This book examines the historical origins and complex evolution of Italian national citizenship and identity from the political unification of monarchical Italy in 1861 to the first developments of republican Italy in 1950. Using the two metaphors of “citizenship as a mirror” and “citizenship as a pencil” for the historical analysis of nationhood, the book details the policies, debates and formal notions of Italian national citizenship to grasp and discuss the multi-faceted, evolving, and often contested visions of italianità. It does so by exploring the genesis of Italian monarchical subjecth ... More

This book examines the historical origins and complex evolution of Italian national citizenship and identity from the political unification of monarchical Italy in 1861 to the first developments of republican Italy in 1950. Using the two metaphors of “citizenship as a mirror” and “citizenship as a pencil” for the historical analysis of nationhood, the book details the policies, debates and formal notions of Italian national citizenship to grasp and discuss the multi-faceted, evolving, and often contested visions of italianità. It does so by exploring the genesis of Italian monarchical subjecthood as the first juridical bond linking the populations of the peninsula in 1861. It then examines the major developments-of the liberal period and of the fascist era-by focusing on the civic history of Italian women and men, of Italy’s immigrants and emigrants as well as of colonial and overseas native populations. It concludes with an analysis of the birth and first characteristics of post-World War Two Italian republican citizenship. Italianità is by no means a fixed notion; that it has been dual, multidimensional and variable in historical perspective; and that it has also been shaped, since the first post-unification years, by homegrown traditions of racial thinking. The book advances the current historiographical discussion by highlighting often-overlooked precedents, continuities and discontinuities within and between liberal and fascist Italies; and by offering an analysis in the longue durée through the useful combination of two citizenship-nationhood metaphors