Paul Corner, The Fascist Party and Popular Opinion in Mussolini’s Italy

Abstract

seventeenth-century England as an earlier example to Conway's discussion on politeness? Secondly, it is strange that this collection ignores prominent Irish and British families who left for the Continent fearing religious persecution in the 1600s. Many successfully integrated into other European polities' political and military structures in the 1700s. Subsequent generations of expatriate Irish noble families became leading figures in the Spanish and French armies and welcomed newly arrived Catholics from their homeland in the eighteenth century. Nonetheless, this is a thought-provoking work, which will prove invaluable to future generations of researchers who wish to understand British and Irish connections with mainland Europe in the eighteenth century. Paul Corner, The Fascist Party and Popular Opinion in Mussolini's Italy, Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2012; 302 pp.; 9780198730699, £68.00 (hbk) Reviewed by: Christopher Duggan, University of Reading, UK

The fascist new–old order

“…The Italian imperial conquest of Ethiopia, for example, revitalized Mussolini's popularity, however briefly. 35 Recent studies have indicated that the conquest of Ethiopia also radicalized the Fascist regime by catalysing policies of racial segregation in the empire that inspired the 1938 anti-Semitic racial laws in Italy itself. 36 Mark Mazower has argued that the organization of Hitler's new order in Europe had all the hallmarks of imperial practices and policies.…”

Round Table. The ‘British School’ and Italian Historiography

“…Only a few years ago, I was especially surprised to find that several new books on consensus (‘ consenso ’) during Fascism were being published in the UK more or less at the same time, and that they had raised a significant debate, not limited to academic journals. Paul Corner’s book on The Fascist Party and Popular Opinion in Mussolini’s Italy (2012) and Christopher Duggan’s Fascist Voices (2013) were widely discussed in the UK press, more so than in Italy 10 . This was especially true of Duggan’s book, which was the winner of the prestigious Wolfson prize, explicitly aimed at promoting research able to engage an audience wider than the academic one.…”