A Rugged Nation uncovers how Italian identity and mountains have constituted one another. State regimes, since unification in 1861, have made mountains into national symbols and resources. The nationalization of Italian mountains has been a story of military conquest and resistance, ecological and social transformation, and expropriating resources and imposing meanings. World War I permanently transformed mountain landscapes and people, nationalizing both. When the Fascists came to power, the process of politicization of mountains reached its acme; the regime constructed and exploited mountains both rhetorically and materially, on one hand celebrating ruralism and rural people and, on the other, giving mountain natural resources to large hydro-electric corporations. The book ends with two exemplary tales about mountains and their place in recent Italian history: the Resistance against the Nazi-Fascists, which found its sanctuary up in the mountains, and the 1963 Vajont disaster, which, with the killing of two thousand, represents the tragic epilogue of the hydroelectric modernization of the Alps.
A Rugged Nation. Mountains and the Making of Modern Italy
Armiero Marco
2011
Abstract
A Rugged Nation uncovers how Italian identity and mountains have constituted one another. State regimes, since unification in 1861, have made mountains into national symbols and resources. The nationalization of Italian mountains has been a story of military conquest and resistance, ecological and social transformation, and expropriating resources and imposing meanings. World War I permanently transformed mountain landscapes and people, nationalizing both. When the Fascists came to power, the process of politicization of mountains reached its acme; the regime constructed and exploited mountains both rhetorically and materially, on one hand celebrating ruralism and rural people and, on the other, giving mountain natural resources to large hydro-electric corporations. The book ends with two exemplary tales about mountains and their place in recent Italian history: the Resistance against the Nazi-Fascists, which found its sanctuary up in the mountains, and the 1963 Vajont disaster, which, with the killing of two thousand, represents the tragic epilogue of the hydroelectric modernization of the Alps.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
