Abstract

The article focuses on the peacetime military justice system in Liberal Italy. The first part adopts a quantitative approach and analyzes about 12.500 verdicts passed by eight court-martials all over Italy, in order to provide an overview of the criminal justice in the Italian military. Data are compared to those of other European armies in order to assess whether repression in Italy is stronger than elsewhere. Mostly based on trial records and conscripts' memoirs, the second part mixes quantitative and qualitative approach in order to ascertain why soldiers commit crimes, how courts react to lack of discipline, and what crime can suggest about the relationship between draft and nation-building in pre-WWI Italy.