ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to examine the various types of texts on political economy that were published in Italy in the period going from the Restoration to the rise of Fascism. The choice of political events as chronological limits is justified by the assumption that this production was embedded in a process of institutionalisation of political economy in universities, secondary schools and other social and administrative institutions, which was in turn strongly influenced by government and other political factors. Owing to this influence, two institutional changes generated significant increases in the production of textbooks and manuals: first, the liberal openings of the early 1840s – followed in some areas by repression after 1848 – which reduced the weight of censorship on a science that reactionary governments had always considered suspect; and second, the unification of Italy in 1861, which was followed by important reforms in the organisation of the state machine and in the domain of education. Our analysis stops at the moment in which the authoritarian hold of the Fascist party brought to an end the Italian ‘liberal age’.
