Economic Growth and the Idealist Revolt

The crisis of the 1890s had brought Italy’s political system to the brink of collapse. Crispi contemplated a presidential alternative. An elected Chamber, he told the queen in 1895, was unworkable, and suggested that it should be replaced with a non-elected and purely consultative Senate. In 1897 he again voiced his profound disquiet, and urged the adoption of the German model: ‘Whenever parliament is involved in government, it leads to the abyss . . . The king does not rule, he is ruled . . . If we carry on with the present system, we will have a revolution.’ Many felt that a revolution, or at least some form of fundamental political or spiritual regeneration, was in fact the answer. Marxism swept the universities in the 1890s and became the dominant creed of intellectuals; and even Gabriele D’Annunzio, Italy’s leading exponent of decadentism, crossed the floor of the Chamber of Deputies in 1900 to join the Socialists: ‘As a man of intellect, I go towards life’, he declared.

The atmosphere of crisis brought to a head the uncertainties about Italy’s identity that had been in the air since the 1870s. Crispi’s heroic vision of national greatness was rooted largely in the past, in the Risorgimento; others preferred to look to an imagined future. The upturn in the economy from the end of the century opened up an alternative path, and for a while rekindled the dream of Cavour and the moderates that the country’s liberal institutions could be legitimated through a growth in material prosperity. ‘We are at the beginning of a new historical period’, proclaimed Giovanni Giolitti confidently in February 1901. Giolitti was to dominate Italian politics in the decade and a half leading up to the outbreak of the First World War. Like Cavour, he put his faith in economic modernisation; but unlike him, he looked to industry rather than agriculture to lead the way forward.