Italy and Its Monarchy

by Denis Mack Smith

Book Overview

Written by one of the world's leading historians of Italy, this provocative and highly readable book is the first major study of the Italian monarchy and its impact on Italy's history, from Unification in 1861 to the foundation of the Italian republic after the Second World War.

"Brilliant, . . . remarkable, . . . highly entertaining. . . . Only Mack Smith could have told what is finally so shabby a story with this combination of...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0300051328
• ISBN13: 9780300051322
• Release Date: March 1992
• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Length: 413 Pages
• Weight: 0.09 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.8" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

A masterly summary of modern Italian political history

This masterly, elegant account of who Italy's monarchs were and what they got up to (usually something not very edifying) demonstrates why Mack Smith is widely viewed as the leading authority on Italy writing in the English language. Post-unification Italy's development might well have been less turbulent, had it not been for the distressing tendency of successive kings to interfere in politics and indulge their taste for intrigue. Nurturing the tender plant of Italian democracy was usually the last thing on their minds. As in his other works, Mack Smith wastes little sympathy on the civilian politicians who were, if anything, even more culpable than their royal masters in contributing to Italy's failure to construct a stable, corruption-free democracy before the First World War. But his particular focus is the monarchy, from its crucial part in the wars of unification after 1860 to its inglorious association with Benito Mussolini's dictatorship in the inter-war years. After putting down Mack Smith's book - a gem of concise writing and lightly worn learning - one can only be glad that Italians eventually abolished the monarchy after the Second World War. Republicanism, though drenched in corruption and crime between 1946 and 1992, did at least do something to modernize public life in Italy.