Customer Reviews

Italy and its Monarchy

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This masterly, elegant account of who Italy's monarchs were and what they got up to (usually something not very edifying) demonstrates why Mack Smith is widely viewed as the leading authority on Italy writing in the English language. Post-unification Italy's development might well have been less turbulent, had it not been for the distressing tendency of successive kings to interfere in politics and indulge their taste for intrigue. Nurturing the tender plant of Italian democracy was usually the last thing on their minds. As in his other works, Mack Smith wastes little sympathy on the civilian politicians who were, if anything, even more culpable than their royal masters in contributing to Italy's failure to construct a stable, corruption-free democracy before the First World War. But his particular focus is the monarchy, from its crucial part in the wars of unification after 1860 to its inglorious association with Benito Mussolini's dictatorship in the inter-war years. After putting down Mack Smith's book - a gem of concise writing and lightly worn learning - one can only be glad that Italians eventually abolished the monarchy after the Second World War. Republicanism, though drenched in corruption and crime between 1946 and 1992, did at least do something to modernize public life in Italy.