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For over a century, Italy has had a love affair with the cigarette. Perhaps no consumer item better symbolizes the economic, political, social, and cultural dimensions of contemporary Italian history. Starting around 1900, the new and popular cigarette spread down the social hierarchy and eventually, during the 1960s, across the gender divide. For much of the century, cigarette consumption was an index of economic well-being and of modernism. Only at the end of the century did its meaning change as Italy achieved economic parity with other Western powers and entered into the antismoking era.
Drawing on film, literature, and the popular press, Carl Ipsen offers a view of the "cigarette century" in Italy, from the 1870s to the ban on public smoking in 2005. He traces important links between smoking and imperialism, world wars, Fascism, and the protest movements of the 1970s. In considering this grand survey of the cigarette, Fumo tells a much larger story about the socio-economic history of a society known for its casual attitude toward risk and a penchant for la dolce vita.
— Mary Neuburger
"Carl Ipsen, Professor of History at Indiana University, has written an absorbing social history of modern Italy as seen through the nation's smoking habits...Much of Carl Ipsen's diverting, well-researched book discusses the role of cigarettes in Italian literature."
— Ian Thomson
"An intoxicating combination of cultural, social, economic, gender, and political history, Fumo tells the fascinating history of smoking in Italy, providing new insights into Italy's transformation over the course of the twentieth century. Delightfully told, it is, like the cigarette itself, hard to put down once begun."
— David I. Kertzer
"Fumo tells a fascinating tale about smoking, health, and risk during Italy's cigarette century. Ipsen effectively integrates a variety of approaches and source material into crafting a narrative that concentrates on those aspects of Italy's tobacco history that are uniquely Italian, yet situated within a broader context, as illustrated by references to developments in the United States, Great Britain, and Germany...scholars interested in the histories of Italy, smoking, and public health will find Fumo a valuable contribution to their respective fields of study."
— Kraig Larkin
"Many histories of smoking are either overly judgmental of the tobacco industry or they give too much weight to the sublime qualities of smoking. Admirably, Ipsen remains neutral in his reporting of smoking's history in Italy, not wishing to judge or rationalize."
— Carol Helstosky
"As in the best historical works, a single aspect of the past is able to illuminate a very large picture....Written in a brilliant and captivating style while maintaining strict methodological rigor, this work is a fine example of cultural history and, at the same time, a model of style and method."
— Emanuela Scarpellini
The introduction reviews briefly the history of tobacco in the West and engages with the historiography on tobacco generally and in various national settings, most notably the US and UK. It addresses the psychological, economic, social and cultural roles played by tobacco in history and introduces some of the main areas to be covered in the book: smoking and gender, smoking and poverty/wealth, smoking in literature and film. It traces a trajectory of smoking common to multiple national contexts from an elite male activity to a mass behavior that crosses the gender divide to an activity eventually rejected by the elite but maintaining its hold on lower-income segments and continuing to exercise a fascination for youth.
Chapter 1 traces the establishment of the Italian Monopolio dello Stato that produced, distributed and sold tobacco products in Italy following Italian unification (1870) and through to the first World War. It devotes a section to Italy's best known literary smoker, namely Zeno Cosini in Italo Svevo's novel The Conscience of Zeno and traces changing tastes as Italians began to switch from cigars to cigarettes. It includes consideration of health claims made regarding smoking in the period and also the significant role that cigarette smoking played in the life of the soldiers of the Great War. Finally it reviews the presence and meaning of depictions of smoking in the popular press, other authors (D'Annunzio, Pirandello, Serao et al.) and in silent cinema.
Chapter 2 explores Fascist management of the Italian tobacco industry including the introduction of new brands and tobacco production in the colonies. Fascist attitudes about smoking are compared with those of Hitler and Germany. The chapter looks at how smoking in interwar cinema and literature serves multiple purposes: signaling romantic passion, moderating moments of tensions, and marking class and gender roles. Film directors discussed include Mario Camerini and Alessandro Blasetti while significant literary figures include Alberto Moravia and Liala.
This chapter examines attitudes about women smoking from the 1860s to 1940s as revealed in depictions of female smokers in the fine arts, in magazines, and in etiquette manuals and other publications that discuss female behavior. The Fascist period saw particular concern expressed about so-called "crisis women" who were inevitably smokers. Fascist-era cinema reveals indeed an association of smoking and loose women, but also at times depicts smoking as modern and empowering.
This chapter tracks increased cigarette production and consumption after the war in the context of Christian Democratic administrations and rapid economic growth. Smoking figures in important anthropological work on Naples from the period, while cinematic and literary examples of the link between poverty/wealth and smoking are taken from Pasolini, Germi, Fellini and others.
This chapter opens with consideration of the way that (self-reported) male and female smoking prevalence changed over time. It looks at the postwar Italian fascination with all things American, including cigarettes. Female smoking increased dramatically in the postwar decades, and the chapter looks at that development and the relevant changing attitudes expressed by the smokers themselves, other observers, and in contemporary films. It concludes with a section on smoking and sex in postwar Italian literature and film (including for example, Visconti's Ossessione and Bassani's The Garden of the Finzi-Contini ).
This chapter traces the debate in Italy over the health risks of smoking from the 1950s to the 1970s. In particular it looks at the introduction of filtered cigarettes as a strategy to reduce the alarm about smoking and lung cancer and discusses the introduction of laws banning tobacco advertising and imposing some restrictions on where smoking was permitted. It concludes with a discussion of Italian attitudes about risk in this period and the role they might have played in the tendency to ignore the health risks of smoking.
This chapter reviews the 1970s smoking landscape in Italy and in particular the increase in female smoking. It explores the intersection between smoking and important political/social movements of the era, namely the New Left and feminism. Finally it looks at the international literature on female smoking and considers what motivated so many women to take up the habit.
The main focus of this chapter is the growing antismoking movement in Italy that included a plethora of local regulations and eventually a national ban on smoking in public places (in 2005). It also looks at the misinformation campaigns of the tobacco industry and the marketing of low tar and nicotine cigarettes. It concludes with a look at youth and smoking (and again industry maneuvering to maintain market share among this crucial demographic).
The first half of this chapter traces the history of cigarette smuggling in Italy and the efforts of the authorities to combat that trade. The second half explores the process leading to the sale and privatization of the Italian State Tobacco Monopoly (completed in 2004). It also looks at tobacco litigation in Italy.