JENS PETERSEN the Italian Aristocracy, the Savoy Monarchy, and Fascism

JENS PETERSEN The Italian Aristocracy, the Savoy Monarchy, and Fascism in KARINA URBACH (ed.), European Aristocracies and the Radical Right 1918-1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007) pp. 91–110 ISBN: 978 0 199 23173 7 The following PDF is published under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND licence. Anyone may freely read, download, distribute, and make the work available to the public in printed or electronic form provided that appropriate credit is given. However, no commercial use is allowed and the work may not be altered or transformed, or serve as the basis for a derivative work. The publication rights for this volume have formally reverted from Oxford University Press to the German Historical Institute London. All reasonable effort has been made to contact any further copyright holders in this volume. Any objections to this material being published online under open access should be addressed to the German Historical Institute London. DOI: 6 The Italian Aristocracy, the Savoy Monarchy, and Fascism JENS PETERSEN What political role did the aristocracy play in the early decades of a unified Italy? Researchers are widely divided in their opinions on this question. They range from the rose-tinted view of Arno Mayer, who regarded the ancien regi,me nobility as still at the core of Italy's social and political system, to opinions that speak of a rapid and unstoppable decline. 1 Although aristocratic values continued to shape the path of upward mobility for the middle classes, nobility as such did not play an important role in the Italian nineteenth-century social structure, because it did not constitute a well-defined group in itself, due to its regional more than national status. Paolo Farneti has analysed the 1,321 positions of minister and secretary of state in the forty-five cabinets between 1861 and 1913. What emerges is a deep caesura-also perceived as such by contemporaries-between the governments of the Destra Storica (Historical Right) from 1861 to 1876, and the seizure of power by the left in the 'parliamentary revolution' of 1876. Up to 1876 there was a total of 237 ministers and secretaries of state. In these first fifteen years, the aristocracy accounted for 43 per cent of the total. They were found mainly in landowning (in absolute terms, forty-two people) and the military (thirty- eight), but also filled significant positions in the administration (seven), and culture (eight). Aristocratic prime ministers of these years include not only Cavour himself, but also Bettino, Baron Ricasoli, Alfonso La Marmora, and Federico Luigi, Count Menabrea. Farneti sums up: 'The ruling political class of the Historical Right displayed three elements of homogeneity. It Translated by Angela Davies, GHIL. 1 Jens Petersen, 'Der italienische Adel von 1861 bis 1946', in Hans-Ulrich Wehler (ed.), Europiiisclurr Adel 1750--1950 (Gottingen, 1990), 243-59. The present essay is based in part on this study. 92 JENS PETERSEN consisted largely of landowners who were members of the middle-ranking aristocracy, and the majority of them had shared the experience of participating in the Risorgimento. '2 A completely different picture emerges for the decades after 1876. The share of the aristocracy sank from 43 to 16 per cent; that of landowners went down from 21 to 3 per cent. The percentage in the military was more stable, reducing from 23 to 15 per cent. Here, too, the reduction in the proportion of aristocrats was striking. Whereas before 1876, 70 per cent in this cate- gory had been aristocrats, by 1903 the percentage of aristocrats had fallen to 22. Looking at the statistics over thirty years actually reduces some of the highest values, as they include the aristocrat- ically influenced reactionary cabinets of Antonio Starabba, Marchese di Rudini, and Luigi Pelloux, shortly before the turn of the century. The first cabinets of the left, after 1876, contained practically no aristocrats. In this year a new political elite came into power. It was highly bourgeois in character, consisting of lawyers, other professionals, journalists, and state officials. Giovanni Giolitti's decade (1903-13) was a period of consolida- tion. The proportion of aristocrats rose slightly from 16 to 20 per cent. The military and landowners each regained I per cent (rising from 15 to 16 per cent and from 3 to 4 per cent respec- tively). On the whole, however, the predominance of lawyers, state officials, and professionals continued. The governments of that decade have gone down in memory as the Golden Age of the Italian bourgeoisie. The composition of the Senate provides a further field for research. At Italy's unification, it comprised about 150 members. A compromise procedure had been worked out between the crown and the government for the recruitment of new members. The prime minister presented the monarch with a list of sugges- tions, from which the monarch then selected a certain number of candidates. 'Strong' prime ministers, such as Agostino Depretis, Francesco Crispi, and Giolitti, were able to use this procedure to increase the number of members and acquire a more tractable Senate. As the minimum age for membership was 40, the average age was far above 50 and soon passed 60. Thus it was that by the 1880s the Senate already comprised more than 300 2 Paolo Fameti, Sistema politico e societa civile (Turin, 1971), passim, quotation at 169. The Italian Aristocracy 93 members and, in 1913, its membership topped 450. As far as the proportion of aristocrats is concerned, two series of data are significant: first, the average composition of the body as a whole; and secondly, the origins of the new members. In his recently published investigation, Lo stato fascista e la sua classe politica, Didier Musiedlak traces the following developments. The average proportion of aristocrats as a percentage of all senators in the period 18611 5: 39.3 per cent (new recruits: 33.2 per cent); 1876-86: 3r.6 per cent (19.9 per cent); 1887-96: 25.4 per cent (18.2 per cent); 1897-1902: 23.8 per cent (2r.5 per cent); 1903-14: 20.1 per cent (14.5 per cent); 1915-22: 17.6 per cent (13.3 per cent).3 Thus during the first fifteen years, the aristocrats' share of senators was still almost 40 per cent, sinking to 20 per cent by the time of the First World War. The decline is even more striking when we look at the figures for new recruits. Here it falls from a third to less than a seventh. If the aristocracy had been the domi- nant element in the Senate at the start, then during the final phase of the liberal system it became marginal even in this body, the 'final refuge of the elite of liberal Italy'. 4 According to Mayer, politics, administration, the army, and diplomacy were the crucial areas in defending traditional struc- tures of privilege. The army did not enjoy high prestige in Italy, with the exception of Piedmont. The navy was largely a bourgeois affair. But even in the army's officer corps, the aristocracy had held only a few residual positions since the 188os-depend- ing on the arm of the service and the tradition of the unit, repre- senting between 5 and 20 per cent. In 1872 the percentage of aristocrats in the officer corps was 8.3 per cent; in 1887 the figure was 3.r. Aristocrats still filled positions of power as generals. Among the generals, 39. 7 per cent were aristocrats in 1863. By 1872 this figure had fallen to 35-4 per cent, and by 1887 to 33.6 per cent. However, almost all chiefs of the general staff in the twentieth century, from Alberto Pollio to Armando Diaz and Pietro Badoglio, were bourgeois when they were appointed to this top job, and were ennobled only afterwards. Among the administrative elite of the prefects, too, we gain the impression 3 Didier Musiedlak, Lo stato fascista e la sua classe politica 192:r-1945 (Bologna, 2003), 76-g1. 4 Ibid. 74. 94 JENS PETERSEN that by the tum of the century, the proportion of aristocrats had shrunk so much that they filled only residual positions. According to Sergio Romano, diplomacy formed an 'aristocratic bastion'.5 Of the 866 officials in the foreign ministry between 1861 and 1915, 43.2 per cent were aristocrats. However, the aristocracy clearly dominated in the core area of diplomacy, where it provided two-thirds of the 314 people employed. In the consular service it provided almost a third, and in the home service a good quarter. The big embassies in Vienna, London, Paris, Berlin, Petersburg, and Madrid were exceptions. Of the sixty-eight 'big' ambassadors, thirty-nine (that is, 57.4 per cent) were members of the aristocracy, and more than half of them came from the former Kingdom of Sardinia. The aristocracy, often still with direct access to the monarch, was best able to maintain its position of power in this core area. But the tendency towards bourgeoisification did not stop at the diplomatic service. From the beginning of the twentieth century, the proportion of aristocrats among new recruits decreased markedly, and before 1914, it hardly amounted to a third. According to estimates, the aristocracy which came into being after 1860, drawing on the nobilities of individual states and the patriciates of individual cities, comprised between 6,000 and 7,000 families. One list, dating from 1878, which is full of gaps and was obviously compiled by an amateur, mentions 7,676 names,6 one-third of whom came from Piedmont. An examina- tion of the families listed in Vittori Spreti's book of the Italian peerage, 7 suggests that around the tum of the century, the entire closed circle can hardly have numbered more that 50,000.

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