GIOVANNI GIOLITTI (1900-1914)
The elections of June 1900 marked the defeat of the Pelloux government and of attempts to impose illiberal laws. The following month King Umberto I was assassinated by an Italian anarchist, Gaetano Bresci, who had returned from the United States to “avenge” the victims of the 1898 repression. The new king, Victor Emmanuel III, favoured a return to constitutional government, as did the governments led by Pelloux’s successors, Giuseppe Saracco, Giuseppe Zanardelli, and Giovanni Giolitti, the last of whom was the most frequent holder of the office of prime minister between 1903 and 1914. Giolitti sought to defuse popular discontent by social reforms, the gradual extension of the right to vote, and public works and to conciliate the major organized opposition groups in the country, the Socialists and the Roman Catholics. In 1912 suffrage was extended to nearly the entire adult male population, from 3.3 to 8.6 million men.
In the south, however, Giolitti’s government was less accommodating and often resorted to old-style repression in the face of protest, as in 1903 and 1904. The historian and Socialist Gaetano Salvemini, the fiercest critic of Giolitti’s strategy toward the south, accused the government of corruption and of doing nothing to alleviate poverty. Salvemini’s pamphlet, first published in 1909 and later collected as Il ministro della mala vita (1919; “The Ministry of Evil”), encapsulated this position. Giolitti also embarked on a colonialist war with Turkey in 1911, with the support of the church and the new nationalist movement. Italy conquered Libya and the Greek-speaking Dodecanese islands in the Aegean Sea. Both territories became Italian possessions in 1912 and remained so until World War II.
Domestic policies
The social reforms passed in these years included laws that prohibited child labour, established a compulsory maternity fund and compulsory rest days, and limited the working day of women to 11 hours. Central