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Anglophilia in crisis: Italian liberals, the ‘English model’ and democracy in the Giolittian era*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 January 2016

Laura Cerasi
Laura Cerasi*
Affiliation:
Dipartimento di Storia, Università di Padova, P.zza Capitaniato, 35139, Padova, Italy, Telephone: + 39 0498274510, Fax: + 39 0498274511. E-mail: [email protected]
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Summary

The image of England was very important to the political culture of Italian liberals during the Risorgimento and the post-unification period. Even if it was viewed as unreachable, it still constituted an example of progress that Italy could strive towards. This article reconstructs the stages of the process that saw a section of Italian political culture become alienated from this image, just at a time when a more complete form of industrial democracy was becoming eswtablished in Britain. This alienation is interpreted here as having its roots in attitudes to the issues raised by the workers’ movement: Italian liberals were reluctant to give it full legitimacy and engage it on the open terrain of social and political competition. The first two sections of the article go over the traits of Italian Anglophilia up to the end of the nineteenth century and single out the earliest reasons for alienation. The third section identifies the Boer War, the figure of Chamberlain and the cluster of issues linking democracy, imperialism and protectionism as key factors in the change of direction. The fourth section shows that the constitutional conflict in Britain and the Parliament Act were a further, decisive, step in Italian liberals’ disaffection with the ‘English model'.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Italy , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , May 2002 , pp. 5 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © Association for the study of Modern Italy 

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References

Notes

1. Gaetano, Arangio-Ruiz, ‘L'odierna questione costituzionale inglese. Note di cronaca e raffronti’, Rivista di Diritto Pubblico e della Pubblica Amministrazione in Italia , 3, I, 1911, pp. 447–159. Here, as elsewhere in the debate I analyse, ‘England’ was used to mean ‘Great Britain’. I have decided to retain that use where I am quoting or summarizing Italian sources.Google Scholar

2. Ibid. , p. 453.Google Scholar

3. That the Lords failed to endorse Lloyd George's measures was interpreted by the government in two ways: first as an attempt to defend the class interests of the landed aristocracy from which the vast majority of the members of the Lords came; and secondly as a political move, given that the Lords was largely made up of Conservatives hostile to the Liberal government (they had obstructed other important measures in the past). It was at that point that the government resolved to get long-planned measures for a radical reform of the Lords under way. The Parliament Act was approved by the Lords under the royal threat to create a crop of new Liberal peers to counter the overwhelming in-built Tory majority. It removed the Upper House's veto, gave the Commons the last word in passing ‘money bills’—by which was meant both spending and taxation measures—and sketched out a future reform of the composition of the Lords. That there was widely perceived to be a connection between tax reform and constitutional reform is confirmed in Alberto Ferraboschi's reconstruction of the Italian debate at the time: ‘La crisi costituzionale britannica del 1909–1911 e la sua recezione in Italia’, Storia Amministrazione Costituzione. Annale Isap , 2, 1994, pp. 129–150. However Ferraboschi considers this political reading of the clash in Britain to have been due to a failure in Italy to grasp the constitutional implications of the issue. For a different perspective, uniting a concern for the institutions and the social role of the aristocracy, see Di Gregorio, Pinella, ‘I “Campi Elisi” del potere. Le Camere Alte e i Senati nell'Ottocento europeo’, Meridiana, 30, 1997, pp. 73–106.Google Scholar

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12. Brunialti used: Leclerc, Max, Les Professions et la Société en Angleterre , Colin, Paris, 1894, and Boutmy's ‘Il governo locale e la riforma dello Stato in Inghilterra’, and ‘La riforma dell'amministrazione locale in Inghilterra’, which appeared in the school's Annales, issues dated 15 April 1886 and 15 January 1889.Google Scholar

13. The reference to Le Play can be found in Attilio Brunialti, ‘Il governo parlamentare in Inghilterra e in Italia’, Prefazione to Alpheus Todd, Il governo parlamentare in Inghilterra, Biblioteca di scienze politiche , 3, Unione Tipografico-Editrice, Turin, 1886, pp. 5–95, p. 45. (Battini underlines Le Play's importance in reassessing the British aristocracy's role in preserving social hierarchies in his L'ordine della gerarchia, p. 151.) The reference to Taine's Les origines de la France contemporaine, set alongside the Burke, Edmund of the Reflections on the French Revolution, is in Brunialti, ‘Il governo parlamentare’, p. 38.Google Scholar

14. Luigi Luzzatti's repeated references to the English constitution have been interpreted in this way. Luzzatti was more concerned to emphasize the constitution's economic and social aspects with the aim of preventing conflict and managing the democratization process than he was to follow its historical development closely. See Pombeni, Paolo, ‘Luigi Luzzatti e il modello liberale inglese’, in Ballini, Pier Luigi e Pecorari, Paolo (eds), Luigi Luzzatti e il suo tempo , Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere e Arti, Venice, 1994, pp. 29–56, esp. pp. 34–35. Quagliariello also argues that the Italian moderates’ Anglophilia was overwhelmingly focused on social issues and not interested in an exact understanding of the institutions (‘L'isola che non c‘è più’, p. 62).Google Scholar

15. Luzzatti, Luigi, ‘Decadenza e risorgimento dei reggimenti parlamentari’, Nuova Antologia , 74, 15 January 1899, pp. 347–364, p. 356. The article reproduces the introductory lecture to his university course in constitutional law at Rome.Google Scholar

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17. Demolins, Edmonde (in Boers et Anglais: où est le droit?, extract from La Science Sociale , Firmin-Didot, Paris (no date)), interprets British imperialism in this way.Google Scholar

18. Boutmy, Emile, Essai d'une psychologie politique du peuple anglais au XIX siècle , Colin, Paris, 1901, pp. 445, 447.Google Scholar

19. See Ferrero, Guglielmo, L'Europa giovane , Treves, Milan, 1897. Nevertheless it should be pointed out that Ferrero put Germanic and Anglo-Saxon peoples in the same category. Noting the unbridgeable gap between English industrial capitalism and the economies of the Latin countries, he proposed adopting the German model which had the advantage of still having to catch up on the Anglo-Saxon world—thus making it a more realistic target to aim for.Google Scholar

20. Neal, Thomas [pseud. of Angelo Cecconi], ‘Sempre le solite razze’, Il Marzocco , 4, 46, 17 December, 1899, p. 3.Google Scholar

21. Ferdinando, Nobili-Vitelleschi, ‘La questione del Transvaal. Lettera dall'Inghilterra’, Nuova Antologia , 83, 16 September 1899, pp. 348–354.Google Scholar

22. Einaudi was annoyed by British proposals to raise the price of coal, ‘a tax of five million a year that Italy has to shoulder because of the war that the English want to fight against the Boer republics’ (‘L'agitazione inglese contro il dazio di uscita del carbone’ (29 April 1901), in Cronache economiche e politiche di un trentennio , I, Einaudi, Turin, 1964, p. 345).Google Scholar

23. ‘Ouida’, ‘Joseph Chamberlain’, Nuova Antologia , 84, 1 December 1899, pp. 574–585.Google Scholar

24. Ibid. , pp. 577–578.Google Scholar

25. Gaetano Mosca argued that one small group of Europeans who had managed to adapt to ‘savage’ living conditions and draw new vitality from them did not seem likely to share this fate: the Boers. See Mangoni, , Una crisi fine secolo , p. 226.Google Scholar

26. Il Regno proposed that Chamberlain the man be treated separately from his economic policy because of a fear that ‘the new protectionism could be harmful to English interests, that is to say from the point of view of English nationalism’ (Calderoni, Mario, ‘Nazionalismo antiprotezionista?’, Il Regno (1904), in Frigessi, Delia Castelnuovo (ed.), La cultura italiana del ‘900 attraverso le riviste ‘Leonardo’, ‘Hermes’, ‘Il Regno’ , Einaudi, Turin, 1979, pp. 472–476.Google Scholar

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28. Pareto, Vilfredo, ‘Il crepuscolo della libertà’, Rivista d'Italia (February 1904), in Ecrits politiques , p. 405.Google Scholar

29. There is an incisive profile of Dalla Volta in Lanaro, Silvio, Nazione e lavoro. Saggio sulla cultura borghese in Italia 1870–1925 , Marsilio, Venice, 1979, pp. 157–162. Lanaro highlights Dalla Volta's anti-Giolittian position and his reluctance to recognize any political role for the labour movement. Salvatore Cingari also provides information on Dalla Volta in the anthology edited by Zanfarino, Antonio, Politica costituzionale e scienze sociali alle origini della ‘Cesare Alfieri’, CET, Florence, 2001, pp. 264–269.Google Scholar

30. ‘Adam Smith has already provided a complete and clear demonstration … of the fact that the colonial system was a long way from contributing to the wealth and prosperity of Great Britain, and many of his arguments can be directly applied to today's debate’, Volta, Riccardo Dalla, ‘Protezionismo, imperialismo e libero scambio, memoria presentata all'Accademia dei Georgofili’, 3 January 1904, in Saggi economici e finanziari sull'Inghilterra , Sandron, Milan, 1912, p. 75. On other occasions he cut the argument short by saying that the protectionist campaign was the result of ‘mistakes’ due to ‘ignorance’ and a failure to recognize the benefits of the sixty years of liberalism that had been heralded by the work of Richard Cobden: ‘Per il centenario di Riccardo Cobden, discorso all’ “Accademia dei Georgofili”, 5 June 1904, in Saggi economici e finanziari, pp. 191–208. In comparable terms he had re-evoked John Bright's beneficial campaign for free trade, ‘Commemorazione di John Bright, memoria presentata all” “Accademia dei Georgofili”’, 2 June 1889, in Saggi economici e finanziari, pp. 163–190.Google Scholar

31. ‘Protezionismo, imperialismo’, p. 61.Google Scholar

32. See Buxton, Sydney, A Handbook to Political Questions of the Day and the Arguments on Either Side , 11th edition, John Murray, London, 1903.Google Scholar

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