Book Review

Europe: Early Modern and Modern

Aaron Gillette, through an investigation of the Italian State Archives and a large body of scientific literature on "race," provides a detailed account of the development of racial theory under fascism. In general he identifies two conflicting schools of thought. "Nordic racism," already developed by German romanticism in the nineteenth century, interpreted the Italians as a degenerate people that, particularly in the south, suffered from miscegenation with Jews and Africans. Any dynamic historical developments in Italy, including the Renaissance, had been purely the result of the migration of Germanic, Aryan peoples whose blood had revived a moribund Latinity. Under fascism the Nordic strand was represented by those Italian scientists and leaders who subscribed to Nazi racial theory, a biological and materialist position that was linked to virulent anti-Semitism and eugenics. Opposed to Germanismo, which denigrated Italian nationalism, was a school of thought that emphasised the vitality of the "Mediterranean" race that, quite independently of any contact with barbarian Germanic peoples, had given rise to imperial Rome, the Renaissance, and European civilization. The Mediterranean racists, in opposition to Nazi biological determinists, generally supported a "spiritual" racism that emphasised, in Lamarckian fashion, the impact of environment and the ability of fascism to create a vital and unified race through the superior psychological powers of the Italian people.

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