The Peasant Experience under Italian Fascism

Abstract

The fascist regime was the first system of government in modern Italy to attempt to address the ‘peasant question’ in a systematic fashion. It not only brought to bear upon it the administrative machinery of the state but also, through its policies and propaganda, attempted to convert the peasantry from a perennial threat to social stability into a positive bulwark of the political system the fascist regime was seeking to consolidate. This article describes the starting point of this historical account of peasants in 1921; the fascist policies that affected agriculture and the rural population; and the peasant responses to fascism.