Volume 37, Number 10 · June 14, 1990
Stompin' with the Savoy
By James Joll
Italy and its Monarchy
by Denis Mack Smith
Yale University Press, 402 pp., $29.95
Denis Mack Smith is the leading writer in English on nineteenth- and twentieth-century Italian history. Over nearly forty years he has done much to challenge many myths and to counter the view of the liberal prime minister Giovanni Giolitti, who once said, 'It would not be right to let beautiful legends be discredited by historical criticism.'[1] In the preface to the 1985 reissue of his first book, Cavour and Garibaldi, 1860, Mack Smith wrote of the reception his work has had in Italy. There was surprise that any historian could write without being a member of a school, Catholic or Marxist or Crocean; there was admiration for his scholarly use of new sources; but there was also outrage at the challenge to hallowed historical legends. With his subsequent books, which include biographies of Cavour and Mussolini, a study of Sicily since 1713, and what is still the best general history of modern Italy, Mack Smith has acquired a privileged position in Italian historiography, perhaps, as he himself has suggested, because the Italians are flattered that a foreigner should have devoted a lifetime to the study of their controversial recent past.[2] He certainly seems able to say things that are unflattering to the Italians: his Cavour is an unscrupulous and devious politician for whom raison d'état justified any behavior however dubious. His Mussolini is not only a cruel, vindictive, and boastful tyrant but also a mountebank who deceived the gullible Italian people, even if he deceived himself as much as he did them.
Review, 4003 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |