was not prepared to accept revolutionary violence,
yet repression, he recognised, would only lead to
unnecessary bloodshed, create martyrs and alien-
ate the working man.
Giolitti utilised the revulsion against the strikes
of 1904 to increase his parliamentary support by
calling for a new election which he fought on a
moderate platform. His tactics succeeded and he
never, down to 1914, lost the majority of support
he then gained. But this support was based as
much on the personal loyalty and dependence on
political favours of individual deputies as on
agreement with any broad declaration of policy.
His management of parliament (and the electoral
corruption) undeniably diminished its standing
and importance.
Enjoying the support of King Victor Emmanuel
III, Giolitti’s power was virtually unfettered for a
decade. He used it to administer the country effi-
ciently, to provide the stability that enabled Italy,
in the favourable world economic conditions, to
make progress and modernise its industry. His
concern for the south was genuine, and state help
pointed the way. In order to preserve the state,
Giolitti appeased the left and claimed to be a con-
servative. His most startling move towards the
politics of the masses, away from those of privilege,
was to introduce a bill in 1911 to extend the elec-
torate to all males. The bill became law in 1912. It
was not so much the new extension of the fran-
chise that undermined Giolitti’s hold over his par-
liamentary majority: he secured the return of a
large majority in the new parliament of 1913.
What transformed Italian politics was the unleash-
ing of ardent nationalism by the war with Turkey
in 1911 which Giolitti had started in quite a differ-
ent spirit of cool calculation.
It was Italy’s misfortune to be diverted in the
twentieth century from the path of highly neces-
sary internal development to a policy of national-
ism and aggressive imperialism. Italy lacked the
resources and strength for an expansionist foreign
policy. But for its own ambitions, Italy could have
remained as neutral as Switzerland.
Italy was favoured by its geographical position
in that it did not lie in the path of the hostile
European states confronting each other. Luckily
for Italy, its military forces represented to its
neighbours a ‘second front’ which they were most
anxious to avoid opening while facing their main
enemy elsewhere. However little love they had for
Italy, they were therefore anxious to preserve
Italian neutrality and even willing to purchase its
benevolence with territorial rewards. Thus, the
diplomatic tensions and divisions of Europe were
extraordinarily favourable to Italy’s security,
which its own military strength could not have
ensured.
One of the most virulent forms of nationalism
is that known as ‘irredentism’, the demand to
bring within the nation areas outside the national
frontier inhabited by people speaking the same
language. There were two such regions adjoining
the northern Italian frontier: Trentino and
Trieste. Both were retained by Austria-Hungary
after the war with Italy in 1866. A third area, Nice
and Savoy, which had been ceded to France in
return for French help in the war of unification,
also became the target of irredentist clamour.
Besides this irredentism, Italian leaders also
wished to participate in the fever of European
imperialism. Surrounded on three sides by the sea,
Italians looked south across the Mediterranean to
the North Africa shore where lay the semi-
autonomous Turkish territories of Tunis and
Tripolis and perceived them as a natural area of
colonial expansion. They saw to the west the
island of Corsica, now French, but once a depen-
dency of Genoa; to the east, across the Adriatic,
the Ottoman Empire was the weakening ruler of
heterogeneous Balkan peoples.
National ‘egoism’ gave Italian policy the
appearance of faithlessness and inconsistency. But
it would be facile to make the moral judgement
that Italian nationalism was either better or worse
than that of the other European powers. What can
be said with certainty is that it served Italian inter-
ests ill, but then it would have required vision and
statesmanship of the highest order to have resisted
the imperialist urge which swept over all the
European powers. The Italians had not distin-
guished themselves in imperial wars. They were the
only European country to be defeated by indigen-
ous African people, the Abyssinians in 1896, but
the Italians did not lose their appetite for empire.
1
HEREDITARY FOES AND UNCERTAIN ALLIES 31
