Italy the Least of the Great Powers

In the heart of Rome beside the Capitol confronting the Piazza Venezia stands the Victor Emmanuel monument. In Rome which until 1945 was so often accorded the adjectives ''eternal'' or ''imperial'' the monumentissimo (as sardonic socialists labelled it) is the most public most theatrical and most excessive architectural celebration of post-Risorgimento Italian patriotism nationalism and perhaps imperialism. This book asks why the Victor Emmanuel monument planned after 1878 and opened in 1911 was a structure raised by Liberal and not Fascist Italy. Through a detailed study of diplomacy of policy-making of policy-makers and of the distribution of real power in pre-First World War Italy it demonstrates how important foreign policy and a foreign policy of greatness was to Liberal Italy. Weakened by economic backwardness regional diversity and the gulf between the legal-political world and ''real'' society Liberal Italy was nonetheless ambitious to be a Great Power. This monograph contributes to a number of major historiographical debates. It produces evidence which casts doubts on the thesis that fascism was a parenthesis in Italian history.