The fact that Italy had a very limited industry and lack of an efficient infrastructure also meant that hardly any money was being created to pump into the economy to keep it running or pay for these debts. This subsequently led to high inflation, increased taxes and no money being spent on education or public services. Another major economic problem under the liberal regime was the north south divide. The fact that Italy’s economy was poor was only made worse by the north south divide in the country; this divide was to do with agriculture, industrial development and general standards of living. All of which the north fared in much better than the south.
Mussolini’s economic battle for the Lira was a failure, although it did have a few positive outcomes. The battle for the Lira was where Mussolini made the Lira artificially expensive- by fixing the Lira at 90 to £, rather than 150. Mussolini planned for this action to reduce inflation and show the world that Italy was a mighty power. And indeed there were a few positive outcomes: that it made it easy for Italians to buy abroad and perhaps boosted Italy’s prestige. However, in reality it made it hard for Italy to sell abroad (due to the higher prices), so Italy lost its competitiveness on the world market.
To what extent did Mussolini’s economic policies improve the standard of living of ordinary Italians in the years 1922-43? Since Mussolini’s rise to power, one of his main goals for future Italy was to rebuild its economy so it was able to compete with other European nations. To accomplish this, Mussolini felt he would have to eliminate or weaken Trade Unions so that the state had more control over the working economy and people. Through his attempts to improve the Italian economy through various ‘battles’, Mussolini effected the living standards of many ordinary Italian people, sometimes for the worse. In his campaign for a greater Economy, Mussolini’s actions sometimes benefitted the Italian people by improving their living conditions.
Summarise and discuss the economic policies of Fascist Italy? When Benito Mussolini came to power as Prime Minister in 1922, Italy’s economy was comparatively weak, having failed to recover sufficiently from the financial demands of the First World War. Mussolini realised that strengthening the economy was essential if Italy was to become a key player in Europe. A number of economic policies were implemented in an attempt to achieve this end. This essay will seek to examine these policies and their varying successes or failures.
So what happened?? Without self-sufficient crops, many fell into poverty… …And were taken over by the bigger farms. However, wheat imports fell by 75%… …But exports of olive oil, wine meat and eggs fell, as countries didn’t trade with Italy – “He’s not buying my wheat, I won’t buy his wine. hah!” Price of bread rose. A huge propaganda campaign was released to try and help them achieve autarky.
Germany faced many problems such as unemployment, debt and lack of money. Construction of Autobahns and schools would have created many jobs and brought in a huge amount of money. This is exactly how Schacht planned to solve Germanys economic problems, with The New Plan. The New Plan consisted of four major parts (Limiting imports, Trade agreements, Government spending and tackling unemployment). However, Hitler was not happy with this as his spending on the military was being limited, which meant only a certain number of tanks/planes were being produced.
This made it difficult for Mazzini to obtain national unification as a majority of powerful and influential people in Italy were against his ideologies, this meant that the progress of national unification was very slow as a large amount of people opposed his views. On the other hand Mazzini’s ideologies gave him one advantage, this advantage being that the army and students were all working class, this meant that in Piedmont during their revolution Mazzini had a large amount of support which is why they were successful up until the Austrians intervened. The fact
WW1 ends – The ending of WW1 meant that the European countries were able to meet their own demands and therefore did not need any more supplies from America. Farmers suffered from overproduction and could not afford to keep their homes or pay mortgages, some farmers even decided to become sharecroppers. In 1924, 600,000 farmers went bankrupt. Also, there was stiff competition from Canadian, Australian and Argentinean farmers who were selling vast amounts of grain to the world market. Over-production – Fewer products such as cars, consumer good etc were not being sold as factories were making more goods than Americans needed or could afford to buy.
How far do you agree that the limited appeal of Mazzini’s ideas was the main reason for the slow progress of national unity in Italy in the years 1815-1848? Nationalism is an ideology that elicits the belief that people of the same race, language, culture and traditions should be united in an independent nation of their own. This idea existing throughout ‘Italy’ at the time would have influenced and encouraged the motive of Italian unification. Since the Congress of Vienna in 1815, Italy was divided up into eight different states, which made it clear that there would be divisions between the people, making the aim of unity appear more and more unrealistic. From this emerged a number of evident figures such as Guiseppe Mazzini who were advocates for Italian Unification.
(Robson, 1992)” However, reviewing the economical, social and political issues this was not to be. After the Unification of Italy in 1870, despite some modernisation occurring, the country still fell behind the other major powers of Europe. The state of the Italian economy was a major problem facing the new Kingdom. It was in huge debt that it had inherited from the states that had been unified to make Italy. The Liberal’s did nothing to make it look like they would attempt to transform the economy, which remained backward and unprepared for World War 1.