Senatore Salvatore Contarini, secretary-general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs until 1926 and Mussolini's first and only diplomatic mentor, thought he knew the place of Fascism in Italian foreign policy: “We must use Mussolini like the blood of San Gennaro: exhibit him once a year, and then only from afar.” Contarini's formula, and still more his dismal failure to hold his master to the assigned role, suggests that the advent of Fascism in 1922 marked some sort of break in Italian foreign policy. As in Germany, where the nature and extent of the analogous break in foreign policy in 1933 has exercised immense attraction for historians as part of a wider debate about the shape of modern German history, understanding the balance between tradition and novelty in Italian foreign policy after 1922 is vital to situating the Fascist experiment historically. Yet Mussolini's foreign policy is poorly understood, and much vital evidence has remained unexplored or insufficiently exploited. The literature and sources that have so far emerged nevertheless suggest three fundamental questions: What, if any, were the distinctive characteristics of Fascist foreign policy? What were the constraints upon its implementation? What led to war and ruin after 1936?

Any attempt to deal with the first question, the singularity of Fascist foreign policy, requires analysis of Italy's pre-1922 traditions.