Preface

A history of Italy on this scale can make no claims to originality or to comprehensiveness. My intention has been to provide a succinct, and hopefully clear, survey of some of the principal developments in the peninsula since the time of the Romans. I lean heavily on the work of others, above all in the early chapters and towards the end: I hope the authors concerned will exercise forbearance, and accept, collectively, my warm thanks. Perhaps inevitably, given limitations on space, my focus is primarily on political issues (in the event, though, rather more than originally intended). However, I have tried to weave in, at certain points, discussion of economic, social, and cultural matters; and in the introduction I have looked briefly at how Italy’s location in Europe, its soil, climate, mineral resources, and physical geography have influenced its history.

The main problem with a work such as this is to find a thematic thread. In the case of Italy this is particularly difficult: the country has only been in existence since 1861, and strictly speaking ‘its’ history starts then, not before. Prior to that date the peninsula was a patchwork of states, each with its own history and traditions. One solution occasionally adopted is to abandon political narrative and instead to consider ‘Italy’ as essentially a ‘geographical expression’, a unit of territory whose history can be given coherence by focusing on broad socio-economic and cultural themes. This is not altogether satisfactory, however, since the unit of territory is still the national-political one, and for the most part bears little obvious or natural relationship to any such themes.