Renzo de Felice - History

Professor Renzo De Felice is one of the greatest historians of contemporary Italy. His work on the interpretation of Fascism, translated into several languages and published in its seventh Italian edition in 1976, made him internationally renowned and sparked a long polemic in Italy.

Speech given in honour of Professor Renzo de Felice on October 3, 1980

"By conferring the title of Doctor Honoris Causa on Professor Renzo De Felice, the University of Angers is not only recognising the value of one of the greatest historians of contemporary Italy. It is also re-establishing the French university as a centre of excellence in teaching and research, in accordance with its original purpose.

Renzo De Felice was born in Rieti in 1929 and is a disciple of illustrious masters. He was a pupil in Rome of the historian Frederico Chabod, to whom we owe, thanks to a collection of lectures given at the Sorbonne, one of the few works rich in new perspectives on the disputed period of Italy between the wars. Professor De FELICE initially concentrated his research on the Italian aspects of the French Revolution, publishing works on the sale of National Assets under the Roman Republic and highly instructive notes on revolutionary mysticism. This initial phase of his work concluded with several works on the Italian Jacobins, one of which was written in collaboration with Delio Cantimori, another eminent figure in Italian historical science, to whom Renzo De FELICE dedicated the first volumes of his monumental biography of Mussolini.

Between 1965 and 1974, in his large volumes published by Einaudi: Mussolini the Revolutionary, Mussolini the Fascist, Mussolini the Dictator, Renzo De FELICE contributed a vast amount of previously unknown information to our knowledge of contemporary Italy. Beyond the character of the dictator, it is the whole history of the peninsula in the first half of this century that is thus renewed by the author's work of remnants. Renzo De Felice sweeps away a number of recurrent ideas, opens up new avenues of research and consolidates his now famous theses on fascism as a bourgeois revolution and on the organisation of mass consensus in the totalitarian regimes of the inter-war period. 

Professor of the History of Political Teaching at the Faculty of the Magisterium in Rome, he was appointed Professor of the History of Political Parties at the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Rome in 1971. His work on the interpretation of Fascism, translated into several languages and published in its seventh Italian edition in 1976, made him internationally renowned. Finally, his "Interview on Fascism", published in 1975, triggered a long polemic in Italy: the "Defelician" theses forced not only Italian intellectuals but also the country's political class to question not only their interwar past but also the birth and development of the democratic regime since the Second World War.

One of the merits of these theses is that they draw a useful distinction for historical research between the "Fascist movement" of its origins and the "Fascist regime" of its maturity. An important part of Renzo De Felice's work is devoted to this first period: he restores the true political dimension of Gabriele D'Annunzio's expedition to Fiume by publishing the poet's correspondence with Mussolini and with the revolutionary syndicalist De Ambris. But with the study of the 1930s, the Ethiopian War and the approach of the Second World War, the political historian became a specialist in international relations. Renzo De Felice had already drawn attention to the issue of South Tyrol in Italian-German relations. He also wrote a remarkable study on the secret relations between Hitler and Mussolini before the latter came to power. The numerous articles he devoted to these problems between 1936 and 1945, and the role he played in the Commission for the Publication of Italian Diplomatic Documents, suggest the immense interest of the two volumes that will soon crown the edifice of his work. 

Renzo de Felice has been blessed with all these scientific mementos. But by honouring him today, the University of Angers is not only recognising the work of a foreign historian, but also addressing a regrettable shortcoming in French historical scholarship, which, by leaving the contemporary history of the peninsula to non-specialists, condemns itself to ignoring the contributions of Italian scholarship and sterilising its own research in this field. The award of the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa to Professor Renzo De Felice is an attempt to remedy this situation."

The University of Angers awarded Professor Renzo de Felice the Doctor Honoris Causa title on October 2, 1980