Suggested citation format:

Taylor, Paul Michael

1988 Anthropology and the racial doctrine in Italy before 1940. Antropologia Contemporanea. 11 (1-2): 45-58.

ANTROPOLOGIA CONTEMPORANEA Vol. 11, n. 1-2: 45-58, 1988

P.M. Taylor Anthropology and the «Racial Doctrine» in

Dqartment o/ Anthropology
National Museum
of NtUura/ History
Smithsonian Institution
Washington, D.C. 20560 USA
Italy before 1940
As a preliminary contribution to the litde-studied history of anthro-
pology during the Fascist period, this study attempts to interpret a
microcosmic situation - the abrogation in 1937 of the charters of
both the Roman and the Florentine Societies of Anthropology, and
the subsequent transformations of leadership and activities of those
societies. The results illuminate the history of anthropology, and the
differences that had developed between schools of t_hought represent·
ed at those two Societies. They also illuminate the hlstory of Fascism,
whose effects on anthropology, and uses of anthropology, seem more
closely related to expediencies of the moment and changes in individ-
ual Ministers of Education than to any continuous, coherent philoso-
phical mission.

With few exceptions (see esp. Cavazza 1987, the anthropology of..the Fascist era has
never been systematically studied in Italy, Germany, or in any of the allied countries. Mario
Einaudi (1968) stated:
No adequate review of the fascist era, from the point of view of the social scientist, has been
undertaken since 1945. The literature has tended to be reminiscent, episodic, and introspective.

(Einaudi, 1968: 340)

Renato Treves, in his review of the development of Italian sociology, dismisses

sociology under Fascism as unworthy of discussion:
When one considers the general situation [in Italy] after 1925, and one realizes that on those
topics direcdy connected to the politics of the dominant regime it was no longer possible to sustain
opinions different from those established and imposed by the State, then it is evident that our task
here is not to consider studies carried out in this period; for such studies, despite their apparent
sociological character, belong rather in the field of apologetics and propaganda than in that of Science
and philosophy.
(Treves, 1959: 194)

Yet while sociology was, according to Treves, actively discouraged throughout the
Fascist era, anthropology was simply ignored as a distinct discipline until 1936, when a
series of changes began which led to increased funding of anthropological research, wider
diffusion of anthropological information, and the opening of as many as nine new professor-
ship positions (cattedre) in one year. In short, an «official» anthropology emerged which
could give a scientific basis to the Racist Policies which Mussolini, following Hitler's model,
introduced into Italy by 1938.
This paper, then, is not the systematic study of Fascist anthropology that has yet to
appear. This essay is instead of the type Stocking (1968: 270) calls «one [which] attempts to
wring the maximum amount of historical meaning from the explication of a microcosmic
situation».

It Editritt D Sedicesimo · Firenu ISSN 0)92·90.n

46 TAYLOR

The Event and its Ahermath

The «microcosmic situation» occurred in March, 1937. Since 1893 there had been two
major schools of thought in Italian anthropology, one centered at Rome's Societa Romana di
Antropo/ogitl, and an older school at Florence, the Societa Italiana per J'Antropo/ogitl e Ia
Etnologia. Throughout 1936 no reunions of the Florentine Society had been held; and on
December 29, 1936, Bindo de Vecchi, the president of the Florentine Society, died. His
death was commemorated at the reunion of February 27, 1937, a few days after Mussolini's
visit to Germany had cemented the Italian-German alliance. Nello Beccari, vice-president
of the Florentine Society, presided over the meeting; but although he would normally have
held elections and become president, the meeting was entirely devoted to a commemoration
of Bindo de Vecchi.
On March 15, 1937, a statute of King Victor Emmanuel II (signed by the Minister of
Education Giuseppe Bottai), abrogated the charters of the Florentine and Roman societies,
and empowered the Minister of Education to draw up new charters. In the case of the
Roman Society, whose founder and President Giuseppe Sergi had also died on October 17,
1936, one gets the impression that the changes were not significant; the same men would
have led the society anyway. Yet in Florence, the ministerial decree of July 16, 1937,
brought a non-member, Ignazio Fazzari, to the presidency, who instituted a series of
changes which allowed the Florentine Society to work closely with Fascist policy-makers.
The passage of this statute, and the subsequent transformation of the Florentine Society,
form an important unexplained chapter in the history of anthropology, and illuminate the
nature of Fascism as well.
I shall discuss below the nature of these societies, for they were until 1945 the major
institutional setting in which anthropological work was carried out. We must also examine
why anthropology seemed to be «officially» ignored until1936. Perhaps the major value of
systematic historical studies of specific disciplines during the Fascist era involves clarifying
the philosophical bases of Fascism itself, for which I shall suggest moving our historical
focus from the early neo-Hegelian theoreticians of Fascism to individual Ministers of
Education. Thus I would see the rather sudden interest in anthropology around the years
1936-37 in terms of new contingencies (especially the war with Ethiopia and the rapproche-
ment with Hitler) which required the elaboration of a new «Scientific» and philosophical
basis for Fascism. In other words, anthropology helped support a new conception of the
Italian Race which had not been necessary before. Furthermore, this change in Fascism was
not uncommon, for it often seems that Fascism's primary «philosophical bases» were
contingency and opportunism, to which other philosophies took temporary second places. H
more historical studies of specific social sciences were made, made, perhaps they would
support these conclusions. In fact, a study of this kind may have more to offer historians of
Fascism than historians of anthropology.
Finally, 1-shall examine the changes that took place in the Florentine Society after
1937. In many respects the Roman Society was closer to the ideology of Fascism before
1936; yet from 1937 on, it is the Florentine Society that becomes most mobilized for war.
An interesting aspect of the changeover is that the philosophical orientation of the Roman
school was transferred to Florence (in fact, one of Fazzari's first actions was to improve
relations between the two schools, and to make the leaders of the Roman school members of
the Florentine Society), so that the «old» Florentine school was simply «truncated» in this
period. Thus, the Idealist (or «Spiritualist») tradition became the dominant orientation
throughout Italy, although only in Florence did it become so completely subservient to
contemporary politics.
We may briefly summarize the characteristics of Italian anthropology from 1937 to
 I
!
ANTHROPOLOGY AND TiiE <dlAGIAL DOCTRINE» etc. 47

1945 with the following ten points: (1) the People (Popolo, or «Society») becomes identified
with Race (razza); both are seen as something really existing which the classifier must find.
(2) Studies of racial superiority and racial differences are emphasized. (3) There is great
concern over the racial purity of the Italian people. (4) The exact boundaries between
Caucasian/non-Caucasian and Aryan/non-Aryan become important questions; (5) «Spiritua-
lism» overshadows «Experimentalism»; there is less concern for experimental accuracy. (6)
The search for «synthesis of opposites» is taken to extremes (this is also true of contempor-
ary Fascist rhetoric); there is a tendency to see widely disparate philosophies and theories as
supporting the same conclusions. (8) In Florence, there is much more active involvement in
the popularization of anthropology with public lectures and displays. (9) Consequently,
there is a gradual change in membership of the Florentine Society; new members are often
not scientists, but theologians or colonial officers. Finally (10) the effort to apply anthropo-
logy to the problems of colonial Africa continues to grow as it had throughout the 1920•s
and •30's, until Italy loses her colonies.
All these factors worked together, not always consistently with one another. For
example, a typical form of «applied anthropology» in colonial Africa sponsored by the
Florentine Society might involve a search for a synthesis between British and French
versions of colonialism, which would respect the nature of the «Peoples» involved; assuming
that the «Peoples» were physically and culturally distinguishable, then using everything
from blood types to belief systems to derive the «correct» groupings, which would alternate-
ly be called «races» and «peoples». The results were often presented to the public at local
«colonial meetings» sponsored by the Ministry of Popular Culture (which also subsidized
the publication of the Florentine Society's journal, the Archivio per /"Antropologia e Ia
Etnologia).

The Institutional Setting:

The Societies of Anthropology and their Journals

Historically the greatest similarity between the Roman and Florentine traditions had
probably been the structures of the Societies themselves. Since these were, in effect, the
centers of anthropological research, their rather unusual organization should be described
to give a feeling for the institutional setting in which research was carried out.
Individual Italian researchers and professors have hardly ever maintained important
professional loyalties to the institutions in which they teach. There is still relatively little
«Upward mobility» within universities; so that promotions, raises, and research opportuni-
ties can be gotten only by «horizontal» mobility among institutions. Therefore the Societies
of Anthropology had members from every major Italian city, and whatever happened at a
given university, hospital, institute of anatomy, etc., one remained loyal to his colleagues in
the Society. Apparently this commitment was taken very seriously until1945. For example,
those few people who could not be present at the Florentine Society's meetings sent excuses
to the President which were published in the Society's journal.
Each Society probably numbered between 70 and 120 regular members every year
from 1920 to 1945. The Florentine Society also had «corresponding members» in other
countries and in the colonies, who received its journal; and «honorary members»- usually
about twenty famous (foreign) leaders of anthropology, chosen more for their wide recogni-
tion than for achievement within any single tradition.
The journal of the Florentine Society, the Archivio per I'Antropologia e Ia Etnologia
(here abbreviated ApA) has been published yearly almost without interruption since 1870.
It consists of a series of original articles, followed by a long section of book reviews in which
48 TAYLOR

a great deal of material published in the previous year is summarized and criticized. The
structure of these reviews is generally loose enough that a reviewer who happens to become
interested in, say, an unpublished doctoral dissertation from the University of Pennsyl-
vania, or an article published three years previously in the South African Journal of Science,
may summarize and review these as well (e.g., Pratesi, 1938; Cipriani, 1937).
These summary reviews are common in Italian scientific journals, and probably form
an important source for the diffusion of information in a country which speaks a «minority»
language and where libraries were sometimes not up-to-date. Thus, in a study of Paolo
Mantegazza (Taylor, 1987), I attempted to arrive at Mantegazza's position on a wide range
of issues by examining hundreds of his reviews. This technique may also be used with
caution to discover the statistically most important questions of the time. For example, in
1935 there were only three reviews of publications on «Racial Psychology» or on cross-
breeding and other inter-racial problems (excluding descriptive physical anthropological
studies), out of a total of 43 reviews (7%). Yet in the meager volume issued in 1936, the
year before the charter's abrogation, 7 of 14 reviews (50%) fit this description. From 1936
to 1945, in connection with the new government policy of racism, readers were kept
regularly informed of the literature on these subjects.
Finally, each volume of the Archivio and of the Roman Rivista di Antropologia contains
the minutes of the meetings of the previous year, often including summaries of discussion
and debate following the presentation of papers. The minutes of the meetings are the major
key to the larger political implications of the scientific addresses and activities.
Both journals are still being published with rather large circulations, although the older
tradition of the Florentine School, so far as I can tell, was effectively terminated in the
Fascist period. By December of 1941, at a ceremony to commemorate the centenary of the
birth of Giuseppe Sergi (founder of the Roman School), Renata Biasutti spoke «in the name
of the old anthropological school of Florence, of which, unfortunately, I may consider
myself the last survivor or descendant even in a collateral line.» (ApA, v. 71: 175).

Anthropology and the «Philosophy» of Fascism:

To the Racist Policies of 1938
Our program is simple. We wish to govern Italy. They ask us for programs, but there are already
too many.
It is not programs that are wanted for the salvation of Italy, but men and will power.
Benito Mussolini (1932)

«Fascism» is not a doctrine, nor does it have an elaborate philosophical basis. The
word itself derives from the Italian «fascia» (group, gathering); so that the more abstract
«fascismo» originally meant something like «togetherness.» Kohn (1974: 183) calls it a
«technique for gaining and retaining power by violence, [which] with astonishing flexibi-
lity... subordinated all questions of program to this one aim.»
Certain themes, however, run through the Fascist phenomenon. Any philosophical
formulations offered to explain Fascism needed to take these more pervasive manifestations
into account. Kohn (ibid.) calls these themes an «attitude of mind»:
From the beginning Fascism was dominated by a definite attitude of mind that exalted the
fighting spirit, military discipline, ruthlessness, and action and rejected all ethical motives as weaken-
ing the resoluteness of will. Stressing the irrational and instincts and activism, fascism insisted that the
strong will always prevail over the weak, the more resolute over the irresolute.
AN'niROPOLOGY AND ntE «RAGIAL DOCTRINE» etc. 49

Eugen Weber offers a particularly insightful analysis of the failure of Fascism to arrive
at any consistent philosophical basis or at any complete program:
Mussolini's movement and Mussolini's order, then, appear as the prototype of modern Fascism,
which is in effect an opportunistic activism inspired by dissatisfaction with the existing order, but
unwilling or unable to proclaim a precise doctrine of its own and emphasizing rather the idea of
change, as such, and the seizure of power. Difficult though it may be to conceive, such inspiration can
inspire a very powerful impetus for a revolutionary movement, the effect of positive statements in
politics being generally divisive and that of negative ones unifying. Many a revolution has been carried
out by people who did not know what they wanted, but knew very well what they opposed.
(Weber, 1964: 28)

Thus we must avoid immediately identifying Fascism with the neo-Hegelian Idealism
of Giovanni Gentile (Mussolini's first Minister of Education), which was only one of many
doctrinal bases it used at varying «historical moments.» In Mussolini's own philosophy, all
theoretical considerations were subservient to the «inexorable dynamics of the factual
situation.)> It is, he contended, the role of the Leader (ll Duce) to master this dynamic
process. And, in contrast to Marxism, there is no «fulfillment of history» in Fascism.
«Instead, all history is incessant struggle, and the struggle itseH is welcomed for its own
ethical value.» (Kohn, 1974: 185).
The «dynamic» and opportunistic nature of Fascism kept it from generally introducing
fundamental philosophical («foundational») changes into academic life or scientific re-
search. The proud motto of many Fascist organizations was Me ne frego (stronger than the
English «I don't give a damn»); and while the motto could be twisted to mean a call to War
for the sake of War, it hardly indicated a direct concern for the speculations of academi-
cians. Yet after the Lateran Pact with the Vatican in February, 1929, fresh conflicts with
various Church groups unsure of their status in relation to the Fascist government soon
required some comprehensive statement of Fascist «doctrine.» Thus it is only in 1932 {ten
years after coming to power) that Mussolini, feeling the necessity for some wider philoso-
phical basis for Fascism, turned to the neo-Hegelian philosopher Giovanni Gentile.
These developments set the intellectual milieu of Italian anthropology from 1922 to
1945. More specifically, they indicate why anthropology as a distinct discipline was ignored
during the early scholastic reforms. Much research remains to be done on the relationship
between Fascism and each intellectual discipline in its historical context. Yet it is in this
area that studies of specialized disciplines such as anthropology will be invaluable. Why
were some faculties and university positions «purged» in 1924 while others waited virtually
unaffected until 1936?
The answer may lie in switching the focus of Fascist studies away from Mussolini or
«Fascism» as any kind of coherent philosophical system, towards individual Ministers of
Education, who were most directly concerned with the universities and with scientific
research and the fine arts. In a sense, Mussolini may have thought of Ministers of
Education as changeable government functionaries who could bring new philosophical bases
to Fascism; who might <<re-invent» its philosophical foundations, while not remaining in
office long enough to effectively «structure» an essentially dynamic movement.
While I would not insist on this sort of conscious plan on the part of Mussolini, I think
it is clear that this was the effect of periodic shakeups in the Ministry of Education.
Further, Mussolini himself had little to gain by taking very clear stands on philosophical
issues. For example, Dennis Mack Smith (1972: 660) discusses the reception of Fascist
explanations for racist persecutions beginning in 1936:
The public reaction to this Fascist line of action is not easy to determine. At any rate it is clear
that without the constant cooperation of most Italians Fascism would not have had such success ...
 TAYLOR

This does not mean that they WCl'C blind and fanatic enthusiasts, since within the empty official
rhetoric there were so many incohcrencies and haH-truths that people could choose to their own tastes
any interpretation of Fascism, especially since not a few aspects of it appeared quite innocent.

(Smith, 1972: 660)

Once we have switched ollr perspective from Mussolini to the Ministers of Education,
we must also realize that each Minister of Education has ideas about Fascism that required
government control in slightly different areas. Giovanni Gentile could «reform» the
faculties of philosophy and political science, but <<his» doctrine of Fascism would not have
been interested in anthropology. Giuseppe Bottai, on the other hand, abrogated the
charters of both anthropological societies shortly after coming into office. The new charters
gave him the authority to appoint the officers of both Societies, and to refuse membership
to anyone; they also required that he approve publications and parliamentary motions of the
Societies. The same Bottai later introduced some of the laws which collectively came to be
called the Racist Policies (Politica Razzista).
When we look car<;fully at the racist studies in anthropology after 1936, we have the
impression that the Florentine anthropologists are first devising the scientific bases of
racism, which only later became State law. For example, a series of conferences in March,
1938, under the auspices of the Florentine Society, suggested many of the Racist policies
which were enacted in October of that year (see ApA v. 69 p. 339-40). We might generalize
this to suggest the (very tentative) hypothesis that Ministers of Education «reformed» those
areas of intellectual activity which required a Fascist doctrine; then allowed the doctrine
itself to develop as a result of their reforms. In the case of the Racist policies, how else
could we explain Bottai's initial disapproval of some aspects of Racist policy, until by 1938
he had become «converted» to Racism enough to introduce legislation removing Jews from
university positions. The doctrine of Racism was not imposed by Bottai; it was required by
the historical circumstance of Italy's rapprochement with Germany (which I shall discuss
briefly below); but it was elaborated and given its scientific or «doctrinal» basis by
anthropologists.
We have seen so far that there was little direct Fascist influence on the discipline of
anthropology before 1936; and that our focus should not be on «Fascism» as a coherent
philosophy, but rather on the changing situation which brought different men to the
Ministry of Education, and required doctrines of Fascism to be continually re-defined. Two
things still need to be discussed: (1) the nature of less direct influences of the Fascist
«attitude of mind» on anthropology as a discipline before 1936, and (2) the particular
historical situation which required the development of an Italian doctrine of Racism.
It is an exaggeration to say that anthropology remained unaffected by Fascism until
1936. Yet the intervention was indirect; and came primarily in two ways. First, the
constant rhetoric of Fascism pervaded every aspect of Italian life with the «attitude of
mind» discussed above, including Gentile's nee-Hegelian Idealism, which had been growing
in popularity since long before 1922.
Secondly, Fascism undoubtedly affected the discipline of anthropology through stu-
dents themselves. Many researchers were also university professors. Wiskemann (1969)
describes the chaotic state of universities in the Fascist era:

For many years school children, but perhaps most of all university student, were ardent
enthusiasts for the Fascist regime ... Part of the fun of being a young Fascist was that the Fascist
authorities egged one on to criticise one's schoolmasters or university professors if they lacked
enthusiasm for the Party. The student journal called, thanks to Mussolini's doggerel, ubro e

,..
ANnfROPOLOGY AND THE «<lAGIAL DOCT'RINE» etc. 51

Moschetto: Fascislll Perfetto [«A book and a rifle for the perfect Fascist»], furiously criticised the
surviving liberalism of some professors.
(Wiskemann, 1969: 41-43)

One apparent reaction to this sort of pressure was to go «Underground» in trivial or

speculative studies which, while not hurting the regime, could not be politically or
economically useful to anyone. While I cannot offer any direct proof for this hypothesis, I
think that by looking through the Florentine Archivio systematically from 1922 through
1936, one gets the impression that certain people such as David Constantini, Nello
Puccioni, or other members of the old Florentine School were no longer generalizing their
studies, or discussing the implications of their work. The anthropologists who leaned
toward Fascism were writing the more profound, more assertive, more wide-ranging
studies. Nevertheless, certain studies still quietly point up a profound distrust of the
Zeitgeist of their time. Costantini's (1932) article introduced the word «behaviorismo•> into
Italian, which offered an alternative to the State-oriented or Collectivity-oriented psycho-
logy popular under Fascism, and which must have further aggravated Fascists by its
unsuccessful attempt to introduce a linguistic impurity into the Italian language. (Behavior-
ism was, in fact, re-introduced after the war as «comportamentalismo»).
The same phenomenon continues after 1936. G.L. Sera concentrated on very particu-
laristic studies while writing cautious articles against drawing any conclusions about racial
groupings:
Far from believing... that human races are well known ... , we must say that knowledge of
contemporary races is very, very approximative; and their system of classification is, more than
anything else, impressionistic.
(Sera, 1938: 257)

Renato Biasutti, who called himseH the last survivor of the «old anthropological school
of Florentine,» withdrew from active research for years to write a complete compendium of
«Peoples and Races of the Earth» (Biasutti 1940), a series of books which has frequently
been revised and re-issued since it first appeared.
By 1936, however, it was becoming clear that the Fascist government would need a
particular sort of anthropology, because Italy was beginning its Racist policies in imitation
of Hitler's Germany. This area of Fascist history has been well well studied, and the origins
of the Politica Rauistll, beginning with the first anti-Semitic legislation of 1938, are
succinctly summarized by Elizabeth Wiskemann in the rather lengthy quote which I have
reproduced below:
It was in 1938 that Mussolini for the first time incorporated anti-Semitism as part of Fascist
doctrine. Less than anywhere in Europe was any anti-Semitic feeling to be found in Italy ... In the early
days of Fascism, when all sorts of fantastic extremisms were being aired, occasionally an anti-Semitic
phrase had been heard... But this was exceptional... Although a Jew like Carlo Roselli had been an
anti-Fascist leader and a good many Jews had been freemasons, other Jews had supported Fascism. For
years Mussolini had taken the line that it would be as fatal to quarrel with the Jews as with the
Catholic Church, and ... in the spring of 1933 he had tried to dissuade Hitler from anti-Jewish
measures. Fascism had been defined as nothing to do with race.
By 1936 Mussolini haJ begun to show signs of a change. For one thing the Ethiopian War made him
more aware of questions concerning relations between races of different color. For another, he was
increasingly eager to win the support of the Arab world. There can be no doubt, however, that the
chief cause was the Rome-Berlin axis ...
There is no evidence that Hitler ever exerted any direct pressure on Mussolini about the Italian
Jews ... But his visit to Italy in May 1938 seemed to set the seal upon the mastery he had gained over
Mussolini in the previous September ...
 52 TAYLOR

It was not until a few months later that Mussolini introduced anti-Semitic Legislation. It was
presented as a continuation of his much-vaunted demographic policy. This had hitherto rested on the
simple assumption that numbers give strength and the tacit implication that an over-populated country
can be excused for expanding into someone else's territory. To the care and help for pregnant women
and... mothers of large families, to the cult of personal fitness in the paramilitary youth formations,
there must now in 1938 be added consideration for the fitness of the Italian race (whatever that might
be). The Italian race must in future not be corrupted by racial mixture. And in this context the Italian
Jews were suddenly branded as not Italian at all ...
[There can be] little doubt that the Italians as a nation condemned anti-Semitism, and felt
humiliated by, as they saw it, already becoming a German satellite. Many of them had been proud
since 1933 that Fascism was not racially intolerant like Nazi Germany ... Even most of the leading
Fascists were privately displeased by the introduction of anti-Semitism.
(Wiskemann, 1969: 68-71)

By the beginning of 1939, a year which may be considered the climax of Italian
Fascism, Jews were forbidden to teach in all State Schools (upon Bottai's proposal), and
expelled from academic bodies, and finally expelled from all state jobs, from the Party, from
the corporations, from banking and insurance, with only a few exceptions.
Aside from the political importance of the Rome-Berlin rapprochement, the ideological
change which began in 1936 was quite disturbing. Fascism had traditionally seen the State
(or the People) as the predominant political and historical unit which evolves, according to
current neo-Hegelian notions, in a progressive self-realization through a dialectical process
of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. Now the «Race» had to be fit into that notion, and the
superiority of Italianita needed a scientific basis. Furthermore, anthropology as the science
which studied Races had to become a popular and an applied science. Only in this new
context can the significance of the new problems, and their political implications, be
understood.
The rapprochement with German racism can be quite precisely measured in the book
reviews by Lidio Cipriani, who had been Secretary of the Florentine Society since 1931.
Cipriani, like many of the Fascist leaders of the Florentine School, had been trained in the
Roman tradition. The fact that he became secretary of the Florentine Society testifies to
the tendency of that group to accept a wide diversity of opinion, rather than becoming a
society closed only to professionals trained in the tradition of Mantegazza. One gets the
impression that Cipriani's career was a prolonged attempt to please people in power, a task
made more difficult by Fascism's lack a coherent stance on most issues.
As early as 193 3, Cipriani had been far off the mark in predicting the most favorable
opinions to embrace. In the review of a book by C. Gini, Cipriani declares:
Peoples, as well as individuals, follow their own cycles of evolution, whose mechanism is
grounded upon the diverse growth of social classes.
(Cipriani, 1933: 63)

He has properly identified the neo-Hegelian distinction between «organic» and «super-
organic» evolution, but has misunderstood the «correct» mechanism. Marxism sees the
social class as a distinct historically evolving unit - that unit for Fascism is the State.
Cipriani continues his rhetorical wandering by suggesting that «great nations generally
come out of mixtures of races, which cause a vital revival of the blood.» He soon changed
both positions as officially imposed doctrines about Racial Purity shifted.
In 1934, Cipriani attacks the «all too ardent political passion» which leads writers to
hold the thesis of Germanic racial superiority Ｈｃｩｰｾ｡ｮＬ＠ 1934: 224). But as Mussolini began
to consider his own later Racist Policies in 1936, Cipriani reversed his position. Despite the

,···
ANTHROPOLOGY AND niE (<R.AGIAL DOCT'RlNE» etc. 53

obviousness of his conversion, Cipriani attempts to hide his own inconsistency in various
guises. In discussing a book by H. Weinert, for example, he states:
Just as the artist must be strictly subjective in interpreting an idea, while neverthdess maintain·
ing himself within the limits of good sense and of reality, so the man of science formulates, interprets
and presents the opinions of his time with entirely personal (and thus unconfoundable) criteria; always
of course remaining within the confines of scientific rigor, and adhering to academic customs.
(Cipriani, 1936a: 57)

In this crucial year of 1936, Cipriani is on hand to suggest:

... the advantages that polltics may draw from scientific work and propaganda; benefits not
restricted to one people, but extending themselves to the entire White Race in its role as the creator of
an ever·higher social justice. ·
(Cipriani, 1936a: 58)

In another article, Cipriani defends the Mediterranean Race against three studies of
Nordic superiority (Cipriani, 1936b). And in this same year, Cipriani opens the sort of
argument that Fazzari will later use to increase government funding and attention to
anthropology:
There is no doubt that some polltical and economic phenomena are influenced by facts of human
biology; not a few errors of government, in fact, might have been avoided at any time if it had been
considered that the masses consist of easily discriminable and quite observable entities. Today,
fortunately, some sciences are therefore cultivated such as the naturalistic·racial sciences, and the
eugenic and health sciences, with the declared purpose of avoiding the inconveniences of the past. In
every civilized country they have conquered a post of honor; and the results obtained, of an
importance varying with the ethnic composition and the norms adopted in the various countries, are in
general quite praiseworthy.
(Cipriani, 1936b: 54

We have seen how the nature of the Fascist state did not encourage direct government
involvement with certain academic fields, including anthropology, until long after Musso·
lini came to power. We have examined the reasons for the statute of 1937 regarding the
major anthropological societies, and have directly traced them to the origins of Italy's
Racial Policies, which in turn were caused primarily by the rapprochement between Hitler
and Mussolini. While liberal professors retreated into abstruse and harmless studies, others
such as Lidio Cipriani could become «theoreticians» of the new Racial Policies, and the
Florentine Society urged such policies months before they became law.
The «reform» of the Florentine Society after 193 7 would have satisfied contemporary
neo-Hegelians as a perfect example of their dusive goal- a true synthesis, whose thesis was
the school of Mantegazza (Florence), whose antithesis was the school of Sergi (Rome), and
for whose opposition the Duce had found a synthesis and resolution. The trouble with such
a vision is that virtually nothing of the «old» school of Florence remained, and in its place a
pseuda.scientific political arm of Fascism had been formed.
I have elsewhere (Taylor, 1987) described the differences between the Roman and
Florentine traditions largely in terms of an Idealist (or dualistic) tradition at Rome, as
opposed to a Kantian (or monistic) tradition at Florence. This difference of orientation
could be dated back to the founders of the two schools, Paolo Mantegazza (1831-1910) and
Giuseppe Sergi (1841·1936). It is interesting to note that Sergi's (1873) Principi di
Psicologilz was published only one year prior to Wilhelm Wundt's (1874) Gruntkuge der
Physiologischen Psycho Iogie, and both schools included these opposing views of human
 TAYLOR

psychology within the range of their differences. Both schools had originally considered
anthropology a unified science of mankind, combining what we would now call physical and
cultural anthropology. Yet the Roman school throughout the 1920's and 1930's had become
more specialized in the physical or somatic aspects of man.
The Roman Society, then, studied amropologia («La Societd Romana di Antropo/ogia»).
In Rome, man was studied «in his physical manifestations,» while the Florentine Society
attempted to study both physical and social aspects of mankind. (Both included human
psychology, for both Sergi and Wundt had assumed that mental processes are rooted in
human physiology, especially that of the brain.) By 1937, it was becoming necessary to
unite traditional Fascist rhetoric about Italitznita (roughly, the «spirit of the Italian people»)
with the Italian Race, and the most appropriate society to provide a scientific foundation to
this unification of «People» with «Race» was the Florentine Society. A second reason for
Fascist concentration upon Florence as opposed to Rome may have been the greater
involvement of the Florentine Society in studies of colonial Africa, and possibly its larger
and older collections of museum objects, including skeletal material.
If the former Florentine tradition held out the possibility of identifying «Peple» (or
«culture») with «Race» in a unified study, that is the only contribution it made to
anthropology after 1937; for the entire metatheory and oudook of post-1937 anthropology
at Florence came direcdy from the school of Giuseppe Sergi. Both Lidio Cipriani and
Giuseppe Genna came to Florence after training in Rome. (Fazzari himself was an
anatomist, untrained in anthropology.) When Genna became president of the Florentine
Society in 1941, the continuance of the Sergian tradition at Florence was assured.
The most central aspect of the Roman school's metatheory was its deeply rooted basis
in Idealist philosophy. The differences between what I have called (Taylor, 1987) the
Idealist and Kantian traditions (also called, in Italy, «Spiritualism» as opposed to «Empiri-
cism»), may be summarized briefly below in terms of (1) the reality of «concrete universals,»
(2) the dialectical process, and (3) the centrality of Mind in knowledge and being.

1. Concrete universals. Robinson (1974) describes the «concrete universal» in the

Idealist tradition, as it was practiced at Rome, and at Florence after 1937:
Many idealists ... emphasize the concept of a concrete universal, one that is also a concrete
reality, such as cmankind» or «literature», which can be imagined as gatherable into one specific thing.
As opposed to the fixed, formal, abstract universal, the concrete universal is essentially dynamic,
organic, and developing.
(Robinson, 1974: 189)

Within the Roman tradition, then, «Race», <<People», and «Society» make up such
concrete universals, which really exist and evolve independendy in the Real World. The
Florentine tradition, beginning with Mantegazza, was founded upon the assumption that
«only individuals exist in nature.» Mantegazza had set the tone when he wrote in 1876:
The species is a pure and simple creation of the human brain, one of so many frontier-posts
which we are constrained to demarcate in our voyage through the world of facts.
(Mantegazza, 1876: 32)

Similarly, «progress» in an Idealist sense involves changes in «SocietY» as a super-

organic whole (a concrete universal), whereas «progress» in the Kantian tradition, which
included Wilhelm Wundt as well as Mantegazza, involves development on the basis of
choices made and activities done by individuals.

1 '

-.....
ANniROPOLOGY AND THE «RAGIAL DOCTRINE» etc. 55

It is clear that a government which emphasizes the State and the Race as a single entity
and as the evolving, active force in history is closer to the Roman tradition.
The use of Race as a concrete universal equivalent to the Nation (or «People») reaches
its most absurd heights in studies of colonial Africa. This is not the place to examine the
nature of Italy's management of its short-lived colonial empire. From our point of view, it is
important only to note an apparently undeclared assumption among anthropologists that
when something went wrong, it was because Races had not been correctly identified. This
was based on the further assumption that each Race (or People) required a government
which respected its unique position in evolution (from primitive to modern) or in the
evolutionary cycle (climax, decadence, etc.). Consequently, a good deal of «applied anthro-
pology» consisted of developing more exact methods of racial classifications so that
administrative boundaries in Ethiopia could become more distinct. Vittorio-Chiodi (1937)
began working with blood types with precisely this purpose in mind. Claudio Massari
(1941) developed measures of «racial affinity» based on a series of body and head measure-
ments taken around Lake Tans in Italian East Africa. Lorenzo Bianchi (1938) studied
encephalometric data to derive racial characteristics.
For the first time, the question of Aryanism became important; and Lidio Cipriani left
for India in 1938 to measure a group of Cochin Brahmins to determine if they were still
members of the Aryan race. His conclusions, after measuring 119 individuals, «Confute the
much-vaunted ethnic provenience of the Brahmin caste,» for he found elements of austra-
loid, mongoloid, and veddoid as well as Mediterranean admixture (Cipriani, 1939).
Anthropologists were also concerned with the purity of the Italian Race itself, and
with the public dissemination of «SCientific» information about racial purity:
The diffusion that a wise ministerial decree has given to the teaching of Racial Biology ... and of
the doctrine of Race, are today an integral part of the spiritual life of the young generations ...
[In] defining the Italian race ... one can demonstrate the necessity of protecting our superb racial
patrimony from any course... which might offend its integrity.
(Massari, 1940: 327)

The propaganda value of such statements was not neglected, and a series of talks and
conferences were arranged at which scientific discussion of the Racist Policies took place. In
fact, the journal of the Florentine Society after 1938 was partly financed by the Ministry
for Popular Culture.

2. Dialectical method. Robinson (ibid.) describes the use of the dialectical method,
which can be applied as a rhetorical device to carry forward an argument, or as a super-
organic process of nature:
[Idealism] seeks the truth in every positive judgment and in its contradictory as well. Thus it uses
the dialectical method of reasoning to remove the contradictions characteristic of human knowledge.
Such removal leads to a new synthetic judgment that incorporates in a higher truth the degree of truth
that was present in each of the two lower judgments.

Mantegazza again had set the tone for the Florentine tradition. When the dialectical
method was employed as the explanatory process in human history, he rejects the whole
business as «ethnographic novels.» Reviewing an early book by Alexis von Fricken on the
question of Aryan supremacy, Mantegazza had written in 1905:
Our author... has been much too fascinated by the seductions of this antithesis of two such
artificial terms as the cSemitic world» and the «Aryan world»; while each of these worlds holds within
 56 TAYLOR

itself so many planets and satellites ... , infinitely interfering with the problem and rebelling against the
love of simplicity, which is one of the most human and irresistable intellectual passions.
(Mantegazza, 1905: 92)

Italy by 1937 had brought up two generations in the Idealist tradition. Of course, not
all intellectuals who looked to Hegel for their philosophical foundations supported Fascism
- the obvious exception is the entire school of Benedetto Croce at Naples. With or
without Fascism, Idealist philosophy had been rapidly growing in Italy since at least the
1890's, and neo-Hegelianism was so common that its terminology had permeated the Italian
language and the prose style of every discipline. This is particularly obvious in both
anthropological journals after 193 7, when the most common mode of making a point is,
first, to set up one point like yours, then describe its «antithesis», which is hopefully also
like yours, then finally introduce your point as a «synthesis» of the other two. We have seen
that colonial policy (for example) ained at a «synthesis» of British and French colonial
policies. Even a study of prehistoric inscriptions at Val Camonica calls the petroglyphs of
that Alpine region a «Synthesis» between the «natural ambience of the rocks» and the
«civilization of the ValleY»; then concludes by calling the modem Seal of the Valley (1750
A.D.), which depicts an eagle and a deer in a sunken field, a «Synthesis» of (a) the
prehistoric emphasis on animals and (b) the modem world; or of (a) the opulence and riches
of the Valley and (b) the Vally itself. (Marro, 1937). Some of this is attributable to
rhetorical style, but I believe it also expresses the real dominance of neo-Hegelianism in
Italian anthropology after 193 7.
It is also part of Fascism's «attitude of mind» described earlier to exalt ruthlessness,
war, and constant struggle. Therefore, this dialectical process was often identified with
conflict and war. Dino Camavitto (1937), for example, re-interpreted the history of Mexico
before Cortez in light of this model of a progressive realization of the State through violent
dialectical process; emphasizing the «demographic factor» in cycles of prosperity and
decadence. Such studies truly seemed to offer the possibility of an applied anthropology in
the service of the State.

3. The Centrality of Mind in Knowledge and Being. Robinson (1974) refers to this as «the
principle that the lower is explained by the higher - specifically, that matter can be
explained by mind but that mind cannot be explained by matter.» Idealism therefore
opposes philosophies that «identify mind with matter and reduce the higher level of reality
to the protons and electrons of mathematical physics.» (The European designation «Spiri-
tualism» is derived from the Latin-based and Italian word for mind, «Spirito»).
Here again the differences date back to the founding of the two schools by Sergi and
Mantegazza. In a clear response to Sergi's Principi di Psicologia, Mantegazza had written in
1877:
The only difference between experimentalists and Idealists is that the former believe these forces
are no more than brain and nerves in action; whereas the latter believe that brain and nerves are mere
instruments necessary for the manifestation of a supernatural energy apart &om any known physical
laws. This is the most tenacious arkeion which experimental science must release from the viscera of
the brain.
(Mantegazza, 1877: 288)

Yet anthropologists in a totalitarian state were not interested in the physiology of

thinking in individuals; and the Roman tradition offered the alternative of treating brain
physiology as a manifestation of racial differences (considering Race as a concrete univer-

,···
 I
!

ANniROPOLOGY AND 1HE «R.AGIAL DOCTRINE» etc. 57

sal), while treating «progress» as the result of Laws of Development, independently existing
apart from the individuals involved.
Giuseppe Sergi's thought may have been especially appealing after 1937 because of his
intense Italian nationalism. In this sense, he prefigured many of the themes that would later
be presented as Fascism. One of the most important was the central and even mystical role
he assigned to the Italian People in the development of civilization. He was an early writer
on the «Aryan theory,» although he gave central importance to the «Mediterranean Race»
among Aryan groups. Alfredo Niceforo, one of the presidents of the Roman Society, wrote
of Sergi in 1937:
To him do we particularly owe the history of the Mediterranean Race, which he narrates through
its ascension, its struggle and its triumphs. Even in that historical moment in which Sergi wrote-
that moment in which it seemed that the British Empire represented the flowering of life and
civilization, he affirmed that ｢･ｾｮ＠ that Empire on the one hand and that of the great Ancient
Rome on the other, the anthropological distance was not so great as one might have suspected; for
these inhabitants of the north were none other than one branch of the Euro-african species of which
the Mediterranean race forms the most glorious ornament.
(Nice£oro, 1937: xxxvm)

This attitude may have encouraged studies of the purity of the Italian race, as it
encouraged laws against cross-breeding. It also may have helped justify territorial ambitions
(although even the «old» Florentine Society's members seem to have favoured colonialism
for other reasons), because the conquest of Albania, Greece, and Libya can be considered
the (re-)unification of the Mediterranean Race.
In short, the only aspect of the pre-1936 anthropological school of Mantegazza which
remained at Florence was the wide-ranging approach to mankind, in both physical and
cultural studies. Yet Giuseppe Sergi had also seen anthropology as an integrated science of
man; and articles on what we would call «cultural» anthropology continued to appear in the
Roman Society's journal throughout the war years; so that this difference is not after all a
significant departure from the Roman tradition. Yet it is precisely the general lack of
concern with ethnology in this period which allowed Sergio Sergi (son of the founder of the
Roman Society) to assert after the liberation of Rome:
In the difficult and sad moments in which the dignity and liberty of science were threatened, [the
Roman Society of Anthropology] never became an instrument of politics within the legitimate field of
its activities.
(Riv. di Ant.• v. 35: 469-70)

Although the metatheory and assumptions of «Fascist anthropology)> came from the
Roman tradition founded by Giuseppe Sergi, that tradition only became a strong political
arm of Fascism after 193 7, in Florence, where the unified study of man in his «biological
and social categories» (Races and Peoples) combined physical anthropology and ethnology
into a pseudo-scientific basis and justification for the Racist Policies which began in 1938.

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-·-
 !SSN: 0392-90)5

ｾ＠ ｕ｀｛ｰＩｾ＠
conternporanea
Vol. 11 - n. 1-2
Gennaio-Giugno 1988

Organa scientifico della

Unlone Antropologica ltaliana (U .A.I.)
della Federazlone delle lstltuzlonl Antropologiche ltaliane (F.I.A.I.)
e dell' Assoclazlone Primatologlca Ita Iiana (A.P .I.)
Editrice · II Sedicesimc> - Firenze
 Antropologia Contemporanea Vol. 11 - n. 1-2 - 1988

INDICE

L. Nicolini Endogamia ed esogamia in tre Comunita del Casentino

all'inizio dell' ottocento p. 1

L. Nicolini Endogamia ed esogamia in trc comuni del Casentino

tra ottocento e novecento p. 9

L. Nicolini Endogamia e scambi matrimoniali in un centro albane-

se del Pollino (S. Paolo Albanese) p. 21

M. Zavattaro, L. Nicolini Natalita e nuzialita a Serravalle di Bibbiena p. 27

P.M. Taylor Anthropology and the cRacial Doctrine» in Italy before

1940 p. 45

L. Di Caprio Ripetitivita e fissazione di concetti nelle prime fasi

dell' evoluzione tecnologica umana p. 59

Bibliografie di studiosi italiani di Scienze Antropologi-

ｾ＠ ｾ＠
Giovanni Marro (1875-1952) I Raffaello Battaglia
(1896-1958) / Velio Zanolli (1878-1954) I Enrico Tede-
schi (1860-1931) I Fabio Frassetto (1876-1953) I Lan-
dogna Cassone (1889-1963) I Lidio Cipriani (1892-
1962)

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