Introduction
This book examines the Italian army’s occupation of the French Riviera during the period 1940–1943 at three different levels, each involving a triangular relationship. At a more general level, it analyzes the military occupation with the lens of historical sociology, making references to the triangular comparison of the Italian occupation of France to the German occupation of France and to the Italian occupation of the Balkans. It also considers “the structural effects of occupation on the occupied society’s environment and living conditions,” with particular emphasis on the triangular and rocky relationship between the representatives of the French state, especially the prefects and mayors, and the Italian military authorities, the officers of Italian units deployed on French soil, and Italian civilian authorities who were officially dispatched by Rome to supervise the implementation of the Franco-Italian armistice and to secretly prepare for the annexation of the occupied territories. Finally, at a grassroots level, the book explores the “face-to-face interaction between occupiers and occupied people” and how it was shaped by both groups’ habits, culture, prejudices, and tensions.