"Italy's involvement in the First World War" - odbędzie się w Sali im. Bobrzyńskiego w Collegium Maius w środę 4 listopada o godz. 17-tej oraz 

"Italy's European Choice" - w czwartek 5 listopada o godz. 13-tej w sali 112 w Instytucie Europeistyki.

Wykłady będą prowadzone w języku angielskim.

Lecture on "Italy's European Choice"

            Italy's role in the European integration has been often underrated by the historians of the European integration and very few Italian names are quoted in the general historical studies on the integration process. The lecture on the contrary aims at demonstrating that, although Italy's role was not similar to the one played by France and Germany, the Italian authorities were able to play a significant role in the wider context of the integration process; on some occasion their decisions had a significant impact on the EC/EU dynamics (e.g. the creation and development of a European social policy, the relations with de Gaulle's France, the process which starting with the Milan European Council led to the drafting of the Single European Act, etc.); last but not least the lecture would demonstrate that Italy's European policy was a pragmatic one, closely connected to the defence of Italy's national interests. Moreover Rome's European choice has always had important consequences on the nation's economy, as well as on its society and on the political system. In this connection it would be possible to demonstrate how the Maastricht treaty, as well as the end of the Cold War, were at the origins of the collapse of the country's party system in the early 1990s. So the process which Italy experience in those years was more similar to the one experienced by East-Central European nations rather than to the one of Rome's western European partners.

Lecture on "Italy's involvement in the First World War"

 It is well known that Italy was the only great power which decided to stay neutral in the summer of 1914, in spite of its being a member of the Triple Alliance, and she joined the "Triple Entente" only in May 1915 as a consequence of the signature of the so-called London Treaty in April 1915; Rome declared war to the Austrian-Hungarian Empire in late May. Italy's decision to enter the "Great War" was largely shaped by both international ambitions and internal considerations. This close connection between the international dimension and the domestic context has been the focus of a study pursued by the author through a volume which has been published recently by the il Mulino publishing house. The lecture aims at explaining the Italian position, both from the international and the domestic perspective on the eve of the First World War. Then it will focus on the development of the diplomatic situation with the secret negotiations that Rome pursued contemporaneously with the Central Powers and the Triple Entente. The internal political balance will be examined too. But the main focus will be on the last month of Italy's neutrality, which was characterized by a thorny debate between on one hand the "interventionists", on the other the "neutralists". At the end the final decision was taken by few men, the King, the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister in a difficult and troubled political atmosphere, that some historian has labelled as a "coup d'état" which remembered the one by the Fascist movement in 1922. The author will conclude his intervention discussing this important and thorny issue in Italian historical debate. 

Antonio Varsori is full professor of History of International Relations at the University of Padua, where "inter alia" he has been Director of the Department of International Studies (2009-2011), Director of the Department of Politics, Law and International Studies (2012-2015); he is currently member of the Academic Senate. He is the Chairman of the Liaison Committee of historians of contemporary Europe at the EU Commission, member of the committee for the publication of the Italian Diplomatic Documents at the Italian Foreign Ministry. He has been founder and first President of the Italian Society of International History SISI (2010-2014). He is the editor of the journal "Ventunesimo Secolo" and member of the scientific committees/editorial boards of several scholarly journals ("the Journal of European Integration History", "Cold War History", "Res Publica"); he is the editor of the series "Storia internazionale dell'età contemporanea" of the Franco Angeli publishing house and, with E. Dumoulin and E. Bussière, of the series "Euroclio" of the Peter Lang publishing house. He has been twice J. Monnet professor of History of the European Integration and has been awarded the title of "success story" of the Jean Monnet Programme. He is associate fellow of the IRICE centre (University of Paris I Sorbonne) and of the "Ideas" Centre (LSE) and has been twice visiting professor at SciencesPo (Paris). In 2014 he has been awarded the title of "Doctor honoris causa" in European Studies by the Babes-Bolyai Uiversity. He as published extensively on the cold war, the European integration, British and French foreign policies in the post-war period, Italy's foreign policy in the twentieth century. He has published more than 250 publications in Italian, English, French, German and Spanish.

Among his most recent publications in volume: La Cenerentola d'Europa ? L'Italia e l'integrazione europea dal 1947 a oggi, Soveria Mannelli, Rubbettino, 2010; European Integration History Themes and Debates, ed. with W. Kaiser, Basingstoke, Palgrave/Macmillan, 2010; L'Italia e la fine della guerra fredda. La politica estera dei governi Andreotti 1989-1992, Bologna, il Mulino, 2013; Economic Crises and New Nationalisms. German Political Economy as Perceived by European Partners, ed. with M. Poettinger, Bruxelles, PIE//Peter Lang, 2014;  Radioso maggio. Come l'Italia entrò in guerra, Bologna, il Mulino, 2015; Storia internazionale. Dal 1919 a oggi, Bologna, il Mulino, 2015.