Abstract

The essay illustrates the historiographical and political parable of Gioacchino Volpe and in particular the relationship between war experience and historiographical development. Engaged in the propaganda of the First World War, Volpe worked ever more intensely on the concept of nation. From the Middle Ages his historiographical interest moved more and more towards the study of the contemporary age, where the relationship between political history and social history became decisive for him. A vision of political processes as «total history» took shape. A leading intellectual of the fascist regime, his vision of history (Lucien Febvre would have called it «histoire a partentiere») collided with the tragedy of the Second World War and the crisis of the idea of nation