Vanda Wilcox - The Italian Empire and the Great War (The Greater War)

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T H E G R E A T E R W A R 1 9 1 2 1923

General Editor

ROBERT GERWARTH

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The Italian Empire

and the Great War

V A N D A W I L C O X

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Vanda Wilcox 2021

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In Loving Memory of

Philippa Nicholls

(19522017)

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Acknowledgements

At Oxford University Press, I would like to thank the editors who have steered the manuscript through the process of commissioning and publication: Robert Faber, Stephanie Ireland, Cathryn Steele, and Henry Clarke, as well as the production team. I am grateful to Series Editor Robert Gerwarth for giving me the opportunity to contribute this volume, and I also thank the anonymous reviewers, both of the original proposal and of the finished text, whose suggestions helped me

immensely.

I had the immeasurable fortune of living for many years in the same city as my archival sources; nevertheless, without the expert assistance of the staff of the Archivio Centrale dello Stato, the Archivio del Ufficio Storico dello Stato

Maggiore dellEsercito, and the Archivio Storico del Ministero degli Affari

Esteri, as well as the Biblioteca di Storia Moderna e Contemporanea and the

Biblioteca Centrale Nazionale in Rome, this book could never have been possible.

In Paris I thank the Bibliothque Nationale Franaise and in Oxford the staff of the Bodleian Library.

Sections of this research were presented at conferences and seminars hosted by the Universities of Leeds and Wolverhampton, Penn State University, the Freie

Universitt Berlin, the Stato Maggiore della Difesa, the Association for the Study of Modern Italy, and the International Society for First World War Studies;

I thank all the organizers who invited me and all those participants who offered feedback and asked tough questions. John Cabot Universitys faculty development funds supported my travel to some of these conferences for which I am most

grateful. I owe a huge debt to Adrian Gregory for twenty years of support and

encouragement. I benefited greatly from discussing ideas with many people,

whether in person or on Twitter, including Nir Arielli, Jonathan Boff, Selena

Daly, John Gooch, Dnal Hassett, Franziska Heimburger, John Horne, Oliver

Janz, MacGregor Knox, Alan Kramer, Nicola Labanca, Stefano Marcuzzi, Roberto

Mazza, Marco Mondini, Emanuele Sica, Hew Strachan, Mesut Uyar, the late Bruce

Vandervort, and Jay Winter, who was also immensely hospitable to me and my

family in Paris. James Halstead chased down an errant reference and Andrew

Pfannkuche helped with the index. David Brown and Sabina Donati were kind

enough to share unpublished work with me. Pierre Purseigle, Jenny Macleod,

Jessica Meyer, Chris Kempshall, Edward Madigan, Michael Neiberg, Martina

Salvante, Julia Ribiero, and other friends in the International Society for First World War Studies have all helped me in many ways over almost twenty years of

the societys activities. In this field we are blessed with many superlative women

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scholars, like Michelle Moyd, Heather Perry, Jennifer Keene, and Sophie de

Schaepdrijver, who have been inspirational role models. Colleagues at John

Cabot University and Trinity College, Rome Campus have provided much in

the way of friendship, support, and encouragement over the years; Luca De

Caprariis also shared his expertise on fascist foreign policy. I am happy to thank my talented undergraduate research assistants at John Cabot University, Demetrio Iannone and Quinlan Davenport, whose enthusiasm and dedication were a great

assistance and who made valuable contributions to the research process. Demetrio went above and beyond the call of duty to track down obscure articles in various inaccessible libraries. NYU Paris, where I taught for a semester, also provided invaluable library access during the Covid-19 pandemic.

It turns out that having already written one monograph doesnt make the

second significantly easier; the musical clich of the difficult second album applies here too. I was fortunate to have the expert support and guidance of Dr Jane Jones, writing coach and editor extraordinaire, without whom I would have greatly

struggled to get the book done.

I have no research grant or funding body to acknowledge, alas. Much of this

book was written in Paris, during what I have called my self-funded sabbatical.

After twelve years as an adjunct, and having never held a permanent job, there is no other kind. I was lucky enough to get work writing a commercial TV docu-mentary series entitled The Cost of War. Thiscombined with my husbands

jobpaid enough for me to sit in my local co-working space eating unlimited

madeleines and writing this book for a year. Most contingent faculty dont get this type of break and I want to acknowledge my good fortune. To all other precariously employed academics out there, still trying to research and write, goes my endless admiration.

Between originally writing a book proposal in 2014 and finishing the manu

script, my progress was slowed by many things: rashly editing two books in the same year, a 5/5 teaching load, bereavement, an international move, a global

pandemic, breaking my foot; but above all by the arrival of my daughter Elena, the best of all possible distractions. The support of my wider family was therefore essential to the completion of this book, especially Nonna, Granet, and Uncle