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That historians "often felt the need to line up behind set versions of history dictated by political considerations' obstructed the dissemination of Annales in Italy as it had in Germany.¹ Historical interpretations performed a sanctifying role in the "battle for control and direction of the political and civil conscience of the Italian people", not simply the work of specialists supposedly free from government interference, as in England. ² And universities, the loci of historical research after 1870, became the scenes of conflicts between professors circulating divergent accounts of the past.³ "Science [was] a vehicle for politics."⁴ Opponents of Annales historians' methodologies for that reason loosely created moments of hostility coinciding with the political regimes extant on the Italian peninsula between 1900 and 1970: the liberal-constitutional monarchy until 1922; the Fascist era, including Italy's second war, against the Germans, after 1943 and the republican age, from 1946 until 1970.

DOI: 10.1057/9781137294982_6

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