Publisher's Synopsis
The political history of modern Italy began in March 1861 when Count Camillo Cavour proclaimed a united Italian kingdom. For a country which, in earlier centuries, had often held a central position in western culture, it was a late entrant to nationhood, and the very suddenness of its national revolution brought problems.;In this fully revised edition of his classic history of the country, Denis Mack Smith provides a narrative of the fate of Italy from Risorgimento to the present day.;For 60 years after 1861 Italy was governed by a liberal oligarchy under a parliamentary constitution. It gave way, after 1920, to Europe's first fascist dictatorship until Mussolini led the country into a catastrophic military defeat in 1943. Torn and bruised by the resulting civil war, Italy rediscovered liberal democracy, and under a new republican regime became one of the major industrialized countries of the world.;What Italy still lacked was political stability and an effective constitution that could check political corruption and contain the criminal activity of the mafia and camorra.;In 1992 a revolt by the electorate brought a complete collapse of the old party system. Some argued for a change to federated state; a few even harked back to the authoritarianism of Mussolini. But most, Mack Smith argues, looked to the formation of a second republic, learning from the past mistakes to fulfil the noble ideals that took their inspiration from Cavour and Mazzini in 1861.;First published in 1953 as "Italy: A Modern History", the book has been substantially rewritten for the current edition, with a section on the period after 1945, a new bibliography, new maps, and updated factual appendices.
