Continuity and Change in Italian Foreign Policy under Fascism: A Reexamination of the Corfu Crisis of 1923

Though not resulting in the outbreak of open war, the Corfu Crisis of 1923 saw Benito Mussolini’s first violent foreign policy venture which exposed the League of Nations’ inability to deter would be aggressor states and presaged future acts of aggression including a similar challenge over Ethiopia just twelve years later. Based on archival research and other primary sources and addressing the issue of continuity and change in Italian foreign policy, this article argues that Mussolini’s bid to seize Corfu in 1923 was not an impulsive act but a crude premeditated attempt to carry out a long-term goal that had deep roots in Italy’s prefascist past.Footnote1