Aristocrats in Bourgeois Italy

Provides an account of the Italian nobility in the post-unification era, and challenges scholarship which has stressed the rapid fusion of old and new elites in Italy, and the marginality of the nobility after 1861. Instead, the text highlights the continuing economic strength, social power and political influence of Italy's most prominent regional aristocracy. In Piedmont, the nobles developed more indirect forms of influence that exercized not only their wealth and prestige, but also a hunger for leadership based on something older than constitutions or electoral politics. They remained a largely separate group within local society, distinguished by their attachment to the values of lineage, military service, landownership, and social exclusivity. This aristocratic exclusivity and influence survived the agricultural depression of the 19th century, before succumbing finally to the devastating effects of World War I.