Conventionally, the resolution of the Matteotti crisis and the signing of the Lateran treaty circumscribe that period of Fascist rule during which Mussolini consolidated power and assembled the institutional elements necessary for the “totalitarian” control of society. In chapter 2 I have traced one aspect of this process: the evolution of the Fascist program of population management. This program would continue to evolve in the decade that followed: a brief interim of emigration liberalization would follow the economic crisis of 1929; efforts to encourage fertility and certain types of internal and colonial migration would be renewed; and Fascist racism would be introduced. Nonetheless, the 1930s were, for the Fascist regime in general and population policy in particular, more a period of realization – or non-realization – than organization. It was the period in which Fascism sought to bind the population to the regime, to inject the masses with a “totalitarian spirit” and create, by means of a martial and Fascist culture, a new Italian consciousness in reaction against the decadent and bourgeois nature of the previous Liberal society. Fundamental to the Fascist vision of a new civilization was the demographic aspect, and following the creation of the various institutions described in chapter 2, the regime launched a multipronged attempt to mold society spatially, quantitatively and qualitatively. These efforts were audacious in their aspirations but modest in their accomplishments.

In this chapter I shall look at the Fascist programs of spatial population management, namely plans for internal and African colonization and the battle against urbanization. The complementary (and at times overlapping) quantitative and qualitative measures – infant protection, pronatalism and racism – are dealt with in chapter 4.