Politics and the political system, 1870–87

After the conquest of Rome in 1870, Italian politicians settled down to manage the economy, to build up the country’s military power, and—in the telling phrase of the Piedmontese author and statesman Massimo d’Azeglio—to “make Italians.” Popular disaffection remained high, especially because of the grist tax that had been introduced in 1869. Governments of the right remained in office, first under Giovanni Lanza (to 1873) and then under Marco Minghetti (1873–76). The right was not an organized party but a group of patriotic, mostly northern landowners committed to a strong currency and free trade. Under both prime ministers the main domestic task was to balance the budget. Minghetti eventually managed this, but raising taxes and squeezing expenditure made the right unpopular, and its candidates did badly in the 1874 elections. In March 1876 the Minghetti government fell when its Tuscan supporters refused to support a state takeover of the railways.

Italy was then ruled for many years by governments of the left, which were usually led by Agostino Depretis (until his death in 1887). The deputies of the left, heirs of the Risorgimento’s democratic tradition, were more anticlerical, more frequently members of the middle class (many of them were lawyers), more often from the south, and less concerned about the value of money than the rentier right had been. They were, however, splintered into various groups, and factional disputes became endemic. Left governments abolished the grist tax (1883) and made two years’ primary education compulsory (1877).

A main achievement of the left was the widening of suffrage in 1882. The voting age was reduced to 21 (from 25); the requirement to pay 40 lire in direct taxes per annum was halved and was abolished altogether for those with two years’ schooling. The electorate thus increased from approximately 500,000 to 2,000,000 men, including now many urban artisans, especially in the north, where schools were more common. Within a few years modern political parties were founded and won seats in northern Italy, but southern constituencies remained dominated by elite groups of lawyers and local notables, often linked to prominent landowners.

Local government was also very significant, and there were often bitter disputes among local factions. The 8,300-odd municipalities (comuni) were in charge of primary schools and most welfare services, raised much of their own revenue, and appointed their own staff. The central government tried to control them by appointing the mayors and also by giving veto powers over municipal decisions to provincial bodies that were strongly influenced by the provincial prefect, a government appointee. The prefect frequently dissolved councils for alleged financial or legal abuses and replaced them with a government “commissioner” until new elections were held, but these dissolutions often occurred when council leaders opposed government candidates at parliamentary elections. However, government attempts to control local government were never really successful. The prefects had to ensure that government candidates would win the next parliamentary elections, and so they had to conciliate, not bully, local elites, including the mayors and municipal councillors. Corruption was therefore often left unchecked. National governments became remarkably dependent on local power holders. Depretis himself won over (“transformed”) deputies and kept his governments in office by distributing patronage and favours to local notables.

Trasformismo (“transformism”) became the normal way of conducting parliamentary business, for there were few serious disputes among the leading politicians. Virtually all of them accepted the constitutional settlement of 1861, and few disputed foreign and colonial policy, which, in any case, was conducted by foreign ministers and prime ministers without much reference to parliament. In 1881 the French occupation of Tunisia alarmed the government, and the following year, to avoid diplomatic isolation, Italy joined the Triple Alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary. This was essentially a defensive alliance guaranteeing German and Austrian support against any attack by France, Italy’s main rival in the Mediterranean. Meanwhile, Italy embarked on its first real colonial ventures, the takeover of the Red Sea ports of Asseb and Massawa (both now in Eritrea) in 1885. Southern politicians favoured colonial expansion as an outlet for surplus population and agricultural produce; northern ones wanted Italy to be a great power, saw the army as an essential guarantor of public order, and supported high military spending—the army and navy ministries spent more than all other ministries combined between 1862 and 1913.