The Hunchback's Tailor: Giovanni Giolitti and Liberal Italy from the Challenge of Mass Politics to the Rise of Fascism, 1882-1922

by Alexander De Grand

Overview

Alongside Georges Clemenceau and David Lloyd George, Giovanni Giolitti (1842-1928) stands out as one of the major liberal reformers of late 19th- and early 20th-century Europe. In the first complete English-language study of Giolitti, De Grand examines the political life of Italy's most notable prime minister after Cavour. Giolitti emerges not as a transitional figure leading fledgling Italy into modern democracy, but as a staunch adherent of 19th-century elitist liberalism trying to navigate the new tide of mass politics. De Grand's careful research offers valuable insight into Giolitti as statesman and, through him, a vantage point on the development of Italy during a critical period.

Giolitti's troubled relationship with mass politics defined his years in office. A life-long bureaucrat aloof from the electorate, Giolitti introduced near universal male suffrage—even while commenting that first teaching everyone to read and write would be a more reasonable route—and tolerated labor strikes. Rather than reform the state as a concession to populism, however, Giolitti sought to accommodate the politics of the piazza under the roof of liberal parliamentarianism, first in his pursuit of coalitions with Socialist and Catholic groups, and finally, at the end of his political life, in a failed courtship with Fascism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780275968748
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	11/30/2000
Series:	Italian and Italian American Studies Series
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	312
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.81(d)
Lexile:	1390L (what's this?)

About the Author

ALEXANDER DE GRAND is professor of history at North Carolina State University. His publications on modern Italy include The Italian Nationalist Association and the Rise of Fascism in Italy, Italian Fascism: Its Origins and Development, Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany: The Fascist Style of Rule, and Bottai e la cultura fascista.

Table of Contents

Introduction
The Apprenticeship of a Statesman, 1842-1892
A Disastrous Beginning: The Presidency of the Council of Ministers, 1892-93
Into the Wilderness: in Opposition, 1894-1901
The Zanardelli-Giolotti Government, 1901-1903
Giolitti's Second Ministry, "Doing it Right," 1904-1905
The Long Ministry, 1906-1909
Domestic Reform and War, 1910-1914
A Second Political Exile, 1914-1920
Giolitti and the Crisis of the Liberal State, 1920-1928
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

The pragmatic and controversial Italian statesman Giovanni Giolitti once compared himself to a tailor who "does not succeed in dressing a hunchback if he does not take the hump into account" (from the introduction). This first biography of Giolitti in English follows his career from its beginnings in the state bureaucracy through his tenure as Prime Minister, which ended with the dictatorship of Mussolini. De Grand (history, North Carolina State U.) considers Giolitti in the context of Italian politics and the social situation of the time. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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