We use cookies to enhance your experience on our website. By continuing to use our website, you are agreeing to our use of cookies. You can change your cookie settings at any time. Find out more

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide.

Request Exam Copy

Print Price: $65.99

Format:
Paperback
352 pp.
92 illustrations, 6.125" x 9.25"

ISBN-13:
9780199982578

Copyright Year:
2019

Imprint: OUP US


A History of Modern Italy

Transformation and Continuity, 1796 to the Present

Anthony Cardoza

A History of Modern Italy addresses the question of how Italy's modern history, from its prolonged process of nation-building in the nineteenth century to the crises of the last two decades, has produced a paradoxical blend of hyper-modernity and traditionalism and thus made the country "different" in the broader context of Western Europe.

The text explores how Italians have experienced seismic shifts in their social and economic landscape over the past two centuries, while simultaneously maintaining older cultural norms, social practices, and political methods. As a second objective, the book showcases a narrative of modern Italy that incorporates and blends the research findings and methodological insights of the new quantitative and cultural historical scholarship of the past two and a half decades. In doing so, it chronicles the regime changes that have taken the country from a Liberal monarchy through the Fascist dictatorship to a Democratic Republic while also delving into the simultaneous economic and social history of the nation through these periods.

Readership : Undergraduate students in Modern European, Western European, Italian, and Modern Italian History classes.

Reviews

  • "Anthony Cardoza has written a clear, concise, and highly readable survey of modern Italy that integrates seamlessly the economic,political and social history of the Italian state from the Risorgimento to the present day. Cardoza's survey helps the reader understand both the tremendous changes that Italy has undergone since unification, but also how traditional values and institutions have shaped the Italian modernization. It is an essential introduction to Italian history for students and all interested readers."

    --Alexander De Grand North Carolina State University

  • "Anthony Cardoza 's History of Modern Italy provides fresh and exciting understandings of politics on the peninsula from Unification until today. The book offers new insights into traditional institutional topics --liberalism, fascism, and the Republic - but also looks at the subcultures that paralyzed the nation from the very establishment of the Kingdom. He deftly describes the narrowness of the governing class, the paralysis in state administration, and popular challenges to official constructions of italianità."

    --Alice A. Kelikian Brandeis University

LIST OF MAPS
- Italy: Physical Features
- Europe in 1748-
- The Languages and Dialects of Italy
- Napoleon's Empire at its Height, 1812
- Italy in 1815-
- Revolutionary Europe-
- Italian Rail Network, 1861-
- The Unification of Italy-
- Italian Rail Network, 1871-
- The Zones of Italy-
- The Triple Alliance-
- The Horn of Africa in the Late 19th Century
- The Italo-Turkish War, 1911-1912
- The Great War and the Italian Front
- Europe after the Paris Peace Conference, 1919
- Expansion of the Italian Empire-
- World War II in Europe, 1939-1945
- Postwar Alliances in Europe and the European Coal and Steel Community
PREFACE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
1. THE ITALIAN PENINSULA IN THE LATE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
- From the Center to the Margins of Europe
- Land of a Thousand Bell Towers
- Roman Catholicism and the Italian Church
- The Italian Enlightenment and the Old Regimes'
- Italy in the 1790s
2. BIRTH OF A NATIONAL IDEA: 1796-1850
- Catalysts of Change: Napoleon and the French Revolution
- The Cultural Roots of the Italian Nation
- Giuseppe Mazzini and Romantic Nationalism
- Moderate Liberal Nationalism
- 1848 and the Limits of Popular National Mobilization
3. A PERFECT STORM: ITALIAN UNIFICATION, 1850-1871
Camillo di Cavour and Piedmontese Liberalism
- Cavour, Piedmont and Italian Unification
- The Mazzinian Moment: Giuseppe Garibaldi and the South
- Completing the Nation State: 1861-1870
- Legacies of a Perfect Storm
4. THE CREATION OF THE LIBERAL STATE: 1871-1887
- The Structure and Practices of the Liberal State
- The Politics of Accommodation: Parliamentary Transformism
- Birth of the "Southern Question"
- From Poetry to Prose: Liberal Italy's Crisis of Confidence
5. LIBERAL ITALY UNDER SIEGE: 1887-1900
- Economic Recession, Social Unrest and Political Challenges
- Francesco Crispi and the Politics of Strong Man Rule
- Crispi and the Politics of National Prestige and Glory
- Italy's End of the Century Crisis
6. LIBERAL ITALY'S GOLDEN AGE: 1901-1914
- Giovanni Giolitti and Liberal Politics in a New Key
- Economic Growth and Social Progress in Giolittian Italy
- The Limits of the Giolittian System
- End of an Era: The Interventionist Crisis, 1914-15
7. THE GREAT WAR AND THE CRISIS OF LIBERAL ITALY, 1914-20
- "A Useless Slaughter:" Italy's War on the Front Lines
- Italy's War at Home
- A Mutilated Victory? Italy's Post-War Malaise, 1918-1920
- The "Red Years" 1919-1920
8. THE RISE AND TRIUMPH OF FASCISM, 1921-1925
- Fascists of the First Hour
- A Pre-emptive Counter-Revolution: Agrarian Fascism
- From Periphery to the Center: The March on Rome
- In Limbo: Improvising Fascism, 1922-24
- The Matteotti Affair and the Demise of Liberal Italy
9. FORGING THE FASCIST TOTALITARIAN REGIME: 1925-35
- The Fascist Totalitarian Social Project
- The Fascist Totalitarian Cultural Project
- Mussolini and the Cult of the Duce
- The Limits of the Totalitarian State
10. FASCISM ON THE WAR PATH: 1934-1940
- Domestic and International Determinants of Fascist Expansionism
- Fascist Expansionism: From Ethiopia to Spain, 1935-39
- The Rome-Berlin Axis and the Radicalization of Fascism
11. FROM FASCIST DICTATORSHIP TO DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC
- Death of a Regime: 1940-43
- Into the Abyss: 1943-45
- A New Beginning: Birth of a Democratic Republic, 1945-46
- The Persistence of the Old Order in Republican Italy
12. ITALY TRANSFORMED: 1948-1970
- The Political Framework for Recovery
- The Economic Miracle, Italian Style
- The Transformation of Italian Society
- The Limits of Italian Modernity
- A Revolution in Rising Expectations
13. ITALY ADRIFT, 1972-1991
- Shock of the Global: Italian Economy and Society in the 1970s
- Italian Democracy under Siege
- The Center Holds: The Historical Compromise and the Government of National Solidarity
- The Grand Illusion: Italy in the 1980s
- The Hidden Costs of the Good Life: Italy in the Late 1980s
14. AN ELUSIVE TRANSITION: ITALY SINCE 1992
- The Center No Longer Holds: The Demise of the Post-War Political Order, 1991-94
- The Man on a White Horse: The Rise of Silvio Berlusconi
- A Transtion? The Center-Left at the Helm, 1996-2001
- While Rome Burned: Berlusconi's Italy, 2001-2011
- Decline or Renewal: Italy Since 2011
SUGGESTED READINGS
CREDIT
INDEX

There are no Instructor/Student Resources available at this time.

Anthony L. Cardoza is Professor of Modern European History at Loyola University Chicago. He received a B.A. from the University of California, Davis in 1969, and his Ph.D in History from Princeton University in 1975, before accepting a Roman Prize Fellowship to the American Academy in 1976. He is the author or co-author of three books on Italian history. His Agrarian Elites and Italian Fascism: The Province of Bologna, 1901-1926 (Princeton, 1982), won the 1983 Marraro Prize from the Society for Italian Historical Studies. Aristocrats in Bourgeois Italy: The Piedmontese Nobility 1861-1930 (Cambridge, 1997) was awarded the American Historical Association's 1998 Marraro Prize for the best book in any area of Italian and Italian-American history). Cardoza is also the author of Benito Mussolini: The First Fascist (Pearson-Longman, 2006) and co-authored with Geoffrey Symcox The History of Turin/La Storia di Torino (Einaudi, 2008). His current scholarly interests are in the area of the cultural and social history of Italian cycling.

Writing History - William Kelleher Storey and Towser Jones
Europe in the Modern World - Edward Berenson
Cultures of the West - Clifford R. Backman
Europe's Long Century - Spencer Di Scala

Special Features

  • Introduces students and a wider public of interested readers to the insights of cutting-edge scholarship in both socio-economic and cultural history. By bringing the Italian story up to the present, it provides a much needed revision of the work on Italy since 1945, in light of the prolonged political crises and economic stagnation that have burdened the country since the early 1990s.
  • Addresses the question of how Italy's modern history, from its prolonged process of nation-building in the nineteenth century to the crises of the last two decades, has produced a paradoxical blend of hyper-modernity and traditionalism, and thus made the country, in some sense, "different" within the broader context of Western Europe
  • Offers a comparative analysis that is sensitive to developments elsewhere in Europe and the ways larger structural changes on the continent and in the world shaped and conditioned Italian choices and possibilities.
  • A combination of chronological, thematic, and historiographical elements makes A History of Modern Italy well-suited for adoption in national and comparative history courses. Its fourteen chronologically organized chapters are designed to provide manageable weekly reading assignments suited to a typical semester schedule. Likewise, the book's brevity will appeal not only to students for obvious reasons, but also to faculty. Teachers can rely on its concise over-view of each period and go into greater depth with primary sources or more specialized essays of their own choosing.
  • Illustrated with 18 maps and 74 photographs.