Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T18:55:11.314Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Land reform in the 1950s in Italy and the United States: the thinking of Mario Einaudi

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 January 2016

Andrea Mariuzzo
Andrea Mariuzzo*
Affiliation:
Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, Pisa, Italy
*
∗Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The article discusses the thinking of Mario Einaudi in relation to the ambitious measures with which the Italian government sought to move towards land reform in the immediate post–war period. Einaudi, an intellectual and academic, was by birth Italian but moved to the United States during the Fascist period. Like his father Luigi, the noted economist, he was convinced of the need to stimulate the free market in land in order to increase productivity and modernise cultivation methods; in his writings he repeatedly sought to develop a plan of action that would facilitate collaboration between Rome and Washington in this field, identifying the Tennessee Valley Authority approach as especially suited to the Italian case. However, while his ideas achieved a good public airing, they had a limited impact: on the political front, Cold War priorities pushed Italian and US Marshall Plan experts more towards the redistribution of landownership than towards stimulating the productivity of agricultural businesses, in the attempt to rapidly build a consensus behind the government; and on the cultural front, at the end of the 1950s the issue of backwardness in the rural South started to be interpreted in terms of cultural and social anthropology, an approach which did not directly relate to the development of political programmes.

Keywords

Mario Einaudi (1904–1994)Italian land reformagricultureTennessee Valley AuthorityRepublican Italy
Type
Articles
Information
Modern Italy , Volume 18 , Issue 4 , November 2013 , pp. 355 - 371
Copyright
Copyright © Association for the study of Modern Italy 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Banfield, Edward C. 1958. The Moral Basis of a Backward Society. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.Google Scholar
Barone, Giuseppe. 1986. Mezzogiorno e modernizzazione. Elettricità, irrigazione e bonifica nell'Italia contemporanea. Turin: Einaudi.Google Scholar
Barone, Giuseppe. 1994. “Stato e Mezzogiorno (1943–1960). Il ‘primo tempo’ dell'intervento straordinario.” In La costruzione della democrazia, vol. 1 of Storia dell'Italia repubblicana , edited by Barbagallo, Francesco, 293–409. Turin: Einaudi.Google Scholar
Bernardi, Emanuele. 2006. La riforma agraria in Italia e gli Stati Uniti. Bologna: il Mulino.Google Scholar
Bernardi, Emanuele. 2008. “I liberali e la riforma agraria.” In I liberali italiani dall'antifascismo alla repubblica, vol. 1, edited by Orsini, Fabio Grassi, and Nicolosi, Gerardo, 420–440. Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino.Google Scholar
Bernardi, Emanuele. ed. 2010a. “Manlio Rossi-Doria negli Stati Uniti. 1951–1952” QA 2010(2):6–83.Google Scholar
Bernardi, Emanuele. 2010b. Riforme e democrazia. Manlio Rossi-Doria dal fascismo al centro-sinistra. Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino.Google Scholar
Bevilacqua, Piero. 1993. Breve storia dell'Italia meridionale. Dall'Ottocento a oggi. Rome: Donzelli.Google Scholar
Bevilacqua, Piero, ed. 2001. Uomini e classi. Vol. 2 of Storia dell'agricoltura italiana nell'età contemporanea. Venice: Marsilio.Google Scholar
Carpitella, Diego. 1993. “L'itinerario di Carlo Levi e la ricerca interdisciplinare di Ernesto De Martino.” In Carlo Levi nella storia e nella cultura italiana, edited by De Donato, Gigliola, 203–212. Manduria: Lacaita.Google Scholar
Colignon, Richard A. 1997. Power Plays: Critical Events in the Institutionalization of the Tennessee Valley Authority. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Cottam, Howard B., Brand, Robert A., and Sullam, Victor B. 1949. “Land Redistribution: One Aspect of Agrarian Reform in Italy” Foreign Agriculture 13(10):219–224.Google Scholar
Einaudi, Luigi. 1962 [1957]. “Di alcuni scatoloni vuoti correnti nell'economia agraria italiana (opening speech at the 204th course of the Accademia dei Georgofili of Florence).” In Prediche inutili, 243–258. Turin: Einaudi.Google Scholar
Einaudi, Mario. 1943. “Italian Hot Potato.” America, November 6:131–132.Google Scholar
Einaudi, Mario. 1944. “The Economic Reconstruction of Italy” Foreign Affairs 22(2):298–308.Google Scholar
Einaudi, Mario. 1950. “The Italian Land: Men, Nature, and Government” Social Research 17(1):8–34.Google Scholar
Ekbladh, David. 2002. “‘Mr. TVA’: Grass-Roots Development, David Lilienthal, and the Rise and Fall of the Tennessee Valley Authority as a Symbol for U.S. Overseas Development, 1933–1973” Diplomatic History 26(3):335–374.Google Scholar
Fauvet, Jacques, and Mendras, Henri, eds. 1958. Les paysans et la politique dans la France contemporaine. Paris: A. Colin.Google Scholar
Forlenza, Rosario. 2010. “A Party for the Mezzogiorno: The Christian Democratic Party, Agrarian Reform and the Government of Italy” Modern European History 19(4):331–349.Google Scholar
Ginsborg, Paul. 1992. “Resistenza e riforma in Italia e in Francia” Ventesimo Secolo 5–6:297–319.Google Scholar
Ginsborg, Paul. 1998. Storia d'Italia dal dopoguerra ad oggi. Famiglia, società, stato. Turin: Einaudi.Google Scholar
Hughes, H. Stuart. 1953. The United States and Italy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Katzenstein, Peter J., Lowi, Theodore J., and Tarrow, Sidney G., eds. 1990. Comparative Theory and Political Experience: Mario Einaudi and the Liberal Tradition. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Killinger, Charles L. 2002. Gaetano Salvemini: A Biography. Westport, CT: Praeger.Google Scholar
La Piana, Giorgio, and Salvemini, Gaetano. 1943. What to Do with Italy. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pierce.Google Scholar
Levi, Carlo. 1947. Christ Stopped at Eboli: The Story of a Year. New York: Ferrar, Strauss, [Originally published as Cristo si è fermato a Eboli, Turin: Einaudi, 1945].Google Scholar
Lilienthal, David E. 1946. Democrazia in cammino. Turin: Einaudi. [Originally published as TVA: Democracy on the March, New York: Harper, 1944].Google Scholar
Malandrino, Corrado, ed. 1998. Luigi Sturzo-Mario Einaudi. Corrispondenza americana (1940–1944). Florence: Olschki.Google Scholar
Mangoni, Luisa. 1999. Pensare i libri. La casa editrice Einaudi dagli anni trenta agli anni sessanta. Turin: Bollati Boringhieri.Google Scholar
Mariuzzo, Andrea. 2011. “La riflessione sul comunismo nella French-Italian Inquiry di Mario Einaudi (1948–1955)” Storia e Problemi Contemporanei 57:39–54.Google Scholar
Mariuzzo, Andrea. 2013. “‘Explaining Europe to Americans and America to Europeans’: Mario Einaudi e gli studi politici internazionali nel secondo dopoguerra” Contemporanea 16(3):409–428.Google Scholar
Mastropaolo, Alfio. 2009. “From The Other Shore: American Political Science and the Italian Case” Modern Italy 14(3):311–337.Google Scholar
Medici, Giuseppe. 1946. L'agricoltura e la riforma agraria. Milan: Rizzoli.Google Scholar
Misiani, Simone. 2010. Manlio Rossi-Doria. Un riformatore del Novecento. Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino.Google Scholar
Romero, Federico. 2001. “L'emigrazione operaia in Europa (1948–1973).” In Partenze, vol. 1 of Storia dell'emigrazione italiana , edited by Bevilacqua, Piero, De Clementi, Andreina, and Franzina, Emilio, 397–414. Rome: Donzelli.Google Scholar
Salvemini, Gaetano. 1936. Under the Axe of Fascism. New York: Viking.Google Scholar
Salvemini, Gaetano. 1955. Scritti sulla questione meridionale (1896–1955). Turin: Einaudi.Google Scholar
Salvemini, Gaetano. 1969. L'Italia vista dall'America, edited by Tagliacozzo, Enzo. Milan: Feltrinelli.Google Scholar
Sereni, Emilio. 1948. Il Mezzogiorno all'opposizione. Taccuino di un ministro in congedo. Turin: Einaudi.Google Scholar
Sullam, Victor B. 1943. “Fundamentals of Italian Agriculture” Foreign Agriculture 7(12):267–288.Google Scholar
Turi, Gabriele. 1990. Casa Einaudi. Libri uomini idee oltre il fascismo. Bologna: Il Mulino.Google Scholar
Vaudagna, Maurizio. 1981. Corporativismo e New Deal. Integrazione e conflitto sociale negli Stati Uniti. Turin: Rosenberg and Sellier.Google Scholar
Vaudagna, Maurizio, ed. 1995. Mario Einaudi (1904–1994) intellettuale, storico ed organizzatore culturale tra America ed Europa. Turin: Fondazione Luigi Einaudi.Google Scholar
Vivarelli, Roberto. 2011 [1981]. Liberalismo, protezionismo, fascismo. Un giudizio di Luigi Einaudi. Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino.Google Scholar
Zoppi, Sergio. 1998. Il Mezzogiorno di De Gasperi e Sturzo (1944–1959). Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino.Google Scholar