Dal trattato di Racconigi al Patto di Londra: Le ambizioni balcaniche dell'Italia e l’Austria-Ungheria

[Autom. eng. transl.] During the Risorgimento, in the Italian public opinion, substantial expectations are formed around the possibility, for the new national state, of carving out a sphere of influence in the Adriatic and in the Balkan provinces that overlook it. In a still unclear way, the memories of the Latin and Venetian heritage merge in this vision which, often, takes the form of a 'long arm' projection of the expectations concerning the eastern territories of the Peninsula, still placed under the Austrian dominion . The disappointing results of the third war of independence (1866) and the acceptance of the Iudrio line as a border with the Hapsburg Empire (Austro-Hungarian since 1867), do not put an end to these expectations, which in the second half of the 1970s, they would have coagulated in the complex and multiform phenomenon of irredentism. With the 'caesura of 1866' and in an ever clearer way in the following years, with the progressive disappearance from the scene of the protagonists of the 'historical Risorgimento' and the 'mythical transfiguration' of its events, however, an ever deeper groove would have emerged among the positions of public opinion and those of the national ruling class. The stipulation, on 20 May 1882, of the Triple Alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary represents the maximum point of this 'detachment'. Strongly desired by the Prime Minister, Francesco Crispi, and the pro-German faction linked to them, the 'Triple' was born as a sort of forced choice in the face of the isolation in which the Kingdom had come to find itself after the deterioration of relations with France that had characterized the previous decade and that culminated in the diplomatic crisis following the occupation of Rome. With the passing of the years (and the succession of renewals), however, the Alliance had ended up transforming itself from an instrument of scope, all in all, limited, into the real pivot of the country's international action, contributing, even in the alternation of governments, to structure its choices not only on the European chessboard, but increasingly clearly also on the colonial one. In this sense, the progressive abandonment of the Adriatic director in favor of expansion in Africa and the Mediterranean is a product of the Triple and the constraints that the triplicist policy imposed on the functions of choice of the country and its elites. The end of 'triplicist centrality' is the joint product of the evolution of Italian public life after the end of the 'crispino system (1 March 1896) and of the transformations of the international scene after the crisis of the Bismarckian one. The 'political citizenship' regained by an increasingly aggressive irredentism is only the most obvious aspect of the changes that it triggers. At the same time, the country's action aims to find - in the so-called 'waltz politics' - new spaces for maneuver. The rapprochement with France sanctioned by the Visconti Venosta-Barrère (1900) and Prinetti-Barrère (1902) agreements, if on the one hand responds to colonial interests, on the other paves the way for a weakening of the value and scope of the Triple an approach to Russia, with which a point of convergence will be found - not surprisingly - on Balkan issues. The Treaty of Racconigi (1911) does not represent the end of the oscillations of Italian foreign policy. However, for the first time it clearly shows the ambitions of the country in a clearly antagonistic perspective with respect to Vienna, as the events of August 1914 / April 1915 would have shown.