The Integration of Social Sciences in Post-War Italian Historiography

The influence of the social sciences on Italian historical writing arrived notably late. The dominant Crocean historicism and Gramscian-inspired political history initially created a resistant conceptual framework, dismissing sociological approaches. A significant exception was the entrepreneur Adriano Olivetti, who supported the first generation of young sociologists through his Comunità foundation. While economists and political scientists sought postgraduate training in Britain and the United States, anthropologists found a domestic precedent in Ernesto de Martino’s pioneering work on southern Italian folklore. The institutional landscape was equally slow to change; the first university chairs in sociology were not authorized until 1962, reflecting a broader academic hesitation.

Despite these constraints, Italian historians actively engaged with Western historical debates by the 1960s, expanding into economic and social history. The field of economic history was already well-established for the medieval period, boasting scholars of international repute like Gino Luzzatto and Armando Sapori. The new stimulus came from the comparative, theoretical frameworks of the American school, including David Landes and Alexander Gerschenkron. Their models provided a fresh lens for examining Italy’s rapid yet geographically uneven industrialization, framing it within global patterns of economic growth.

Italian historiography has long been exceptionally receptive to foreign influences, particularly French scholarship. The Annales School, from Marc Bloch and Fernand Braudel to Jacques Le Goff and Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, offered a major impetus toward social history. From the 1960s, theorists like Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, and Jacques Derrida were critically read for their applicability to Italian archives. Concurrently, British social historiography, especially the work of E.P. Thompson and Eric Hobsbawm and journals like Past & Present, generated broad interest. Italian scholars adeptly explored and refined methodologies from historical demography to oral history, gender studies, and proto-industrialization.

However, it would be reductive to attribute the expansion of Italian historical writing solely to foreign stimuli. In many cases, external ideas served as an initial catalyst that was then profoundly adapted. For instance, the anthropological categories used by Christiane Klapisch-Zuber in Tuscan social history or Le Goff’s mentalité approach were absorbed and redirected. Meanwhile, economic historians like Giorgio Mori independently mapped Italy’s industrial ascent from the 1880s through studies of specific sectors and comparative analysis. Conversely, Italian historians such as Carlo Ginzburg, Carlo Cipolla, and Arnaldo Momigliano achieved significant international influence, exporting Italy’s rich historiographical traditions.

Since the 1980s, social history in a broad sense has characterized the most innovative work across all periods. New journals like Quaderni Storici (1966), Società e Storia (1978), and Memoria (1993) actively shaped research fields and approaches. This shift is evident in the study of the Counter-Reformation, which moved beyond institutional and biographical studies to examine the "long re-Christianization" of the peasantry. Research now explores the popular religiosity propagated by missionary congregations and parish clergy, revealing a complex dialogue between official doctrine and popular practice whose political implications in the modern era remain a fertile ground for study.

A second pivotal theme is the historiography of the Italian working classes, which shifted decisively toward history "from below" from the mid-1970s. This reflected the cultural legacy of the 1968-69 protests and moved away from strictly organizational histories. Studies like Stefano Merli’s reconstruction of factory proletariat composition challenged Marxist generalizations. Research expanded to explore rural-urban ties, family strategies, and gender relations, as seen in Franco Ramella’s work on a textile village, which tested Franklin Mendels’ theory of proto-industrialization. This thematic and methodological expansion encompassed oral history projects, such as Luisa Passerini’s work on Turin families under fascism, and major studies on Italy’s mass emigration.

Urban history has a natural prominence in Italy, given the historical centrality of its cities. The journal Storia Urbana fostered interdisciplinary collaboration among social, economic, and art historians. The preeminence of Italian scholarship in this field is underscored by Marino Berengo’s comprehensive comparative history of European cities. The history of regions, however, proved more problematic, especially after a state-led reform in 1976. While criticized by Quaderni Storici for potentially fostering artificial identities, regional studies ultimately provided new perspectives on nation-state formation through the lens of local elites, lessening the dominance of purely political history.

Significant innovation also came from historical geography and demography. The geographer Lucio Gambi tirelessly emphasized how Italy’s environmental contrasts conditioned settlements and social practices, paving the way for environmental history. Historical demographers, engaged in international debates from the Cambridge Group onwards, increasingly used demographic data to ask social and cultural questions. Studies on infant abandonment in foundling hospitals and analyses of poor family structures, like Renzo Derosas’s work on Venice, challenged theories such as Peter Laslett’s on the nuclear family and highlighted cultural factors in demographic behavior.

Finally, gender history and women’s history developed rapidly from the 1980s. Rich archival sources enabled innovative research into the early modern period, examining marriage, patronage, and the profound impact of the Council of Trent on female religiosity and social behavior. This field exemplifies the broader trajectory of Italian historiography: a sophisticated engagement with international methodologies, critically tested and enriched against the country’s exceptionally varied historical and archival landscape, leading to uniquely profound contributions.