The 1939 Option Agreement and the ‘Consistent Ambivalence’ of Fascist Policies towards Minorities in the Italian New Provinces

Bibliographic Data

ID8957907
AuthorsEmmanuel Dalle Mulle (0000-0002-9260-5925, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, corresponding author), Alessandro Ambrosino (Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies)
Year2023
Volume66
Issue4
Pages887-908
Publication date2023-05-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Historical Journal (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0018-246X • E-ISSN: 1469-5103
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0018246x23000158
OpenAlexW4367677488
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited15

The 1939 Option Agreement between Italy and Germany concerning South Tyrol was the first population transfer agreement in western European history. Its analysis offers a unique opportunity to shift the focus of the historiography on interwar minority questions from eastern to western Europe, thus challenging the lingering view of eastern Europe as a land of endemic ethnic heterogeneity and conflict. Furthermore, the 1939 Option illuminates a form of ‘consistent ambivalence’ that problematizes dominant analytical frameworks concerning the management of ethnic differences. Italian fascists consistently affirmed the inevitable assimilation, and therefore inclusion, of minorities within the Italian nation, but they also deeply distrusted them. As this ambivalent attitude reached a climax in the 1939 Option, in order to understand fascist behaviour during the implementation of the agreement we need to consider the longer history of fascist attempts to homogenize the new provinces. Three features structured these attempts: a belief that the assimilation of these minorities would be inevitable; the absence of means to carry out radical solutions; and a deep-seated distrust of the minorities. Fascist policy during the Option was simultaneously more ambivalent than the current historiography suggests and more consistent with the regime's interwar homogenization policies

Ambivalence · Development economics · Distrust · Economics · Economy · Ethnic group · Historiography · Political economy · Political science · Population · Sociology · Central European national history · Demography · Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics · History · Italian Fascism and Post-war Society · Law · Social Psychology

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