milan deprived Starabba di Rudinì of parliamentary support. The latter asked King Umberto I to call new elections and declared his resignation on June 29. The king refused to accept the resignation for the time being, but in June 1898 he instructed General Luigi Pelloux to form a new government.

The very conservative Pelloux saw his only tasks as restoring normalcy and defending state institutions. Pelloux wanted an end to parliamentary democracy and the establishment of a reactionary regime that would act decisively against the socialist opposition. To implement this, he passed a series of laws as minister of the interior in 1899 that again restricted the work of the opposition and limited or banned freedom of speech, press, and assembly, as well as strikes (the latter only in the public sector). In the face of this reactionary turn, a broad opposition emerged (from the socialist to the bourgeois liberal around Giuseppe Zanardelli and Giolitti) that favored a democratic and reformist political opening.

When Pelloux attempted to submit a bill to parliament that would have allowed him to pass laws without parliamentary approval, the Italian Constitutional Court overturned it and declared the practice illegal. Even the hitherto loyal great Milanese industry, which considered this too dangerous a reactionary attempt, resisted. Finally, Pelloux resigned early in May 1899, but then merely reshuffled the cabinet. New elections were held in June 1900, strengthening the Socialists, Radicals, and Republicans. Pelloux resigned on June 24.

King Umberto I gave the task of forming the government to the old senator Giuseppe Saracco. On July 29, 1900, during a visit to the city of Monza, the monarch was assassinated by the anarchist Gaetano Bresci, who understood the act as revenge for the massacre in Milan. Umberto I was succeeded by his son as Victor Emmanuel III, who took the oath to the Constitution before the two chambers of the Italian Parliament on August 11.

The young king and Saracco made efforts to normalize political life. Saracco succeeded in December 1900 in completely normalizing relations with France. With the French government under Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau, the prime minister reached an agreement on claims to Morocco and Libya, whose borders as an Italian colony were outlined for the first time. Domestically, however, he failed shortly thereafter in a general strike in Genoa in December 1900 and resigned on February 15, 1901.

Victor Emmanuel III, leaning more toward his grandfather's more liberal views than his father's conservative ones, appointed the left-liberal and reform-minded Giuseppe Zanardelli, who chose Giolitti as minister of the interior. Because of his relatively poor health, Zanardelli largely left day-to-day politics to Giolitti, who soon emerged as the real head of the cabinet. The Zanardelli/Giolitti government continued the aborted process of slowly integrating labor into the state and initiated a turnaround in foreign policy. Although the Triple Alliance was extended in June 1902, it had lost much of its significance for Italy since the turn of the century. Instead, a rapprochement with the more liberal states of France and Great Britain was initiated. In June 1902, Italy and France concluded a secret agreement in which both states pledged benevolent neutrality in the event of war between the two alliances (Triple Alliance and Franco-Russian Alliance).

Giolitti era and the Belle Époque

On November 3, 1903, Giovanni Giolitti of the Party of the Historical Left returned to the head of the government. He offered, despite the reactionary wave of the century and the violent social protests of the 1890s, to be the first prime minister to join the Socialists in government. Although the Socialist party leadership around Filippo Turati and most of the members of parliament agreed, the "maximalist" revolutionary direction of the inner-party opposition prevailed. Nevertheless, Giolitti knew the party as the spokesperson for the workers.

Giolitti was prime minister from 1903 to 1905, again from 1906 to 1909, and from 1911 to 1914. The short-lived governments of Alessandro Fortis (1905-06), Luigi Luzzatti (1910-11) and Sidney Sonnino (1906, 1910-11) fell in the intervals. Giolitti based his government on entrepreneurs and workers in the north, where he wanted to achieve a balance of interests between these groups, and in the south on agrarian deputies, whom he was able to rally behind him by securing their privileges and interests. His reign is called the "Giolitti era" (ital. età giolittiana) and was the longest in Italian history after that of Benito Mussolini.

During Giolitti's reign, Italy experienced a cultural flowering. His economic and social programs and relative political stability led to an economic boom that lasted until the First World War. Average annual incomeper inhabitant rose from 324 lire (1891-1896) to 523 lire (1911-1916). The shortage of coal was compensated by electric energy from hydroelectric plants on the Adda and in the canton of Ticino. In northern Italy, the large industrial centers developed around Milan (textile industry), Genoa (port), Turin (automobile industry), Florence and Venice (port). But there was also an economic boom in Rome and Naples. In 1906, the Simplon Tunnel was opened. In 1914, the Italian railroad had about 17,000 km of railroads. By developing the food industry with modern means, Italy managed to make southern Italian cereals marketable again and to become one of the world leaders in cereal exports.

At the same time, emigration increased from 165,000 emigrants in 1880 to 540,000 in 1901 and to 872,000 in 1913. More than 80% of these people were men. At first there was temporary emigration to neighboring European countries such as Switzerland, the German Empire, Austria-Hungary and France. These emigrants were mostly miners or day laborers. Every year they sent their money home to their families and then came back. But there was also permanent emigration to Tunisia, eastern Algeria, Libya, Egypt, the northeastern United States and California, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina. Between 1906 and 1910, about two million Italians settled in the United States. While this emigration helped alleviate population pressures, it resulted in a severe population loss. Giolitti attempted to counter this with renewed colonial expansion. In 1911, he ordered the occupation of Ottoman Libya. While Italian socialists opposed the colonial policy, intellectuals and writers such as Gabriele D'Annunzio and Giovanni Papini, the Futurists around Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, and the nationalists Enrico Corradini and Giuseppe Prezzolini supported it. All these artists and intellectuals were characterized by a strong nationalism and propagated the struggle of the "young proletarian and chosen Italian nation" against the "old democratic plutocratic nations." War was praised as a cleansing bath for humanity that had become decadent. In 1909, Marinetti called for a radical break with cultural traditions in his Futurist Manifesto. In 1910, after a congress of all nationalist groups, movements and parties, the Associazione Nazionalista Italiana was constituted, which advocated a colonial but also an expansion of Italy in Europe, with which social problems should be solved more quickly.

"Attempted" settlement with the opposition

The Giolitti government sought to win over the opposition through an inclusive social policy of small steps designed to convince workers that representation of their interests and social progress would be assured even under a liberal monarchy. In this context, the first labor standards were adopted to protect the working population (especially for children and women). Old-age, disability and accident insurance (was extended to all workers in industry) were extended. Prefects showed greater tolerance for strikes, provided they did not threaten public order, and Catholic and socialist cooperatives and unions were permitted. This openness to socialists developed into an important hallmark of the "Giolitti era." Giolitti was also convinced that only by raising workers' wages would living conditions improve in the long term.

For the success of a settlement with the Socialists, two conditions were needed: First, Giolitti wanted the Socialists to renounce their revolutionary program. As a second condition, he demanded that the privileges of the nobility be recognized, but that they also participate in the reforms. However, the internal division of the Socialist Party, divided into a maximalist revolutionary camp and a reformist camp around Turati, made it difficult for Giolitti to implement his program. His government was mostly dependent on the direction that prevailed among the Socialists. However, Giolitti was temporarily able to isolate the extremist forces of the left and the Socialists and to bind Turati's camp to himself without the latter being part of the government. As early as 1901, the Socialists had agreed to vote with the government on a case-by-case basis. However, in 1903 and 1911 his attempts to involve the Socialists in his government failed.

Giolitti also began to court the Catholic opposition, which had made progress in the 1904 elections. However, he considered a comprehensive understanding with the Catholics impossible, mainly because of Pope Pius X's cultural anti-modernism. The prime minister, however, saw most Catholics as loyal citizens of the state and offered them and the pope a say in Italian politics. Finally, in 1912/13, the pope softened the non expedit and the first Catholic political associations and parties emerged. Giolitti, however, declared that despite his attempts at reconciliation, he would adhere to the secular church policy practiced by Italian governments since 1870, which included the separation of church and state and religious freedom.

High phase of industrialization

Domestic political détente was facilitated by positive economic development. From 1895/96, the Industrial Revolution began in Italy, lasting until 1912/13 and reaching its peak under Giolitti. In 1897 the steelworks in Piombino were built, in 1898 those in Elba and in 1899 Giovanni Agnelli founded the Fiat works. In 1902, the ILVA Group built the first steel mill in the south of Italy, in Bagnoli near Naples, with state aid. The backwardness of the south remained a central problem for the state. Proposals for solutions to the so-called southern question, such as those made by Francesco Saverio Nitti, Gaetano Salvemini and Sidney Sonnino, were addressed, but the government confined itself to particular problem areas, such as Naples. In 1911, 55.4% of the Italian population worked in agriculture and 26.9% in industry.

In the financial sector, Giolitti was mainly concerned with increasing pensions and reorganizing the state budget. Both were carried out with great caution. The government secured the support of large corporations and banks. The criticism that the project mainly received came from the conservatives, although the majority of the public welcomed it and considered it of great symbolic value for a real and lasting consolidation of public finances. The state budget, which from 1900 had annual revenues of around 50 million lire, was to be further strengthened by the nationalization of the railroads. Meanwhile, much of public opinion was in favor of it. At the beginning of 1905, there were numerous labor unrest among railroad workers. Shortly thereafter, Giolitti resigned as prime minister in March 1905 due to illness. He proposed his party colleague Alessandro Fortis to the king as his successor. On March 28, Victor Emmanuel III appointed Fortis as the new prime minister, making him the first Jewish head of government in the world. With Law 137 of April 22, 1905, he sanctioned the nationalization of the railroads through a public hiring process under the control of the Court of Accounts and the supervision of the Ministries of Public Works and Finance. At the same time, telephone operations were nationalized. The Fortis government remained in office until early 1906, when it was followed by a short-lived government from February 8 to May 29 under Sidney Sonnino, who was also of the Jewish faith. Finally, Giolitti began his third term in office. In this he was mainly concerned with the economic situation of southern Italy, where, partly due to demographic and economic factors or natural disasters, such as the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 1906 and the earthquake and tsunami in Messina, Reggio Calabria and Palmi in 1908, there was a massive deterioration of the situation, with entire villages depopulated and centuries-old regional cultures disappearing. Nevertheless, there was a slight economic upturn in the south thereafter. The government, which had initially hindered migration bureaucratically and financially so as not to have to raise prices on the labor market, now gave its approval to encourage the emigration of hundreds of thousands of Italians from the south. Fear of increasing social pressure and possible effects on the now reliable monetary stability were decisive factors.

In 1906, the government lowered the national interest tax rate from 5% to 3.75%. This move relieved the state's required finances, reduced panic among the state's creditors, and encouraged the growth of heavy industry. The budget surplus that followed made it possible to finance major government employment programs, such as the completion of the Simplon Tunnel in 1906, which massively reduced unemployment. The Italian lira, which had been settled in gold, was also revalued internationally and at times was able to achieve a higher monetary value than the British pound sterling.

In addition to the now completed nationalization of the railroads, the planned nationalization of the insurance companies was initiated and the trade war with France, which had been going on since 1887, was brought to an end. In the process, Giolitti interrupted Crispi's pro-German foreign policy, thus enabling the export of fruit, vegetables and wine to France. He also boosted the cultivation of sugar beets and their processing on the Po Valley and encouraged heavy industry to gain a foothold in the south as well. The latter, however, showed little success. In 1908, some laws limiting working hours to 12 hours for women and children up to age 12 were passed with the support of Socialist deputies. Special laws for the disadvantaged regions of the South followed. However, their implementation mostly failed due to the resistance of the large landowners. Nevertheless, there was a marked improvement in the economic situation of small farmers.

Introduction of universal male suffrage

In the 1909 elections, Giolitti received a stable government majority. Nevertheless, it was not Giolitti who was appointed head of government, but the more conservative Sidney Sonnino. Sonnino's government failed after only three months, however, and was replaced by a cabinet led by Luigi Luzzatti, who leaned more toward Giolitti's liberal positions than those of his predecessor. Meanwhile, the political debate over extending suffrage to more segments of the population intensified. The Socialists, Radicals, and Republicans had long called for the introduction of universal male suffrage. The Luzzatti government developed a moderate proposal for this, which, under certain conditions (certain age, ability to read, ability to write, and annual payment of taxes), would allow a gradual expansion of the electoral base, but without the achievement of full equal suffrage for men. Giolitti, along with the opposition, opposed this proposal and declared his support for the introduction of universal male suffrage. This intention was intended to provoke the fall of the minister, herald a new political turn, and eventually bring about parliamentary cooperation with the Socialists.

The electoral law of 1912 finally introduced universal suffrage under Giolitti. This applied to all men over the age of 30 who had completed military service. The new electoral law increased the voting population from 3.3 million to 8.6 million (about 24 % of the total population at the time) and, contrary to Giolitti's calculations, destabilized the entire political environment for the time being. The old experienced small parties had problems integrating the new voters and were increasingly displaced by the new inexperienced but popular mass parties (including later the National Fascist Party). Giolitti, however, was convinced that Italy could not develop economically and socially without expanding the number of those who would participate in politics. The socialists Claudio Treves and Turati and Sonnino later also proposed extending the right to vote to women. For the time being, however, this was to affect only propertied women at the municipal level. Giolitti refused, however, on the grounds that too broad a voter base would be a "leap in the dark." Provisionally, a law was then drafted granting women the right to vote in local elections. However, its implementation was postponed indefinitely in view of the Italian-Turkish War and the fall of the government.

Giolitti's move strengthened the left in particular during these years. Concerned about preventing a leftist takeover, the prime minister agreed with the Catholics on the Gentiloni Pact, an agreement in which Catholic parties and organizations discreetly pledged support to Giolitti against the Socialists. In return, he pledged to oppose a repeal of traditional divorce laws, which was proposed by Zanardelli, to assure Catholics the same rights as his government partners, and to defend their remaining faith schools.

The fourth and last Giolitti government within the Giolitti era was formed on March 30, 1911, with the approval of the Catholics, and remained in office until March 21, 1914. During this cabinet, Giolitti again tried to involve the Socialists in his government policies, but this time with more success. He partially aligned his program with that of the Socialists. It included more political and social freedoms for the population and the nationalization of life insurance. This marked a central attack by the state into the private sector. In 1912, state social insurance was introduced.

The prime minister also enforced that parliamentarians should receive financial compensation for their work. Until then, this was only an honorary office, and the deputies were not allowed to pursue any side work. As a result, the poorer deputies were barely able to carry out their mandate. As a result of the reform, they too were now able to live off a parliamentary mandate.

The war in Libya

In foreign policy, Giolitti initially acted cautiously, which brought him criticism, especially from right-wing and nationalist circles. Already after the Austro-Hungarian annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908, they demanded that he occupy Ottoman Albania. However, he and his foreign minister, Tommaso Tittoni, focused on Libya and sought rapprochement with France, the Russian Empire, and Great Britain. In 1906, at the Algeciras Conference, Italy supported France's efforts to annex Morocco. In 1909, a secret agreement was reached with Russia.

After France militarily occupied Morocco in April 1911, Italy began planning military operations against Ottoman Libya. Urged on by a wave of chauvinism and nationalism that emerged in the summer of 1911, carried mainly by the bourgeoisie and industry, Giolitti ordered an attack on the Ottoman Empire while Parliament was still in summer recess. On September 29, 1911, King Victor Emmanuel III signed the declaration of war and ordered the Royal Italian Army to conquer the Ottoman provinces of Tripolitania, Cyrenaica and Fessan in North Africa.

Italy cited the poor treatment of Italian citizens in Tripoli as the reason for the war. On September 27, 1911, it had issued an ultimatum to the Ottoman Empire to cede Libya to Italy within 48 hours. The other great powers, France and Great Britain, pledged their support to Italy. The war finally began on September 29, 1911, and ended on October 18, 1912, in which Italy used its most modern weapons, including airships, which were used for military purposes for the first time in history, area bombardments, the dropping of aerial bombs, reconnaissance flights, and its modern fleet of ships and artillery. The war thus formed a model for the First World War.

At the beginning of the war, the Italian fleet sank a number of Ottoman warships in the Adriatic Sea and opened fire on Tripoli from the sea on September 30. The poorly armed Ottomans could not withstand the onslaught of the numerically superior attackers. The city was taken by Italian troops on October 5, while the remaining Ottoman soldiers retreated inland. A Turkish offensive against the Italians in October 1911 also failed. Reinforcements failed to arrive because Britain refused to allow Ottoman troops to pass through Egypt. Initially, the local population did not support the Ottoman army. However, Enver Pasha and Mustafa Kemal Ataturk were able to mobilize parts of the Arab population against the Christian occupiers. The Italians entrenched themselves along the coast and were slow to penetrate inland because of the opposition. By 1912, the 100,000 Italians were facing 25,000 Ottoman soldiers. Italy then deployed its superior fleet and conquered the Dodecanese in 1912. The Ottoman forts in Beirut and on the Dardanelles came under fire, and in Yemen massive support was given to the insurgents there against the Ottomans.

At the peace negotiations in Lausanne on October 18, 1912, the Ottoman Empire had to cede Tripoli, the provinces of Tripolitania, Cyrenaica and Fessan in the Peace of Ouchy. Italy later combined these into its colony of Italian North Africa. As compensation to the Ottomans, Italy was originally supposed to cede the occupied Dodecanese back to the Ottoman Empire, but Italy did not comply and with the Treaty of Lausanne of 1923, the archipelago was also granted to Italy under international law. A total of 20,000 soldiers were killed in the war, of which about 1,500 were Italian and 18,500 Ottoman soldiers and Arab fighters. The war further weakened the Ottoman Empire, encouraging the newly formed Balkan League in its plan to expel the Ottomans from the remaining territories in the Balkans.

The so-called Libyan War (Italian: Guerra di Libia) was intended to strengthen Giolitti's integration policy, but it failed to achieve this goal. Instead, nearly half a million men had to be called to arms, and the cost of the war exceeded the government's calculations. It also created a climate of militant mobilization that gave rise to Italian radical nationalism, whose adherents sought the conquest of Dalmatia and Greece. The conflict also destabilized the already fragile political balance: the Socialist Party split and the radical wing around the journalist Benito Mussolini prevailed. Cooperation between the reformists and Giolitti came to an abrupt end.

The elections of October 26, 1913, reduced Giolitti's governing majority from 370 to 307 seats. The Socialists, once again in opposition, doubled their mandate, gaining 52 seats. The Right also received an excellent result, increasing its mandate from 51 to 73 seats.

Giolitti's reduced government majority consisted mainly of right-wing liberal ministers who made pacts with the nationalists. Thus, the prime minister increasingly isolated himself. He achieved a final success on March 4, 1914, when Parliament granted him the necessary financial resources to promote the economic development of the new colony in North Africa. Weakened, Giolitti resigned on March 21, 1914, and proposed Antonio Salandra to the king as his successor.

World War I

Italy's participation in World War I (also called the "Fourth War of Independence") began on May 24, 1915, about ten months after the conflict began, during which the country underwent major political and economic changes. It came to the end of Giolitti's policy of reform and integration and the establishment of an imperialist and expansionist foreign policy and a nationalist domestic policy focused only on the war economy. Italy's domestic problems receded into the background for the time being, and in 1917 the right-wing and left-wing war supporters in Parliament joined together to form a unified bloc (Fascio parlamentare di difesa), which had a majority in both chambers with two-thirds of the deputies. During the war, Italy had three governments. Antonio Salandra led the country into war in 1915 and, after failing to achieve success, was forced to resign on June 18, 1916. He was followed by Paolo Boselli, who held office only briefly until October 29, 1917, and Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, who took office on October 30, 1917, and remained head of government through the war until his resignation on June 23, 1919.

The Kingdom of Italy remained the only major European power to remain neutral at the start of hostilities, and in parallel began negotiations for territorial compensation with the two opposing sides of the Triple Entente and the Central Powers. During this long period of negotiations, the public played an important role in deciding whether to enter the war and on which side. The masses divided into the interventionists (ital. interventisti) and neutralists (ital. neutralisti). At the conclusion of the negotiations, the Kingdom of Italy left the Triple Alliance and declared war on Austria-Hungary on May 23, 1915. The war was fought in the Eastern Alps, from the Swiss border to what is now Slovenia to the shores of the Adriatic Sea. In parallel, Italy took part in the fighting in the Balkans, in the Middle East and North Africa, and in East Africa. The war demanded unprecedented efforts from Italy; huge masses of people were mobilized both at home and at the front, where soldiers had to adapt to hard life in the trenches, material deprivation and the constant threat of death. The fighting imposed enormous collective psychological consequences on those affected and hardly allowed for reintegration into society.

After a long series of inconclusive battles, in October/November 1917 there was an unexpected victory of Austro-Hungarian and German troops in the Battle of Caporetto, which pushed the Italians to the banks of the Piave River, where the Italian resistance then consolidated. The decisive counter-offensive in Vittorio Veneto led to the armistice of Villa Giusti on November 3, 1918 and the end of hostilities.

The end of the war, with the signing of the final peace treaties, in which Italy had to give up important territories - it received neither Dalmatia nor Albania, and also left empty-handed the former German colonies, which France and Great Britain only divided among themselves - triggered unrest among the population and a great dissatisfaction with the new peace order.

Prelude to war, international dilemma

On March 21, 1914, Antonio Salandra was appointed the new prime minister. He had already held several ministerial posts under previous governments and belonged to the right wing of the Liberal Union (Ital. Unione Liberale) party, founded in 1913. Because of his inexperience in foreign policy, he kept Giolitti's foreign minister, Antonino Paternò-Castello, a confidant of King Victor Emmanuel III and an experienced foreign policy expert, in office. In its first months, the Salandra government had to contend with a rapidly growing revolutionary left. Salandra therefore also took over the Ministry of the Interior. In Emilia-Romagna, the "Red Week" (Italian: Settimana rossa) in June 1914 saw an uprising of peasants and workers reminiscent of the violent riots of 1898. Salandra reacted with harshness and at the same time tried to maintain Giolitti's balancing course against the Socialists and Catholics. Salandra's position was strengthened with the defeat of the Socialists in the municipal elections of June and July 1914.

In the run-up to World War I, the Kingdom of Italy faced a number of short-term and long-term problems in choosing its alliance partners and territorial goals. Italy's recent success in the Libyan War renewed tensions with its Triple Alliance partners of the German Empire and Austria-Hungary because both countries had sought closer relations with the Ottoman Empire. But Italy's relations with France and Britain also remained strained, despite its unofficial support in the Libyan War. France still felt "betrayed" over Italy's support of Prussia in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, and relations remained strained because of the two countries' rivalry in the Mediterranean. British-Italian relations were also affected because Italy demanded that Britain recognize its great power position and its interests in North and East Africa. At the same time, the conflict between Italy and the Kingdom of Greece intensified when Italy annexed the Greek-populated Dodecanese Islands. Italian nationalists still demanded the annexation of other Greek islands such as those of Crete or the Ionian Islands, where a small Italian minority lived. From 1898 to 1913, the Cretan state existed as an Italian-British-French-Russian protectorate, with Italy as the riparian state holding a political and economic monopoly position among the four powers. Italy and Greece were also in open competition over the desire to militarily occupy the fledgling principality of Albania, whose independence and unity Italy had guaranteed at the London Ambassadors' Conference (1912-1913). King Victor Emmanuel III himself was worried about possible colonial adventures and instead pushed for the annexation of the Italian-populated territories from Austria-Hungary (so-called "completion of the Risorgimento").

After the Sarajevo assassination on July 28, 1914, Foreign Minister Antonino Paternò-Castello declared on July 8, protected on Articles 1, 3, 4, and 7, that no alliance obligations existed for Italy in the event of an Austro-Hungarian attack on Serbia.

The Triple Alliance had last been renewed on December 5, 1912, with the addition of a special protocol on the Balkans. In this context, Austria-Hungary had already prepared a military operation against the Kingdom of Serbia in 1913, which, however, was rejected by Italy's opposition and further deteriorated relations with both monarchies. Also during the July crisis, Austro-Hungarian diplomacy failed to inform Italy sufficiently about its actions. It was not until July 22, 1914, that Austro-Hungarian Ambassador Kajetan Mérey met with Paternò-Castello at the Foreign Ministry in Rome. On July 24, the German Hans von Flotow presented the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum to Serbia to Prime Minister Antonio Salandra and Paternò-Castello. Again, the government in Vienna had not informed Rome in order to avoid the predictable negative reactions, and in an effort to prevent any form of formal protest or transmission to Serbia. Serbia rejected the document, and the start of World War I followed on July 28 with Austria-Hungary's declaration of war. Italy held back for the time being and did not yet proclaim its neutrality.

On July 3, 1914, the Chief of Staff of the Royal Italian Army, General Alberto Pollio, presented his report on the state of the army. In it, he called for an increase in personnel to keep up with the other major powers. He cited the many technical deficiencies that plagued the armed forces, including poor training of troops and lack of preparation for war. General Pollio's report was submitted to the Minister of War, Domenico Grandi, who requested a 400 million lire budget for the army. His successor, Vittorio Italico Zupelli, and General Carlo Porro, who was to succeed Pollio, made this funding a necessary condition for entering the war. Salandra's offer of 190 million did not go far enough for them. Only General Count Luigi Cadorna was willing to compromise and was appointed the new Chief of Staff. Luigi Cadorna promoted the proclamation of neutrality at the outbreak of hostilities, seeing it as an opportunity to reorganize and modernize the army. In September 1914, Cardona assured the government that he could raise a force of four armies in the spring of 1915, with 14 corps, 35 infantry and four cavalry divisions.

Cadorna consolidated the preparation of a military strike against Austria-Hungary, which his predecessor had already begun, and adapted it to the standards of the time. His "Summary of a Possible Offensive Toward the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy During the Present European Conflagration," submitted to the government on August 21, 1914 (Ital. Memoria riassuntiva circa un eventuale azione offensiva verso la Monarchia austro-ungarica durante l'attuale conflagrazione europea) envisaged immediate mobilization, full and rapid use of all railroads, an offensive toward the open border to Gorizia and Trieste, but defensive tactics in Trentino. Studies made since August 1914 on the question of mobilization of the army predicted that the shift of the army to the border would take at least a month and would be so conspicuous that the enemy would not be surprised and could initiate countermeasures. This fact led to the adoption of a new mobilization system defined as red mobilization (ital. mobilitazione rossa). This envisaged calling each person individually to arms rather than the public.

In order to upgrade the striking power of the army, the production of weapons was massively increased. New larger artillery pieces were developed, such as the 75/27 mod. 1911 gun, which resembled the French Canon de 75 mm modèle 1897, production of the Italian model of the German 15-cm heavy Feldhaubitze 13 was boosted, and a light measurement squad was established. The railroad network was once again massively expanded for high mobility, which should make a war of movement possible. It finally succeeded in eliminating many deficiencies within the army during the 10 months of Italian neutrality (see below) and considerably increased its combat power. By July 1915, the Royal Army had mobilized 31,000 officers, 1,250,000 soldiers, and 216,000 civilians serving in the army. In the meantime, the fighting strength of the Austro-Hungarian troops had been reduced by the heavy losses on the Eastern Front and in the Balkans.

Italian neutrality

The official and final decision on Italian neutrality was adopted by the Council of Ministers on August 2, 1914. Prime Minister Antonio Salandra declared: Italy was in a state of peace with all the powers involved in the war and the Royal Italian Government, the authorities and citizens were obliged to observe neutrality according to the laws in force and according to the principles of international law.

Neutrality was initially maintained unanimously, but the stalemate in the German offensive on the Marne in September 1914 led to a discussion of alleged German invincibility. Interventionist movements began to form and gradually gain influence in the fall of 1914. As early as August 1914, Foreign Minister Paternò-Castello had called for entry into the war. They considered the geopolitical situation favorable and called for entry into the war on the side of the Triple Entente. Intervention on the side of the Entente was demanded by the Nationalists, parts of the Republicans and the Radical Left, the reformist Socialists, anarcho-syndicalists, and gradually also the conservative and liberal Right, which had long adhered to the Triple Alliance. The left-wing liberals around their leader Giovanni Giolitti, many Catholic believers, and the socialists were the main ones who opposed the entry into the war. The majority of the population and parties opposed the war. The liberal supporters of intervention were strongly influenced by the ideals of democracy and propagated the fight against autocratic monarchies and the liberation from Trento and Trieste. The nationalists spoke of new possessions in Dalmatia, dominion over the Adriatic, a protectorate over Albania, and colonial compensations in Africa. All groups pointed to a possible loss of Italy's great power position if it remained a passive spectator. Also, the war was to avenge all Italian defeats of the past from the Battle of Custozza and Naval Battle of Lissa in 1866 against Austria to Adua against Ethiopia in 1896 and to conclude its settlement with the annexation of unredeemed territories. The neutralists argued that Italy was still a "young and fragile nation" and that the state finances were shattered by the war in Libya and that entering the war would entail unforeseeable risks. Despite their majority, the neutralists gradually lost influence in parliament and in the government. On May 20, 1915, for example, the majority of Socialists voted against the party leadership, one of four major groups that wanted to preserve neutrality, in favor of the government's war credits. The reason for this was the shift in public opinion that had taken place in the last 10 months from August 1914 to May 1915. The interventionists dominated the media, which could mobilize the masses. The neutralists had on their side the state organs and political institutions, which, however, remained passive. The interventionists organized so-called journalistic debates, where the press verbally promoted entry into the war, filling entire theaters, halls and conference rooms with crowds. There was also the creation of numerous new newspapers and magazines that promoted entry into the war. The neutralists lacked such an organization. The Socialists, Catholics and Giolitti failed to organize joint projects and meeting places, while the interventionist bid acted as a unified bloc.

Another decisive factor in the victory of the interventionists was the internal indecision of the two strongest Neutra currents, the Socialists and the Liberals. The former acted most vehemently against the war, but within the party there was a kind of "diaspora" whose members secretly supported the interventionists. Characteristic in this respect was the activity of the Austro-Hungarian Socialist deputy Cesare Battisti, who fled to Italy in 1914 and campaigned throughout Italy for entry into the war in order to annex Trento to Italy, arguing that socialism could not ignore national roots and identity. Another example was Benito Mussolini, who campaigned for war in 1914 and was subsequently expelled from the Socialist Party, but could count on the support of the Milan wing of the party. On November 10, 1914, Mussolini declared dead the old anti-patriotism course of the Socialists, and five days later the first issue of his new newspaper Il Popolo d'Italia (People of Italy) appeared, where he repeatedly promoted entry into the war. These positions contributed to a major change of direction for the Socialists, even though some members had other goals and many saw the war as the only way to fundamentally change Italian politics and politics in Europe. This "democratic or revolutionary interventionism" also aimed to trigger a social revolution. Thus, the syndicalist Filippo Corridoni wrote on December 5, 1914, that a social revolution would be prepared with the war and that the last remnants of feudal rule would thus be eliminated.

Prime Minister Salandra took advantage of the strong public pressure on Parliament and the internal dissension of the neutralists. Initially, he pursued a domestic and foreign policy similar to that of Giolitti. He based his government on a broad majority and appointed politicians from almost all camps as ministers. The only minister he took over from Giolitti, however, was Foreign Minister Paternò-Castello. But in parallel, Salandra had the ambition to bind the left wing of the Liberal Union around Giolitti to himself and to initially isolate and eliminate the latter as a competitor. This attempted and ultimately successful shift in the balance was evident with the appointment of Sidney Sonnino as Foreign Minister, who belonged to the left wing of the Conservatives and succeeded the late Paternò-Castello in November 1914. Sonnino argued only for neutrality in return for territorial compensation, as he expected from Austria-Hungary. Sonnino eventually entered into a series of secret negotiations with the Entente, which gave Italy major territorial concessions. On April 26, 1915, the negotiations with the Entente were concluded and the Secret Treaty of London was signed, by which Italy undertook to enter the war within a month. On May 3, 1915, the Triple Alliance was denounced by Italy.

While politicians spent the months of neutrality calculating the strengths and chances of the country's entry into the war, intellectuals increasingly played an important role in the decision to enter the war. Many idealized the situation and sought new territorial gains and political hegemony in the Mediterranean for Italy. In this regard, the intellectuals distinguished themselves into "reformers" and "revolutionaries" (the latter meaning to continue the "revolution of the fathers"). The reformers called for the collapse of the old monarchies and the unification of the "free peoples of Europe." The spokesman for this group was Gaetano Salvemini, a critic of Giolitti, who saw war as the only way to defeat the old anachronistic monarchies of Germany and Austria-Hungary. The idealist Benedetto Croce, writing through his cultural journal La Critica, praised Italy's liberal system and called for entry into the war against the Central Powers because of the values of progress and freedom. Renato Serra and Giovanni Gentile, on the other hand, praised the aesthetics of blood and violence in La Critica. The later fascist ideologue Alfredo Rocco proclaimed proletarian nationalism, which was to use the war not only a foreign policy of territorial expansion, but also in a strategic perspective to recompose the social classes into a broad social and political bloc. This idea was taken up and adopted by many similarly thinking nationalist intellectuals such as Enrico Corradini, Francis Coppola, Luigi Federzoni, Maffeo Pantaleoni and Gabriele D'Annunzio.

"Bright May" and the entry into the war in 1915

The denunciation of the Triple Alliance caused an unexpectedly strong echo in Italy in May 1915. These days were called Radiant May (ital. maggio radioso). Demonstrations and strikes for or against the war occurred throughout the country. The strong public mobilization led to street fighting and civil war-like conditions.

One day after the denunciation of the Triple Alliance, a large demonstration took place in Genoa on May 5, 1915, on the occasion of the 65th anniversary of Garibaldi's Thousand Train. About 20,000 people participated in this demonstration. Gabriele D'Annunzio appeared as a speaker. He preached the sanctity of the Italian nation, idealized heroism, and again called for Italy to enter the war.

The speech and the demonstration triggered a government crisis. On May 9, Giolitti traveled to Rome and, supported by a joint pledge by the German and Austro-Hungarian governments for further territorial cessions, again advocated neutrality in the Chamber of Deputies. In doing so, he contradicted the Salandra government and the king. Giolitti and his supporters prepared a vote of no confidence against the government. However, this failed because of the Socialists. However, to prevent Giolitti from taking power again, the interventionists organized pro-war demonstrations and protests throughout the country, with the help of the major newspapers and intellectuals, especially D'Annunzio. With this increased pressure from the streets, Parliament was effectively disempowered and deprived of its representative function. The government and Salandra finally resigned on May 13 as a result of these tensions. Victor Emmanuel III did not accept Salandra's resignation and instead reaffirmed his support for her course.

On May 20, 1915, Parliament issued powers to the government with regard to the war. Until then, no Italian government had had so much power. This was followed by demonstrations for neutrality in Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna, which ended in violent clashes, and in Turin, where the neutralists organized a general strike against the war. For the most part, however, interventionist demonstrations were more numerous and more evenly distributed throughout the peninsula, including southern Italy, where the population had remained largely passive until then. In May, demonstrations of several thousand people in favor of the war occurred in the cities of Parma, Padua, Venice, Genoa, Milan, Catania, Palermo, and Rome. The center of the demonstrations was Rome, where the situation was particularly tense.

Pushed by the strong interventionist agitation of Mussolini and D'Annunzio and the nationalist campaigns and demonstrations, fearing a conflict between the Crown and Parliament and the consequences for foreign relations, the neutralists in Parliament gave in. Giolliti left Rome, and on May 20, Parliament ratified the decision to intervene and provided the necessary financial resources. The nationwide general mobilization followed. On May 23, the declaration of war was presented to Austria-Hungary. On May 24, Italy officially entered the Great War. It declared war on the Ottoman Empire on August 21, 1915, and on the Tsardom of Bulgaria on October 19. Italy initially maintained its diplomatic relations with Germany, with which the Salandra government hoped not to break completely.

The enforcement of the entry into war constituted a violation of the rules of the parliamentary system as it had prevailed since 1878. Although the king had a great deal of power in foreign and military policy under the constitution, until that time, within the democratic parliamentary tradition, governments alone had declared wars with the approval of parliament. This case occurred again in 1922, when Victor Emmanuel III appointed Benito Mussolini as prime minister without parliamentary support.

Italy's war effort

At the beginning of its military campaign against Austria-Hungary, Italy initially saw itself at an advantage: Austria-Hungary's army had to fight a two-front war against Serbia and Russia, and the Royal Italian Army was numerically far superior to the enemy. However, this advantage was not fully exploited because Italian military commander Luigi Cadorna insisted on a dangerous frontal attack against Austria-Hungary in order to march across the Slovenian plateau and occupy Ljubljana, from where it would have been easy to occupy the Austro-Hungarian imperial capital of Vienna. Only after eleven offensives had failed with enormous loss of life and materiel did the Italian campaign to take Vienna collapse. For the Italian troops, the geographical situation was also a difficulty, as the border with Austria-Hungary ran through mountainous terrain. The border was 650 km long and stretched from the Swiss border over the Stelvio Pass to the Adriatic Sea.

The fighting between Italy and Austria-Hungary began with the first shots fired at the enemy positions in the municipality of Cervignano del Friuli on May 24, 1915, which was captured by Italian troops the same day. On the same day, in a surprise attack, the Austro-Hungarian fleet bombarded the towns of Manfredonia and Ancona. In the naval battles between the Royal Italian Army and the Austro-Hungarian Navy in the Adriatic, Italy initially remained defensive. In most engagements, Italy's warships proved outmatched or stalemated the Austro-Hungarian fleet due to lack of organization and coordination. The French Navy and the British Royal Navy did not dispatch the Entente allies to the Adriatic. Their respective governments considered the Adriatic far too dangerous due to the concentration of the Austro-Hungarian fleet.

In the first months of the war, Italy launched the following offensives:

• First Battle of the Isonzo (23 June-7 July 1915)
• Second Battle of the Isonzo (18 July-4 August 1915)
• Third Battle of the Isonzo (18 October-4 November 1915)
• Fourth Battle of the Isonzo (November 10, 1915)

In these first four battles, the Italian army suffered 60,000 casualties and more than 150,000 wounded, or about a quarter of the forces mobilized at the time. By May 1915, Italian forces numbered 400,000 and outnumbered the Austrians and Germans by a factor of four. However, the Austrian defense, despite being undermanned, remained strong and was able to hold all four Italian offensives. Fighting with the Austro-Hungarian army along the foothills of the Alps developed into trench warfare with little progress soon after the war began. Fighting took place at altitudes above 3,000 meters. The Italian army suffered from a severe shortage of ammunition, because of which offensives were usually abandoned. In the first year of the war, these poor conditions on the battlefield and an outbreak of cholera led to a large number of casualties on the Italian side. Despite these serious problems, Cadorna forbade a troop withdrawal for prestige reasons.

In its African colonies, the situation was critical for Italy. Italian Somaliland in East Africa was not pacified and was threatened by the rebellion of Somali Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah Hassan. In Libya in North Africa, the Italian military presence was limited to a few separate cities and points on the coast. In the provinces of Tripolitania and Fessan, the Italian army initially went on the offensive. In August 1914, while still in neutrality, Italian forces advanced deep into the Libyan hinterland as far as Ghat. This advance was completed in April 1915. By August 1915, the Italians had been pushed back to the Libyan coast by the indigenous Sanūsīya tribal leaders. This situation continued until 1922/23. Only then was the conquest of all of Libya resumed.

Morale among Italian soldiers was low since the beginning of the war. They were forced to lead a boring life, so they were forbidden to visit theaters or bars, even during their leave. However, before a battle they were allowed to drink alcohol to reduce tension before the battle. To keep morale up, the Italian military leadership had propaganda lectures given about the importance of the war for Italy and the extensive territorial gains promised. Some of these lectures were also given by popular nationalist war advocates such as Gabriele D'Annunzio. D'Annunzio himself fought in naval and air force ranks during the war and undertook a number of propaganda-enhanced ventures including flying over Vienna at the end of the war. Benito Mussolini was banned from lecturing by the government, probably because of his revolutionary socialist past.

In the fall of 1915, the Italian government was confronted with the increasingly passive attitude of the Serbian army. The Kingdom of Serbia had not launched a serious offensive against Austria-Hungary for several months. Salandra blamed the Serbian military for turning the Austrians' armies against Italy. Cadorna accused Serbia of secretly negotiating with Austria for Serbian entry into the war and addressed this to Secretary of State Sidney Sonnino, who claimed that Serbia was an "unreliable ally." Relations between the two allies cooled to such an extent that the Entente members abandoned their idea of forming a united Balkan front against Austria-Hungary. In negotiations over territory, Sonnino conceded Bosnia and Herzegovina to Serbia but refused to negotiate over Dalmatia, which was disputed between Serbian and Italian nationalists. When Serbia was overrun and occupied by the Central Powers in a campaign in October 1915, Cadorna proposed sending 60,000 men to Thessaloniki to support the Serbs, who now had their headquarters in exile in the city. The Serbs, however, feared an Italian fixation in the Principality of Albania, which was also claimed by Serbia, and rejected the proposal. Italian troops, however, played an important role in defending it against Austria-Hungary. From 1916, the Italian 35th Division fought on the Saloniki front as part of the Allied Army of the Orient. The Italian XVI Corps (a unit independent of the Army of the Orient) took part in actions against Austro-Hungarian forces in Albania. In 1917, an Italian protectorate was established over Albania and it was not until 1920 that Italian troops withdrew.

In 1916, the situation for Italy deteriorated dramatically. The stalemate dragged on for the entire year of 1916. In May, Austria-Hungary, in its South Tyrol offensive, succeeded in recapturing the outlying areas of Trentino that Italy had conquered. On March 11, 1916, Cadorna launched the Fifth Battle of the Isonzo. This attempt was also fruitless. In June, an Austro-Hungarian punitive expedition managed to occupy the Asiago plateau. However, the Italian army managed to stop the offensive and force the enemy to retreat to the Carso countryside. On August 4, the Sixth Battle of the Isonzo began, which five days after its start led to the Italian conquest of the County of Gorizia, at the cost of 20,000 dead and 50,000 wounded. The year ended with three new offensives:

• Seventh Battle of the Isonzo (14-16 September 1916)
• Eighth Battle of the Isonzo (November 1, 1916)
• Ninth Battle of the Isonzo (November 4, 1916)

The price was another 37,000 dead and 88,000 wounded on the Italian side, without any remarkable conquest. At the end of 1916, the Italian army advanced for a few kilometers into Trentino, while the situation on the Isonzo front remained stable throughout the winter of 1916/17.

The Italian military leadership also faced an increasing shortage of warships with the war year 1916, whose inventory was diminishing due to increased attacks by U-boats, and had to contend with steadily rising freight costs for imported food, raw materials and military equipment. To finance these costs, the government imposed tax increases and austerity measures in other areas. After minor successes by Austro-Hungarian and German forces in northern Italian territory, Chief of Staff General Cadorna finally adopted a more defensive approach beginning in November 1916. In 1917, France, Great Britain, and the United States, which had entered the war, offered Italy troop units for support in organizing a new offensive against the Central Powers. However, the Italian government under Prime Minister Paolo Boselli, whom Salandra had succeeded in June 1916, declined, seeing in it a loss of Italy's great power position. Instead, to safeguard its interests in the Middle East, Italy sent smaller contingents of troops to the Palestine front to support the British in their fight against the Ottomans. Italy eventually became a party to the Sykes-Picot Agreement for the partition of the Ottoman Empire. Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Sonnino promoted isolationism as a valiant alternative. Italy also pursued this strategy with regard to the entry of the Kingdom of Greece into the war in 1917, which could have relieved Italy and the other Allies in the fight against Bulgaria, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. Italy wanted to prevent this in order to have a free hand in the occupation of Albania, which Greece also claimed. In Greece, however, the Venetian direction under Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos prevailed, which made no claims on Albania.

The war turned for Italy after the collapse of the RussianEmpire with the February Revolution of 1917, followed in October by the October Revolution and the seizure of power by the communist Bolsheviks under Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. The new Russian government halted hostilities on the Eastern Front and concluded the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty in 1918. The resulting marginalization of the Eastern Front allowed the withdrawal of Austro-Hungarian and German troops and permitted the redeployment of new troop units to the front against Italy. Internal dissent against the war grew increasingly as economic and social conditions worsened due to the strain of the war. Many pacifists and internationalist socialists advocated peace negotiations with workers in the German Empire and Austria-Hungary and a communist revolution beginning in 1917. Protests broke out in Turin in August 1917. In Milan, an uprising organized by communist revolutionaries occurred in May 1917, which the Italian army had to put down with tanks and machine guns by May 23, 1917.

On May 12, 1917, Italy launched the tenth Battle of the Isonzo. The goal of the Italian offensive was again the breakthrough to Trieste. However, the Battle of Monte Ortigara (June 10-25) constituted Cadorna's attempt to conquer some new territories in Trentino as well. Terrain gains failed to materialize, however, and Italy succeeded only briefly in capturing the village of Doberdò del Lago. On August 18, 1917, the most important Italian offensive began, the Eleventh Battle of the Isonzo. The Royal Italian Army had raised the largest force so far and made some important advances, such as the conquest of the now Slovenian Banjšice plateau southeast of Tolmino. However, the offensive had to be abandoned due to supply shortages. The attack was completely abandoned on September 12, 1917. Instead, the Austrians and Germans, who had previously been pressed, went on the offensive. On October 24, 1917, Central Powers troops broke through the Italian lines in the upper Isonzo at Caporetto and advanced to the Piave River. The 2nd Italian Army was effectively routed. Although the Italian army commanders had been informed of a probable enemy attack, they had underestimated it and did not realize the danger caused by the infiltration tactics developed by the Germans. The defeat of Caporetto led to the disintegration of the entire Italian front on the Isonzo. In total, Italy suffered 700,000 dead, wounded and prisoners. Cadorna, who had tried to attribute the causes of the disasters to low combat morale and cowardice on the part of the troops, was removed as chief of staff and replaced by Armando Diaz on November 8, 1917. Prime Minister Paolo Boselli resigned on October 29, 1917, and was replaced on October 30 by his Minister of the Interior, Vittorio Emanuele Orlando. Orlando abandoned the previous isolationist approach to the war and advocated increased coordination with the Allies. France, Britain, and the United States then sent troops to support Italy. In November, Italy managed to repel another German-Austrian advance in the First Battle of Piave.

From the spring of 1918, some Italian divisions were detached to support the Entente on the Western Front. Their most important engagement on this front was their role in the Second Battle of the Marne.

The Italians were able to resist the renewed offensive of the Central Powers during the Second Battle of the Piave River in June 1918. The failure of the offensive marked a turning point on the Italian front. The Central Powers eventually proved unable to sustain the war effort on the Italian front, while Austria-Hungary's multi-ethnic units were on the verge of rebellion. The Italians scheduled their planned 1919 counteroffensive for October 1918 to take advantage of the Austro-Hungarian crisis. The Italian attack, supported by a small contingent of French, British, Czechoslovak, and U.S. troops, began at Vittorio Veneto on October 24. Fighting lasted for four days, but then the Italians managed to cross the Piave River and establish a bridgehead. On October 29, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which was in the process of dissolution, requested an armistice. The armistice was signed on November 3 at Villa Giusti near Padua.

Inner development

After Italy entered the conflict, Parliament granted the government powers that made it de facto independent of the control of the Italian Court of Accounts and Parliament. There was a growing autonomy of the bureaucracy and the introduction of strict censorship ofthe press and regular police checks. The only institution that enjoyed autonomy from the government was the military organization, where Cadorna was given unlimited powers. In view of the war effort, new ministries and bodies were created, such as the Secretariat of State for Armament and Ammunition (from 1917 its own ministry), the Ministries of Maritime and Rail Transport, Purchasing and Consumption, Support and War Pensions, and a series of secretariats with the participation of the industrial sector. However, these new structures proved ineffective because of their overlapping responsibilities, and rivalries among the ministries arose. Neither the Salandra nor the Boselli governments succeeded in getting these problems under control. It was not until the Orlando government that there was rationalization and a clear distribution of responsibilities. However, the number of employees in the public administration continued to rise. Between 1915 and 1921, the number of public sector employees rose from 339,000 to 519,000, including railroad workers, police, and financial police. The Ministry of Industry under Giannetto Cavasola formed seven (later 11) regional committees to coordinate arms and munitions production. Military officials, civil servants, and industrialists entered into increased cooperation. Although the Italian Navy already had a long history of cooperation with the private sector, the Army and the fledgling Air Force, both of which had lower material requirements, could not rely on the private sector. It was not until the outbreak of war that a turning point occurred. The newly created committees procured for the companies the materials and raw materials they needed in Italy and abroad, assisted in the conclusion of contracts, and coordinated labor management (schedules, wages, security, vocational training, support, and social security). The number of industrial plants involved increased from 125 plants with 115,000 workers a year to 1976 plants with more than 900,000 workers in 1918, which were located mainly in Lombardy, Piedmont, Liguria, and the Naples area and included both large and small factories supplying all types of weapons to the army and navy.

The increased consumption of resources led to the depletion of the resource reserves that had been saved by Italy during the years of peace, so that the war effort could only continue at the expense of the living standards of the civilian population. The situation of the population deteriorated markedly in the second half of 1916, almost simultaneously in all countries involved in the conflict. As the war wore on, the lack of food imports and agricultural labor had a negative impact on the population's supply situation. The result was considerable price increases and supply shortages. It was only possible to cope with this inadequately through farming measures. The soldiers' bread rations were reduced from 750 to 600 grams a day by the summer of 1916, while it was now impossible for the citizens to obtain things like coffee, cocoa, sugar, or grain. In order to reduce specific fuel consumption, certain foods were not sold on certain days. Meat, for example, was not available on Thursday and Friday, and sweets on three consecutive days during the week. To reduce paper consumption, newspapers had to cut their content to four or two pages. However, the reduction of coal imports, which were increasingly a financial burden, had a threatening effect and consequences. If the imports of this fuel were in the immediate about one million tons per month, they fell to 720,000 tons in the second half of 1916 and remained to only 420,000 tons in the whole year 1917. The Ministry of Industry and Transport reached an agreement with Great Britain, which established a maximum price of 29 to 30 shillings per ton of coal, while the freight rates were set at 59 shillings and 6 pence per ton. This maximum price of freight rates was due to the lack of ships and the high security costs to protect the ships from enemy attacks. When the Central Powers unleashed unrestricted submarine warfare in February 1917, insurance premiums to cover the resulting risks were added to freight costs. Many ships could not bear these high costs and remained in their ports. The difficulty of making up for the shortage of coal posed a major challenge to the population and industry. The Italian government looked for alternatives. Eventually, entire mountains were deforested, gas supplies to cities were reduced, and many trains were canceled because some 25,000 rail cars were needed to transport coal from France to Italy.

Between 1916 and 1917, these circumstances led to many riots against the war. In Turin, protests from August 21 to 25, 1917, against the lack of bread led to 37 deaths. In the surrounding area and in other provinces, the events led to hundreds of other demonstrations, with the active participation of women. Between January and March 1916, women demonstrated against the war in Florence. The General Directorate of Public Safety estimated that in the four and a half months from December 1, 1916, to April 15, 1917, there were about 500 demonstrations attended by tens of thousands of women. The protests were mostly organized by rural women in the cities. The peasant social classes included farmers, tenant farmers, and a large number of workers and totaled about ten million people whose economic conditions and legal status varied widely. The changes due to the conflict led to a labor shortage but to rising real incomes, so that the economic gap between landowners and peasants narrowed. But the great concern of the Italian peasants was the absence of the millions of men who now mostly served in the army. The government instead forced the remaining members of the families to work to make up for the shortage of skilled labor. This also increasingly affected industry, which employed several million people in its factories. For this reason, the majority of the workers were young people from the age of 15, who were not yet of military age, and women. Work in the factories had to be done under heavy disciplinary measures and sometimes even under military drill, while in the other countries the factory discipline of the pre-war period was maintained without militarization. Although wages rose here as well, money devalued as inflation increased. The government printed paper money to cope with the costs of war. Nevertheless, despite labor shortages, the war years meant prosperity and increased production for Italian industry.

The armaments industry profited most from the war. In 1914, Italian steel mills produced only 900,000 tons per year compared with the 17.6 million tons produced by the German Empire or the 7.8 million produced by Great Britain. Initially, this shortage did not allow the army to meet the high demands for weapons and ammunition. Only through increased imports of raw materials and resources was it possible to make up for the shortage and reach the level of the other great powers in terms of technology. The achievements of Italian industry proved to be extensive. Shipbuilding and aircraft construction flourished, and Italy was soon able to produce annually more than 16,000 pistols, 37,000 machine guns, 3.2 million rifles, and 70 million artillery shells. At the Ansaldo concern, capital increases went from the equivalent of 30 million British pounds in 1916 to 500 million in 1918, while the number of workers rose from 6,000 (1916) to 56,000 (1919). Similarly, the Ilva steel company managed to increase production to around 2.1 million tons of steel per year. Fiat, the car manufacturer, monopolized its position in the construction of military vehicles, but also built airplanes, machine guns, and ship engines, and grew from 4,000 to 40,500 employees. However, the latter company did not only have military orders, so it also managed to continue its industrial growth in the post-war period, while Ansaldo and Ilva quickly collapsed without military orders. The war represented a great opportunity for the good development of Italian industry.

The First World War led to a slow and unusual kind of emancipation of women in Italy. Even before the war, some prominent women expressed their support for the war: the anarchist Maria Rygier gave patriotic speeches, the republican Margherita Sarfatti supported Mussolini, and the socialist Anna Kuliscioff supported the neutral course of her partner Filippo Turati. Many noblewomen served as Red Cross nurses and were involved in caring for soldiers and the poor. Women's contribution to the war effort grew steadily during the war: between 180,000 and 200,000 women were employed in war industries in 1917, while hundreds of thousands were still working in other industries, including as accountants, stenotypists, and archivists. The entry of women into the workforce had initially raised some concerns. But the worsening shortage of men led to a change in thinking. However, women's wages were very low compared to those of men.

The war aroused the government's interest in the media, which were to be instrumentalized as a weapon for propaganda. The massive and successful media campaign between 1914 and 1915 in favor of entering the war had impressed the Italian governments. During the war, in order to mobilize the population, the interventionist wing of the economy, business and finance, heavy industry and the big banks increased their investments in the press. Government intervention in propaganda remained sporadic at first. Only with the Boselli government were two ministers without portfolio charged with implementing a propaganda campaign: the liberal senator Vittorio Scialoja was to promote Italy's territorial goals and economic support for the country abroad. The interventionist Republican Ubaldo Comandini was given responsibility for internal propaganda in July 1917 and helped create the General Commission for Public Service and Internal Propaganda in February 1918.

To compensate for the state's shortcomings in the propaganda field, numerous private associations supported the state. In the summer of 1917, the United Societies were founded. They included numerous associations with 80 provincial secretaries and 4500 commissioners and were to bring patriotic propaganda among the civilian population.

A useful element for the government to control public opinion was the censorship of newspapers. War correspondents were forced to write and publish partially distorted articles. This always optimistic picture of the war was intended to prevent internal unrest and panic among the population.

End of the war and Italian territorial gains

During the war, the Royal Italian Army grew from a size of 500,000 men in 1914 to 5 million in 1918. By the end of the war, Italy had lost 700,000 soldiers and it had a budget deficit of twelve billion lire. The government deficit was so large that only 30% of expenditures could be met by revenues. By 1921, the lira had fallen to a fifth of its 1913 value, and the government responded with massive tax increases. The iron and steel industry struggled with overproduction.

With the signing of the armistice of Villa Giusti near Padua on November 3-4, 1918, Italy received a free hand from the disintegrated Austro-Hungarian Empire. The head of the Italian delegation, General Pietro Badoglio, forced the representatives of Austria and Hungary to evacuate the Tyrol as far as the Brenner Pass, to hand over the entire navy and to give Italian troops freedom of movement in the defeated country. 350,000 Austro-Hungarian soldiers surrendered and Italian troops advanced to Innsbruck and occupied Vienna, from where they withdrew only in 1924.

Shortly after the armistice, Italian soldiers marched into South Tyrol, Trentino, and toward Istria to Gorizia (November 7), Trieste (November 3), Koper (November 4), Poreč (November 5), Rovinj (November 5), Pula (November 5), and Zadar and Šibenik (November 4). November), and Zadar and Šibenik (November 4), which became the capital of the new Italian military administration in Dalmatia, and occupied the suburbs of Ljubljana, but were stopped in the city by Serbian troops. On November 5, Italian troops landed on the Dalmatian island of Lissa.

When the war ended in November 1918 with the Compiègne Armistice, Italian Prime Minister Vittorio Emanuele Orlando negotiated the new borders of Europe and Italy with British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau and United States President Woodrow Wilson at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. Italy, as one of the main victorious powers, was a member of the Council of Four, which played a decisive role in shaping the new peace order in Europe. At the Peace Conference, the representatives of Italy Orlando and his Foreign Minister Sidney Sonnino insisted on the full respect of the Treaty of London and, moreover, the annexation of the city of Rijeka, where 62% of the population was Italian.

The Italian government was incensed by Wilson's 14-point program, which called for the full right of peoples to self-determination but opposed the Treaty of London. In the Italian Chamber of Deputies, the nationalists condemned the fourteen points, while the socialists defended them and saw the Treaty of London as an attack on the rights of the Slavs, Greeks and Albanians.

U.S. President Wilson, who had not signed the London Agreement, conceded to Italy in point 9 the rectification of its borders according to the precisely identifiable demarcations of ethnicity, but demanded for Serbia in point 11 safe and free access to the sea. This was mainly about Dalmatia and the port city of Rijeka. Italy rejected the proposal to create a state of Rijeka with a free port.

In January 1919, Orlando left Paris and did not return until May 7. This protest did not have the desired effect. It weakened Italy's position among the four main victorious powers and isolated the country. On June 21, Orlando resigned. Francesco Saverio Nitti of the Partito Radicale Italiano was appointed as his successor on June 23. Tommaso Tittoni became the new foreign minister. On September 10, 1919, Nitti signed the Treaty of Saint-Germain, which defined the new Italian-Austrian border, but not the one in the east. Instead, the Allies demanded that Italy and the newly formed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes define their border jointly and alone. Immediately thereafter, on September 12, some nationalist freedmen and former Italian soldiers, led by Gabriele D'Annunzio, militarily occupied the city of Rijeka to demand its annexation to Italy. His popularity among the nationalists earned him the title "Il Duce" (the Leader), and he used black-clad paramilitary units. The use of the title Duce and the black uniforms later became synonymous with Benito Mussolini's fascist movement. The Italian Regency proclaimed by D'Annunzio on the Quarnero remained without international recognition. Yugoslav-Italian negotiations on this and Istria and Dalmatia began in May 1920. In order to normalize relations, which had been strained since World War I, the new Foreign Minister Carlo Sforza, who wanted to achieve reconciliation with Yugoslavia, ordered the evacuation of Italian occupation troops in Albania, where there had been an uprising in Vlora. In July 1920, Sforza agreed to the creation of an independent state of Rijeka, but demanded Istria and Dalmatia in return. The latter was a central component of Italian foreign policy in the early postwar years. On the other hand, the leadership of the Royal Italian Army had little sympathy for an annexation of Dalmatia, which would be difficult to defend in wartime and lay isolated from the Italian motherland. This internal resistance and that of the United States made an annexation of Dalmatia effectively impossible. In the border treaty of Rapallo in December 1920, Italy and the SHS state agreed on a compromise: Italy received all of Istria, some Dalmatian offshore islands, and the city of Zadar, while Yugoslavia received northern Dalmatia, which had actually been granted to Italy in 1915. Rijeka became the Free State of Fiume.

After initially successful efforts, the country had to renounce colonial compensations made to Italy. During the drafting of the Treaty of Versailles, Italian diplomacy demanded the annexation of the previously German colony of Cameroon, Togo, French Chad, Portuguese Angola, Belgian Congo, Georgia and parts of the Ottoman Empire. The other victorious powers refused to accede to Italy's claims. Cameroon was annexed to France. Of Chad, Italy later received only the Aouzou Strip. In Angola, Italy was ultimately limited to demanding agricultural concessions to Italian emigrants from Portugal. The establishment of the "Colonial Society for West Africa," supported by the 11 most important Italian banks, was intended to lend weight to these demands. However, this project met with strong opposition from Great Britain, France and Portugal.

For Georgia, in 1919, King Victor Emmanuel III, with the support of Lloyd George, raised an Italian contingent of 85,000 men under General Giuseppe Pennella, which was to secure the independence of the country under Italian protectorate and Italian interests in the Russian Civil War. The exact date for the invasion was not set, however, and the Nitti government, in order not to jeopardize the new relations between Italy and the nascent Soviet Union, decided to call off the venture. It was not until Mussolini took up the idea of an Italian protectorate over Georgia again with the German-Soviet War in 1941.

After the Moudros Armistice of October 30, 1918 and the occupation of Istanbul, in March 1919 the Italian government sent an expeditionary force to Antalya and from there occupied the Turkish lands of the Mediterranean and the Aegean. This show of force led to fierce resistance from the Greek government. On May 15, Greek troops landed in Izmir and occupied the city's environs to halt the Italian advance north to Istanbul. The dispute over the Turkish territories was not settled until a secret agreement was signed by Tittoni and Greek Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos on July 29, 1919. Italy was to withdraw from Antalya and Greece was to withdraw from southern Albania, which was granted to Italy. However, this agreement was cancelled by the next Italian Foreign Minister Carlo Sforza in June 1920. With the Treaty of Sèvres (August 10, 1920) concluded with the Ottoman Empire, Antalya and its surroundings were recognized as an Italian zone of influence. In the Greek-Turkish War (1919-1922), the Turkish patriots under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk were militarily supported by Italy, which armed and trained troops from Antalya. Italy withdrew from its zone of influence in April to autumn 1922 after the victory of the Turks. With the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, the Italian occupation was annulled, but the Italian possession of the Dodecanese and Libya was recognized under international law.

As a result of the peace treaties of 1918 to 1923, Italy annexed territories that were not only ethnically mixed, but in some cases populated exclusively by Slovenes, Germans, Croats or Greeks. In the former Austrian coastal land, about one-third of the population was Slovenian, which corresponded to one-fourth of the total Slovenian population at that time. The Slavic and German populations were later subjected to a ruthless Italianization policy during Italian fascism. After the Treaty of Rapallo, over half a million Slavs lived inside Italy, while only a few thousand Italians lived in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.

Cartoon on Italian neutrality in the tug of war between the Entente and the Central Powers (1914)


Italian airships bomb Ottoman positions in Libya (1911)


Antonio Salandra


Italian artillery of the 149 mm model 1877 in front of Tripoli (1911)


Fiat postcard (1905)


Overview of battles and operations in the Mediterranean (1911/12)


Italian Possessions and Zones of Influence at their Height in East Africa (1896)


In 1892, the lawyer Filippo Turati, following the example of German Social Democracy, forced the merger of various socialist movements into a single party, the Partito Socialista Italiano.


Crispi and his ministers at an audience with the King in the Quirinal Palace in 1888. Next to Crispi, the then Minister of Finance, Agostino Magliani; behind him, Minister of War, Ettore Bertolè Viale.


Francesco Crispi


A French cartoon on the alleged weakness of the Triple Alliance. The German and Austro-Hungarian allies must come to the aid of weakening Italy


Battle of Dogali (painting by Michele Cammarano)


Agostino Depretis


Austria-Hungary, the Kingdom of Italy and the German Empire in 1899


The rulers of the Triple Alliance Umberto I, William II and Francis Joseph I.


The Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan. A building designed by Giuseppe Mengoni from 1865 to 1877, named after King Victor Emmanuel II.


Achille Beltrame: Gabriele D'Annunzio speaks against "Giolittism" in 1915


Nationalist assembly in Rijeka to demand annexation to Italy (1920)


According to the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the regions to be allocated to Italy were not specified in the Treaty of Sèvres. Instead, in accordance with Wilson's principles, it was decided that Turkey should remain independent.


Order for General Mobilization (May 23, 1915)


The Italian Chamber of Deputies decides to enter the war (picture from a newspaper, May 20, 1915).


Italian occupation troops in Vlora, Albania (ca. 1916)


Italian propaganda poster dropped over Vienna in 1918


Members of the Arditi battalions (1918). Until the spring of 1918 Italy lost 650,000 soldiers


A woman says goodbye to a soldier


Postcard from the front (1918)


Propaganda poster of the technology company Ansaldo (1918)


Working women in a post office in Lombardy during the war


Territories promised to Italy in the Treaty of London (light green) and territories promised to Serbia by the Entente (dark green).


Giovanni Giolitti


Automobile factory in Turin (1898)


Victor Emmanuel III taking the constitutional oath in Parliament (1900)


Italian (colonial) troops in Africa (painting by Quinto Cenni)


The United Eight States troops in a Japanese drawing (Italy is shown on the far left).


The Big Four: Vittorio Emanuele Orlando (2nd from left) at the Versailles negotiations with David Lloyd George, Georges Clemenceau and Woodrow Wilson (from left)


Generalissimo Luigi Cadorna, Chief of General Staff from 1914 to 1917, talking to British officers

Fascist regime and World War II

In 1921, Mussolini founded the National Fascist Party (Partito Nazionale Fascista, PNF). On October 1-2, 1922, a few hundred fascists made the March on Bolzano; in October 1922, the PNF organized a Star March on Rome with about 26,000 fascist supporters. It became known as the March on Rome (Marcia su Roma). This ended at the gates of Rome on October 28, and Mussolini followed in a sleeping car from Milan. As a result, King Victor Emmanuel III appointed Mussolini prime minister and the fascists entered Rome with a victory march.

Just six months later, the new Legge Acerbo electoral law of July 1923 significantly limited the influence of the opposition (see also Italian Political System). Mussolini then began to establish the fascist dictatorship, and in 1926 all opposition parties were finally banned. Only candidates approved by the PNF were allowed to run in the 1928 elections, and the establishment of the "Fascist Grand Council" (Gran Consiglio del Fascismo) created a body that combined party and state functions. This completed Italy's transformation into a fascist dictatorship. This was followed by a rigorous Italianization policy, to which ethnic minorities such as Franco-Provençals, Slovenes, Croats, Hungarians and South Tyroleans in particular fell victim.

The end of Mussolini's rule and the continuation of the war

On July 25, 1943, shortly after the Allied landing in Sicily, the Fascist Grand Council deposed Mussolini by a simple majority out of disappointment over the defeats in World War II, and Mussolini was taken into custody. King Victor Emmanuel III assumed supreme command of the armed forces and ordered Marshal Pietro Badoglio to form a military government. The latter dissolved the National Fascist Party and signed the Cassibile Armistice with the Allies on September 8, 1943.

The German side was prepared for a change of Italy's front and triggered the "Axis case". In the central and northern Italy occupied by the Germans, the Italian Social Republic, the war continued for another year and a half. On April 29, 1945, Army Group C of the Wehrmacht surrendered unconditionally (on May 2). This marked the end of World War II for the Kingdom of Italy.

End of the war and end of the monarchy

King Victor Emmanuel III abdicated on May 9, 1946, in favor of his son Umberto II. He had been discredited by his actions since October 1922 (e.g., appointing Mussolini as prime minister and signing the Italian racial laws).

On June 2 and 3, 1946, a referendum on the future form of government was held at the same time as the election for the Constituent Assembly; 54.3 percent of those voting voted in favor of the Republic. As a result, the members of the House of Savoy had to leave Italy on June 18; the republican constitution came into force on January 1, 1948. Umberto II went into exile in Portugal, where he considered himself the legitimate king of Italy until his death on March 18, 1983. The Italian constitution did not allow him to return to Italy.

Since then, smaller conservative parties in particular have been fighting for the reinstatement of the monarchy in Italy. After the constitutional amendment of 2007, his son Victor Emmanuel of Savoy was able to return from exile with his family; he announced a claim for damages against the Republic for the alleged injustice of exile, which the other members of the House of Savoy distanced themselves from. In turn, the Italian Republic also announced a claim for damages for the involvement of the House in the period of fascism.

Map of the results of the 1946 referendum on the form of government


Situation of the Italian Social Republic


Benito Mussolini

See also

• Kingdom of Italy (1805-1814)
• Italy history