The Social Politics of Nationalist Women's Activism on Italy's Linguistic Frontier: The Curious Case of Italia Redenta, 1919-1940

With the annexation of formerly Austro-Habsburg Istria in the immediate aftermath of WWI, Italy acquired a territory where slavophones outnumbered italophones, and where rates of poverty and child mortality were higher than anywhere else in the nation. In 1919, the Duchessa d'Aosta and a group of similarly placed nationalist women founded Italia Redenta, an organization that blended social assistance to women and children with systematic efforts to assimilate the predominantly slavic speaking population into the Italian nation via programs that targeted young children in particular. Throughout the Istrian peninsula, Italia Redenta founded sewing workshops for the mothers and nursery schools for the children in which the latter were fed, looked after and given a nationalist education based on intensive learning of the Italian language. Based in Trieste, Istria’s Italia Redenta flourished under fascism; certain of its local institutions were even (eventually) integrated into the regime's central organism for maternal and infant welfare, the Opera Nazionale Maternià e Infanza. After 1945, Italia Redenta continued its activities until the mid-1970s, when a national network of state nursery schools supplanted the association's schools and dispensaries.

Italia Redenta thus raises the question of the relationship between social and political activism in the case of women's public and political activity, particularly on the Right. As such, it invites comparison with France's Action sociale du mouvement Croix de Feu, which flourished in the 1930s and 40s and drew direct inspiration from Italian examples of such politically-inflected social activism among conservative and fascist women.