Abstract
What was the impact of Fascism on the Italian historical profession? From the 1930s through the early 1940s, Italian scholars loyal to the regime could count on a government that supported their work both in the universities and through the establishment of new research institutions. This academic infrastructure served an emerging generation of historians who had begun their careers under the dictatorship, trained by masters who were sympathetic to the Fascist cause. In some of their writings they would come to closely reflect the regime’s political and ideological priorities, particularly with respect to foreign policy. These historians would reevaluate the country’s geopolitical position since the Risorgimento, as well as Italy’s place in Europe and the Mediterranean, in a way that dovetailed with the regime’s ideology of colonial conquest and national grandeur. As Fascism strived to fulfill these historians’ interpretations of Italy’s “destiny,” they in turn distilled and enunciated visions of an Italian world power. This chapter will analyze the intellectual discourse prevalent in the universities, in order to assess the various ways in which Fascist beliefs were gradually assimilated, consciously or unconsciously, by different generations. I will thus examine the reception of Fascist foreign policy objectives not only in the lectures and writings of major Italian historians but also in the tesi di laurea (senior theses) of their young students.
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Notes
This period was defined by Renzo De Felice as the years of “consensus,” a concept that has been widely discussed and debated ever since. See De Felice, Fascism: An Informal Introduction to Its Theory and Practice, ed. Michael Ledeen (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1977).
De Felice, “Gli storici italiani nel periodo fascista (e discussioni),” in Federico Chabod e la ‘nuova storiografia’ italiana dal primo al secondo dopoguerra (1919–1950), ed. Brunello Vigezzi (Milan: Jaca Books, 1984), 559–630, in particular 602.
Pier Giorgio Zunino, L’ideologia del fascismo: Miti, credenze e valori nella stabilizzazione del regime (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1985).
Eugenio Garin has denied the existence of a Fascist culture, while Norberto Bobbio has reiterated Benedetto Croce’s positions, at least with respect to the academic context. See Garin, Intervista sull’intellettuale, ed. Mario Ajello (Rome: Laterza, 1997), 34–35;
Norberto Bobbio, “La cultura e il fascismo,” in Fascismo e società italiana, ed. Guido Quazza (Turin: Einaudi, 1973), 209–46.
The academic literature on the relationship between Fascism and culture is too large to repeat here, but a good review into the 1990s can be found in Sergio Luzzatto, “La cultura politica nell’Italia fascista,” Storica 12 (1998): 57–80. See also
Gabriele Turi, “Fascismo e cultura ieri e oggi,” in Il regime fascista: Storia e storiografia, ed. Angelo Del Boca, Massimo Legnani, and Mario G. Rossi (Rome: Laterza, 1995), 529–50;
Emilio Gentile, The Sacralization of Politics in Fascist Italy, 1st English ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996);
Mabel Berezin, Making the Fascist Self: The Political Culture of Interwar Italy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997);
Marla Stone, The Patron State: Culture and Politics in Fascist Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998);
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Fascist Modernities: Italy, 1922–1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001);
Turi, Lo Stato educatore: Politica e intellettuali nell’Italia fascista (Rome: Laterza, 2002); and
Ben-Ghiat, “Italian Universities under Fascism,” in Universities under Dictatorships, ed. Michael Grüttner and John Connelly (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 45–73.
On the relationship between Fascism and historians, see R. J. B. Bosworth, The Italian Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives in the Interpretation of Mussolini and Fascism (New York: Arnold, 1998); Roberto Pertici, “Storici italiani del Novecento,” Storiografia 3 (1999);
Alessia Pedio, La cultura del totalitarismo imperfetto: Il Dizionario di Politica del Partito Nazionale Fascista (Milan: Unicopli, 2000);
Gabriele Turi, Il mecenate, il filosofo e il gesuita: L’“Enciclopedia Italiana” specchio della nazione (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2002);
Claudio Fogu, The Historic Imaginary: Politics of History in Fascist Italy (Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 2003);
Giovanni Belardelli, Il Ventennio degli intellettuali: Cultura, politica, ideologia nell’Italia fascista (Rome: Laterza, 2005);
Massimo Baioni, Risorgimento in camicia nera: Studi, istituzioni, musei nell’Italia fascista (Turin: Einaudi, 2006);
Margherita Angelini, “Transmitting Knowledge: The Professionalisation of Italian Historians (1920s–1950s),” Storia della storiografia 57 (2010): 1–174; and
Angelini, Fare storia: Culture e pratiche della ricerca in Italia da Gioacchino Volpe a Federico Chabod (Rome: Carocci, 2011).
Turi, Lo stato educatore, 49–76. Only 12 university professors broke this oath, demonstrating considerable courage: Helmut Goetz, Il giuramento rifiutato: I docenti universitari e il regime fascista (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 2000).
It is important to emphasize this point as one possible area of comparison between the Italian situation and that of Germany under Nazism: See Ingo Haar, Historiker im Nationalsozialismus: Die deutsche Geschichtswissenschaft und der “Volkstumskampf” im Osten (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2000); and
Winfried Schulze and Otto Gerhard Oexle, eds., Deutsche Historiker im Nationalsozialismus (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1999).
Innocenzo Cervelli, Gioacchino Volpe (Naples: Guida, 1977);
Turi, “Il problema Volpe,” Studi Storici 19 (1978): 175–86;
Belardelli, Il mito della ‘nuova Italia’: Gioacchino Volpe tra guerra e fascismo (Rome: Edizioni Lavoro, 1988);
Barbara Bracco, Storici italiani e politica estera: Tra Salvemini e Volpe (1917–1925) (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1998);
Eugenio Di Rienzo, Un dopoguerra sto-riografico: Storici italiani tra guerra e Repubblica (Florence: Le Lettere, 2004); Belardelli, Il Ventennio degli intellettuali, 97–140;
Fabrizio Cossalter, Come nasce uno storico contemporaneo: Gioacchino Volpe tra guerra, dopoguerra, fascismo (Rome: Carocci, 2007);
Di Rienzo, La storia e l’azione: Vita politica di Gioacchino Volpe (Florence: Le Lettere, 2008).
Gioacchino Volpe, L’Italia in cammino (Milan: Treves, 1931), 99.
This element was emphasized only by the most astute anti-Fascists like Carlo Rosselli, who was sensitive to what was “new” in Fascism. See Claudio Pavone, “Le idee della Resistenza: Antifascisti e fascisti di fronte alla tradizione del Risorgimento,” in Alle origini della Repubblica: Scritti su fascismo, antifascismo e continuità dello Stato (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1995), 12–13.
Volpe, Francesco Crispi (Venice: La nuova Italia, 1928);
Volpe, Italia moderna 1815–1914, 3 vols. (Florence: G. C. Sansoni, 1943–1952).
Angelo Montenegro, “Politica estera e organizzazione del consenso: Note sull’Istituto per gli studi di politica internazionale 1933–1943,” Studi storici 19 (1978): 741–59;
Enrico Decleva, “Politica estera, storia e propaganda: L’Ispi di Milano e la Francia (1934–1943),” Storia contemporanea 13, no. 4/5 (1982): 697–757;
Valeria Galimi, “Culture fasciste et droit à la guerre: L’Istituto per lo studio della politica internazionale dans les années Trente,” Mil Neuf Cent: Revue d’histoire intellectuelle 23 (2005): 167–82;
Angelini, “L’Istituto per gli studi di politica internazionale,” in Gli italiani in guerra: Conflitti, identità, memorie dal Risorgimento ai nostri giorni, ed. Mario Isnenghi and Giulia Albanese, vol. 6, Il Ventennio fascista. (Turin: UTET, 2008), 172–78.
On the foreign policy of the Fascist government, see Enzo Collotti, Nicola Labanca and Teodoro Sala, eds., Fascismo e politica di potenza: Politica estera 1922–1939 (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 2000);
MacGregor Knox, Common Destiny: Dictatorship, Foreign Policy, and War in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000);
Knox, “Fascism: Ideology, Foreign Policy, and War,” in Liberal and Fascist Italy: 1900–1945, ed. Adrian Lyttelton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 105–38; and
Davide Rodogno, Fascism’s European Empire: Italian Occupation during the Second World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
Sergio Soave, Federico Chabod politico (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1989).
Volpe, “Una Scuola di Storia Moderna e Contemporanea,” in Volpe, Storici e maestri (Florence: Sansoni, 1967), 455–505, in particular 471–72. Sestan, instead, argued that he was not at the demonstration:
Ernesto Sestan, Memorie di un uomo senza qualità (Florence: Le Lettere, 1997), 233. On these points see
Luisa Mangoni, ed., Primato, 1940–1943: Antologia (Bari: De Donato, 1977);
Gianpasquale Santomassimo, “Gli storici italiani negli anni della guerra: Il caso Morandi e ‘Primato,’” in L’Italia in guerra (1940–1943), ed. Bruna Micheletti and Pier Paolo Poggio (Brescia: Annali della Fondazione “Luigi Micheletti,” 1992), 827–44;
Gabriele Turi, “Intellettuali e istituzioni culturali nell’Italia in guerra 1940–1943,” in L’Italia in guerra, 801–26; Simonetta Soldani, “Sestan, il mondo tedesco e le aporie del principio di nazionalità,” Passato e presente 51 (2000): 95–122; Pedio, La cultura del totalitarismo imperfetto;
Mirco Carrattieri, “Tra le due sponde. La cultura fiorentina, l’Italia in guerra, la crisi del fascismo. Materiali per una biografia intellettuale di Carlo Morandi,” Storiografia 10 (2006): 105–209;
Angelini, “‘Si parva licet componere mag-nis’: I giovani storici italiani, la guerra e la caduta del fascismo,” in Le rotte dell’io: Itinerari individuali e collettivi nelle svolte della storia d’Italia, ed. Mario Isnenghi (Naples: Scriptaweb, 2008), 223–50; and
Zunino, “Tra stato auto-ritario e coscienza nazionale,” in Nazione, nazionalismi ed Europa nell’opera di Federico Chabod, ed. Marta Herling and Pier Giorgio Zunino (Florence: L. S. Olschki, 2002), 107–40.
Morandi, Corso di storia moderna dalle lezioni di Carlo Morandi [La Politica estera dell’Italia dal 1871 alla guerra mondiale] (Florence: S. A. Editrice Universitaria, 1940), 148. Despite its title, the book ends in 1909.
Nicola Labanca, Oltremare: Storia dell’espansione coloniale italiana (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2002), 33–34.
Walter Maturi, Lezioni di storia del Risorgimento: Il regno di Cavour dalla morte di Cavour alla Breccia di Porta Pia (Pisa: GUF, 1940), 11–13.
Romea Malatesta, “L’alleanza franco–russa” (thesis, University of Pisa, 1938), 147–48. The thesis supervisor was Carlo Morandi.
Furthermore, around 1943–1944, Morandi shifted to democratic ideas and published many articles for a broad audience in the journal Il Mondo in which he analyzed the causes of the Second World War: Morandi, Come nacque e come finì la seconda guerra europea (Florence: Il Mondo, 1946).
Dino Confrancesco, “Il mito europeo del fascismo (1939–1945),” Storia contemporanea 14 (1983): 5–46.
Jolanda De Blasi, ed., Romanità e germanesimo: Letture tenute per il Lyceum di Firenze (Florence: G. C. Sansoni, 1941).
Ernesto Ragionieri, “Il fascismo,” in Storia d’Italia. Dall’Unità ad oggi: La storia politica e sociale, ed. Ragionieri (Turin: Einaudi, 1975), 2325.
Volpe, Vittorio Emanuele III (Milan: ISPI, 1939);
Volpe, Casa Savoia, ed. Francesco Perfetti (Milan: Luni, 2000).
Volpe, Lettere dall’Italia perduta: 1944–1945, ed. Belardelli (Palermo: Sellerio, 2006).
Pavone, Unaguerra civile: Saggio storico sulla moralità nella Resistenza (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1991);
Pavone, “Caratteri ed eredità della ‘zona grigia,’” Passato e presente 43 (1998): 5–12.
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© 2012 Giulia Albanese and Roberta Pergher
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Angelini, M. (2012). Clio among the Camicie Nere. In: Albanese, G., Pergher, R. (eds) In the Society of Fascists. Italian and Italian American Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230392939_11
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