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Abstract
The imposition of punitive sanctions against Italy by the League of Nations in November 1935 in response to the invasion of Ethiopia, a fellow league member, provided the fascist regime with an opportunity to mobilize the civilian population into ‘resistance’ against the ‘economic siege’ and to promote its ideals of nationalism, imperialist expansion and autarchy. This article examines the way in which the fascist authorities in Venice, aided by a supportive local press, sought to use the sanctions and ‘sanctions resistance’ to engage Venetians – especially women – in the fascist project and explores the effect of the anti-sanctions resistance measures on Venetians' daily lives. Placing importance both upon the regime's intentions as well as Venetians' reception of the anti-sanctions rhetoric, and drawing upon Michel de Certeau's observations on The Practice of Everyday Life, the article argues that Venetians' reception of such propaganda was characterized above all by confusion and by a multiplicity of personal choices and reactions, spanning a range of possible responses from unequivocal support through passive acceptance or indifference to outright rejection or subversion of the sanctions resistance measures that sought to elicit consent for the fascist project.
Notes
1 The quotation is taken from Mussolini's speech, made from the central balcony of Palazzo Venezia on 7 May 1935, in front of ‘over a hundred thousand women’ in which he told them that the Italian victory in the Ethiopian war was, in part, thanks to the ‘delicate and decisive task’ entrusted to the women of Italy, that of turning every Italian family into ‘a fortress of resistance to the sanctions’ (Mussolini Citation1959: 66). An earlier version of this article was presented at the Modern Italian History seminar at the Institute of Historical Research in London in November 2004; I am grateful to the convenors and members of this seminar for their questions and comments. At UCL, Axel Körner's suggestions upon reading the draft article have also proved very valuable. I would like to thank the AHRB and the Marie Curie European Doctoral Fellowship programme in social history for the financial assistance that made it possible for me to carry out the research on which this article is based. This article forms part of a larger research project, carried out for my doctoral thesis, into the impact of dictatorship on the everyday lives and life-courses of Venetians during the 1930s.
2 Reported in the Gazzetta di Venezia, 19 December 1935. The resident population of the comune of Venice in January 1932 was 165,856 according to Bolletino Mensile dell'Ufficio di Statistica del Comune di Venezia. The donation of gold was not limited solely to the Giornata della fede; virtually every day from 24 November, the Gazzetta included lists of Venetian citizens who had donated valuables to the patria.
3 Gazzetta (Citation1935) ‘Unanime di fervida’. In Venice, during the 1930s, two principal daily newspapers were published; the Gazzetta di Venezia is generally considered to have been the paper of the Venetian ‘elites’, while Venice's other daily, the Gazzettino was read more widely by the Venetian working class. This class-based assessment of the papers' readership is reflected in their circulation figures: while the Gazzettino from the close of the First World War regularly sold around 130,000 – 140,000 copies within the entire province of Venice, the Gazzetta, in keeping with its focus on the centro storico, had a much smaller and diminishing circulation – on average 4,000 – 6,000 copies daily (rising to 25,000 on Mondays thanks to the sporting coverage). However, by 1940, just two years before it was merged with the Gazzettino, the Gazzetta's circulation had dropped to 2,000 copies (Damerini Citation1988: 17; De Marco Citation1976: 63; Boldrin Citation1976; Curcione 1995 – 6: 24). Both newspapers were broadly supportive of the fascist regime: the Gazzetta, which advocated a more D'Annunzian brand of fascism, focusing on an almost mystical, spiritual advocation of Adriatic irredentism, was edited throughout the fascist period (until 1942 when it was merged with the Gazzettino) by Gino Damerini, member of an elite and fascist-supporting social circle, which included the industrialist and, from 1925 to 1928, minister of finance, Count Giuseppe Volpi di Misurata. The more clerical but nevertheless pro-fascist Gazzettino, was owned and edited from its foundation in 1887 by Giampietro Talamini until his death in 1934. Talamini's son, Ennio, then edited the paper for two years; however the family was forced to sell the paper in 1938. It was bought by a number of holding groups, including that of Giuseppe Volpi (Isnenghi Citation1996: 253 – 88.) Archives of the Gazzetta and the Gazzettino are both held in the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana in Venice.
4 For a discussion of the range of materials included in the economic sanctions and the implications of these in terms of the failure of the sanctions, see Federico (Citation2003) and Ristuccia (Citation2000: 85 – 110).
5 Historians disagree about the causes of the failure of the sanctions in economic terms. Shepherd B. Clough, for example, in the 1960s argued that the sanctions caused grave concern among economic policy makers and business leaders. Short of foreign credits and reliant on imports for much of its raw materials including coal, iron, petrol, cotton, wood pulp, quinine, and rubber, Clough maintained that the sanctions ‘would have brought Italy to its knees’ had they been more rigorously and universally applied in the long term. More recently, however, economic historian Cristiano Andrea Ristuccia has questioned this interpretation, arguing that the modest effect of the sanctions should be attributed not only to the non-uniform manner in which League of Nations member states applied the measure, but also, and more significantly, to the limited range of products and materials placed under embargo. In this interpretation, the omission of steel, coal and petrol from the list of banned materials was crucial, leading Ristuccia to engage in an exercise of counterfactual history, when he asked whether the extension of the sanctions to coal and oil ‘would … have made a difference’ (Clough Citation1964: 254 – 5; Ristuccia Citation2000: 85 – 110, 1999).
6 Following a trend initiated in the first decade of the century, the economic development of the region in the 1920s centred principally around the industrial base constituted by the Venetian islands and immediately adjacent areas of terraferma, with transport, engineering, food, clothing and construction industries providing the chief sources of employment for the local workforce. The 1911 census reveals that 1,317 of the 2,835 firms registered in the province of Venice were based in the centro storico, employing around 60 per cent of the active population. By 1927 the census results highlight the intensification of this relationship between the regional and provincial capital and its hinterland: over half of industrial firms in the province lay within the comune of Venice, employing over 72 per cent of the population (4,411 industrial firms with a total of 39,180 employees). A marked increase was also registered in the number of large-scale firms in Venice; in 1911, thirty-nine of the forty-nine firms in the province employing over 100 people were to be found in the Venetian centro storico; by 1927 there were eighty such firms. See Fontana (Citation2002: 1857 – 60) and Reberschak (Citation1986: 262).
7 See Fontana (Citation2002: 1464) and Reberschak (Citation1986: 262). Reberschak suggests that the reason for recruiting the majority of the work force in Porto Marghera from the provincial countryside rather than from the pool of unemployed naval, industrial and artisanal workers of the Venetian centro storico was less the result of a tradition of ‘isolazionismo’ or hatred towards terraferma on the part of the lagunari, as it was the product of precise industrial strategies which preferred a peasant workforce because of their perceived greater physical strength, ‘costanza in lavoro’ and sense of discipline.
8 The population of Mestre increased from 36,256 in 1921 to 53,936 in 1931, rising further to 65,961 in 1936. Reberschak argues that the dramatic population increase in Mestre resulted from this ‘forced exodus’ from Venice rather than from the migration of Porto Marghera workers from the provincial hinterland. The planning of ‘città-giardino’ style residential areas on Sant'Elena and the Lido dated back to 1911, but were constructed on a large-scale from 1924. From 1933, the Venetian podestà, in an attempt to provide housing for an increasing number of migrants, unveiled plans to create the euphemistically titled ‘villaggio rurale’ Ca' Emiliano in Marghera. Described by Reberschak as ‘huts’ (capanne) rather than adequate housing, Ca' Emiliano began to be populated by ‘exiled’ working-class Venetians from 1935, and was swiftly joined by Ca' Sabbioni and Ca' Brentelle. By 1939 the three ‘rural villages’ housed 1,663 people (Reberschak Citation1986: 265).
9 De Certeau maintains that rather than being passive receptacles, absorbing unquestioningly the cultural products with which they are assailed by the dominant authority, individuals construct their own ‘trajectories’ – individual modes of behaviour and practices – using opportunistic, guerrilla-like ‘tactics’. In defining the meaning of his use of the term ‘tactics’, de Certeau contrasts these with ‘strategies’. Strategy refers to a mode of operating used by those with a relative degree of power within a given spatial or institutional location, whereas tactics might be considered the ‘weapons of the weak’ in so far as these relate to modes of behaviour operating in a sphere where the individual holds little or no apparent power. Tactics are therefore necessarily flexible as they cannot choose or define the space in which they operate, but must act within space imposed on them. This study contends that the myriad, diverse ways in which Venetians reacted to the economic sanctions and anti-sanctions resistance propaganda presented to them may usefully be considered ‘tactics’ in this sense (De Certeau Citation1988: 34 – 7). It is also very much guided by the admonitions of Richard Hoggart to maintain a ‘concern with how texts are stitched into patterns of lived experience’ (Hoggart Citation1992: xiii).
10 For example, the Venetian journal, Le Tre Venezie, published in its November 1935 a set of instructions: citizens were advised not to consume foreign products of any kind; to severely limit their use of imported primary materials, particularly petrol; to make every possible effort to substitute national products for foreign-made ones; and finally, to ‘boycott with religious fervor every practice which renders us reliant on foreign aid: we must also read in Italian, speak in Italian, always and in every instance make use of the honest mentality and clear good sense which are among the fundamental qualities of the Italian people’ (Le Tre Venezie, November 1935: 543 – 4).
11 ‘A.O.’, Il Ventuno, September – October 1935: 1 – 2.
12 Gazzetta (Citation1935) ‘La resistenza contro’ l'offensiva sanzionistica', Gazzetta, 17 November 1935.
13 Ibid.
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid.
16 Gazzetta (Citation1935) ‘L'implacabile resistenza’.
17 Ibid.
18 Ibid.
19 Reproduced in Gazzetta (Citation1935) ‘La resistenza contro’. Unfortunately, no reference to the Decalogo has been found other than that in the Gazzetta, making it difficult to determine how many and how widespread the booklets were actually distributed. Certainly, it was the intention of the Venetian Fascio femminile to publish the Decalogo ‘in migliai di esemplari’ for distribution throughout the city and province.
20 Gazzetta (Citation1935) ‘La resistenza contro’.
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid.
23 The rituals of the festa della Salute centred upon the baroque votive church of Santa Maria della Salute, constructed to give thanks to the Virgin Mary for Venice's deliverance from plague in 1630. Along with the festa del Redentore, celebrated in the third week of July and which also originated as a votive festival of thanksgiving, this time after the intercession of the Redeemer to deliver Venice from the outbreak of plague in 1575 – 6, the festa della Salute is one of the most important festivals in the Venetian calendar. Marco Fincardi described the castradina, the traditional food eaten on the festa della Salute, as ‘un tratto essenziale dell'identità locale, per i ceti abbienti che possono permettersene l'acquisto, o per i lavoratori che un tempo la mangiavano all'osteria’. He suggested that whilst the absence of traditional castradina at the 1935 celebration of the festa della Salute was given a great deal of coverage by the Venetian press, the absence of foodstuff habitually eaten on a more daily basis, such as baccalà, would have been more keenly felt by the population of Venice (Fincardi Citation2002: 1494).
24 Gazzetta (Citation1935) ‘La “Salute”’.
25 Ibid.
26 Ibid.
27 A further example of the linking of the 1935 – 6 sanctions with the 1848 – 9 siege of Venice is provided by the Venetian-based children's comic, the Gazzettino dei Ragazzi. In an article entitled ‘Resisteremo ad ogni costo’, Bazzani (Citation1935) exhorted Venetian youngsters to remember and repeat ‘the heroic motto of our fathers’ from the 1848 – 9 siege of Venice; the 2nd Venetian Republic's futile but ‘heroic’ resistance to the Austrian siege of the city under the leadership of Daniele Manin. The article related an episode that reportedly occurred on 2 April 1849, after 12 months of siege, when Manin called upon the crowd in Piazza San Marco to decide whether or not to continue resistance. The reply came: ‘Resistance at any cost’. Adamo Bazzani instructed contemporary youngsters to take care of their possessions, to renounce ‘spontaneously’ sweets, amusements and toys, and to support ‘with courage and philosophy’ unpleasant food, patched-up socks, a torn overcoat or a poorly-heated house; only by following the example of the ‘unconditional, infinite love of the Fatherland’ of their heroic forefathers, she wrote, could Venetian children fulfil their ‘duty as Italians, at the present difficult hour’ (Bazzani Citation1935).
28 Gazzetta, 2 December 1935.
29 Carol Helstosky recently traced the evolution of fascist food policy or ‘alimentary sovereignty’; she demonstrated how, from the mid 1920s and the ‘battle for grain’, the regime began to reverse post-war trends towards greater diversity in food consumption, instead calling upon Italians to eat with restraint only domestically produced goods to show their political and patriotic allegiance. The Ethiopian war and subsequent sanctions served to accelerate and intensify this political trajectory (Helstosky Citation2004: 1 – 26).
30 Popular support or dissent for the Fascist regime's colonial adventures was in part also founded on the negative ‘memory’ of Liberal Italy's colonial policy under Crispi. Both the defeat at Adua in 1896 and the bloodshed of the 1911 Libyan war became etched in the collective memory of the nation. Mussolini, for example, wrote in December 1935 in terms of the ‘riconquista di Adua e di Macallè’ (Foglio d'Ordine, 21 December 1935 Archivio Centrale dello Stato [ACS] Segreteria Particolare del Duce [SPD] Carteggio Riservato [CR] b.31 342/R13B). The way in which individuals appropriated such memories, however, varied considerably; while some saw past colonial defeats and bloodshed as proof of the fallacy of imperial adventure, others saw these as licence for revenge. That connections between past and current colonial campaigns were made by ordinary Venetians is demonstrated in a number of anecdotal articles published in the Venetian papers in this period. For example, a report appeared in the Gazzetta highlighting the donation made by Attillio Toffoletto to the collections of gold and metal for the ‘patria’ of a dagger found on the battlefield at Adua (Gazzetta, 19 December 1935). Similarly, just a month later the Gazzettino reported Mussolini's gift of 500 Lire to a Venetian woman who had recently given birth to triplets and named them Benito, Arnaldo and Adua (Gazzettino, 22 January 1936).
31 See R. De Cilia (1986) Mi Chiamo Rosa De Cilia ‘ai suoi comandi’, ed. B. Armani, Archivio D'Aristico Nazionale (ADN) MP/86: 55.
32 Gazzetta (Citation1935) ‘Il metodico’.
33 Gazzetta, 21 November 1935.
34 Letter from Michele Pascolato to Giovanni Marinelli 21 January 1936. ACS Partitio Nazionale Fascista (PNF) Direzione Generale (DG) Servizi vari, Serie 1, b. 1187 9.89.12.
35 Letter from Giovanni Marinelli to Michele Pascolato 30 January 1936. ACS PNF DG Servizi vari Serie 1, b. 1187 9.89.12.
36 Gazzetta (Citation1935) ‘Per la nostra’.
37 Ibid.
38 It was also the impact of the Depression, following the 1929 Wall Street Crash that prompted general fashion trends to reject the maschietta style of the anni ruggenti – much abhorred by Catholic and fascist commentators – in favour of more nostalgic, modest and voluminous designs. In 1931 the head of the Ufficio Stampa, Gaetano Polverelli, ordered newspapers to eliminate from their pages female images considered too slim or masculine and representative of a sterile female type (De Giorgio Citation2003: 142). In addition, women's magazines, following the example set by Lidel in 1932, championed the cause of la campagna antidimagrante (De Giorgio Citation2003: 142; Gnoli Citation2000: 44 – 7).
39 The Ente was accused of impracticality in carrying out its directives, whilst Ester Lombardo, a fervent supporter of the regime and editor of Vita Femminile, deplored the devaluation of the marca di garanzia, which she felt was awarded to too many – or rather too many ‘insignificant’ – clothing manufacturers: ‘Accanto al vestito e al cappello della grande casa troviamo marchiato il cappellino da magazzino e il vestituccio da dozzina di casa a serie, così che la signora in nome di italianità può essere vestita presapoco a somiglianza della propria cuoca. Sacrificio che non bisogna chiedere ad una signora’ (Lombardo Citation1936). Furthermore, while the judging of clothes put forward for the marca di garanzia was carried out principally through the use of photographs, the Italian fashion houses, unlike the French, were not accustomed to photographing their creations, leaving the Italian women's magazines with a distinct shortage of images of national fashions, with which to regale their readership (Gnoli Citation2000: 93 – 5).
40 Gazzetta (Citation1935) ‘Eleganze’.
41 Ibid.
42 Ibid.
43 The experience of participation in the Spanish Civil War did not just affect the direction of Italian fashions; Sheila Fitzpatrick, in her fascinating work on everyday life in the Stalinist Soviet Union, noted Aleksei Adzhubei, the editor of Izvestiia's recollection of how in 1937, ‘Spanish caps – blue with red edging on the visor – came into fashion, and also big berets, which we tilted at a rakish angle’ (Fitzpatrick Citation1999: 69).
44 Petrol was not included in the list of import materials prohibited by the sanctions; nevertheless, the Gazzetta commented on 20 November on the ‘prezzo elevato della benzina’. Six days later, however, the need to save petrol was ascribed not to its prohibitive cost, but to two motives: ‘prima di tutto perchè ci viene dall'estero, in secondo luogo perchè è di larghissimo impiego bellico specie quando si tratti di una guerra coloniale’ (Gazzetta Citation1935: ‘Il compito’; Gazzetta Citation1935: ‘La gondola’).
45 Gazzetta (Citation1935) ‘Risparmiare’; Gazzetta (Citation1935) ‘Il compito’.
46 Gazzetta (Citation1935) ‘Il compito’.
47 Ibid.
48 Gazzetta (Citation1935) ‘La gondola’.
49 Il Gazzettino Illustrato (Citation1936).
50 In this sense, the sanctions represented one element of the fascist imperialist project in which women were envisaged outside of the static and essentially passive role which Patrizia Palumbo's recent study of children's colonial literature at the time of the Ethiopian war has shown was usually assigned to them (Palumbo Citation2003: 225 – 51).