Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Preface
- List of maps
- 1 Society and politics in Liberal Italy
- 2 New political pressure groups and foreign policy
- 3 The making of a Foreign Minister: Antonino Di San Giuliano
- 4 The Consulta: the bureaucrats of foreign policy
- 5 How Italy went to Libya
- 6 How Italy stayed in Libya
- 7 The politics of alliance: Italy in the Triple Alliance, 1912–1914
- 8 The politics of friendship: Italy, the Triple Entente, and the search for a new Mediterranean agreement, 1911–1914
- 9 ‘Un cliente maleducato’: Italy in the Dodecanese and Ethiopia, 1912–1914
- 10 Preparing to digest some spoils: Italian policy towards Turkey, 1912–1914
- 11 San Giuliano's epilogue. The realities of European war 28 June to 16 October 1914
- Conclusion
- Appendix I The Ten Commandments for Italians abroad
- Appendix II Pro-memoria on our politico-military situation, by A. Pollio
- Appendix III San Giuliano's poem about his funeral ceremony
- Abbreviations used in the notes and bibliography
- Select bibliography
- Notes
- Index
Conclusion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 November 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Preface
- List of maps
- 1 Society and politics in Liberal Italy
- 2 New political pressure groups and foreign policy
- 3 The making of a Foreign Minister: Antonino Di San Giuliano
- 4 The Consulta: the bureaucrats of foreign policy
- 5 How Italy went to Libya
- 6 How Italy stayed in Libya
- 7 The politics of alliance: Italy in the Triple Alliance, 1912–1914
- 8 The politics of friendship: Italy, the Triple Entente, and the search for a new Mediterranean agreement, 1911–1914
- 9 ‘Un cliente maleducato’: Italy in the Dodecanese and Ethiopia, 1912–1914
- 10 Preparing to digest some spoils: Italian policy towards Turkey, 1912–1914
- 11 San Giuliano's epilogue. The realities of European war 28 June to 16 October 1914
- Conclusion
- Appendix I The Ten Commandments for Italians abroad
- Appendix II Pro-memoria on our politico-military situation, by A. Pollio
- Appendix III San Giuliano's poem about his funeral ceremony
- Abbreviations used in the notes and bibliography
- Select bibliography
- Notes
- Index
Summary
In April 1911 Giovanni Giolitti declared that all his governments aimed merely to see an Italy which was ‘calm, prosperous and great’. Two years later, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and his Futurists demanded that ‘the word ITALY dominate over the word LIBERTY’ and that national foreign policy become ‘cynical, crafty and aggressive’. To some analysts, it is the difference between these two remarks, the contrast of the peaceable, if perhaps corrupt, liberalism of Giolitti, and the strident, irrational nationalism of some intellectuals which is the best evidence that Liberal Italy was, by 1914, headed for collapse and the degradation of fascism.
However, a detailed study of Italian foreign policy in the last years before 1914 reveals more continuity and consensus about diplomatic ambitions than might have been expected from these contrasting words. For, in 1913, San Giuliano's foreign policy was ‘cynical, crafty and aggressive’, just as much as San Giuliano's and many of his colleagues' definition of domestic policies sprang from an ideal that ‘Italy’, national unanimity behind the existing ruling class, surpass ‘Liberty’, with its horrid prospect that, via socialism, the ‘terrible masses’ were entering history and could in no way be diverted. What made Liberal foreign policy distinguishable from fascism-to-come was not its intention, but rather a combination of accident, opportunity and professionalism.
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- Italy the Least of the Great PowersItalian Foreign Policy Before the First World War, pp. 418 - 420Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1979
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