ABSTRACT
Italian historians have always posed the question of the real origin of imperialism in Italy, a country without financial surplus, without a surplus of manufactured goods and, above all, far from having solved the problems of its backward regions, the Mezzogiorno, at home. The answers have been confused and contradictory; all too often, the deep causes of this imperialism have been seen as the absolute need for a vigorous, young state to affirm itself in the world, without having to take into account conditions which other forms of imperialism enjoyed. All the difficulties of accepting this imperialism have been glossed over to enhance the grandeur of a modern, nationalist, Fascist Italy which had nothing to reproach itself with regarding the continuity of the grandeur of the classical Imperium of Rome. The ideal continuity between the past and present was seen to construct the future of a ‘Great Nation’. In the post-war era, other historians underlined the validity of a ‘Marxist’ analysis of the Italian case, emphasising the economic advantages which this imperialism had brought not only to the Italian state as such, but to certain groups of Italian industrialists, such as ship-owners, arms manufacturers and industrialists (Fiat, Pirelli, Montecatini and so forth), or to other social classes such as the higher civil service and military class. It is now time to put some order into the analyses of this imperialism which has aspects which are very different from other forms of imperialism.
