In his book Fascist Voices (2012), Christopher Duggan, who has died unexpectedly aged 57, drew on thousands of ordinary Italians’ diaries, memoirs and letters to explain why so many identified closely with the fascist regime of the early 20th century and the second world war. Postwar Italy never experienced an equivalent of German de-nazification. This enabled many on the Italian right to portray fascism as relatively benign. It also permitted collective amnesia: Italians still often sing partisan songs at parties, perhaps choosing to forget that their grandparents embraced fascism.
Not all scholars agree with him about popular loyalty to Benito Mussolini, but Christopher’s meticulous research and clear prose give us an unconventional history of the era, a history that shows vividly how fascism operated at grassroots level. The book was awarded the Wolfson prize.
Christopher’s history was never polemical, but he did not shy away from positions that some of his readers found uncomfortable. His first major work, Fascism and the Mafia (1989), grew out of his PhD, supervised by the eminent Italianist Denis Mack Smith. This argued that the mafia was not an organisation, but an idea. While subsequent research challenged this interpretation, Christopher’s argument – that both the authorities and individual politicians have a vested interest in fostering the notion of a “bogey” organisation – is one that famously appealed to the great Sicilian novelist Leonardo Sciascia and continues to raise important theoretical questions. Christopher’s vast 2002 study of Francesco Crispi, the dominant figure in Italian politics in the late 19th century, is much more than a painstakingly researched political biography: there is no other book in English that tells us as much about the challenges of making the Italian nation during and after the struggle for unification.
Christopher wrote two general histories of Italy. A Concise History of Italy (1994) permitted him, however briefly, to reprise an earlier enthusiasm for the middle ages. The Force of Destiny: A History of Italy since 1796 (2007) focused on his principal expertise in the 19th and 20th centuries. The title, drawn from the opera La Forza del Destino, was appropriate for a scholar who loved to work while listening to Verdi. It was perhaps this book above all that symbolised Christopher’s contribution to the understanding of Italian history and culture, and earned him the recognition of the Italian state: in 2008, the president, Giorgio Napolitano, made him commendatore, the equivalent of a knight.
Born in Petts Wood, which was then in Kent, he was the son of Margaret (nee Hesketh), who later became a social worker, and John Duggan, a shipbroker. A bookish child, he developed an enthusiasm for ecclesiastical architecture when very young. At the age of 11, he would travel by train and bicycle to make brass rubbings. He loved to help his father organise family excursions to remote historical sites.
When Christopher had children of his own, they grew accustomed to car journeys interrupted by detours to visit this or that church or chapel. Erudite works on monumental brasses, church masonry and stained glass remained by his bedside in adult life.
He went to Dulwich college preparatory school, and then Westminster school, before studying history at Merton College, Oxford, but it was his parents who introduced him to Italy, on family holidays. (In the immediate aftermath of the second world war, his father had served with the British army in Trieste.)
At 11, Christopher won a Mediterranean cruise as an essay prize. Before going to Oxford, he explored Italy by motorbike. His Honda CB175 was insufficiently powerful to tackle the Alps and the Apennines, so, slightly built but determined, he spent a lot of his trip pushing the vehicle up steep mountain roads.
At Oxford, he first focused on medieval Italy. It was Mack Smith who inspired his interest in Italian unification and fascism. Also at Oxford, as a research fellow in 1986, he met the art historian Jennifer Mundy. They married in 1987, the year he joined the staff of the University of Reading as a lecturer in history.
Despite attempts to lure him to other institutions, Christopher spent most of his academic career at Reading, always a magnet for modern Italianists. He was promoted to reader in 1994, then professor of modern Italian history in 2002. It was above all Christopher’s presence that made me apply for a job in Reading’s history department. As his colleague for many years, I witnessed his kindness, patience and generosity daily. For generations of Italian PhD students at Reading, Christopher became the embodiment of the English gentleman.
He is survived by Jennifer and their children, Amelia and Thomas.
• Christopher Duggan, historian, born 4 November 1957; died 2 November 2015
