Forgiare il mito, forgiare la nazione. La guerra di Libia, gli Alpini e la costruzione dell'identità nazionale

With the Libya war, Alpini -– the Italian mountain troops -– quickly rose to a special role in popular culture and national war mythology. Although the war was not their baptism of fire, they soon imposed as one of its most popular icons. At one time, this process shaped and was shaped by the contemporary political climate: the emergence of Alpini as a model of "Italian virtues" mirrors a long-term steering in national identity building process, which was grown, since 1880s, increasingly disconnected from Risorgimento and its rhetoric. In this perspective, the proposal (and the adoption) of Alpini as a military and social model, somehow envisage a shifting of ruling class' political favour toward a new kind of citizen (hard-labourer, devout, conservative, and essentially loyal to the monarchy), in an age of political turmoil and declining national enthusiasm. More than a mere military corps, Alpini came, thus, to epitomize a new Italian prototype, opposed both to the dashing Bersaglieri and to the line infantry, massified into a too much turbulent and dangerous industrial dimension.