Abstract

At the beginning of the 20th Century, the Chianciano rural strikes seemed to threaten the long-standing traditional sharecropping system on which the hegemony of Sienese landowners as the city’s ruling class was based. Due to the mistrust of the Giolitti political system and fear of the Socialist party, the Sienese aristocracy threw its support to the new Nationalist political movement created by an intellectul elite, which they believed would maintain order and safeguard tradition; the movement would later play a fundamental role in italian national life.