Seeds of Inequality

Few of the leaders of the new nation cared to find out about the realities of the South

A critical look at the Italian unification (circa 1860).

Excerpt from Blood of My Blood of Richard Gambino, page 51 forward.  

The long-standing antipathy between "Alta Italia" and the South rapidly boiled to active enmity. 

The new liberators from the Northern province of Piedmont were irked when reminded that Sardinia, which had been ruled for 150 years not by foreigners but their own government in Turin, was one of the poorest areas of the South, in fact economically in worse shape than some of the poorest areas of the old Bourbon kingdom. 

Thirty years after unification, the average Piedmontese had a standard of living twice as high as the average Sicilian. The economic result was that the Southern contadini (peasants) sent taxes north and the tax rate jumped at once 30 percent over the rate under the Bourbons.

Having virtually no national debt under the Bourbons (Kingdom of Two Sicilies rulers), the Mezzogiorno (aka Southern Italy) was soon caught in a spiral of ever-increasing debts followed by higher taxes. By merely re-establishing their unholy alliance of corruption with outsiders, this time with Piedmontese politicians and bureaucrats, the latifondisti (landowners) evaded the burden of taxation, and it fell squarely upon the contadini. 

To benefit the industry of the North, protective industrial tariffs were instituted.  The result was the closing of most of the factories in the Mezzogiorno, especially around Naples which had functioned under the free trade policy of Bourbons.