1800-1900 - Historical Context

The period before the First World War, although collects in peace the fruits of the century liberal, actually puts in conflict the great European industrial bourgeoisie that now had divided the world in a sort of colonial building.
Particularly in England, Germany and France recorded a frantic race to the conquest of colonial possessions and new areas of influence. Colonialism, in fact, ensuring the industrialized countries the control of raw materials and international markets, conditioned the imperialism, which was not only thirst of military and political power, but above all economic imperialism, consolidated domain of a larger market and a wider area of ​​exploitation.
Lenin stated in his essay of 1917, "Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism.

If you wanted to give the briefest possible definition of imperialism, you should say that imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism.
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Imperialism is the re in that stage of development, where the dominance of the big monopolies and financial capital, the export of capital has acquired importance, began the division of the world among the international trusts, and It has already completed the allocation of the entire Earth's surface among the biggest capitalist countries. "
Now, as the great European powers, Britain, France and Germany, tended to the conquest of ever larger markets and larger areas of exploitation to give life to the growing industrial machine, it was clear that their confrontation, once or l ' other, he passes on the floor of the war for survival.
The feeling of the nation, which in the early nineteenth century had a connotation of patriotism and democratic ideal, degenerated in recent years in fetishistic cult of the individual nationalities, expressing the tendency to impose the national record on other countries.
The new imperialist expansion found its theoretical justification in the ideology of positivism, that the doctrine of the "struggle for life" (struggle for life), as well as trends in some of the irrational culture, which emerged in the eighties and in the first decade of the nineteenth century, which terrified the "will to power" of Nietzsche, trivially distorted in meaning imperialist and colonialist.
Collapsed, or at least challenged, the system of values ​​rooted in the culture of the nineteenth century, in a world that has become "vast and terrible", as written by R. Kipling, apostle of British imperialism, only the strength and power seemed to offer an assurance of salvation .
Even Italy did not remain foreign to breath irrational, venturing to obtain in East Africa a "lung" the surplus population. The Italian colonial enterprise was marked by deadly defeat of Adua in 1896, which caused the fall of the government Crispi, the standard bearer of the political prestige of Italy. Even under the government Giolitti was retried the colonialist enterprise with shipment to Libya in 1911-12 which, prompted mainly by financial groups and nationalists, he resulted in the conquest of a "sandbox".
The causes of World War must therefore be sought in the tackle, especially economic and industrial between Germany and Britain, but should not be forgotten even those nationalistic between France who wanted revenge against the failures of Sedan by Germany and ethnicities, among panslavism (Russia) and pan-Germanism of the Central Powers. The Balkans, which were and are Serbia and Bosnia, for centuries was considered a territory strategically and economically important as Austria as from Russia. Serbia on the other hand aspired to build an independent and sovereign unitary with the Slavs.
To understand, therefore, the causes of the outbreak of World War we have to take into account a number of factors ranging from economic and industrial persistent nationalism, religious and ethnic contrasts with dynastic aspirations of expansion of their domains, from reflections colonial competitions that took place in other continents to the increasing population pressure. Nor can one ignore tensions and social unrest that nation states and supranational tended to download the "eternal enemy" much to do want war. In this situation the murder of Franz Ferdinand in Sofia had the effect of a match thrown into a powder keg.
And so after forty years of peace (1870-1914), European history resulted in the War of 1914-1918. It was a breakout inevitable. The precarious balance between states resting on the coexistence of two blocks: on the one hand the Triple Alliance, signed in 1882 between Germany, Austria and Italy; the other the Triple Entente, established in 1907, between England, France and Russia - had undermined the foundations of strong imperialist pressures, by virulent nationalism, the fever of finding new markets for industrial production; there were also territorial claims, as well as the emergence of a culture which saw the war as a valid instrument of maturation and renewal of political, social and moral for a stagnant world into mediocrity and indifference.
The war, therefore, the result of "an accumulation of factors, intellectual, social, economic and even psychological, as well as politicians and diplomats, who contributed all together to produce the situation of 1914" (J.Joll).
The situation after the war appeared anywhere potentially revolutionized: the exasperation produced by four long years of suffering, of which the working classes and the lower middle class had borne the greatest lost, resulted in lively agitation for a while 'well-being and freedom , fueled by the example and the Soviet exacerbated by promises of social justice and peace mentioned by the leaders during the war.
The lords of the military and political power bent to their purposes the victory achieved nell'odioso German imperialism, on the old monarchies multinational (were cleaved empires Austrian, German, Russian and Ottoman). The treaties of peace, defined a challenge to justice, devotion to common sense, were aimed above all to put the losers in such a condition that it can not, for a long time, contending supremacy to the winners.
The formed "League of Nations", which was to be an instrument of peace and international justice, beginning already appeared destined to become an instrument for the major powers or, at best, an academy of theoretical statements.
Imperialism and nationalism continued to be "the animus" deep international political life. The discredit on the principles "corporate", expired at the level of ambiguous pretexts, "spread the climate of unease, fear, mistrust, deepened skepticism in the face of every statement of good will, of founding moral of political life, had reflexes in relations between the political and social forces within each country "(Balestrieri).
Five years after the conflict the town Salvatorelli found himself stated: "There is something really hard to die in Europe and the world, and is the spirit of the war, that is the spirit of nationalism and reaction that sparked the war, He lasted until the general peace poisoned and devastated the world after the war. "
Beyond the conquest of small strips of unredeemed, the war in Italy produced devastating effects. I generated a serious economic crisis, especially in agriculture, resulting in unemployment and poverty.
The gap between the ruling elite and the mass of petty bourgeois and peasant deepened to the levels of mutual challenge. And 'so the ineptitude of the political class to solve the serious problems of the post-war period, the inability of the major parties, the Socialists and the People, to impose a policy and concrete unity, the economic collapse, the social tension (the " two red years "of 1919-20, with the occupation of the factories), the widespread disappointment of those who had hoped for a radical democratic renewal, moral and economic, led to a deep crisis of the parliamentary system, paving the way to the affirmation of forces reactionary and undemocratic, which manifested themselves with the organization of the fascist squads.
The landed gentry and industrial Italian, already quite timid and inadequate to the growing technological progress, he needed some confidence in the social field for the industrial and economic recovery, so feared strikes and unrest, he feared the leap in the dark socialist.
The dictatorship, therefore, was the only possible solution to end the crisis of the postwar period, only with it the power of the bourgeoisie could be guaranteed.
Fascism is to be found, therefore, in the behavior of the middle classes, but especially the petty bourgeoisie, that is not protected by the trade unions as was the proletariat and totally defenseless against the economic dominance of the big bourgeoisie, it tended to claim their own space life between the one and the other. The fascists ended however to be largely also favored by agricultural and industrial bourgeoisie convinced they can easily liquidate their movement; also from the same liberal state, whose leaders made no secret of their belief that extremism fascist would with time appeased and that everything would be back to normal constitutional, once silenced "proletarian violence".
The occupation of the factories had appeared to the big and middle bourgeoisie as an attack on private property and the liberal state was destinatati to certain ruin if there had been defended by the "red danger" even at the cost of stifling democracy as much of the country He had won in 50 difficult years of life united.
It must be said also that similar movements or dictatorial, even totalitarian, it had come insediando and consolidating, or will happen soon, in other countries such as Spain with Primo de Rivera, Antonio Salazar in Portugal, Germany with Hitler , Greece, Ioannis Metaxas, Engelbert Dollfuss in Austria, Romania and Turkey with Jon Antonescu with Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder of the Turkish republic by him straight with dictatorial powers until his death.
Nor forget the numerous movements of fascist address ESTABLISHED in other states, not excluding France and Britain itself.