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All 508 seats in the Chamber of Deputies 255 seats needed for a majority | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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General elections were held in Italy on 21 March 1897, with a second round of voting on 28 March. [1] The "Ministerial" left-wing bloc, led by Giovanni Giolitti remained the largest in Parliament, winning 327 of the 508 seats. [2]
The humiliating defeat of the Italian army at Adwa in March 1896 in Ethiopia during First Italo-Ethiopian War, brought about Francesco Crispi's resignation after riots broke out in several Italian towns. [3] [4]
The ensuing Antonio di Rudini cabinet lent itself to Cavallotti’s campaign, and at the end of 1897 the judicial authorities applied to the Chamber of Deputies for permission to prosecute Crispi for embezzlement. A parliamentary commission of inquiry discovered only that Crispi, on assuming office in 1893, had found the secret service coffers empty, and had borrowed money from a state bank to fund it, repaying it with the monthly installments granted in regular course by the treasury. The commission, considering this proceeding irregular, proposed, and the Chamber adopted, a vote of censure, but refused to authorize a prosecution.
The crisis consequent upon the disaster of Adowa enabled Rudinì to return to power as premier and minister of the interior in a cabinet formed by the veteran Conservative, General Ricotti. He signed the Treaty of Addis Ababa that formally ended the First Italo–Ethiopian War recognizing Ethiopia as an independent country. [5] He endangered relations with Great Britain by the unauthorized publication of confidential diplomatic correspondence in a Green-book on Abyssinian affairs.
Di Rudinì recognized the excessive brutality of the repression of the Fasci Siciliani under his predecessor Crispi. Many Fasci members were pardoned and released from jail. [6]
A new party participated to the election, the Italian Republican Party (PRI), led by Carlo Sforza. The PRI traces its origins from the time of Italian unification and, more specifically, to the democratic-republican wing represented by figures such as Giuseppe Mazzini, Carlo Cattaneo and Carlo Pisacane.
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| Party | Votes | % | Seats | +/– | |
| Historical Left | 327 | −7 | |||
| Historical Right | 99 | −5 | |||
| Historical Far Left | 42 | −5 | |||
| Italian Republican Party | 25 | New | |||
| Italian Socialist Party | 15 | 0 | |||
| Total | 508 | 0 | |||
| Valid votes | 1,199,575 | 96.62 | |||
| Invalid/blank votes | 41,911 | 3.38 | |||
| Total votes | 1,241,486 | 100.00 | |||
| Registered voters/turnout | 2,120,909 | 58.54 | |||
| Source: Nohlen & Stöver | |||||
Francesco Crispi was an Italian patriot and statesman. He was among the main protagonists of the Risorgimento, a close friend and supporter of Giuseppe Mazzini and Giuseppe Garibaldi, and one of the architects of Italian unification in 1860. Crispi served as Prime Minister of Italy for six years, from 1887 to 1891, and again from 1893 to 1896, and was the first prime minister from Southern Italy. Crispi was internationally famous and often mentioned along with world statesmen such as Otto von Bismarck, William Ewart Gladstone, and Lord Salisbury.
Antonio Starrabba, Marquess of Rudinì was an Italian statesman, Prime Minister of Italy between 1891 and 1892 and from 1896 until 1898.
Agostino Depretis was an Italian statesman and politician. He served as Prime Minister of Italy for several stretches between 1876 and 1887, and was leader of the Historical Left parliamentary group for more than a decade. He is the fourth-longest serving Prime Minister in Italian history, after Benito Mussolini, Giovanni Giolitti and Silvio Berlusconi, and at the time of his death he was the longest-served. Depretis is widely considered one of the most powerful and important politicians in Italian history.
The Fasci Siciliani, short for Fasci Siciliani dei Lavoratori, were a popular movement of democratic and socialist inspiration that arose in Sicily in the years between 1889 and 1894. The Fasci gained the support of the poorest and most exploited classes of the island by channeling their frustration and discontent into a coherent programme based on the establishment of new rights. Consisting of a jumble of traditionalist sentiment, religiosity, and socialist consciousness, the movement reached its apex in the summer of 1893, when new conditions were presented to the landowners and mine owners of Sicily concerning the renewal of sharecropping and rental contracts.
Rosario Garibaldi Bosco was an Italian Republican-inspired socialist, politician and writer from Sicily. He was one of the leaders of the Fasci Siciliani, a popular movement of democratic and socialist inspiration in 1891-1894.
Giuseppe De Felice Giuffrida was an Italian socialist politician and journalist from Sicily. He is considered to be one of the founders of the Fasci Siciliani a popular movement of democratic and socialist inspiration. As the first socialist mayor of Catania in Sicily, from 1902 until 1914, he became the protagonist of a kind of municipal socialism.
Nicola Barbato was a Sicilian medical doctor, socialist, and politician. He was one of the national leaders of the Fasci Siciliani dei Lavoratori a popular movement of democratic and socialist inspiration in 1891–1894, and perhaps might have been the ablest among them according to the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm.
General elections were held in Italy on 23 November 1890, with a second round of voting on 30 November. The "ministerial" left-wing bloc emerged as the largest in Parliament, winning 401 of the 508 seats. As in 1886, the elections were held using small multi-member constituencies with between two and five seats.
General elections were held in Italy on 6 November 1892, with a second round of voting on 13 November. The "ministerial" left-wing bloc emerged as the largest in Parliament, winning 323 of the 508 seats. The electoral system reverted to the pre-1882 method of using single-member constituencies with second round run-offs.
General elections were held in Italy on 26 May 1895, with a second round of voting on 2 June. The "ministerial" left-wing bloc remained the largest in Parliament, winning 334 of the 508 seats.
General elections were held in Italy on 3 June 1900, with a second round of voting on 10 June. The "ministerial" left-wing bloc remained the largest in Parliament, winning 296 of the 508 seats.
Events from the year 1893 in Italy.
Events from the year 1894 in Italy.
Events from the year 1895 in Italy.
Events from the year 1896 in Italy.
Events from the year 1891 in Italy.
The Right group, later called Historical Right by historians to distinguish it from the right-wing groups of the 20th century, was an Italian conservative parliamentary group during the second half of the 19th century. After 1876, the Historical Right constituted the Constitutional opposition toward the left governments. It originated in the convergence of the most liberal faction of the moderate right and the moderate wing of the democratic left. The party included men from heterogeneous cultural, class, and ideological backgrounds, ranging from British-American individualist liberalism to Neo-Hegelian liberalism as well as liberal-conservatives, from strict secularists to more religiously-oriented reformists. Few prime ministers after 1852 were party men; instead they accepted support where they could find it, and even the governments of the Historical Right during the 1860s included leftists in some capacity.
The Liberal Constitutional Party was a political party in Italy, born to represent the liberal-conservative and anti-Transformist wing of the Historical Right. Their members were usually labeled as Constitutionals or Liberal-Conservatives, especially during the leadership of Rudinì and Sonnino.
The Dissident Left, commonly named The Pentarchy for its five leaders, was a progressive and radical parliamentary group active in Italy during the last decades of the 19th century.
Events from the year 1897 in Italy
