Historical Left

Different to its Right counterpart, the Left was the result of coalition who represented Northern and Southern middle class, urban bourgeoisie, small businessmen, journalists and academics.

After the 1890s, the Left began to show more conservative tendencies, including advocating breaking strikes and protests and promoting an aggressive colonialist policy in Africa.

It was not a structured party, but simply an opposition divided in two tendencies: The cooperation between Rattazzi and Cavour grew strong and the two plotted to oust D'Azeglio from office.

They also undergo the law of motion, the occurrence of transformations.This statement was the basis of the phenomenon of trasformismo (literally transformism),[22] which consists in a constant changing of political faction motivated by opportunity rather than ideals.

King Victor Emmanuel II verified the impossibility for the Right to gain confidence and nominated Depretis as Prime Minister, who formed a Left-only government.

Isolated by the European powers at the Congress of Berlin, Cairoli was forced to resign in 1878 after a failed life attempt to King Umberto I[26] and after lesser than nine months of government.

Particularly, the executive faced the difficult relationship with Austria that showed an anti-Italian attitude[29] despite the common adhesion to the Triple Alliance with Germany,[30] and ended the Italian international isolation.

Despite the victory in the election of 1886, the Left was tested by decline of traformismo, with many opportunist Right politicians who joined in the Liberal Constitutional Party, causing the necessity of Depretis to find an agreement with Crispi and Zanardelli.

[38] Crispi wanted reunite all the Italian-speaking territories in one nation, revealing to the German general Alfred von Waldersee his desire to annex the Austrian Trentino and French Nice.

Despite the initial Left tendencies, Crispi got worried about the Italian Socialist Party[44] and after the suppression of the labour movement of the Fasci Siciliani the executive changed the electoral law, permitting the vote only to the literate citizens, excluding 800,000 voters.

[45] At the same time, Crispi tried to re-obtain popular support prosecuting a colonialist policy in Africa, consolidating the acquisition of Somaliland and Eritrea and starting the First Abyssinian War in 1894.