My favorite reading for 2009: one of the books to which I devoted my last year. I'll introduce in this summary, but please buy it, to help the author. Ask in the library. good reading.
"counterstory Unification of Italy" by CARLO COPPOLA MCE Publisher
Many historians in modern times have shed light on the events that marked the unification of Italy showing with certainty that the culture of "scheme" put forth, from the early years of unity, a veil over events "Risorgimento" e sul loro reale evolversi.
Tutte le forme d'influenza sulla pubblica opinione furono messe in opera, per impedire che la sconfitta dei Borboni o la rivolta del popolo meridionale si colorasse di toni positivi.
Si cercò di rendere patetica e ridicola la figura di Francesco II - il "Franceschiello" della vulgata – arrivando alla volgarità di far fare dei fotomontaggi della Regina Maria Sofia in pose pornografiche, che furono spediti a tutti i governi d'Europa e a Francesco II stesso, il quale, figlio di una "santa" e allevato dai preti, con ogni probabilità non aveva mai visto sua moglie nuda nemmeno dal vivo. Risultò, in seguito, che i fotomontaggi erano stati eseguiti da una coppia di fotografi dubious, such Diotallevi, who confessed to have acted on the Committee of the National Committee, and the story made headlines, though false, was used in order to undermine the reputation of the two sovereigns in exile.
The memory of King Ferdinand II, father of Francis, was tarnished by allegations of brutality and savagery: he was written by Gladstone - take an interest - to have been - he catholic - "the denial of God."
Above all, we minimized the size of a rebellion which inflamed all over the former Kingdom of Naples, reducing it to "common banditry," as we read in the newspapers of the day (newspapers, however, published only in the north since the freedom of Print was abolished in the South until December 31, 1865), was born the legend of the Risorgimento "nastiness" of the Bourbons as opposed to "goodness" of Piedmont and Savoy, who fill the pages of textbooks.
remain to clarify the reasons behind the academic first the Kingdom of Italy, the Fascist period and then the Republic, to maintain almost the present day, a version of the facts so far from the truth.
In my opinion the reasons are composite, but the result of a concept that D'Azeglio enunciated in the last century, "We have made Italy, now we must make Italians," and can be illustrated as follows:
a. The world of culture post-unification worked to eradicate the consciousness and memory of those people who had to be Italian, so the pirate and cruentisissimo with which the unit was obtained, blanketing legends of the "heroic" work of Garibaldi ( which were, despite everything, sooner or later the army crushed the Bourbon), downplaying the fact that the real conquest of the south was obtained, in reality, the Piedmontese army, through the vicissitudes of civil war - despite the formal annexation to the United Piemonte - and silence, above all, the fact that the populations of the south, except for a minority of landowners and intellectuals, had no desire to be "liberated" and indeed reacted violently against those who, rightly, were considered invaders.
However it gave the Bourbon monarchy deposed traviata and distorted image, and the '700 and '800 Neapolitan vision, a liar, a period of oppression and misery left by the people of the south which is emancipated, finally, with unity, freed from slavery by the Piedmontese Garibaldi and the "foreigner".
b. The Ministry of Education and popular culture of the fascist period, it was stretched to the pursuit of nationalistic values \u200b\u200band tied a double thread to the Savoy dynasty, did not, for obvious reasons, no desire to type "revisionist," even bringing back the ' origin of nation to the Roman period and skipped a millennium of history south. The fascist government had the undeniable merit of attempting to trigger a mechanism of economic recovery south of reality, but from a historical point of view even more covered up the issue of the South as both unnecessary and damaging the plant's cultural system.
c. The Italian Republic, the war, kept intact, in essence, the system of public education of the fascist period.
The nation emerged, we must not forget, by a civil war, in which the warring factions had, with the Republic of Salò, divided into two to Italy, the Sicilian separatist movement was in full agitation (these were the years of companies Salvatore Giuliano), was certainly not the time to raise doubts about the veracity of the history of the Risorgimento and food so the separatist thesis.
They came this way today, where even now, in many textbooks, the history of southern Italy and in particular, is shamefully mystified.
In the economic vision that is called the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was, if anything, even farther from reality.
South Bourbon, as Nicola Zitarosa us back was: "A country economically structured on its size. Since, at that time, the foreign trade facilitated by the fact che nel settore delle produzioni mediterranee il paese meridionale era il piú avanzato al mondo, saggiamente i Borbone avevano scelto di trarre tutto il profitto possibile dai doni elargiti dalla natura e di proteggere la manifattura dalla concorrenza straniera. Il consistente surplus della bilancia commerciale permetteva il finanziamento d'industrie, le quali, erano sufficientemente grandi e diffuse, sebbene ancora non perfette e con una capacità di proiettarsi sul mercato internazionale limitata, come, d'altra parte, tutta l'industria italiana del tempo (e dei successivi cento anni). (...) Il Paese era pago di sé, alieno da ogni forma di espansionismo territoriale e coloniale. La sua evoluzione economica era lenta, ma sicura. Chi reggeva lo State was contrary to the political stakes and preferred to measure growth in relation to employment of the working classes. System in Naples, the bourgeoisie's business was not the dominant class, to which the general interests were sacrificed obtusely, as in the Kingdom of Sardinia, but it was a class in the service of the national economy. "
In fact the central problem of the whole story is that in 1860 Italy was made, but became very ill. Beyond the horrific carnage that brought the unit, the people of the South suffer and yet so evident failures of a process of political unification of Italy, which was implemented without taking into account the minimum diversity, economic needs and aspirations delle popolazioni che venivano aggregate.
La formula del "piemontismo", vale a dire della mera e pedissequa estensione degli ordinamenti giuridici ed economici del Regno di Piemonte all'intero territorio italiano, che fu adottata dal governo, e i provvedimenti "rapina" che si fecero ai danni dell'erario del Regno di Napoli, determinarono un'immediata e disastrosa crisi del sistema sociale ed economico nei territori dell'ex Regno di Napoli e il suo irreversibile collasso.
D'altronde le motivazioni politiche che avevano portato all'unità erano – come sempre accade – in subordine rispetto a quelle economiche.
Se si parte dall'assunto, ampiamente dimostrato, che lo stato finanziario the south was very solid in 1860, promotes a better understanding the mechanisms that triggered his downfall.
Under the liberal policy set by Cavour, the southern country, with nearly nine million inhabitants, with its significant savings, with its foreign exchange earnings, appeared to be a delicacy. The abnormal
national debt was procured from Piedmont belligerent and expansionist policy of Cavour (three wars in ten years!) Had to be restored and the greed of the bourgeois class to which the Piedmontese wars had made (and to which the Cavour belonged to the same full title) was, in some way satisfied.
describe economic events and linked to the world of banking and finance, may be the reader, I realize, boring, but you can not understand some of the events if they know the intimate implications.
The Savoy had been provided with a monetary system that provided for the issue of paper money while the system Bourbon issued only gold and silver along with so-called faiths of credit "and" policy notice "to which yet this the exact equivalent in gold poured into the coffers of the Bank of the Two Sicilies. Piedmont
The problem was not complying with the "convertibility" of its currency, which means that for every pound of paper Piedmont did not correspond to an equivalent value Gold paid at the issuing bank, that due to the insane policy of the state expenditure on armaments.
In short the currency Piedmont was waste paper, while the Neapolitan was solid and, by its very nature a convertible (a coin Bourbon had its value in itself because the quantity of gold or silver contained in it had value nearly the same as nominal). So
cites still Zitarosa: "Without the looting of the country's saving historic Bourbon, Italy Savoy did not have a future. On the same resource was awarded the National Bank of the Sardinian States. The mountain of money in circulation in the South would provide five hundred million gold and silver, a huge mass to be allocated to reserves, which the central bank Sardinia - at that time had only one hundred million - could build a house of paper money banking top three billion. Like the Devil, Bombrini, and Bastogi Balduino (owners and founders of the bank, which later became Bank of Italy) and non-woven spun, and yet they had set up shop to sell wool. In short, for the Piedmontese, the plundering of the South was the only answer at hand, groped to overcome the trouble that had started. "
Following the occupation of Piedmont was immediately prevented the Tour of the Two Sicilies (then divided into Banco di Napoli and Banco di Sicilia) to round from the market to turn their coins into paper money as stipulated by the Piedmontese, as in this way the banks could issue paper money for a value of 1.2 billion and could control the whole Italian financial market (although the two banks was permitted to issue paper money for a few years). That gold, however, passed through special operations in the Piedmont cases.
However the reserve of the new Bank of Italy, there appeared to be confiscated all the gold (see Acts of Parliament about the time).
Obviously part of this had taken other paths, which for the most part were those of setting up and financing firms in the north operated by new banks that have invested in the north to the north, but with the huge capital raised in the south.
Even now, in hindsight, the banking system suffers from the south of the setting then you gave. Credit institutions adopt policies still very different between north and south, making the collection of savings and investment in the South in the North.
The final blow to the economy of the south was given by adding the debt Piedmont huge in 1859 (it was the most indebted in Europe), all'irrilevante debt of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, with a public finance system maybe investing a little stiffly, but withdrew that very little from the pockets of their subjects. The result was that people and companies in the South, they had to pay a huge tax burden, both to pay the debts incurred by the Government of Savoy in pre-unification period (even to buy those guns rifled barrel that allowed the victory over Bourbon) , both the Italian government to contract debts to follow: it in a mad rush all''armamento, characterized by scandal and corruption, became, with its bonds, the lure of business locations in Europe.
Zitarosa again writes the historian: "The rhetoric of unity, which covered special interests, do not be fooled. The innovative decisions taken by Cavour, when taxes were the whole of Italy, had already proven to be unsuccessful in Piedmont. A wish to pursue that road was the political cynicism of Cavour and his successors, the one and the other bank of more men than true patriots. A change of course would amount to un'autosconfessione. When, at the end, those "innovations" were also imposed in the South, had the function of a noose.
took only a few months because the joints of the manufacturing country, which needed no further enlargement of the market to function, were suppressed.
Agriculture, which fed the foreign trade, once freed of the constraints that are imposed on exports of commodities of Bourbon popular consumer products, recorded a growth excessive and uncontrollable, and it took twenty years because governments Savoy arrived to worship. Immediately, the unitary state was the worst enemy that the South had ever had, worse than the Angevin, Aragonese, Spaniards, Austrians, Frenchmen, and the revolutionaries that the Imperial ".
However, a development policy, one thousand mistakes and economic disasters epochal (think the failure of the Banca Romana, the main funder of the unitary state or scandal Bastogi for the award of contracts stations), was implemented only in the North while the South and ended up paying the costs of war of annexation, and the costs become astronomical modernization of the north.
The government adopted in Turin against the former Kingdom of Naples a policy of mere exploitation of such "colonial" so as to exclaim to the deputy Francesco Noto in the parliamentary session of November 20, 1861: "This invasion is not union, not annexation ! This is our wish to exploit the land as a conquest. The government of Piedmont wants to deal with the southern provinces such as Cortez and Pizarro in Peru and Mexico were, like the English in the kingdom of Bengal. "
dissennatamente liberal policy of the unity government led, however, the newly united Italy and weak economy to a financial crash.
Large società d'affari francesi ed inglesi fecero invece, attraverso i loro mediatori piemontesi, affari d'oro.
Nel 1866, nonostante il considerevole apporto aureo delle banche del sud, la moneta italiana fu costretta al "corso forzoso" cioè fu considerata dalle piazze finanziarie inconvertibile in oro. Segno inequivocabile di uno stato delle finanze disastroso e di un'inflazione stellare. I titoli di stato italiani arrivarono a valere due terzi del valore nominale, quando quelli emessi dal governo borbonico avevano un rendimento medio del 18%.
Ci vorranno molti decenni perché l'Italia postunitaria, dal punto di vista economico, possa riconquistare una qualche credibilità.
L'odierna arretratezza economy of the South is the daughter of those choices wicked and at least fifty years of reckless economic policy and absolutely forget the former Kingdom of Naples by the state unit.
You will have to wait to see the fascist period undertaken some development policy of the South with a structural intervention on its territory by building roads, schools, water systems (the Apulian all), distilleries and factories, the recovery of a policy reclamation of agricultural land, the completion of some railway lines as the Foggia-Capo di Leuca - begun by Ferdinand II of Bourbon, forgotten by the governments of Savoy and finally terminated by the fascist. But the damage
and had already made disasters: a real economy in the South no longer existed and his forces were younger and better emigrated abroad.
Despite interventions in the 50s of the twentieth century with the Marshall Plan (also with new inequalities between north and south), 60s and 70s with the Fund for the South and economic assistance to the European Union today the gap that separates the South from the rest of Italy is still considerable.
The population of the Kingdom of Naples, decimated by massacres of the period of "banditry", exhausted by years of war, devastation and atrocities of all kinds, in order to survive, it will give life to the great transoceanic migration of the last decades' 800, that will continue, with a quick turnaround in the fascist period and a diversification of destinations that will become Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, almost to the day.
The South will pay, once again, with the cash flow generated by the work and sacrifice of southern migrants, the development of industrial Italy.
I think, in conclusion, that is a right of the people of southern regain that piece of history that after 1860 the country was torn and duty of the faculty of the state foster more objective historical analysis of those facts that have so much weight had and still have in the social development of the country, including a selection of textbooks more careful and impartial.
The war between the north and the south of Italy can not be fought more on the battlefields of the Volturno, Garigliano, in the stands or in the countryside of Gaeta infested with "bandits", but it is no less alive, continues today on the grounds of an historic culture backward and lying to, feeding a vision of the South "genetically" backward, producing a further rift between the two "ethnic groups" that have not been popular ever.
The debate is still open and lively on the assumption of a federal Italy, the bright tones of the Party of the Northern League, an aversion, a hidden but real, between the people of the north and south, despite the "mixing" due to 'migration internal evidence of what these issues, born in 1860 are still relevant today.
Today the unity of the state, in a period where advancement through political-economic supranational institutions like the European Union, is certainly a value to be protected, but the south is due to a policy and a special attention, a policy linked to His real interest, which values \u200b\u200bits enormous resources go along and its vocation, in partial compensation of disasters and injustices of the unity it has brought.
The huge number of deaths that cost the annexation, the 23 million migrants from the south of the last century, which have highly contributed to the cost of enormous efforts, the creation of modern Italy and viable practice that deserve recognition and respect that for 140 years the State, through a longstanding culture of lying, denied him and that today's heirs of the nation Napoletana claim.
CARLO COPPOLA
"counterstory Unification of Italy"
MCE Publisher
