ABSTRACT
A consideration of Italian politics before Mussolini would be helpful for several reasons. First, liberal Italy was the seedbed of fascism; a look at the issues of the times should therefore provide insights into the nature of fascism. Italy's politics were shaped by the interplay of several fundamental problems. The movement for Italian unification, called the Risorgimento, began during the upheavals of the Napoleonic wars. Italian unification would complicate the policies and plans of most of the chancelleries of Europe, In every corner of Italy, men of wealth, education, or conservative temperament feared that the unification of the peninsula into one state must involve war, both international and civil, and probably revolution. The two great crises of Italian development—the Risorgimento and the struggle over entry into World War I—were characterized by elitism: small minorities of determined men, evading or attacking prevailing institutions, laws, and beliefs, ignoring the wishes of their countrymen to bring about the millennium.
