Secondly, Italy had many political problems; the main one being their foreign policy. When Britain and France were dividing up Africa in 1895, Italy used a huge army in order to get Massawa; however they did not succeed in gaining this new land which was very humiliating for Italy. They also failed to gain Ethiopia and Tunisia despite using a large army. Another problem that Italian politics were confronted with is Transformismo. This was when politicians were bribed, by people such as Giolitti, with favours to join large political coalition governments. The most powerful political group of the time were the Liberal’s, which was not a structured party. Therefore Transformismo created many problems for Italian politics leading up to 1919.
Thirdly the Italian economy was in a crisis. This was particularly due to the severe wealth division between the north and south. There were a small percentage of Italians who were extremely wealthy, and then the rest of society was peasants. Due to the south also being economically and agriculturally backward, the peasants struggled to make money off of farming because of the lack of materials and therefore this failed to change for many years until the divide narrowed. Added to this, there was also inflation and high taxation due to the trade war, which caused the peasants to revolt. Therefore the economy was certainly behind the rest of Europe which caused problems between 1890 and 1919.
Fourthly, the Pope’s opposition to the government cause many religious problems for Italy. Tension was caused between the church and the rest of Italy when it was being decided on who would have control over Rome; the church refused to recognise the state until this was decided which caused another divide. The Pope also influenced Catholics into not being part of the new Italian state because he lost a lot of power after he lost control of the Vatican city; therefore the church were now concerned about loosing their power within the rest of Europe. Industrialisation also reduced the churches influence over society as it expanded in the 1900’s. However, Catholics became involved in Italian politics in 1909 when the Popolari party put themselves up for an election. They did this because they were scared of socialism as it goes against their belief system.
Finally the impact of WW1 caused many problems for Italy because there were 1.6 million combined casualties. The National debt had also increased dramatically during the war – in 1914 Italy were in debt by 16 billion Lira, yet by 1918 the national debt had risen to 85 billion Lira. Although there was still the opposition of the Pope and there were violent protests due to the shortage of food, there were some positive aspects after WW1; industry expanded which caused an increase in female employment, and peasants were now able to pay off some of their debts because the rents froze - therefore it appeared that Italy would now be able to begin improving as a whole nation.
Overall, it could be said that although Italy would have inevitably faced many problems leading up to 1919, the nation would possibly not have been in so much turmoil had the state been less divided by the Pope and economic issues due to there being less influences, making the society much stronger against the rest of Europe.
