It's the virtually unanimous judgment of historians that the economic conditions of the Mezzogiorno were on average worse than those of the north of Italy and that this gap had centuries-old roots. Even southernist historians, from Villari to Gramsci, do not deny this. Also, if you take into account the so-called "quality of life" (calculated on the basis of a varied range of indices) and not just GDP, you will notice that the gap between north and south was even higher in the Bourbon period. The Bourbon government was awful, with its reactionary conservatism and stagnation, an incredible level of corruption and administrative inefficiency, excessive power of feudal cliques, the court and even the Mafia. Not for nothing did the great majority of southerners welcome Garibaldi as a liberator. Furthermore, the Bourbon state was an Austrian semi-protectorate, as the military instructors and the most loyal troops of King Frankie were Austrians (they called themselves "Bavarian", but in reality were Austrian regular divisions). They also had a secret political and military treaty with Austria to prevent the Unification of Italy.
The works of Gioacchino Volpe ("L'Italia in cammino: l'ultimo cinquantennio") on the Risorgimento, along with many others, are more than enough to dismiss the pseudo-scientific and pseudo-historical revisionism that has become fashionable these days, demonstrating all the inconsistencies.
Of course, surfing the web or searching bookstores and newsstands you can find anything and the opposite of everything, including people who claim totally absurd theories, such as that the earth is flat, that Atlantis really existed, that ancient civilizations were founded by extraterrestrials, etc.
The claims of the Neo-Bourbonists mirror those of the Northern League, and indeed has arisen in reaction to the northern movement. Their idealization of the Bourbon kingdom is symmetrical to the Northern League's exaltation of the Celts and the non-existent "Padania", which is equally inconsistent.
Austria and the states ruled by the monarchs of Habsburg lineage (Tuscany and Modena) were naturally hostile to Italian Unity, while the Papacy and the Kingdom of Naples, after an initial period of support for unification in 1848, later became hostile to it. Indeed, in 1859 both had entered into a secret alliance with Austria to attack the newborn "Kingdom of Upper Italy", rejecting Cavour's proposal of a joint confederation and an offensive against the Habsburg state to oust them from Italy. It was this secret alliance (the best Bourbon army regiments were actually made of Austrian regular divisions, despite wearing Neapolitan uniforms and officially claiming to be "Bavarian mercenaries") that led to the expedition of the Thousand.
On the other hand, the south itself made an essential contribution both to the Risorgimento, and to the subsequent period of cultural unification of Italy: in fact, even the Italians of the south were for the most part anti-Bourbon.
Cuoco, Spaventa, Pellegrini, Poerio, etc.; the entire great southern intellectual class was fervently united in being anti-Bourbon. After the Unification, among the intellectuals from the south we can name:
- Francesco De Sanctis, who with his masterpiece "Storia della letteratura italiana", a model and benchmark for all similar later works, demonstrated that even before political unification there always existed a consciousness of being a nation and a unitary culture in Italy.
- Matteo Renato Imbriani, a former Garibaldian, the theorist and father of irredentism.
- Gabriele D'Annunzio, poet, playwright, soldier and politician, leader of Fiume, a great supporter of the Risorgimento and irredentism.
All three were southerners.
Italian Unification was not made only by some regions or against others. Unification was made by Italians for Italians.
Bibliography
• Gioacchino Volpe, L'Italia in cammino: l'ultimo cinquantennio (Milano, 1927)
• Rosario Romeo, Breve storia della grande industria in Italia: 1861-1961 (Bologna, 1961)
• Rosario Romeo, Risorgimento e capitalismo (Bari, 1959)
• B. Caizzi, Storia dell'industria italiana dal XVIII secolo ai giorni nostri (Torino, 1965)
• S. Clough, Storia dell'economia italiana dal 1861 ad oggi (Bologna, 1965)
• V. Castronovo, “La storia economica”, nel IV Volume, “Dall'Unità ad oggi”, di “Storia d'Italia”, a cura di R. Romano-C. Vivanti (Torino, 1975)
• R. Villari, Il sud nella storia d'Italia (Bari, 1961)
• L. Cafagna, Dualismo e sviluppo nella storia d'Italia (Venezia, 1989)
• M. L. Salvadori, Il mito del buongoverno. La questione meridionale da Cavour a Gramsci (Torino 1960)
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