I

Iceland A large island lying in the North Atlantic, just south of the Arctic Circle. Over many centuries the settlements of the exceptionally homogeneous but small Icelandic population (currently estimated at 320,000) had developed along very limited stretches of the vast coastline. This encircled a territory more than twice the size of DENMARK, whose monarchs ruled the island from 1380. Iceland eventually gained in 1845 the restoration of an advisory version of its own ancient parliamentary assembly (the Althing), followed by a significant measure of domestic governmental autonomy in 1874. It attained full independence in 1918, even while retaining for a time its allegiance to the Danish crown. The importance of Iceland to naval and air strategy during WORLD WAR II led in May 1940 to a pre-emptive occupation by British (and soon also Canadian) forces, which attracted from the islanders more resentment than resistance. In mid-1941, even before the USA entered the conflict, it was agreed with the Icelandic government that those units should be replaced by American ones. In 1944, while German troops were still in control of Denmark, the Icelanders took the opportunity of choosing by plebiscite to inaugurate a republic. The country became a founding member of NATO in 1949, and continued (despite some periods of tension with US governments) to provide a geopolitically valuable base for American logistical operations during the COLD WAR. Iceland joined the COUNCIL OF EUROPE in 1950, and the NORDIC COUNCIL (see also SCANDINAVIA) in 1952. From the 1950s onward its governments proved increasingly assertive about defending the nation's position on deep-sea fishing, as its main source of food and of export earnings. Unilateral extensions to the republic's maritime limits contributed to causing a series of “cod wars,” which threatened to become more directly violent during the early 1970s when Icelandic gunboats repeatedly harassed British trawlers in particular. Diplomatic relations with the UK were briefly severed before the negotiation of a compromise in 1976. From 1992 the country's participation in the European Economic Area (see also EUROPEAN FREE TRADE ASSOCIATION) gave it access to the free-trade arrangements of the European Union, which encouraged a significant rise in prosperity. However, Iceland's geographical remoteness and unusual economic profile had continued to complicate possibilities of full participation in the processes of EUROPEAN INTEGRATION. This whole issue was rapidly transformed by the 2008 crisis in global BANKING – a service sector into which Iceland had recently expanded on an exceptionally rapid and reckless scale. Suddenly faced with national bankruptcy, it requested accelerated negotiations about entry into the European Union and also became the first western country since the 1970s to receive an urgent loan from the International Monetary Fund. In 2010 volcanic activity on the island produced ash clouds that intermittently disrupted air COMMUNICATIONS across much of Europe.

Illyrian movement This term denotes the heightening of Croat (see CROATIA) cultural and political aspirations, chiefly during the period from the mid-1830s until the European REVOLUTIONS OF 1848–9. Centered on the Dalmatian provinces that Austria had gained after the defeat of NAPOLEON I in 1815, Illyrianism exemplified the NATIONALISM that soon increasingly challenged the structure of the HABSBURG EMPIRE. Inspired by the leadership of the writer Ljudevit Gaj, the movement saw the Hungarians as an even greater threat than the Austrians. It was also generally sympathetic to PAN-SLAVISM, viewing all the BALKAN Slavs as descendants of the ancient Illyrians and treating the Croats' concerns as deeply entwined particularly with those of the Serbs (see SERBIA).

immobilisme Term used to describe the French parliamentary system under the THIRD and FOURTH REPUBLICS, and suggesting an unwillingness or inability to effect political change. Ill-disciplined parties, the lack of a strong executive, and an unduly powerful lower house of parliament contributed to chronic ministerial instability. During the relatively brief lifespan of the Fourth Republic (1946–58), for example, there were 25 different governments and 18 prime ministers. Passing legislation proved exceedingly difficult, and attempts to change the system, for instance those initiated by MENDÈS-FRANCE, were met with dogged resistance. This immobilisme should not, however, disguise an underlying political stability. Nor should it detract from very real achievements, particularly those of the Fourth Republic in the economic and international spheres. The concept is broadly paralleled by the Italian one of TRASFORMISMO.

imperialism Concept denoting the theory and practice of empire, as derived from Latin imperium meaning “command” or “authority.” Governance in the imperial mode implies power over an extensive range of territories. The titles Kaiser and Tsar, each deriving from Caesar, suggest the importance of such rule in modern European history. The Russian, German, and Austrian regimes that collapsed in 1917–18 all possessed an imperial structure, of a kind that NAPOLEON I and NAPOLEON III attempted to consolidate for France as well. Moreover, though hereditary dynasticism was hardly an issue for STALIN and HITLER, historians have commonly talked of the Soviet and Nazi “empires” that these dictators aspired to build across Europe.

As for the term “imperialism,” this became current during the second half of the nineteenth century principally to cover the extra-European aspects of “empire” as imposed, formally or otherwise, upon colonies and other territories overseas. During the early-modern period it was the Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, British, and French who principally engaged in this activity, which included a lucrative transatlantic slave trade as part of a far-flung network of maritime commerce. The rivalries generated in the eighteenth century included Anglo-French confrontation over Canada and over the anti-British rebellion that brought the USA into existence. Colonial issues, particularly as linked to naval power, featured similarly in the FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY WARS and NAPOLEONIC WARS. The latter were particularly significant in reducing the longstanding control of the two Iberian countries over South America, where anti-imperial NATIONALISM flared strongly once Napoleon had embroiled them in the PENINSULAR WAR back in Europe. Between 1810 and 1826 most of these Spanish colonial regions liberated themselves, while in 1822 the vast Portuguese possession of Brazil turned itself peacefully into an independent empire.

Even so, the nineteenth-century history of European imperialism is largely a tale of expansion not retreat. The driving forces were complex, particularly where extensions of formal sovereignty stood at issue. There has been much debate about socio-economic factors such as the dynamism of Europe's POPULATION growth, the search for new markets, the development of new opportunities for investment of surplus capital, or the rising demand for raw materials under conditions of INDUSTRIALIZATION. The explanations that Marxists (for instance LENIN, with his views on imperialism as “the highest stage of CAPITALISM”) and many others have based on those elements may sometimes seem plausible overall, yet by themselves they often look inadequate when specific areas of expansion are studied in detail. Desire for territorial expansion virtually as an end in itself became an increasingly important factor, and many initiatives stemmed from soldiers and administrators on the spot rather than from plans carefully laid in the chancelleries or entrepreneurial boardrooms of Europe. Nor can the wellsprings be properly understood without considering the realms of cultural or even spiritual development, where ideas of “civilizing mission” often appeared. In short, any sweeping generalization about the complex relationships between, for example, trade, flag, and Bible is perilous. It is indisputable, however, that this new wave of imperialism emerged from, and then intensified, a long-established sense of European civilizational pre-eminence. By the end of the century this was commonly being expressed, in terms of an innate racial superiority (see RACISM; SOCIAL DARWINISM) – a discourse taken to validate beliefs in the duty to enlarge the ambit of white rule and in the permanence of Europe's ascendancy. The aim of significant settlement was often not a priority. Much of the British advance, for instance, stemmed more from determination to secure the naval bases and the other aids to supply and COMMUNICATIONS on which global maritime and commercial supremacy depended. In this context, the most striking case was that of the Indian sub-continent, where settlers remained a tiny minority. There the East India Company had increasingly become not just an instrument of trade but one of governance over peoples widely diverse in language, culture, and religion. Following the Indian Mutiny of 1857, there seemed little alternative other than to transfer these ruling responsibilities to the British crown. In 1876 Disraeli prompted Queen VICTORIA to assume the title “Empress of India,” and by 1890 she was sovereign over a sub-continental “Raj” comprising more than 250 million subjects.

During the final quarter of the nineteenth century it was, however, the “scramble for Africa” that constituted the most striking manifestation of imperialism. Though yet again it was not driven principally by desire to foster major white settlement, this phenomenon did feature a widened range of states (now including Belgium, Germany, and Italy) in competition for new territory. Until that time Africa contained only two regions with a significant settler presence. One was Algeria, where French control had begun to replace Ottoman authority in the 1830s. The other was the Cape and its hinterland, which the British had seized from Dutch settlers during the Napoleonic Wars. By the 1850s the latter had trekked north-eastwards to form their own “Boer” republics of the Orange Free State and Transvaal. Elsewhere, however, white explorers had barely penetrated into the interior of a “dark continent” protected perhaps rather less by indigenous resistance than by the white man's susceptibility to tropical diseases. Eventually, the Maxim gun that would terrorize Africans and the quinine that would save Europeans combined to transform the situation. Between the 1870s and 1914 almost the whole of Africa was partitioned into colonial zones. The Portuguese had long held the coastal areas of Angola and Mozambique. As for Spain, it claimed the western Sahara in the mid-1880s and part of Morocco in 1912. The French were under constant pressure from Britain in various western coastal areas, and their relative situation worsened elsewhere as they found themselves losing out in the early 1880s as the British occupied Egypt and exerted greater control over the Suez Canal, opened back in 1869 (see also LESSEPS). By that stage LEOPOLD II of Belgium was also staking out a claim to empire, and the point had been reached where it seemed imperative to conduct international discussion of African issues. One outcome from the resulting BERLIN CONFERENCE of 1884–5 was, in effect, to turn the vast Congo basin into Leopold's own personal, and brutal, fiefdom. The location of those negotiations reflected, moreover, the fact that the new German Empire too had been developing colonial ambitions in South-West Africa (Namibia), Togoland, and Cameroon.

The general aim was no longer informal influence while avoiding the trammels of direct annexation. All around Africa, and now across its interior, European flags were being raised to assert formal sovereignty. Even areas of desert or swampland that a state might have been reluctant to grab in other circumstances became desirable, according to a “strategy of denial,” once colonial rivals were also in the hunt. This was the heyday of Cecil Rhodes, bent on painting the map of Africa in the red of Victorian empire all the way from the Cape to Cairo. Though he came close to achieving that goal, he was most crucially frustrated by Berlin's consolidation of its hold on German East Africa during the 1890s. Elsewhere along Rhodes's axis, the British did prevail by the time he died in 1902. Kenya and Uganda were theirs, and so too, after the FASHODA CRISIS with France, was the Sudan where an Anglo-Egyptian condominium operated. From the south, the British had also colonized northwards far beyond the Cape, incorporating what became the two Rhodesias and Nyasaland, and by the end of the Boer War of 1899–1902 they had also seized the gold and diamond resources of Transvaal and the Orange Free State. In 1905 and again in 1911 the French managed to defy German pressure in the two MOROCCAN CRISES and thus, with their control of Senegal and Algeria too, consolidated their position around the Sahara. Similarly, shortly before WORLD WAR I, Italy renewed a bid for empire which, though it had been frustrated in Ethiopia in 1896, succeeded through the Libyan campaign of 1911–12 (see ITALO-TURKISH WAR). Meanwhile, in 1910 Britain had accorded Dominion status to a new Union of South Africa, accompanied by certain rights to internal self-governance. However, neither there nor anywhere else across the white-controlled continent, was there any question of granting to the indigenous populations even those modest concessions to democratic participation that European regimes had begun to yield to their own peoples at home (or, in the British case, to the other white-settled dominions of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand as well).

During the late nineteenth century, imperialism also drove the growth of Europe's influence in Asia and in the Indian and Pacific oceanic regions. Britain's hold on the Raj, and on neighboring Ceylon, protected long-distance maritime routes vital to European global trading, such as those that ran via Suez and Aden to the Dutch East Indies and Australia, or via the Cape and Singapore to China. By the 1890s the Malay states had become federated under British rule, while France had created Indo-China out of another colonial union embracing Cambodia, Annam, and Laos. The race for Pacific islands involved not only Anglo-French rivalry, but also claims from Germany (over the Marshall archipelago and parts of New Guinea) and indeed the USA. Though imperial China avoided the worst of a European scramble for its territory, it had already fallen victim to the “opium wars” of the 1840s and 1850s. The policy of securing control over its coastal trading ports was most fully pursued towards the end of the century in Hong Kong and Macao, where Britain and Portugal respectively entrenched their claims to direct governance. Chinese resentment against foreign interference was, however, reflected both in the unsuccessful Boxer Rising of 1899–1900 and in the republican revolution of 1911 which would eventually turn the country into a major challenger to Western ascendancy. Even so, the global map of 1914 largely concealed the future vulnerability of imperialism. Leaving aside Antarctica, four-fifths of the world's land surface was covered by countries inhabited or otherwise controlled by peoples of European birth or descent. Within that context, the British Empire alone accounted for around a quarter of the globe's territory and population alike. In Asia only Japan and Siam, and in Africa only Ethiopia and (to lesser degree) Liberia, had survived as notable exceptions to the globalized dominance formally or informally exercised by the West.

Over the next thirty years Europe's contribution to that hegemony would weaken. One source of difficulty was the growing power of the USA, whose ambitions to dominate the Pacific had already led it to seize Spanish colonial possessions during the war of 1898. Another problem was imperial Japan, whose military successes against Russia in 1904–5 (see RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR) fuelled anxieties about “the yellow peril.” However, Europe's ascendancy was also endangered by the fact that in 1914 its leading states, which had managed to avoid mutual armed conflict for more than forty years, plunged into something which from a global perspective constituted a continental civil war – one fought with an intensity that weakened all of them and undermined pretensions to “civilizing mission” (see WORLD WAR I). Paradoxically, the PARIS PEACE SETTLEMENT of 1919 gave the appearance of boosting the imperial standing of Britain and France in particular, by virtue of the MANDATES that they obtained from the LEAGUE OF NATIONS to govern territories previously belonging to Germany and Ottoman Turkey. Yet, over the next two decades, it became clearer that British and French global influence was fraught with vulnerability – for example, when challenged by the nationalistic radicalization of Gandhi's Congress movement in India or Ho Chi Minh's communist one in Indo-China. The GREAT DEPESSION[2] of the early 1930s also weakened Europe's position in regard to dependencies whose experience of subjection had often been eased hitherto by the ability to share some measure of economic growth: now, by contrast, the profits available from exporting primary products to the metropolis were tumbling far faster than the prices being demanded for the manufactured goods offered in return. One notable landmark was Britain's concession of a new Government of India Act in 1935, yielding greater self-rule even amid rising inter-communal tensions. By 1939 France too was under pressure from Algerian, Tunisian, and Vietnamese activists in particular. Viewed overall, the 1930s witnessed only one further instance of the direct expansion of European imperialism. This was MUSSOLINI'S conquest of Ethiopia in 1935–6 (see ITALO-ETHIOPIAN WAR), which formed in effect the last episode in the scramble for Africa.

WORLD WAR II hastened a new configuration of global authority. While the new “superpowers” of the USA and the Soviet Union would both continue to pursue their own versions of imperialistic assertion, neither had much sympathy with the brand hitherto practiced by Britain, France, or any other state operating in the classic colonial tradition. Moreover, although most of Europe's imperial claims were promptly reasserted around 1945, the course of the fighting had destroyed much of that image of invincibility upon which the creation and survival of empire had heavily depended. French, Dutch, and Belgian colonialism never recovered the degree of authority enjoyed prior to national defeat in 1940. Equally, while island Britain had fared better in its defiance of Nazi power, much of its holding in Asia and the Pacific had fallen with similar swiftness to the early advances of the Japanese. As for the Italian bid for a restored Roman empire overseas, this had collapsed by 1943. All these frailties served, furthermore, to accelerate a shift in the nature of anti-colonial movements too. These had typically originated among educated elites, who often adapted to their own purposes many of the nationalist ideas originally generated within Europe itself. Now such movements would attract an ever broader mass following that would prove all the more difficult for alien officials to control. In this sense among others, Britain's hurried concession of independence to India and Pakistan in 1947 became the central symbol of transition from the epoch of European imperialism to a new phase most helpfully considered under the general heading of DECOLONIZATION.

industrialization The process whereby economic activity becomes increasingly characterized by greater exploitation of power sources and of machinery, deployed to achieve mass production of manufactured goods from large-scale factory units generally concentrated in urban settings (see URBANIZATION). This definition also reflects the sense in which historians tend to apply the label “pre-industrial” to the general condition of Europe in the mid-eighteenth century. By this they mean that a majority of people lived and worked on the land, and were often engaged in subsistence agriculture (see RURAL SOCIETY). Even so, industry already had some presence. There were mining and metal works, which were often associated with armament manufacture but tended to employ relatively small numbers. The other key industry was textiles, organized around the “domestic system” whereby a manufacturer distributed raw materials to his operatives in their homes prior to the finishing stage being completed in dedicated workshops. The result was that a majority of people still labored in the countryside rather than in towns: in the 1770s, for instance, the 300 operatives at one textile factory in Bohemia also relied on the services of 1,400 spinners and 100 weavers from the surrounding areas.

It is a mistake to believe that, even a century later, the European scene had already become dominated by the “dark Satanic mills” of industrialization. Nonetheless, though the domestic system and small workshops still remained widespread, changes were well under way particularly in the nature of the factory system. Back in the 1780s these had already started to become noticeable in Britain and France. Whereas further developments in the latter case were seriously impaired by the FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1789, the British embarked on a more rapid transformation towards becoming the “first industrial nation” in Europe and indeed the world. Some of the advantages possessed or developed by mainland Britain (including its geographical compactness, together with good transport COMMUNICATIONS, and its ready access to key natural resources such as coal and iron) were soon similarly exploited by entrepreneurs in Belgium. Though these were the only two countries to be substantially industrialized by the mid-nineteenth century, the “second wave” of such a process was now bringing significant change to other areas of northern Europe, including Silesia, Saxony, and Prussia, as well as parts of France, The northernmost regions of Italy, Austria, and Spain followed suit during the 1870s, and in the 1890s both Russia and Sweden undertook an industrial acceleration based on foundations that had been laid earlier. By the start of the twentieth century most European countries, with the partial exception of the Balkan region, had taken significant steps along the road to “industrial revolution.” Even so, this was often a gradual, faltering process. It was also one generally typified by regional concentrations within particular countries, with examples such as London, the English Midlands, Lancashire, lowland Scotland, and South Wales in the British case; northern France; the Rhine-Ruhr districts of Germany; the Milanese and Viennese hinterlands; or the Silesian area around Katowice. Regions of this sort often developed links with one another and became in some degree economically interdependent.

Explaining industrialization is no easy matter. Alongside the factors specific to each national or regional case, it is possible to identify a series of broader considerations. One was growth in POPULATION, especially marked in the case of England and Wales. This contributed towards what economists term “effective demand,” in the sense of spare income being available to buy manufactured goods. Any such monetary surplus was partly derived from changes in agriculture. Indeed, it has been argued that no country underwent an industrial revolution without first experiencing an agrarian one; though Russia is a possible exception, even there the abolition of SERFDOM in 1861 was an important stage in modernization. Agricultural change itself was extremely uneven. Broadly speaking, it was most advanced in northern Europe where the increasing commercialization of farming depended upon, and also stimulated, the emergence of an entrepreneurial class. The human factor, notably a willingness to take risks and an ability to spot gaps in the market under the demanding conditions of competitive CAPITALISM, was essential both to industrial and agrarian development. So too was new technology where, at least until the late nineteenth century, Britain led the field particularly through its use of steam-driven machinery. The British were also advantaged by their maritime trading capacity and, as previously noted, by their possession of natural resources pivotal to early industrialization as well as by their development of suitable internal transportation. This included navigable rivers and canals, though the building of railways started to become a much more influential factor both in Britain and in continental Europe from the 1840s onward. The potentialities of rail transportation undoubtedly highlighted the desirability of reducing or abolishing restrictive internal tariffs, and it was no coincidence that industrial “lift-off” in the German states followed hard on the heels of the enlargement of their ZOLLVEREIN in the years prior to 1848. More controversial in furthering industrialization is the role of BANKING, vital in the provision of credit and investment. Though in the late eighteenth century, Britain possessed a relatively sophisticated financial system, many early ventures drew on family capital and small loans which were easily repaid. Rather, it was those countries which industrialized later that were most reliant on large-scale investment. This often came from major trusts (e.g. KRUPPS) in the German case, or from government as occurred in Russia where in the 1890s WITTE orchestrated a massive drive for growth.

The impact of industrialization was manifold. There was a particularly marked rise in urban population, on a scale demanding greatly improved productivity from an increasingly mechanized agricultural sector. The enlargement of a largely town-based WORKING CLASS inevitably created social tensions, not just with employers but also with the more traditional ARTISANS who maintained a resilient presence in many parts of Europe. Influenced by SOCIALISM and the need to offer a safety net to fellow-operatives who fell ill or were made redundant, the working classes experimented with new forms of organization, most obviously TRADE UNIONISM. Such developments troubled conservative elites, as well as the middle classes who were the most obvious beneficiaries of industrialization. In some cases state intervention also served to curtail the exploitation of women (see also GENDER) and children, and even to promote public WELFARISM. The manner in which industrialization scarred and polluted the landscape also troubled more perceptive commentators, though it was not until the late twentieth century and the emergence of “post-industrial” society that “green” issues came to the fore (see also ENVIRONMENTALISM).

It is tempting to dwell on the downside of industrialization, yet there were also clear benefits. Falling manufacturing costs and rising productivity slashed prices, encouraged consumerism, and enhanced standards of living. Industrialization increased, moreover, the range of available goods: for example, by the 1890s new inventions such as sewing machines and vacuum cleaners were beginning to have a significant impact on everyday life, at least in the case of the better off, as well as reflecting changes within the nature of industrialization itself. Heavy enterprises such as coal, iron, steel, ship-building, and textiles were still important, yet were now being rivaled by “new” industries – oil, chemicals, dyes, electricals, rubber goods, and automobiles. Germany especially took the lead in such ventures, challenging Britain's industrial ascendancy. Russia, reliant still on older industries, also joined the elite though its progress was complicated by the onset of divisive revolution and civil war. When rapid industrialization was prioritized from the late 1920s onward through the Soviet FIVE-YEAR PLANS, the process was not entirely dissimilar from the state-led campaign of the 1890s. On the other hand, this pioneering attempt at industrialization through the structures of COMMUNISM rather than capitalism, was undeniably much more brutal than Witte's earlier endeavor.

It was, of course, the USA (and to a lesser extent Japan) that emerged as the most energetic of the industrializing nations at the start of the twentieth century, and it is telling that many European states borrowed from American experiments in mass manufacture, notably those pioneered by Ford motors, and in management techniques. The American challenge was naturally enhanced by the impact of two world wars, and it is no exaggeration to say that such “total war” reshaped much of the nature of European industrialization. Most economies experienced a similar pattern: preparing for war in 1914, coping with war, rebuilding in the wake of war, establishing a new economic order only for this to be dislodged by the GREAT DEPRESSION[2], getting ready for yet another such conflict, and then facing the challenge of recovery amid its aftermath. It is Germany's example that often attracts the greatest attention, including the search for autarky under NAZISM and then the outstanding economic regeneration evident in its western regions from the 1950s onward. Yet WORLD WAR II was no less important in shaping the UK's fortunes, exacerbating Britain's decline. There the demands of the conflict inevitably boosted heavy industries, already in need of streamlining before 1939, and may have entrenched outdated management and labor practices that survived well into the 1960s and 1970s.

More generally, in the years after 1945 Europe found itself increasingly confronting the problems of a post-industrial world. Though the liberal democracies experienced an “economic miracle” – based on reconstruction, EUROPEAN INTEGRATION, economic planning, demographic growth, and the release of pent-up demand – the OIL CRISES of the 1970s and the challenges posed by Far Eastern economies highlighted deep-rooted structural problems in those traditional enterprises central to the nineteenth-century industrial revolution. While in eastern Europe coal and steel production was artificially sustained by the state, in the west retrenchment was commonplace. Many countries eventually abandoned nationalization and scaled back welfarism. Instead they favored privatization and trade liberalization, even if this resulted in serious unemployment, the deskilling of a shrinking working class, and regional decline – problems which could not easily be resolved even by the enlargement of the service sector, the creation of “high-tech” companies, or the exploitation of new energy. What is clear is that deindustrialization happened at a much faster pace than did the original process of industrialization, and threw up a series of problems that have yet to be adequately addressed.

The International Following the REVOLUTIONS OF 1848–9, supporters of SOCIALISM sought to establish a body to promote their international solidarity. Thus the International Working Men's Association (later known as the First International) was created in London in 1864. It was, however, wracked by ideological disputes – small wonder given that it brought together advocates of Marxism, ANARCHISM, Owenism, and Mazzinian republicanism (see MAZZINI) among others. Personal rivalries between MARX and BAKUNIN hastened its dissolution in 1876. The Second International was then founded at Paris in 1889. This too was undermined by doctrinal disputes, and mortally wounded upon the outbreak of WORLD WAR I by the general socialist betrayal of international fraternity. A relatively moderate successor organization emerged as the Labor and Socialist International in 1923, only to remain eclipsed by the communist-dominated Third International launched by the BOLSHEVIKS in 1919. The aim of the latter, otherwise known as the Comintern, was to overthrow “the entire world capitalist system.” Under STALIN, however, the policy of “Socialism in One Country” gave more immediate priority to revolutionary consolidation inside the SOVIET UNION. Thus the Comintern encouraged communists outside the USSR to infiltrate the social-democratic organizations within their own countries in preparation for more decisive action at a later stage. In the 1930s the Comintern also came round to urging POPULAR FRONTS against FASCISM, until the signing of the NAZI–SOVIET PACT sent out a bewildering message. WORLD WAR II was initially denounced as “an imperialist struggle,” but in June 1941 it became one to preserve the USSR. In 1943, as a goodwill gesture towards the Allies, Stalin dissolved the Comintern – by then a largely redundant body. The Cominform emerged as a replacement in 1947, but failed to prevent TITO from leading YUGOSLAVIA down a dissident path. It was dissolved by KHRUSHCHEV IN 1956, as part of his post-Stalinist reform program. (See also COMMUNISM)

International Brigades (see under SPANISH CIVIL WAR)

International Working Men's Association (see under THE INTERNATIONAL)

Ireland An island lying to the west of Great Britain, four-fifths of which today forms the Republic of Ireland, while the remainder (Northern Ireland) is a province of the United Kingdom (see also BRITAIN AND EUROPE). During the early-modern period the whole of Ireland had come increasingly under English control. Outbreaks of revolt by an indigenous population deeply attached to CATHOLICISM were met by the progressive “plantation” of English (and latterly) Scottish Protestant settlers. While Britain was engaged in the FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY WARS, the unsuccessful rebellions of 1796 and 1798 associated with Wolfe Tone (both of which envisaged French assistance) hastened an Act of Union, passed by the Westminster and Dublin parliaments in 1801. There was immediate pressure for political reform, as the three quarters of Ireland's population which were still Catholic continued to be denied civil equality. After a campaign orchestrated by Daniel O'Connell, Catholic Emancipation was granted in 1829. However, this victory was soon overshadowed by the Great Famine of 1845–9 when the potato crop, the staple diet of a majority of peasants (see also RURAL SOCIETY), was hit by disease. This caused the loss of around a million lives, as well as massive MIGRATION to mainland Britain and the USA. A population of 8.2 million in the early 1840s fell to a figure of 6.5 million at the 1851 census, and such decline continued at a slower rate throughout the rest of the century. Impoverishment now nurtured a powerful movement of NATIONALISM represented by the Irish Republican Brotherhood, or Fenians, (1858); the National Land League (1879); the Irish Home Rule Party (1880) of Charles Stewart Parnell; and the republican party, Sinn Féin (1902). Several home rule bills foundered on the rock of Conservative and Unionist opposition at Westminster. Even when such an Act was eventually passed in 1914, it also became suspended for the duration of WORLD WAR I. This encouraged militants to initiate the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin whose subsequent suppression became a fabled part of Irish nationalism.

In December 1921 Dominion status was conceded, with the exception of six of the nine counties which had hitherto comprised the province of Ulster. These principal bastions of Protestant ascendancy remained within the UK, forming a Northern Ireland that possessed some powers of self-government while also sending MPs to Westminster. Across the new border, the Irish Free State (whose population of around 3 million was more than double that of its neighbor) was formally proclaimed in December 1922. However, in the eyes of republicans such as DE VALERA, who became its premier in 1932, this was insufficiently independent of London. A new constitution was introduced in 1937 establishing a sovereign state of Eire which declined to recognize the legitimacy of the Irish partition. Despite its continuing Dominion status, Eire maintained neutrality in WORLD WAR II. By 1948 it had effectively left the British Commonwealth, and a year later formalized the break and reconstituted itself as the Republic of Ireland.

Over the following decades this did nothing to assuage nationalist sentiments affronted by the situation in Ulster where Catholics suffered blatant discrimination. Mounting tensions prompted British military intervention from 1969 onward, and eventually “The Troubles” provoked a return to direct rule from London. On January 22, 1972 (“Bloody Sunday”) a battalion of the Parachute Regiment killed 13 civil-rights marchers in Derry/Londonderry. This action (which was initially whitewashed by a hasty judicial inquiry, but eventually became the object of belated official condemnation through the exhaustive Saville report of 2010) contributed towards plunging Northern Ireland even deeper into a lengthy period of sectarian violence and TERRORISM, involving not only the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) but also such Protestant paramilitary groups as the Ulster Volunteer Force. The painfully slow “peace process” that allowed escape from the worst of this bitter conflict was eased by the increasing willingness of Westminster administrations to involve Dublin too, and landmarks of tortuous negotiation included the Anglo-Irish (Hillsborough) Agreement of 1985 and the Good Friday (Belfast) Agreement of 1998. In essence, by the turn of the millennium the governments both of the UK and of the Republic had come to recognize that, over the longer term, any removal of the 1921–2 partition could only be properly effected by the peaceful agreement of a majority of voters separately recorded in each of the two jurisdictions. By 2005 the principal paramilitary contenders had declared an end to their campaigns of armed militancy. Two years later Northern Ireland embarked upon a constantly imperiled attempt to sustain a form of devolved government reliant on tense power-sharing between Unionists and Republicans.

Even amid these difficulties the Republic had long maintained close economic ties with the UK, and in 1973 had joined the European Community at the same time as its neighbor (see EUROPEAN INTEGRATION). This provided an important stimulus towards an unprecedented prosperity, and encouraged a rapid process of social and cultural modernization as well. The resulting pressures towards SECULARIZATION created tensions with a particularly conservative Catholic hierarchy that had long prided itself on protecting traditional Irish values: early in the new century, its authority was further undermined by revelations about its role in concealing over many years the alarming scale of pedophiliac abuse on the part of clergy. By 2007, with a population of around 4.3 million, the Republic was among the richest members of the European Union (EU), attracting large numbers of immigrants from across the Continent. In June 2008, however, an Irish referendum blocked ratification of the Lisbon Treaty aiming at general reform of the EU's structures. Shortly thereafter the unanticipated onset of global recession created particularly severe problems for the Irish economy, and this was the principal factor prompting a clear endorsement of Lisbon through a further plebiscite held in October 2009.

Iron Curtain (see under COLD WAR)

Iron Guard This movement (Garda de Fier) embodied the principal manifestation of FASCISM in ROMANIA. Originally founded by CODREANU in 1927 as the Legion of the Archangel Michael, it was renamed three years later. It was inspired by a heady mix of ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY, virulent ANTISEMITISM, and extreme NATIONALISM. Enjoying considerable support among the peasantry, as well as students, the Guard was organized on military lines, its members wearing green uniforms so as to symbolize a rebirth of Romania. Thanks to its violence and use of TERRORISM, which included the murder of prime minister Ion Duca in 1933, the Guard was forced underground, whereupon it started to call itself the All For Fatherland Party. It did moderately well in the 1937 elections. The following year the movement suffered a setback when King CAROL II established a personal dictatorship. Members of the Guard were imprisoned and Codreanu himself was shot. The Iron Guard took revenge in 1940 when it assisted Marshal ANTONESCU'S seizure of power. Even so, it remained mistrusted by the new dictator. The Guard was eventually suppressed in 1941 and Codreanu's successor, Horia Sima, was forced into exile.

irredentism Term deriving from “Italia irredenta” (“unredeemed Italy”), a phrase used in the context of a NATIONALISM that sought to reclaim territories peopled by Italians yet retained by the HABSBURG EMPIRE after 1866. These areas included Trentino, the city of TRIESTE, the peninsula of ISTRIA, FIUME, and segments of Dalmatia. Their acquisition was one of the key Italian objectives in WORLD WAR I, and figured high among ORLANDO'S demands at the 1919 PARIS PEACE SETTLEMENT. Most of these calls were met, though nationalists viewed matters more critically and in the way that soon prompted D'ANNUNZIO'S incursion into Fiume. MUSSOLINI subsequently made much of the notion that Italy had been “stabbed in the back” and denied its due rewards. The term is now used far more broadly, describing any assertion, based on ethnic, historical, or cultural grounds, of a nation's right to “redeem” territory possessed by another state.

Islam (see MUSLIMS)

Istria Peninsula of the northern Adriatic lying between TRIESTE and Rijeka (see FIUME), now divided between CROATIA and SLOVENIA. Following the collapse of the HABSBURG EMPIRE, the 1919 treaty of ST GERMAIN transferred sovereignty over this ethnically complex region to Italy. Istria, with its substantial Slavic population, subsequently became a source of tension with YUGOSLAVIA. It was eventually taken over by TITO'S regime at the end of World War II. Istria then remained under the rule of Belgrade until Yugoslavia itself was broken up by the civil war of the early 1990s.

Italian unification Nationalist historiography has generally portrayed this as the inevitable product of the RISORGIMENTO, an allegedly irresistible process of regeneration successfully harnessed by CAVOUR, GARIBALDI, and VICTOR EMMANUEL II. In truth, however, this political and cultural movement was essentially elitist and riddled with divisions. Among supporters of unification, there was much hostility between those such as MAZZINI or the CARBONARI who strove to achieve it through insurrection and many other patriots who favored more moderate means. Noteworthy too are those who remained suspicious of the whole objective, including Catholics anxious to protect the church's interests (see CATHOLICISM) and denizens of southern Italy who often felt marginalized in every sense. By the late eighteenth century the Italian peninsula had long been politically fractured and vulnerable to foreign occupation. In 1789 it comprised no fewer than nine states. NAPOLEON I subsequently redrew the map and gave rise to talk of unity. Yet while the emperor portrayed himself as a liberator, he kept Italy divided lest it should become a threat to France. At the VIENNA CONGRESS of 1814–15 its reconfiguration was dictated by reasons of state rather than principles of legitimacy. Austria was entrusted with the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia; the Duchies of Parma, Tuscany, Modena, and Lucca were handed to Habsburg and Bourbon princes; and the reconstituted PAPAL STATES became the base for Austrian garrisons. In the south, the Bourbons were restored to the Kingdom of the TWO SICILIES, but tied into a defensive alliance with Vienna. The sole effectively independent state was PIEDMONT-SARDINIA, reshaped as a buffer between France and Austria. This restructuring meant that unification faced a formidable obstacle in the shape of the HABSBURG EMPIRE. France and the Papacy were also generally opposed to integration, though some misguided patriots placed hope in PIUS IX around the start of his pontificate in 1846. Geopolitical divisions only reinforced longstanding regional, economic and cultural differences, especially between north and south. Nor was there much linguistic homogeneity, since in the 1850s only 10 percent of the peninsula's population spoke Italian (essentially Tuscan) as their first language. As METTERNICH had remarked, Italy was as yet merely “a geographical expression.”

The frailties of Italian NATIONALISM were badly exposed in the REVOLUTIONS OF 1848–9. If there was to be some form of unification, this was likely to be promoted by Piedmont-Sardinia, which aspired to control the north. Though the Piedmontese bid of 1849 to expel the Austrians from Lombardy was defeated at CUSTOZZA and NOVARA, such ambitions were sustained by Victor Emmanuel II and by Cavour as his chief minister, both of whom believed in deploying diplomacy as well as force. When involvement in the CRIMEAN WAR produced no immediate gains, Cavour exploited NAPOLEON III'S sympathies, heightened by the ORSINI PLOT, and concluded with France the PLOMBIÈRES AGREEMENT of 1858. This envisaged a military alliance against Austria that would produce, most particularly, a significantly enlarged northern Italian state ruled by the House of Savoy. In the event, the ensuing FRANCO-AUSTRIAN WAR of 1859 (abbreviated by Napoleon's decision to make peace via the VILLAFRANCA TRUCE) resulted in Piedmontese annexation only of Lombardy. Conversely, the further promised gain of Venetia did not materialize – but, even so, Napoleon insisted on Victor Emmanuel transferring Nice and Savoy to France, as previously agreed. Having initially resigned over this whole turn of events, Cavour resumed his premiership in January 1860. By then the challenge was to deal with the plebiscites which had been swiftly conceded in the small states of central Italy, and which now endorsed union with Piedmont. Developments were then further accelerated and transformed by Garibaldi's exploitation of a Sicilian rising in May and by the crossing of his “Thousand Redshirts” to the Neapolitan mainland in August. Victor Emmanuel and Cavour became fearful lest the south, having now been freed from Bourbon misrule, should end up as a Mazzinian republic – something that might trigger foreign intervention and imperil the gains recently registered further north. They dispatched troops southwards to prevent Garibaldi's advance from reaching Rome, where papal interests were now guarded by a French garrison. On October 26 Victor Emmanuel and Garibaldi met, together with their armies, to transact a tense but peaceful confirmation of Piedmontese royal authority. Early in 1861, endorsed by further plebiscites, a new Kingdom of Italy was then proclaimed across most of the peninsula.

This formal unification under Victor Emmanuel had been accomplished through a combination of forces. French assistance had been vital, together with the dynastic ambitions of the House of Savoy and the machinations of Cavour. Garibaldi's determination, and the support he had mustered in the south, had been equally crucial. Patriotic sentiment had, however, played only a limited role in this whole process, and any sense of distinctively Italian identity was further diluted by the campaign of “Piedmontization” pursued in and beyond the 1860s. In so far as Venetia and Rome remained to be “redeemed,” international diplomacy again proved essential. The acquisition of the former would be a side-effect of the AUSTRO-PRUSSIAN WAR of 1866, while that of the latter (except for the Vatican itself) would stem from French defeat four years later in the FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR. Though some minor territorial claims remained outstanding, the subsequent feeling (vigorously expressed e.g. both by Mazzini and Garibaldi) of an essentially incomplete unification had more to do with the quality of the nation-building process than with quantitative omissions. As D'AZEGLIO had famously observed, it was one thing to have made Italy, but another to create Italians. This constituted the central challenge of the decades after 1870 (a period more fully reviewed under the separate heading of ITALY). Most importantly, for the next half-century or so successive papal “prisoners of the Vatican” would continue to undermine the authority of a structure built at the expense of the church's temporal power; and meanwhile the hegemony of the north would be evident in its alienating treatment of the southern MEZZOGIORNO as a region of semi-colonial status. In the 1920s such political, religious, cultural, economic, and social divisions and tensions were still sufficiently evident for MUSSOLINI to claim, quite plausibly, that much of the task of unification still lay ahead. (See also Map 4)

Italo-Ethiopian War This was launched by MUSSOLINI early in October 1935, and ended with the capture of Addis Ababa in May 1936. The conquest constituted Italy's revenge for the defeat inflicted on her at Adowa in 1896, and confirmed the Duce's own IMPERIALISM. Though the LEAGUE OF NATIONS condemned his invasion, inclinations towards APPEASEMENT (see also HOARE–LAVAL PACT) severely limited the sanctions actually applied. Meanwhile, techniques of WARFARE that involved air power, tanks, and poison gas had speeded Italian success against poorly-equipped opponents. Mussolini's victory further emboldened his foreign policy, which became henceforth more aligned with that of HITLER rather than of the STRESA FRONT. Italy's triumph also enabled VICTOR EMMANUEL III to be proclaimed Emperor of Ethiopia. The deposed ruler, Haile Selassie, fled into exile, but during the course of WORLD WAR II reclaimed his imperial throne with British assistance.

Italo-Turkish War This conflict, which lasted from September 1911 until October 1912, demonstrated ITALY'S colonial ambitions (see also IMPERIALISM). The principal target was Tripolitania (modern Libya), ruled by Ottoman Turkey (see TURKEY AND EUROPE) since the sixteenth century. With the French consolidating their own position in North Africa particularly after the MOROCCAN CRISES, the GIOLITTI government was anxious to benefit from the sultanate's waning authority by seizing Tripoli. The Italians occupied the key coastal positions within the first month of the war, in a campaign aided by the innovatory use of airplanes. However, they soon found themselves forced to increase their troop numbers to 70,000 in the face of continuing Arab as well as Turkish resistance. The Ottoman position was crucially weakened in May 1912 when Italy took the risk of extending the war to the Aegean and swiftly captured the islands of the Dodecanese. Turkey's hopes of retrieving the losses both there and in Tripolitania were then dashed through the outbreak of the first of the BALKAN WARS in October. Libya remained an Italian colony until WORLD WAR II, coming under British military rule in 1943, and eventually achieved independence in 1951; the Dodecanese was ceded by Italy to Greece under the PARIS TREATY of 1947.

Italy For the pre-1870 period the modern history of this peninsula – bounded to the north by the Alps, and elsewhere principally by the Adriatic, Mediterranean, and Tyrrhenian Seas – is most conveniently treated with reference to ITALIAN UNIFICATION (see also Map 4). The proclamation in 1861 of a unified Kingdom of Italy brought together under the leadership of PIEDMONT-SARDINIA most of the other regions, from Lombardy in the north to the TWO SICILIES in the south. Venetia was added in 1866; four years later VICTOR EMMANUEL II annexed most of the Pope's remaining temporal domain (see PAPAL STATES) and made Rome his new royal capital. Subsequent Italian history contains three main phases – a period of broadly parliamentary government lasting until 1922; one of dictatorial rule continuing until 1943 (treated principally via further entries on FASCISM and MUSSOLINI); and an ensuing era of democratic restoration.

Though by 1870 the new Italy (with a population of nearly 27 million) was largely complete in formal territorial terms, it still remained poorly unified in other major respects. The Vatican endeavored to turn popular CATHOLICISM into a force hostile to the “liberal” secular state, maintaining until 1904 the self-defeating policy of trying to ban the faithful from voting or engaging in any other brand of political participation. Meanwhile, many of the disparities between the northern part of the peninsula and the southern MEZZOGIORNO were enlarged. Across the Neapolitan and Sicilian regions, where a form of civil war had raged well into the 1860s, extensive lawlessness associated particularly with the MAFIA thrived thereafter in defiance of administrative centralization (otherwise condemned as “Piedmontization”). In parliament, originally elected on a very restrictive property franchise, right-wing administrations held sway from 1861 to 1876. At that point the more radical DEPRETIS gained control, and then retained the premiership through most of the period down to 1887. He proved particularly adept at TRASFORMISMO, which remained thereafter one of the most persistent features of Italian parliamentary politics. This involved buying off potential opponents with offices, honors, or concessions, and generated a system of revolving coalitions whose constant and often corrupt compromises tended to frustrate decisive reformist initiatives. The most important change achieved by Depretis came in 1881, when he secured franchise extension to cover nearly all literate men (though the overall level of LITERACY itself remained too low thus to produce any universal male entitlement). He was notable too for bringing Italy into a TRIPLE ALLIANCE with Germany and Austria in 1882, and for exploring the potentialities of a colonial policy (see also IMPERIALISM). The latter was pursued even more energetically under CRISPI, a Sicilian who had once fought alongside GARIBALDI and who headed the government during the periods 1887–91 and 1893–6. He formalized the Italian colonization of Eritrea in 1889, before sanctioning a disastrous invasion of Ethiopia that in 1896 brought humiliating defeat at Adowa together with his own political downfall.

Crispi had also been confronted by internal unrest. During his second ministry he ruthlessly repressed peasant discontent in Sicily, and introduced laws obstructing the rise of SOCIALISM and ANARCHISM. These developments reflected the fact that by the 1890s the poverty-stricken landless laborers of the south were engaged in massive MIGRATION, not only towards a northern Italy at last experiencing rapid INDUSTRIALIZATION but also towards the USA. One symptom of turmoil was the anarchist assassination in 1900 of Umberto I, who had ruled since 1878 and was now succeeded by VICTOR EMMANUEL III. The early years of the new century witnessed the ascendancy of GIOLITTI, an essentially pragmatic liberal reformist. He used the techniques of trasformismo to integrate the socialists into the political system by promoting schemes of WELFARISM and by introducing, in 1911, almost universal male franchise. NATIONALISM too was part of his armory, as evident in the popular acclaim that accompanied his launching of the ITALO-TURKISH WAR of 1911–12, which secured the colonization of Libya. Having won the 1913 elections at the head of the Liberals, Giolitti stood down from the premiership early the following year. Nonetheless, when WORLD WAR I broke out, his was one of the most influential voices that emphasized Italy's military unpreparedness and helped to secure initial NEUTRALITY. He maintained this stance even when in May 1915 his successor, Antonio Salandra, brought the country into the conflict against Austria – and thus not as part of the Triple Alliance, but as the ally of Britain, France, and Russia. This realignment followed the secret LONDON TREATY concluded in April, whereby those three powers had promised to satisfy the remaining claims of Italian IRREDENTISM by stripping the HABSBURG EMPIRE of Trentino, the South Tyrol, central Dalmatia, and the city-port of TRIESTE. Having declared war on Germany too in 1916, Italy had a hard struggle against the CENTRAL POWERS which included most notably her major defeat at CAPORETTO in October–November 1917. However, by the summer and early autumn of 1918 her forces had recovered to win battles on the Piave and finally at Vittorio Veneto.

As victors, the Italian delegates to the 1919 PARIS PEACE SETTLEMENT, headed by ORLANDO, hoped to obtain even more than the London Treaty had offered, especially with regard to FIUME. In the event, once the ST GERMAIN TREATY had left unimplemented the previous promises about Dalmatia, they emerged with rather less. Though their other gains from Austria were far from insubstantial, Italians protested against a “mutilated” victory. It took a raid by D'ANNUNZIO'S irregulars, conducted in September 1919, to provoke a revision of the Fiume issue. Even so, that dramatic eruption was itself a sign of the lawlessness now threatening to overtake Italy. The years 1918–20 would become known as the BIENNIO ROSSO, when discontent with domestic as well as diplomatic policies appeared to be playing into the hands of the Left, and particularly of “Reds” inspired by the BOLSHEVIK triumph in the RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONS OF 1917. Against this background – of inflation, hunger, strikes, and unemployment, particularly as experienced by large numbers of demobilized and disillusioned soldiers – the ex-socialist Mussolini and his new Fascist movement emerged as the proponents of a nationalist and anti-communist cause that offered the restoration of order and of pride in italianità. In late October 1922, with the support of many military, ecclesiastical, and business leaders, the king offered him the premiership, under circumstances where the Fascists' much-vaunted MARCH ON ROME became essentially the first celebration of a takeover already achieved.

What rapidly developed into the dictatorship of Mussolini (discussed elsewhere in connection with his own career) lasted for more than twenty years. It included a rejection of parliamentary authority, as well as some degree of reconciliation with the papacy through the LATERAN TREATIES of 1929. Important manifestations of the Duce's nationalistic foreign policy were his successful ITALO-ETHIOPIAN WAR of 1935–6 (a revenge for Adowa) and his annexation of ALBANIA early in 1939. After HITLER attained control over Germany in 1933, the Duce tended to be at first suspicious and then patronizing towards this newer fascist dictator. But it soon became plain that Italy was the junior partner in their Berlin-Rome AXIS. Though both leaders joined in supporting FRANCO'S Nationalists during the SPANISH CIVIL WAR, Mussolini declined to be drawn into the opening phase of WORLD WAR II. Having not entered the fray until May 1940, the Italian forces then became increasingly reliant on German support as their own campaigns in Greece and North Africa faltered. In July 1943 Allied troops landed in Sicily, and within a fortnight the Fascist Grand Council and the king had combined to secure Mussolini's dismissal and arrest. He was initially replaced by Marshal BADOGLIO, who obtained an armistice in September before formally declaring war on Germany in October. Over the next eighteen months much of mainland Italy was torn apart as Hitler's troops sought to maintain their hold on it in the face of Allied advances from the south and of sabotage by the Italian RESISTANCE movement. Though the Nazis managed to rescue Mussolini and gave him charge of the puppet-regime known as the SALÒ REPUBLIC, it was the partisans who ultimately triumphed by executing him in April 1945.

This time Italy experienced not mutilated victory but a mitigated defeat. There was no Soviet involvement in her occupation, and she escaped the partitioning that befell Germany. The 1947 PARIS TREATY required the Italians to relinquish all African colonial claims, but permitted them to keep the SOUTH TYROL while sustaining only moderate losses of territory in the Adriatic and the Dodecanese. By then, a plebiscite (in which women voted for the first time) had replaced the monarchy with a republic, and the western Allies were concentrating on swiftly re-establishing Italy as a source of parliamentary-democratic support within the new COLD WAR context. In the early postwar years they placed particular reliance on DE GASPERI, who headed a new movement of CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY. This grouping benefited from the divisions between its Socialist and Communist rivals, and remained until the early 1990s an essential part of the successive coalition realignments to which the country seemed fated. Under the De Gasperi premiership (1945–53) Italy gained materially from the MARSHALL PLAN and became a founding member both of NATO and of the so-called SIX who were exploring a path towards EUROPEAN INTEGRATION. The political system was strengthened during the 1960s by the willingness of the Christian Democratic leader MORO to pursue an “opening to the left” that brought the Socialists into the sequence of coalitions. Though the south remained relatively poor and still suffered badly from the organized criminality of the Mafia, much of the country enjoyed a period of prosperity, with such firms as Fiat, Olivetti, Zanussi, and Pirelli flourishing in international trade. From the late 1960s, however, Italy entered into the anni di piombo – the years of leaden bullets – when economic progress faltered and there was a renewal of extra-parliamentary TERRORISM, exemplified by the RED BRIGADES and their 1978 assassination of Moro. Such leftist extremism was also partly a protest against the attempts made by the moderate Communist leader BERLINGUER, whose party had been excluded from coalitions since 1947, to secure an “historic compromise” with the Christian Democrats (see also EUROCOMMUNISM).

Some greater measure of stability was restored during the 1980s, most notably under CRAXI who from 1983 to 1987 served as Italy's first Socialist leader. Yet, by the early 1990s, even this accomplished wheeler-dealer had been successfully charged with forms of bribery and corruption that were increasingly revealed as pervading most of the political class. In the course of 1992–3 Italians witnessed an extraordinary drama of factional party collapse that affected the Christian Democrats, the Socialists, and the Communists alike. The main beneficiary was BERLUSCONI, a business magnate who already controlled an extensive COMMUNICATIONS empire. In the 1994 elections he headed a new movement called Forza Italia. This propelled him briefly into his first premiership, with support from smaller right-wing elements (including an emergent devolutionist, or even separatist, Northern League that regarded the mezzogiorno essentially as a drain on the resources of more dynamic regions such as Veneto, Lombardy, and Piedmont). From 1996 to 2001 it was the centre-left, with Romano Prodi as its pivotal figure, which held the upper hand. However, Berlusconi then regained power to become the dominant Italian politician of the first decade of the new century. He served as prime minister from 2001 to 2006, and again from 2008 as leader of a party recently reorganized as Il Popolo della Libertà. In his pursuit of a broadly conservative free-market agenda for a country now inhabited by some 60 million, Berlusconi's demagogic talents, coupled with dominance of a propaganda empire, were clearly useful assets. Yet he showed little inclination towards using such advantages to promote long-overdue structural reform. It also became increasingly doubtful whether they would be sufficient to protect him from a rising tide of allegations involving personal scandal, as well as charges of corrupt political practices of a kind all too familiar in the history of the Italian Republic.

Izvolsky, Alexander Petrovich, Count (1856– 1919), Russian diplomat and Foreign Minister (1906–10). Following the RUSSIAN REVOLUTION OF 1905, Izvolsky's chief objective was to reduce Russia's entanglements in external affairs so as to leave space for domestic reform. Having successfully defused difficulties with Britain over Persia, Afghanistan, and Tibet, he negotiated the ANGLO-RUSSIAN ENTENTE (1907) which formed part of the TRIPLE ENTENTE that also included France. However, his diplomacy in the BALKANS was more confused. Although he reluctantly acceded to Austria's project of formally annexing BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA (1908), his Viennese counterpart AEHRENTHAL then failed to reciprocate over Russian claims upon maritime access through the DARDANELLES. This led to increased tension in the period prior to WORLD WAR I. Izvolsky served as ambassador in Paris from 1910 to 1916, and after the RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONS OF 1917 he remained in France until his death at Biarritz.