This study examines the evolution of aristocratic identities and roles in an ostensibly post-aristocratic society, namely that of Italy from the middle of the nineteenth century to the decade following World War I. As such, it aspires to contribute not only to our understanding of traditional elites, but also to the ongoing scholarly discussion of the social contours and characteristics of the Italian bourgeoisie at its upper reaches. The changing relations between old aristocratic and new bourgeois elites has long been viewed as one of the central themes in the larger processes of modernization in Europe. Indeed, historians have used this relationship to explain England's extraordinary political stability (and more recently its industrial decline), Germany's authoritarian path to modernity, the failure of liberal polity in Italy, and the crisis of the late Czarist regime in Russia.

Most scholars would agree that at some time between the early nineteenth century and the end of World War II the aristocracies and upper middle classes of Europe became so intertwined and intermarried that they no longer functioned as separate groups and effectively merged into a single upper class. There has been considerably less agreement, however, on the pace, mechanisms, terms, and consequences of this fusion of aristocracy and bourgeoisie.