Alexander De Grand and the Historiography of Italian Fascism

Beginning with the appearance of his first article on Curzio Malaparte in the Journal of Modern History in 1972, Alexander De Grand has been a constant protagonist in the historical debates on Italian Fascism, a field heavily influenced by shifting contemporary political priorities within Italy as well as by evolving methodological fashions with the profession.  De Grand’s modest and self-effacing personal style should not obscure both the range and pioneering influence of his contributions to the scholarship on Mussolini’s regime and its dissemination to a wider educated audience.  Over the past four decades, he has written on virtually all the major aspects of this topic, from the origins and of the black-shirted movement to the development of Fascist culture, the regime’s policies towards women, and its relationship with Nazi Germany.  In the process, he has often anticipated major shifts in the scholarly agenda of the field.  At the same time, his principal work of historical synthesis, Italian Fascism:  Its Origins and Development, has remained a basic text for college students and a general readership, since its first appearance in 1982.  My paper will examine this body of work in order to illuminate De Grand’s principal interpretive themes and assess his larger contributions to the field of Italian Fascist history.