Britain and Italy in the Era of the Great War: Defending and Forging Empires (Cambridge Military Histories)

This is an important reassessment of British and Italian grand strategies during the First World War. Stefano Marcuzzi sheds new light on a hitherto overlooked but central aspect of Britain and Italy's war experiences: the uneasy and only partial overlap between Britain's strategy for imperial defence and Italy's ambition for imperial expansion. Taking Anglo-Italian bilateral relations as a special lens through which to understand the workings of the Entente in World War I, he reveals how the ups-and-downs of that relationship influenced and shaped Allied grand strategy. Marcuzzi considers three main issues – war aims, war strategy and peace-making – and examines how, under the pressure of divergent interests and wartime events, the Anglo-Italian 'traditional friendship' turned increasingly into competition by the end of the war, casting a shadow on Anglo-Italian relations both at the Peace Conference and in the interwar period. C1 04.0_pp_iv_iv_Copyright_page 05.0_pp_v_vi_Dedication 06.0_pp_vii_viii_Contents 07.0_pp_ix_ix_Figures 08.0_pp_x_x_Maps 09.0_pp_xi_xii_Acknowledgement 10.0_pp_1_12_Introduction 11.0_pp_13_72_Making_the_Anglo-Italian_Entente_19111915 11.1_pp_15_16_Context 11.2_pp_17_27_Traditional_Friendship 11.3_pp_28_41_Crumbling_Principles 11.4_pp_42_66_Pushing_Friendship_into_Alliance 11.5_pp_67_72_The_Contested_Treaty 12.0_pp_73_204_Integrating_Italy_into_the_Triple_Entente_Spring_1915Summer_1917 12.1_pp_75_77_Context 12.2_pp_78_97_Turning_Papers_into_Policies 12.3_pp_98_132_Dealing_with_Recalcitrant_Allies 12.4_pp_133_153_Peripheral_Competition 12.5_pp_154_173_Shaping_Allied_Grand_Strategy 12.6_pp_174_204_Italys_Empire_Project_Accepted 13.0_pp_205_342_The_Forked_Road_to_Victory_and_Peace_Autumn_1917Summer_1919 13.1_pp_207_208_Context 13.2_pp_209_223_Clash_of_Responsibilities 13.3_pp_224_237_Response_to_Military_Emergencies 13.4_pp_238_254_Re-shaping_Allied_Grand_Strategy 13.5_pp_255_268_Propaganda_As_a_Strategy 13.6_pp_269_289_Divided_at_the_Finish_Line 13.7_pp_290_326_Versailles_1919 13.8_pp_327_333_Epilogue_Bloody_Christmas_in_Fiume 13.9_pp_334_342_Conclusions 14.0_pp_343_368_Bibliography_and_Sources 15.0_pp_369_384_Index Drawing on a broad range of new archival material, Stefano Marcuzzi analyses the British strategy of imperial defence and the Italian strategy of imperial expansion within the context of World War I, the Peace Conference and the Fiume crisis.