Buondì.
If you’ve been keeping pace with our FREE Summer Series of Italian articles with online audio, then you’ll recall that we left off, on Wednesday, at the point at which Italy’s crafty king had seized Rome from the Pope and made it the country’s capital.
So far, so good! I was eager to find out what happened next.
Turns out, nothing of note – for the next thirty years! Today’s episode seems to have skipped ahead to the twentieth century and…
Episodio 6. L’età giolittiana (1903-1914)
OK, so two possibilities. Maybe our series writer spilled honey on her history book and glued a few pages together without noticing. It happens.
Or perhaps it really was a quiet few decades, with nothing much happening, except the usual – the rich getting richer, while the poor become ever more desperate (or emigrate).
But anyway, let’s talk about Giovanni Giolitti, who I shamefully admit to never having heard of. Our writer describes him as:
“il grande protagonista della politica italiana di inizio Novecento, un po’ come lo era stato Cavour qualche decennio prima”
Cavour I vaguely knew. Something to do with the ‘Risorgimento’, right?
(See episodes 1-3 of the current series, at the bottom of this page.)
But Giovanni Giolitti? Zilch!
Which is regrettable, as the guy appears to have been a model for other twentieth-century Italian politicians (see next year’s Summer Series), and had similar problems in his in tray. According to today’s article, he’s clearly an important figure in Italy’s story.
OK, so you’ll remember that (thirty years before) a king from some place up north had somehow ended up with the whole of Italy, the lower half of which he was then delighted to tax but otherwise ignored. With me?
In the missing three decades then, despite Italy’s official capital now being Rome, things picked up quite briskly in the center-north – now the industrial and financial heartland of an actual country – while continuing to not improve a whit from Rome on downwards.
So along comes Giolitti – a smooth political operator, apparently, who would enjoy a whole decade in power, to fix things – and guess what?
Italy, according to G.G., was a deformed country. It was increasingly powerful and modern in the north, but persistently weak and underdeveloped in the south.
And when a tailor is asked to sew a suit for a client with a hunchback, Giolitti explained, what is he to do?
The best he can, obviously. So work around the disability, in order to find a realistic solution that will clothe his client while perhaps partially concealing the hump.
Recently deceased German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898), someone whose successes would have been more than familiar to Italian politicians of this period, is supposed to have said:
“Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable — the art of the next best.”
I expect that’s where our G.G. got his ‘realpolitik‘ leanings from…
Read more about which problems Giolitti chose to tackle, and which to ignore, in today’s Summer Series episode:
Episodio 6. L’età giolittiana (1903-1914)
(Episodes 1-5 of this series can be found on our History page. Scroll right down to the end to find them.)
A lunedì.
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Lynne F says
Another interesting week of reading and listening to the Italian HIstory series.. I too was unaware of Giovani Giolitti The previous three protagonists have come
to my attention over many trips to Italy. Whichever town or city there is always a Via Garibaldi Cavore, Vittorio Emmanuel but Giolotti, well I am sure there is somewhere. Your thrice weekly articles written in your inimitable style Daniel, are amusing and informative . I look forward to next week’s instalments.
Daniel says
If you’ve ever been to Roma Termini, Lynne, that’s to say Rome’s main railway station, the street that runs up its right hand side is Via Giolitti, and features amongst other attractions what Google Maps describes as McDonald’s Roma Giolitti. Via Cavour is just around the corner, much classier (stations are never very chic, even in Italy) but lacks its own McDonald’s.
Seems that there’s no Via Giolitti in Bologna, though. Probably because, as our writer says, the man was too much of a capitalist pig to merit having a street named after him in this workers’ paradise. We have a Via Lenin, though, and a Via Stalingrado!
Thanks for writing.
Lynne F says
Thanks for the info Danielle I have been to Rome several times ( and Bologna) Next time in Roma I will have to find it .
Denis says
I wonder how many Via Gambettas there are in Italy. Perhaps as many Victoria or Cromwell Roads there are in England
Daniel says
For the moment, my name is Daniel, Lynne. Being female in Italy isn’t easy in general, and being a foreign (French) female is doubtless harder.
I’m a British male and, despite Brexit, still have some privileges, though less than before.
For now, then, becoming Danielle remains the option of last resort. If I do change gender, I’ll be sure to let you know…
Lynne F says
Sorry about that DANIEL, my niece is called Danielle and has just had a very exciting big life event so she is very much on my mind. Typing fast my autopilot took over. Ancora una volta mando le mie scuse 🙂
Judith says
I’m really fascinated by this series – my brain works backwards with history so I understand it better working back from today – hence the medieval period was a bit remote for me – I’m sure I’ll get there eventually.
I laughed a lot at the episode about the toppling of Rome – but through my watering eyes I did wonder about the role of the Catholic Church in Italy today – it doesn’t seem so very different. They still seem to have huge influence over how their believers vote.
It does seem that the ‘domanda meridionale’ e ‘la chiesa cattolica’ will continue to plague the country for quite some time to come.
Giolitti (new to me too) does indeed seem a true politician, and would fit in to many many countries politics today – wouldn’t it be wonderful to find some leaders with real integrity.
Dream on… I guess…
Thank you for another fantastic summer series.
Daniel says
Prego!
Later in the summer we’ll see how Mussolini did a deal with the Catholic church that rather restored their influence. And then, at the end of this series, in WWII, there were the ‘partigiani’, at least some of whom were communists, so anti-religion.
The church’s influence lives on even today, of course, and was the cause of one of two major arguments I’ve had with my Italian wife in the twenty-five years we’ve been together – her parents wanted our three kids baptised, while I didn’t. Neither they nor she gave a damn for the religious element, as far as I could tell, while I was brought up religious – just not catholic.
So that more or less sums up modern Italy’s attitude, from what I can see. The church is present, has a major influence, but only muslims and Jehova’s Witnesses actually seem to believe in a god. For everyone else, it’s just part of the ‘culture’, like football, pasta, and Formula 1.
The other argument was about Brexit, by the way, and getting the hell out of Italy while we still could. And of course, I lost that one, too.