2008, Volume 14, N°2 - Centre d'études et de recherches ...

Book reviews – Comptes rendus – Buchbesprechungen 181
consistent body of interpretations having sharpened and bettered over time, it’s
surely not an easy undertaking to produce an original contribution. This book,
resulting from collective research conducted by a group of economic historians,
aims to tackle precisely this daunting task. Sharing the conviction that the
abandonment of autarchy and the remodelling of the protectionist apparatus were
fundamental factors in the setting up of the “economic miracle” of the late 1950s,
the contributions of this volume aim to shed new light on some less known aspects
of the choice to take part in the Western economic system.
The volume is composed of fifteen essays, divided in three sections. The first
opens with a contribution by Claudio Besana who intends to assess the economic
consequences of the peace treaty signed on February 1947. In spite of a detailed
reconstruction of the costs implied by the clauses of the treaty (the financial
burdens imposed by reparations and above all the loss of important sources of raw
materials, industrial and financial assets due to the territorial clauses), the author
does not offer a clear conclusion about the actual weight that these losses had on
the whole of the Italian economy.
Andrea Bonoldi tackles the issue of the economic recovery in the Alpine area
with a comparative approach that considers the Italian, the Austrian and the Swiss
case. What emerges is that in the Italian regions taken into consideration
(Trentino-Alto Adige and the province of Belluno), recovery took a slower pace
(one of the reasons was a minor incidence of the Marshall aid in the Italian alpine
area compared to its foreign neighbours), the economy stagnated during the 1950s.
It was only with the approach of full employment in the industrial areas of the plain
and the consequent rise in incomes that made possible the expansion of tourism and
rendered profitable the delocalisation of some industrial activities, that the Alpine
regions were included in the development process.
The tourism industry is the subject of both Aldo Carera’s and Andrea Leonardi’s
essays, from which results the ambivalence of the Italian approach to this sector.
On one hand, as Leonardi points out, there was a widespread consciousness
amongst the economic and political establishment of the importance of tourism for
the national balance of payments. Consequently the tourist sector was the subject
of some attention in setting up the reconstruction plans and in the allocation of the
Marshall aid. On the other hand, as it results from Carera’s work, the elaboration of
a coherent approach to the problems of tourism suffered from an
“anti-industrialism” attitude, nourished both by the inefficiency of public
bureaucracies and the suspicion with which private interests considered every
public attempt to intervene, that curbed all the efforts to forge a consistent long
term policy for the sector.
3. For a recent overview of the historiographical debate see: R. RANIERI, L’Italia, la ricostruzione
e il sistema economico internazionale, in: F. ROMERO, A. VARSORI (eds.), Nazione interdipendenza,
integrazione. Le relazioni internazionali dell’Italia (1917-1989), vol.I, Carocci, Roma,
2005, pp.131-153.