Italy

From Revolution to Republic, 1700 to the Present, Fourth Edition

Spencer M. DiScala

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429974731
• Subtopic: Modern History
• Index: History

This essential book fills a serious gap in the field by synthesizing modern Italian history and placing it in a fully European context. Emphasizing globalization, Italy traces the country's transformation from a land of emigration to one of immigration and its growing cultural importance. Including coverage of the April 2008 elections, this updated edition offers expanded examinations of contemporary Italy's economic, social, and cultural development, a deepened discussion on immigration, and four new biographical sketches. Author Spencer M. Di Scala discusses the role of women, gives ample attention to the Italian South, and provides a picture of how ordinary Italians live. Cast in a clear and lively style that will appeal to readers, this comprehensive account is an indispensable addition to the field.

PART ONE

Enlightenment and French Revolutionary Italy

CHAPTER ONE

The Italian Enlightenment

THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EUROPEAN ENLIGHTENMENT USED IDEAS AS “intellectual weapons” to alter the existing religious, political, and social situation. The intellectuals of this age, the philosophes (illuministi in Italian), aimed to transform their traditional, rigid, and inequitable society into a world that enjoyed greater justice. They utilized “reason,” critical judgment that corroded the “myths” underpinning the existing political and social structure. By employing reason, they could analyze society, learn the principles governing behavior, and achieve a more perfect and rational world by applying these principles through education and influence upon powerful “Enlightened monarchs.”

In short, the philosophes applied physicist Isaac Newton’s scientific methodology to the study of society, reversing the prevailing attitude of reverence for the past and aiming for perfection in the future rather than lamenting the loss of the past’s golden age. Newton had influence also in Italy. Using the rules of evidence, they questioned everything, destroyed the historical basis of the old regime, and set the stage for the “Age of the Democratic Revolution” in Europe and America.

In practice, the philosophes advocated eliminating the Church’s political power, judging government by a utilitarian yardstick, rationalizing the economy by eliminating feudal vestiges and by establishing an equitable tax system, opening careers to talent instead of birth, drafting constitutions to limit the power of governments, securing civil rights, and reforming the justice system.

RECIPROCAL INFLUENCES

France’s position as the center of the Enlightenment sometimes causes observers to overlook the crucial contributions of Italian, German, English, Russian, and other thinkers, and Marxist analyses of the movement as the expression of a rising bourgeoisie have downplayed the Enlightenment’s revolutionary character outside France. In Italy during the 1920s and 1930s, the Fascists encouraged interpretation of the Italian Enlightenment as a purely native movement foreshadowing the Risorgimento—the movement for Italian unification. After World War II, Italian historian Franco Venturi refuted this nationalistic view by demonstrating the Italian Enlightenment’s richness and its integration within the “Atlantic” movement. Newtonian ideas, for example, influenced the Italian Enlightenment, and the Italian intellectual diaspora had effects on northern European culture.

Although intellectual developments in France stimulated discussion in Italy, Italians also influenced European Enlightenment thinkers. The works of Alberto Radicati di Passerano, an exile from the intolerant Kingdom of Sardinia (Piedmont), dealt with several issues dear to Enlightenment intellectuals. After a bold analysis of religious leaders, for example, he wryly concluded that “it would be better … to be an atheist than to worship a Being chargeable with such enormous crimes and iniquities.” Like French philosophe Denis Diderot, Passerano chipped away at the concept that governments enforce ethical behavior established by God, a prime source of their authority, and argued that ethical concepts originate in social habit and custom.

If Passerano’s ideas dealt with the more subtle aspects of the “myths” holding existing society together, writer Girolamo Tartarotti undermined grosser ones. In the 1740s, he struck a blow against prejudice and superstition by demolishing the belief in witches; such beliefs, he argued, contradicted morality and the scientific precepts of the new age. His work stimulated a vast debate over magic and touched off a general attack in France, Austria, and Germany on the supposed existence of witches, vampires, and ghosts.

The work of a Milanese thinker, Pietro Verri, is another example of this reciprocal influence. His Meditations on Political Economy (1771) caused a commotion in Europe by criticizing the Physiocrats, influential economists who advocated taxes on all land as the only source of new wealth. Verri argued that Physiocratic ideas would keep out foreign produce, working against the beneficial free trade that the Physiocrats intended their program to produce. Translated into French, German, and Russian, Verri’s book stirred discussion among the most famous philosophes and provided Europe with a taste of the fundamental issues being engaged by Italian intellectuals.

But it was another Milanese thinker who had the most international influence. Cesare Beccaria’s Of Crimes and Punishments (1764) was translated into many languages (the French edition bore a famous commentary by Voltaire). In examining justice during his time, Beccaria made compelling arguments for speedy trials, for informing the accused of their crimes, for limiting the power of judges, for proportioning the punishment to the crime, for equalizing punishments for the same crime, and for treating offenders equally regardless of social class; he denounced torture and the death penalty. Beccaria placed jurisprudence on a modern footing in Europe and America.

THE LONG PEACE

Besides these intellectual aspects, political currents also intertwined in eighteenthcentury Italy. Historians seem to agree that the 1730s mark the depth of the Italian post-Renaissance crisis and that the decade witnessed a slow revival of the political, economic, and intellectual fortunes of the country.

They divide the century into two periods. From 1700 to 1748, the precipitous decline of Spain and the desire to pluck Spanish spoils in Italy provoked major conflicts. During the War of Spanish Succession (1700–1713), the French attempted to take over the entire Spanish Empire, including Italy, while Austria hoped to substitute its hegemony for Spain’s on the peninsula. In the end, Austrian domination replaced Spanish, a development that made the Italian diplomatic situation more fluid.

The Austrians controlled only Lombardy (Milan) directly, even though they had indirect power in Tuscany (Florence). Spain retained influence in Naples, Sicily, and Parma through Bourbon rulers, but these states regained their independence. To obtain a consensus in their newly acquired possessions, the rulers adopted important reforms based on the prevailing Enlightenment culture. These attempts had the powerful support of Italian intellectuals, many of whom played an active role in the government and thus gained valuable governmental experience. A good example of Hapsburg activities in this sense can be seen in Trieste, where the Austrians established a free port and granted tolerance to the Jews.

With the decline of Spain and the emergence of a new European balance, the Italian diplomatic equation underwent major changes. The major beneficiary was Piedmont. Tucked in the northwest corner of Italy, and pursuing the expansionist aims of its ruling Savoy dynasty, this state ably exploited the differences between France and Austria, new rivals for supremacy in Italy. Because of England’s emergence as a Mediterranean power and its policy of preserving Piedmontese independence to counterbalance France and Austria, and because of its value to France and Austria as a buffer state, Piedmont gained diplomatic maneuverability. Smaller Italian states acquired some diplomatic maneuverability as well. By exploiting its privileged position, Piedmont acquired the large island of Sardinia, increased its mainland possessions, and won recognition as a kingdom. Thus, the eighteenth century witnessed the growth in prestige and size of the state that, a century and a half later, would accomplish Italian unification.

MAP 1.1 Eighteenth-Century Italy

European developments produced a long peace in Italy. Following the War of Austrian Succession (1740–1748), the rivals for control of Italy—France and Austria—became allies. Consequently, European conflicts did not involve the peninsula until 1792, when revolutionary France and conservative Austria battled anew. For fifty years, the Italian states could concentrate on internal affairs. Different conditions in various sections guaranteed mixed results, but the reform attempts were always interesting in their own right and helped determine the future course of the various Italian regions.

THE NORTH

Enlightened reforms and their effects on social and economic development placed Lombardy, despite its subjection to Austria, in the forefront of the Italian states.

The Austrian Hapsburg queen, Maria Theresa (1740–1780), initiated a reform policy on practical grounds, not on Enlightenment principles. Emerging from a war designed to dismember her disparate empire, Maria Theresa understood that only by streamlining the financial and administrative structure of her dominions could she increase production and the population’s capacity to pay more taxes. In practice, this policy meant a campaign against the remnants of Lombard feudalism, which hampered production—a goal that secured the cooperation of the Lombard philosophes.

The most crucial reform proved to be the vast land survey initiated by Maria Theresa’s father and completed by the empress in 1759. This survey allowed the state to impose a fairer tax on land belonging to all classes, including the nobility. Besides addressing the equity issue, the survey ensured fiscal stability by imposing definitive taxes, thus stimulating agricultural production. A typical but rarely implemented Enlightenment demand, this reform pleased Pietro Verri and the Lombard illuministi, ensuring their collaboration in the reforms that followed.

During the seventeenth century, the Spanish had sold to landlords the right to collect certain taxes and tolls. Between 1760 and 1786, the Austrians returned direct control of these taxes and tolls to the state. As a result, the economic position of nobles suffered. Since the reform presented the nobility with the choice of either a reduction in income or a return to business activity, part of the Lombard aristocracy engaged in improving its lands for profit. In short, this reform dealt a death blow to the residues of Lombard feudalism and created the basis for its legal abolition in 1797, results that went beyond the government’s intentions. Furthermore, redemption of indirect taxes and tolls permitted Lombardy in 1776 to declare freedom of internal trade in grains and, ten years later, to permit their free export. Lombardy thus carried out a series of important reforms that had long been advocated by European philosophes but that countries such as France had been unable to achieve.

In other areas of reform, such as administration, the Church, and education, the Austrians achieved mixed success, but on balance, the reform policy yielded permanent results. In the fertile Lombard lowlands, the great noble estates began breaking up, the land going to persons—noble and not—who founded vibrant agricultural firms. Intent on increasing production and profits, the agricultural bourgeoisie introduced new production methods and products such as cheese. This activity reversed the previous parasitic role of the city and created an equilibrium between city and country, as may be seen in the cultivation of the silkworm in the country while the towns invested capital and produced finished silk products. The population spurt in the smaller Lombard cities signaled a new dynamism unknown in Lombard society since the Renaissance.

The emerging middle class favored by Austrian policy created a climate for greater participation in politics to further its economic interests, although this was expressed only with the arrival of the French in 1796. At this critical point, however, the Austrians reversed their policy of cooperation with the Italians. The circumstances of Maria Theresa’s accession to the throne had forced her to collaborate with her subjects, but her son pursued a policy of centralization throughout his empire. After his mother’s death in 1780, Joseph II strengthened his control over Lombard officials; by 1790, collaboration with intellectuals and the middle class had ended. Historian Alexander Grab emphasizes the limits of Austrian reform policy and believes that “Joseph II lacked a commitment to a deep economic reform program”; according to Grab, for further significant economic change to occur, “other political upheavals and a stronger bourgeoisie were necessary.” Thus the Austrian fracture with the Lombard illuministi and the middle class transformed collaboration into permanent conflict and ensured a receptive audience for French revolutionary ideas.

No reform activity of the kind noted in Lombardy marked adjoining Piedmont. This state lacked the stimulus of a new ruling house eager to establish itself and did not follow a reform policy. Indeed, the Savoy dynasty judged reform dangerous to its control and persecuted Enlightenment culture. The travails of an important Piedmontese writer, Vittorio Alfieri, symbolize the poor relationship of this state with its intellectuals.

Other differences from the Italian pattern also show up. Piedmontese origins lay not in a large commercial city that had swallowed surrounding territory but in a collection of medieval fiefs over which the Savoy house had succeeded in imposing a centralized command after 1559. The government accomplished this aim by taming the unruly aristocracy and by converting it into a “service nobility” of the Prussian type that was closely bound to the monarchy. Loss of its fiscal privileges did not transform the Piedmontese nobility into a business class, as had partially occurred in Lombardy, but into a military, bureaucratic, and diplomatic caste; it thus retained its social status and its landed character.

This development did not improve Piedmontese agriculture, which remained backward. Industrial activity did not develop because the government failed to encourage commerce through the eradication of feudal conditions and because Piedmont lacked large cities. While Piedmontese rulers made weak attempts to improve the economy, they rejected the Enlightenment reforms that would have encouraged industry and commerce.

Piedmont achieved military and diplomatic successes in the eighteenth century, but it would not emerge as a serious candidate to lead the movement for Italian unification in the next century until it had moderated the less progressive aspects of its society, economy, and politics.

The fate of Venice and Genoa, once important mercantile republics, may be considered together. Venice emerged exhausted from the numerous attempts to destroy it during the late Renaissance and from a century-long conflict with the Turks. The discovery of America had pushed Venice into a long economic decline; by the eighteenth century, the republic had dwindled to diplomatic insignificance, even though its governmental structure remained an object of study and admiration for the philosophes.

The Venetian nobility abandoned commerce for landed activity and concentrated wealth into a few hands while retaining the severe restrictions for entry into the ruling class that had existed in its glory days. These factors prevented the emergence of a commercial middle class and provided little incentive for the aristocracy to engage in commerce once more. Enlightenment ideas did penetrate and some industry did develop, but not to a significant degree.

Similar to Venice in its restrictive governmental structure, Genoa also presents interesting dissimilarities. Given Genoa’s small size and poor hinterland, the nobles continued to lend money to the great powers, but this money-lending never developed into modern investment activity, nor did it stimulate industrial growth. Only in the ports of Leghorn and Genoa did mercantile activity expand; this commercial development gave rise to a vocal bourgeois class that was impatient with noble privileges and that later supported Italian unification.

THE CENTER

The government of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the area surrounding Florence, conducted the most serious experiment in Enlightenment reform. When Francis of Lorraine, husband of Maria Theresa, became the grand duke in 1737, he brought Tuscany under indirect Austrian control and initiated the reform process that their son, Peter Leopold (1765–1790), greatly accelerated.

Peter Leopold inherited an agricultural region that primarily produced grain, wine, olive oil, and fruit. The bourgeoisie was weak, and the land belonged mostly to the nobility, the ruling family, the Church, or to special orders of knights founded to fight the Turks. The peasants worked the land as sharecroppers to produce for themselves and the landowners, not for a market. The absence of a market, combined with the large tracts of unhealthy marshland, created a depressed peasant class perpetually indebted to the landlords and subject to frequent famines.

As in Lombardy, the new Austrian dynasty collaborated with the illuministi to bring about a series of reforms. Expanding on a 1767 provision, Peter Leopold allowed unlimited export...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Maps
• Preface and Acknowledgments
• The Setting
• Introduction: From “School of Europe” to Conquered Land
• PART ONE ENLIGHTENMENT AND FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY ITALY
• PART TWO RESTORATION ITALY
• PART THREE THE RISORGIMENTO
• PART FOUR THE “AGE OF PROSE”
• PART FIVE WAR AND FASCISM
• PART SIX THE REPUBLIC
• Bibliographical Essay
• About the Book and Author
• Index