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9 - Economic change and nationalism in Italy in the twentieth century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 September 2009

Alice Teichova
Affiliation:
University of East Anglia
Herbert Matis
Affiliation:
Wirtschaftsuniversitat Wien, Austria
Jaroslav Pátek
Affiliation:
Charles University, Prague
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Summary

For most of the nineteenth century the pressure on the Italian government and parliament to abandon liberalism and to pursue a policy that protected and promoted the country's economic interests did not come from any political movement as such but from newspapers, cultural and economic societies, industrial and worker associations and similar organisations. The Chambers of Commerce, in particular, showed themselves to be increasingly in favour of state intervention in the economy, especially in towns where industrial centres had grown up, demanding that contracts to provide the weapons and ships needed for the country's defence be awarded to Italian and not to foreign companies, as had happened in the past, as well as a revision of trade and navigation treaties with foreign powers. It was at the end of the century and the beginning of the new that such forces found a political counterpart – that is, a movement of opinion and action that sought to increase the country's economic and political prestige among the concert of nations.

It is no coincidence that the movement emerged towards the end of the century, stimulated as it was by two circumstances. One was of a political nature: the reaction to the Italian army's defeat at Adua in 1896 in the war against Ras Menelik to conquer the Eritrean Plateau.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2000

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