For Whom the Bell Tolled: Political Engagement, Taxes, and Welfare in Post-WWI Italy

The First World War left Italy with a generation of casualties commemorated in every village — and with a fiscal aftermath that reshaped political engagement well into the interwar period. For Whom the Bell Tolled asks how local exposure to war losses translated into postwar political and fiscal behavior, linking municipal-level rolls of the caduti (fallen) to taxation, welfare uptake, and electoral records across the immediate postwar years. The paper argues that mass wartime mobilization did not dissolve once the war ended; it left a measurable imprint on how communities negotiated taxes and welfare with the central state.