A Concise History of Italy: Giolitti, the First World War, and the rise of Fascism

Economic Growth and the Idealist Revolt The crisis of the 1890s had brought Italy’s political system to the brink of collapse. Crispi contemplated a presidential alternative. An elected Chamber, he told the queen in 1895, was unworkable, and suggested that it should be replaced with a non-elected and purely consultative Senate. In 1897 he again voiced his profound disquiet, and urged the adoption of the German model: ‘Whenever parliament is involved in government, it leads to the abyss . . . The king does not rule, he is ruled . . . If we carry on with the present system, we will have a revolution.’ Many felt that a revolution, or at least some form of fundamental political or spiritual regeneration, was in fact the answer. Marxism swept the universities in the 1890s and became the dominant creed of intellectuals; and even Gabriele D’Annunzio, Italy’s leading exponent of decadentism, crossed the floor of the Chamber of Deputies in 1900 to join the Socialists: ‘As a man of intellect, I go towards life’, he declared. The atmosphere of crisis brought to a head the uncertainties about Italy’s identity that had been in the air since the 1870s. Crispi’s heroic vision of national greatness was rooted largely in the past, in the Risorgimento ; others preferred to look to an imagined future. The upturn in the economy from the end of the century opened up an alternative path, and for a while rekindled the dream of Cavour and the moderates that the country’s liberal institutions could be legitimated through a growth in material prosperity. ‘We are at the beginning of a new historical period’, proclaimed Giovanni Giolitti confidently in February 1901. Giolitti was to dominate Italian politics in the decade and a half leading up to the outbreak of the First World War. Like Cavour, he put his faith in economic modernisation; but unlike him, he looked to industry rather than agriculture to lead the way forward.