ABSTRACT
The first two chapters of this book consider the problem of the eastern border of the Kingdom of Italy between 1866 and the outbreak of World War I as an expression of the broader issue of irredentism, which raised the claims to both Venezia Giulia and the Trentino as the final step toward national unification. With the breakout of the Bosnian crisis in 1908, those claims assumed a partially new connotation, becoming both an object of nationalist programs, especially through the works of Ruggero Timeus,1 and topics of discussion within the context of Italian “power policy.” These two partially conflicting approaches shaped the Italian participation in the World War, which was simultaneously the “fourth war of the Risorgimento” and a conflict for power.
