Foreign Policies of the Great Powers FOREIGN POLICIES OF THE GREAT POWERS VOLUME I The Reluctant Imperialists I: British Foreign Policy 1878-1902 C. J. Lowe VOLUME II The Reluctant Imperialists II: British Foreign Policy 1878-1902, The Documents C. J. Lowe VOLUME III The Mirage of Power I: British Foreign Policy 1902-14 C. J. Lowe and M. L. Dockrill VOLUME IV The Mirage of Power II: British Foreign Policy 1914-22 C. J. Lowe and M. L. Dockrill VOLUME V The Mirage of Power III: 1902-22, The Documents C. J. Lowe and M. L. Dockrill VOLUME VI From Sadowa to Sarajevo: The Foreign Policy of Austria-Hungary, 1866-1914 F. R. Bridge VOLUME VII The Foreign Policy of France from 1914 to 1945 J. Nere VOLUME VIII Italian Foreign Policy 1870-1940 C. J. Lowe and F. Marzari VOLUME IX German Foreign Policy 1871-1914 Imanuel Geiss VOLUME X From Nationalism to Internationalism: US Foreign Policy to 1914 Akira Iriye VOLUME XI Japanese Foreign Policy, 1869-1942: Kasumigaseki to Miyakezaka Ian Nish Foreign Policies of the Great Powers Volume VIII Italian Foreign Policy 1870-1940 C. J. Lowe and F. Marzari Fran^ London and New York First published 1975 by Routledge Reprinted 2002 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, 0X14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York NY 10016 First issued in paperback 2010 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group © Cedric Lowe and the estate of Frank Mazari 1975 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested. ISBN 978-0-415-27372-5 (hbk) (Volume 8) ISBN 978-0-415-60621-9 (pbk) (Volume 8) ISBN 978-0-415-26597-3 (set) Publisher's Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original book may be apparent. Italian Foreign Policy 1870-1940 C. J. Lowe Professor of History, University of Alberta and F. Marzari lMte Professor of Strategic Studies, University of British Columbia Routledge & Kegan Paul London and Boston Contents Acknowledgments page ix Abbreviations xi Parti I The Sixth Wheel 3 2 From Independence to Alliance 13 3 Mancini, Robilant and the Mediterranean, 1882-7 28 The Egyptian Crisis 28 Via Tripoli to Massowa 32 Massowa 35 Robilant's fortress 39 4 The Crispi Era 47 Crispi and "France 48 Crispi, Austria and the Ottoman Umpire 5i Crispi and Africa 54 The road to Adowa 61 5 Back from Africa 69 Rudint and the settlement with France jo The Prinetti-Barrere agreement 82 Giolitti, Tittoni and the Entente Cordiale 90 The Moroccan Crisis 93 Italy, Austria and the Balkans 96 The Bosnian Crisis 105 6 The Revival of Italian Nationalism 112 V Contents 7 Neutrality and War, 1914-15 133 8 Italy at the Peace Conference 160 Colonial diversions 169 Nitti and D'Annun^io 172 The Treaty of Kapallo 177 Part II 9 Mussolini and the New Diplomacy 183 Mussolini9s ideas 183 The Near East 185 Reparations 191 The Corfu Incident 194 Towards Locarno zoo 10 Italo-French Relations after Locarno 211 11 The Watch on the Brenner 223 The Four Power Pact 224 The Tar dieu Plan 228 Negotiations with Austria 231 12 The Abyssinian War 240 The rise of the Africanisti 242 Wal-Wal 250 Diplomatic preparations 2 5 5 Sanctions 283 13 The Brenner Abandoned 291 Belgrade 292 The Rom-Berlin Axis 297 An opening to the West? 309 14 Munich and After 315 The loss of the initiative 315 The seizure of Albania 3 26 The Pact of Steel 331 vi Contents 15 War, 1940 337 Avoiding the catastrophe 337 A neutral bloc? 353 Intervention 362 Documents 37i Notes 416 Bibliography 458 Index 469 vii Acknowledgments The authors wish to acknowledge the kind permission of the officials of the Public Record Office, London, the Ministero degli Affari Esteri, Rome, and the Haus-, Hof-, und Staatsarchiv, Vienna, to make use of archives within their care. Material from other sources is reproduced by kind permission of the following: Oxford University Press for Documents on International Affairs 1928, 1933, 1934, 193 J and 1936, published under the auspices of the Royal Institute of International Affairs; the Hamlyn Publishing Group for Clam's Diplomatic Papers edited by Malcolm Muggeridge; Associated Book Publishers and Casa Editrice Licinio Cappelli for darn's Diary 1937-8; the Chicago Daily News for Clam's Diary 1939-43\ Arnoldo Mondadori Editore for La guerra diplomatica by Luigi Aldrovandi-Marescotti and Diario 1914-18 by Fernando Martini; Giuseppe Laterza e Figli for Storia della politica estera italiana dal i8yo al 1896 by F. Chabod and for Sidney Sonnino, Diary, edited by Benjamin Brown. Transcripts of Crown Copyright material in the Public Record Office, London, and extracts from Documents on German Foreign Policy Series C and D appear by permission of the Controller of Her Majesty's Stationery Office. Quotations from the Sonnino Papers appear by permission of Xerox University Microfilms. ix Abbreviations AHR American Historical Review AMEI Ministero degli Affari Esteri, Rome ASC Archivio di Stato Centrale, Rome BD British Documents on the Origins of the War BM British Museum Cab. Cabinet Papers, Public Record Office DBFP Documents on British Foreign Policy DDF Documents Diplomatiques Frangais DDI Documenti Diplomatici Italiani DGFP Documents on German Foreign Policy EHR English Historical Review FO Foreign Office FRUS Papers relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States GP Die Grosse Politik der europaischen Kabinette, 1870- 1914 HJ Historical Journal HZ Historische Zeitschrift JCEA Journal of Central European Affairs JCH Journal of Contemporary History JMH Journal of Modern History MRR Museo del Risorgimento, Rome NA Nuova Antologia NRS Nuova Rivista Storica RIIA Royal Institute of International Affairs RSPI Rivista di Studi Politici Interna^ionali RSI Rivista Storica Italiana RSR Rassegna Storica del Risorgimento SAW Haus Hof und Staatsarchiv, Vienna SP Sonnino Papers Slavonic Review xi I do not believe that history provides many examples of a country which has been ruined so completely and so shockingly as ours. And how can we recover from this folly? How can we persuade a people to return to reason when its ideas have been so distorted that now it cannot tell right from wrong nor distinguish between victory and defeat? Count Giuseppe Tor nielli> February 1896 Parti Chapter i The Sixth Wheel Peace is an absolute necessity for our country. It is essential that it should last as long as possible until the time comes when, in an European crisis, Italy can act as a Great Power instead of being the prey of the strong. Visconti Venosta, 1875 Nationalism must be pushed to its furthest possible limits in every question and towards everybody: this is an absolute necessity for us after so many years of foreign domination. This is the only way we can re- acquire a complete sense of national consciousness and demonstrate to the world that Italy is and must be only for the Italians. Crispin 1870 These contrasting programmes provide the key to the dialogue in Italian foreign policy from 1870 to 1919. To men of the Right such as Emilio Visconti Venosta, Constantino Nigra, Edward de Launay, Carlo di Robilant, Alberto Blanc, Italy had never really become a great power. Born and bred in the Piedmontese tradition of sitting on the fence, waiting for France, Austria or Prussia to make up their minds and then adroitly choosing the right side, they regarded Italy simply as a bigger Piedmont. To their way of thinking the new state had been made by a combination of luck and finesse in exploiting the European situation after the Crimean War. If this was so she could equally be unmade by adverse circum- stances or poor diplomacy, unless and until she had the power to stand on her own feet. This is a constant refrain in the letters, speeches and writing of the realist school in the 1870s and 1880s: Blanc even went so far as to tell an Austrian diplomat that Italy did not want to be a great power. Nor was this humble view confined to Italy. The Russian Ambassador at Rome once explained in all seriousness to Pasquale Mancini (Foreign Minister 1881-5) that the powers only invited Italy to their conferences as a matter of 3 The Sixth Wheel courtesy. It was a commonplace in European diplomacy until Mussolini's time to regard Italy as 'of no account as a Great Power5; the "sixth wheel on the chariot': Bismarck, in particular, said so whenever his nerves were bad.1 Power was, of necessity, slow in coming. Italy was very much the sixth great power, both in population and resources of every kind except ingenuity. In 1870 she had 28 million inhabitants, rising to 37 million in 1914 and 43 million in 1939. Her industrial power measured by the yardsticks of the nineteenth century - coal, iron and steel - was slight, as the following figures show.2 Even after 1914 progress was still slow: production of coal was up three times by 1939, iron and steel doubled, but these are still not the figured of a great industrial power.