Modern ItalyPub Date : 2025-06-11DOI: 10.1017/mit.2025.5
Andrea Rapini
{"title":"Antifascism and antiracism: a new turn?","authors":"Andrea Rapini","doi":"10.1017/mit.2025.5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/mit.2025.5","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article argues that antifascism began to acquire a new meaning in the early 1990s, making a vital contribution to the emergence of a national antiracism movement in Italy and the spread of an antiracist culture built on new foundations. This thesis is based on observations of Italian society. The first section reconstructs the operations of the association Senzaconfine and analyses the contents of its publication of the same name. The middle section describes an exhibition entitled <span>La menzogna della razza</span>, its connection to the ‘Pantera’ student protest movement and its continued travels around Italy until recent years. The final section is dedicated to the reaction of several segments of the youth population and political community to the neofascist Luca Traini’s attempted racial massacre in Macerata in 2018. The article concludes that although the new focus on antiracism is not the only way the Italian antifascist tradition is being remoulded, it remains one of the most important, given the issues we face in a globalised, postcolonial world.</p>","PeriodicalId":18688,"journal":{"name":"Modern Italy","volume":"29 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2025-06-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144260672","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Modern ItalyPub Date : 2025-06-04DOI: 10.1017/mit.2025.13
Uoldelul Chelati-Dirar, Nicola Camilleri
{"title":"Challenging race, gender, and class in Fascist and postwar Italy. Biographical notes on Elena Sengal (1911–1962)","authors":"Uoldelul Chelati-Dirar, Nicola Camilleri","doi":"10.1017/mit.2025.13","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/mit.2025.13","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Our essay aims to offer a biography of Elena Sengal (1911–1962), an Italian citizen of Ethiopian origin, whose life offers important elements to better understand both Fascist and postwar Italy. Elena was born into an Italo-Ethiopian family and became an Italian citizen after the naturalisation of her father, Sengal Workneh, a former Italian colonial subject and a lecturer in Amharic and Tigrinya at the Istituto Orientale in Naples. She grew up in Naples where she graduated and later held a teaching position, following in her father’s footsteps. When in 1939 her partner, Guido Cucci, fell in Ethiopia fighting the Ethiopian resistance, Elena found herself alone with a newborn child and struggled to make a living. Her life did not improve with the end of Fascism. Indeed, in postwar Italy it became so unbearable that she relocated to Ethiopia. However, racism and exclusion accompanied her life in the East African country too. This biography is based on archival materials as well as a body of personal letters of Elena Sengal, kindly made available by her granddaughter Maria Elena Cucci.</p>","PeriodicalId":18688,"journal":{"name":"Modern Italy","volume":"19 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2025-06-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144211001","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Modern ItalyPub Date : 2025-06-04DOI: 10.1017/mit.2024.72
Iara Meloni
{"title":"No longer silent: the history and memory of women’s roles in the Resistance","authors":"Iara Meloni","doi":"10.1017/mit.2024.72","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/mit.2024.72","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article offers a critical rereading of the historiography on the role of women in the Italian Resistance. It starts with the postwar period, marked by a general silence and the prevailing image of women as mothers and <span>staffette</span>. In the 1970s, the first historical elaboration of women’s experiences began in all northern regions, leading to the now iconic concept of the ‘silent Resistance’. In the 1990s, a dialogue developed with other historiographical categories, such as the concept of ‘civil resistance’ developed by Jacques Sémelin and the ‘war on civilians’, but this approach ran the risk of reducing women’s contribution to ‘powerless’ acts. Although today women’s history is fully integrated into the narrative canon of the Resistance, it faces new challenges, such as the confrontation with ‘other’ (mainly non-European) resistances and new public uses of history. The article suggests that women’s history has been, if not the only, then certainly the most important means by which new dimensions of the partisan movement and the Second World War have been brought to the fore, shedding light on the specificities of the conflict experienced by women, but also shaping the very notion of resistance by overcoming a purely militarist vision.</p>","PeriodicalId":18688,"journal":{"name":"Modern Italy","volume":"331 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2025-06-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144211523","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Modern ItalyPub Date : 2025-05-22DOI: 10.1017/mit.2025.18
Karen Bertorelli
{"title":"Pilgrimages of martyrdom: the National Day of Italian Labour Sacrifices in the World","authors":"Karen Bertorelli","doi":"10.1017/mit.2025.18","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/mit.2025.18","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Through the analysis of a series of different documents preserved in the Fondo Tremaglia, I reconstruct the genesis and development of the National Day of Italian Labour Sacrifices in the World (<span>Giornata nazionale del sacrificio del lavoro italiano nel mondo</span>). The holiday was conceived by Minister for Italians in the World Mirko Tremaglia and designated by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi at the end of 2001. The analysis focuses on the recovery and exaltation of the memory of the Italian miners who died in the Marcinelle mining disaster in 1956, on the political and cultural dynamics of Italy at the time, and on Tremaglia’s <span>saloino</span> (he voluntarily joined the Italian Social Republic and was enlisted in the National Republican Guard) and <span>missino</span> (term used to refer to the members of the Movimento Sociale Italiano) past. The result is a multifaceted scenario for a commemoration that still exists today, but is largely unknown in the country where it was created.</p>","PeriodicalId":18688,"journal":{"name":"Modern Italy","volume":"25 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2025-05-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144113644","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Modern ItalyPub Date : 2025-05-22DOI: 10.1017/mit.2025.17
Chiara Zampieri
{"title":"Public debt in the First Republic: a review of studies and new research perspectives","authors":"Chiara Zampieri","doi":"10.1017/mit.2025.17","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/mit.2025.17","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article provides an overview of the main interpretations in contemporary historiography of the role of Italian political actors in the management of public debt during the First Republic, also in the context of European integration. In order to fill the gaps in historical research on this crucial issue, the conclusion proposes some questions and insights for future research.</p>","PeriodicalId":18688,"journal":{"name":"Modern Italy","volume":"3 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2025-05-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144113339","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Modern ItalyPub Date : 2025-05-19DOI: 10.1017/mit.2024.79
Mirco Carrattieri
{"title":"‘Lightness is not superficiality, but gliding over things from above, without boulders on your heart’: unconventional locations and informal approaches to the history of the Resistance","authors":"Mirco Carrattieri","doi":"10.1017/mit.2024.79","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/mit.2024.79","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In the new millennium, amidst a crisis of antifascism as a source of political legitimacy, there has been a revival of antifascism in a more accessible and popular form, integrated into collective imagination and everyday practices. Events and themes of the Resistance have been revisited in venues and contexts beyond the traditional, utilising new approaches and languages outside conventional frameworks. This brief overview highlights the activities of five distinct organisations, spread across the country and all established between 1999 and 2009. Despite their differing methods and objectives, they have all played a significant role in promoting the Resistance through the lens of public history. Their work involves the collection and preservation of sources, the publication of studies and research, dissemination and educational activities. These organisations engage with local memories while addressing major international issues, and they promote original and innovative projects, either digital or conducted in open-air settings. This Contexts and Debates article aims to serve as a tool for those approaching the study of the Italian Resistance, helping them discover new research opportunities, particularly in the form of archival content, as well as alternative outlets to promote their findings.</p>","PeriodicalId":18688,"journal":{"name":"Modern Italy","volume":"55 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2025-05-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144088255","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Modern ItalyPub Date : 2025-05-08DOI: 10.1017/mit.2025.1
Gianluca Fantoni, Rosario Forlenza
{"title":"The Italian Resistance: historical junctures and new perspectives","authors":"Gianluca Fantoni, Rosario Forlenza","doi":"10.1017/mit.2025.1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/mit.2025.1","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This introduction to this special issue of <span>Modern Italy</span> explores how the emphasis on fascism in recent scholarship and public discourse risks its mythification and cultural rehabilitation, and urges a rebalancing of historiography to highlight the pivotal role of the Italian Resistance in shaping Italy’s democratic identity. Marking the eightieth anniversary of Italy’s liberation and the thirtieth anniversary of <span>Modern Italy</span>, the issue examines lesser-known aspects of the Resistance, such as marginal groups, gendered experiences and transnational perspectives. Contributions include studies on Roma Resistance fighters, the Catholic underground press, American soldiers of Italian descent, and women in the Liberal Party. The articles emphasise the liminality and creative potential of the Resistance as a transformative period that redefined political and cultural identities.</p>","PeriodicalId":18688,"journal":{"name":"Modern Italy","volume":"53 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2025-05-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143920301","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Modern ItalyPub Date : 2025-05-08DOI: 10.1017/mit.2024.74
Alessandro Santagata
{"title":"Italy’s Catholic partisan: history and narrative","authors":"Alessandro Santagata","doi":"10.1017/mit.2024.74","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/mit.2024.74","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article reviews the evolution of the representation of Italy’s ‘Catholic partisan’. In essence, this involved adaptation of the model of the Catholic soldier, who was able to kill out of love and ‘without hatred’, to the context of a civil war. With particular reference to the case of the central Veneto, this examination looks back to earlier Italian experiences during wartime to help explain how Catholic activists and the partisan groups linked to the Catholic world addressed the key issues of the legitimation of Resistance violence and the control of its use. It emphasises the disparity between the rhetoric directed at containing the violence and the realities of guerrilla warfare. The article goes on to analyse the different models of the ‘Catholic partisan’ put forward in the immediate postwar period (1945–1950): the ‘Catholic soldier’, with his military bearing; the ‘pure martyr’, who never initiated violence; and the ‘devout partisan’, who managed to restrict his use of violence, assessing its costs and benefits, and was characterised by his inclination to forgive and, especially, to kill as little as possible. The conclusions consider how a particular rhetoric helped to shape the narrative of the active involvement of Catholics in the Italian Resistance.</p>","PeriodicalId":18688,"journal":{"name":"Modern Italy","volume":"104 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2025-05-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143920461","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Modern ItalyPub Date : 2025-04-22DOI: 10.1017/mit.2025.12
Mariella Terzoli
{"title":"From migrants to legionnaires: diplomatic and political tensions surrounding Italians in the French Foreign Legion, 1945–54","authors":"Mariella Terzoli","doi":"10.1017/mit.2025.12","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/mit.2025.12","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Since its inception in 1831, the French Foreign Legion, a specialised unit within the ranks of the French military, has played a prominent role in the wars of both colonisation and decolonisation. This article seeks to trace the origins, development and eventual decline of an Italian and international ‘Legionary issue’ regarding the recruitment and employment of Italian volunteers in a foreign military force deployed in the French decolonisation war in Indochina. Through the examination of archival sources as well as autobiographical narratives by Italian legionnaires, this study offers a novel perspective on the interplay between Italy’s political, economic and sociocultural trends, the enlistment of Italian volunteers into the French Foreign Legion, and the evolution of Italo-French relations in the postwar period.</p>","PeriodicalId":18688,"journal":{"name":"Modern Italy","volume":"36 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2025-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143857759","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Modern ItalyPub Date : 2025-04-11DOI: 10.1017/mit.2025.9
Eden K. McLean
{"title":"Bishop Geisler and the 1934 ‘Torello-Ricci Affair’: fighting for moral authority in a Fascist borderland","authors":"Eden K. McLean","doi":"10.1017/mit.2025.9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/mit.2025.9","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In the autumn of 1934, Bishop Johannes Geisler of Brixen/Bressanone denied two Italian-speaking priests, Carlo Torello and Giuseppe Ricci, permission to teach within his predominantly German-speaking diocese. In response, Benito Mussolini threatened to expel all Church representatives from the state education system and, by extension, to unravel the recently signed Lateran Accords. Untangling the motivations behind Geisler’s decision, the escalating tensions it precipitated, and, ultimately, the discussions that led to its quiet resolution reveal much about Fascist and Church ambitions in the newly annexed territory of Trentino-South Tyrol. This ‘Torello-Ricci Affair’ provides a micro-historical lens with which to better understand the political and cultural infrastructures of power in interwar South Tyrol and their relationship to institutions in Rome. In particular, it illustrates the ongoing battle between civil and religious officials to assert moral authority within the region, most importantly as it regarded the education of its children.</p>","PeriodicalId":18688,"journal":{"name":"Modern Italy","volume":"60 2 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2025-04-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143819215","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}