Eurostudium3w

The suspended Republic. Italy and United States during the Cold War

2024-03-02T12:39:46+00:00

Between the end of the Second World War and 1989, the Cold War both circumscribed Italian political life and left a deep mark upon it. The stand-off between East and West cut across boundaries and natural affiliations; it determined political relationships, and created political leaders. Two opposing but equally misleading points of view of the so-called Prima Repubblica have often been proposed. One is that Italy had limited sovereignty and its main political actors followed decisions taken in Moscow or Washington; the other is that Italy plowed a completely independent furrow. This latter view is sometimes expressed in terms of Italian exceptionality and uniqueness, as if Italian political affairs were incomparable and quite unlike those of other countries.

More recent scholarship, which has been able to draw on new sources, has emphasized interconnectedness, arguing that for all its peculiarities, recent Italian history is best understood in the general context of the Cold War. External influences and internal factors are no longer seen as two diametrically opposed and incompatible elements but, rather, as both belonging to the one historical process. Many historians are now pointing to the central importance of the 1970s in their research, noting that the decade offers a particularly rich source of information, and provides an excellent vantage point from which to consider the preceding and subsequent years. In that crucial decade, previously solid bonds began to unravel, models began to creak and identities began to dissolve as the post-war equilibrium came to an end. It was a period that saw the twilight of the old order and the start of a new and difficult type of confrontation. In those years, the relationship between Italy and the United States was characterized by intense discussion of the potential fall-out for other western nations of an Italian economic and political crisis. The debate polarized positions both within the domestic world of Italian politics and among the different tendencies that existed inside the Us Administration.

Notes on Global Britain and xenophobic nationalism

2024-03-02T12:47:56+00:00

Brexit is surely the most dramatic event in the history of European integration as well as in contemporary European Union politics. This article highlights some of its most important aspects. Firstly, it suggests how some of the Conservatives’ rhetoric on this “necessary exit” from the European Union was based on the myth that the country is a global force – Global Britain – with a global (imperial) past as well as global ambitions. Given this, the natural consequence was to leave the EU. Secondly, Brexit unambiguously concealed a form of xenophobic nationalism which favoured the populist narrative and the subsequent Eurosceptic vote. Moreover, as the article shows, the mainstream political establishment popularised anti-European xenophobia well before the Brexit referendum.

Politica ed economia. Amintore Fanfani ministro dell’Agricoltura (1951-1953)

2024-03-02T13:32:10+00:00

The role played by Amintore Fanfani as Minister of Agriculture in the VII De Gasperi Government has rarely been touched upon by historiography. Based on largely Italian and foreign unpublished sources, the essay traces Fanfani’s thoughts and actions on both a national and international level, highlighting in particular the complexities of the process of European agricultural integration (Green Pool) and the reasons for the resistance exercised by the Italian side, despite the convinced Europeanism of Alcide De Gasperi.

Per un’Europa «as a whole». Il percorso politico e intellettuale di Mary Saran, dall’internazionalismo socialista al federalismo europeo

2024-03-02T14:01:52+00:00

This article aims to be part of that strand of studies investigating the connections between the pro-Europeanist groups of the Resistance and devoted to identifying the reciprocal influences and specific contributions to federalist debate and planning offered both as groups and individually. In such framework, special attention is paid to the figure of Mary Saran, who, in addition to representing a prominent figure in the history of democratic socialism on the female side, especially as secretary of the International Council of Social Democratic Women (ICSDW), distinguished herself for her active commitment to anti-fascist struggle, lavished as much in her native Germany as in the years of her London exile, and for her contribution to pro-Europeanist reflection in the 1930s-40s. Concerning the last issue,which represents the key element of this essay and which at the same time constitutes an aspect still little investigated by scholars, Saran, especially as the editor of the influentmonthly magazine "Socialist Commentary," was the author of two pamphlets of certain relevance European Revolution. How to Win the Peace? (1941) and The Future Europe. Power of Politics? (1943), that can be considered of great interest in enriching the historiographical debate around the reality and complexity of European federalism in the 1940s. The research was conducted with the help of the documentation on Mary Saran available at the Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis in Amsterdam.

Solidarietà e politica a Firenze nel Quattrocento. Qualche osservazione sul Monte delle Doti

2024-03-02T13:09:19+00:00

Social solidarity in 15th-century Florence also rested on the activities of the Dowry Fund, a financial institution founded to supportmarriage policies and encourage social mobility. The characteristics of the Dowry Fund have been extensively analysed from a demographic, anthropological and gender history standpoint, with few surveys on their political implications. The article therefore aims at proposing some reflections on the relevance of the Dowry Fund for the Florentine government in the pre-Medicean age and in the decades of the hegemony of theMedici’s first generations.

M. Pellegrini, Savonarola. Profezia e martirio nell’età delle guerre d’Italia, Roma Salerno 2020, 367 pp.

2024-03-02T12:58:45+00:00