Gaetano Salvemini and the Adriatic question from the First World War to the Treaty of Rapallo

This essay intends to investigate the political thought and action of Gaetano Salvemini regarding the "Adriatic question” - the relations between Italy and the South Slavs during the Great War. The end of his militancy in the Italian Socialist Party coincided with his decision to support the positions of democratic irredentism. The participation of Italy in the war would have realized the process of national unification, with the annexation of Trentino and Venezia Giulia, regions inhabited mainly by an Italian population. In the final phase of the conflict, Salvemini’s polemic was directed against the Italian Foreign Minister, Sidney Sonnino, who was accused of hostility towards the nascent Yugoslav nationalism. According to Salvemini, Italy should have come to terms with the nascent Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, even at the cost of renouncing the aspirations over Istria and Dalmatia, promised to Italy in the Treaty of London, signed on April 1915. The defeat of Sonnino's policy at the Paris Peace Conference was welcomed with satisfaction by Salvemini, who then applauded the signing of the Treaty of Rapallo, on November 1920, with which Italy and the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes solved the dispute over the common border.