Name Denis Smith | ||
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Books Modern Italy, Mussolini's Roman Empire, Cavour and Garibaldi, Italy and its Monarchy, Mussolini | ||
Le guerre del duce denis mack smith e i meccanismi del mussolinismo
Denis Mack Smith CBE FBA FRSL (March 3, 1920 – July 11, 2017) was an English historian, specialising in the history of Italy from the Risorgimento onwards. He is best known for studies of Garibaldi and Cavour and of Mussolini, and for his single-volume Modern Italy: A Political History. He was named Grand Official of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic in 1996.
Contents
- Le guerre del duce denis mack smith e i meccanismi del mussolinismo
- Intervista su Garibaldi parte 01
- Early life
- Career
- References
Intervista su Garibaldi parte 01
Early life
Denis Mack Smith was born in Hampstead (north London), the son of Wilfrid Mack Smith (1891-1975) and Altiora Edith Gauntlett (1888-1969). He took a degree in History at Peterhouse, Cambridge, and following graduation was a History Fellow there for 15 years (1947-62).
Career
An Emeritus Fellow at All Souls College at the University of Oxford since 1987, Mack Smith has been considered the world's leading scholar on Italian history for the English world. He belonged to the post-World War II generation of Cambridge historians, many based at Peterhouse, who learned to appreciate the primacy of documentary evidence. He was an Honorary Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, and of Peterhouse, Cambridge. He received the Presidential Medal of Italy in 1984.
Though his work on Italian history has been criticized by Italian academics, including Rosario Romeo and Renzo De Felice, since the first translations in the 1950s, Mack Smith remains the best-selling author on the Italian history of Italy after Indro Montanelli. Other Italian academics were outraged over Smith refusal “to regard Italian fascism and the rise of Benito Mussolini as an aberration.” Smith contended that one of the causes of Italian fascism was due to structural weaknesses in the Italian political system, a lasting “legacy of the Risorgimento.”
