1861- The unification of Italy, also known as
the Risorgimento, sees the consolidation of
different states of the peninsula into a single
state under King Victor Emmanuel II.
1871 - Unification is completed by the capture of Rome
and its designation as the capital of the modern state of
Italy.
1915 - Italy enters World War One on side of Allies.
1919 - Italy gains Trentino, South Tyrol and
Trieste from Austria-Hungary under the
post-war peace treaties.
Italian Socialist Party
Economy
Italy had emerged from World War I in a poor and weakened
condition and, after the war, suffered inflation, massive debts
and an extended depression. By 1920, the economy was in a
massive convulsion, with mass unemployment, food shortages,
strikes, etc. That conflagration of viewpoints can be exemplified
by the so-called Biennio Rosso (Two Red Years).
World War I tore the party apart. The orthodox socialists
were challenged by advocates of national syndicalism, who
called for revolutionary war to liberate Italian-speaking
territories from authoritarian Austrian Empire control and
force the government by threat of violence to create a
corporatist state. The national syndicalists intended to
support Italian republicans in overthrowing the monarchy if
such reforms were not made and if Italy did not enter the
war together with the Allied Powers and their struggle
against the Central Empires, seen as the final fight for the
worldwide triumph of freedom and democracy.
The dominant internationalist and pacifist wing of the party remained
committed to avoiding what it called a bourgeois war. The PSI's refusal to
support the war led to its national syndicalist faction either leaving or
being purged from the party, such as Mussolini who had begun to show
sympathy to the national syndicalist cause. A number of the national
syndicalists expelled from the PSI later joined Mussolini's Italian fascist
revolutionary movement in 1914, including the Fasces of Revolutionary
Action in 1915 (later Italian Fasces of Combat). During the Third Fascist
Congress in late 1921, Mussolini turned the Fasces of Combat into the
National Fascist Party.
Foreign Policy
Domestic {Social}
Politics
Fascist Rule 1922-1945
Economy
Mussolini appointed Alberto De' Stefani, a man with free market
economic views, as his Minister of Finance. De' Stefani simplified the
tax code, cut taxes, curbed spending, liberalized trade restrictions and
abolished rent controls. These policies provided a powerful stimulus.