I popolari e i trattati di pace (1919-1920)

The Partito Popolare Italiano (PPI) was founded in Rome on 18 January 1919 (the same date as the opening of the Versailles Peace Conference) and, right from its first Appeal to the country, asserted the aim of a «just and lasting peace» in which the national aspirations of Italy, victorious in the war, should be reconciled with the application of the principles of Wilson’s «new diplomacy». The «popolare» objection to the peace negotiated in Versailles by the Entente’s diplomacy, which called for the end of «Wilsonism» and isolation of the Italian delegation on the «Adriatic question», developed from these programmatic claims over just a few months. The essay goes back over the statements of the PPI and its national and local ruling class on the peace treaties signed and ratified by Italy between 1919 and 1920: the protests against the Treaty of Versailles with Germany, culminating in the opposition report presented to the Chamber by the popolare member Giovanni Maria Longinotti; parliamentary approval of the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye with Austria, justified by the annexing of Trentino and Alto Adige and the pledged guarantees of autonomy for the new provinces; the sharing of the Treaty of Rapallo with the Yugoslav state, which bilaterally solved the dispute over Italy’s eastern border left unresolved by the Versailles Conference.