Electoral results
| Chamber of Deputies | |||||
| Election year | Votes | % | Seats | +/− | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1880 | 70,479 (3rd) | 19.7 | 119 / 508 | – | Giuseppe Zanardelli |
| 1882 | 45,282 (4th) | 3.7 | 19 / 508 |  100 | Giuseppe Zanardelli |
| 1886 | 71,632 (4th) | 5.1 | 26 / 508 |  7 | Giuseppe Zanardelli |
Dissident Left Sinistra dissidente | |
|---|---|
| Leaders | Giuseppe Zanardelli Francesco Crispi Benedetto Cairoli Giovanni Nicotera Alfredo Baccarini |
| Founded | 1877 |
| Dissolved | 1887 |
| Split from | Historical Left |
| Merged into | Historical Left |
| Headquarters | Palazzo Montecitorio, Rome |
| Ideology | Progressivism Protectionism |
| Political position | Left-wing |
The Dissident Left (Italian : Sinistra dissidente), commonly named The Pentarchy (Italian : La Pentarchia) for its five leaders, was a progressive and radical parliamentary group active in Italy during the last decades of the 19th century. [1]
It emerged in 1880 from the left-wing of the two dominant parliamentary groups, the Historical Left, in opposition to the trasformismo of Agostino Depretis. In the 1880 general election, the party won 19.7% of the vote and 119 seats in the Chamber of Deputies. [2]
The Pentarchy was a group formed led by Francesco Crispi and composed also by Giuseppe Zanardelli, Benedetto Cairoli, Giovanni Nicotera, Agostino Magliani, Alfredo Beccarini and Gabriele D'Annunzio. Initially split from the Left in 1880, this group re-merged in to the Left in 1887. [3]
The Dissident Left supported statist and progressive internal policies, expansionism and Germanophile foreign policies, as well as protectionist economy policies. Most of these policies were to be implemented by Francesco Crispi when he became Prime Minister in the 1890s. [4]
| Chamber of Deputies | |||||
| Election year | Votes | % | Seats | +/− | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1880 | 70,479 (3rd) | 19.7 | 119 / 508 | – | Giuseppe Zanardelli |
| 1882 | 45,282 (4th) | 3.7 | 19 / 508 | 100 | Giuseppe Zanardelli |
| 1886 | 71,632 (4th) | 5.1 | 26 / 508 | 7 | Giuseppe Zanardelli |
Giovanni Giolitti was an Italian statesman. He was the Prime Minister of Italy five times between 1892 and 1921. After Benito Mussolini, he is the second-longest serving Prime Minister in Italian history. A prominent leader of the Historical Left and the Liberal Union, he is widely considered one of the most powerful and important politicians in Italian history; due to his dominant position in Italian politics, Giolitti was accused by critics of being an authoritarian leader and a parliamentary dictator.
Giuseppe Zanardelli was an Italian jurist and political figure. He served as the Prime Minister of Italy from 15 February 1901 to 3 November 1903. An eloquent orator, he was also a Grand Master freemason. Zanardelli, representing the bourgeoisie from Lombardy, personified the classical 19th-century liberalism, committed to suffrage expansion, anticlericalism, civil liberties, free trade and laissez-faire economics. Throughout his long political career, he was among the most ardent advocates of freedom of conscience and divorce.
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 Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury.
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. Depretis is widely considered one of the most powerful and important politicians in Italian history.
Giovanni Nicotera was an Italian patriot and politician. His surname is pronounced [niˈkɔːtera], with the stress on the second syllable.
Liberalism and radicalism have played a role in the political history of Italy since the country's unification, started in 1861 and largely completed in 1871, and currently influence several leading political parties.
The Historical Far Left, originally known as Far Left, Radical Extreme, simply The Extreme, or Party of Democracy, was a left-wing parliamentary group and coalition of Radical, Republican and Socialist politicians in Italy during the second half of the 19th century. Formerly known as the extreme wing of the Historical Left before the unification of Italy, it became a separate group when the more moderate branch of the Left accepted the leadership of the House of Savoy to build the new Italian state.
The Banca Romana scandal surfaced in January 1893 in Italy over the bankruptcy of the Banca Romana, one of the six national banks authorised at the time to issue currency. The scandal was the first of many Italian corruption scandals, and discredited both ministers and parliamentarians, in particular those of the Historical Left and was comparable to the Panama Canal Scandal that was shaking France at the time, threatening the constitutional order. The crisis prompted a new banking law, tarnished the prestige of the Prime Ministers Francesco Crispi and Giovanni Giolitti and prompted the collapse of the latter's government in November 1893.
General elections were held in Italy on 16 May 1880, with a second round of voting on 23 May.
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 election was held using small multi-member constituencies with between two and five seats.
Events from the year 1893 in Italy.
Events from the year 1894 in Italy.
Events from the year 1895 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 Anglo-Saxon 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 Left group, later called Historical Left by historians to distinguish it from the left-wing groups of the 20th century, was a liberal and reformist parliamentary group in Italy during the second half of the 19th century. The members of the Left were also known as Democrats or Ministerials. The Left was the dominant political group in the Kingdom of Italy from the 1870s until its dissolution in the early 1910s.
The Liberal Constitutional Party was political party in Italy, born from the ashes of the Historical Right to represent the liberal-conservative and anti-Transformist wing of the Italian Parliament. Their members were usually labeled as Constitutionals or Liberal-Conservatives, especially during the leadership of Rudinì and Sonnino.
The Dictatorship of Garibaldi or Dictatorial Government of Sicily was the provisional executive that Giuseppe Garibaldi appointed to govern the territory of Sicily during the Expedition of the Thousand in 1860. It governed in opposition to the Bourbons of Naples.
Events from the year 1900 in Italy.
Events from the year 1901 in Italy.
Events from the year 1890 in Italy.
 19th-century political groups in Italy | |||||
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