From conformism to secessionism: the Young Liberal Party (1897-1901)

di Johannes U. Müller
in Memoria e Ricerca n.s. 25 (2007), p. 27

The articles focuses on the formation of the Young Liberal Movement from its first emergence in 1897 until the foundation of the Young Liberal Party in 1901 and explores its rapid transformation from a rather conformist union of juvenile bourgeois associations into a mobilised protest movement that anticipates central traits of political youth movements after World War I. The author gives a brief reconstruction of how the movement came into being during the profound Italian State crisis at the end of the 19th century, with special respect to networking processes by means of newspapers. The second part is dedicated to certain political, social and generational aspects and their potential of conflict that pushed the Young Liberals into a process of radicalisation and rebellion, eventually leading to the foundation of the first organised bourgeois-liberal party of a modern type in Italy.