The army as "the real school of the Nation". The "martial aspect" of popular education in the Italian post-unitary period

The twofold – political and economic – revolution that took place between the XVIII and XIX centuries imposed a new political protagonist: the masses. These had found full political legitimacy in the principle of popular sovereignty, whose abolition was maybe the main issue promoted by the post-Revolution intents of the Congress of Vienna (1814-1815). The power of the Restoration to impose a return to the principle of the legitimisation of divine power proved to be inconsequential and, in any case, did not extend beyond the year 1848. However, at a first recognition, the masses as a political entity seem to have been banished from the XIX century European political system. In actual fact, the Nineteenth century distinguished itself for the deep hostility shown by the ruling class towards the masses, considered sometimes as the starting point for a new potential type of tyranny or, alternatively, as the means whereby the qualities of the individual could be lost and thus make man degenerate into barbarism. In this sense we can say that the masses maintained even a sort of protagonist role! Nevertheless, it must be underlined that the ruling class itself was constantly interested in involving the masses around its élite project. It was this very necessity that triggered those strategies that in the post-unitary period were known as “popular education”. The theatre of this complex and even paradoxical situation (what G. Mosse called «Nationalization of the masses») was certainly the scholastic context and, in particular, primary school. However this process – aimed at transforming this de-stabilizing element into a structural potentiality – was assigned even more to the army. On the one hand it appeared a safer place to keep at bay any risks deriving from such an experiment, on the other hand the same liberal ruling class felt an urgent need of the utility of a mass army. As time went by, a strong link was created between this increasing attention towards the masses and the military dimension; as confirmation of this situation, it can be considered that the definitive achievement of a political dimension of the masses coincided with the wartime events. In Italy this took place in 1912 as a consequence of the Libyan War, the first real war involving the majority of the Italian populace: that same year marked the concession of universal male suffrage. In this article I propose to analyse the way in which the army found itself at the core of the mass education policies of the newborn Reign of Italy.