Author:
Marcuzzi, Stefano, 1987- author.
ImprintCambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2020.
Descriptionxii, 383 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm.
Note:Part I. Making the Anglo-Italian Entente (1914-1915) -- Context -- Traditional Friendship -- Crumbling Principles -- Pushing Friendship into Alliance -- The Contested Treaty -- Part II. Integrating Italy into the Triple Entente (Spring 1915-Summer 1917) -- Context -- Turning Papers into Policies: the Implementation of the London Treaty -- Dealing with Recalcitrant Allies: Shaping Italy's War -- Peripheral Competition -- Shaping Allied Grand Strategy -- Italy's Empire Project Accepted -- Part III. The Forked Road to Victory and Peace (Autumn 1917-Summer 1919) -- Context -- Clash of Responsibilities: the Caporetto Crisis -- Response to Military Emergencies: Keeping Italy Alive -- Re-Shaping Allied Grand Strategy -- Propaganda as a Strategy -- Divided at the Finish Line -- Versailles 1919: Italy's Empire Project Repudiated -- Epilogue: Bloody Christmas in Fiume -- Conclusions.
Bibliography Note:Includes bibliographical references (pages 343-368) and index.
Note:This is an important reassessment of British and Italian grand strategies during the First World War. Stefano Marcuzzi sheds new light on a hitherto overlooked but central aspect of Britain and Italy's war experiences: the uneasy and only partial overlap between Britain's strategy for imperial defence and Italy's ambition for imperial expansion. Taking Anglo-Italian bilateral relations as a special lens through which to understand the workings of the Entente in World War I, he reveals how the ups-and-downs of that relationship influenced and shaped Allied grand strategy. Marcuzzi considers three main issues - war aims, war strategy and peace-making - and examines how, under the pressure of divergent interests and wartime events, the Anglo-Italian 'traditional friendship' turned increasingly into competition by the end of the war, casting a shadow on Anglo-Italian relations both at the Peace Conference and in the interwar period.
