Introduction
In his 1958book, A.J.P. Taylor (Taylor, Reference Taylor1958) defined the tradition of dissent over British foreign policy from the late eighteenth century to the Second World War as one pursued by ‘troublemakers’. These ‘troublemakers’ all rejected Britain's great power foreign policy in the name of liberalism in international relations, but were of different types. They included, for instance, John Bright and Richard Cobden, who believed that the development of free trade would lead to the extinction of international rivalry and war and that, consequently, the best foreign policy was to refrain from it. Or William Gladstone who, as leader of the opposition to Prime Minister Disraeli, called for humanitarian intervention by the great powers against the ‘Bulgarian atrocities’ at the time of the revolt against the Ottoman Empire, but who, once he was back in government, attempted an ethical foreign policy in which the role of the United Kingdom in the Concert of Europe was used to promote a programme of liberal reforms in other countries (Holbraad Reference Holbraad1971, 162; Aldobrandini Reference Aldobrandini2009).
Gaetano Salvemini can also be considered a ‘troublemaker’, and an advocate of a liberal theory of international relations. The fundamental elements of this concept can be found in the mistrust of military expenditure that withdraws resources from domestic democratic reforms; in anti-protectionism; in the call for parliamentary control over foreign policy; and in the promotion of forms of arbitration and international cooperation. The first two aspects, in particular, are a constant presence in Salvemini's foreign policy writings prior to the First World War. As is well known, Salvemini was a keen observer of European events, in this respect a rara avis, together with Leonida Bissolati, in the Socialist movement of which he was a member until 1910–11. From this vantage point, he acutely noted the development of Anglo-German antagonism from the early 1900s. Clear testimony to the forma mentis described above was his hostile position on irredentism, that is the demand for the annexation to Italy of Trento and Trieste, still under Habsburg rule. This policy had in fact originated and developed in Italy in the ranks of the democratic left and was linked to Risorgimento ideals. Nevertheless, Salvemini criticised it because, in spite of its political origin, insofar as it contributed to maintaining a state of tension with Austria-Hungary, it played into the hands of the supporters of increased military expenditure, that is, the conservative forces. The Italian historian also sided with a famous press campaign on the Libyan War of 1911–1912 (Frangioni Reference Frangioni2011, 17–51), opposing a foreign policy that distracted from the necessary domestic reforms.
This essay will analyse how this concept of foreign policy was adopted by Salvemini during the First World War, in particular by seeking an Italian-Slavic understanding on the Eastern border. Salvemini's interventionism was in fact motivated by his previously mentioned liberal vision of international relations. He believed the war had been provoked by Germany's hegemonic project, which needed to be defeated; this was the only way to open up space for the prevalence in Europe and also within the individual states, both victorious and defeated, of democratic and liberalist reform policies. Therefore, the completion of Italian national unity with the reunification of Trento and Trieste was not the central reason for Salvemini's interventionism. Paradoxically, during the conflict, his position centered on the definition of the Adriatic border. Salvemini in fact opposed the prospective annexation to Italy of half (as envisaged by the London Pact) or the whole (as demanded by the nationalists) of Dalmatia. This was because it would have meant incorporating a strong Slav minority within Italian borders that would be hostile to Italy. Salvemini was one of the first Italians to consider the break-up of the Habsburg Empire inevitable: he believed it was necessary to pursue a policy of alliances with South Slavs. In this regard, it is interesting to note that until the outbreak of the conflict, Salvemini had supported the reform of the Austro-Hungarian Empire on a federal basis. To this effect, the positions of Angelo Vivante, a socialist from Trieste and anti-Redentist, who in turn had drawn on the Austromarxism of Otto Bauer and Karl Renner, had a very important influence. Specifically, Vivante postulated that the national issues of the Habsburg Empire should be resolved through the broad recognition of the linguistic, scholastic and cultural rights of the different nationalities existing within the Empire, rather than through the construction of nation states (Frangioni Reference Frangioni2011, 44–47). With the outbreak of war, this prospect was judged unfeasible by Salvemini, who went on to advocate the dissolution of the Empire. Vivante, seeing his hopes collapse with the conflict, committed suicide on 1 July 1915.
In this essay, the complex relationship between Salvemini and the Scottish historian and journalist Robert Seton-Watson (1879–1951) is relevant. As is well known, the latter followed a path that was in some ways parallel to Salvemini's: as a correspondent in Vienna from 1905 for The Times and The Spectator, he had focused on issues regarding the nationalities of the Empire. An advocate before the war of its reform on a federal basis, he had also judged that its break-up was likely, influenced in this regard by Tomas Masaryk. To support the cause of the oppressed nationalities of the Habsburg Empire and in particular the Yugoslav and Czechoslovak movement, he founded the journal The New Europe at the end of 1916 (Seton-Watson Reference Seton-Watson1981; Vivarelli Reference Vivarelli2022).
Salvemini's relationship with Seton-Watson, with its convergences and divergences, revealed the complexity of the Adriatic question. And it showed the modernity and far-sightedness of Salvemini's position, which nevertheless lacked a realistic assessment of the forces in the field and their positions at the time.
History of a failed collaboration
In a letter of February 1917 Gaetano Salvemini refused to collaborate with the new journal founded at the end of 1916 by Seton-Watson (Salvemini Reference Salvemini and Tagliacozzo1984, 295–298). The letter also explained that Salvemini's name had been suggested to Seton-Watson by Jules Destrée, the Belgian socialist who, after the invasion of his country by German troops, had moved to Italy to support its entry into the war. In his letter, Salvemini reviewed to what extent his vision was close to that of Seton-Watson's group. Firstly, on war in general, Salvemini pointed out that his journal L'Unità, founded in 1911, had translated Seton-Watson's essay – from the book War and Democracy, published in the spring of 1915 by a group of Oxford scholars – analysing the issues surrounding the outbreak of war. The group had brought together liberals and radicals of different orientations, such as Lord Bryce, George Trevelyan, Alfred Zimmern, Nelson Brailsford, Lionel Curtis and Philip Kerr. However, the group was destined to split between on the one hand, personalities such as Curtis and Kerr, who were liberal imperialists, members of the Round Table (the association set up by Lord Milner to study the transformation of the British Empire on a federal basis) and supporters of a decisive involvement of Great Britain in the conflict, and, on the other, the liberal-radicals who founded the Union of Democratic Control, which was much more critical of the war.
Like Seton-Watson, Salvemini thought that the autocratic central powers (especially Germany) had ambitions to dominate Europe. It was therefore necessary to fight against this hegemonic project, defeat militarism and design a new system of international relations for the postwar period, based on arbitration, open diplomacy, free trade, arms control, the spread of democratic and representative institutions and the defence of national rights. Salvemini's L'Unità was the main channel for circulating these ideas, which were to become Wilsonian ideals, in Italy (Perazzoli Reference Perazzoli2022).
If responsibility for the war was attributed to the central empires, it was easy to move from this liberal view to an interventionist position: this was the path followed by Round Table intellectuals such as Lord Bryce, George Trevelyan and Robert Seton-Watson himself. Whereas, if one was more sceptical about the exclusive responsibility of Germany and its allies and also pointed a finger at general flaws in the system of international relations (secret diplomacy, the arms race), this would possibly lead to a more neutralist position, more inclined to compromising for peace. This was the stance held by the Union of Democratic Control, an association founded in December 1914 by liberals, radicals and Labour members such as Henry Noel Brailsford, Ramsay Macdonald, E.D. Morel, Norman Angell, Arthur Ponsonby and Charles Trevelyan. The latter, for example, had resigned from the Asquith government because he was against entry into war. On 11 December 1914, L'Unità, the weekly magazine edited by Salvemini, reported the Union's postwar programme with appreciation and assent: no transfer of territory without plebiscite; parliamentary control over foreign policy; creation of a European concert of states with public deliberations; reduction of armaments and nationalisation of the arms industries. However, L'Unità underestimated the Union's scepticism towards British participation in the war (Frangioni Reference Frangioni2011, 60–63).
It is important to mention Robert Seton-Watson's essay on ‘The Problem of Austria-Hungary’, translated by L'Unità in April 1915 (Seton-Watson Reference Seton-Watson1915), and how Salvemini's and Seton-Watson's views on this issue showed a similar development. As previously mentioned, before the war they were both in favour of a reform of the Habsburg Empire on a trialist or federal basis. However, after the war's outbreak both Seton-Watson (under the influence of Tomas Masaryk) and Salvemini became supporters of the break-up of the Empire and the liberation of its nationalities, including the foundation of a Union of South Slavs, Yugoslavia. Salvemini first wrote about the hypothesis of the dissolution of Austria-Hungary in January 1915 in L'Unità; Seton-Watson only in the translated essay.
In September 1916, for the first time the position of ‘Delenda Austria’ (‘Austria must be destroyed’) was supported in a public speech. It was a speech given in Cremona by a member of the Italian government, the Minister of Arms and Munitions Leonida Bissolati, leader of the interventionist Socialist Reformist Party, albeit with the opposition of Foreign Minister Sonnino. Supporting the idea of the dissolution of the Empire implied, for Salvemini and Seton-Watson, a territorial compromise between Italy and the new Yugoslav state. As of spring 1915, Salvemini opposed those sectors of Italian public opinion (the nationalists, but not only them), who demanded the inclusion of the whole of Dalmatia within the Italian borders, arguing that the majority of its population was Slavic (as mentioned above, the London Pact included half of Dalmatia in the Italian borders anyway). For Salvemini, as he wrote in March 1915, Italy's eastern border should have only included Trieste, Istria, Pula and Zadar and also created an autonomous status for Fiume. Later, during the war, in particular in his pamphlet The Adriatic Question of 1918, Salvemini supported the idea of an autonomous statute that included Zadar (Maranelli and Salvemini Reference Maranelli and Salvemini1918). Furthermore, from a modern perspective, Salvemini called for the recognition of the rights of national minorities (Slavs in Italy and Italians in Yugoslavia), especially in schools and education in general, and for the creation of a free trade zone along the border. In particular, Salvemini stated in his 1918 essay that the two minorities, Italian in Yugoslavia and Slav in Italy, should be guaranteed the use of their own language in courts and schools; the latter should be administered by two separate councils, one Serbo-Croatian and one Italian, which would meet to make decisions of common interest; school certificates issued in Yugoslavia should allow access to Italian universities and vice versa; a permanent arbitration commission should settle conflicts.
In contrast, Seton-Watson put forward two hypotheses in his article: if Italy entered the war and Austria-Hungary collapsed, as seemed likely, Italy should obtain Trentino and, through an agreement with the Yugoslav movement, only Trieste and the demilitarisation of Pula. If, on the other hand, Italy remained neutral and a reduced Empire survived, defeated by the Entente, Italy should only obtain Trentino, as compensation for its neutrality. For this reason, Salvemini refused to write for The New Europe in February 1917, granting nevertheless that he shared the journal's idea of an Italian-Slav compromise. In his opinion, the journal did not oppose the Yugoslav nationalists who also claimed Trieste, Gorizia and western Istria in the same way that L'Unità opposed Italian nationalists. In his letter, Salvemini also criticised an article by his friend Gennaro Mondaini, translated in the second issue of The New Europe, which had argued for an Italian-Slav compromise, because it attacked Italian nationalists without any objection to Yugoslav nationalists (Mondaini Reference Mondaini1916).
This complex point of view showed all the difficulties of Salvemini's position: he was close to Seton-Watson's group in the proposal to support an Italian-Slav compromise, but at the same time he was incapable of conclusively resolving this compromise.
Salvemini, The New Europe and Italian public opinion
Starting from May 1917, many people close to Salvemini decided to collaborate with The New Europe: first of all, the co-director of L'Unità, Antonio de Viti de Marco; Mario Borsa, a contributor to the daily newspaper Il Secolo, who would later become an antifascist and the director of Il Corriere della Sera; Edoardo Giretti, a liberal economist and contributor to L'Unità Footnote 1 (The New Europe 1917a and b). Salvemini's initial refusal actually marked the start of a complex relationship, in which it is useful to identify three phases: one characterised by the search for a common approach, without however managing to overcome differences; one of closer collaboration; and finally, one that marked the final and irreparable divergence of positions.
The first phase was delineated by the definition of a common line to deal with Prince Sixtus of Bourbon-Parma's project of a separate peace between the Entente and Austria-Hungary. Accordingly, The New Europe translated the attacks of L'Unità on the Italian positions against the break-up of Austria and in favour of a separate peace with the latter (The New Europe 1917c). A separate peace between the Entente and Austria-Hungary would have been a diplomatic disaster for Italy and the interventionists. Salvemini therefore found it necessary to facilitate the comprehension of Italian positions by the Allied public and felt that these stances would be better understood if Italy took the lead on the question of the oppressed nationalities of Austria-Hungary. In this phase, Salvemini found a new ally in Italy in Il Corriere della Sera and its director, Luigi Albertini: from May 1917 the Corriere della Sera supported the hypothesis of the break-up of Austria.
In particular, on 31 May 1917, the correspondence from Geneva in the Milanese daily proposed that the dissolution of the Empire should be included among Italy's war objectives. At the same time, a collaborator of Il Corriere, writer Giuseppe Antonio Borgese, met some Yugoslav exiles in Switzerland, together with diplomat Gaetano Paternò. From their trip the two gained the impression of the inevitability of Yugoslavian unity and in their memo on the mission they judged practicable an Italo-Slav compromise that would recognise Italy's right to ‘Gorizia and Istria up to Monte Maggiore, the protectorate of Albania, the constitution of Fiume and Zara as free cities with a guarantee, as well as respect for national minorities'. This is a position close to Salvemini's even if – and this is a difference that would become more acute – the memo urged no immediate concessions to the Slavs in order to avoid the danger that ‘they should begin to aspire to Trieste and Istria and should want to drive us out of Albania’ (Frangioni Reference Frangioni2011, 158–159; Borgese Reference Borgese, Moroni and Isnenghi2022b).
At the same time (July 1917), Robert Seton-Watson was acting as a mediator in the Corfu Pact between the Kingdom of Serbia and the Croatian leadership of the Yugoslav Committee in London. However, the differences between Salvemini and The New Europe remained. Immediately after the Corfu Pact, on 2 August, The New Europe wrote: ‘We are firmly convinced that the Italo-Yugoslav problem can be solved by statesmanship and good-will’ (The New Europe 1917d). But at the beginning of October, Arthur Evans published in The New Europe a map of the future Yugoslavia that assigned only Trieste, Gorizia and Western Istria to Italy (Evans Reference Evans1917). This was, however, a more moderate position than the one held by some member of the Yugoslavian movement who wanted Trieste and Gorizia (Cattaruzza, Reference Cattaruzza2007 and Reference Cattaruzza2014). Salvemini, on the other hand, while renouncing Dalmatia, called for Eastern Istria to be part of Italy.
The beginning of 1918 marked a second, closer, phase in the relations between Salvemini and The New Europe. After the publication of Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points and Lloyd George's speech to the trade unions, which upheld the principle of nationality, it became urgent for Salvemini to reach an Italian-Slav compromise to strengthen Italy's position in future peace negotiations. Salvemini realised that it was difficult to support Sonnino's defence of the 1915 London Pact with Wilson. Moreover, the ‘Delenda Austria’ campaign had to be carried out while the last attempt of Jan Smuts and Count Mensdorff to reach a separate peace with the Habsburg Empire was taking place. For the same purpose, during the last offensive action by Austria and the Central Powers in June 1918, an article by Robert Seton-Watson was translated in another Italian journal close to Salvemini's positions, La Voce dei Popoli, directed by Umberto Zanotti Bianco. In the essay ‘Austria-Hungary and the Federal Solution’, Seton-Watson stated that, while before the war he had supported the idea of a federalised Austria-Hungary, now this solution was to be rejected. Therefore, together with Luigi Albertini and developing an idea of Giuseppe Antonio Borgese (Borgese Reference Borgese2022a and b), in April 1918 Salvemini organised the Congress of Nationalities Oppressed by Austria-Hungary in Rome. The aim was also to prevent a similar initiative by French diplomacy (and the French politician Franklin-Buillon), who saw an Italo-Slav agreement as a threat to French postwar influence in the Balkans (Frangioni Reference Frangioni2011, 163).
Seton Watson attended the Congress in Rome. During the proceedings, Salvemini and Albertini adopted two different approaches. Albertini demanded that the policy of nationalities and the hypothesis of an Italian-Slav compromise should be supported by politicians manifesting different opinions. To achieve this, Albertini avoided a clear definition of such a compromise; this allowed the involvement of nationalists such as Enrico Corradini and Luigi Federzoni in the Rome Congress, while excluding others such as Francesco Coppola (Pertici Reference Pertici and Salvatori2016). Under Albertini's patronage, the event was preceded by an agreement between Ante Trumbic, the Croatian leader of the Yugoslav Committee in London, and the Italian journalist and MP Andrea Torre. Neither the Torre-Trumbic agreement nor the final declaration of the Congress of Rome (the so-called ‘Pact of Rome’) clearly defined a territorial compromise between Italy and the new Yugoslav state, preferring a declaration based on general principles.
In particular, the final declaration of the Congress of Rome merely stated that
in relations between the Italian Nation and the Nation of Serbs, Croats, Slovenes … the representatives of the two peoples recognise that the unity and independence of the Yugoslav nation is of vital interest to Italy, just as the completion of Italian national unity is of vital interest to the Yugoslav nation
and that the two parties
undertake to amicably resolve … single territorial disputes on the basis of the principles of nationality and the right of peoples to decide their own destiny … The nuclei of one people that should be included in the borders of the other will be recognised and guaranteed the right of respect for their language, their culture and their moral and economic interests. (Frangioni Reference Frangioni2011, 171)
Salvemini took a different approach: at the congress in Rome, he formed a committee of intellectuals and, together with Minister Leonida Bissolati, convened a meeting with Ante Trumbic to define the content of the Italian-Slav territorial compromise. Robert Seton-Watson and Henry Wickham Steed attended the meeting, which turned out to be a failure, because Trumbic did not agree to include Istria up to Monte Maggiore in the Italian borders. At that time, Salvemini actively supported the idea of the ‘Italianness’ of Istria (Salvemini Reference Salvemini1918a and Reference Salvemini and Salvadori2016). Nevertheless, from May 1918, he agreed to contribute to The New Europe and in the autumn of 1918 he wrote an article – ‘The Adriatic Problem’ (Salvemini Reference Salvemini1918b) – trying to convince Seton-Watson and his group to support his position. His specific goal was an attempt to make The New Europe understand, using a conversational tone, the need for Italy to obtain, for strategic reasons, a disarmament of the Dalmatian coast in exchange for giving up the annexation of Dalmatia.
The third phase of Salvemini's collaboration with The New Europe began after the end of the war, when the policy of nationalities and the Italian-Slav compromise collapsed. On 28 December 1918, Bissolati resigned from government because of disagreements with Sonnino over Italy's position at the upcoming Paris Peace Conference. Sonnino supported the ‘London Pact + Fiume’ stand: in other words, he wanted Italy to claim Fiume – not included in the London Pact, according to the principle of nationality after the collapse of the Habsburg Empire – and half of Dalmatia, the latter included in the London Pact, but in contrast to the principle of nationality (Cattaruzza Reference Cattaruzza2014). On the contrary, Bissolati asked for Dalmatia to be renounced, according to the nationality principle and Wilsonian ideals.
On 6 January 1919 the British newspaper The Morning Post published an interview with Bissolati, given on 29 December to Rome correspondent William Miller, who also wrote in The New Europe. To respect the principle of nationality, Bissolati was willing to renounce the Dodecanese islands and South Tyrol. When the interview was translated and published in Il Corriere della Sera on 9 January, it triggered protests from the nationalists. Their dissent, also shared by the Futurists and Mussolini, was harshly expressed when Bissolati spoke at the Teatro della Scala on 11 January (Frangioni Reference Frangioni2011, 203–205; Scirocco Reference Scirocco and Salvatori2016). Meanwhile, the attitude of The New Europe towards Italy became more critical. An article published on 28 November 1918 – ‘Italy, Yugoslavia and the Secret Treaty’ – accused Sonnino and the Italian government of being solely responsible for the failure of the Italian-Slav compromise. In another contribution on 2 January 1919 – ‘Le vere linee di un accordo adriatico’ (‘The True Lines of an Adriatic Settlement’) – The New Europe proposed setting the border according to Yugoslav rather than Italian demands (Frangioni Reference Frangioni2011, 205). Consequently, on 7 February 1919 (Salvemini Reference Salvemini and Tagliacozzo1984: 442–444), Salvemini wrote a letter to Seton-Watson withdrawing his collaboration with The New Europe:
The silence [The New Europe] scrupulously observes towards Slavic pretensions, combined with the indignation it manifests, on the contrary, on every occasion, towards Italian imperialists, serves to encourage some, to exasperate others, to maintain on both sides a state of mind least suited to the equitable examination of common problems.
In Italy, The New Europe was contested by nationalist newspapers and periodicals (including Politica, edited by Francesco Coppola), but also by Giornale d'Italia, which was close to Sonnino's positions. Many of the Italians who wrote in The New Europe stopped collaborating between January and February 1919. Among them, from 6 February, in addition to Salvemini, were Antonio De Viti De Marco, Edoardo Giretti, Giuseppe Borgese, Italo Giglioli and Giuseppe Bruccoleri. The New Europe also announced that it would no longer publish the other Italian contributors, namely Mario Borsa, Edoardo Albasini Scrosati and Angelo Sraffa, for their protection (Frangioni Reference Frangioni2011, 205–206).
Conclusion
How did the relationship between Salvemini, on the one hand, and Seton-Watson and The New Europe on the other, evolve between February 1917 and February 1919? In this essay we have already mentioned that A.J.P. Taylor (Taylor Reference Taylor1958) criticised the Troublemakers’ position as moralistic, idealistic and naive. Even many historians, however close to him and devoted to his memory, considered Salvemini's positions during the First World War as moralistic and idealistic. Both Seton Watson and Salvemini were accused of ignoring the difficulties of creating nation states in Central Europe, an area where nationalities were mixed (Apih Reference Apih1951, Valiani Reference Valiani and Caracciolo1968). Taking a different approach, Nelson Brailsford, a member of the Union for Democratic Control, in his 1917 book The League of Nations, considered self-determination in Central and Eastern Europe difficult to achieve and supported the idea of creating a federated Habsburg Empire (Brailsford Reference Brailsford1917; Howard Reference Howard1978; Reference Howard2002). But in 1917 even this position was as unrealistic as the idea of a separate peace with a federated Habsburg Empire, because the Austrian leadership was not strong enough to separate from Germany.
The only possibility of compromising for peace during the First World War came from negotiations with the Second Reich, but there was hardly any space left for those after the declaration of ‘submarine war’ in February 1917. This may be an interesting starting point to reassess the issue. As shown by Timothy Snyder's research, until the Second World War (Snyder Reference Snyder2018, 77–82), the Empire, and not the federal state, was considered the only alternative to nation states. The nation state was based on equality of citizenship, whereas in Empires not all citizens had the same rights, and the attempted introduction of equal rights led to a period of crisis, for instance in Austria-Hungary (Valiani Reference Valiani1966). This is well explained by the articles that Angelo Vivante – a very important influence, as we have seen, on Salvemini's prewar positions – wrote in L'Unità in 1913 on ‘Nazione e Stato nell'Austria-Ungheria’. These attributed the genesis of the national movements in the Empire to the original overlap between ethnic and social division, with the cleavage between the aristocracy of German origin and Slavic peasant classes. Capitalist development, with urbanisation and the minimal literacy requirements of the subordinate classes resulting from industrialisation had, however, thrown this balance into crisis. The national movements had, in short, emerged from the process of social emancipation and democratisation in a Tocquevillian sense (like the overcoming of the Ancien Régime in the countryside and the affirmation of equal conditions). However, the Empire largely played the divide-and-rule card by setting the various movements against each other to maintain its domination, making the contrasts irremediable (Frangioni Reference Frangioni2011, 46–47; Judson Reference Judson.2022). On the other hand, the creation of nation-states in Central and Eastern Europe entailed well-known problems, the different nationalities being, as already mentioned, intermingled. Only after the Second World War in Western Europe and after the Cold War in Central and Eastern Europe did a third way open up between the nation states and the Empire: the integration of the nation states into a common political, legal and economic space guaranteed by NATO, the Council of Europe, and the European Union.
During the First World War, Seton Watson and Salvemini supported both the idea of nation states and the integration process. Adopting a modern approach, they called for the creation of a common economic space between the new Central European states and the Balkans (Frangioni Reference Frangioni2011, Leoncini Reference Leoncini2018, Cornwalll Reference Cornwall2022). Thus, a line of continuity can be drawn between their position in favour of federalism before the war and the dissolution of the Empire during the war. And this is undoubtedly the most modern aspect of their positions.
At the same time, many errors of judgement were made. During the war, Seton Watson could have been more proactive in moderating the Yugoslav Committee and might have considered another factor: France wanted to maintain its hegemony in the Adriatic and the Mediterranean by supporting the demands of South Slavs, thus containing Italy's influence. The British moderation of these demands should be seen as part of a foreign policy based on maintaining the European balance. At the Paris Conference, Lloyd George tried to negotiate an agreement on the Adriatic border (Cattaruzza Reference Cattaruzza2014), but Seton-Watson did not follow this route.
Consequently, Salvemini should have given up a clear draft agreement on the Adriatic in favour of a more flexible (and vague) position, as advocated by Albertini. Moreover, the Italian delegation at the Paris Conference should have considered European problems from a broader point of view. More importantly, in his message on 23 April, US President Wilson had not shown sufficient commitment to his vision of Central Europe and the Balkans, a vision that should have included an Italian-Yugoslav compromise more acceptable to Italy, such as the one Lloyd George was negotiating in April 1919, without attacking the entire Italian position. This message also aroused Salvemini's indignation. Interestingly, the day before, urged by Lloyd George, Italian Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando had made a proposal based on the Italian renunciation of Dalmatia in exchange for a non-Yugoslav solution for Fiume. In fact, the proposal was that Fiume should be under Italian sovereignty but with ample autonomy, the Dalmatian islands, with the exception of Pag, were to be assigned to Italy as foreseen by the London Pact, the Dalmatian mainland to Yugoslavia, except for Zara and Sibenik, which would be under the protection of the League of Nations with Italy as mandatory power. On 23 April, at 3p.m., Lloyd George had communicated acceptance of the Italian demands except for Fiume; but then Wilson's message blew up the agreement (Cattaruzza Reference Cattaruzza2014, Karlsen Reference Karlsen2016). Nevertheless, working towards an Adriatic agreement was not an unrealistic position: Carlo Sforza, foreign minister in the Giolitti government, would enact this policy a year later, signing the Treaty of Rapallo in November 1920 (Sforza Reference Sforza1944, Cattaruzza Reference Cattaruzza2014, Karlsen Reference Karlsen2016, Leoncini Reference Leoncini2018). Meanwhile, the myth of the ‘mutilated victory’ had poisoned Italian politics (Vivarelli Reference Vivarelli2022).
Competing interest
The author declares none.
Andrea Frangioni serves as Official at the Italian Chamber of Deputies Research Department. His published books include Gaetano Salvemini e la Grande Guerra (Rubbettino 2011) and Francesco Ruffini. Una biografia intellettuale (Il Mulino 2016). Among his essays are Chabod e il progetto di storia della politica estera (2014). He is the editor, for the Rubbettino publishing house, of the L'isola di Jura. Storie di dissidenti series.
