Italy’s Social Order between Unification and Fascism

Abstract

This chapter reviews the evolution of Italy’s social order between the political unification of the peninsula, achieved in 1861, and the end of Fascism, in 1943. It follows the country’s convergence to Europe’s early industrializers, which accelerated near the end of the nineteenth century and was assisted by appropriate institutional reforms. In the presence of a large anti-systemic opposition the country’s social order opened up only modestly and hesitantly, however, and in the early 1920s its elites preferred Fascism to democratization. Under this regime the progress made by political institutions during the liberal period was reversed, convergence slowed down markedly, and the divergence of the South from the rest of Italy peaked. The chapter underlines the essential continuity of the country’s social order and elites between the liberal epoch and Fascism.