This special issue stems from the 2022 Association for the Study of Modern Italy conference, reflecting on key turning points in modern Italian history through the lens of ‘small histories’. Drawing on contemporary international historiography and the contributions in the present volume, this introduction discusses how microhistorical, biographical and related approaches may challenge or refine dominant interpretations in that they abstract from ‘grand narratives’ to instead highlight dynamics and actors that may appear to be on the margins of major historical processes. The studies in this special issue engage in particular with the intersections of identity, space and memory. Themes such as Fascism, the reshaping of Italian identity through cultural policies and the creation of a collective memory, colonialism and postcolonialism, migration and evolving gender roles are explored in diverse contexts from interwar South Tyrol through to contemporary Palermo. Together, these ‘small histories’ demonstrate the methodological and interpretative richness of focused studies in tracing Italy’s transformation across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. They challenge binaries such as centre–periphery and local–global, while shedding new light on the relation between individual experiences and the creation of shared spaces, memories and identities.

This introduction to this special issue of Modern Italy explores how the emphasis on fascism in recent scholarship and public discourse risks its mythification and cultural rehabilitation, and urges a rebalancing of historiography to highlight the pivotal role of the Italian Resistance in shaping Italy’s democratic identity. Marking the eightieth anniversary of Italy’s liberation and the thirtieth anniversary of Modern Italy, the issue examines lesser-known aspects of the Resistance, such as marginal groups, gendered experiences and transnational perspectives. Contributions include studies on Roma Resistance fighters, the Catholic underground press, American soldiers of Italian descent, and women in the Liberal Party. The articles emphasise the liminality and creative potential of the Resistance as a transformative period that redefined political and cultural identities.

When did fascism end? Did it end in July 1943, with the fall of Mussolini from power, or in April 1945, with Liberation Day? The argument of this article is that fascism was not simply a historical experience but a political form that attempted to transcend Italy’s social and political fractures with fantasies and unrealistic but nevertheless captivating expectations. Its hypnotic contagious power cast a mimetic spell that can be continuously reloaded: by blurring the boundaries between truth and lies; by exploiting crowd irrationality; by establishing boundaries between outsiders and insiders; by perpetuating negative sentiments of hostility, fear and envy within society; and by manipulating time. The argument, therefore, is that fascism has never ended, not merely in the sense of political and cultural continuity, but in the deeper sense of immanency within the body politic of Italy’s democracy. As such, it is meaningless to wonder whether fascism might come back. It is here and now, in the only form that current historical circumstances allow it to exist – and yet it might be countered by a process of rejection that individuals and political communities can and should exercise in their everyday life, adopting the political form generated by the Resistance.

Our essay aims to offer a biography of Elena Sengal (1911–1962), an Italian citizen of Ethiopian origin, whose life offers important elements to better understand both Fascist and postwar Italy. Elena was born into an Italo-Ethiopian family and became an Italian citizen after the naturalisation of her father, Sengal Workneh, a former Italian colonial subject and a lecturer in Amharic and Tigrinya at the Istituto Orientale in Naples. She grew up in Naples where she graduated and later held a teaching position, following in her father’s footsteps. When in 1939 her partner, Guido Cucci, fell in Ethiopia fighting the Ethiopian resistance, Elena found herself alone with a newborn child and struggled to make a living. Her life did not improve with the end of Fascism. Indeed, in postwar Italy it became so unbearable that she relocated to Ethiopia. However, racism and exclusion accompanied her life in the East African country too. This biography is based on archival materials as well as a body of personal letters of Elena Sengal, kindly made available by her granddaughter Maria Elena Cucci.

In contemporary Italy, media and public actors frame the exploitation of migrant agricultural labourers as the outcome of caporalato. This concept – translated as labour brokerage or gang mastery – connotes the violent treatment of workers and their exploitation by powerful individuals, who are today increasingly racialised and understood as being Black and immigrants. However, our fieldwork in Apulia and Sicily uncovered a more complicated picture. This article considers a variety of sources to explore how caporalato is constructed and to what effect. Our argument is that, though rooted in real dynamics, caporalato is also a reductive, sensationalised, and racialising framing device that transposes historic tenets of Italy's ‘Southern Question’ onto ‘othered’ migrant workers. It affects policy by creating categories of people who are made ‘illegal’ and ‘deportable’. In also reinforcing derogatory stereotypes about the Italian South, it makes visible further South(s) of the Italian South(s) – offering insight into how and where borders are created and what their effects are.

In the autumn of 1934, Bishop Johannes Geisler of Brixen/Bressanone denied two Italian-speaking priests, Carlo Torello and Giuseppe Ricci, permission to teach within his predominantly German-speaking diocese. In response, Benito Mussolini threatened to expel all Church representatives from the state education system and, by extension, to unravel the recently signed Lateran Accords. Untangling the motivations behind Geisler’s decision, the escalating tensions it precipitated, and, ultimately, the discussions that led to its quiet resolution reveal much about Fascist and Church ambitions in the newly annexed territory of Trentino-South Tyrol. This ‘Torello-Ricci Affair’ provides a micro-historical lens with which to better understand the political and cultural infrastructures of power in interwar South Tyrol and their relationship to institutions in Rome. In particular, it illustrates the ongoing battle between civil and religious officials to assert moral authority within the region, most importantly as it regarded the education of its children.

The role that Roma communities played in the Resistance during the Second World War is a little-known part of history, especially in Italy. Through consideration of their involvement, we can highlight the complexity of the Resistance, and recognise Roma communities as an integral part of Italian society. Roma involvement in the Resistance had distinctive characteristics compared to that of the gagi (non-Roma), particularly in how they viewed it not only as a fight against fascism, but also it as a means of honouring the mulé (the dead). However, only a handful of Roma partisans are recorded in the Ricompart archive, which contains documentation relating to those who participated in Resistance activities. To trace history, personal testimony, in addition to secondary historiography, is key. Roma communities share a rich oral tradition, which forms the basis of a significant part of this article, and which offers an account of civil resistance and armed action both within partisan groups and as part of small formations based on ethnicity. This piece examines the reasons why the Roma partisans who fought and died in the Resistance did not receive full public recognition, a form of historical amnesia of the postwar period rooted in the absence of a cultural ‘defascistisation’ whereby fascist-style racism permeated the Republic.

In 1912, the Italian parliament approved the extension of male suffrage, making it ‘almost’ universal. This process of revising representation transformed the very idea of the relationship between citizens and the state and shaped a profoundly different Italy. The aim of this article is to trace both the process leading to the approval of universal suffrage and its impact on the party system. With a compilation and analysis of data developed from scratch for the elections of 1909 and 1913, it was possible to analyse the main dimensions of the two rounds in a disaggregated manner. Three aspects make 1913 a year of transition. First, the degree of competition in the electoral process, especially in the South, increased considerably. Second, the decline of liberal formations was not transformed into defeat, thanks only to the Catholic vote. Third, the birth of the Popular Party and the failure to create a mass party of conservatives were causes of the imbalance in the party structure.

This article uses the postwar trial of Fascist Italy’s most prominent general, Rodolfo Graziani, to examine issues of transitional justice and the formation of popular memory of Italian Fascism and colonialism after 1945. During the Fascist ventennio, the regime constructed Graziani as the nation’s colonial ‘hero’ despite his leading role in genocidal measures during Fascist Italy’s colonial wars in North and East Africa. His position as minister of defence in Mussolini’s Nazi-backed Salò Republic in 1943–5, however, threatened his heroic reputation as he worked with Nazi commanders and became responsible for atrocities against Italian civilians. After the Second World War, Graziani was tried for Nazi collaborationism at the Supreme Court in 1948, but his colonial conduct was left unquestioned. Unlike in the Nuremberg Trials in post-Nazi Germany, few Italians were tried for war crimes after 1945. This historical inquiry analyses the legal proceedings, transnational representation and outcome of Rodolfo Graziani’s 1948 trial as an emblematic case study to explore de-fascistisation and decolonialisation initiatives and their limitations in post-Fascist postcolonial Italy.

This article explores the socio-ecological impacts of Fascist hydropower extraction in the Alpine valleys of Italy, focusing on the Toce river basin during the interwar period. It investigates the conflicts between local communities and hydropower initiatives by private energy companies under Fascism, thereby revealing the regime's communication strategies rooted in its political ecology. By analysing newspaper articles, propaganda outlets and communal archival documents, the study uncovers statal and local perspectives on infrastructure development and its enduring consequences. How the political ecology of Fascism in a high-altitude hydropower construction site became an expression of Fascist modernity will thereby be shown. Despite objections from valley inhabitants, Fascist hydropower projects persisted, perpetuating socio-ecological inequalities after 1945. Even postwar efforts for compensation failed to address the long-lasting impacts on mountain communities. This research reveals the intersection of political ecology and modernist infrastructure development in Mussolini's Italy, and thus also highlights the legacies of Fascist resource extraction policies on the country's peripheral Alpine regions.

This article reviews the evolution of the representation of Italy’s ‘Catholic partisan’. In essence, this involved adaptation of the model of the Catholic soldier, who was able to kill out of love and ‘without hatred’, to the context of a civil war. With particular reference to the case of the central Veneto, this examination looks back to earlier Italian experiences during wartime to help explain how Catholic activists and the partisan groups linked to the Catholic world addressed the key issues of the legitimation of Resistance violence and the control of its use. It emphasises the disparity between the rhetoric directed at containing the violence and the realities of guerrilla warfare. The article goes on to analyse the different models of the ‘Catholic partisan’ put forward in the immediate postwar period (1945–1950): the ‘Catholic soldier’, with his military bearing; the ‘pure martyr’, who never initiated violence; and the ‘devout partisan’, who managed to restrict his use of violence, assessing its costs and benefits, and was characterised by his inclination to forgive and, especially, to kill as little as possible. The conclusions consider how a particular rhetoric helped to shape the narrative of the active involvement of Catholics in the Italian Resistance.

Since its inception in 1831, the French Foreign Legion, a specialised unit within the ranks of the French military, has played a prominent role in the wars of both colonisation and decolonisation. This article seeks to trace the origins, development and eventual decline of an Italian and international ‘Legionary issue’ regarding the recruitment and employment of Italian volunteers in a foreign military force deployed in the French decolonisation war in Indochina. Through the examination of archival sources as well as autobiographical narratives by Italian legionnaires, this study offers a novel perspective on the interplay between Italy’s political, economic and sociocultural trends, the enlistment of Italian volunteers into the French Foreign Legion, and the evolution of Italo-French relations in the postwar period.

During the Second World War, hundreds of thousands of American soldiers of Italian origin were drafted into the US military and sent to fight overseas against the Axis powers. For many, this was an opportunity to demonstrate their loyalty to the country and remove suspicions raised by Italian communities’ ties with the Fascist regime. The prospect of fighting in their homeland aroused mixed feelings among those who were sent to Italy from June 1943. On the one hand, the presence of cultural and family ties stimulated the establishment of supportive relations with Italians and was seen by Washington as a useful tool for promoting ‘good occupation’ policies in Italy. However, the ethnic background of these soldiers did not always act as a socialisation factor with Italians, but sometimes gave rise to contradictory and even hostile attitudes that were linked to harsh judgements about Italians’ responsibilities for Fascism and their predisposition, or otherwise, to democracy. This article reconstructs the contribution made by these ethnic personnel to the liberation of the peninsula and the particular views they held of Italy and Italians between war and liberation.

This article uses an original dataset to sketch a portrait of women mayoral candidates and women elected as mayors in Italy in the period 1993–2021. The analysis highlights several significant findings. Women must compensate for their political marginality by deploying other resources, such as higher levels of education. Nevertheless, women are penalised not only by the reluctance of parties to put them forward as candidates, but also by the elections themselves. More specifically, the electoral presence and strength of women decreases when the population size of the municipality grows, except for municipalities with more than 100,000 inhabitants. Moreover, women candidates are most disadvantaged in geographical areas where the socioeconomic condition of women is more marginal. However, women mayors running for a second mandate have the same chance of winning as men. Finally, it is the protest parties, rather than the left-wing parties, that are revealed as doing the most to promote women.

The 1970s saw intense discussions among feminists about the patriarchal family. While radical feminists called for complete withdrawal from marriage and motherhood, others attempted to reconfigure the roles of parents and children in the light of feminism. A particularly vibrant discussion unfolded in the feminist magazine Effe, published in Rome between 1973 and 1982, evolving from a largely negative to a more nuanced view of motherhood by the late 1970s. The notion of love was central. Effe writers asked how love could be separated from care and if it was really so natural. They stressed how maternal love needed to be balanced with children’s need for freedom and autonomy and reflected on their experiences as daughters as well as mothers. While excessive love could be harmful, there was radical potential in the notion of the loved and wanted child. Many proposed collective solutions to child-rearing, while others stressed the sensual pleasures of motherhood. Using a history of the emotions lens, this article teases out the complexities and contradictions of Italian feminist thinking about motherhood. Although the space for more positive evaluations expanded over time, Effe was ultimately more successful in reclaiming pregnancy as a feminist experience than motherhood itself.

This article delves into the historical trajectory of Lotta Femminista, a pioneering separatist feminist network in Italy during the early 1970s, and its significant influence on feminist discourse, particularly concerning the advocacy for wages for housework. Through an examination of the group's development within the broader context of the Italian women's movement, this study illuminates the theoretical foundations and practical activism associated with the perspective on wages for housework. Drawing on archival documents and personal accounts, the essay investigates how Lotta Femminista depicted domestic labour as a form of women's exploitation within a Marxist framework. Despite facing criticism and opposition, Lotta Femminista's ideas resonated globally, leaving a legacy in feminist theory and activism. Through its engagement with issues such as the refusal to work and the recognition of unpaid care as a site of capitalist exploitation, Lotta Femminista contributed to the broader history of feminism in Italy and beyond.

This article offers a critical rereading of the historiography on the role of women in the Italian Resistance. It starts with the postwar period, marked by a general silence and the prevailing image of women as mothers and staffette. In the 1970s, the first historical elaboration of women’s experiences began in all northern regions, leading to the now iconic concept of the ‘silent Resistance’. In the 1990s, a dialogue developed with other historiographical categories, such as the concept of ‘civil resistance’ developed by Jacques Sémelin and the ‘war on civilians’, but this approach ran the risk of reducing women’s contribution to ‘powerless’ acts. Although today women’s history is fully integrated into the narrative canon of the Resistance, it faces new challenges, such as the confrontation with ‘other’ (mainly non-European) resistances and new public uses of history. The article suggests that women’s history has been, if not the only, then certainly the most important means by which new dimensions of the partisan movement and the Second World War have been brought to the fore, shedding light on the specificities of the conflict experienced by women, but also shaping the very notion of resistance by overcoming a purely militarist vision.

This article describes the results of the Progetto di ricerca di interesse nazionale (Research Project of National Interest [PRIN]) ‘Il brigantaggio rivisitato’ (‘“Brigantaggio” Revisited’), which investigated the practices and imagery of brigandage (and the fight against it) in modern and contemporary Italy from a Euro-Atlantic perspective. A large community of scholars, both within Italy and further afield, tackled numerous historiographical issues: forms of rural criminality in the modern age; the profile of the brigands (both male and female); their level of politicisation and relationship with the Legitimists and the Catholic Church; the reaction of the security forces and the unification movement; the evolving definition of the word ‘brigand’; the politics and military strategy of the post-unification anti-brigandry campaign; and the interaction between the local dimension and global view of banditry and irregular warfare. In-depth work was also conducted on the image of the bandits spread through visual and material culture by the media and on their performative consequences in different eras, through to their present-day reuse.

This article uses the hitherto partially unpublished diary of Virginia Minoletti Quarello and her husband Bruno Minoletti to shed a light on the Resistance and on the transformation of Italian politics after the war from an original angle. Virgina and Bruno, members of the Italian Liberal Party, played a central role in the Resistance and in consolidating the network of the Liberal partisans led by Edgardo Sogno, first in Genova, where their house hosted the local National Liberation Committee, and then in Milan. Their diary offers new perspectives on events and processes that preceded and followed 25 April 1945: from the arrival of the Allies in Milan to the killing of Mussolini and the display of his body in Piazza Loreto; from the struggle and division within the antifascist front to the marginalisation of the Liberals; from internal conflicts in the Liberal Party on the institutional question to the value of the Resistance.