Un pluralismo a due tempi. Colonizzazione e crisi dello stato liberale in Italia

The colonial experience has been a sort of dark side of European legal culture. This essay is aimed at investigating the links between changes in Italian public law, on the one hand, and, on the other, colonial policies and their rhetoric of legitimation, in the period from the end of the nineteenth century to the First World War. Colonies were actually relevant litmus tests of the institutional changes operated by Italian liberalism before the crisis triggered by the explosion of multiple actors and interests emerging in those years. Colonisation constituted a non-secondary component of the transition from the rule of law to the “administrative State”, which took place between the age of Crispi and the First World War. Colonial spaces were sites of the most authoritarian traits of Italian liberalism and of the “administrative State”, which constituted a significant continuity factor between the liberal and fascist season.