This module will provide an overview of war and conflict in Italian society from Italy’s entry into the First World War in 1915 until the ‘Tangentopoli’ (Bribesville) political corruption scandal in 1992, which overturned the post-war political landscape. The primary focus will be on the period 1915–1945 (weeks 1–7) while the final three weeks will be devoted to the post-war period. In studying the First and Second World Wars, we will examine topics including mobilisation, the concept of ‘total war’ and the home front. We will also analyse how political and social tensions post-1918 led to the Fascist assumption of power in 1922 and will examine the Nazi occupation and anti-Fascist Resistance between 1943 and 1945. In addition, the focus will be broadened beyond the Italian peninsula by examining Italy’s colonial wars through the Fascist ‘pacification’ of Libya in the 1920s and the invasion of Ethiopia in 1935. After the end of the war, our attention will shift to internal and social conflicts such as Cold War tensions between Communists and Christian Democrats, student and labour activism in the 1960s and 1970s, and neo-Fascist and Communist terrorist attacks in Italy between the 1960s and 1980s. 

Indicative primary sources 


	 Selection of posters, postcards and visual propaganda from the First World War, using the collections of www.14-18.it  
	
	
	 Gebreyesus Hailu, The Conscript: A Novel of Libya's Anticolonial War, trans. Ghirmai Negash (Ohio University Press, 2013), orig. written in Tigrinya 1927, pub. 1950  
	
	
	 Extracts from Ada Gobetti, Diario partigiano (1956) / Partisan Diary: A Woman's Life in the Italian Resistance, trans. Jomarie Alano (Oxford University Press, 2014) 
	
	
	 1968 student protest songs (text and music), including Paolo Pietrangeli, Contessa (1967) and Valle Giulia (1968). Translations to be provided by me. 
	

	  
	
Indicative secondary sources 

Further secondary reading in Italian will be provided for non-ab initio students. 


	 Ali Abdullatif Ahmida, Genocide in Libya: Shar, a Hidden Colonial History (Routledge, 2020) 
	
	
	 Ilaria Favretto, ‘Rough Music and Factory Protest in Post-1945 Italy’, Past and Present 228.1 (2015): 207–247 
	

	 John Gooch, Mussolini's War: Fascist Italy from Triumph to Collapse: 1935­–1943 (Allen Lane, 2020) 
	
	
	 Vladimiro Satta, I nemici della Repubblica. Storia degli anni di piombo (Rizzoli, 2016) 
	
	
	 Vanda Wilcox, Morale and the Italian Army during the First World War (Cambridge University Press, 2016) 