Italy’s Key Problems in The Early 20th Century

Question 1

When had Italy become a nation, and how?

Answer 1

• In 1870, with the addition of the Papal States
• This entire process was known as the Risorgimento, which meant resurgence or rebirth

Question 2

List 3 issues caused by the Risorgimento.

Answer 2

• Political leaders struggled to create an identity for Italy, as it had been fragmented political, economically and socially since the Middle Ages
• Italians did not have a sense of patriotism, but rather defined themselves through ‘campanilismo’; a feeling of pride and belonging to their place of birth
• Language

Question 3

Describe 3 ways in which language was an issue for Italy.

Answer 3

• 99% of Italians spoke a regional dialect, and could not understand dialects from other regions
• The official language was the dialect from Florence, but only people from Florence and the educated classes spoke it
• The king (Victor Emmanuel III) himself mostly spoke in the Piedmontese dialect, so most Italians could not understand him

Question 4

Why did many question if Italy would be able to survive as a nation in the late 1800s? Give 3 examples of this issue.

Answer 4

• Due to the political and economic turmoil
• In 1898, people protested against Italy’s political system and economic problems
• The government responded brutally and 100 protestors were killed in Milan
• In 1900 the king, Umberto I, was assassinated by a political anarchist who wanted to avenge the protestors’ death

Question 5

Give 6 details on how did Italy’s political system worked.

Answer 5

• It was meant to be a constitutional monarchy
• There was the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies
• The Chamber of Deputies was elected every 5 years, and was more powerful
• Government ministers were chosen from there
• The prime minister was the head of the government and took care of the country’s daily affairs
• However, the king was involved in state affairs; he had the power to appoint and dismiss government ministers (even the prime minister) and senators, controlled foreign policy and was the face of Italy at times of crisis

Question 6

What was the issue with political representation in Italy, and what did this cause?

Answer 6

• In 1882, only 25% of men had the right to vote, and it remained this way until 1912
• As a result, the Italians who made up parliament were predominantly northern, professional, middle-class men, who were mainly liberals

Question 7

What was Italian liberalism like after 1870, and what caused this?

Answer 7

• It became more right-wing
• This was because liberals saw the need to establish order and uniformity

Question 8

List 3 problems with the way the liberals ran the government.

Answer 8

• They tended to serve the interests of their own class
• They usually served the local interests of their region instead of national interests
• Trasformismo

Question 9

What was trasformismo? Give 5 details, and figures.

Answer 9

• There were very few political parties, so the government was made up of factions in a coalition
• Prominent politicians offered other deputies key positions, who would then support them as prime minster
• Success as a politician therefore hinged on forming political alliances
• This made the government unstable as politicians could offer deputies better deals, and they would then withdraw their support from whoever they were originally supporting
• This political manoeuvring was known as trasformismo, and was extremely corrupt
• A politician’s popularity therefore had nothing to do with popular or successful policies
• This made the government so unstable that there were 29 changes in prime minister between 1870 and 1922, and over 20 different governments between 1870 and 1915 (as coalitions were also short-lived)

Question 10

What were the 2 main reasons why the liberals came to dominate the government?

Answer 10

• The attitude of the Catholic Church and the Roman Question
• The majority of the population were disenfranchised

Question 11

In what 2 ways did the population’s inability to vote (for the most part) impact the political situation?

Answer 11

• Protest was popular, but these protests were violently repressed by the military
• Extreme ideologies, such as anarchism, grew

Question 12

What was the Roman Question? Give 4 details.

Answer 12

• It was the split between the Italian state and the Catholic Church
• The Catholic Church’s land had been reduced to a small area within Rome
• Pope Pius IX was angered by this and refused to acknowledge the new Italian state
• He argued that he needed his temporal power (power as a landowner) to ensure his independence as God’s representative, and that he could not be subject to a new state
• However, no government wanted to give up Rome to the Catholic Church

Question 13

What were the 5 impacts that the Roman Question had on politics?

Answer 13

• In 1886, the next pope Leo XIII forbade Catholics from voting or taking part in politics
  This also caused:
• The legitimacy of the nation to be questioned
• Italy to lose a potential symbol of unity as the majority of the population were Catholic
• Politicians to be unable to challenge the Church, as they couldn’t risk losing the population’s support
• The prevention of a national conservative party being formed from Catholic values, which allowed the liberals to remain unchallenged

Question 14

What were the other main political groups?

Answer 14

• Socialists
• Nationalists

Question 15

What was socialism like in Italy around 1900? Give 6 details.

Answer 15

• The Italian Socialist Party (PSI) was set up in 1892, and became very popular
• It was like modern political parties, as it had congresses, membership, rules and procedures
• It had a newspaper called Avanti!
• It was led by middle-class intellectuals, but aimed to address the problems of the working class, so it had mass appeal
• In 1900, the PSI won 200,000 votes
• Their key policies were: votes for all men, an 8-hour working day, and more rights for women

Question 16

In what 2 ways did the PSI interact with the liberals in the government?

Answer 16

• They usually formed coalitions against them, as they saw them as the party of the elite
• However, within the PSI there were moderate and radicals socialists, and the moderate socialists often cooperated with the liberals

Question 17

What was nationalism like around the year 1900? Give 2 details.

Answer 17

• Italy had been formed by men with nationalistic ideals, but this was very different to what nationalism was in the 20th century
• In the 20th century, nationalism was about aggression, expansion and exclusion as a way of responding to socialism and the failures of the liberal government

Question 18

Who tended to support nationalism?

Answer 18

• It was mainly supported by urban middle-class men who owned small businesses and were against parliamentary democracy

Question 19

Give 4 facts about the ANI.

Answer 19

• The Italian Nationalist Association was founded in 1910
• It was extremely small before 1914; its popularity grew rapidly during and after WW1
• Its supporters were usually disillusioned former supporters of Catholicism, liberalism or socialism
• It was elitist, anti-parliamentary and supported business owners rather than workers; it was very anti-socialist

Question 20

What were 2 big issues that Italians blamed the ruling classes for not dealing with?

Answer 20

• Economic issues
• The north-south divide

Question 21

List 4 reasons why Italy had social problems. Give figures on unrest.

Answer 21

• Living conditions for workers were poor
• Unemployment
• Food shortages
• High taxation
• Between 1901 and 1911 there were over 1500 strikes involving almost 350,000 workers

Question 22

List 4 ways in which industrialisation was a success.

Answer 22

• The iron and steel industries grew significantly
• Newer industries like the chemical, mechanical and electrical grew as well
• The car industry was a huge success and companies such as Fiat and Alfa Romeo were established
• Industrial production had generally doubled between 1899 and 1910

Question 23

What was a limitation of industrialisation in Italy?

Answer 23

• Italy had always been behind other countries such as Germany and Britain (and therefore continued to be)

Question 24

What had agriculture been like in Italy?

Answer 24

• Italy still wasn’t self-sufficient in terms of food production, so it relied on imports as well

Question 25

What was the questione meridionale?

Answer 25

• The southern question; why the south had become so poor and what could be done to solve the problem

Question 26

What did the government usually do in regards to the south? Give 3 details.

Answer 26

• They tended to ignore it
• It took a 32 years for an Italian PM to even visit the south after unification
• There were parliamentary inquiries into the the ‘southern question’, but very little was actually done

Question 27

List 5 areas in which the north-south divide was a huge problem.

Answer 27

• Industry
• Agriculture
• Literacy
• Disease
• Migration

Question 28

What were 4 differences between the north and the south in terms of industry?

Answer 28

• Almost all of the industry in Italy was based in the north
• Milan, Turin and Genoa (northern cities) alone accounted for 55% of Italy’s industrial production
• In 1911, half of Italy’s 2.2 million industrial workers were employed in the northern provinces where these 3 cities were based
• The south was far less modernised, and although the government passed laws to try to change this, it didn’t work as the south’s economy continued to be reliant on agriculture

Question 29

What was farming like in the north? Give 3 details.

Answer 29

• In the north, farming became more profitable and efficient due to improvements in mechanisation, fertiliser, irrigation and drainage systems
• Its land was also naturally rich and fertile
• As a result, subsistence farming disappeared, and farming became a business

Question 30

What was farming in the south like? Give 4 details.

Answer 30

• In the south, farming had not been commercialised in the same way
• Deforestation meant that the soil quality was low, so crop growth was poor
• The region was also more vulnerable to natural disasters and drought
• Financial aid was given to the south after such disasters, but it was slow in coming, so the government’s popularity decreased there

Question 31

Give 4 examples of natural disasters in the south.

Answer 31

• Earthquake in Calabria in 1905
• Mount Vesuvius erupted in 1906
• Tidal wave in 1908
• Mount Etna erupted in 1910

Question 32

What were 2 differences between the north and the south in terms of poverty?

Answer 32

• As the south’s industrial development was practically non-existent, most workers were farm labourers who relied on their daily wages
• By 1911, income per head in the north was double what it was in the south

Question 33

What were the differences between the north and the south in terms of disease? Give 3 details.

Answer 33

• Poverty made the south more vulnerable to disease, due to a lack of clean drinking water, malnutrition, cramped conditions and infant mortality (40% of all registered deaths were those of children under 5)
• The south of Italy had among the highest rates of disease in Europe
• There were also high rates of malaria and tuberculosis across Italy

Question 34

What were the differences between the north and the south in terms of literacy?

Answer 34

• By 1911, more than half of the south’s population was illiterate, which was over 5 times the rate of Piedmont, for example

Question 35

What were the differences between the north and the south in terms of emigration? Give 4 details.

Answer 35

• From the 1890s, 200,000 Italians left Italy every year
• 75% of Italian immigrants to the USA were from the south of Italy
• 1 million Sicilians left out of a population of 3.5 million
• This did ease the economic strain in the south, but many Italians saw it as a shame as they lost people who would have contributed to the economy

Question 36

When it came to the balance of power in Europe, how did Italy compare to the others? How did this compare to Italy’s foreign policy?

Answer 36

• Italy was industrially behind Germany and Britain, and geographically the Mediterranean was controlled by the French and British navies
• Italy was thought of as “the least of the great powers”, and wanted to become one of the major powers

Question 37

What 2 things was Italy’s foreign policy based on?

Answer 37

• Irredentism
• Gaining colonies in Africa

Question 38

What was irredentism?

Answer 38

• The idea that Italy’s unification was not complete until all Italian-speaking areas- the irredente (unredeemed) lands- became part of the Italian state, such as Istria and South Tyrol

Question 39

What was the problem with irredentism?

Answer 39

• Most of the irredente lands were part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire
• Italy had neither the military nor the diplomatic means to get them back

Question 40

What had gone wrong with Italy’s attempts to gain colonies in Africa? Give 5 details.

Answer 40

• Italy had first focused on Tunisia for strategic and economic reasons, but in 1881 France invaded Tunisia and claimed it for themselves with Britain’s diplomatic support
• In 1884 Britain agreed that Italy could invade Abyssinia
• This failed at the 1887 Battle of Dogali, where 500 Italian soldiers were killed
• This failed again at the Battle of Adwa in 1896, where 5000 Italian soldiers were killed, and thousands more injured
• The loss caused massive political unrest

Question 41

What did Italy do after it failed to colonise Tunisia, and what was the problem with this?

Answer 41

• It joined the Triple Alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary in 1882, which was a defensive alliance mainly against France
• Many Italians were angered by this as Austria was Italy’s traditional enemy, and also had the irredente lands in its possession