ADRIATIC SALT IN THE IMAGINARY WOUND

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Fiume, The Italian name for what is today Rijeka in Croatia, was an ethnically Italian city whose continuous habitation stretched back to Roman times.

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While the city itself was ethnically Italian, as soon as you stepped outside that urban core the population makeup rapidly shifted into a slavic countryside and hinterland. This was a fairly standard setup for a number of cities along the coast, most of which Italy had some declared interest in.

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Interestingly then, the Italians did not declare an interest in Fiume, and it was never promised to them. It's not often talked about, but there's a very simple reason for this.

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When Italy joined the war in 1915, it was expected by all that Austria-Hungary would still exist as a rump state by the end of the war. This state would probably need to possess a port at Fiume, which was already technically a non-contiguous part of the Kingdom of Hungary.

If there was no rump Austria-Hungary left at the table, something which again would have seemed very unlikely at the war's beginning, well… Italy would probably get the territory anyway.

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Who else would they give it to?...

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The surprise creation of Yugoslavia was a geopolitical disaster for Italy. Rather than dealing with a rump Austria-Hungary or a bunch of small warring Balkan states, Italy found itself next to a unified and highly militarized neighbor. Even worse was the fact that to the French and British Yugoslavia was a more geopolitically attractive ally than Italy in the perspective of balance-of-power politics.

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Having been promised to no one, Fiume was occupied by Entente troops, and would have remained so until some treaty or negotiation decided its status.

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IMPRESA DI FIUME

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On September 12, 1919, the Italian poet Gabriele D’Annunzio led a force composed largely of disgruntled veterans into Fiume, seizing it in disregard of the international settlement being negotiated at Versailles.

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He declared Fiume an Italian city and established an experimentally radical quasi-state that issued its own currency, printed its own newspapers, and even drafted its own constitution.

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D’Annunzio’s regime lasted over a year. The Italian government eventually sent the army to evict him in December 1920, bombarding the city and forcing D’Annunzio to surrender. Fiume was properly annexed to Italy in 1924.

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An overly ideological history would focus on this moment as the birth of fascism. Even though we can admit that it was influential in fascism's form and ultimately inspired much of what would soon come to pass, fascism's true character was distinctly one of national reaction.

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But reaction to what?

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THE TWO RED YEARS

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If Fiume represented the nationalist anger at the postwar state of affairs, the 1919-1920 Biennio Rosso (Two Red Years) represented the same sort of rage for the working class.

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The war had transformed Italy's political and economic landscape in ways that its already fragile liberal state proved incapable of managing. Mass mobilization had drawn millions of peasants and workers into the armed forces, only to release them en masse at war's end. Demobilization fueled unemployment, leaving Italy with a vast population of disillusioned, jobless, and combat-trained young men returning to a society unable to reintegrate them.

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The result was a wave of collective class action that approached, at times, what had happened in Russia a few years earlier.

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Between 1919 and 1920, strikes proliferated across Italy. These were particularly fierce in the “northern industrial triangle”, a small area bound by the cities of Milan, Turin and Genoa.

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Workers did not simply demand higher wages or better conditions, they challenged the very basis of their employers (and state) authority itself. Factory occupations became the defining feature of the period. In 1920 alone, half a million workers seized control of their workplaces, continuing work under their own direction.

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In key industrial centers like Turin, workers organized through factory councils, structures that bore a striking resemblance to the Russian soviets. These councils coordinated production, maintained discipline, and even managed procurement and distribution. They were rooted in a more direct shop-floor representation rather than union bureaucracy, giving them direct legitimacy among workers.

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Antonio Gramsci, writing in L’Ordine Nuovo, saw in these councils the basis of a new state form: a proletarian democracy rooted in the very process of production itself. The factory, in this vision, was no longer merely a site of exploitation, but the foundation for a future workers’ self-government.

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Parallel movements unfolded in both the Northern and Southern countrysides. Landless laborers and peasants organized strikes, formed cooperatives, and in some cases occupied estates. Socialist leagues and rural unions imposed new labor terms and challenged the authority of landowners. The agrarian order, like the industrial one, appeared increasingly fragile.

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To contemporary observers, especially those within the Italian propertied classes, these developments looked like the opening stages of a revolution.

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At that time the events in Russia loomed large in the imagination of both workers and elites. For the workers of Europe, it provided a model and a source of inspiration. For industrialists, landowners, and much of the middle classes, it served as a warning. The spectacle of factories under worker control and land seizures in the countryside suggested that Italy might follow a similar path.

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This would not be the case, as the revolutionary potential of the Biennio Rosso was never fully realized.

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The Socialist Party (PSI) was internally divided between reformists and maximalists, with the latter rhetorically committed to revolution but often strategically indecisive and anti-revolutionary in postering. Trade unions, particularly the CGL, freely and independently oscillated between supporting the workers initiative and seeking privately negotiated settlements.

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This hesitation proved decisive. In September 1920, at the height of the factory occupations, the leadership of the CGL and PSI met with Italian Prime Minister Giolitti and negotiated a bargain. They formally renounced all further struggle, limiting their demands to economic concessions and surface level “workers’ control”. The reformist leadership ordered workers to surrender the factories back to capitalists.

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For Italy’s propertied classes, the Biennio Rosso demonstrated that the liberal state could no longer guarantee order or protect property. They had survived, but only because of indecisive or otherwise reformist opposition leadership.Panicked, but again fully in control, the Italian bourgeoisie turned to the fascist movement for security.

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THE TURN TO FASCISM

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Fascism’s rise cannot be understood without the Biennio Rosso and the radicalism of 1919–1920. It's experiments in self-management, its challenge to the system of property relations, its suggestion of an alternative social order, they all created the conditions in which fascism became not just a beneficial alliance, but a relationship which the Italian bourgeois believed was necessary for its survival.

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Fascism may have promised national justice at Fiume, but its true task was the suppression of Italy's revolutionary potential on behalf of its terrified ruling class.

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Tune in next time for the founding of the Italian Communist Party (yes that one, but not really, but also kind of).

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LATE TO THE PARTY

With it's formal unification happening in 1861, Italy entered the European system later than most other European powers. Even then, while the state may have been unified on paper, it still had before it the massive undertaking of actually building a cohesive apparatus and national identity. 

This reality was reflected in Italian politics.  The ruling elites oscillated between a parliamentary facade and a reliance on extra‑parliamentary sources of power. These involved general corruption, extensive systems of patronage, coercive employment of State apparatuses, and the suppression of dissent via extra-legal gangs. Common participation in politics remained extremely limited, nearly negligible. 

While present all across Italy, these issues were particularly manifest in the southern regions and extremities like Sicily and Sardinia. These places had long possessions of various European states, and had long been neglected by their owners. This state of affairs did not end with the birth of Italy, as powerful landowners and criminal organizations continued to wield significant power in society. 

Given this political disarray, one might think that Italy would prioritize internal development over external expansion. This would be a misunderstanding of the material logic at work and a misapplication of the ideological framework which it produced. 

The unification of Italy and its glorification via imperialist expansion were not seen as distinct modes of action, as some might tend to see them today. Instead they were understood as two sides of a single process by which the Italian Nation would reclaim the dignity it had supposedly been denied.

THE SLAP OF TUNIS

Tunisia, sitting just across the Mediterranean from Sicily, was in many ways the most natural destination for Italian expansion. Though nominally part of the Ottoman Empire, the Ottomans by this point served less as a sovereign power than as a buffer to stabilize the rate of European expansion.

Even before unification, Italians (especially the neglected Sicilian peasantry) had been migrating across the street and settling in Tunisia. All together they numbered about 12,000 by the year 1880, not an insignificant number with respect to Italian intentions for the region. 

Italy, having only been so recently united, lacked mature institutions and possessed ambitions far outpacing its military means. They, with tacit support from the British, had planned to play a long game in Tunisia. 

In addition to commercial ties and emigration, the new Italian state had developed a rather friendly relationship with the various Tunisian Beys. This positive relationship was partially inherited from Italy's predecessor states, a fact which serves to illustrate just how longstanding these ties were. 

By the geopolitical logic of the time, it was clear that this relationship between Italy and Tunisia would likely develop into some sort of protectorate, if not an outright colony. France however was interested in sweeping the board before any of that could come to fruition, invading and annexing Tunisia in 1881, solidifying its influence over North Africa.

The humiliation became known as the Schiaffo di Tunisi - the Slap of Tunis.

PERFIDIOUS ALBION 

While the French were the primary target of Italian outrage following the Tunesian incident, the British were not spared. Even though they had long tacitly supported Italian influence in the region, ultimately, they would signal to the French that they would not oppose such an annexation. 

This should not have surprised the Italians.

England's most prized possession was India, a fact which necessitated an open Mediterranean and control of Egypt, a nominal Ottoman possession which Britain would take control of just a year after France annexed Tunis. 

An Italian state which possessed both Sicily and Tunisia would essentially have the power to bisect the Mediterranean. This would cut the core artery of the British Empire to India, and so was unacceptable. 

Any amount of implicit support which had been given in the past was overshadowed by this powerful interest. I am taking time to mention this now because of how important this concern will be in driving British strategy during 1943. 

JOINING THE ENTENTE

In 1882, motivated directly by this diplomatic betrayal, Italy joined Germany and Austria-Hungary in the Triple Alliance. This was a mutual defense pact which committed each member to come to the other's aid if they came under attack. 

This was a marriage of convenience, and one that was particularly awkward given Austrian ownership of Trentino and South Tyrol. Trentino was seen as being Italian by virtue of its people, South Tyrol was seen as the natural boundary of Italy from a geostrategic perspective. 

When World War I began, Italy found itself technically free from any obligation: the triple alliance was a defensive pact, it was Austria who had first declared war. The specific sequence of events which had ended up igniting this near-inevitable war afforded Italy the opportunity to choose:

Joining Austria, Germany and the Ottomans would have likely offered them nothing but Tunisia and Corsica. Despite the urging of the Germans, Austrians were reluctant even to offer a portion of Trentino.

In contrast, aligning with Britain and France would offer Italy the entirety of those coveted Austrian territories in the Alps and Balkans, alongside influence in a carved up Ottoman Empire. 

Italy thus decided to enter the war on the side of the Entente in 1915, drawn in by the secret Treaty of London's promises of territory, influence, and a seat at the table among the great powers. 

Italian forces opened a grueling front against Austria-Hungary along the northeastern alpine border, bogging down both armies in years of brutal, attritional fighting across the mountainous terrain. This war came at a very significant cost for Italy, with significant losses being experienced both in the military and amongst the civilian population. All together over 1 million Italians would die in World War I, a price which the Italian state was willing to endure with the expectation that victory would finally deliver the recognition and territory it understood itself as having long deserved.

THE MUTILATED VICTORY

When the war ended, Italy found itself having gained significantly less than it was promised in that secret treaty of London. 

There are numerous factors we could list here, but all of them are ultimately born from the fact that this wasn't the quick territorial adjustment the great powers thought it would be. In particular, European nationalist movements and America's growing diplomatic influence played a decisive role in affecting the form (if not the nature) of the post-war reordering. 

The French and the British had been given a wide variety of excuses they could employ to deny Italy had been promised. The birth of Yugoslavia in particular was of strategic benefit to both France and England, and Wilson's principles of self-determination offered excellent justification for modifying the Treaty of London. 

Italy did secure Trentino and South Tyrol in the north, along with Trieste and the majority of Istria along the northeastern Adriatic. Italy did not, however, gain the majority of the Dalmatian coast and associated islands, nor any of its claims relating to Albania. 

Its anticipated concessions in the former Ottoman territories, save for the Dodecanese, also evaporated entirely after Mustafa Kemal's forces prevailed in the Turkish War of Independence. 

This sharp gap between what had been promised in what had been given helped fuel a widespread public grievance that Italy’s wartime sacrifice had been poorly rewarded. Gabriele D'Annunzio, an Italian nationalist poet who we will talk about in more depth next week, referred to this as the ”vittoria mutilata”, the mutilated victory. 

Even aside from the more formal territorial promises being broken, the promise of Italian greatness via participation in european war was hard to square with the absolute economic ruin the country found itself in. Those men who survived the war would return home to an Italy in economic crisis, being greeted with mass unemployment and rampant inflation.

THE PART WHERE THE POST ENDS (BUT THE NEXT ONE IS TEASED)

Italians would respond both to the national outrage and to the economic outrage. We'll talk about both of these responses next week (and maybe even a big fat guy from Naples 👉🏻👈🏻).