A Concise History of Italy

Cambridge Concise Histories

by Christopher Duggan

Since its formation in 1861, Italy has struggled to develop an effective political system and a secure sense of national identity. This new edition of Christopher Duggan's acclaimed introduction charts the country's history from the fall of the Roman Empire in the west to the present day and surveys the difficulties Italy has faced during the last two centuries in forging a nation state. Duggan successfully weaves together political, economic, social and cultural history, and stresses the alternation between materialist and idealist programmes for forging a nation state. This second edition has been thoroughly revised and updated to offer increased coverage of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Italy, as well as a new section devoted to Italy in the twenty-first century. With a new, extensive bibliographical essay and a detailed chronology, this is the ideal resource for those seeking an authoritative and comprehensive introduction to Italian history.

Genres: History, Italy, Nonfiction, European History, Audiobook, Travel, Italian Literature

338 pages, Paperback

First published April 21, 1994

About the author

Christopher John Hesketh Duggan was a British historian specialising in the political, social and cultural history of modern Italy. He began his career as a research fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford and then at All Souls College, Oxford. In 1987, he moved to the University of Reading where he remained until his death. He had been Professor of Modern Italian History since 2002.

Reviews

[Colleen · Rating 1 out of 5]

Hands down, the most boring book I’ve ever read. I can’t explain why I kept reading it except that I’m headed to Italy very soon and I wanted to understand the history of the country. There were far better ways to do that than this but I ran out of time to start something new. Next time, I’d choose individual topics I’m interested in, such as the Renaissance or the Medici family or Pompeii or the Roman Empire or WWII, rather than a book that tried to cover it all...and not very well, at that.

[Dario Andrade · Rating 4 out of 5]

Em geral, há uma certa dificuldade em encontrar livros publicados no Brasil que façam uma boa síntese histórica de histórias nacionais. Felizmente, porém, já há algum tempo, a editora tem publicado essa série de livros que originalmente foram publicados pela Cambrigde.
Aqui, a história da Itália é apresentada em pouco menos de 400 páginas desde mais ou menos da queda de Roma, lá por volta do ano 400 até 2011. Exceto pelos fatos desta última década, o que há de principal está presente. Certamente um desafio enorme é o de sintetizar em espaço tão pequeno uma história tão complexa, mas, de forma geral, ao final da leitura, fiquei com a impressão que o autor fez algo bastante bom dentro de limites de espaço tão estreitos. Há, ainda, uma boa introdução, em que ele apresenta os problemas intrínsecos a esse tipo de empreitada e à própria ideia de Itália enquanto conceito e um excelente capítulo em que os aspectos geográficos da península são destacados.
Elogiável é uma boa cronologia e quantidade bastante razoável de indicações para quem queira se aprofundar.
De problemático – e isso tira uma estrela da avaliação – diz respeito à qualidade da tradução. Mesmo sem ter tido contato com o texto original, é possível observar a quantidade bastante significativa de escorregões. Trechos que não fazem muito sentido ou, ainda, palavras que podemos perceber que não se encaixam muito bem na frase.
Mesmo assim, é uma leitura que recomendaria a qualquer um interessado em conhecer a história italiana em língua portuguesa, mas que não queira se aprofundar além de uma boa síntese.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

A competent, if short and broad, overview of Italian history. Focus upon the Italian "nation" as constructed entity rather than a genuine nationality is very good.

[Kimberly · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book because it truly is a concise history of Italy, which I appreciate because I love learning about the history and politics of the country but I don't have a lot of time to read a plethora of books on the topic. This book covers the period from the fall of the Roman Empire in the west to the present day, and focuses on the continual difficulties that Italy has had with unification. The book's theme was about the constant challenge that Italy faces to unite its citizens and country and alievate the bureaucratic chaos that has always plagued the country. I love this book!!!

[Edith · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s all there, and it’s not badly written, but it is consequently too dense for easy reading (or remembering). A bit of a trudge.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I mean, all good info, but so, so many politics; not as much of a cultural overview.

[Luke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite interesting and well-written but the sections on socio-economic history are quite boring imo.

[Augusto Alves · Rating 4 out of 5]

It fulfills its promise. The book briefly introduces Italian History from the fall of the Roman Empire, without paying excessive attention to specific dates, events, or people. I enjoyed its focus on larger structural trends. After all, no reader expects to become an expert after reading 300 pages and, truth be told, won’t likely remember more than half of the book’s contents. But, with the aid of the author, I now know the main challenges facing Italian society, why they are so hard to overcome, and where regional divides and the political structure fit in this complex puzzle.

[Keeley · Rating 2 out of 5]

Perhaps I chose the wrong book. I was hoping for a balanced, invigorating history of Italy from the fall of the Roman empire. However, this book takes a narrower view, and is more interested in Italy since it became (united) Italy. The first 85 pages or so dealt with the period I was most interested in (though I suppose any good history of the middle ages/Renaissance would take care of my needs), and most of the rest was focused on issues such as unification, fascism and the Mafia. It was certainly a revealing picture, and helped me understand the background to how Italy was perceived when I was first studying it in the mid-90s. Since joining the Euro and the boom in luxury goods, things have changed a lot from the half-"first world," half-"third world" Italy I was first taught about. But in the 1980s, that was pretty much a reality.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author's semi-snobbish asides about the Church throughout the book bring down the tone, but it is a good overview of Italian history, especially the early 20th century.

[Andrea Ortu · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am Italian and this book has been a really interesting reading. After this book I understood a lot more about contemporary Italy.

[TJ · Rating 3 out of 5]

The major claim of A Concise History of Italy is the Risorgimento (reunification) of Italy happened by accident, rather than design.  Duggan’s analysis is convincing and merits further study of other sources.  King Victor Emmanuel II of the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont certainly does not strike the reader as a strong, unifying leader; capable of uniting multiple disparate kingdoms, republics and duchies.  Garibaldi’s clandestine southern crusade appears as a hopelessly romantic quest, more akin to Don Quixote’s tilting at windmills than a well-planned effort to unite the Italian peninsula.  In the end, chance and circumstance dictated that the majority of the Italian state came into being during this time, in a rather haphazard fashion.  While Duggan does not stress it, I believe the method of the unification of Italy had the most dramatic consequences for the future of the Italian nation-state.  The coercion of the various republics and kingdoms into a unified state by Sardinia-Piedmont would reflect the future difficulty in building consensus between the regions.
“What is Italy?” permeates the whole of the book and Italy’s history.  What units the region?  Is it a shared history, religion, language, or ideology?  This question has vexed the governments of Italy for well over a century and is at the root of many of the country’s problems.  There is no simple answer.  Italy has been fragmented politically and geographically since the fall of the Western Roman Empire.  Italian as a language did not truly exist until after unification: in the mid-1970s 30% of Italians spoke only dialect.  Different governments have continually tried to find an answer to what unites Italians in order to bind these disparate peoples together to form a modern nation-state. 
A key historical difference between Italy and the other major Western European powers appears to be a complete sense of government incompetence from the top down.  This includes executive, parliamentary and bureaucratic leadership.  I believe there are two chief causes of this malaise: the determination of those in power to maintain their position and a corresponding failure to define themselves.  These two problems are joined together.  The desire to retain power has hamstrung every Italian government since unification; the post-unification liberal Kingdom of Italy, fascist Italy and the Italy of the Christian Democrats.  The distinct lack of ideology is prevalent in the historical ruling parties of Italy.  Most of them seem to have defined themselves by what they are against, instead of what they are for.  These rulers were enabled to hold on to the government often because there was no other viable alternative, often through the non-enfranchisement of voters.  Rather than build and deliver on a platform of ideas, the ruling parties have tended to resort to political patronage and clientelism in order to build and maintain their political bases. 
This seems most true of fascism, which formally stressed the ideals of intuition, spontaneity and nationalism.  While this is hardly a recipe for a party ideology, these values did allow Mussolini a certain amount of flexibility in dealing with specific problems and issues he had to face.  Duggan describes the hollowness of fascism and how it was built on “the cult of the Duce, patriotic rhetoric, parades, uniforms, films, football, and trips to the sea, [these] were little compensation for the lack of serious ideas and real debate.”
A few criticisms of the book are in order: I was disappointed at the lack of attention on medieval and Renaissance Italy.  I was hoping for more detail on the rivalries and alliances between the major Italian states, specifically Florence, Milan, Venice, Naples and the Papal States.  Unfortunately, this is the wrong book for such a study.
I was also disappointed by the lack of attention to the mafia.  The author spends much time on problems endemic to the south of Italy and the essential economic backwardness of the region.  However, Duggan is inclined to blame the apathy and resistance to change on the big landowners and scantly acknowledges the influence of the mafia.  There is some mention of the mafia, but as a symptom rather than a cause.  I do not agree.  Unfortunately I cannot back up my claim, because he spent so little time in describing organized crime. 
Overall, the book did most of what I expected it to do.  I enjoyed the idea of unification by accident and the existential question of what unites Italy.  The writing and study is strong from the Risorgimento to modern-day, but more time should have been spent on medieval and Renaissance Italy.

[Thomas H. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This review is of the Second Edition of Christopher Duggan's History of Italy (2013)

A few years ago I read Duggan's magisterial 'The Force of Destiny: A History of Italy Since 1796', which i very much enjoyed. This concise history starts much earlier and finishes a few years later than that previous work, and the structure of his history seems to have bewildered a number of other reviewers of this book. Yet, it would not be possible to write a concise history of Italy that included as in depth look at the Romans or the Renaissance as others would have liked - indeed, this is a history of Italy as related to the conception of a united Italy, an Italian nation state, and all earlier history before 1789 (the first 87 pages) is written with this in mind. The first chapter, focusing on the 'geographical determinants of disunity' in the Italian peninsular, explains Duggan's methodology - disunity was the rule, not the exception; and yet a unity of sorts has been imposed, unnaturally in many regards, since 1860 in the form of the Italian nation state.

'Italy' as imagined by many who are interested in the country - the Romans, the city states of Florence and Venice - is not, therefore, Italy as nation state, and this will alienate many readers who will be unfamiliar with a number of names. The first few chapters speed by at a rate that is necessary to allow a focus on how Italy unified and on the history of Italy since unification. It is an unsurpassed summary, and it is a great tragedy that the author has passed on and won't be able to grace up with a third edition. I would have been fascinated by how he regarded the decade that has passed since this book was published. With the recent death of Paul Ginsborg, the other great English historian of Italy, there is now a distinct dearth in up to date histories on the country in the English language. For that reason, from the Risorgimento to the new millennium, Duggan's work, ten years on, is still the definitive history of Italy.

[Jota Houses · Rating 2 out of 5]

Despues de un viaje por italia he querido profundizar en la historia del pais y este es uno de los pocos libros que ofrece la biblioteca pública de mi ciudad.
Su titulo original A concise history of Italy con énfasis en concise describe mejor su contenido. Resulta poco profundo aunque claro y descriptivo. El libro dedica tambien mucho más tiempo al periodo desde la Reunificación a la actualidad (años 90) de modo que el tratamiento de la Edad Media y el Renacimiento es muy pobre.
Hablando de pobreza me gustaría dedicar unas palabras al traductor o mejor aún a los editores. Si bien no tengo queja en cuanto a la tradcción del inglés al castellano, el traductor demuestra carecer de conocimientos históricos mínimos. Odoacro de convierte en Odoacer, el Sacro Imperio Romano en Sagrado, los Angevinos en Angevins etc... Obviamente se le podía pedir un mayor esfuerzo al traductor pero desde luego, en un libro como este, se podía haber contratado a un historiador para que corrigiese este tipo de fallos. Una pena.

[Matteo Cordero · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Concise History of Italy illustrates the history of the Italian nation from the fall of the Roman Empire to the relatively present day (it was first published in 1994). The central aspect of this book is to look at the geographical, historical and cultural divisions that have characterized Italy since its unification and that persist in the nation in the present day. As is mentioned in the title, this research gives you a general overview of the Italian history of a period that stretch for nearly 1600 years in a short text (nearly 300 pages long).

I like very much this book probably because I am Italian. It gives you a general understanding of Italian history with a short read. I like the way the author summarized the most relevant events of the historical evolution and development of the history of my country. In my view, this book gives a clear explanation of Italy's most notorious problems, such as corruption, inefficient state and bureaucracy and enormous public debt. Its issues could be generally explained in its political and cultural division: it is a simple fact that, however, I have not realized until I read it in this book.

[Thiago Da silva · Rating 4 out of 5]

Um bom livro, que cumpre a tarefa de apresentar mais de mil anos de história em poucas páginas. O autor tem posições moderadamente liberais e enfatiza história política e econômica. A história moderna (XVIII em diante) é apresentada mais longamente, o que é justificável.
Enfim, um bom panorama, bem escrito (a tradução tem pequenos deslizes, mas sem comprometer) e ótimo para quem quer se aproximar do assunto. No final, há uma extensa seção comentada de sugestão bibliográfica, mas reduzida a títulos em inglês (o autor é inglês e o livro foi pensado para a Inglaterra; isso explica, aliás, a escolha de trazer a Inglaterra como comparação em alguns momentos).
De todo modo, recomendo.

[Thomas Cafe · Rating 4 out of 5]

As the title says, this is a very concise history of “Italy.” The general thesis of the work is that Italy was (at the time of writing) and is more fragmented and unresolved as a nation that one might think it is. Likely inspired by Anderson, this text poses the image of a millennia long struggle across the peninsula to idealise and materially institute the “Italian nation” over what is ultimately, and remains in many ways today, a culturally and politically heterogenous pocket of southern Europe. Without knowing Italian historiography, it’s probably safe to assume this work is a little dated. The focus on high politics is understandable in such a short work. A good intro for me at least.

[Jeffrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Useful history and focused on aspects that other histories pay little attention to. I was particularly interested in the periods of history when Italy was not prominent, e.g. 17th century on or pre-Rennaisance middle ages. The book focuses on how geography shaped its history, which is appealing to me as I believe geography is a critical determinant in any country's history. The risorimento in the 19th century gets focused attention in the book as well. In my trip to Italy this Spring, I found the knowledge I learned from this book gave me valuable insight to the country that made my trip more enlightening.

[Morgan]

A good first foray into the history of Italy for a newbie.

I think for most people, this will be a utilitarian read - we want information, and we want it quickly. This book delivers that.

I have further questions and areas of interest after reading this book, but that is the job of future reading.

My one complaint about this book is that it's weighted more heavily toward post-war Italy. A simple look at the page counts for each era will reveal that. Modern histories tend to be very focused on politics, politicians, and specific events of only temporary "significance." For a newbie, this goes over my head, and I don't think it's needed at this level of generality.

[Elizabet]

As a whole, the book is really interesting and comprehensive in terms of going over the history periods of Italy. Its quite a lot to digest, so it will take you a while to get through. It reads a bit like a textbook and may prompt you to get into more detailed research into some of the things you find interesting. Overall, don't expect to remember everything in the book, but do expect to walk away with a decent amount of new knowledge and understanding of how Italy was shaped and why certain things prevail in today's society.

[Haymone Neto · Rating 3 out of 5]

O foco do livro parece ser a história política da Itália. Poderia ter mais conteúdo sobre a sociedade e em especial a cultura da Bota. Em todo caso, acho que é uma boa introdução ao tema, e dá um panorama bem completo da história desse país que tem tanto em comum com o Brasil: as desigualdades regionais, o clientelismo, a desfuncionalidade do sistema político etc. Para mim, o melhor capítulo é o que trata do fascismo.

[Hans · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great story of ebbs and flows of the Italian nation. The role of its physical environment that lacks rivers for transport, coal for industry, trees for ships, and fertile plains resulted in a different development path than the rest of Europe. It also explained how the waves of revolts led the rise and fall of the fascists. But it would have been complete with a few decades of the post war period, which were the consequence of all of this.

[Daniel Maria · Rating 5 out of 5]

A proposta do livro de Duggan é excelente. Traz uma visão abrangente da história da Itália, com um visão geopolítica e social aguçada, não se resumindo a uma listagem de datas históricas e acontecimento, mas sim a trazer uma lógica e construção de acontecimentos que levam o leitor a formar uma visão dos grandes movimentos da história do país. A forma como o livro foi construído ajuda a entender a Itália de hoje. Excelente proposta para uma leitura para quem quer ter uma visão geral do processo histórico na península.

[Aaron Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

INTRODUCTION

I THE GEOGRAPHICAL DETERMINANTS OF DISUNITY

2 DISUNITY AND CONFLICT: FROM THE ROMANS TO THE RENAISSANCE, 400-1494

3 STAGNATION AND REFORM, 1494-1789

4 THE EMERGENCE OF THE NATIONAL QUESTION,
1789-1849

5 ITALY UNITED

6 THE LIBERAL STATE AND THE SOCIAL QUESTION,
1870-1900

7 GIOLITTI, THE FIRST WORLD WAR, AND THE RISE OF FASCISM

8 FASCISM

9 THE REPUBLIC

[Elysse · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot of detail seems to be lost due to the vast amount of time that the author attempts to cover in each section. I think there could have been better ways to introduce the important events with better context.

[Anthony · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wish I could give this book a 2.5. However, Goodreads does not allow half stars, so I rounded up because other than the first two poorly crafted chapters and a few other rushed areas, it wasn’t completely terrible.

[Angela Morelli · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very concise indeed. I don't know much of the history of "Italy", but the strong regional identity of Italians has always intrigued me. In that sense this book is kinda helpful. I hope to read more history of Italy in the future.

[Deli Isle · Rating 4 out of 5]

One thing important to realize is that this isn't a history of the region of Italy, but rather the modern polity of Italy, from its formation through its evolution and until today. Even then, this truly is concise, and only gives a broad overview, which is to be expected considering its length.

[Emre Ozsar · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed the book; it was not very long and accordingly most of the sections did not contain very detailed analysis; I liked the charts and the statistics; I wish there was more in relation to the Roman empire, and also the reasoning behind the separation of north and south.

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book to read about the story of Italy.