Society and politics in the age of the Risorgimento: essays in honour of Denis Mack Smith 9780521365925, 9780521526456, 9780511875601

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Society and Politics in the Age of the Risorgimento contains ten essays written

in honour of Denis Mack Smith by leading British and Italian specialists.

The volume is intended both as a tribute to Denis Mack Smith’s outstanding contribution to Italian history and as an attempt to open up

wider debate on Italian society and politics in the period of the Risorgimento, bringing aspects of nineteenth-century Italian politics and social history into a comparative European context. Topics discussed in the volume include the collapse of the ancien régime in

southern Italy; the Italian armies in the Napoleonic period; debates on poverty in Italy and Europe in the early nineteenth century; family and marriage; the origins of Mafia in Sicily; peasant protest in the Po valley; Garibaldi and England in the 1860s; the emergence of an Italian middle

class; women workers; and the politics of Francesco De Sanctis. Contributors: Marzio Barbaghi, Derek Beales, Simonetta Ortaggi Camma-

rosano, John A. Davis, Giovanna Fiume, Paul Ginsborg, Adrian Lyttelton, Franco Della Peruta, Denis Mack Smith, Stuart Woolf

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SOCIETY AND POLITICS IN THE AGE OF THE RISORGIMENTO

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Society and Politics in the Age of the Risorgimento Essays in honour of Denis Mack Smith Edited by

JOHN A. DAVIS and

PAUL GINSBORG

4.

SE ARS Universtiy of Contbridge

i 4 was granted by , ey "j iy Henryor Vit in 1534.

bi rs snce 1584. i By The University has printed

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE

NEW YORK PORT CHESTER MELBOURNE SYDNEY

PUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK 40 West 20th Street, New York NY 10011-4211, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia Ruiz de Alarcon 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa http://www.cambridge.org © Cambridge University Press 1991

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1991 First paperback edition 2002 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Society and politics in the age of the Risorgimento: essays in honour of Denis Mack Smith / edited by John A. Davis and Paul Ginsborg.

p. cm.

"Bibliography of Denis Mack Smith's writings’. Includes index. Contents: 1799: the Santafede and the crisis of the ancien régime in southern Italy / John A. Davis — War and society in Napoleonic Italy / Franco Della Peruta —- The poor and how to relieve them / Stuart Woolf ~ Bandits, violence, and the organization of power in Sicily in the early nineteenth century / Giovanna Fiume — Marriage and the family in Italy in the early nineteenth century / Marzio Barbagli— After the Revolution / Paul Ginsborg — Labouring women in northern and central Italy in the nineteenth century / Simonetta Ortaggi Cammarosano — Garibaldi in England / Derek Beales — The middle classes in Liberal Italy / Adrian Lyttelton — Francesco de Sanctis / Denis Mack Smith. ISBN 0 521 36592 9 1. Italy —-Social conditions. 2. Italy — History — 19th century.

3. Mack Smith, Denis, 1920-— - Bibliography. I. Mack Smith, Denis, 1920— . LI. Davis, John Anthony. III. Ginsborg, Paul. HN475.856 1991 306’.0945—dce20 90-1927 CIP

ISBN 0521 365929 hardback ISBN 0521 526450 paperback

Contents

Preface Xlil

List of figures and maps page ix

List of contributors x

southern Italy I

I 1799: the Santafede and the crisis of the ancien régime in JOHN A. DAVIS

2 War and society in Napoleonic Italy: the armies of the

Kingdom of Italy at home and abroad 26

FRANCO DELLA PERUTA

3. The poor and how to relieve them: the Restoration

debate on poverty in Italy and Europe 49 STUART WOOLF

4 Bandits, violence and the organization of power in Sicily

in the early nineteenth century 70

century Q2 GIOVANNA FIUME

5 Marriage and the family in Italy in the early nineteenth

1848-54 128

MARZIO BARBAGLI

6 After the Revolution: bandits on the plains of the Po PAUL GINSBORG

nineteenth century 152

7 Labouring women in northern and central Italy in the SIMONETTA ORTAGGI CAMMAROSANO

8 Garibaldi in England: the politics of Italian enthusiasm 184

DEREK BEALESVu.

vill CONTENTS g The middle classes in Liberal Italy 217 ADRIAN LYTTELTON

Io Francesco De Sanctis: the politics of a literary critic 251 DENIS MACK SMITH

Index 274

century Italy 271 Bibliography of Denis Mack Smith’s writings on nineteenth-

Maps

1 Italy in 1815 | page xvii 2 Italy in 1870 XIX

3 Italy — place-names XX—-XX1

4 Geographical area of bandit activity on the plains of the Po 30

Figures 1 Age at marriage for men and percentage of owner-farmers

in Piedmont and Liguria in 1881 es!

2 Age at marriage for women and percentage of owner-

1881 116

farmers in Piedmont and Liguria in 1881 112

3 Permanent nubility and percentage of owner-farmers in Emilia Romagna, Tuscany, Umbria, and the Marche in

4 Permanent nubility and percentage of owner-farmers, leaseholders, and share-croppers in Emilia Romagna, Tuscany,

Umbria, and the Marche in 1881 116

1X |

Contributors

MARZIO BARBAGLI 1s professor of sociology in the University of

Bologna. He has written widely on education and the family and among his most recent publications is Sotto lo stesso tetto: mutamenti della

famiglia in Italia (Bologna 1984). DEREK BEALES holds the chair of modern history in the University of Cambridge and is a fellow of Sidney Sussex College. He has written on British, Austrian, and Italian history and his most recent publication is Joseph IT: Volume I, In the Shadow of Maria Theresa, 1741-1789 (London 1987).

JOHN A. DAVIS 1s a professor of modern history in the University of

Warwick and author of Conflict and Control: Law and Order in Nineteenth Century Italy (London 1988).

FRANCO DELLA PERUTA holds the chair in Risorgimento history in the University of Milan and has written extensively on the political and

social history of nineteenth-century Italy: his most recent book is Esercito e societa in Italia napoleonica (Milan 1988).

GIOVANNI FIUME is a research fellow in the University of Palermo

and author of a recent study on banditry in Sicily in the early nineteenth century: Le bande armate in Sicilia 1815—49: organizzazione del

potere (Palermo 1984).

PAUL GINSBORG is a fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge, and

university lecturer in politics. His most recent book is A History of Contemporary Italy. Society and Politics, 1943-1988 (London 1990).

ADRIAN LYTTELTON holds the chair in contemporary history at the

University of Pisa and writes widely on Italian social and political x

CONTRIBUTORS x1 history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: he is author of The Seizure of Power: Fascism in Italy 1919-29 (London 1974).

DENIS MACK SMITH is emeritus fellow of All Souls College, extraordinary fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, and a fellow of the British Academy. He is Commendatore dell’Ordine del Merito della Repubblica Italiana, and in 1990 was awarded the CBE for his services

to Italian history. His most recent book 1s Italy and Its Monarchy (London 1989) SIMONETTA ORTAGGI CAMMAROSANO teaches economic history at

the University of Trieste and is author of Il prezzo del lavoro. Torino e Pindustria italiana nel primo ’900 (Turin 1988).

STUART WOOLF holds chairs in modern European history at the European University Institute (Florence) and in the University of Essex. His recent books include A History of Italy, 1700-1870 (London 1979) and The Poor in Western Europe (London 1986).

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Preface

This volume of essays is published in honour of Denis Mack Smith and

in acknowledgement of the unique role that he has played in promoting the study and understanding of Italian history in this country. In a career that already spans more than four decades, Denis

Mack Smith has written more widely and influentially on contemporary Italian history than any other non-Italian. In so doing he has established an unparalleled reputation both in Italy and in the English-

speaking world. | The breadth of his reputation owes much to the fact that he has the gift of writing original, serious, and scrupulously researched history

which none the less remains accessible and attractive to the nonspecialist — a rare talent that has won him recognition as one of the finest historical biographers writing in English today. This ability to reach out beyond the confines of academic audiences has enabled him to play a critically important role in first reviving and then stimulating and widening an interest in Italian history. His works have inspired younger generations of professional historians of Italy, as well as being

very well received by university students, school-teachers, and the

general reading public. , That is not to say that his work has been uncontroversial, and indeed another of his talents as a historian has always been to provoke. When

his first major book, Cavour and Garibaldi, was published in 1954,

A.J. P. Taylor commented: ‘with brilliant, though well-founded perversity, Mr Mack Smith turns things upside down’. Cavour and Garibaldi certainly did turn upside down an accepted image of Italian Unification as the fruit of the harmonious and concerted action of great men and patriots; by going back to contemporary debates and battles, Mack Smith showed instead the extent to which Italian independence and national unity had been born out of internal conflict and disunity. X111

X1V PREFACE The central theme of this famous book was not only the defeat of Garibaldi by Cavour in the struggle to settle the political future of the unified state once independence from Austria had been achieved, but also the destruction of those idealistic and heroic aspirations that had inspired the struggle for independence.

, This critical view of the outcome of the Risorgimento has remained one of the constants of Mack Smith’s writings, in sharp contrast to the

heroic terms in which earlier English writers like Trevelyan had depicted the Italian struggles for independence. It has found close echoes in Mack Smith’s search to identify the historical causes of the rise

of Fascism. This was the theme of his enormously successful Italy: A Modern History, first published in 1959. His insistence on the fatal flaws

that accompanied the birth of the Liberal state was not a view that everyone was prepared to accept. Indeed, it provoked furious debate. But, as well as arousing dissent, Mack Smith’s interpretation coincided closely with the conclusions of more than a few Italian historians and his participation in these historical controversies gave Italy’s past a wider international audience as well as constituting an important episode in Anglo-Italian cultural history. After the publication of Italy: A Modern History, Mack Smith turned his attention for a decade and more to Fascism and its leader. But the nineteenth century has never been far from his sight, as is evident from

the new biography of Cavour published in 1984. The Risorgimento and the reign of Victor Emanuel IE also provided the starting point for his most recent publication, which takes the Italian monarchy as a vantage point for a study that sweeps across a remarkably eventful century of Italian history. In these more recent studies — as in the new essay on Francesco De Sanctis that forms part of this volume — he has revised, but in general stood by and reinforced, his earlier judgements

on the political legacy of the Risorgimento and the short-comings of Liberal Italy.

Such a synoptic resumé cannot do justice to the breadth of Denis Mack Smith’s work or the fineness of his judgements, but it does provide an essential introduction to the essays that follow. While these are offered as a tribute from friends and colleagues here and in Italy, they are not intended as a formal Festschrift, not least because Denis Mack Smith was appalled at such a project. In any case, a Festschrift

that adequately reflected the range of his interests and his contributions , to Italian history in the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries would not be easily contained in a single volume. But above all, although he

PREFACE XV retired as a senior research fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, in 1987,

Denis Mack Smith is still very much a working historian whose productivity shows no sign of slackening. For all these reasons the editors felt that a tribute from British and Italian colleagues working in the field of nineteenth-century Italian history should most fittingly take the form of ‘work-in-progress’. Italian Unification has always held a particular fascination for British audiences, yet until quite recently both Italian and non-Italian historians have tended to concentrate their attention on the twentieth rather than

the nineteenth century, and especially on the Fascist period. But the more thoroughly the inter-war period has been explored, the more historians have begun to ask new questions about what went before it and what came after. As a result, the agenda of research on modern Italy has broadened notably in recent years. On the one hand, this has led to new research on the period after Fascism, and in particular on the political, cultural, and social changes that took place in the 1940s and 1950s. On the other, there has also been what might be described as a modest but distinct rediscovery of the nineteenth century.

The new directions taken by recent research on the nineteenth century are reflected in many of the essays that follow. They indicate

most obviously the growing importance of social history and the

awareness of the need to set political change in its social and institutional contexts. In more than one respect, the new social history

has followed the example given by Mack Smith in his pioneering article, written as long ago as 1950, on “The peasants’ revolt in Sicily, 1860’. But it is only in the last decade that the social history of modern Italy has begun to come fully into its own. This is not to say that the older agenda has been abandoned or that the political struggles for independence and unification have lost their importance. It is, rather, to claim that the historical explanation of the

achievements and failures of the Risorgimento can be enormously refined and enriched by examining every aspect of Italian society in the nineteenth century, and by trying to connect the social to the political.

This changing emphasis has also served to encourage more comparative approaches, since in many cases the Italian experience was

much less particular than has often been assumed. A comparative perspective is evident in many of the essays that follow, whether their subject matter is the crisis of the ancien régime states, the experience of service in the Grande Armée, attitudes towards poverty, Garibaldi’s visit to Britain, or the emergence of a new middle class. Developments in

XV1 PREFACE Italy are seen as variants on more general European patterns whose particular characteristics become evident only through comparative study. In other cases, such as the development of family structures, the

conditions of women workers, the impact of agrarian unrest or the development of new systems of power in the context of rapid social and institutional change, the analysis is necessarily more case-specific; but here, too, there are constant references to other models and experiences,

and hence to wider comparisons. While a volume of this sort is necessarily eclectic, we hope that as a whole it bears the imprint of the two themes outlined above — the social and the comparative. It is our intention to bring discussion of Italy more fully into those recent debates amongst social historians which have tended, in this country at least, to privilege Britain, France, and Germany. Naturally, this collection of essays cannot pretend to offer a comprehensive panorama of Italian social and political history in the nineteenth century. What it does aim to do is to widen discussions

on Italian history; to encourage younger historians to take up the challenges and unanswered questions it poses; and to strengthen contacts and exchanges between British and Italian historians: three fields in which Denis Mack Smith’s contributions have been quite outstanding.

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There were also errors of omission. The republican government was

slow to introduce reforms. It did abolish feudal entails and primogenitures, but this was an innovation that benefited the wealthy most directly and especially the cadet sons of the great aristocratic families. Such changes brought no immediate advantage to the masses, although they did arouse expectations that were not met. The commission set up to consider the wider issue of defining and abolishing feudalism divided into moderate and radical factions, but the law that it eventually drafted was rejected by the French authorities. It was not until 27 April, three months after the declaration of the Republic, that the law abolishing

feudal dues was published. With reason De Nicola noted: ‘The Government thinks in this fashion to make the provinces aware of the

advantages of the revolution and bring the revolts to an end. But it should have done this sooner.’” The anticipated abolition of feudalism aroused hopes and fears that brutally exposed the conflicting interests in southern society. Many

believed that some portion of all feudal estates would become the

property of the rural communities, while others feared that the imposition of absolute property rights would remove ancient use-rights and cause irreparable damage to the interests of the pastoral economy

and the upland communities. The Republic risked being caught between the two, neither able to satisfy the demands of those who wanted the restoration of traditional use-rights nor to offer protection against such claims.

For the royalists, the task was much easier. They promised their supporters a share in the lands and goods of the Jacobins and the leaders of the masse, like Fra Diavolo and Pronio, were authorized to sequester

the lands and revenues of all Republican landowners to finance their operations. The monarchy was even prepared to make much wider concessions, as is evident from the queen’s instructions to Ruffo in *l Colletta, Storia, vol. 1, p. 263; Helfert, Ruffo, p. 137; Cingari, Giacobini, p. 300. ®2 De Nicola, Diario, 27 April, p. 170; G. Galasso, ‘La legge feodale napoletana del 1799’, Rivista Storica Italiana, 86 (1964) pp. 507-29.

22 JOHN A. DAVIS February: ‘lift all taxes for ten years and abolish feudalism and all jus proibitivi [1.e. feudal monopolies} —1in short, let us anticipate all those initiatives that the French will introduce’.*? But Ruffo resisted these instructions, and for reasons that show that

he had developed a much wider understanding of the nature of the crisis in the Mezzogiorno. His objections were in part pragmatic, and he argued that to abolish feudalism as Maria Carolina demanded would

be a dangerously opportunist and populist gesture that risked irrevocably alienating a considerable part of the nobility and making the task of defeating the republicans even more difficult. Ruffo’s own policy was quite different. He was prepared to reduce certain taxes paid only by the poor in order ‘to nurture jealousy between the people and the middle ranks while at the same time alleviating the poor of some of their burdens without removing them completely.’*4 Ruffo was concerned above all to seek a rapprochement with those sections of the elites that had deserted the monarchy. The best way to beat the republicans, he repeatedly argued, was to make it easy for them to recant: ‘It can be seen that the Calabrians are in general loyal to the

king and that many joined the rebellion through fear rather than enthusiasm.”®® For that reason, he went out of his way to offer the

Jacobins the opportunity to come to terms. When the republican galantuomini at Ascoli Satriano were threatened by a popular royalist

rising and offered to surrender, for example, Ruffo despatched a squadron of mounted troops to keep order in the town and protect the former Jacobins from the insurgents.°* On hearing that the Jacobins on Procida had been massacred after Captain Troubridge occupied the

island, he protested angrily that such actions would only make the Jacobins more intransigent and so make the recapture of Naples the more difficult. By contrast he repeated his insistence on the need to win over the republican elites: It is like the old medieval wars between the barons and | find that by dividing them with flattery, rewards, privileges, and gifts one half will soon get the rest under control and will do the task with enthusiasm. But what is the point in punishing them, indeed how is it possible to punish them when they are so many without resorting to methods of excessive cruelty 2°’

Ruffo’s strategy of reconciliation was a major factor in the success of °§ Croce, La riconquista, Maria Carolina to Ruffo, 16 February, p. 21; cf. Coppa Zuccari, ‘Uombuono delle Boccache’, p. 347. 54 Croce, La riconquista, Rufto to Acton, 3 March, p. 45. © Tbid., Ruffo to Acton, 2 March p. 39.

*8 The leading faction in Ascoli Satriano, they had already changed coats twice before! See Lucarelli, Puglia, p.113. *”’ Croce, La riconquista, Ruffo to Acton, 30 April, pp. 153-4.

1799: The ‘Santafede’ and the crisis of the ‘ancien régime’ 23 the counter-revolution, but it brought him increasingly into conflict with Maria Carolina and Nelson who demanded punitive measures and

would offer no quarter. The rift became definitive when Nelson revoked the generous terms of capitulation that Ruffo had offered the

Jacobin leaders after the fall of Naples. Politically Ruffo was an embarrassment and shortly after he found a convenient excuse to leave the Kingdom.*®

This was more than a clash of tactics. Ruffo’s awareness of the need for a political rather than a military solution in 1799 was the principal fruit of his experience in Calabria. He had understood that there were

two keys to the crisis. On one hand, the conflict between the monarchy and the elites. On the other, the increasingly complex and precarious structure of power in the Mezzogiorno which bred conflict and division. The precariousness of the southern elites was exacerbated by the weakness of the state and lay at the heart of the disorder that had swept through the Mezzogiorno. For that reason Ruffo believed that the restoration of order was a greater challenge than the defeat of the

republicans, and that simply to give power to the winning factions would be dangerous and counter-productive. Dangerous because it would perpetuate factional conflict and vendetta; counter-productive

because it risked leaving the state with little effective power or influence.

Hence the attempt to create a new framework of order and legitimacy under the banners of the Santafede. Although it is unlikely that this could have offered any solution to the contradictory social and economic forces that were dividing and weakening the southern elites, Ferdinand and Maria Carolina chose to follow a strategy that amounted

to littl more than the legitimization of vendetta. As a result, throughout the Kingdom the victory of the counter-revolution put power into the hands of those factions that had supported the Santafede, and their victories were consolidated by the inquests conducted by the Royal Visitors who in 1799 and 1800 travelled the provinces to: punish the republicans and investigate local grievances. The politics of revenge made the rift between the monarchy and the

progressive sections of Neapolitan society irreversible, while legitimizing factional government in ways that seriously weakened the State’s ability to intervene effectively in local government. This was evident in the government’s failure to introduce reform despite the inquests conducted in the aftermath of 1799. Even in the short term the consequences were negative. Angelo De Jacobis gives an indication of °° On the hostility to Ruffo see Blanch, ‘Il regno di Napoli’, pp. 82-3.

24 JOHN A. DAVIS the climate of expectation and fear aroused by the royalist victory when

the first news of the executions of the Jacobins in Naples reached Teramo in the summer of 1709: It is said that D. Giuseppe Guidobaldi from Nereto in the Abruzzi, who is a member of the State Junta, started the chaos by pursuing a vendetta against all those who were suspected and cutting off the heads of the leading families in Naples. He managed to see to it that the city would be governed now by the sons of butchers, fruit sellers, carpenters, police spies, and other infamous types, since his only aim to was to destroy anyone of standing or dignity.°®

But once again expectations were to be dashed. Despite the promises, the lands of the Jacobins were not shared out and even Fra Diavolo was cheated of the rewards promised him by the king. In many parts of the Kingdom popular revolts were directed against the victors of 1799, while harvest failures and the financial burdens of renewed preparations

for war after Napoleon’s victory at Marengo increased popular discontent. The year 1799 failed to provide solutions to popular discontent and unrest in the Mezzogiorno, but it did dispel the myth of the Santafede.

When the French armies returned to the south in 1806 to put Napoleon’s brother Joseph on the throne of Naples, there was no response to the royal appeals for a popular rising to resist the invader. In part this was because the elites, still mindful of the events of 1799, took care to engineer a peaceful transfer of power. But the failure of the

victorious royalist factions to honour the promises made to their followers in 1799 had undermined popular faith mm the monarchy’s power to redress their grievances. Significantly, the final appeal for a new Santafede after the fall of the Bourbon monarchy half a century later in 1860 also fell on deaf ears, and although peasant insurrections spread through much of the rural Mezzogiorno all attempts to impose a Sanfedist or royalist imprint on them proved unsuccessful: and for

similar reasons. The absence of a tradition of popular counterrevolution in the south was itself a reflection of the tense relations that existed between the masses and the elites: these were to remain a major cause of the fragility of Southern society in the century that followed. In political terms, too, the Sanfedist triumph of 1799 was bankrupt and mainly for the reasons that Ruffo had understood. It offered no solutions to the problems of the ancien regime monarchy, which was soon to be transformed at the hands of Joseph Bonaparte and Joachim *§ Coppa Zuccari, ‘Angelo De Jacobis’, p. 144a. 69 See G. Cingari, ‘Michele Pezza, Fra Diavolo’, in Brigantaggio, pp. 38-$9; on the ‘anarchy’ after 1799 see Dante, Anarchia, pp. 128-50.

1799: The ‘Santafede’ and the crisis of the ‘ancien regime’ 25 Murat. The victory of factionalism in 1799 in many ways exacerbated

the political crisis of the ancien regime, making the problem of establishing new and more stable forms of power all the more difficult. When the French invaders returned in 1806 the victories of 1799 would be reversed, and at each succeeding change of regime or political crisis — in 1814, in 1820, in 1848, and in 1860 — similar processes would occur.

But the French formula of the régime de notables could be no stronger

than its notables, and it was symptomatic of continuing divisions within the southern elites that they failed to develop any powerful collective political or cultural ideology — even that of the counterrevolution. If the memory of the Santafede remained a useful weapon for brow-beating and frightening Liberals, after 1799 it was never again to be a serious political force in the south: even in 1799 success had

barely concealed the deep contradictions that were present in the Sanfedist victory.

CHAPTER 2

War and society in Napoleonic Italy: the armies of the Kingdom of Italy at home and abroad FRANCO DELLA PERUTA

In January 1802 Napoleon renamed the former Cisalpine Republic the Italian Republic, and in March 1805 this in turn became the Kingdom of Italy, with Napoleon himself as king and Eugéne Beauharnais as

viceroy.Covering an area of some 84,000 square kilometres, the Kingdom stretched from Novara to the River Tronto, and contained nearly seven million inhabitants or nearly a third of the total population of Italy at the time. The Italian Republic inherited the chaotic military

forces of its predecessor, the Cisalpine Republic, and found itself in 1802 with a National Guard that hardly existed and about 1,400 troops of the line, most of whom were foreigners, at least half being Poles. In his Oration to Bonaparte the soldier-poet Ugo Foscolo described the

Republic’s army as ‘a militia in mere embryo’ and more mercenary than national in character. This greatly concerned Pietro Teulié, one of the Republic’s ablest generals and for some months the Minister of War. Teulié believed that the creation of a genuinely ‘national’ army was the only means of escaping overpowering French domination, and

for that reason he favoured compulsory conscription —- and was supported by Francesco Melzi d’Eril, the vice-president of the new Republic.

By the law of 13 August 1802 all males in the ‘nation’ between the

ages of twenty and twenty-five were obliged to enlist in the army; exemptions were made only for those who had contracted to marry before the law was published, for widowers with dependent children, ministers of religion, and seminarists. Substitutes were allowed, but had to be presented within three days of the call to arms, be physically fit,

and be under thirty years of age. Individuals offering substitutes had also to pay a tax assessed on income (with a ceiling of one thousand Milanese lire), which meant that the wealthier families were in effect exempt, leaving the burden of enlisted military service (four years in 26

War and society in Napoleonic Italy 27 peace-time and indefinitely in case of war) to fall on the poorer classes —and above all on the peasants. The creation of the Kingdom of Italy in 1805 gave new impetus to

the military reorganization which had begun during the Republic. Throughout the Kingdom conscription was bitterly resisted, and everywhere young men eligible for enlistment fled to inaccessible regions of the mountains, the forests, and the swamps, or else to other states. But gradually the conscription procedures became more effective

and the number of draft evaders declined. However, the rate of desertion — described by the War Ministry in 1804 as ‘the worm that sows the seeds of destruction in an army’ — grew correspondingly, so that there were soon more deserters than draft evaders. This suggests that it was less risky to desert after being called to the colours than to

try to evade the conscription boards. In October 1810 Eugéne Beauharnatis reported to Napoleon that there had been 18,000 desertions in the previous three years, while another 22,000 conscripts were listed

as absentees, making an ‘alarming’ total of nearly 40,000 men who were illegally avoiding military service. Despite this massive absenteeism, the army of the Kingdom of Italy

continued to grow in size until 1812 and its organization and operational capacity steadily improved. The number of men with the colours, or absent for legitimate cause, was always less than the official complement, but the underlying trend was positive. In February 1804

there were 22,779 men under arms (excluding the Poles, the Gendarmerie, and the Royal Guard), but by November 1807 the number had nearly doubled to 40,000 (including the gendarmes and the

Royal Guard), with an official complement of 45,000. By the end of 1810 the figures were 50,345 men with the colours and a complement of 60,500; by the end of 1812, 71,690 and 80,000 respectively.' Officers were included in these figures, but although their numbers increased in absolute terms, they fell in proportion to the number of ordinary soldiers. There were respectively 2,085 officers for 24,365 soldiers in 1807; 2,484 officers for 42,307 soldiers in 1810; 3,038 officers for $9,128 soldiers (¢ncluding NCOs) in January 1812. Training was by

the new military academies or through service in the Royal Guard and the standard of leadership greatly improved. The traditional systems of

promotion on the basis of age and election were abolished and Archivio di stato di Milano (ASM), Ministero della guerra (MG), cart. 2436; 785; 797: ASM, Archivio Aldini, cart. 102; A. Zanoli, Sulla milizia cisalpina-italiana. Cenno storico-statistico dal 1796 al 1814 (Milan 1845), vol. 1, p. 255.

28 FRANCO DELLA PERUTA henceforth promotion went strictly on merit alone. Teulié considered this an important measure for strengthening the ‘national’ character of the officer corps, and his efforts were generally successful despite the constraints imposed by the emperor. The number of officers born in the territories that formed part of the Kingdom steadily increased, so that over the period from 1802 to 1812, 12 of the 17 generals commanding army divisions, 18 of the 40 brigade commanders, and 41 of the 73 colonels and naval captains were natives of the Kingdom.’ Each unit had an adequate complement of junior officers and NCOs

and they were also generally of a high standard of training and experience. Engineers were in short supply because of the training required, hence the difficulties facing Bianchi d’Adda, the inspector general of the Corps of Engineers, when he attempted to reorganize the

corps — the principal problem being the very slow supply of newly trained officers from the Military Academy in Modena, which was aggravated by the fact that many officers with training in engineering were often posted to other units. The shortage of engineers led Prince Eugene in 1808 to ask Napoleon for the secondment of senior French officers, since he had few suitable battalion commanders and his more able captains were too young and inexperienced for senior commands.* The NCOs outnumbered the officers by several hundred, but it was

always hard to find well-qualified men. The most able tended to be allocated to conscription and training duties or else were posted to new units, leaving the line regiments to make do with illiterates who were

barely capable of carrying out the administrative duties required of them. In 1808, for example, the commander of the 1st Light Infantry at Bologna pointed out that promotion seriously undermined ‘the formation of a good team of NCOs’, who could not be replaced by conscripted men since almost without exception they were peasants and

farmers with no education or knowledge. In 1811, to take another example, the commander of the 2nd Battalion of the 4th Light Infantry complained that his NCOs and corporals were ‘all rejects from other

units for reasons of their indiscipline, or else former National Guardsmen — the most horrid, decrepit and useless men imaginable’. The shortage of NCOs became even more acute in the last years of the Kingdom owing to war casualties.“ The Republic’s infantry was originally made up of four half brigades of the line and a single Italian half brigade of Light Infantry (with two 2 ASM, Aldini, cart. 97, 99, 102; Zanoli, Sulla milizia, vol. 1, pp. 33, 217-19. 3 ASM, MG, cart. 444; Aldini, cart. 86 (Prince Eugene to Napoleon, 22.11.1808). 4 ASM, MG, cart. 402 bis, 413; Zanoli, Sulla milizia, vol. 1, p. 26.

War and society in Napoleonic Italy 29 Polish half brigades): by 1811 there were seven regiments of the line and four Light Infantry regiments, making fifty-five battalions in all (not including the Dalmatian Regiment and the Colonial Battalion, both formed in October 1810). Their operational strength was increased

by adding to each combat battalion four companies of riflemen, a company of grenadiers, and a company of Volteggiatori — specialist units recruited from men chosen for their agility and short stature who could

be moved very quickly in battle, often riding double-back on cavalry mounts. From 1810 onward each regiment was also provided with a company of foot artillery.” The cavalry was thoroughly reorganized and strengthened under Melzi’s administration. In 1801 there had been three cavalry regiments, two of Hussars and one Light Cavalry (as well as a regiment of Polish Uhlans), but their effective numbers were less than a third of the official complement and some squadrons consisted of barely thirty men ‘with their uniforms in tatters, no equipment and for the greater part without boots’. They were short of officers, although the cavalry needed more than the infantry because of the complexity of the manoeuvres that had to be learned. But by 1811 each cavalry regiment in combat order had

a complement of 1,096 men and 996 mounts, divided into nine companies (one acting as reserve), making a total complement of 6,576 men and 5,976 mounts. In general standards were high, although some units were still short of officers and NCOs, while others lacked training or were short of arms or equipment.® The artillery regiments of the Italian Republic had been particularly weak and in 1802 had consisted of only 740 men (including 95 officers), divided between one foot and one mounted regiment each with a few bronze cannon. In 1805 Napoleon still considered the situation to be

‘alarming’, but by 1812 the complement had risen to 4,802 men (including 198 officers), 1,769 mounts, and 150 pieces of field artillery.’

But the condition of the transports remained poor and there was little increase in the number of military engineers. In 1802 the Corps of Engineers had 703 men, including 64 officers, and ten years later this had risen to only 1,019 men, including 95 officers — 895 of whom were sappers and mine-layers.®

The Royal Guard consisted of two brigades: the Guard of Honour and the Veliti. The former was recruited exclusively from the brothers and sons of the members of the Electoral Colleges of the Kingdom, and was the preserve of the most illustrious families. The Veliti, on the other > ASM, MG, cart. 376-7. 5 ASM, MG, cart. 456-64, 727-8. ” ASM, MG, cart. 378, 524; Zanoli, Sulla milizia, vol. 1, p. 301. ®° ASM, MG, cart. 376.

30 FRANCO DELLA PERUTA hand, were recruited from the wealthier middle classes. After two years’ service in the Guard, cadets from the Guard of Honour joined line regiments as subalterns, those from the Veliti as sergeants. By 1812 there were 541 Guards of Honour, 1,450 Veliti and 436 line Dragoons,

forming a substantial elite force that acquitted itself with great distinction in combat.? The military police, the Gendarmes, and a regiment of veterans and invalids, completed the muster-roll of the army of the Kingdom of Italy. For those who served in the Italian army in these years, the first experiences of military life were in the barracks. Supplying this rapidly growing number of men with food and equipment was the greatest of the problems facing the senior military commissioner, Tordord, who reported in 1807 that the barracks were short of 20,000 beds and 16,000 sets of sheets.'® Things did not improve and in the barracks of the Royal

Guard stationed in the Bonaparte Forum in Milan, for example, the tables and benches were found to be ‘unusable because broken and filthy ’, the straw and palliasses were mouldy, and there were virtually no sheets or blankets. The barracks of the Dalmatian Regiment at Zara had no equipment and makeshift hammocks were used instead of beds. The barracks used by the Napoleon Dragoons stationed at Vigevano in 1808

were in a state of ‘dilapidation’, and equipped with ‘nothing worthy

of the name of a blanket’. When the Ist regiment of the line was inspected in March 1808 it was discovered that their beds were much narrower than the regulations permitted, that the straw used to cover them was rotten, and that many soldiers slept three to a bed.”! To remedy the situation, local communities were made responsible for maintaining the Kingdom’s 300 barracks and the 100,000 men and

19,000 horses they accommodated. Municipal authorities had to provide for ‘the purchase, maintenance, repair and replacement of beds and bedding’, for the maintenance and upkeep of the buildings used as barracks and for their ‘fixtures and fittings’, for which they received an

allowance of seven centimes per soldier per day during ‘the seven months of summer’, eight centimes during the ‘five months of winter’,

and eight centimes throughout the year for mounted troops. Each soldier was to be provided with a bed, a coarse canvas palliasse filled

with 45 lbs. of wheat, rye, or maize straw, a mattress stuffed with 26 Ibs. of wool, a bolster, two sets of sheets, and a woollen blanket.

New health and sanitary regulations were also introduced, but mainly with an eye to achieving greater economies. Changes of bed-

® ASM, MG, cart. 376. 10 ASM, MG, cart. 161. 12 ASM, MG, cart. 163, 414, $47, 727-8.

War and society in Napoleonic Italy 31 linen were no longer required every 15 to 20 days, but every 20 days from May to August and only once a month for the rest of the year. Bedding-straw was to be changed twice a month during the summer and once during the winter, but maize-straw only once a year. Earlier regulations had stipulated that NCOs and common soldiers should sleep in double or single beds, but according to the new regulations all corporals and soldiers were to sleep in double beds."* The delegation of responsibility to the local authorities did not solve

the problem and in June 1808 the Minister of War told the commissioner in chief: ‘Sir, diverse reports have persuaded me that in general the service of supplying and maintenance of the barracks is sadly neglected.’ The reports of the military commanders paint a vivid picture of conditions in the barracks. In 1810 the commander of the sth

regiment of the line reported that his 1,250 men were stationed at Chioggia in a building with room for only 800: The equipment and supplies are amongst the most atrocious that I have ever seen. There are not enough sheets, and those that exist are never changed or taken away to be cleaned by the Municipal authorities... The blankets are putrid, infested with scabies and vermin — they are the same ones that were

used by the Austrians in 1806. The palliasses are infested, rotted, and impossible to clean... The straw 1s old, filthy, infested with vermin, and stinking ...most of the beds lack a base so that the soldiers have to put the palliasses on the floor, and this is particularly unhealthy in the lower rooms which are all damp because they are at sea level and are frequently flooded.’®

The appalling conditions in the barracks meant that soldiers often had to be billeted in private houses. In March 1808, for example, the town of Vigevano was forced to accommodate 150 Dragoons, even though the mayor had protested that this would prevent the inhabitants

rearing the silkworms on which their livelihood depended. At Cormons, in 1812, the decision to billet a battalion of the sth regiment of the line on the inhabitants provoked lively complaints from both the citizens and the soldiers, since the former were too poor to provide mattresses, sheets, and blankets.!4

The projected massive complex of stone barracks capable of accommodating twenty-four battalions that was to have been built at Montichiari near Brescia in 1805 would have gone some way towards solving the problem. But despite pressure from Napoleon, only a very small part of the construction ever got under way."° As well as lodging, the soldiers received a daily allowance to meet the 12 Raccolta dei leggi, decreti e circolari...riguardanti lo Stato militare (Milan 1806-13), vol. v, p. 4;

Zanoli, Sulla milizia, vol. 1, p. 104. 13 ASM, MG, cart. 1,810. 14 ASM, MG, cart. 163. > Zanoli, Sulla milizia, vol. 1, p. 104; vol. 1, pp. 425-7.

32 FRANCO DELLA PERUTA costs of food and clothing and leave them a small sum of ‘pocketmoney’. The lowest ranks of infantry soldiers received a daily wage of 30 centimes plus an allowance of 15 centimes as a “supplement for

victuals’. Of these 45 centimes, 35 were deducted as a ‘general contribution’ to be used by the captains ‘to administer to their men

each day eight ounces of fresh meat, six ounces of rice or dried vegetables, or three ounces of white bread and fresh vegetables in sufficient proportion’. A further deduction of 5 centimes was made for

‘linen and foot-wear’, so that when the men received their weekly ‘pocket-money’ an infantryman could expect only 5 centimes for each day’s service.'®

Few complaints were registered about the payment of these allowances, and these mainly concerned unwarranted deductions made by the officers. But there were greater irregularities in the distribution of clothing to conscripts, as a War Ministry report of 1808 noted: The system of providing new recruits with personal equipment has given rise to much complaint since the conscripts generally leave the recruiting stations to join their regiments without such items. Since their journeys are long this sight offers the people a subject for painful reflection and their appearance

seems to justify the false conclusion that the government neglects the maintenance and health of the sons of the State."’

Abuses that went unpunished were likely to provoke strong reactions

from the men. In March 1810, for example, some men of the 8th company, 4th squadron of the Napoleon Dragoon Regiment stationed at Novara wrote anonymously to the War Minister to expose a long list of vexations and irregularities: their pay was two and a half months in arrears and was subject to unjustified deductions, their clothing was not changed at the stipulated intervals, quarterly leave was conceded on the basis of whim and was given preferentially to those in the depots rather than those who had been on active service: “We ask only for

what is just, since every day men are flogged for the slightest misdemeanours or suffer worse than in any jail.’** As well as the soldiers in barracks and billets there were also many in army prisons. These included draft evaders, arrested deserters, those awaiting trial and those who had been convicted for disciplinary and other offences. There were twenty-seven military prisons, the largest being at Milan (in the Rocchetta del Castello fortress which held 240 prisoners), Cremona (200 prisoners), Padua (160), and Ancona (140).*® As well as punishment blocks and police cells, the military prisons also 16 Raccolta dei leggi, vol. 1v, pp. 12-19; ASM, MG, cart. 144. 17 ASM, MG, cart. 9.

18 ASM, MG, cart. 376. 19 ASM, MG, cart. 2,097, 2,316.

War and society in Napoleonic Italy 33 provided accommodation for soldiers travelling under escort by the gendarmerie. Many soldiers sentenced to fixed-term sentences had to be sent to civilian jails, and when the prisons were small this caused overcrowding that was deemed to be ‘harmful to the health of all the prisoners and to the proper aims of punitive justice’. The warders of the jails were generally veterans, who carried out their duties with ‘cold apathy’, taking advantage of the very slight penalties that they incurred to let their prisoners escape, and also of the

benevolent attitude of local army commanders who were often prepared to cover up for them. Escape was frequent, generally with the

paid connivance of the warders. The convicts were also frequently victims of the frauds committed by their jailers. Giacinto Ghezzi, for example, who was a sergeant in the Invalids’ Battalion and a former secretary to the commandant of the Milan Castello, was found guilty

in 1804 of conspiring with high-placed persons to steal tens of thousands of food rations from the prisoners held in the Bonaparte Forum.”?

The warders also connived in the various extortions to which new

convicts were subjected, particularly the ‘welcoming fee’ which incoming prisoners always paid to those already in custody. The War Ministry described the practice in a circular dated 22 October 1808: Soldiers who enter the prisons are despoiled of all their money and effects by means of a payment known as the ‘welcoming fee’. All new arrivals must pay

this imposition, and those who have no money are mistreated and not infrequently badly beaten. The exactions are carried out with all the order of a routine operation: the longest-serving prisoner takes the title and authority

of president and amongst the others men are chosen to carry out his orders...Certain of the warders encourage these extortions not only by refraining from intervening but also actively participating in them; indeed, the so-called president often hands over the money and goods of the newcomers to the warders who use them to buy the food and liquor required for the inmates’ shameful jubilations.”"

Most of those in prison were draft evaders and deserters. Other offences included insubordination and common crimes ranging from murder, which was rare, to brawling and theft. The latter were the most common and of the sentences handed out by the War Councils between 1805 and 1807, 14 were for murder, 31 for affrays resulting in woundings, 41 for acts of insubordination, and 133 for theft.* The brawls occurred mainly between soldiers and civilians, and were 20 F. Melzi d’Eril, I carteggi. La vicepresidenza della Repubblica italiana, ed. C. Zaghi (Milan 19$8—64, 7 vols.}, vol. vil, pp. 364-5. 21 Raccolta dei leggi, vol. IX, part 3a, pp. 16-17. 22 ASM, MG, cart. 790.

34 FRANCO DELLA PERUTA generally caused by the overbearing and provocative behaviour of the soldiers, although on some occasions friction between the Italians and the French was the cause. Thefts occurred mainly in the countryside where chickens and vines were the main target. For disciplinary offences or crimes which could not easily be proved before a military tribunal, soldiers could also be drafted to the 6th regiment of the line and, after

1808, to the Colonial Battalion on Elba, the destiny of any soldier deemed to be ‘incorrigible’ and unresponsive to other disciplinary measures. With good reason these units had very dire reputations. The sick and the wounded were another important contingent of the army. The medical services were reorganized in 1807 and put under a

‘director of sanitary affairs attached to the Ministry of War’. New military hospitals were established and each infantry regiment was provided with a senior surgeon, a senior and junior assistant surgeon, and an apprentice (who was required to have completed two years of

medical studies at university); each cavalry regiment had a senior surgeon, an assistant, and an apprentice.

A decree of 23 November 1810 listed four permanent military hospitals, three being categorized as first class (Milan, Venice, and Mantua, catering respectively for 800, 800, and 700 patients) and one second class (Ancona — 450/500 patients), with 119 ‘medical officers’. The same decree attempted to increase the number of medical officers

with the line regiments, but it proved far from easy to fill these posts without employing people who lacked proper medica] qualifications. Prince Eugéne took a personal interest in this and expressed his concern over the information contained on the registers of the medical officers: it is of little interest to me to know that such and such an officer is well or badly

turned out, that he is amiable or boorish: the critical issue is that he be well qualified in both the theory and the practice of medicine.”

A School of Clinical Medicine was established in 1807 as part of the military hospital of San Ambrogio in Milan, and courses in clinical medicine were given at all the permanent military hospitals. A new commission was also established to examine civilian physicians who wished to join the army as well as others who were already employed in hospitals.

Each regiment had its own sick bay where minor ailments were treated, and there were two spa hospitals at Trescore and Montorone which accommodated 300 patients, while sick soldiers were also sent to

Porretta. The hospitals were administered on the French model, and 23 ASM, MG, cart. 2099.

War and society in Napoleonic Italy 35 many of the leading names in Italian medical science in this period

became actively involved. Given the conditions of the time, the administration of the hospitals functioned reasonably well, although financial pressures arising from the war did cause the allowances made

to hospitals to be reduced in 1808, and again in January 1813 bread rations were reduced and wine rations discontinued. But even in the most desperate moments every effort was made to ensure that the hospital inmates should continue to receive white bread made only from wheat.** In time of war, temporary hospitals were set up in the towns closest

to the combat areas. The regimental field hospitals moved with the troops and provided first-aid for the wounded, but the divisional and central stations were better equipped. During sieges surgeons were stationed in the trenches, while ambulance teams were on hand for sorties and attacks. But to judge by the few accounts that have survived, the temporary field hospitals left much to be desired. After inspecting

the three battalions of the rst Polish Brigade who were fighting under

his command, Giuseppe Lechi reported to the War Minister: ‘The hospital stations are used only in cases of extreme necessity, I found them to be totally unequipped and the medical staff disinclined to give even the most fleeting assistance when some unfortunate accident takes place.’*”°

The service did improve but the mobile regimental and divisional hospitals were not well equipped. Surgical instruments were especially unsatisfactory and the surgeon-general Giovanni Palazzini described them as ‘generally of very poor construction’, especially the portable

cases of instruments supplied to the hospitals which he called ‘unusable’. The nursing staff also left much to be desired. The reports of the corps commanders suggest that they were rough and undisciplined and in 1813 Palazzini wrote: ‘This race of people is the same everywhere.

Inactive, negligent, insubordinate. If they sometimes manage to do something useful it is only because they have been forced to.’ Finding suitable nursing staff was as much a problem for civilian as for military

improvement. |

hospitals and despite the efforts made there was little sign of The military hospitals were unable to meet the demands placed on them and many soldiers had to be treated in civilian hospitals. But sick soldiers were rarely sent quickly to hospital, due to the negligence of 4 Zanoli, Sulla milizia, vol.1, p. 294. 25 ASM, MG, cart. 2,654. 26 ASM, MG, cart. 1,138.

36 FRANCO DELLA PERUTA their officers or because they were suspected of malingering, so that a great many died after being kept in their barracks until their illnesses became acute. There were also particular problems for those who fell

ill while separated from their units, a risk that faced not only those whose duties caused them to travel but also convalescent soldiers returning from military hospitals to their units. Both found that local doctors would not treat them on the grounds that no-one would pay them, while many of those discharged from hospital fell ill again as soon as they rejoined their regiments because of the hardships of their journey. Many of those in transit to military prisons were also gravely

ill, but received no medical care before or during their journeys. Conscripts who fell ill while in transit to their regiments were also accommodated for convenience in military prisons where their condition invariably grew worse because of the treatment they received.

Thanks to the interest in statistical information which was characteristic of the new administrative ideology of the Napoleonic period, we have some idea of how many patients were entering the military hospitals. The data that are available are not entirely reliable, but they do give an impression of general trends. In 1810, 8,260 sick soldiers entered the Milan Hospital, of whom

5,940 were ‘medical cases’ and 2,320 were ‘surgical cases’. The majority of the former entered hospital in April (650) and the smallest

numbers in November and December (c. 370). Of these 361 died, giving an average mortality rate of 4.37 per cent. The medical cases accounted for 183,787 hospital-days: 100,521 for those suffering from ‘fevers’; 38,860 for wounds; 41,513 for venereal diseases; and 2,893 for chronic skin diseases. The ‘General Statistic of Indisposed Soldiers’ for 1812 shows that the average mortality rate for those treated in military hospitals was about § per cent, except at Mantua where the poor climate and situation of the hospital caused more deaths. The rates were higher, of course, at times of epidemics.*’ Malaria was the most prevalent disease, especially among the troops

stationed in the districts around Mantua and the Venetian Lido. In September 1805 the military commander of Mantua predicted the ‘cotal destruction’ of his regiment, while in May 1808 the medical officer Luigi Venanzi referred to the ‘huge’ number of men who had

fallen ill in the Dalmatian Regiment after a long tour of duty at Mantua, where the men had become victims of ‘long and terrible afflictions that cause ... languors, exhaustion and loss of weight’. In 1811 2? ASM, MG, cart. 1,126, 1,186—7.

War and society in Napoleonic Italy 37 the colonel of the 6th regiment of the line at San Giovanni di Moriana reported to the Ministry of War that his battalion had been decimated by ‘intermittent fevers’ contracted in the Mantua region’.”*

Similar reports were made by the officers commanding troops stationed near the Venetian Lido and lagoons. The colonel of the 3rd Light Infantry blamed the ‘ pestilential air’ of Venice for the decimation of his troops by ‘intermittent fevers’ while in transit in 1808 from the

city to Imola, where ‘the sickness grew even greater, causing the convalescent to relapse while those still healthy also succumbed to the

malignity of the infection, so that even my officers, who are much better able than the common soldiers to take precautions, have been stricken’.*” A couple of years later the colonel-in-chief of the 3rd Light

Infantry sent an alarmed report to the War Ministry detailing ‘the wretched state of health of the men of the 4th and sth Battalions who

have served for nearly three years in the region of the Lagoons of Venice’: Your Excellency well knows what the air is like during the summer months in this region. Not only does it induce continuous fevers but it also helps to propagate with great rapidity a highly malignant form of scabies. Started by infected bedding from the hospitals, this has now became general and virulent, causing terrible irritations which unless subject to radical cures make numerous soldiers unable to perform their duties.*°

Similar problems afflicted troops stationed in other malarial districts,

and the Italians suffered especially since Napoleon had instructed Eugéne not to send French troops into these regions. The emperor viewed the prevention of disease in his armies as an absolute military priority, arguing that the art of war was to provide the best safeguards possible for the health of the troops — and especially French troops. In March 1806 he instructed Eugene: In two months’ time the air in Italy will become very unhealthy. Your principal task must be to place my men in the healthiest places — Brescia, Verona, Salo, Como, Udine, Bologna, Rimini are the healthiest cities in Italy. Mantua, Peschiera, and Porto Legnago are very unhealthy and during the four or five summer months keep only small detachments of troops there and make sure that they are all Italians.*"

Bronchitis and lung ailments were widespread and were aggravated by squalid living conditions and inadequate clothing. Gastro-intestinal complaints were also common; in March and April 1811 typhoid fever

spread amongst the troops in the lower Po valley, while ‘gastric’ 28 ASM, MG, cart. 410 bis, 414. 7° ASM, MG, cart. 202 bis. °° ASM, MG, cart. 422. #1 Napoleon to Eugéne Beauharnais, 3.3.1806.

38 FRANCO DELLA PERUTA illnesses became endemic amongst soldiers in the military prison in Ancona in 1813 and in the sth division of the First Observation Corps in the same year. The army medical officers could do little for those afflicted by such illnesses, other than recommend better clothing and prescribing wine. There were also epidemics: a major outbreak of smallpox occurred

in Dalmatia, where vaccination was still almost unknown, while

typhus was endemic in the military prisons and ‘ophthalmia’ (probably trachoma) was highly virulent in Ancona and other parts of the Marche in 1813. Venereal diseases were omnipresent, and were aggravated by the soldiers’ unwillingness to seek medical help because after 1805 those treated in hospital for venereal infections lost fivesixths of their pay if they were officers and their entire pay if they were NCOs or common soldiers. Other skin diseases and scabies were also acute and affected about § per cent of the army. But the rate of infection in some units was very much higher, and the frequent troop movements

and changes of barracks in 1813 resulted in half the men in some units having chronic skin diseases. Since the soldiers often slept three to a bed, diseases spread with a speed that no amount of circulars from the

War Ministry could reduce. Attempts were made to investigate causes, and information collected

from the sth division stationed at Ancona in 1813 suggested that conscripts were more likely to fall ill than veterans (the proportions from the small sample taken were respectively 30 per cent and 1.8 per cent). This was seen as evidence of the lesser resistance of new recruits to the exertions of military life, and led to the proposal that ‘conscripts

might perhaps be introduced to military discipline by degrees, for example by not giving them training during the first and second months more than once a day and then for a relatively short period’. The same enquiry also indicated that artillerymen were less likely to become ill than infantrymen, the reason — it was suggested — being that

they did less drilling, were better paid and therefore better lodged, and were generally recruited from the more robust conscripts.** During these years the soldiers of the Kingdom’s army saw frequent service abroad and were deployed by France in the Kingdom of Naples,

in Switzerland, Dalmatia, the Illyrian provinces, the Ionian islands, Germany, the Tyrol, Carinthia, and above all in Spain and Russia, where the impact of war was particularly dramatic and bloody. 32 ASM, MG, cart. 1,189.

War and society in Napoleonic Italy 39 One of the first units to serve abroad was Teulié’s division which

helped to guard the French coast in 1804 but was not engaged in combat. Nor was Lechi’s division that formed part of Massena’s army which invaded the Kingdom of Naples in 1806. Although there was no resistance from the Bourbon army, the troops from northern Italy were stationed in Apulia and Basilicata where they were soon engaged in a relentless struggle against exhaustion and disease, in a hostile country where the few roads were infested with brigands. In April 1806 the division had 4,869 men in service and 1,290 in the hospitals, and matters grew worse when the troops were split up to combat brigand bands in Apulia, Calabria, and Campania. At the end of the year the condition of the 2nd Light Infantry was desperate, as their commander Pietro Forestri reported from Salerno: Your Excellency, I cannot offer an adequate description of the condition of the regiment which has been entrusted to me because it grows worse every day. Death, illness, and convalescence have left the men with hardly any officers. They are dispersed amongst the mountains of Lagonegro and Lauria with only scant rations of biscuit to keep them alive, so that the daily mountain marches quickly exhaust them. They fall ill, but, being far distant from any hospital or medical assistance, once sick the soldiers invariably die or are so weakened that they cannot move a step... We have lost nearly a hundred men in the recent expedition against Maratea through death, wounds, and disease.**

Large numbers of the troops that were later sent to Central Europe also fell ill. Pino’s division which was stationed at Stralsund in August 1807 had 9,588 men on active service and 1,522 in the hospitals, while Severoli’s division in Slovenia in August 1809 had 4,962 men in service and 2,123 in the hospitals.**

Spain was to be the principal theatre for the Italian troops, after Napoleon formally annexed the peninsula in 1808, deposing Carlos IV

and Ferdinand VII, and putting his brother Joseph on the Spanish throne. The response was first the Madrid rising of 2 May 1808 and then the general insurrection of the Spanish people against the French invaders, which began the long and bloody war that would destroy the myth of the invincibility of Bonaparte’s troops and bring about his fall. Three Italian divisions were sent to Spain. The first was commanded by Giuseppe Lechi. It left Italy for Catalonia with 6,000 men (including 2,100 Neapolitans), but the numbers soon fell to less than 4,000. Pino’s division was also sent to Catalonia (where it had a series of commanders:

Severoli, Pino again, Peyri, and then Palombini). The division left

33 ASM, MG, cart. 400. 34 ASM, MG, cart. 45.

40 FRANCO DELLA PERUTA Novara with 8,043 men, 7,554 of whom reached Perpignan in October. The third division was formed in April 1811. Its commander, Filippo Severoli, by then had long experience of fighting in Spain and

well understood the importance of using only men in good physical condition. But although he rejected more than a thousand as unfit, his division left Milan in July with 8,955 men but reached Toulouse in August with only 7,840, owing to illness and desertion; by September the number had fallen to 7,019.®° Once in Spain the Italian commanders had to come to terms with the

devastating character of the war that was being fought there: a war without quarter in which regular soldiers fought bands of insurgent peasants using every form of guerrilla tactic, laying waste land and villages, and were confronted by the cruel hatred of a people inspired

by love of their country and the fanaticism of their priests. In these conditions the Italian troops were constantly engaged in exhausting marches and counter-marches and in sieges of cities that were defended to the last, and were constantly without supplies because the roads were insecure and controlled by the partisans.

The Italian generals soon understood that they were engaged in a new form of warfare in which the methods of regular soldiers were of little use. In a report dated September 1808, the senior staff officer in

Pino’s division, Dembrowski, emphasized the importance of the clergy: ‘The Spanish priests have put themselves at the head of the people with the image of Christ in one hand and a dagger in the other.’

A few months later he drew attention to the popular character of the revolt: ‘The war in Spain is quite different from all other wars. Here

the whole population resists our advance and takes refuge in the mountains.’*® The temporary commander of Lechi’s division, General Millosevitz, reached similarly discomforting conclusions the following year: Were I to comment on the nature of this war, I would advise Your Excellency that from people like this, who are ignorant and superstitious yet mindful of their former greatness, we must expect the most sustained endeavour. They draw advantage from a mountainous and inhospitable terrain, and in a country virtually without roads, guides, or spies our movements lack the speed and unpredictability essential in any form of warfare, and most especially for that in which we are here engaged. Whenever our troops engage the enemy they

defeat and disperse them, but those that are left regroup and, reinforced by hordes of peasants, seethe around our flanks. They fall on our trains, lay waste 3° Zanoli, Sulla milizia, vol. u, pp. 433-4; ASM, MG, cart. 2,690. 36 ASM, MG, cart. 49 (5.3.1809).

War and society in Napoleonic Italy 41 the villages, and by stages inflict greater injury on us than we on them. Your Excellency may find this account somewhat melancholic, yet it is the truth. Nor can things change much unless the all-powerful mind of the Great Man who is at this moment establishing order on the Danube can be turned to put this sad situation to rights.°’

The memory of the Spanish guerrilla war would live long after in the minds of the Italian officers who survived the campaign, and played an important part in establishing the idea that partisan warfare was the means most suited to the struggle for national independence — a belief

that was to influence profoundly the democrats of the Risorgimento from Carlo Bianco di Saint Jorioz to Mazzini. During the short months of constitutional government in Naples in

1821, an essay written by an anonymous officer who had ‘won distinction in the Spanish wars’, entitled ‘The War of the Partisans’, appeared in the Minerva Napoletana. The author argued that the Spanish ‘war of partisans’ had been a national war because the entire population

was actively involved in the struggle to win its freedom. The war, he argued, showed how partisan struggles should be organized, with a mass of large and small bands that could ‘flood’ the areas held by the enemy, relying on unexpected assaults and rapid engagements in order

to destroy the enemies’ logistic organization and cut their lines of communication. By awakening the slumbering energy of the masses the partisan forces had been able to draw increasing numbers of men into the struggle and steadily isolate and divide the enemy. Eventually, the author concluded, ‘the partisan groups were able to unite, give leadership and government to the mass rising and new direction to their battalions, and so drive the foreign hordes from the national soil’.*® Camillo Vacani returned to the theme of the ‘national war’ in his Storia delle campagne e degli assedi degli Italiani in Ispagna dal 1808 al 1813,

published in Milan.*? But the detailed and enthusiastic descriptions to be found in the Episodi della guerra combattuta dagli Italiani in Ispagna published in Milan in 1843 and written by Antonio Lissoni, a former cavalry officer who had served in Catalonia, are much more interesting. An ardent nationalist whose first book, Gli Italiani in Catalogna had been banned by the Austrian authorities in 1814 because of its overtly patriotic overtones, Lissoni had also written a long defence of the Italian 37 ASM, MG, cart. 49 (11.7.1809). 38 La Minerva Napoletana, Naples 10.2.1821, pp. 59-126. 39 C. Vacani, Storia delle campagne e degli assedi degli Italiani in Ispagna dal 1808 al 1813 (2 vols. Milan 1823).

42 FRANCO DELLA PERUTA troops against Balzac’s denigration of their performance in the Catalan campaigns.

Like Millosevitz and Dembowski in their reports from the field, Lissoni stressed the essentially popular character of the Spanish resistance, and claimed that the French commanders failed to take account of this: “it seemed as though they did not wish to accept that Spain was something totally different from other theatres of war, that the entire population was in the field, and that they were a people very different from others’. The war they fought was ‘warfare in miniature one piece at a time’: For their part, the Spaniards very well understood that war on a grand scale

according to established strategies could only bring them disaster: but emboldened by their massive numerical superiority, by their alliance with the

English and by the strength of their positions, they set out to make war in miniature one piece at a time, the only form of warfare that would succeed against the French in this mountainous and craggy terrain.*° Acknowledging the valour of his popular adversaries, Lissoni attributed

the Spanish victory to the patriotism of these humble guerrillas: The citizen and the patriot substituted for the soldier; love of fatherland made

good what their generals lacked in military science and their soldiers in experience and discipline. While the larger Spanish armies were defeated and

captured, and while their cities fell to the enemy, the ordinary patriots remained armed and ready. Through cunning and courage they kept the war going, and the continuous assaults and disasters they inflicted on their foes in the end brought them ruin...starting as a mere handful of men, these hardy adventurers soon found themselves leaders of many thousands of warriors. History must tell the truth and the truth is that these were Spain’s liberators.*!

The war in Spain was a war between an occupying army and a people who had risen in arms to resist them. Like all guerrilla warfare it was pitiless and fought with the greatest cruelty and savagery by both

sides. There was no time for the niceties of conventional war and women and children were its victims as often as men. The Italian soldiers who fought in Catalonia paid a heavy toll, and few of those taken prisoner by the insurgents survived. Pietro Sant’ Andrea, a major in the 4th regiment of the line, noted in September 1810: ‘The fate of the soldiers captured by the brigands of the Spanish army can only be death, since the law of war decrees the same for brigands who fall into

the hands of our own troops.” The military reports were full of 40 A. Lissoni, Episodi della guerra combattuta dagli Italiani in Ispagna (Milan 1843, 2 vols.), vol. 1,

pp. 98-9. 4! Lissoni, Episodi, vol. u, pp. 164-5. ** ASM, MG, cart. 403 (17.9.1810).

War and society in Napoleonic Italy 43 references to soldiers ‘massacred by peasants’ or ‘hacked to bits by bandits’, and lend weight to the atrocities described by Lissoni: Murdered prisoners were found torn to pieces with the most inhuman cruelty, their hearts, bowels, and brains gouged out, their private members stuffed into

their months...there was no form of cruelty that the insurgents did not perpetrate against our men who fell into their hands, even when they were already dying.”

Those prisoners whose lives were spared fared little better. Of those sent to the Spanish islands many were persuaded to swap the rigours of their confinement for service with the English, who sent over 3,000 Italians to India and hardly any ever returned.**

The Italian and French troops behaved with equal cruelty, taking indiscriminate reprisals and frequently killing their prisoners irrespective of whether they were regular or irregular soldiers. Dembowski noted in his division’s “historical journal’ that after the siege of the fort of Hostalrich (13 May 1810) the defenders were ‘put to the sword for

their obduracy’ and Francesco Arese Lucini, a colonel in the Ist regiment of the line, recorded how thirty-two brigands captured near Aguilar ‘after an hour-long engagement... were summarily shot’.”° The taking of hostages and reprisals, the sacking and burning of towns and villages, inflicted endless sufferings and bloodshed on the civilian population. Lissoni’s account is filled with these ‘disasters of

war’, as for example the events after the French and Italians took

Tarragona on 28 June I8I1: | After defeating and killing the enemy soldiers the victors fell on the townspeople and seemed then to lose their reason... what followed was a massacre, a total chaos that seemed like the end of the world... Mothers screamed as their children were tortured, the children screamed as they themselves were tortured and for what was being done to their parents, yet nothing could be done to stop the wicked deeds committed by these hotheads.*°

But the thirty thousand Italians who fought in Spain had to face another enemy just as dangerous as the Spaniards, hunger. Guerrilla warfare made it very difficult to supply the troops, and the insurgents

used scorched-earth tactics to isolate the enemy and cut lines of communication between different units. The reports of the commanders show that food was always in short supply and that the 48 A. Lissoni, Gli Italiani in Catalogna (Milan 1814), p 165.

4 Lissoni, Episodi, vol. u, pp. 111, 345. 45 ASM, MG, cart. 49, $0. 46 Lissoni, Episodi, vol. 1, pp. 126-7.

44 FRANCO DELLA PERUTA situation was worst for units like Pino’s division that were constantly in combat. The long periods of shortage were sometimes interrupted by brief spells of abundance, especially after the sacking of a town or village, or when the commanders sent out foraging parties. Lissoni described such an operation: We were soldiers and robbers at the same time. As soon as we arrived in a new place we would send out some 60 or more men to find food... About half an

hour later we would hear the sound of shots and fighting as they took possession of some small property ... once inside the houses they seized all the fat, flour, poultry, hogs, wine, and brandy they could and returned to camp — generally pursued by the Catalans they had robbed so that more soldiers had to be sent out to reinforce our detail and drive off the persecuted inhabitants.*’

But these raids were not always successful and the difficulty of the terrain and the strength of the peasant resistance made it dangerous to send even large detachments of troops any distance. So the troops often collected grass and herbs from the fields to make soups, made bread from acorns and crushed olive stones, or, when they were luckier, ate cats, dogs, rats, and the carcasses of dead mules and horses. Slowly they came to live by marauding, which had very bad effects on discipline

and caused petty thieving to become rife throughout the army. Sometimes this was tolerated by the officers, but on other occasions was

met with exemplary punishments. Yet even when the soldiers were willing to pay for food, the prices were well beyond their means. The mens’ pay was always heavily in arrears and to make matters worse it was actually reduced by one-third in July 1809 in an attempt by Prince Eugéne to reduce the flow of money out of the Kingdom, despite bitter protests by the Italian commander in Spain.**

Animals suffered for lack of food as well as the men, seriously weakening the effectiveness of the cavalry, which often had to advance on foot because the mounts were too weak to carry the troopers. With

virtually no veterinary surgeons, disease and malnutrition caused massive losses of horses and livestock.

If the Italian troops were poorly clothed at home, the situation for those on service in Spain was far worse because the insurgents cut their

supplies. The complaint of one corps commander was typical: his mens’ uniforms were in ‘complete ruin’ and they desperately needed overcoats, caps, and other items: ‘There are no boots to be had any

more... Their jackets are falling to pieces and are beyond repair... 4” Lissoni, Episodi, vol. 1, pp. 107-8. 48 ASM, MG, cart. 135.

War and society in Napoleonic Italy 45 personal linen and stockings are worn out and have been in use throughout the last five months of continuous action.’*” The situation became even worse after the enemy captured Figueras in April 1811, and with it the stores, equipment, and chests of four regiments, valued at over half a million lire. The consequences were dire, as Peyri, the new divisional commander, pointed out: The need for clothing is urgent. Except for the 6th regiment of the line, all the

units are in tatters and short of everything. The stores lost at Figueras are impossible to replace. Only measures taken by Your Excellency can remedy the situation, but these are needed as soon as possible, otherwise the soldiers’ morale may fall even lower as they go about dressed no longer in uniform but in rags.°°

Severoli also reported on the desperate condition of those units which would face the winter ‘in a state of deplorable nudity’. This bears out what Lissoni wrote later: In the six long years that we fought in Spain, our soldiers never had a change

of uniform; the most ridiculous thing, yet true none the less, was that the Dragoons finished up wearing uniforms patched together from things stolen from priests and friars, of every colour except the green they were supposed to wear while of the national colours nothing remained except for a few patches of crimson.°*

Weakened by hunger, fatigue, exhaustion, and privation the men were easy prey to disease. Pulmonary fevers and gastro-intestinal infections soon became endemic, but the most dangerous of all were the malarial fevers which caused repeated epidemics, especially amongst

troops engaged in siege operations. Malaria broke out in Lechi’s division during the siege of Gerona; Lechi himself fell ill and asked to be relieved of his command, after describing the state of his men: The sickness spreads with a virulence that threatens to destroy the entire division. The sth regiment has only 360 men left at their posts, and three of their four officers are ill. The Velitt cannot undertake any duties and do not have a single officer left. The Prince Royal’s regiment is in the same condition. Over 700 of the sick have been evacuated in the space of 24 days from a single

encampment and another 400 are awaiting evacuation.”

By mid September the division simply no longer existed as a fighting unit, and at the end of the month what remained was incorporated into

Pino’s division. But the sickness quickly spread to the rest of the division and in October Pino reported that: ‘The siege of this place is 49 ASM, MG, cart. 985. *0 ASM, MG, cart. $0 (15.5.1811). 51 Lissoni, Episodi, vol. 1, p. 87. 52 ASM, MG, cart. 49 (16.7.1809).

46 FRANCO DELLA PERUTA rapidly destroying my army, although I have spared no expense on medicine.’ Things did not improve after the fall of Gerona and Pino’s successor, Severoli, reported in August 1810 that he had only 4,000 men left and another 2,000 in the hospitals. After a brief respite sickness again spread rapidly at the end of 1811. The commander of the 2nd Light Infantry reported in April 1812: Bad weather, long periods in bivouacs, and shortage of food are the reason why the numbers in the hospitals grow daily at a tremendous rate. Every fortified place in the region is full of sick men, and it is painful to report that

the shortage of space and equipment means that they are dying in large numbers. The officers on duty are all seriously ill or suffering from wounds and keep requesting to be sent to the depots.

A month later the same officer described the fate of those who entered

the military hospitals: ,

The men go quickly to their destruction ...it is absolutely essential that Your Excellency be informed that when the men leave the so-called hospital they are put to convalesce in the basement of the Castle where they are left lying on the bare floors with no food other than mouldy bread, a pittance of meat, and wine mixed with water: the effects on their weakened bodies are such that they shortly return to the hospital and die.**

The losses from sickness and disease were increased by those incurred

m combat. The Italian units were in action almost continuously and showed a tenacity and courage that won the acknowledgement of many French officers, but they. paid a heavy price. By September 1811

a total of 21,288 men and officers had been sent from Italy to the amalgamated Pino and Lechi divisions, of whom 1,231 were sent back as unfit, or for service in the Royal Guard. At the same date there were

8,070 men in service (3,000 of whom were in the hospitals), so that about 12,000 men had already been lost.” Such haemorrhages seriously affected the army’s operational capacity

since the losses could not be made good by new recruits. Most of the units became chronically short of veterans, and so lacked even the means to train new recruits, while physically unsuitable men were

recruited even though they were unlikely to survive the rigours of campaigning. The shortages of officers and NCOs also became chronic.

For these reasons Napoleon decided to amalgamate the Severoli and Palombini divisions in February 1813, but the end of the campaign was now close, even though there was to be no respite in the ambushes and °3 ASM, MG, cart. 50. °* Zanohi, Sulla milizia, vol. 1, pp. 145-6.

War and society in Napoleonic Italy 47 forced marches, the defeats, and retreats. At the end of the year Severoli’s division and the other scattered units that remained finally left Spain with no more than 5,500 men altogether. In six years of war some 30,000 Italians had been sent to the Iberian peninsula: of these, only 9,000 returned home, leaving behind them over 21,000 dead, missing, or prisoners.” The destruction of the divisions that fought in Spain took place over a relatively long period, but the catastrophe that overwhelmed the Italian contingent in Napoleon’s Russian campaign of 1812 was rapid and sudden. The Kingdom of Italy contributed 27,000 men, 8,300 horses, 740 oxen, and 58 cannon to the massive armada of over 650,000

that the empire mobilized for the attack on Russia, and they were commanded by the Viceroy, Prince Eugéne.”®

After crossing the Niemen in late June, Eugeéne’s men reached Moscow in mid September. The march had been devastating and Pino’s division which had set out with 14,000 men arrived with only 4,000. The scorched-earth tactics used by the retreating Russians made

it almost impossible for the invaders to find either forage for their livestock, which perished in huge numbers, or supplies for their men.

During the campaign the Italian soldiers hardly ever ate bread and made do with rye-cakes cooked in the ashes of their camp fires. They

ate meat and honey only occasionally, lived off filthy and polluted water, and often had to use gunpowder instead of salt. Dysentery spread rapidly through the army, and those who fell ill had to be ‘left in the rear’ where they were captured by the peasants or the Cossacks and usually killed.®’

The Italian units suffered the full horror of the retreat from Moscow.

Hunger, exhaustion, dysentery, lice, and attacks by Cossacks and peasants were made worse by the terrible cold against which the soldiers had no protection. With no furs, they tried to keep warm with whatever they had managed to seize before leaving Moscow — cloaks, blankets, coverings of any sort: I saw — a survivor later recounted ~ our poor soldiers covered in wounds, pale and disfigured by hunger and cold, some draped in bloody horse hides stripped from the beasts as they died ...1 saw captains bend down and caress a humble common soldier to beg a portion of his wretched ration of bread. I saw whole >> ASM, MG, cart. 50, 1,067; Vacani, vol. 1, p. 330; Zanoli, Sulla milizia, vol. 1, p. 220. °§ Zanoli, Sulla milizia, vol. m1, p. 206. °7 Ibid. p. 197; C. de Laugier, GP Italiani in Russia. Memorie di un ufficiale italiano per servire alla storia della Russia, della Polonia e dell’ Italia nel 1812 (Florence, 1826~7), vol. 1, p. 401; see also

ASM, MG, cart. 2,691.

48 FRANCO DELLA PERUTA squadrons of men and horses frozen in a single night, their rigid and unmoving corpses set against the morning snow... saw horridly wounded and mutilated soldiers left in heaps, with surgeons, without lint for their wounds, struggling as best they could to bind their wounds with straw and grass.”®

By the beginning of November the Italian divisions had lost ‘every trace of order or military bearing’. Their cannon were gone, their horses and transports were collapsing. Discipline and comradeship gave

way to the instinct for survival. Each man now thought only of himself — recalled another survivor — Many of those still capable of carrying arms formed raiding parties ... attacking not only

the Cossacks but also their own weaker comrades whose bread and clothes they stole, leaving them naked and starving.”

By mid December the tragedy was nearly over. Little more than

100,000 men were left of the huge army that had set out on the campaign. Of the 27,000 Italians only a thousand returned: the rest either perished or were taken prisoner. The Italian army lost all its artillery and all its cavalry, but the survivors did succeed in bringing

home most of their colours, as the patriotic Tuscan priest Pietro Contrucci later recalled: They brought back the banners of the nation to recall for posterity the superhuman courage of those warriors of the Kingdom of Italy who followed

Napoleon to Russia and to ease the grief and pride of their fellow countrymen.” °8 B. Bartolini, I Giorni d’orrore. Avventure particolari accadute al Cav. B. Bartolini ...ed alcuni suoi compagni d’armi dal giorno 13 al 28 novembre 1812 nella campagna di Russia (Venice 1847, 2 vols),

vol. 1, pp. xxili-xxiv. °° F. Pisani, Con Napoleone nella campagna di Russia. Memorie inedite di un ufficiale della Grande

Armata, ed. C. Zaghi (Milan 1942), p. 42. 8° Zanoli, Sulla milizia, vol. n, p. 207. On Contrucci see F. Della Peruta, Mazzini e i rivoluzionari italiani: il ‘Partito d’ Aztone’ 1830-45 (Milan 1974).

CHAPTER 3

The poor and how to relieve them: the Restoration debate on poverty in Italy and Europe STUART WOOLF

A cry of alarm, which originated a few years ago in the British Isles, has echoed through Europe, spreading universal terror. It warns against the invasion of a scourge which threatens social prosperity, peace and quiet in the world, civilization itself. A new term has been invented to describe the new danger. There is fear on all sides that a swarm of indigents is about to rise up: some believe they have already sighted it; all assume that it will be without bounds. The danger has been accepted as continuous without any evidence,

and writers have vied with each other to discover its causes and suggest remedies. There has been an exaggerated preoccupation with population, marriages, manufactures, and large cities. But above all the system of public charity has been indicted as responsible for this calamity that has so struck the public imagination.'

Nine years before Karl Marx’s spectre of communism, Joseph-Marie de Gérando evoked the fear of pauperism, in order to combat what he saw as the misleading and dangerous conclusions that contemporaries deduced from it. Pauperism, a word that entered into public usage in

England from 1815 and France from 1823,” was seen as a new phenomenon. It was interpreted for the most part in terms of either the Malthusian theory of early marriage and consequential uncontrolled increase of population, or that of the political economists, in which the division of labour and urbanization functioned as motive forces. For de -Gérando, the obsession with what he saw as a passing phase of an ageold and controllable problem needed to be re-dimensioned, precisely

because it placed in doubt two fundamental and complementary values: technological progress and Christian charity. His views are important because of his influence in western Europe (outside Britain) on what were regarded in the Restoration as central issues — poor relief

and the principles of public administration. , 1 J.-M. de Gérando, De la bienfaisance publique (4 vols., Brussels 1839), vol. 1, p. 454. Shorter Oxford English Dictionary ; Le Grand Robert de la langue francaise, s.v.

49

Exe) STUART WOOLF In so far as Risorgimento historiography touches on the poor, it tends

to be limited to Cavour’s youthful espousal of the English Poor Law reform of 1834, with perhaps a fleeting reference to Petitti di Roreto’s indigestible treatise on charitable institutions and prisons.* Pauperism and poor relief are regarded as social problems of minor relevance to the history of the Risorgimento, unlike for example their role in early nineteenth-century England or in the build-up to the 1848 revolution

in France. They deserve mention in any discussion of Cavour’s intellectual formation, but as an early and transient subject of interest, and little more. Such discussions tend to result in a simplified contrast between modernity and tradition, the former embodied in the liberal values of the market and lay State, the latter in the deadweight of the

church and its appanage of anachronistic charitable practices. As always, reality was far more complex. In the 1830s and 1840s the model of capitalist production proposed by English political economists aroused considerable reservations and perplexity among many Italian progressives; following the writings of J. B. Say and Sismondi, they pointed to the negative effects on distribution. In similar manner, the radical English Poor Law reform provoked contradictory reactions and substantial doubts in Italy because of its implications for social stability.

De Gérando’s writings were influential in shaping the ideas of the Italian moderate Liberals (albeit not of Cavour), precisely because he was an enthusiastic supporter of material progress and industrialism,

whose technical proposals about the mechanics of charity offered reassurances about social stability through their incorporation of utilitarian modernity. I will argue in this chapter that the European discussions of charity and poor relief contributed significantly to the

elaboration among Italian moderates of a model of collaboration between State and society which seemed less open ended and hence uncontrollable than the English one, a model in terms of the directive role of the administration. As is the case with most matters relating to poverty, it is helpful to

take a reasonably long perspective. In this instance, a convenient starting point is the late eighteenth century, when Italian reformers and

intellectuals participated actively in the discussions and reforming * C. Cavour, Extrait du rapport des commissaires de S. M. Britannique ... sur l administration des fonds provenant de la taxe des pauvres en Angleterre (Turin 1835), in F. Sirugo (ed.), C. Cavour, scritti

di economia 1835-1860 (Milan 1962); C. I. Petitta di Roreto, Saggio sul buon governo della mendicita, degli istituti di beneficenza e delle carceri (2 vols., Turin 1837). The best discussion of

Cavour’s ideas on poverty is in R. Romeo, Cavour e il suo tempo (1810-1842) (Bari 1969), PP. 400-50, 546-64.

The poor and how to relieve them 51 experiments of the Enlightenment. This applied to the important debate on what to do about the poor, in which Lodovico Ricci, Ercole

III of Modena’s leading minister, wrote what is probably the most coherent exposition of the extremely harsh attitude of the mainstream

of late-Enlightenment critics of charity.“ |

In Ricci’s treatise, as in the contemporary French discussions surrounding the depdts de mendicite and the radical attack in England on the poor-rate system in the later 1790s, the issues were essentially two, the first concerning the relationship between assistance and the numbers

of the poor, the second the modes of poor relief. For the most consequential critics, such as L. Ricci or F. M. Eden,°® the numbers of

the poor were directly dependent on the availability of charitable resources. Nobody denied the existence of the poor, nor that certain categories — above all infants, the chronically handicapped, widows, and the aged — would always require assistance. The critics (whether conservative or progressive in other matters) were convinced that the great majority who relied on assistance,or even claimed it as a right, was not genuinely in dire need, but regarded charity as a soft option to work. If the resources of charity were severely reduced and access to

them rigorously controlled, the numbers of the poor would fall sharply, to the benefit of society and the economy and the moral wellbeing of the poor themselves. The execution of so radical a change implied practical propositions about the most appropriate modes of poor relief, which were required at one and the same time to act as deterrent to the false poor and to

ensure adequate provision for the genuinely needy. The basic alternatives (which had been employed for centuries) were outdoor relief or enclosure in design-built institutions. Each country produced a substantial number of variants on these two main themes. Outdoor relief could range from help in kind or apprenticeship to the wage subsidies of the notorious Speenhamland system; models of enclosure included the all-embracing general hospitals of Italy and France, the French dépéts de mendiciteé, and the English workhouses.

In England, where outdoor relief had been institutionalized by the Elizabethan Poor Laws, reaction against its cost surfaced recurrently at every moment of economic crisis, as in the later 1790s, the years after 1815, and finally in the radical attack of 1830-4 which was to result in the New Poor Law. Although there were defenders of outdoor relief, 4 L. Ricci, Riforma degli istituti pii della citta di Modena (Modena 1787). ° F,M. Eden, The State of the Poor; or, An History of the Labouring Classes in England, from the Conquest to the Present Period ...(3 vols., London 1797).

$2 STUART WOOLF particularly among the Wilberforce group of evangelists led by Sir Thomas Bernard, the initiative remained with its critics, not least because the very existence of a national poor-rate system paid for by local householders provided a tangible object of grievance. It is worth noting, however, that (as so often) the English debate virtually ignored all foreign experiences, even ‘modernized’ ones, like the dépdts de mendicité or the out-relief visiting and make-work schemes at Hamburg,

of which baron von Voght published an account in English (1796, 1817). Indeed, although the parliamentary commissioners asked for information about foreign relief systems in 1832, they did not wait to receive the replies before submitting their report.® In France, the Revolution marked the regaining of the initiative by

philanthropists opposed to the harshness of the late-Enlightenment critics. The Comité de Mendicité (1790-1), headed by La Rouchefoucauld-Liancourt, bolstered humanitarian arguments with the declaration of the rights of man, to conclude that the poor, if unable to maintain themselves, had the right to assistance from the State.’ Even

if the committee’s recommendations were without practical effect, concern about the best methods to achieve an efficient but humane system of relief remained strong in administrative circles. The most substantial collection of works on poor-relief systems throughout Europe and the United States was published by an eminence grise of the

Consulate, Adrien Duquesnoy ;° and de Gérando used his position as

secretary general of the imperial Ministry of the Interior and subsequently as government representative in the newly annexed Tuscany and Papal States to propose rationalization of the charitable

systems. While it is true that the repressive approach towards the treatment of the poor was reinforced under Napoleon, with the penal code and extension to every department of the dépéts de mendicité,” the

counterpart was de Gérando’s affirmation of the need to develop methods by which to identify the genuinely needy and the obligation

to assist them. His most significant contribution was probably his rehabilitation of outdoor relief: a special commission was set up in 1809, whose recommendations were enacted in Paris in 1816.!° 8 J. R. Poynter, Society and Pauperism: English Ideas on Poor Relief, 1795-1834 (London 1969),

p. 87 and passim. ” A. Forrest, The French Revolution and the Poor (Oxford 1981). 8 Recueil de mémoires sur les établissements @’ humanité, 39 numbers in 18 vols., years vii—xu. In 1820

de Gérando recalled that, at the dramatic moment of Napoleon’s fall in 1814 (which had threatened the end of his career), he had intended to continue Duquesnoy’s collection but in such a manner as to facilitate fruitful applications: Le Visiteur du pauvre (Paris 1820), p. 14, n. I. ° S. Woolf, The Poor in Western Europe in the 18th and 19th Centuries (London and New York

- 1986), pp. 103-9, 134-6. 10 De Gérando, Le Visiteur (1820), pp. vi-viii; and the third edition of 1826, pp. 398-402.

The poor and how to relieve them 53 The Italian states had long-standing and relatively well-endowed networks of urban charities. The existence of such institutions, as well as the diffuse religious sense of moral obligation, reinforced by the presence of the papacy, offered the terrain both for philanthropic activities and for rationalist criticisms of them, like those of Ricci. The co-existence of such contradictory approaches was consolidated during the years of French rule in Italy. On the one hand, charitable structures were subjected to a ruthless administrative overhaul, while prisons and depots de mendicite were established everywhere as part of the Napoleonic

repression of mendicity. On the other hand, Italy ~ or more exactly

Florence and Rome-—became the experimental field for the development of more ‘scientific’ systems of outdoor relief. As de Gérando was later to recall, the organization of the Restoration outrelief system at Paris, for which he was primarily responsible, was structured on that of Rome."! With the end of the Napoleonic wars, the divergence in attitudes towards poor relief between England and the continental countries

became marked. In England, although out-relief continued in a multiplicity of local forms (of which the Speenhamland supplementary benefits version was only one example), it was increasingly attacked as costly, wasteful, and corrosive of the independence of labouring men. On the Continent, although prisons and workhouses (depots de mendicité) continued, a rationalized, modern out-relief system was regarded, like education, as an essential pillar of social cohesion. The mechanism at the

base of its modernity — personal visitations by the philanthropic —

provided a channel for rehabilitation through moral example, applicable equally to the general body of the poor living at home and to the reprobates enclosed in prison.

But if the prevailing tone of social attitudes differed between England and the Continent, the discourse about poverty contained often new elements common to all countries. Of course the need to distinguish between the meritorious and the unworthy, true and false indigence, was a platitude. What was new compared to earlier periods,

in the way it conditioned the very language of the debate, was the recognition that the justification for assisting the poor could no longer

be couched in traditional religiously inspired terms. The critics of Christian charity had successfully shifted the content of the dialogue away from moral obligation towards the role and relationship of the poor to the progress of society. The philanthropists, without necessarily 1! Le Visiteur (1826 edn), pp. 396—7.

54 STUART WOOLF abandoning their religious motivations, were obliged to give pride of place to social and administrative defences of assistance, while relegating

to a subsidiary position moral arguments, which in any case now tended to be presented in secular language.

The Restoration debate on poverty turned around three central theoretical contributions of the later eighteenth century. The first was

the Malthusian theorem, according to which the population would always tend to multiply at a geometric rate, compared to the arithmetic rate of increase of food supplies. The consequence deduced by the most

radical Malthusians was that poor relief was not only pointless, as it could not modify this iron law, but also dangerous as it was likely to accelerate its verification. For the moderate Malthusians, poor relief was still undesirable, as it facilitated early marriage. The second dogma underlying the debate about what to do with the poor was that of the political economists. Restoration arguments mostly repeated those of F.

M. Eden in his The State of the Poor (1797), which applied Adam Smith’s theories in a wholly conventional manner: poor relief distorted the labour market, did not create work, diverted capital from its proper channels, and was not even effective in eliminating begging. Malthus and Smith were obligatory reference points, not just in England, but in the Continental Restoration debate on poverty. But Jeremy Bentham, whose utilitarianism constituted the third dogma, was more central to

the dialogue, probably because his arguments and approach derived so directly from a central core of Enlightenment methodology — the practical applications of scientific and administrative knowledge — and

hence could be deployed with equal facility by both critics and exponents of poor relief. Bentham turned his attention to poor relief in 1796, a few years after his Panopticon proposals for a rational prison. Unlike the Malthusians and political economists, he was quite clear about the necessary role of the State in guaranteeing subsistence, because of the patent inadequacy of private charity and the danger of social revolt, should the Poor Law simply be abolished. He shared the general concern about the negative effects of outdoor relief on the diligence of the labourer and supported the principle of ‘less eligibility’, by which relief would always be more

uncomfortable than employment. Even if his attempt to reconcile public responsibility and private enterprise resulted in a characteristically eccentric and unrealistic proposal for a National Charity Company to ‘farm the poor’, there can be no doubt about the direct influence of his thought and observations on the formulation of the

The poor and how to relieve them 55 1834 Poor Law, through the person of Edwin Chadwick.” But Bentham was influential not merely in the specific context of the English Poor Law, but more broadly because of his concern with ‘improvement’ as the hallmark of progress and civilization. Such improvement was to be translated into measures based on adequate

information, to be achieved through the systematic collection of quantitative knowledge and the application of rational and scientific criteria to the administration of society. In these respects, his concerns were closely akin to those of the Napoleonic administrators. It was precisely the qualities of scientific and administrative utility

that explain the appeal, in both Britain and the Continent, of the remarkable late-eighteenth-century American adventurer, Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford (1753-1814). A loyalist during the war of independence, knighted by George III, he was involved in experiments

on heat and light which led to his election to the Royal Society. He moved on to Bavaria, where he first reorganized the army and then, in 1789, put into practice the well-established theories of turning to advantage the repression of mendicancy, by obliging the beggars of Munich to engage in textile manufacture in a military-style workhouse.

As a manufactory, the Munich workhouse (like all such attempts) proved a failure. As a public relations exercise it was a remarkable success. In the Kingdom of Bavaria, it led to the adoption of Rumford’s

proposals for the rationalization of poor relief on a national scale (1806-8): begging was forbidden, work was to be provided for the unemployed in both voluntary workhouses and an obligatory house of

correction, marriages between indigents were prohibited (for good Malthusian reasons); but home relief was also supported, with urban pawnshops, and assistance for the deserving, identified through regular visits. Outside Bavaria, Rumford’s name became famous, above all for his recommendations on how to provide cheap but nutritional food for

the poor, with which he had experimented in Munich. During his

further sojourn in England, he extended his experiments in the application of science to domestic management by illustrating how to

construct economic kitchen utensils and stoves for the indigent on which to cook his economic soups, and chimneys for gentlemen’s houses which would economize on fuel and turn it to heating the room rather than the outside air. He is nowadays best known in England as

founder of the Royal Institution (1802), modelled on the French ™ Poynter, Society and Pauperism, pp. 118-44; M.E. Rose, The Relief of Poverty 1834-1914 (London 1972); K. Williams, From Pauperism to Poverty (London 1981).

56 STUART WOOLF Directorial-Napoleonic Institut, whose purpose was to research and diffuse useful knowledge. He married (and divorced) the widow of the guillotined chemist Lavoisier and spent his final years at Auteuil, the retreat of disillusioned and mildly anti-Napoleonic French savants.’*

At the height of his fame, Rumford was compared to Benjamin Franklin, living example of how even a ‘simple nation’ could produce a philosopher and scientist on a par with the best of Europeans in terms of their accomplishments in arts, sciences, and the polished life. But

whether or not, through his chimney conversions, he increased the comfort of virtually every gentleman’s house in England (before going on to Edinburgh and Dublin), his reputation was undoubtedly based on

his work in the field of philanthropy. In France, his account of his Bavarian scheme was rapidly translated by Duquesnoy (year vm/1798),

and his portrait was printed as frontispiece of volume xxx of the Decade philosophique to accompany a laudatory biographical article by J. B. Say (1802). More substantially, his economic soups were adopted by the Napoleonic administration as the most effective means of saving

the poor from starvation during the terrible winter of 1811-12. In England, his proposals on allotments for the poor and on how to feed

them, although probably of no direct influence on the Poor Law debate, were continuously cited and reprinted as late as 1847 in Dublin

and 1851 in London. Allotments and potato cultivation for the rural poor, bone gelatine and cereal broth for public distribution, all cloaked

in the precision of scientific and statistical language, were popular

recipes in the nineteenth century, as they constituted ‘the art of providing wholesome and palatable food at a small expense...so applicable to the present time’."* Italian philanthropists participated in

the international debate on Rumford’s contribution in 1801-2, and again at moments of famine, as in 1815-17 and 1821, with papers to 13 Collected Works of Count Rumford, ed. S.C. Brown (5 vols., Boston 1968-70); F. Redlich, ‘Science and charity: Count Rumford and his followers’, International Review of Social History,

16 (1971). For Rumford’s Bavarian experiences, the most precise account is in M. Dunan, Napoléon et l Allemagne. Le Systeme continental et les debuts du royaume de Baviere, 1806-1810 (Paris

1942), pp. 84-5, 136-7, 478-9 N. $5, 491 n. 71, $32 n. 14. 14 Public Characters, or Contemporary Biography, Containing Memoirs of the Following Personages:

Lord Nelson, Sir B. Thompson, Marquis Cornwallis, Bushrod Washington, John Wolcott M.D., John Horne Tooke, Dr. Jenner, and General Bowles (New York 1805), pp. 11-24; La Decade Philosophique, vol. XXXII, 20 germinal — year x, pp. 81-91; Woolf, The Poor of Western Europe,

pp. 92-3; To Those in Authority, Count Rumford’s Essays on the Management of the Poor, and Industrial Occupation for Soldiers in Barracks, are so Applicable to the Present Times, that no Apology

can be Necessary for their Republication (London 1851); An Essay on Food, and Particularly on Feeding the Poor, Exhibiting the Science of Nutrition, and the Art of Providing Wholesome and Palatable Food at a Small Expense. By Count Rumford. Edited by Sir Richard Musgrave, Bart. (Dublin 1847).

The poor and how to relieve them $7 learned societies, like the Accademia dei Georgofili, in which they discoursed about the possibilities of recycling boiled bones by crushing

them and the relative costs of meat or vegetable broths.” Rumford is a significant figure in the passage from Enlightenment to Restoration attitudes to poor relief. His ideas and practical experiences were not new and almost certainly owed much to an obscure, learned, and cosmopolitan German philanthropist, Freiherr Caspar von Voght,

who had spent eighteen months in England in the 1790s visiting prisons, workhouses, and charitable institutions, and was responsible for the reorganization of poor relief successively in Hamburg, Vienna, and Rome.'® But von Voght, a virtually unknown figure in western countries outside specific philanthropic circles, lacked the publicist qualities in which Rumford excelled. Rumford’s proposals were influential not for their originality, but because they encapsulated the values of scientific philanthropy, with

their emphasis on the cost-benefit approach to assistance and the practical utilitarian encouragement of work. In the words of an anonymous biographer, written in 1801-2, his experiments had demonstrated that ‘a very small portion of solid food will suffice to satisfy hunger and sustain life and health, and that consequently, the stoutest and most laborious man may be supported at a very trifling expense in any country’. Rumford is a decided enemy to the injudicious distribution of alms, than which nothing

in his opinion contributes more powerfully to encourage idleness and immorality among the poor, and consequently to perpetuate all the evils to society, which arise from the prevalence of poverty and mendicity ... The most certain and efficacious relief that can be given to the wretched, is that which could be afforded by forming a general establishment for giving them useful employment and furnishing them with the necessaries of life at a cheap rate,

through an ‘asylum or school of industry on a small scale’ in every parish. *”

De Gérando was both a polymath and a highly experienced administrator. His numerous publications, dating from the Directory 19 G. Carradori, ‘Ricetta di un brodo per i poveri’, and G. Pallont, ‘Sopra la cost detta zuppa alla

Rumford’, both in Atti del Accademia dei Georgofili, 5:1 (1802-4), pp. 353-72; C. Ridolfi, ‘Risultato dell’uso di zuppe economiche’, Continuazione degli Atti della R. Accademia dei Georgofili, 1 (1818), pp. 170-5; G. Gazzeri, “Memoria sul pitt economico impiego delle sostanze alimentari’, ibid., 4 (1821). Cf. Romeo, Cavour, p. 98 n. 46. 16 Poynter, Society and Pauperism, p. 87; de Gérando, Le Visiteur (1820 edn), p. vi; De la

bienfaisance, 1839 edn, vol. 1, p. 131 n. I. "7 Public Characters, pp. 20-1.

58 STUART WOOLF to the 1840s, reflect the shift of intellectual interests of his generation:

from the early concern with sensationalist explanations of the acquisition of knowledge and the progress of human civilization to the Restoration writings on primary education, poor relief, moral progress, administrative law, and industrialism. His vast experience in government — as secretary general of the Napoleonic Ministry of the Interior,

as delegate responsible for the annexation to the Empire of Genoa, Tuscany, the Papal States, and Catalonia, as Conseiller d’état during the

Restoration, and finally as member of the French house of lords — reinforced his early beliefs in the potential of rational administration, based on the systematic collection of useful information, and 1n its

necessary role in assisting the forward march of progress. A philanthropist throughout his life, de Gérando was unusual in that he reconciled the moral obligations of charity. with an espousal of the most

modern forms of economic development. He set out his ideas in two works, each of which he subsequently expanded at considerable length in order to incorporate as complete a comparative body of factual information as possible and to take on board and refute the propositions of the anti-charity schools, whether Malthusian or political economists. Le Visiteur du pauvre, first published

in 1820 (158 pages), was rewritten for the third edition of 1826 in 548

pages. In the 1830s, besides a fourth French edition (1837), it was published in translation in England (1833), the United States (1832, 1833), and Italy (1834); it was subsequently translated into German (1843, 1846) and Spanish (1852). Le Visiteur du pauvre was concerned with the methods of ensuring effective private charity. De la bienfaisance publique (1831, expanded to four volumes in its second edition of 1839)

was its logical complement, a work on public forms of assistance and

on the relationship between public and private poor relief. Besides presenting probably the most complete survey of charitable institutions

in western Europe of the first half of the nineteenth century, de Gérando offered a counter-model to the recent English experience of Poor Law reform of particular attraction to the moderate liberals of the 1830s to 1840s, given its capacity to accommodate Christian charity and economic progress through administrative action. For de Gérando, industry was the motor of progress, the generator

of national wealth which had reduced the dimensions of poverty, despite population growth. To late-twentieth-century readers, many of the observations of this ageing, stuffy Restoration figure are striking for their modernity. As he pointed out, poverty 1s relative and individual

The poor and how to relieve them 59 needs grow ‘by habit and imitation’ when there is a general increase in prosperity. Equally perceptively, he ascribed the sudden preoccupation with the poor not to any increase in their number, but to the fact that they had become more visible, with public enquiries and regular forms of assistance, as had happened with the mentally sick or deaf and dumb: It is when the public administration initiates a special enquiry into an illness that one discovers with surprise that it is widespread ...Indigence does not increase in reality simply because it is opened to public view. It is above all when a system of poor relief 1s introduced and developed in a country that the phenomenon of poverty is noted. For private charity is distributed in silence and in the shade; no lists are kept; the unfortunates who are assisted remain unknown...The presence of the poor is more striking in the cities, because they are more concentrated there, they are more visible, a greater umber sees

them.'® |

With equal vigour, de Gérando refuted the Malthusians, on the one

hand by pointing to machine technology as the escape from the agricultural subsistence trap, on the other hand by comparing marriage

and birth rates in the departments of France in order to deny any obligatory relationship between poverty and reproduction.” If Malthusianism and urbanization were rejected as explanations of poverty and industrialization was welcomed in terms of its raising the general level of individual and collective well-being, de Gérando did

not deny the connection between industrialism and indigence. Inequality formed part of the very nature of society, ‘because it is the

condition of its progress, and progress is the great law of human society ’.°° But industrialism created casualties, especially among wage labour, whether casual, unskilled, or even skilled workers in luxury or export industries. Hence the counterpart to rapid technological growth

was the obligation on entrepreneurs and society to foresee the vulnerability. of the workers and offer them protection.”! Deeply worried by the enrichissez-vous ethic circulating in the France of Guizot

and the dangers of class conflict, de Gérando turned to traditional solutions dressed up in modern clothes. Faithful to his youthful anthropological ideas about stages of civilization, he argued that, as tribes and primitive peoples gave asylum and hospitality to the needy, so modern societies ‘replace them with a superiority corresponding to their social development’, through association, but above all through 18 De Gérando, De la bienfaisance, vol. 1, pp. 146-7; vol. 11, pp. 455—7. 1? Ibid. vol. 1, pp. 270-301; Le Visiteur (1826 edn), pp. 178-82, 203-13.

20 De la bienfaisance, vol. 1, p. 152. 21 Ibid., pp. 169-269.

60 STUART WOOLF a formalized system of solidarity and patronage, in which the private and the public, the individual and the collectivity, would collaborate in a spirit of universal fraternity. For de Gérando, moral and material improvement was the characteristic both of individual progress and that of society. He saw society and the State as creating a hierarchical continuum, with organicist overtones: from family to community as an alliance of families, from commune to province as an alliance of communes, all held together by an inner bond of reciprocal recognition of rights and duties.**

De Gérando, however, was far too modern to be satisfied with so vaporous and traditional a recipe for the ills of nineteenth-century society. Economy and control were key values of his system of poor relief. He was as severe as any eighteenth-century critic of charity in his

condemnation of begging and false poverty. The solution was not to refuse assistance, but to subject it to strict controls through personal and

regular visits to the poor suppliant’s home. De Gérando elaborated at

length on the details of such visits, as they would serve multiple purposes: to judge the veracity of the person, to decide on the appropriate form and period of assistance, to find work for the ablebodied, to exercise influence and rehabilitate through moral example. For economic independence remained the prerequisite, as in earlier periods. What was novel, and characteristic of the Restoration in France

as in England, was the conviction that receipt of relief, at least on a systematic footing, was degrading; which implied as its complement that those who had fallen into a condition of degradation (whether through indigence or felony) could be rehabilitated.?* There were various paths by which this could be achieved: by provision of work, by education, by encouraging savings, by personal example since the lower orders were expected to imitate their betters. And if none of these (except savings) was a new idea, the weight placed upon them and

the specific positive consequences that were expected to derive from them can be considered as hallmarks of the Restoration mentality.

Education for the labouring classes, for example, was no longer considered in the restrictive, practical, and exclusively instrumental sense of the Enlightenment, but in a broader, more altruistic manner, serving both utilitarian purposes and the formation of moral character. It was no accident that de Gérando played an active role in setting up primary schools, teaching the instituteurs, encouraging the Lancaster 22 Ibid., pp. 467, sto-11. = Ibid., pp. 474-7; Poynter, Society and Pauperism, pp. 78-9.

The poor and how to relieve them 61 system and exploring the German experiences of singing in class as a means of forming character.** The aim was always the same — Seifeducation, or The means and art of moral progress, to quote the English title

of another of de Gérando’s successful books, which anticipated Samuel Smiles’ far more materialistic Self-help by thirty-five years.”

But if material and moral independence was the aim, de Gérando recognized that pauperism was ineradicable and would remain on a scale that far surpassed the possibilities of private philanthropy. Given that the permanent presence of the poor necessitated poor relief, the central issue was the eminently practical one of how to make it most effective. His criticism of the English New Poor Law was that it was wrong to assume that the English system had universal validity and that it was mistaken to create repressive institutions before a complete relief

useless.?° |

system had been constructed, as half-measures were worse than A complete system required study, the collection of statistics, and the

provision of a range of solutions, both institutional and out-relief, assistential and repressive, for the different classes of poor. It was here

that economy and control came to the fore. For institutional relief could be costly, as the English example had made only too clear. Rumford’s soups offered economies of scale; his stoves assisted the independent poor materially and taught them the benefits of saving. But even more than Rumford’s ingenious and practical inventions, de Gérando — like Bentham — saw the solution and future of poor relief in terms of administrative efficiency. Always a centralizer, though less so than Bentham, de Gérando placed the state at the top of his pyramid of individual, family, commune, and province. The individual would never lack opportunity to exercise private charity, and indeed had an irreplaceable function as the visitor and tutor of the indigent. But the administrative State played the leading role: ‘public bienfaisance is to be

found at the summit of the social edifice, applying the holy laws of humanity to all public ills. Its regulations are of general application as

its actions are far-sighted.’*’ It was the Napoleonic vision of the omniscient, neutral, and effective administrative State that de Gérando *4 For Enlightenment ideas on primary education, H. Chisick, The Limits of Reform in the Enlightenment: Attitudes towards the Education of the Lower Classes in 18th Century France (Princeton 1981). O. Morel, Essai sur la vie et les travaux de Marie-Joseph baron de Gérando (Paris

1946), pp. 39-42, 53-5. 25 Du perfectionnement moral; ou, De Uéducation de soi-méme (Paris 1824). There were three American editions (Boston 1830, 1832, 1833). Smiles’ bestseller was first published in 1859. 2° Le Visiteur (1826 edn), pp. 427-30; De la bienfaisance, vol. 1, pp. $02-4. 7 De la bienfaisance, vol. 1, p. $11.

62 STUART WOOLF had taught in public courses of administrative law.?* Poor relief constituted a major element of the State’s responsibilities, because of its centrality for social cohesion. It was the association of poor relief with

administrative authority that made Italian moderates, especially in Piedmont, so receptive to de Gérando’s message.

The direct experience of French rule and the powerful Restoration

image of English superiority explain the openness of the Italian educated classes to the debate on poor relief in England and France. The

deep roots of Catholic charity explain, in tarn, the strongly humanitarian tone of the Italian discussions. The terrible winters of 1815-17 led wealthy landowners to distribute Rumford soups on a substantial scale. Cosimo Ridolfi, whose father had kept a record of the ingredients and costs on his own estate in Tuscany, commented to the

Georgofili in 1818 on the much larger-scale experience in Savoy, where 130,000 rations had been distributed, and on the introduction of

bone-soups in Parisian charitable establishments. His conclusion, implicitly polemical against Melchiorre Gioia’s attack on such relief as

evading the real issues of improvement of peasant housing and agriculture, was couched in purely humanitarian terms: Let us hope that no civilized country will not wish to benefit from these useful discoveries, since to remain indifferent to such finds, to refuse to alleviate the

wretchedness of many persons by such easy means, would be same as admitting to a crass and culpable ignorance or at the least to insulting Providence and humanity.””

There can be no doubt that Catholic humanitarianism inspired intense private charitable activities in northern and central Italy throughout the Restoration, both by individuals, such as Giulia Falletti di Barolo and Silvio Pellico, and of a more associative or institutional character, like Cottolengo’s homes for the handicapped and Aporti’s schools for poor

children. |

What is not so clear is the extent to which the modernizing context of the English and French debate on poor relief was accepted in Italy. 28 De Gérando gave the first courses in France on administrative law between 1819 and 1821, after which the government prohibited them; he resumed the courses in 1828 and in 1829 published them as Instituts du droit francais, ou eléments du code administratif (6 vols., Paris

1829-36). Cf. Morel, Essai sur la vie...de Gérando, pp. 42-3, 51-2. Beugnot, who was as experienced a Napoleonic administrator as de Gérando, praised the course as ‘announcing the principles of law which were barely emerging from the laboratory of science’: Eloge funebre du baron de Gérando, Chambre des Pairs, session of 2 February 1844.

° Ridolfi, ‘Risultato dell’uso di zuppe economiche’, p. 175; M. Gioia, Problema: quali sono i mezzi piu spediti, piu efficaci, pik economici per alleviare l’attuale miseria del popolo in Europa. Discorso popolare (Milan 1817).

The poor and how to relieve them 63 The most progressive journal in Restoration Italy, highly sensitive to technological, productive, and institutional developments abroad — the Milanese Annali Universali di Statistica — certainly dedicated more space

to methods of elementary education than to discussions of charity. And

its few references of the early 1830s to foreign publications or philanthropic institutions were accompanied by a rather forlorn appeal

for more systematic information about such establishments in the Italian states, ‘as we shall thus be able to inform foreigners about our progress in benevolence and enlightened and provident cordiality. No

one would wish to deny that our country possesses these two fine qualities: it is just that we would like them to be better known.’” The one exception (in this as in so many other fields) was Carlo Cattaneo, who dedicated a long review article to F. M. L. Naville’s De

la charité légale in 1836. Cattaneo had no doubts about the negative

effects of public charity, except of the most contingent kind at moments of political upheaval. In his customary rigorous manner he demonstrated, through examples culled from western Europe and the

United States, how poor rates and workhouses were ineffective, inhuman, and anti-economical: they interfered with the free movement of labour, removed the incentive to work, degraded the labourer, and were administered inefficiently. Despite his humanitarianism, which led him to accentuate the humiliation of dependence on charity and the

appalling conditions of the workhouses, his deep faith in the entrepreneurship of modern productive structures made him accept the permanence of poverty. It could only be alleviated by private charity, based on de Gérando’s method of personal links through visits and his

own confidence in specialization of beneficent functions, based on practical knowledge and associative effort.*’ Cattaneo never returned to the argument. The Congresses of Italian Scientists, which gathered

together the elite of Italian moderates in the 1840s, also barely mentioned the poor or relief, except in relation to technological education and child labour in factories; not until the Naples congress of 1845 was there any general discussion of the causes of indigence and the means to relieve it.*” 39 Annali Universali di Statistica, 31 (1832), 127. Previously Romagnosi had published an article

‘Del trattamento dei poveri’ in the Annali (1829). The haphazard choice of charitable institutions mentioned in those years is indicative of the unclear attitude of the Annali, where Giuseppe Sacchi was primarily responsible for information on philanthropy. 31 C. Cattaneo, ‘Della carita legale’, Annali Universali di Statistica, 0 (1836) and 51 (1837), reprinted in C. Cattaneo, Seritti economici (Florence 1956), vol. 1, pp. 343-400. 32 Riunione degli Scienziati Italiani... Atti, 11 (Florence 1841), p. 48: technological orphanage at

Prato; 1v (Padua 1842), p. 488: Petitti di Roreto report on technological education in

64 STUART WOOLF Cavour’s enthusiastic support for the proposals of the English Poor Law commissioners aroused little interest outside the narrow circle of friends and colleagues of his father, then mayor of Turin, precisely because the connection between pauperism and productive activities,

made so strongly by the English political economists, evoked few echoes in Italian circles of the early 1830s. Before Francesco Ferrara’s

active propagation of the English school from the 1840s, what was understood in Italy as political economy bore a French hallmark in the confidence placed on statistics and administration, combined with a conviction of the primacy of agriculture and a generic belief in laissezfaire. Hence while Cavour’s account of the financial and moral costs of the poor rates was easily endorsed, his approval of the harshness of the

proposed workhouses gained no support.** Charity and_ relief institutions continued to be regarded as a necessary, indeed an inherent

part of a Christian civilization, in a sugarcake vision of an idyllic society, of which the virtuous docile poor were exemplars. When Lorenzo Valerio started publishing his Letture popolari in Turin (1837),

a compendium of proper values for the young, the short stories spelt out the work ethic, education, charity, self-help, the predilection of domestic animals for the poor, culminating in: ‘ Well-ordered poverty is a great wealth’; it is hardly surprising to find included a passage of de Gérando on the virtues of the poor.** By the 1840s charities were listed as manifestations of urban pride precisely because they provided evidence of a widespread Christian spirit: ‘The charitable institutions are the first and major marvel of Turin...the charities would honour a metropolis three times its size’, wrote Davide Bertolotti in 1840.*° Within an environment where religious obligations and agricultural vocation remained so strong, it is evident that the attacks on the very

concept of poor relief, whether from Malthusians or political economists, could gain short shrift. But this did not imply refusal of the case for an economic and efficient organization of relief. One can point Piedmontese charitable institutions; v (Lucca 1843), p. 93 and vi (Milan 1844), p. 234: child labour; vu (Naples 1845), pp. 435~6: causes of indigence and work-schemes in charitable institutions. I wish to thank Rossano Pazzagii for these references, which constitute an almost complete list of references to the poor and therr relief. 33 Romeo, Cavour e il suo tempo, pp. 441-8. 34 Letture popolari, year 1 (Turin 1837). The titles of the moral stories were ‘ Amore verso le bestie

e predilezione di queste verso 1 poveri’, ‘Dell ’importanza del lavoro’, ‘Educazione ed istruzione’, ‘Le virtt del povero’ (de Gérando), ‘Votia pro’ d’indigenza’, “Della carita’, ‘Chi s’ajuta Iddio l’ajuta’ (Lambruschini), ‘Appello a favore degli asili di carita’, ‘Poverta ben ordinata é grande ricchezza’. 3° D. Bertolotti, Descrizione di Torino (Turin 1840), p. 145.

The poor and how to relieve them 65 to the telling analogy in the same years of the rejection by Italian moderates of the English manufacturing path to progress, but their enthusiastic support for agronomic instruction and technology.** With. the publication of the one major Italian Restoration work on the poor and charity, Carlo Ilarione Petitti di Roreto’s Saggio sul buon governo della mendicita, degli istituti di beneficenza e delle carceri (1837), the

modernity of a public-relief system was legitimated, but almost exclusively in terms of a science of administration.*’ Petitti, a Piedmontese councillor of state whose responsibilities had included prisons, owed far more to de Gérando than his acknowledgement of Le Visiteur du pauvre. But his 1,000-page essay lacked the intellectual richness and rigorous modernity of the Frenchman. Petitti

was a name-dropper, citing eighteenth- and nineteenth-century authors, Piedmontese and foreigners, in a wholly eclectic manner in support of conservative views. Unlike de Gérando, he believed in Christian obligations of charity and argued polemically against the Protestant Reformation as responsible for the destruction of charitable institutions. But his Catholicism was of progressive stamp, for he was just as polemical against claims that pauperism was less in Catholic

countries, citing the examples of Spain and Portugal, where ‘the absence of enlightened charity, bad civil government, and the disastrous conditions that derive from this are the causes of an excessive number

of poor’.*® Where he differed from de Gérando most fundamentally was in his total hostility to industrialism, which led him to challenge (an

1837!) ‘the fictitious prosperity of the immense artificial industry of Great Britain’. For Petitti, it was only the poor rates that kept English manufacturers working, as wages were so low that such subsidies were needed to maintain subsistence. This classic conservative argument against industry and urbanization, that they generated proletarians, encouraged dissipation and early marriage, and incited demand for

superfluous goods, was naturally bolstered by a strong defence of agriculture; though once again with concern for agronomic progress, which was to make Petitti a leading member of the Turin Agrarian Association.*” The contrast could hardly be stronger with de Gérando, 38S. Woolf, A History of Italy 1700-1860 (London 1979), pp. 316-31. 37 Petitti di Roreto, Saggio sul buon governo: ‘Ragione dell ’opera’, vol. 1, pp. xxiii-xxxv. The only other substantial work on poor relief to appear in Italy was C. L. Morichini, Degl ’istituti di pubblica carita e d istruzione primaria a Roma. Saggio storico e statistico (Rome 1835). Most urban

guides of the 1840s, especially those published for the Congresses of Italian Scientists, included

sections on charitable institutions. 55 Petitti di Roreto, Saggio sul buon governo, vol. 1, pp. 367-8, n. 4.

39 Ibid., pp. 123-4, 72-80.

66 STUART WOOLF who explicitly accepted Malthus’ argument that agricultural productivity could never match population growth. But if Petitti’s religiosity and anti-industrialism distanced his mental attitudes from those of de Gérando (and from the general direction of nineteenth-century material progress), he was at one with him in his recognition of the inevitability of poverty: ‘poverty is unfortunately more or less a normal condition of the human species, which exceeds every proportion especially in those countries, like England, where there is a large number of proletarians’. Malthusianism was no answer, he argued, amply deploying de Gérando’s method of visitations as an effective way of discouraging the poor by instruction and persuasion.*° But nor were the political economists right to attack poor relief as useless and interfering with the market: Pauperism must be considered as a moral illness, which religion and humanity teach one to help, temper and correct. But that has nothing to do with the true

principles of political economy, whose theorems are extraneous to the question of mendicity, if it is considered in the sense of Christian opinions. In respect of such a science, one can only say that the poor too, once they have been removed from idleness, can turn themselves into useful producers, and thus in that sense as well reinforce the principles of enlightened charity.”

Whereas de Gérando had argued the need for a rational system of relief

because of the organic link between progress and poverty, Petitti’s

conservatism is shown in his deliberate separation of economic production from the existence of the poor.

Precisely because poverty was an ineradicable and ubiquitous phenomenon, Petitti’s concern, as a modern conservative, was to elaborate the most rational and hence effective method of containing

and relieving it. His proposals, as one might expect, were more conventional and harsh than those of de Gérando. Arguably his prime interest was in systems of internment, and it is not without significance

that he should have included a plan of the rational prison, derived directly from Bentham’s Panopticon. His elaborate details about workhouses were modelled on those of the English system, with echoes of old and new disciplinary debates about separation of old lags from

voluntary inmates, and a hearty acceptance of ‘an exact and severe discipline: privation of food, work in isolation, exemplary humiliations’.**

But the pillar of Petitti’s construction was the responsibility and 40 Ibid., pp. 6, 371-2 n. 7. ‘1 Tbid., p. 120. 42 Ibid., ch. 12.

The poor and how to relieve them 67 capacity of the administration in creating an economic and functional system of poor relief. Like his eighteenth-century predecessors and his contemporaries, he was obsessed with street begging (‘the streets of a truly civilized state must not offer the disgusting spectacle of a crowd of filthy beggars who deafen passers-by with their importunate and often fake quarrels’.**) Like de Gérando, he was convinced of the need to collect statistics as the basis for policy. ‘By their faithful exposition of facts, statistics manage to persuade administrations to carry out their duties, and to convince public opinion of the utility of the measures adopted; such utility, once confirmed, adds force and respect to law.’** | The administration had an important role to play in directing private charity away from indiscriminate alms so that it could be useful and effective. But in a more comprehensive sense the administration alone could effectively organize a system of poor relief, because ‘the science of government nowadays almost everywhere follows the incontestable progress of civilization’; indeed, ‘the administration can consider itself as the destined instrument of Providence’.*°

De Gérando could never have expressed so remarkable an identification between government and God. But his views on the relationship between private charity and public relief, between selfhelp and social support, and on the directive role of the administration

in marking the lines between the State and society provided the framework for Petitti’s treatise and entered the discourse of the Piedmontese moderates. As Romeo has noted, Petitti and Giacomo Giovanetti, future close collaborators of Cavour, first found a common terrain of agreement in the debate on ‘legal charity’. Giovanetti argued

in favour of ‘a single, constant, rigorously controlled direction of private and public charity’. By the early 1840s Cavour himself had modified his earlier faith in the workhouse solution proposed by the New Poor Law, recognizing that the complexity of the productive structures of modern society generated pauperism and hence required ‘general measures’ of public poor relief.*° What is significant in the views of these three exponents of Piedmontese liberalism was their *8 Ibid., p. 30. Petitti attacked critics who, in the name of laissez-faire, argued for freedom to beg, as begging could lead to disorder, even rebellion. The same authors ~ C. M. T. Duchatel, La Charité dans ses rapports avec l état moral et le bien-étre des classes inférieures de la société (Paris 1829),

and F. M. L. Naville, De la charité légale (Paris 1836) — were also criticized by de Gérando, but

without Petitti’s worries about public order. 44 Petitti di Roreto, Saggio sul buon governo, vol. 1, pp. 113-14. ” Ibid., pp. xxix, 133. *® Romeo, Cavour e il suo tempo, pp. 446, 556. For Piedmontese legislation, M. Piccialuti Caprioli, ‘II “Sistema della beneficenza pubblica” nel Piemonte preunitario’, in G. Politi, M. Rosa, and F. Della Peruta (eds.), Timore e carita. I poveri nell Italia moderna (Cremona 1982).

68 STUART WOOLF identification of centralized administration as the most appropriate means to regulate the problems thrown up by the complex and opaque

mechanisms of a rapidly changing and ultimately little-understood society. It was on the same terrain of poor relief that the English ruling

class took the first momentous step towards central administrative

control of local government. The Piedmontese ruling class, not surprisingly given its Napoleonic heritage, was to push far further its faith in centralized administration as the solution to social problems. Nevertheless, as in England and France, laissez-faire convictions

argued for a balance between the public and the private, in which ample space was left to traditional forms of charity, with the role of the

administration defined as overall control, direction, and supplementation of private assistance. In all three countries, within the private sphere, out-relief was increasingly geared to the modern methods of Rumford and de Gérando — economic soups and personal knowledge

of the needy family through visitation. Soup kitchens became a characteristic mode of assistance during periods of hardship.*’ Visiting the poor was adopted as a preferential social activity of middle-class

women; it was to be utilized as the operative mechanism of more professional welfare associations, like the Charity Organization Society in England, and subsequently in State welfare.*®

Despite a clear awareness of the inefficiency and inadequacy of private charitable efforts, even supporters of the State’s role long remained reluctant to extend its action, essentially for two reasons. Deep hostility to increasing public expenditure is the first, obvious explanation, which worked against public responsibility for even selective but generalized measures of welfare, as it also delayed the spread of primary education. But above all, even with acceptance of a more deliberate and carefully graduated role of the administrative state (at least in theory), a lurking fear remained that poor relief would sap the independence of the labouring classes. The intensity of this belief in the need to force the poor to help themselves is well illustrated in an essay of 1855 on the need and best means of helping the poor, in which 47 By 1802, Rumford’s anonymous biographer claimed: ‘It is to his hints that we are indebted

for the numerous soup societies so prevalent in this kingdom; and which with an unusual spread have extended from Cornwall to John-a-Groat’s house, and multiplied to such a degree in and about the capital as to become eminently beneficial’ (Public characters, pp. 19-20). 48 On the early history of visiting: Poynter, Society and Pauperism, pp. 96-8. The role of women

in nineteenth-century charitable activities has been studied primarily in England: F. K. Prochaska, Women and Philanthropy in Nineteenth-Century England (Oxford 1980); B. Harrison, ‘Philanthropy and the Victorians’, in Peaceable Kingdom. Stability and Change in Modern Britain (Oxford 1982); E. Wilson, Women and the Welfare State (London 1977).

The poor and how to relieve them 69 the Tuscan philanthropist Lambruschini rejected the provision of work by landowners for the able-bodied poor, as the permanent and most fruitful subsidy one can give them is to exhort, stimulate and direct them to search for and find work. I say search for, because

if we remove from the pauper the need to think about his own needs, we destroy his capital of self-awareness and concern... Go out and search for work,

we need to tell the able-bodied labourer.”

Self-help and administrative relief in reserve were two sides of the same coin. The success of the Italian moderates lay not only in their faith in administrative action as the most effective means of regulating society, but in the democratic opposition’s acceptance of the same dogma of the work ethic. In the words of the Milan Voce del Popolo, in an article of July 1848 analysing the June Days at Paris:°° The English proletarian lives nobly on the poor rates; the German artisan, full of coins or knick-knacks, doesn’t blush to go begging soup from workshop to

workshop; the Spanish ruffian does better still, demanding charity at gunpoint. The French worker demands employment; and if instead of work you offer him alms, he revolts and responds by gunshots. I’m all for the French

worker, and I’m honoured to belong to this proud race, untouchable by dishonour. 49 R. Lambruschini, Della necessita di soccorrere i poveri e dei modi (Florence 1855).

°° La Voce del Popolo, n. 113, 19 July 1848, p. 449. I wish to thank Martin Brown for bringing this quotation to my attention.

CHAPTER 4

Bandits, violence, and the organization of power in Sicily in the early nineteenth century GIOVANNA FIUME

It has often been argued that both in Sicily and in Europe more generally banditry grew out of the rural overpopulation and poverty that were caused by the economic and social changes that accompanied the transition from feudalism to capitalism. Brigandage was as much a product of this process as rural vagrancy, the only difference being that

the bandit was the more enterprising and the more prepared to use illegal means to stay alive. Hence poverty and deprivation are seen as the root causes of almost all forms of deviant behaviour, ranging from banditry, prostitution, and vagrancy to very different phenomena like the abandonment of illegitimate children as foundlings.! There are similar assumptions behind the argument that banditry was a form of pre-political protest in peasant societies which became especially prominent in moments of subsistence crisis or in response to

the ‘fear of famine’.* It was then that the bandit became the armed avenger of the peasantry, and by robbing merchants, money-lenders, taxmen, and wealthy landowners he symbolically brought about a juster distribution of resources. These actions gave expression to an embryonic class consciousness, albeit one that lacked political form or objectives since the bandit’s response was an instinctive reaction born of

centuries of exploitation. The more extreme versions of this thesis developed in the years

following the cultural revolution in China and the armed struggle for national liberation in Latin America, Africa, and South-East Asia in the

1960s. In this climate, the bandit was portrayed as a soldier in a 1 F. Braudel, ‘Misére et banditisme’, in Annales ESC (1947), pp. 129-42; J. P. Gutton, La societa ei povert (Milan 1977); O. Cancila, Baroni e popolo nella Sicilia del grano (Palermo 1983); M. Aymard, ‘ Villes laborieuses, villes oisives: I’Italie 4 ’€poque moderne’, in La Force de travail dans les cités mediterraneennes du milieu du XVIIe siecle, Cahiers de la Mediterranée, no. 3 (University of Nice 1974). * J. Delumeau, La Peur en Occident (XIVe—XVIlIle siecles) (Paris 1978), p. 162.

70

Bandits, violence, and the organization of power in Sicily 71 precocious class war between the peasants and their oppressors.* Eric Hobsbawm’s concept of the ‘social bandit’ offered a wider and more

sophisticated model that was quickly adopted by others, thanks in particular to Hobsbawm’s wide-ranging comparative approach and the sensitivity with which he developed his analysis.“ Drawing on examples that ranged from Sardinia, Sicily, Spain to the

Balkans, and from Europe to India, China, Brazil, and Peru, Hobsbawm traced what he believed to be the ‘universal’ features of the

bandit. Bandits, he claimed, were generally recruited from young agricultural labourers and members of the most marginal sections of rural society whose rebellious spirit embodied the most elemental form

of peasant protest. They had close ties with the communities from

which they sprang, so that the bandit was both avenger of the community’s injuries and protector of its moral equality. This role of necessity brought the bandit into conflict with the authorities, whilst strengthening the bonds of solidarity with the community. The myth of the bandit’s invulnerability, for example, illustrated the bandit’s

integration into a wider social group, whose desire for protection against injustice he embodied. The bandit was first and foremost, therefore, the product of a traditional rural society, so that when the process of modernization established new forces of economic change, | more rapid forms of communication, and more effective methods of

public administration, banditry gave way to more modern forms of trade-union and political organization.

In practice it has proved difficult to reconcile this model with historical realities. Alan McFarlane has challenged the idea that there

were ever bandits in Great Britain, arguing that in the absence of a genuine peasant society crime had from the earliest times taken on decidedly modern and ‘capitalist’ features in Britain.” Sharpe has argued that the early English bands of cattle thieves, smugglers, and poachers were in many ways similar to brigand bands in terms of size, organization, and the ways in which they distributed their booty. But

he also argues that the presence of a well-organized State with a structure of local government that functioned effectively and a developed system for administering justice and enforcing the law, together with the absence of internal frontiers, made the emergence of 3M. R. Cutrufelli, L’unita d'Italia. Guerra contadina e nascita dello sottosviluppo del Sud (Verona 1974). 4 E. J. Hobsbawm, I banditi. Il banditismo sociale nel? eta moderna (Turin 1971). * A. Macfarlane, Justice and the Mare’s Ale: Law and Disorder in Seventeenth Century England (Oxford 1981).

72 GIOVANNA FIUME ‘social banditry’ almost impossible. The gangs of smugglers and cattle thieves that developed later were closely related to the emergence of a new capitalist economy and new forms of commercial enterprise. In the

English case, rather than giving rise to social revolt in the form of banditry, rural pauperization seems to have led to the formation of a modern rural proletariat.° Recent studies on banditry in modern France also suggest that bandits were typically noblemen or soldiers, whereas popular criminality more generally took the form of smuggling or else exhibitions of ‘youthful exuberance’ that were sanctioned by popular

custom.’ |

The social contexts of banditry have not been overlooked in these more recent studies, but new emphasis has been placed on the political contexts and especially on the relations between the State and local administration. The result is that we now have a great deal of historical evidence to show that banditry was very closely related to the processes

of political and administrative centralization. In the Scandinavian countries, for example, the development of powerful centralized state structures at an early period led local communities in Denmark and Sweden to collaborate with the authorities and the law so that by the early eighteenth century banditry had almost completely disappeared. In Holland, the rapid development of an effective administrative system

after the reforms of the Napoleonic period and the creation of organized policing agencies also brought about the rapid disappearance of banditry, although it continued until much later in some areas where state control remained weak.’

The attempts to locate the origins of banditry in the processes by which centralized forms of State power took shape is open to criticism

on two grounds. It has been pointed out that banditry was a consequence of the deep-seated conflicts between rival social groups which in many communities persisted over long periods of time, so that

what outsiders saw as banditry was part of the faction struggles between neighbouring clans. Others have drawn attention to the role of banditry in the vendetta and in conflicts between or within kinship groups. Conflicts of this sort reveal the complex interplay between ® J. Sharpe, ‘Criminal organization in rural England 1550-1750’, in Bande armate, banditi, banditismo, ed. G. Ortalli (Rome 1986), pp. 125-40.

* See A. Zysberg, ‘Bandits et banditisme en France du XVIIe au XVIlIle siecle: essai de typologie’, in Bande armate, p. 18; N. Castan, ‘Du banditisme a la revolte populaire; l’exemple du Vivarais 4 la fin de l’Ancien Regime’, ibid., p. 11.

8 J. Sundin, ‘Bandits and guerrilla soldiers. Armed bands on the border between Sweden and Denmark’, in Bande armate, pp. 141-66; F. Egmont, ‘The heyday of banditry in Western

Europe: the case of the great Dutch band (1790-9)’, ibid. pp. 167-78; A. Blok, ‘The Bokkerrijders bands (1726~-76)’, in European Mediterranean Society, no. 7 (Amsterdam 1976).

Bandits, violence, and the organization of power in Sicily 73 localized and wider power structures, and suggest that it would be wrong simply to equate the proliferation of banditry with the weakness of the State. But these two approaches are complementary, and indicate that the particular features of the State and its presence at a local level should be seen in terms of the particular features and organization of

systems of power that existed in each community. It is equally important to remember that the law itself cannot be overlooked, since historically it was the law and its procedures that ‘created’ the criminal by defining what was and what was not ‘crime’.” In the case of Sicily, there is overwhelming evidence that banditry originated in the struggles to establish, expand, defend, and consolidate feudal power. As rival families and clans fought for control over land that was particularly fertile or gave strategic control over communi-

cations or key military positions, the armed bands emerged as the private armies of the feudal lords and provided them with the physical means to maintain authority on their feudal estates. Banditry came into

being, therefore, as a means of defending feudal privilege against outside incursions and this close interdependence between the bandits

and the feudal barons was recognized by both Sicilian and foreign observers. *°

For this reason the bandits almost inevitably came into direct conflict with the centralizing aspirations of the State. Once battle was joined, the State sought to destroy the bandits with merciless and exemplary

punishments. Captured brigands were quartered alive, thrown from high towers, or hanged from the battlements, their severed heads exposed in public to instil a fear of justice and a horror of crime. No mercy was shown and the bandit remained a special target even after the feudal regime began to disappear and other forms of petty crime began to proliferate. Yet many Sicilian historians still depict the bandit as a popular hero and draw a clear distinction between banditry and the Mafia. One recent study describes brigandage as ‘the bitter and desperate revolt of

a peasant society that lacked other means to bring about a fairer redistribution of wealth’. Another refers to it as ‘an explosion... of an instinctive and primordial peasant rebelliousness, a permanent vendetta against the feudal seigneurs, against the rich and powerful of every sort ° R. Comaschi, ‘Strategie familiari, potere locale e banditi in una comunita contadina del Cinquecento’, in Bande armate, pp. 225-32; O. Raggio, ‘Parentele, fazioni e banditi: la Val Fontanabuona tra Cinque e Seicento’, ibid. pp. 233-76; M. Sbriccoli, ‘Brigantaggio e ribellismo nella criminalistica dei secoli XVI-XVIII’, ibid. pp. 479-500. 1° P. Brydone, A Tour Through Sicily and Malta in 1770 (London 1806), pp. 39-40. 11 S. Leoni, ‘Brigantaggio e societa’, in Storia della Sicilia (Napoli 1978), vol. vu, p. 84.

74 GIOVANNA FIUME who ruled the countryside by violence and without any. check’.’? Banditry, mn short, continues to be seen as a form of social insurrection which is contrasted to the conservatism of the mafioso and is portrayed as a form of heroic and courageous resistance to the forces of social and

moral corruption.” Such interpretations have been strongly influenced, of course, by the experience of the post-war peasant movement in southern Italy which

gave expression to deep-seated peasant hostility towards the state. Many writers have sought to show parallels between these protests and

the banditry that had occurred in southern Italy immediately after Unification. But if brigandage on the southern mainland after 1860 may have expressed some degree of rural class solidarity, this was never

the case in Sicily. On the contrary, throughout the first half of the nineteenth century banditry in Sicily was almost exclusively reactionary

both in its origins and in its inspiration. It is perhaps no accident that many of those charged with offences by the present-day commission of enquiry into the Mafia carry the same names as the brigands of the last century. These features of banditry were well evident in the period that is the subject of this essay, the three decades that followed the abolition of feudalism in Sicily in 1812. Social structures are not changed overnight by legislative fiat, and the power of the Sicilian aristocracy meant that change was particularly slow. The private armies with which the old feudal aristocracy had enforced its authority survived and continued to be the principal means by which the aristocracy exercised its power, despite the reorganization of the state and the judiciary and despite the abolition of the feudal privileges of merum et mixtum imperium, the unlimited criminal and civil jurisdictions previously exercised by the feudal aristocracy. For centuries this had been the fundamental legal principle that had legitimized the power of the barons and their armed retainers at a local level. As a result, the exercise of private violence had

come to permeate social relations and to acquire its own legitimacy. Such things could not be changed quickly and even later in the century

the Tuscan writer Leopoldo Franchetti could still claim that banditry was ‘the key to the system of social relations that prevail throughout the greater part of Sicily’.™ *2 S. F. Romano, ‘Le origini della mafia’, in Storia della Sicilia, vol. 1x, p. 360. 13 F. Renda, ‘Funzioni e base sociale della mafia’, in La Mafia (Bologna 1970), pp. 39-40; A.

Buttitta, ‘Cantastorie in Sicilia’, in Annali del Museo Pitre, VII1X (Palermo 1957-9), 149-236. 14 L. Franchetti, La Sicilia nel 1876 (Florence 1924), vol. 1, p. 41.

Bandits, violence, and the organization of power in Sicily 75 During the three decades between 1819 and 1849 there were two quite distinct phases in Sicilian banditry. For the first decade and a half the armed bands were few in number but generally large in size. Both

features suggest that the authorities were not particularly active in repressing an institution which was still considered to be a legitimate and indeed normal feature of the power of the landowners and the nobility. This also explains why very few complaints were brought by the victims of the bands. The prestige and authority of the bands also indicates that this form of banditry had little to do with petty crime or simple theft. In the second half of the period, however, the State began to take a more active role in repressing banditry, and it was in the years after 1830 that new military units and gendarmeries were created in

Sicily specifically for this purpose. This profoundly changed the situation and it was in this new context that the armed bands took on a key role in forms of organized crime that extended across wide areas and which formed part of a more general increase in petty crimes, robberies, and violence in general. After 1830 the bands were also less directly dependent on the former feudatories, who still remained powerful landowners. This did not mean that the bandits became independent agents, however, and were now operating on their own account. The abolition of feudalism in

Sicily made possible the emergence of new social groups whom contemporaries described as the civili and gentiluomini, who took advantage of the new legislation to acquire land and positions in local

administration. The wealth they acquired in this way gave them immense power and influence and it was they who became the bandits’ new masters and protectors. As a result the armed gangs began to be

deployed in the violent struggles that were being waged to establish control over public administration so that they ceased to be simply the armed guards of the great estates and began to play a critical role in the lives and activities of the rural and provincial townships or comuni.’°

Local administration was now the nerve centre of new systems of power, although these retained their roots in the countryside. The armed bands also began to recruit in the towns, indicating that the growth in banditry was not caused by the disintegration of rural

society, as some historians have argued. On the contrary, the new banditry grew out of the determination of both the older and the newer sections of the Sicilian elites to resist the Bourbon monarchy’s attempts © Thid. p. go.

76 GIOVANNA FIUME to assert its control over the exercise of power. The armed bands were therefore directly involved in the resistance to the centralizing instinct

of the State, and were the instruments by which rival ‘parties’ or faction groups sought physically to gain control over local administra-

tions and the revenues and resources that went with them in each Sicilian township. The result was what contemporary sources described as ‘social anarchy’, the roots of which lay not in popular unrest but in

the proliferation of rival systems of power. As endemic faction struggles politicized the life of the rural townships, the ‘spirit of faction’ prevailed everywhere and split communities into warring faction and patronage groups. These changes were also reflected in the nature and composition of the armed bands. On the one hand, there were some really large bands, easily identifiable by virtue of their numbers, the amount of booty they acquired and the length of time they remained active; all features that won them a particular fame and made them particularly feared. But the most important feature of the larger bands was that they could rely on

networks of powerful protectors amongst the local notables, the professional classes, public officials, and local landowners who provided

them with shelter and on whose behalf they raided transports, rustled livestock, or simply waged private vendettas. On the other hand, there were also many smaller bands. These were made up from the bolder or more desperate petty criminals, and did reveal a closer correlation with the recurrence of rural subsistence crises.

The small bands were typically recruited from out-of-work farmhands, impoverished artisans, and army deserters. Their activities were geographically circumscribed and generally short-lived. They robbed to keep alive and to provide themselves with the horses and equipment

they needed, but they lacked protectors capable of keeping the authorities at bay and sooner or later they fell into the hands of the authorities. The abolition of feudalism in Sicily not only brought about a wider distribution of landownership, but also a rapid escalation in the use of violence and in the activities of brigand bands. The State responded by

arming itself with more soldiers, more policemen, and more executioners in an attempt to assert its will by force, and in response the Sicilian elites sought to defend themselves against the new centralizing

policies of the State. It was in this resistance to the pretensions of the State that the interests of the old Sicilian feudal classes and the newer rural bourgeoisie came together in a common cause.

Bandits, violence, and the organization of power in Sicily — 77

Throughout much of European history the opposition of the aristocracies had been a major obstacle to the development of the centralized State,*® and in Sicily in these years this opposition took the

form of a bourgeois guerrilla war that challenged the State from within. But violence was also a means of accumulating wealth, which also indicates how little affinity there was between the operations of the armed bands and the interests of the poor. This aspect of banditry is very widely documented not only in the contemporary administrative

and judicial records and in the legal terms by which banditry was defined, but also in the ways in which banditry was perceived in popular culture. As well as extorting money through ransoms, the armed bands were principally engaged in a variety of commercial activities, the profits from which were in large part subsequently invested in the purchase of land. In fact, the rural bourgeoisie of western Sicily took shape from these essentially illegal activities and the use of violence as a matter of course would remain a persistent trait in their entrepreneurial behaviour.

If we want to find genuine peasant-brigands, however, the sources prove less helpful. What they do tell us is that one of the principal means used to combat brigandage was the offer of rewards to those who were prepared to help the authorities capture wanted outlaws, on the ancient legal principle that latro potest impune occidi. From the

massive administrative documentation that resulted from _ these procedures it is clear that relations between bandits and the rural populations were dominated by constant mutual suspicion, and that it

was the peasants who most frequently betrayed and captured the outlaws. Nor do the sources offer any examples of noble bandits who sought to avenge the wrongs of the poor and the weak or punish their oppressors. On the contrary, the sources indicate very clearly that the

bands were either motivated by personal gain and enjoyed the protection of powerful patrons, or else consisted of small groups of desperate outlaws, escaped convicts, and deserters who sought only to stay alive by theft and pillage. Sicilian banditry in the early nineteenth century did not develop as a form of social war against the ruling classes nor as a product of the poverty and disintegration of rural society, but rather as an instrument in the power struggles between rival sections of the rural elites. The cause of these faction struggles lay in economic changes that weakened some sections of the landed classes while offering new opportunities to 18 N. Elias, Potere e civilta (Bologna 1983).

78 , GIOVANNA FIUME others. With the possible exception of 1848, when the circumstances of the revolutions created a wider crisis, there is no correlation between the timing of peasant protests and the activities of the armed bands. The

two followed separate paths, at times running parallel and at others diverging. As far as Sicily is concerned the identification of banditry with peasant protest is little more than a populist attempt to idealize and moralize all forms of social violence — an interpretation that obscures

rather than explains the real nature of social antagonisms in a rural society in which realities were far removed from the nostalgic myth of ‘a world we have lost’.'’ But how did an individual become a bandit in Sicily in this period ? The bandit was defined first and foremost by the law, which designated as a bandit any individual who had been outlawed (fuorbandito) for

membership of an armed band, tried in absentia and condemned to death.'® The procedure was as follows. The names of those who were considered to be a threat to society or who were unaccountably absent from their normal place of residence were placed on what were known as the Provisional Lists of Outlaws. Within eight days of the public posting of such a list, the relatives of the named person were obliged to provide the authorities with reasons for the individual’s absence. These declarations (officially termed ‘excuses’) might be accepted or rejected, so that the bandit was ultimately defined in effect by public ‘fame’ or reputation. This was why the official documents described bandits as

‘notorious’, ‘widely acclaimed’ or ‘publicly denounced’. , Anyone whose name was included on the Definitive List of Outlaws could be freely killed with the full sanction of the law either by agents of the State or by private citizens, the latter qualifying for a cash reward and the ‘government’s consideration ’.’” As the scale of banditry grew, the authorities sought to use every means possible and with the explicit intention of causing divisions within the bands rewards were offered to any bandit willing to provide information and betray their colleagues. In 1827, for example, it was announced that the leader of a band who killed three other bandits would qualify for an amnesty, while the same

concession was offered to any bandit who killed at least one other: those who gave themselves up voluntarily were promised mitigated sentences. ‘7 P, Laslett, The World We Have Lost (London 196s). 18 Royal decrees 2.7.1810, 17.11.1811, 14.6.1815, 17.6.1817, in D. Vacca, Indice generale della collezione delle leggi e decreti per il regno delle Due Sicilie dal 1806 al 1836 (Naples 1837), pp. 406ff. 19 Royal decree 22.8.1821, in Dizionario ragionato del codice per lo regno delle Due Sicilie: leggi penali

(Naples 1819), part 2, pp. 22-5, 34-6.

| Bandits, violence, and the organization of power in Sicily 79 These measures gave rise to considerable debate because of their dubious moral premiss and the likelihood that they would provoke even greater violence and barbarity. Captured bandits could also be executed on the basis of ‘a single proof of identity’, and in a society where even the most rudimentary forms of identification were lacking, mistakes were common. Bandits were arraigned before special military tribunals from which there was no appeal, and the impartiality of the judges was often highly dubious. Those whose names appeared on the

lists were obliged to present themselves to the authorities within a month to escape automatic execution. But many could not be aware

that their names had been included, and others avoided going to the authorities for fear of denunciation by an enemy or else because they were victims of a vendetta or knew the judge to be hostile. The laws on outlaws were known as the ‘decree of heads’ and they probably increased rather than reduced the number of bands since the blanket application of the death penalty forced many lesser criminals as well as many entirely innocent people to take to the hills. The law also presupposed that any person who was absent without proper account was associating with others with the intent of committing crime, and it defined membership of an armed band as a crime in its own right

without requiring proof that other illegal acts had been committed. The Definitive Lists of Outlaws were printed in each administrative district and publicly displayed in the main piazza of every town and village and on the principal highways. In this way the names of the indicted bandits, the charges against them and their sentences were public knowledge, and opened the way to a manhunt. But who was being pursued? A sample of 90 bandits taken from 37 lists of outlaws between 1828 and 1840, shows that 62.7 per cent were aged between 20 and 29 years, and 27.9 per cent between 30 and 39 years. As to their occupations, 30 per cent were artisans, hauliers, and people employed in a range of urban services or petty trades (shoemakers, coopers, barbers, millers, sailors, etc.). Some 24 per cent were ‘yokels’ or farm labourers, 24 per cent were shepherds and cattlemen (including the owners of small flocks and herds) and another 22 per cent were described as peasants or field guards. Bandits were drawn mainly from the marginal sections of the urban artisans and service trades, therefore, and only to a lesser extent from the rural poor. There was also a significant number of individuals like field guards who played important intermediary roles in local hierarchies of power.

The lists also show that not all parts of the island were equally

80 GIOVANNA FIUME affected by banditry. In the Val di Mazara, for example, banditry was

particularly widespread and persistent, whereas it was much less prevalent in the Val Demone and the Val di Noto. On the other hand, the districts of Caltanissetta, Alcamo, Agrigento (and especially Favara), and the Madonie hills were seething with armed bands; in the province

of Palermo they were particularly prevalent in the neighbourhoods of Bagheria, Termini Imerese, Corleone, Palazzo Adriano, and Partinico. What the police documents referred to as the ‘infested valleys’ were also the principal sources of ‘the nation’s wealth’. The map of banditry in Sicily in the first half of the nineteenth century coincides almost exactly with that of the vast latifundist estates on which extensive cereal

production was combined with cattle rearing. This was the classical terrain of feudal Sicily, and it was here that the great Sicilian feudal dynasties held their estates (or in feudal vocabulary their ‘States’, a term that continued to be used). The Terranova, the Resuttano, the

Branciforte, the Lanza, the Bonanno, and other great aristocratic families that had played a major part in Sicily’s history all came from this area. Here the abolition of feudalism had brought few changes and had been applied ‘not only with little political firmness but indeed with a feebleness that laid it open to evasion and derision’.*°

It is not surprising, therefore, that over the period of thirty years there were only ten cases in which members of the aristocracy were victims of the actions of the bandits. On the other hand, carters and travellers made up 66 per cent of the recorded victims of the bands, peasants and shepherds 14 per cent, merchants and other landowners II per cent, whereas only 0.37 per cent of the victims were noblemen.

The bandits’ booty comprised mainly livestock, then cash and jewellery, food for their own needs as well as guns, clothing, and fodder.

There are references to 594 bands during this period but there are indications of the numbers involved in only 290 of these cases: although

these alone constituted an army of 3,503 bandits! In 1838 there were 1o1 bands operating in the Val Demone, but in 1846 there were only 64 bands in the whole of western Sicily. In mid July 1824 the sources reveal that between Termini and Licata there was a band of 8 operating near Naro; one of 13 at Grotte; another of 9 at Campobello; of 3 at San Cataldo; and of 11 at Vallelunga. At Parco travellers were attacked by 20 P. Cala-Ulloa, ‘Lettera riservata al Re’ (3.8.1838), quoted in E. Pontieri, I! riformismo borbonico nella Sicilia del Settecento e Ottocento (Rome 1945), p. 221.

Bandits, violence, and the organization of power in Sicily 81 ‘a number of men’, while 12 bandits took refuge at Sommatino in a pistachio wood. In short, numbers varied widely and so too did official information about them.

During this period there were no major subsistence crises nor any sharp increases in grain prices. Popular protest was caused not by food shortages but by tax increases and by changes that took place in local administration. These, together with the final disappearance of the use-

rights which villagers had formerly enjoyed on common lands and feudal estates, contributed to the increase in paupers and vagrants. But

while vagrants might join the small bands of highway robbers, the larger bands reflected more closely the prevailing hierarchies of power in the local communities. Indeed, one of the most striking features of the larger bands was the complicity of the authorities and the tight webs of obscure and often

impenetrable interests that brought together the representatives of public administration and the bandits. This reflected a central reality of

Sicilian political life, much of which revolved around the struggles between contending ‘parties’, family clans, and patronage groups, to establish monopolies first and foremost over public administration at a local level and then to exploit that monopoly to fatten and consolidate the clan’s patrimony by systematically pillaging public property. Local government was at the centre of these close-knit webs of interests that

ran between the town, the principal administrative centre in the province and ultimately the capital, Palermo. This chain of interests in turn provided the basis for a hierarchy of command which filled the communications gap between the State and local society that the public authorities proved unable to occupy or control.”? In the changed circumstances of the early nineteenth century, it was the newly emerged middle classes that looked to public office and local government as a vehicle of social mobility and to the resources of the former common lands as a means to grow rich. The key to exploiting these opportunities was the armed bands. As wider social groups began ©

to acquire land, the use of violence became more ‘democratic’ and more widespread. It has been argued that ‘the criminal elements of the Sicilian population that had formerly served the barons now became independent’,** but in most. cases it was the nature of the bandits’ protectors rather than that of the bands themselves that changed. The 21 A. Blok, The Mafia of a Sicilian Village (1860-1960) (New York 1975). 22 L. Franchetti, La Sicilia nel 1876, p. go.

82 GIOVANNA FIUME sources make no secret of the fact that behind every bandit whom the

authorities were unable to catch there was always the figure of a nobleman, a judge, a mayor, or a police chief, and sometimes their suspicions were stated quite openly. All the large bands had powerful

protectors, informers, and accomplices whose social position and authority generally reflected the size and importance of the band. The power of a band’s protectors determined not only its size, the scale of its operations, its durability, and ability to attract new recruits, but also the nature of its victims. The armed bands constituted the key link in a chain of power that had well-established structures of organization and responsibility, all of which were directed towards a single criminal objective. According to the Sotto-Intendente of the district of Termini Imerese in the 1840s, there were three distinct levels of criminal organization. The first were the organizers, who generally resided within the great latifundist estates and who were responsible for planning and coordinating the operations of the band, hiding booty, and stolen livestock on their estates, issuing orders for execution against enemies and seeing that they were carried out. The second level was formed by the intermediaries who negotiated with the bands and delivered their orders to them, while at the same time keeping close contacts with the courts and prisons. The third and final level were those who carried out the operations and it was they who were the principal targets of the government’s attempts to impose law and order.”* The organizers were individuals of the highest social position and influence, and since they provided the hiding place for stolen goods and cattle were normally great landowners, and hence the same people who held the principal offices in local government and enjoyed high social and political prestige. The intermediaries were often men well versed

in the law, since their tasks included dealing with magistrates and looking after the interests of imprisoned bandits. The bandits themselves

were simply the combat troops of the organization. The principal activity of the larger bands was cattle rustling, which was carried out on a very large scale and required highly complex forms of organization. Ways had to be found to fake brand marks on the animals and certificates of ownership, to conceal and move the animals, to slaughter them and then organize their clandestine sale: all of which were highly lucrative operations. 23 Archivio di Stato di Palermo (ASP); Ministero e Real Segreteria, Polizia (RSPol); f. 1,321, doc. 2,036, secret report to the king 23.10.1841.

Bandits, violence, and the organization of power in Sicily 83 In the 1820s a local magistrate at Cattolica identified an armed band with over a hundred members that was operating between Cianciana,

Santo Stefano di Quisquina, and Palazzo Adriano and enjoyed the protection of a number of leading landowners, public officials, and other ‘gentlemen’.** A so-called Montelepre Band made repeated thefts of livestock in the area around Godrano, San Giuseppe, Cefala Diana, and Carini between 1831 and 1832, and its leader was not only a nephew of the mayor of Montelepre, but also a cousin of the town’s

treasurer, of the Justice of the Peace and of the supplementary magistrate and was known to be on close terms with many members of the town council.*® There are many references to another ‘league of robbers’ known as the ‘Sacred Union’ which had an even wider range of operations and was based on Mazzarino although it had contacts in Caltagirone, Mirabella, Aidone, Barrafranca, Mussomeli, Delia, and

Butera. The ‘Sacred Union’ was organized at two levels and was mainly engaged in cattle rustling. According to the authorities, the band was responsible for twenty-three raids between March and September 1838 and involved alliances between a number of different family-based clans.** Kinship was usually the principal source of unity

and solidarity, and was the critical criterion of trust: there are no records of any cases of treachery or betrayal within individual family groups. The critical importance of kinship in the structure of the bands

is further illustrated by the fact that it was normal practice for the authorities to arrest and remove from their normal place of residence all the males in the families of listed bandits, since they were seen as the key agents in the systems by which the bandits were supplied, sheltered, and protected.

Other features followed from this. In some cases there was what might be termed a hereditary vocation for banditry, which was passed

from one generation to the next. There is insufficient evidence to follow this process systematically, but it seems that family-based solidarity with the brigands did not take the form of support for an individual who through misfortune or rebelliousness had been driven into crime, but rather of the collective complicity of different groups within a family or group of families in certain illegal activities. Cattle rustling, for example, was conducted as a family enterprise, with one part of the family operating by legitimate and the other by illegitimate 24 ASP; RSPol; f. 112, doc. 422, report of the procurator general of Girgenti 16.10.1828. * Ibid., f. 165, doc. 1,288, report by director general of police 12.9.1832. 26 Ibid., f. 277, doc. 1,615, letter from the Intendente of Caltanissetta.

84 GIOVANNA FIUME | means. This again illustrates how banditry contributed to the accumulation of wealth and to the social mobility of the families involved. In this sense the family, the armed band, the urban faction, league or party were all different features of a single form of association

whose political and social objectives were indistinguishable. The internal cohesion of these associations derived from what Banfield called ‘amoral familism’ and their primary object was to exploit public resources for private gain.*’ Family solidarity did not simply amount to helping a member of the family escape capture, and the sources show that it was much more a

matter of collective participation in highly lucrative activities that enabled the bandits’ families to ‘live comfortably without having to work, although having few possessions’. Their operations enabled them to acquire wealth quickly and very many landowners and civili owed their wealth to such activities. Of those charged in connection with banditry, for example, many had the title Mastro and their wealth

in turn gave them access to administrative functions that conferred further power and hence access to further wealth. The State responded by trying to destroy banditry, and for this purpose the policing of the countryside was entrusted primarily to Mounted Gendarmes.*® There were detachments of gendarmes in each principal town and although they were under the orders of the Interior Minister they could be summonsed by the local magistrates who were responsible for the maintenance of order. As an additional incentive the

local chief of police was held personally responsible for all thefts committed in his area, including thefts of cattle, the value of which was in theory deductible from his annual salary.”°

Like the custom that empowered the chief of police to choose his twelve guards on the basis of personal trust, this had quite disastrous consequences.*° The gendarmes were recruited from the rougher

sections of local youths most of whom had criminal records and contacts with petty crime, and although the chief of police was in theory appointed by the Interior Ministry, in practice the appointment was determined by local preference. This meant that the entire police force was effectively selected by the local elites who showed scant interest in its moral probity or impartiality. 2” E. Banfield, The Moral Basis of a Backward Society (Glencoe, Ill. 1958).

28 ASP; RSPol; f. 3, doc. 118. 29 Ibid.

3° This derived from a decree of 12.6.1714 according to N. Giordano, La delinquenza in Sicilia (Palermo 1971), pp. 36-7; see also V. Titone, Economia e politica nella Sicilia del Sette e Ottocento

{Palermo 1947), p. 126.

Bandits, violence, and the organization of power in Sicily 85

The result was the development in each locality of a close interrelationship between the great estates, the notables, and crime. The

landowners were able to enjoy almost complete protection for their property and tranquillity, thanks in particular to the role played by the captain of police in controlling petty crime. The latter’s true function was to act as an intermediary and negotiator between the thief and his victim. As a result, the victim recovered part of what had been stolen, the thief received a pardon, and the captain of police a ‘reward’ for acting as mediator, as though he were an honest broker acting for both buyer and seller in a public auction.*! The system met a number of different requirements. In the first place, it effectively shut out the magistracy and the processes of law since the thief was pardoned. Second, it guaranteed the appearance of order and tranquillity in the district, and spared the captain of police his liabilities for theft. Third, it established a structure of power outside the

framework of the law and the State that relied on a system of complicity and collusion that involved the criminals, the representatives

of the State, and the local landowners. The powers entrusted to the gendarmes enabled them to act as they chose with absolute impunity. They lorded it over their own districts and at the same time took part in raids against neighbouring territories. The embarrassment this caused is evident from the references in official

reports to armed bands ‘wearing the uniforms of armed soldiers’ and to others that claimed to be such or used this as a pretext to gain access to farms or houses before proceeding to rob, burn, pillage, and rape.*” It was difficult to catch the gendarmes in uniform, however, because they disregarded all regulations and generally dressed ‘just as though they were bandits’. But it was not only their dress that gave grounds for complaint, and according to one report their whole conduct ‘far from contributing to the maintenance of public order has on many occasions been the principal cause of disorder’. Convicts were left unguarded and allowed to escape, there were frequent fights amongst the guards or else between them and youths from their own or other villages, they were often involved in ‘sectarian conspiracies’ and were held responsible for committing injuries, violence, and murder and 3! Eig. the statement by M. Raeli, the Minister of ‘the Interior and Public Safety, during the session of the Sicilian parliament on 27.1.1849, in Le assemblee del Risorgimento (Rome 1911), vol. H, pp. 1,004—5.

32 ASP: RSPol; f. 236, doc. 929, report by the director of police; ibid f. 262, doc. 147, 12.9.1839.

86 GIOVANNA FIUME generally abusing their authority.** The sources reveal that they were

also guilty of carrying out arbitrary house searches and arrests, torturing prisoners to extract confessions, shooting wounded suspects, waging their own vendettas, and that they were in general undisciplined and negligent of their duty. Above all, they proved to be very reluctant to engage in the pursuit of armed bands, although they were frequently to be seen in the company of bandits who ‘to great public scandal are never brought to book’.** Sloth, cowardice, or desire for a quiet life led the police chiefs to minimize the activities of the bands and the general level of crime in their districts. Enquiries from the Director General of Police about the scale of banditry in any district and the identity of the bandits’ protectors and fences received evasive responses. The knowledge that the gendarmes were not serious adversaries also made the bandits even more daring, while public faith in the police was

non existent because it was widely known that the gendarmes and bandits worked hand in glove.*® There were many bonds that linked

the two: kinship, personal ties, membership of the same municipal faction or ‘party’, and shares in the proceeds of crime. As a result, the gendarmes often gave warning to those whose names were to appear on the public lists of outlaws, passed information about the movements of their patrols to the bands, or perjured themselves to the courts, as well as helping to hide stolen goods and cattle, organizing sales of stolen property, and providing shelter for bandits on the run.

The charades that were played between the bandits and fakegendarmes did not fool either the more honest officials or the ordinary people. But what measures could be taken to clean up the countryside?

It was perhaps inevitable that these should have taken the form of emergency ad hoc measures and private initiatives. The landowners set up their own private police forces to guard and protect their properties, while the State responded by forming a series of special mounted units and by trying to enforce the liability of the police chiefs for the costs of thefts in their districts. The provision was extended to cover even cases in which no violence had occurred and the pay of police chiefs

who proved persistently unable to capture wanted bandits was also suspended.*®

33 See ministerial circular 10.2.1852, in G. Tirrito, Manuale di polizia ordinaria in Sicilia (Palermo

1854), pp. 49-50; ASP; RSPol; f. 121, doc. 204 and 190; ibid. f. 38, doc. 187, 26.2.1824. 34 Ibid., f. 38 (1824); f. 149 (1831); f. 223 (1836); f. 300 (1840); f. $31 (1848); f. 277 (1838); f. 209

(1835); f. 277 (1838); f. 321 (1841). 3° Ibid., f. 227 (14.9.1838). 36 Ibid., f. 209. (28.4.1835).

Bandits, violence, and the organization of power in Sicily 87 There were only a few Sicilian police chiefs who were trusted — Orlando, Biondi, Ferro, Ritiucci, Pensavecchio — and they were put in

charge of the special units that were created with the specific aim of destroying named bands or restoring order in particular areas. But the emergency measures soon proved quite inadequate in a situation in which ‘the bandits are like the teeth of Cadmus and seem to spring up from underground’.*’ Neither the State’s resources nor those of the local communities could long support the cost of these operations. The

government was unable to disband these special units, however, because their help was increasingly needed for collecting taxes in the face of determined public hostility, and they soon became ‘so many detachments of armed tax collectors’.*® The formation of special anti-brigand units like the ‘Rural Guards’

and ‘Watchmen’ also proved unsuccessful. The landowners quickly gained the right to recruit the ‘Rural Guards’ so that the authorities were left with little control over them. The ‘Watchmen’, on the other hand, were simply troops of civil guards recruited from ‘persons of property, capital and trade, men of professions, the owners of shops and

workshops or those of civil condition’ to patrol the streets at night.*° They were appointed by the local authorities and were under the orders of the resident magistrate or the mayor; but they were unpaid, had to provide their own weapons and equipment, and did not even wear a uniform. Like the magistrates’ bailiffs (the ‘Rondieri’), the Watchmen’ were not a military force and consisted of ‘heads of families’, well-todo landowners and professional people who, as one official put it, ‘are not Over-eager to participate in strenuous operations, for which they are in any case completely unequipped since they have no mounts’. Often they could not even patrol the larger towns effectively, never mind hunt bands of mounted brigands.*° Attempts to force ‘honest citizens’ to participate in maintaining order were also unsuccessful. Even in England, much earlier attempts

to make policing a civil duty through the creation of the parish constable proved unworkable because the propertied classes preferred to pay ‘lowly sorts of people’ to serve in their place.** In Sicily the official sources were full of complaints about those who should have been ‘animated by zeal to maintain the tranquillity of their environment 37 Ibid., f. 277 (10.8.1838); f. 277 (27.9.1838): f. 321. 38 Ibid., f. 276 (27.4.1834). %° Ibid., f.277, doc. 1,611: Regolamento per lo stabilimento dei sorvegliatori di Interna Sicurezza, part §; ministerial instruction 25.7.1850 in Tirrito, Manuale di polizia, p. 82; R.

Decree 2.6.1833. 40 Ibid., f. 277 (1838).

41 See T. A. Critchey, A History of the Police in England (Montclair, 1971).

88 GIOVANNA FIUME and who by virtue of their own interests and their knowledge of the locality and its people’ were best suited to aid the government in its efforts to wipe out banditry, but who in practice proved to be ‘deaf to the voice of duty, honour and their own best interests’.** Again it was noted that the greatest failing was not simply the neglect of public responsibility, but the tendency to use public institutions for private ends: those who should have been the ‘guardians of order’ were in reality frequently ‘accomplices of the delinquents’.**

New bodies of “Urban Guards’ were established in an attempt to reduce local influence, and were recruited from the ‘property owners, capitalists, merchants, craftsmen, owners of shops...and in the case of smaller townships from labourers as well’. Nomination was made directly by the authorities in an attempt to lessen the influence of local clientelist networks, but in order to find sufficient people who were considered loyal to the king it proved necessary to include working men as well.** These new urban militias lacked professional organization or equipment, and could at best only provide back-up support for Operations against the brigands rather than take any initiative on their

own account. Even worse, many observers claimed that the Urban Guards soon became deeply involved in rural theft, kidnappings, and other crimes, although there seems to be little evidence for this.*° | The key problem was still how to create a force that could give an overall lead to the operations against the armed bands. This could not

be done by the ‘companies at arms’ which had existed before the abolition of feudal jurisdiction. The companies were abolished by royal

decree, and although many of the former guards were recruited into the newly formed Royal Mounted Gendarmerie,** the aged and those with particularly bad reputations were excluded. Since they remained unemployed and lacked any means of supporting themselves, they soon became another source of grave concern for the authorities who saw

them as a major threat to public order, even though they were disarmed and put under ‘the closest police surveillance’.*’ The abolition of the companies at arms and the creation of the Royal Mounted Gendarmerie were part of a broader attempt to extend the power and authority of the royal government and weaken that of the local authorities. Hence the repeated complaints raised by the municipal 42 ASP, RSPol, f. 277: Circolari a stampa dell’Intendente di Caltanissetta (20 and 29.6.1838).

43 Ibid., f. 277 (12.7.1838). 44 RK. Decree 4.11.1838.

48 ASP, RSPol, f. 321: Circolare a stampa dell’Intendente della Provincia di Trapani (8.8.1840).

6 Ibid., f. 244, doc. 758: R. Decree 14.10.1837; Istruzioni per lo Scioglimento delle 25 Compagnie d’Arme 7.11.1837; Ministerial circular 29.1.1838. 47 Ibid., Report from the procurator general, December 1837.

Bandits, violence, and the organization of power in Sicily 89 authorities against the gendarmerie. They were accused of having no knowledge of local conditions or people, so that wanted bandits could walk past them without being recognized.** Similar motives also lay behind the reluctance of local magistrates and Mayors to cooperate with the gendarmerie, despite repeated, insistent, and direct instructions to do so. As a result the transition from the old feudal companies at arms to the new centralized gendarmerie was chaotic. The members of the companies at arms who were not re-employed in one of the new local policing forces remained a major threat to public order and the sources are full of letters begging for pensions and jobs, or promising to hand over wanted bandits. Some found private employment, but the

gendarmerie itself remained severly undermanned and unable to Operate in many districts.*” There were also bitter tensions between the police authorities and the commander of the para-military gendarmerie. The former accused the

gendarmes of incompetence in the tactics they used, while the commander of the gendarmes retorted that there was little point in swamping the countryside with troops to pursue brigands when the local police authorities ‘keep silent and choose to ignore the crimes committed under their noses’.°” But even when the gendarmerie had been purged of all suspect elements and had become an instrument that

the government could trust, it was so heavily inundated with other duties that its effectiveness in the campaign against the brigands

remained severely hampered. The need to guard prisons, escort convicts, mail coaches and other transports, provide guards for magistrates and the criminal courts, not to mention assisting the government’s tax officers, imposed heavy burdens and the need for more units and more men.”? Within the broader panorama of rural disorder, the government also

began to devote increasing energy to the problem of the theft of livestock since it was here that evidence of the complicity of the local authorities was often strongest. The senior royal administrator in each region, the Intendente, was ordered by the king to report the names of all those local magistrates, judges on the regional tribunals, supplementary magistrates, Mayors or commanders of Civic Guards, who are

in any way negligent in their duty or fail to provide the Gendarmerie with 48 Ibid., f. 253, docs. 1,877, 1,890 (2.7.1838 and 6.9.1838). 49 Ibid., f. 244, doc. 758 (16.12.1837); f. 192, doc. 627 and 645; f. 276, doc. 1,561 (23.1.1838); doc. 1,588 (25.8.1838); doc. 1,605 (29.8.1838). 5° Ibid., f. 276, doc. 1,588 and 1,568 (19.2.1838 and 25.8.1838).

51 See Vacca, Indice generale, pp. 385-8; ASP, RSPol f. 276, doc. 1,575; f. 277, doc. 1,644; f. 321, doc. 2,015.

gO GIOVANNA FIUME

arrests. .

information about the movement of armed bands or the names of those responsible for crimes...and other matters that may assist them in making

The same instructions warned that no exceptions would be made in ‘punishing any person in authority who is negligent or who 1s actively involved in brigandage’.*” An important escalation of the campaign against banditry and cattle rustling came when it was decided to transfer administrative personnel and judges between Sicily and the mainland. Many Sicilian officials were transferred to the mainland, while posts in Sicily were given to Neapolitans and others who were not part of local faction groups. As a result the administrative personnel both in Palermo and in the Sicilian

provinces underwent a major change and thereafter a much more aggressive stance on the part of the magistrates was evident. The new political climate that resulted from this is clearly reflected

in the reports of the officials themselves, who indicated their firm intention of putting an end to a situation that they did not hesitate to describe as intolerable, if possible without resorting to illegal means.

‘Hitherto the concern and energy of the Circuit Judges has not stretched much beyond the mere dispatch of paper’, thundered the royal procurator general at Trapani as he set out a new agenda of vigilance and active intervention for the magistracy and the courts. His sentiments were reflected by the Sotto-Intendente of Termini: ‘Up to

now we have been content to make war against the brigands simply

with the pen... but I get on my horse and hunt them out in the

countryside.’®* |

The transfer of officials, the reorganization of the Mounted Gendarmerie, and the more strenuous campaign against cattle rustling were all means by which Ferdinand II’s government in the 1830s and 1840s sought to assert royal authority in western Sicily, and at the same time to demonstrate the monarchy’s paternalistic concern for the well-

being of its subjects. But unlike other parts of Western Europe, the power of the ex-feudal aristocracy in Sicily was not residual. At every step they sought to obstruct and undermine the attempts to centralize

and consolidate the power of the monarchy, and every attempt to establish a royal monopoly over the exercise of violence and physical coercion through the creation of centralized military and administrative institutions met with the same resistance. 52 Ibid., f. 276, doc. 1,588, Circolari a stampa 25.7 and 7.9.1838. 3 Ibid., f. 320, doc. 2,008 — a ‘very urgent and top secret report from Cala-Ulloa’ (4.6.1838); f. 520, doc. 2,881 (22.5.1846); f. 342, doc. 1,653 (9.12.1841).

Bandits, violence, and the organization of power in Sicily 91 According to Max Weber, the outcome of this type of conflict had everywhere been ‘decisive for the history of civilization’.** In Sicily in the early nineteenth century, the conflict was fought out within the institutions of the state itself. The government’s ability to cleanse the Sicilian countryside of the brigand bands would ultimately depend on whether or not it was able to destroy the Leopard and his kind. °4 M. Weber, Economia e societa (Milan 1974), vol. 1, p. 262.

CHAPTER §

Marriage and the family in Italy in the early nineteenth century

MARZIO BARBAGLI

This chapter will examine some of the changes relating to marriage and the family in Italy in the early nineteenth century. These changes are of great interest for the social historian of nineteenth-century Italy, and thanks to recent research we now have a fair amount of information for a reconstruction of the history of the family and marriage in Italy in this period. The discussion will be divided into three sections. In the first two parts we shall examine the systems of family formation in Italy, the ways in which these varied from region to region and the nature of the

principal changes that took place during the period. Starting with a description of patterns of residence after marriage (the choice between

neo-local and patrilocal residence), we shall move on to examine household structures (the composition of a group living in the same household), and the different types of household to which an individual might expect to belong during the span of his or her life. The second section will examine the ages at which males and females married, as

well as the correlations between age at marriage, residence patterns after marriage, and household structures. In the final section we shall explore changing attitudes towards children, and in particular the reasons for the massive increase in the abandonment of infants that constituted one of the most dramatic changes affecting relations within the family in this period. HOUSEHOLD STRUCTURES

The situation in Florence in 1810

In his memoirs, Guido Nobili wrote of the large and complex family in which he had grown up in Florence in the mid nineteenth century. Nobili’s family consisted of his octogenarian paternal grandfather who ruled the household ‘in the correct style of an ageing gentleman’; his 92

Marriage and the family in Italy 93 grandfather's wife’s sister; his father, a “good’ but ‘severe’ man who had ‘made up his mind to make me a subject for the application of the most rigorous rules for the physical and moral up-bringing of children’ ; his mother, who ‘was only sixteen years my elder’; three aunts and an

uncle, a cousin and a brother. There were also ‘servants, domestics,

nannies, cooks, and coachmen who form a society almost unto themselves in the basement of the house and in the estate cottage’.’ Examples such as this have tended to give the impression that in the eighteenth century and earlier most Italians — and especially those from more exalted social backgrounds — lived their lives in the surroundings of large and complex families.” But recent research has shown that this

is almost entirely false. The census data for Florence in 1810, for example, show that the vast majority of households were neither numerous nor complex. Indeed, only about § per cent resembled the type of multiple household in which Guido Nobili had grown up. On the other hand, 65 per cent of households were of the simple conjugal

type, 16 per cent consisted of a single person, 4 per cent lacked a conjugal structure, while extended family households made up only Io | per cent of the total.*

Even amongst the highest social classes the multiple household described by Guido Nobili was unusual. At the top of Florentine society, according to the census returns, there was a very small group of families that were described as ‘wealthy’, and amongst these were many of the great noble families of the city. In comparison with other social groups, both extended households and those consisting of a single person were common amongst this group, but otherwise there was no

clear correlation between multiple households and specific social eroups. In the early nineteenth century the majority of Florentines set up a neo-local (i.e. separate) residence after marriage and lived on their own.

However, the type of household in which they lived varied greatly according to their age at marriage and their condition before marriage (see table 1).” Most Florentine children up to the age of ten were part 1 G. Nobili, Memorie lontane (Florence 1952), pp. 26-7. 2 G. Vismara, Il diritto di famiglia dalla riforma ai codici (Milan 1978) describes Guido Nobili’s family as a ‘typical upper-class Florentine household on the eve of Italian Unification’ (p. §2). * M. Barbagli, Sotto lo stesso tetto: mutamenti della famiglia in Italia dal XV al XX secolo (Bologna

4 ithe typology of family structures used here is that proposed by P. Laslett in ‘La Famille et

le ménage’, in Annales ESC (1972), 847-72. : 5 My thanks to Carlo Corsini of the Department of Statistics, University of Florence, where the data from the original Florentine census of 1810 are now stored on computer disc.

, and 94 MARZIO BARBAGLI

Table 1. The population of Florence in 1810 by family type, sex, age, and marital status % Age band

ony

O-§ 6-10 II-I§ 16-20 21-25 26-30 31-35 36-40 41-45 46-50 §I-§§ 5$§6-60 61-65 66-70 over

Men: unmarried |

Solitaries 0.0 0.0 0.2 0.9 2.2 6.9 15.4 24.2 31.6 40.4 41.7 41.3 48.0 47.2 49.5 No-family 0.3 0.6 1.9 3.3 §.2 8.2 9.§ 13.6 16.7 20.8 22.8 27.4 26.7 24.8 23.1 household

Nuclear: parents, with 71.9 71.0 66.0 60.3 $3.0 38.2 26.3 15.7 7.1 4.5 2.9 2.4 2.00 08 £6.

with children , or without children

Nuclear: one parent 2.3 70 14.3 16.8 20.9 25.1 26.3 22.1 18.3 8.7 4.9 2.4 1.3 6 0.5 Extended 15.6 14.0 12.0 12.3 I1.1 14.2 13.6 14.9 14.9 20.0 23.3 22.6 19.3 23.2 17.2

Multiple 9.7 7.2 5.6 6.4 7.5 7.3 8.7 9.3 I1.§ 5.3 4.4 3.8 20 2.4 2.3 Other and not known 0.1 0.1 0.0 0.1 O.1 O.1 0.2 0.6 0.0 0.4 0.0 0.0 07 0.0) 05 Totals 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 I00.0 I00.0 100.0 Number of cases (3,773) (2,466) (2,471) (2,071) (1,568) (1,063) (505) (376) (323) (265) (206) (208) (150) (125) (186) Men: married

Solitaries — — — 16 07 O04 0.3 0.2 0.3 10 0.7 OF O48 O48 07 No-family — — — 0.0 OL 04 0.3 06 O11 O04 Of O04 Of 0.2 0.3 household

Marriage and the family in Italy 95 Nuclear: parents, with — — — $3.1 61.6 68.8 72.9 77.1 80.0 80.2 80.9 82.6 80.4 80.4 77.9 or without children

Nuclear: one parent — — — 0.0 0.4 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.3 0.3 0.4 0.3 OF O02 40.2 with children Extended — — — Iq4.I 13.7 13.5 14.2 13.7 14.6 12.4 10.2 9.0 7.6 7.4 7.7 Multiple — — — 31.3 23.2 16.6 12.0 8.1 4.6 $.7 7.3 7.0 10.8 11.4 13.1 Other and not known — — — 0.0 O.I 0.0 O.I 0.2 0.1 0.1 0.2 0.0 O4 O.0 OI

Totals — — — 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 I00.0 100.0 I00.0 100.0 Number of cases — — — (64) (680) (1,412) (1,473) (1,613) (1,579) (1,649) (1,160) (1,086) (846) (648) (700)

Men: widowers and separated :

household |

Solitaries | — — — — — 23.0 17.1 19.6 18.5 17.9 13.9 20.6 25.2 22.1 20.8

No-family — — — — — 6.7 2.9 2.0 3.3 0.9 2.6 I.4 3.3 26 3.0 Nuclear: parents, with — — — — — 20.6 I1.4 7.8 2.2 1.8 1.7 2.1 1.3 1.3 1.3 or without children

Nuclear: one parent — — — — — 21.0 40.0 41.2 §0.0 60.7 $58.2 46.8 39.7 31.8 26.5 with children

Extended — — — — — 10.0 22.9 17.6 18.§ 10.7 17.4 #+%17.0 17.2 29.2 31.1

Multiple — — — — — 20.0 5.7 11.8 7.6 8.0 6.1 12.1 12.6 13.0 16.8

Other and not known — — — — — 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.7 OO O04 Totals — — — — — 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 I00.0 100.0 Number of cases —- =—- = = — _ (0) (3s) (SI) (92) (112) (115) (141) (151) (154) (303)

96 MARZIO BARBAGLI

| Age band : Table 1. Cont.

71

and

Oo-~§ 6-10 II-I§ 16-20 21-25 26-30 31-35 36-40 41-45 46-50 51-55. 56-60 61-65 66-70 over

| Women: unmarried

Solitaries 0.1 0.0 0.3 0.6 2.2 4.4 6.8 15.4 22.4 26.1 29.6 31.. 41.6 38.6 38.5 No-family 0.1 0.7 1.7 2.6 4.9 8.3. 14.5 18.3 16.0 33.0 29.6 32.3 33.6 26.7 30.8 household

Nuclear: parents, with 72.3 69.9 65.9 $8.3 49.3 33.0 22.5 15.8 7.7 6.9 5-6 2.4 0.0 0.0 0.0 or without children

Nuclear: one parent 2.9 6.3 12.8 19.4 23.4 29.§ 25.7 8.1 19.2 9.5 7.2 1.2 18 0.0 4.9 with children

Extended 14.9 15.9 13.5 13.§ 12.4 15.8 I9.! I2.. 25.6 18.1 26.4 28.7 21.2 30.7 23.8

Multiple 9.6 7.1 5.7 $5 78 9.0 I1.4 22.3 9.0 6.4 16 36 18 40 2.0 Other and not known 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.0 0.0 8.1 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.6 0.0 0.0 0.0

Totals 100.0 100.0 [00.0 I00.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 Number of cases (3,652) (2,401) (2,461) (2,545) (1,567) (779) (324) (273) (156) (188) (125) (167) (113) (I0T) (143) Women: married

Solitaries —_ — — 04 04 O8 O02 06 06 07 O06 O4 O06 1.0 1.6 No-family — — — 00 O04 O.2 O38 O00 OF OF OF Of 02 0.3 0.0 household

Marriage and the family in Italy 97 Nuclear: parents, with — — — 58.7 68.6 72.5 76.2 80.5 81.8 81.2 81.5 78.8 75.5 74.9 79.1 or without children

Nuclear: one parent — — — 1.3 0.3 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.5 0.4 0.2 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.0 with children Extended — — — 13.9 13.2 13.7 14.9 13.6 12.2 10.5 8.7 8.5 8.7 6.5 §9

Multiple — — — 25.7. 7.2 12.3 7.9 5.1 4.8 7.0 8.8 11.8 14.7 16.6 13.4 Other and not known — — — 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.1 0.0 O.1 0.0 0.2 O02 O3 10.0

Totals — — — 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 I00.0 I00.0 100.0

household |

Number of cases — — —~ (230) (1,392) (2,071) (1,701) (1,789) (1,366) (1,481) (941) (811) (497) (307) (254) Women: widows and separated

Solitaries — — — _ — 20.0 18.9 20.5 23.4 20.6 22.5 25.1 27.8 28.8 27.1

No-family — — — — — 2.1 3.6 3.9 4.2 4.9 4.5 56 2.66 §.1 §.0 Nuclear: parents, with — — — — — 7.4 2.8 3.1 1.5 0.9 1.5 0.§ O99 $1.3 I.7 or without children

Nuclear: one parent — — — — — 42.1 §3.1 49.3 48.3 54.9 48.8 38.6 31.6 25.2 21.2 with children

Extended — — — _ — 18.9 10.5 13.6 13.8 10.90 16.4 20.1 28.1 32.1 35.5 Multiple — — — — — 9.5 II.2 9.2 8.8 7.5 6.3 9.9 90 7.5 9.5 Other and not known — — — — — 0.0 0.0 0.4 0.0 0.2 0.0 0.2 00 0.0 0.0 Totals — — — — — [100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 [00.0 I00.0 100.0 100.0 Number of cases FS Oa (95) (143) (229) (261) (466) (396) (557) (424) (468) (579)

98 MARZIO BARBAGLI of a complete conjugal household, consisting of father, mother and children (70 per cent of the cases). But as time passed, the situation changed. As the children grew older the chances that one of their parents would die increased and meant that the number of young

people living alone with either their mother or father—in an ‘incomplete’ or ‘truncated’ simple conjugal household — also increased.

Marriage led to other important changes. A small number of Florentines married early, at the age of twenty. Of these, about a quarter adopted a ‘patrilocal’ pattern of residence and went to live in the household of the husband’s parents, although probably for only a short period until they were able to set up their own household. But in most cases the age at marriage in Florence was much older, and newly married couples immediately set up a household of their own. The evidence also suggests that most couples sought to live alone without their parents or other relatives for as long as possible, and about 80 per cent of the couples aged between thirty and fifty at the time of marriage lived in simple conjugal households. The situation for those that never married (10 per cent of the total population) was very different. For a certain period they remained in the households where they had grown up, either with both their parents or only one. When the parents died the off-spring had to find some other

solution, and they either lived on their own (forming a single-person household), or formed a non-conjugal household (with an unmarried brother or cousin) or else joined the household of a married brother (creating an extended household). For those over forty-five, the most common solution was to live alone, although there were important differences between men and women. Bachelors were more often to be found living alone, whereas spinsters were more likely to join either extended family households or non-conjugal households. The composition of the household also changed when the conjugal

union was dissolved. Although the Napoleonic Code introduced divorce at the beginning of the nineteenth century, this found little favour in Italy.° Only the death of one or other partner brought the conjugal union to an end, and in the early nineteenth century when this occurred the surviving partner frequently remarried (more frequently

in the cities than in the countryside and amongst widowers than widows).’ But even after a second marriage, the simple conjugal ° P. Ungari, Storia del diritto della famiglia in Italia (Bologna 1977); G. Vismara, I! diritto di famiglia (Milan 1978). ” See the following essays in Marriage and Remarriage in Populations of the Past, ed. J. Dupaquier (New York 1981): A. Bellitini, “Les remarriages dans la ville et dans la campagne de Bologne

Marriage and the family in Italy 99 household remained the norm, and even those who had lost a spouse continued to live in simple conjugal households after remarriage. Many of those who lost a marriage partner — and especially widows — did not remarry. What became of them? As we can see from table 1,

the majority (60 to 70 per cent) of these people lived in either incomplete conjugal households or else in extended households. For

those aged up sixty or sixty-five, the former was more common, because up to that age the majority of widowers and widows remained

with their unmarried children forming ‘truncated’ conjugal households. Beyond that age, however, it was more common for widowed persons of both sexes to join the households of their married children to form extended family households.

The Florentine evidence therefore indicates that in the early nineteenth century household structures and the different phases through which the composition of the household passed were determined by the principle of neo-local residence after marriage. As a

result, the majority of the population lived in simple conjugal households, although a small section of the population did also spend some part of their lives in extended households. Regional differences and changing household structures over time

The Florentine situation was mirrored in other Italian cities as well, and

despite their great diversity in most other respects they were extraordinarily similar in terms of household structures. In all Italian cities in the early nineteenth century most of the population followed the rule of neo-local residence after marriage and the simple conjugal household was everywhere the norm.

There was nothing new in this, however, and both neo-local residence after marriage and the simple conjugal household had been widespread in urban Italy since the fourteenth century. What was new was something that can be dated only from the final decades of the eighteenth century and derived primarily from behavioural changes amongst the elites. In earlier centuries, the upper classes had always lived in patrilocal households and spent the greater part of their lives in either extended or multiple households. But in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries a major change took place as the upper classes au Ige siecle’, pp. 259-72; C. Corsini, ‘ Why is remarriage a male affair? Some evidence from Tuscan villages during the eighteenth century’, pp. 385-95; M. Livi Bacci, ‘On the frequency

of remarriage in nineteenth century Italy: methods and results’, pp. 347-61.

roo MARZIO BARBAGLI began to adopt neo-local residence after marriage and simple conjugal household structures. As a result, upper-class households became less complex and the differences in the household structures of the upper classes and the rest of society diminished. But at the start of the nineteenth century rural households were quite different. In general terms, most of the population of rural northern and central Italy lived in patrilocal households after marriage and spent much of their lives in multiple households. In contrast to the city, rural

household structures in northern and central Italy varied greatly according to social position. The greatest divide was that which separated the landless labourers (braccianti) from the rest of rural society. The braccianti had no fixed or permanent hold on the land they worked,

and they often lived at a great distance from it. Other groups, be they share-croppers, small owner-farmers, tenant farmers, or farm servants with fixed contracts (known as boari), had a more permanent contact

with the land they worked, leased, or owned. In most cases, the braccianti formed simple conjugal households, while all those who owned or leased land tended to form multiple family households. But amongst the more settled sections of the rural population there were also important differences, and in general peasant household structures became larger and more complex in direct proportion to the size of the farm the family owned or leased.

In the rural regions of northern and central Italy there were two distinct patterns of household structure. The first covered the Marche,

Umbria, Emilia, Tuscany and much of the Veneto, the second Lombardy, Liguria, and Piedmont. In both areas patrilocal residence patterns after marriage and multiple households predominated, but in the first zone these were always the norm. In the second zone, multiple households were generally of a vertical type (‘stem families’, in which a single son lived with his wife in his parents’ house) whereas in the first

zone the multiple households were more often of a horizontal type (known as frereches when two or more married brothers with their respective wives established a single household).

The differences between the two regions are important since they point to different correlations between age at marriage and patterns of residence after marriage, which we shall come back to. But they also reflect the fact that the processes of social and economic change in the two areas in the early nineteenth century were very different. Although we still lack adequate data, it seems to have been the case that in the rural areas of Lombardy, Piedmont, and Liguria the complex peasant

Marriage and the family in Italy 101 households (consisting of extended and multiple family households) were either static or possibly even declining in relative importance in the first half of the nineteenth century. But in the other rural areas of

northern and central Italy, the multiple family household was in proportional terms becoming even more widespread in the same period and the simple conjugal household was losing ground. These changes can be explained by developments in the organization of agriculture

that affected the second but not the first zone in this period — in particular the growth of large-scale farming enterprises which had begun much earlier in the second zone and continued in the nineteenth

century.*® In the first zone (the Marche, Umbria, Tuscany, and the

Veneto) the changes were less noticeable, so that the number of multiple family households here reach a peak precisely at the moment

when our analysis closes in the middle of the nineteenth century. , In southern Italy the situation was again completely different (see table 2). Apulia is the region for which we now have the fullest data, and here most of the rural population followed a pattern of neo-local residence after marriage. Of the thousands of households that have been

analysed, nearly three-quarters were simple conjugal households and multiple households formed barely 6 per cent of the total.” But within

the Apulian region there were many variations. At Sannicandro Garganico and Lucera in Capitanata, for example, complex households were more numerous, but elsewhere — in Capitanata, in the Terra di Bari, and the Terra di Otranto — the proportion of multiple households was consistently low; indeed lower than in the cities of northern and

central Italy, and even lower than in England where multiple

households were quite exceptionally rare. , The difference between household structures in the larger towns like

Bari, Barletta, Molfetta, Gravina, and Martina Franca and those in smaller settlements were slight. In some cases different social groups appear to have adopted different household structures, and in the predominantly agricultural township of Turi in the Terra di Bari, for example, complex household structures were more common amongst ® C. Klapisch-Zuber, ‘Mezzadria e insediamenti rurali alla fine del Medio Evo’, in Centro Italiano di Studi di Storia e d’Arte, Civilta ed economia agricola in Toscana nei secoli XIII-XV: problemi della vita delle campagne nel tardo Medioevo (Pistoia 1981); A. Doveri, ‘Famiglia coniugale e famiglia multinucleare: le basi dell’esperienza domestica in due parrocchie delle colline pisane lungo il secolo XVIII’, in Genus JQanuary—June 1982), 59-95; M. Della Pina,

‘Famiglia mezzadrile e celibato: le campagne di Prato nei secoli XVH e XVIII’ (paper presented to the Congresso ispano-luso-italiano di demografia storica, Barcelona 1987). * G. Da Molin, ‘Strutture familiari nell’Italia meridionale’ (paper presented to the Congresso ispano-luso-italiano di demografia storica, Barcelona 1987).

102 MARZIO BARBAGLI Table 2. Distribution of family types in central and southern Italy (eighteenth to nineteenth centuries) Type of household No

Locality Year Solitary family Nuclear Extended Multiple Total Cases

Jesi (rural) 1853 — 3 47 12 38 100 (778) Marche

Umbria

Perugia (contado) 1782 — 9 43 21 27 100 (3,024) Abruzzi and

Chieti | 16 Chieti (city) (rural)1754 17549 32 62 2 62 13IO21100 100(1,255) (527) Molise

Agnone 18051748 — 13 Morro d’Oro 5 5$5 4816 1716 25100 100 (856) (106) Poggio Morello 1753 6 I §2 23 18 100

Scala 1732 3It2268 1322143 100 (295) Ascea 1754 62 100 Pisciotta 1743 14 4 53 16 13 100(179) (258) Campania

Procida 1856 It 4 77 4 4 100 (2,585) Mongrassano 1754 49IO II 30 Settingiano 1743 7 5 8632 15 100100 (218) Calabria

Marriage and the family in Italy 103

Belmonte 1754 3 53221331 29100 100(546) (452) Paola 1754 I2 32 32

Acti 1754 5 33 37666919 7 9100 Cosenza 1756 100(836) (945)

d’Esaro 81 20 II 23 LOO (265) Rossano 1756 1774 54 52 67 100 (1,018) Melfi 1773 I 45 64 181613II100 (642) Rapolla 1733 4 64 100 Forenza 1750 — 7 66 14 13 100 (383) (738)

: Sant “Agata Basilicata

Paceco 1747 4 2 87 5 2 100 (296) Sicilia

Sannicandro 1778 4 2 68 14 12 100 (1,529)

Apulia: Capitanata

Lucera 1814 4 3 7702 12 II 100 (1,586) Cerignola 1742 83 6 2 100 (624) Termoli 1750 7 — 76 10 7 100 (197) Candela 1753 7 2 67 16 8 100 (408) Garganico

104 MARZIO BARBAGLI Table 2. Cont. Type of household

No

Locality Year Solitary family Nuclear Extended Multiple Total Cases

Bari 1753 9 212762 IO Barletta 1754 79 63 I100 100 (4,157) (2,831) Apulia: Terra di Bari

Molfetta 1839753I78 83IO 9 22 100 (1,896) Gravina 1754 100 Palo del Colle — -«17§2 ae) 2 76 IO 2 (2,006) 100 (891)

Turi 1825 5 I 79 II 4 100 (861) Apulia: Terra di Otranto

Trepuzzi 1748 17II2 7787436O2100 (447) Aquarica — 1739 100 (194) Campi Solentino 1747 16 2 71 9 2 100 (755) Lucugnano 1748 18 I 66 9 6 100 (99) Lequile 1722 15 4 69 12 o 100 (579) Martina Franca 1755 8 2 77 8 5 100 (2,326)

Marriage and the family in Italy 105

Sources: A. Antonuccio, ‘Il problema dell’aggregazione domestica confrontato con una verifica empirica: il catasto onciario e lo stato delle anime a Sant’Agata d’Esaro (degree thesis, Facolta di Scienze economiche e sociali, Universita degli Studi della Calabria, 1986); F. Benigno, Una casa, una terra. Ricerche su Paceco, paese nuovo nella Sicilia del Sei e Settecento (Catania 1985); G.

Da Molin, ‘Strutture familiari nell’Italia meridionale’; W. A. Douglass, ‘Cross-sectional and longitudinal analysis of extended family households in an eighteenth century Italian hill town’ (paper delivered to the conference on ‘Strutture e rapporti familiari in eta moderna’, September 1983); M. V. Forlini, ‘Strutture familiari e ceti sociali a Chieti. Una ricerca sul catasto onciario del 1754° (degree thesis, Facolta di Magistero di Bologna, 1983~4); M. Giacomini, Spost a Belmonte (Milan 1981); P. Montalti, *Strutture familiari, professioni e proprieta terriera a Rossano nel 1744’ (degree thesis, Facolta di Scienze economiche e sociali, Universita degli Studi della Calabria, 1984-5); P. Moretti, ‘L’economia del matrimonio: l’aggregazione domestica in una comunita calabrese del ’700’, in Miscellanea di Studi Storici, vol. mr, Dipartimento di Storia dell’Universita degli Studi della Calabria, 1983, pp. 1-29; R. Rettaroli, ‘Modelli di nuzialita nell’Italia rurale del XIX secolo’ (doctoral thesis, Bologna University 1987); A. Samoggia, ‘Ricerche sulle tipologie familiari in base al catasto onciario’ (paper delivered to the conference on *Strutture e rapporti familiari in eta moderna’, Trieste, September 1983); L. Tassagna, ‘L’organizzazione e le finalita della convivenza e della collaborazione domestica in una comunita calabrese del ‘700’ (degree thesis, Facolta di Scienze economiche e sociali, Universita degli Studi della Calabria, 1986); L. Tittarelli, “La struttura della famiglia urbana e rurale a Perugia nei secoli XVII-XIX’, in Quaderni dell’ Istituto di Statistica dell Universita degli Studi di Perugia, no. 10, pp. 25-86.

106 MARZIO BARBAGLI the nobility and the wealthy bourgeoisie, 19 per cent of whose households were extended and 16 per cent multiple. But elsewhere in Apulia household structures differed very little between the rich and the poor."° Was the same true for other parts of southern Italy? The available

data (see table 2) as yet do not permit a clear answer. But from the research that has been done it would seem that in Sicily, in many parts of the Neapolitan Campania, and in Basilicata it was the norm to set up a neo-local residence after marriage, although the same studies also

show that in many parts of Calabria, Campania, and Basilicata patrilocal households were common and that a considerable proportion of the population lived in complex households. On the other hand, the situation in Molise and the Abruzzi was quite different from the rest of

southern Italy and in many ways much closer to that of central and northern Italy. Here complex households were much more frequent, and there was also a sharper distinction between household structures in urban and rural areas."* The difference between the patterns of residence after marriage and the prevailing forms of household in southern Italy on one hand, and

in northern and central Italy on the other, can be related to cultural factors and to the very different types of rural settlement in the two regions. In northern and central Italy agriculture was organized around peasant farmsteads, and here intensive farming went hand in hand with relatively thin patterns of settlement: most of the population lived in

scattered farms, and it was this that favoured the development of multiple households. In the south, on the other hand, the predominance

of large-scale feudal estates and extensive farming had historically brought about a great fragmentation and dispersal of landholdings, which meant that the rural population tended to concentrate in large agro-towns. In the south, therefore, farm-labourers and peasants tended

not to live on the land they worked but in large and often distant townships. This pattern of settlement in turn encouraged the formation of simple conjugal households. 10 Da Molin, ‘Strutture familiari nell’Italia meridionale’. 11M. V. Forlini, ‘Strutture familiari e ceti sociali a Chieti. Una ricerca sul catasto onciario del 1754 (degree thesis, Facolta di Magistero dell’Universita di Bologna, 1983-4).

Marriage and the family in Italy 107 AGE AT MARRIAGE

Patterns of residence In anumber of important essays John Hajnal and Peter Laslett have put forward some suggestions about the correlation between marriage age, patterns of residence after marriage, and household structures.’ They

have argued that there are two principal historical models of family

formation. The first is the one that is found throughout much of northwestern Europe (the Scandinavian countries, Great Britain, the Low Countries, northern France, and the German-speaking countries) and consists of late marriage and simple conjugal households. In this model both men and women marry relatively late (men not before the age of twenty-six, women not before twenty-three, and at once set up a simple conjugal household. The second model combines earlier marriage with patrilocal residence patterns and is considered to be the one that is typical in Mediterranean and Asian societies. In this case men

—and especially women-— married early (men before the age of twenty-six, women before they were twenty-one), and after marriage immediately entered into a multiple family household. This hypothesis has found much support amongst historians and demographers, but it cannot be said that it fits the data now available for Italy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In general, the Italian data indicate that there were considerable variations in residence patterns after marriage, in household structures, and also in ages at marriage. There are cases of very late marriage, for example in the Veneto where men married on average between the ages of thirty and thirty-one and women at twenty-nine.’* At the opposite extreme, in some parts of the south men married at twenty-three and women at twenty.!* Similar trends were evident in Apulia where in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries women generally married at the age of twenty, while in parts of Sicily, Calabria, and the Campania women and sometimes also men married very early. 12 J. Hajnal, ‘European marriage patterns in perspective’, in Population and History, ed. D. V. Glass and D. E. C. Eversley (London 1965); J. Hajnal, ‘Two kinds of pre-industrial household formation system’, in Family Forms in Historic Europe, ed. R. Wall, P. Laslett, and J. Robin (Cambridge 1984); P. Laslett, ‘Family and household as a work group and kin group’, in Wall et al. (eds.), Family Forms in Historic Europe.

13 1D. Beltrami, Storia della popolazione di Venezia dalla fine del secolo XVI alla caduta della Repubblica (Padua 1954). 14 See G. Delille, Famille et proprieté dans le Royaume de Naples (XVe—XIXe siecle) (Rome 1985);

M. Barbagli, ‘Sistemi di formazione della famiglia in Italia’, (paper presented to the Congresso ispano-luso-italiano di demografia storica, Barcelona 1987).

108 MARZIO BARBAGLI In the north the situation was very different. In the Piedmontese and Lombard countryside in the early nineteenth century the average age at marriage for men was about twenty-seven and for women twentytwo. Even in the eighteenth century, the marriage age of women in the Emilian and Tuscan countryside had been much older, often more than twenty-five and in some cases even twenty-seven years.

By the middle of the nineteenth century there were still important differences in marriage ages between different regions.'® The regions where women married latest were the Marche, Umbria,and Tuscany, whereas they married youngest in Sicily and Basilicata. For men, marriage ages were lower in Basilicata, Sicily, Calabria, and Apulia than in central and northern Italy.

When information was being collected for the Parliamentary Enquiry on the Conditions of the Peasants in the Southern Provinces at the beginning of this century, observers were very struck by the persistence of these differences. In his report on Basilicata and Calabria,

for example, Francesco Saverio Nitti wrote: ‘time-honoured customs

still survive in part despite the progress of time and the effects of emigration. Marriage comes early. Girls marry even before they attain their majority, and men no sooner than they have done so.’"®

With reference to Basilicata, Azimonti noted that ‘the women generally marry between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one, the men

between twenty and twenty-five’.’’? In Campania, Oreste Bordiga reported that women in agricultural communities generally married between the ages of sixteen and twenty-two, and the men ‘for the greater part between twenty-four and twenty-five years of age’.’® Taken together with evidence on patterns of residence after marriage

and household structures, the information on age at marriage shows that Italy cannot be described as a country where women married young and where complex households were the norm, as both Laslett and Hajnal have argued, albeit with some qualifications. What is clear is that in Italy, perhaps unlike many other European countries, there was no single system or pattern, but instead a variety of different systems of family formation. R. Rettaroli, ‘Modelli di nuzialita nell’Italia rurale del XIX secolo’ (doctoral thesis, Bologna University 1987). 16 FM. Nitti, Inchiesta parlamentare sulle condizioni dei contadini nelle provincie meridionali e nella Sicilia. Basilicata e Calabria (Rome 1910), vol. v, part UI, p. 180. 1? E. Azimonti, Inchiesta parlamentare sulle condizioni dei contadini nelle provincie meridionali e nella Sicilia. Basilicata (Rome 1909), vol. v, part 1, p. 154. 18 ©. Bordiga, Inchiesta parlamentare sulle condizioni dei contadini nelle provincie meridionali e nella Sicilia. Campania (Rome 1909), vol. Iv, part 1, p. $32.

Marriage and the family in Italy 109 The Italian evidence also throws into doubt the correlation between

age at marriage and residence patterns after marriage proposed by Hajnal and Laslett. The suggestion that there was a direct relationship between early marriage and the incorporation of the young couple into

the household of one or other parent finds absolutely no empirical support from the evidence now available for Italy in the eighteenth and

nineteenth centuries. Some historians have argued, it is true, that in Tuscany in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries there was a close connection between early marriage and the formation of multiple households.'® But this is wrong. In Tuscany, as we. have already seen, residence in a multiple household (either a stem family or a frereche) after marriage was linked not with an early but indeed with a relatively

later age at marriage. But outside Tuscany, the other Italian regions

where complex household structures were prevalent, such as the Marche and Umbria, were those in which ages at marriage were amongst the highest.

Nor is the connection between neo-local residence patterns after marriage and late marriage borne out by the Italian evidence. As we have seen, neo-local residence patterns and simple conjugal households were common in the south, yet these were the regions where women (and sometimes men as well) married youngest.

The truth is that in Italy in both the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries there were numerous systems of family formation. There were three general models. The first combined patrilocal residence after marriage with late marriage, and prevailed mainly in the rural regions

of northern and central Italy. As we have seen, however, in rural Piedmont, Lombardy, and Liguria late marriage co-existed with the formation of stem families, and with the formation of multiple family households in the other rural regions of the north and centre. The second model consisted of simple conjugal households and. early marriage (for women, at least), and this was typical in the south. The third model consisted of single-family households and late marriage ages for both men and women, and this was common throughout the cities of northern and central Italy, as well as in Sardinia. | *8 R. M. Smith, ‘Some Reflections on the Evidence for the Origins of the “ European Marriage Pattern” in England’, Sociological Review Monograph, n. 28 (1979), 74-111; R. M. Smith, ‘The People of Tuscany and their Families: Medieval or Mediterranean’, Journal of Family History (1981), 107-28.

IIo MARZIO BARBAGLI Table 3. Coefficients of correlation between age at marriage, permanent celibacy, and nubility, and social stratification in fifty-one districts of Piedmont, Liguria, and Lombardy in 1881

Age of marriage , —__—_--——_—. Permanent Permanent M F celibacy nubility % of male farm-workers —0.18 0.02 —0.16 —0.22

% of male owner-farmers 0.33 0.25 0.39 0.46 Stem families and peasant farms

The national census of 1881 was the first to provide data for units

smaller than the province, since returns were made for each administrative district within the provinces.*” The data for the fifty-one

districts in the provinces of Piedmont, Lombardy, and Liguria have enabled us to explore the correlations between the ages of men and

women at marriage, the proportion of the population that never married, and patterns of rural social stratification. The findings show that the higher the percentage of owner-farmers, the higher the age at

marriage for both men and women and the higher the number of celibates and the unmarried (see table 3). If the sample is restricted to

the districts of Piedmont and Liguria alone, the correlation is even tighter (see figures 1 and 2).” In these rural regions the prevalence of small peasant properties was mainly responsible for late marriages, the formation of stem families, and the large numbers of permanent celibates and the unmarried. In very general terms, the system functioned as follows: to avoid excessive sub-divisions of their land, the peasant proprietors tended to leave their farm to a single son (often the first-born) who when the time came (and 20 The data in tables 3, 4, $ and figures 1, 2, 3, and 4 are taken from the returns for the 196 localities into which the Italian population was divided for the 1881 census, excluding those still under Austrian control and the main provincial towns. Marriage age is calculated using the method proposed by Hajnal. Absolute celibacy and nubility rates are calculated by halving the celibacy and nubility data for the 45—9 and 50-4 age groups. Percentages of agricultural

labourers, share-croppers, and so forth are given in relation to total numbers employed in agriculture. *! For the twenty-eight districts of Piedmont and Liguria the coefficient of correlation between

the percentages of male owner-farmers and definitive celibates was 0.56 and 0.61 for the former and definitive nubility ; 0.50 and 0.47 between the first variable and, respectively, the age at marriage of men and women.

30 5 29.5 o ° 29 Oo 5 5

Marriage and the family in Italy 111

30.5

O

28.5 ° 6 O oO e) 2 O 28 0 0 Oo oO

27.5 “ 265 ° 0 O° ,oO

26 ° 25.5 e) 15 25 35 45 55 65 25

% of owner-farmers y = 27.95 + 0.06x

26 © | 5 ; 25 : 24 O | ,O5 O

Fig. 1. Age at marriage for men and percentage of owner-farmers in Piedmont and Liguria in 1881

27

O

oO

O

O O Oo e)

O O° Po 22 21 . 55 65 15 25O 35 45 oO

1e)

% of owner-farmers y = 23.81 + 0.06x

Fig. 2. Age at marriage for women and percentage of owner-farmers in Piedmont and Liguria in 1881

this was generally fairly late) married and brought his wife into his parents’ household, thereby giving rise to the formation of a stem

family. The other brothers and sisters generally left the parental household to look for work elsewhere and many of them never married. Share-cropping families and late marriage

The system of family formation in the classical share-cropping (mezzadria) regions of central and northern Italy in the last century was

I12 MARZIO BARBAGLI similar to those described above, but is in some respects even more

revealing. In earlier times the Tuscan share-cropping lease had encouraged early and frequent marriages. This was certainly the case in the fifteenth century, when both men and women from share-cropping families married early and with very few exceptions. When they lost a marriage partner, they tended to remarry quickly.** But by the early nineteenth century the situation was totally different. The areas where widows married least frequently were now those where share-cropping leases and multiple-family households predominated (in other words, the Marche, Umbria, Tuscany, and Emilia).** In the same regions, ages

at marriage were also much higher than in most other parts of Italy. How and why had the pattern of marriage in the share-cropping regions changed? As far as first marriages are concerned, Giuliana

Biagioli has recently put forward a possible explanation for this puzzling change. She has shown that the share-cropping system began

to undergo profound changes towards the end of the eighteenth century when the combination of population growth and the limited number of farms available caused the demand for farms to out-strip supply. As a result, the contractual position of the share-croppers in relation to their landlords was seriously weakened. The share-cropping

family began to lose much of its ‘traditional independence in the management of the farm’ and had to agree to more onerous contractual obligations in their leases. These not only imposed higher labour inputs but also gave the landlord wide powers over the internal organization

of the family itself, in particular with regard to whether and when individual members might marry. In response to the deteriorating terms of their leases and in an attempt to prevent themselves being reduced to the level of landless labourers, the share-croppers began to change their traditional marriage customs. This caused the number of celibates of both sexes to increase, since to ‘maximize the number of

producers and reduce the number of simple consumers... was the ultimate defence against the threat of expulsion from the farm’.™4

There is other evidence to support this interpretation. In the first place, the fact that the share-cropping system served to delay marriage 2-H. Herlihy and C. Klapisch-Zuber, Les Toscans et leurs familles. Une étude du catasto florentin de 1427 (Paris 1978).

*8 Livi Bacci, ‘On the frequency of remarriage in nineteenth century Italy’. *4 G. Biagioli, ‘La diffusione della mezzadria nell’Italia centrale: un modello di sviluppo demografico ed economico’, in Bollettino di demografia storica (1986), 66.

| Marriage and the family in Italy 113 was taken for granted by most nineteenth-century observers and commentators. Gino Capponi, for example, noted that: the tenant farmers are spend-thrift and calculating, and make few unwise marriages. Confined by the small space of their holdings, they limit the size of their families according to the size of their farms.”°

The report on Tuscany for the Parliamentary Enquiry on the Condition

of Agriculture of 1882, also noted that amongst the share-cropping families ‘the headship of the household was reserved for bachelors’: Generally at the time of the death of the father the sons are still unmarried, and the eldest then has the choice between marrying or assuming the headship of

the household. If the eldest elects to marry, then the headship passes to the second son who is consequently debarred from marrying.”

Domenico Spadoni remarked on similar conditions in the Marche at the close of the nineteenth century: for peasant families, and especially for the share-croppers, males have a considerable economic value since they constitute not only the principal unit of labour but also of capital whose value is determined by the particular needs of the land that has to be cultivated... For that reason, young men normally

do not marry before the age of thirty, and were they to do otherwise they would risk exposing themselves to criticism and ridicule.

If there were many women and children in a particular family, the ratio between workers and mouths became unbalanced, with the result that ‘the young men’ were no longer able to marry ‘since neither the family economy nor the landlord would have permitted this’. In cases where there was a number of brothers, generally only one (normally the firstborn) would marry. The others had either to resign themselves to a life

of celibacy or wait in the expectation that their turn would come, following the proverb maritu a chi troa e moglie a chi tocca (‘a husband

for whoever finds one and a wife for the one whose turn it is’).”” A recent study of rural families in the neighbourhood of Prato lends further weight to this theory.”* In the middle of the eighteenth century, 25 G. Bowring, Statistica della Toscana, di Lucca, degli Stati pontifici e lombardo-veneti e specialmente delle loro relazioni commerciali (London 1939), p. 44. 26 Atti della Giunta per Pinchiesta agraria e sulle condizioni della classe agricola (Rome 1882), vol. 11,

Pp. 39-41. |

part Il, p. 456. 27 1). Spadoni, Alcune costumanze e curiosita storiche marchigiane (Turin and Palermo 1899),

28 M. Della Pina, ‘Gli insediamenti e la popolazione’, in Prato storia di una citta, vol u, Un microcosmo in movimento (1494-1815) (Prato 1985), pp. 43-121; M. Della Pina, ‘Famiglia mezzadrile e celibato: le campagne di Prato nei secoli XVIf e XVHI’ (paper presented to the Congresso ispano-luso-italiano di demografia storica, Barcelona 1987).

114 MARZIO BARBAGLI ages at marriage amongst the share-croppers were still very low in this

region, as they had been in the early seventeenth century. Women

married on average at the age of 19.9 years, men at 24.8 while permanent celibates were virtually unknown. But the situation began to change very rapidly in the last three decades of the century. The average age at marriage for women rose to 22.2 and for men to 29. This tendency continued into the next century, but already in 1786 women were not normally getting married before the age of 26, while for men the age had risen to as high as 33.5 years. At the same time, the number of permanent celibates had increased enormously and 30 per cent of the

men and 18 per cent of the women aged 50 or over in share-cropping

families were unmarried. The structure of the share-cropping households also became more complex as a result of horizontal extensions that took the form of frereches. The Prato findings suggest a number of reasons for these changes. The most important was the steady increase in the population, which

meant that the existing farms were unable to support the enlarged share-cropping families. This caused the surplus members of the share-

cropping families to be caught in a downward social spiral that threatened to separate them from their families and turn them into landless labourers. To avoid this fate, the share-croppers adopted a strategy that was designed to bring the size of the family and the capacity of the share-cropping farm back into line by correcting the imbalance between workers and mouths. This resulted in a general

retardation of marriage ages, a steady increase in the number of bachelors, and a tendency for family structures to expand horizontally rather than vertically through the formation of frereches. The differences in the systems of family formation adopted by sharecroppers and landless labourers provide further indirect evidence of

these trends. Share-croppers continued to follow the pattern of patrilocal residence after marriage, whereas the landless labourers were

more likely to set up neo-local households. Share-croppers married much later than labourers. In the case of Prato, male share-croppers married on average at 31.5 years, male labourers at 27.5.7” The number of permanent celibates was much higher amongst the share-croppers,

although the age at marriage for women was much the same for both groups (about 25 years). Similar patterns can be found elsewhere.

Throughout the nineteenth century share-croppers and labourers married at different ages in other parts of Tuscany, although there was 9 Della Pina, ‘Famiglia mezzadrile e celibato’.

Marriage and the family in Italy 115 Table 4. Coefficients of correlation between age at marriage, permanent celibacy, and nubility, and social stratification in Emilia Romagna, Tuscany, Umbria, and the Marche in 1881 (fifty districts) Age of marriage

———_—_____—__. Permanent Permanent

M F celibacy nubility

% of male farm-workers —0.17 —0.24 —0.24 —0.61

% of male share-croppers 0.26 0.22 0.27 0.31 % of male share-croppers, 0.12 0.23 0.30 0.51 owner-farmers and tenantfarmers

little difference in the ages at which women from the two categories married.*®

From the studies currently available, 1t would not appear that there were significant differences in the age at marriage of share-croppers and

rural labourers in other parts of Italy. At Jesi in the Marche, for example, both male and female, share-croppers and labourers, married at much the same ages in the middle of the nineteenth century.** In the area around Bologna and Reggio Emilia, the labourers actually married later than share-croppers (at least in the case of men). In the Bologna region, those who married latest of all were owner-farmers (both men

and women) and this was probably because their sons had to delay marriage until they had inherited the farm from their father — as occurred in many other parts of central and northern Italy.*” The 1881 census data for the fifty districts of Emilia Romagna, Tuscany, the Marche, and Umbria offer further confirmation of these trends, but also raise’ some new problems. In each of these districts the relative strength of share-croppers in proportion to other agricultural groups varied considerably. In some cases (e.g. Ancona, Arezzo, Rocca S. Cascian, Macerata, and Montepulciano) over 60 per cent of the males engaged in agriculture were share-croppers. At the other extreme were the districts of Comacchio, Ferrara, and Grosseto where less than 5 per cent were share-croppers. 3° A. Doveri, ‘Sposi e famiglie nelle campagne pisane alla fine dell’800. Un caso di matrimonio mediterranco ?’ (paper presented to the Congresso ispano-luso-italiano di demografia storica,

Barcelona 1987); Rettaroli, ‘Modelli di nuzialita’. *" Rettaroli, ‘Modelli di nuzialita’. 82 A. Angeli, ‘Strutture familiari e nuzialita nel bolognese a meta dell’800’ (paper presented to the Congresso ispano-luso-italiano di demografia storica, Barcelona 1987).

17 , 7 ae

116 MARZIO BARBAGLI

18 ° > 16

Oo 0 ° = 12 na P 4 8 E 8 °7S56 8 og oSO o one &5¢ O O 5°SO 0 40 6 O 19

= 15 0

40 20Oo 40 60 18 9 zi oo O14 fe) a€oE12119Oo © O on o Oo ec i

34

% of labourers y = 8.84 - 0.15x

Fig. 3. Permanent nubility and percentage of owner-farmers in Emilia Romagna, Tuscany, Umbria, and the Marche in 1881 19

17 |

in the Sardinian form of marriage, a wife was entitled to enter into contracts,

incur debts and dispose of her own property either with or without the consent of her husband, provided that she had the support of three relatives and could demonstrate to the local civil governor (podesta) that she had good cause to act in this way... By contrast, the dowry system that was in force elsewhere laid down that the property which formed part of the dowry could not be disposed of, so that a wife was debarred from entering into any kind

of obligation either with or without her husband’s consent, while any obligations she might contract were legally null and void.** ,

This continued until relatively late, and even the new Civil Law Code for the Kingdom of Sardinia that was introduced in 1827 by the government of King Carlo Felice allowed for the joint-ownership of goods (meaning both assets and proceeds) between married couples, and laid down that if the marriage was dissolved the goods should be divided equally between the two partners. Child-rearing and the abandonment of children

During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century important changes took place in Italy both in the relationships between married couples and in those between parents and their children, at least in so far as the higher social classes were concerned. The changes were first evident in the families of the progressive and cultured middle classes, and were soon adopted more widely by the aristocracy. Patterns of

reproduction also changed as married couples started controlling conception and the frequency of pregnancies declined. The distance and

reserve that had previously separated husbands from their wives and parents from their children also decreased. Methods of bringing up children changed too, and after centuries of dependence on wet-nurses upper-class mothers began to take direct responsibility for bringing up their own children.”” But the most important development affecting children in Italy in the early nineteenth century was one that concerned the poorer classes. This was the massive increase in the number of *foundlings’ or newborn infants who were temporarily or permanently abandoned by their 5! Vismara, ‘Momenti della storia della famiglia sarda’, p. 188. 2 See Barbagli, Sotte lo stesso tetto.

| Marriage and the family in Italy 123 parents. New-born babies had been abandoned in earlier centuries as well, but during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the number of infants who were abandoned remained fairly constant throughout Italy.°* In the early nineteenth century the numbers began to grow very rapidly, quickly reaching a quite unprecedented scale (see table 6). The phenomenon did not occur with the same intensity or timing

everywhere. In Milan, Brescia, and Florence, for example,°* the increase in the numbers of abandoned infants began as early as the middle of the eighteenth century, if not before, whereas in Verona, Vicenza, Padua, Perugia, and in many other Lombard towns it came in

the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century.”> But almost everywhere in Italy the number of ‘foundlings’ began to reach record

levels in the first decades of the nineteenth century, in some cases assuming proportions that today strike us as incredible. It is calculated

that by 1840 something close to a third of all newly born babies in Milan were abandoned -— that is, nearly half of the babies born to the poorest sections of the population. And these numbers continued to increase during the following two decades.”®

The ways in which children were abandoned also changed. Previously the custom had been for parents to abandon infants they could not or did not wish to bring up themselves either by placing them outside houses or on the steps of churches. In the early nineteenth

century increasing numbers of infants were placed directly in orphanages by means of the Ruota. This was a revolving container placed on a door that sounded a bell inside the orphanage when the _

infant was deposited from outside, so as to alert whoever was responsible for admitting new arrivals.°’ The infants were normally placed in the Ruota either early in the morning or late at night when those depositing the infant could not easily be recognized. The infants were often provided with some form of identification in the form of a piece of paper or a sacred image torn in half— the other part being retained by the parent. The piece left with the child contained its name 53 G. Da Molin, ‘Illegittimi ed esposti in Italia dal Seicento all’Ottocento’, in SIDES, La demografia storica delle citta italiane (Bologna 1982), pp. 497-564.

*4 For Florence see C. Corsini, ‘Materiali per lo studio della famiglia in Toscana nei secoli XVII-XIX: gli esposti’, in Quaderni Storici (1976), 998-1052; for Brescia and Milan see V. Hunecke, I trovatelli di Milano (Bologna 1988). *® L. Tittarelli, ‘Gli esposti all’ospedale di S. Maria della Misericordia in Perugia nei secoli X VII

e XIX’, Bollettino della Deputazione di Storia Patria per PUmbria (1985), 23-130; F. Della

Peruta, ‘Infanzia e famiglia nella prima meta deil’Ottocento’, in Studi Storici (1979),

Pp. 473-91. 56 Hunecke, I trovatelli di Milano.

>? Tittarelli, ‘Gli esposti all’ospedale di S. Maria della Misericordia’; Hunecke, | trovatelli di Milano.

124 MARZIO BARBAGLI Table 6. Annual average numbers of abandoned infants in certain Italian cities (1771-1860)

Milan Turm Brescia Verona Vicenza Padua Treviso Friuli

1771-80 681. 294 318 220 127 136 05 120 178I—90 959 294 332 239 149 166 118 126

1791-800 1,464 $12 307 300 I§2 187 136 125 180I-I0-—i1,471 $99 433 304 192 178 165 169 I8I1I-20 1,902 —_— 479 344 225 248 185 190 1821-30 ~— 1,938 — 448 322 254 339 198 228

1831-40 =. 2,615 — 545 — — — — — 1841-50 3,029 — 538 — — —_ — — 1851-60 = 4,238 — 668 — — — — —

Venice Cesena Florence Prato Perugia Todi Camerino Naples

1771-80 469 30 856 33 121 27 $3 1,818 1781-90 475 31 1,018 35 10g 26 46 2,041

I79I-800 494 35 1,244 29 123 35 SI 2,378 I80I—I0 471 65 1,268 34 167 47 56 2,180 I81I—20 487 84 1,357 50 2§2 67 72 2,084 1821-30 423: — 1,389 47 220 41 $5 1,909 1831-40 — — 1,639 45 218 — $7 2,091 184I~—§0 — — 1,461 47 254 — — 2,172

1851-60 — — — — 287 — — 2,002 Sources: O. Bussini, Camerino fra XVI e XIX secolo. Evoluzione demografica e aspetti sociali (Naples 1986); C. Corsini, Materiali per lo studio della famiglia in Toscana nei secoli XVU-XIX: gli esposti, Quaderni Storici (1976), 998-1,052; G. Da Molin, ‘Tlegittimi ed esposti in Italia dal Seicento all’Ottocento’, in SIDES, La demografia storica delle citta italiane (Bologna 1982); V. Hunecke, I trovatelli di Milano (Bologna 1988); G. Levi, ‘Gli aritmetici politici e la demografia piemontese negli ultimi anni del Settecento’, in Rivista Storica Italiana (1974), 244-5; A. Pestelli, ‘L’infanzia abbandonata a Prato nell’eta moderna. Materiali e ricerche’, (degree thesis, Facolta di Lettere e Filosofia dell’Universita di Firenze, 1979-80); L. Tittarelli, ‘Gli esposti all’ospedale di S. Maria della Misericordia in Perugia nei secoli XVIII e XIX’, in Bollettino della Deputazione di Storia Patria per fT Umbria (1985), 23-130.

and date of birth. In other cases money, a ribbon, or a piece of material

was left, but a part was retained in case one or other parent should subsequently wish to reclaim the child.*® °8 F. Doriguzzi, J messaggi dell’abbandono: bambini esposti a Torino nel ‘700’, Quaderni Storici

(1983), 445-68; Hunecke, I trovatelli di Milano; Tittarelli, “Gli esposti all’Ospedale di S. Maria della Misericordia’.

Marriage and the family in Italy 125 The prevalent sex of the infants who were abandoned also changed. For centuries girls had been considered less important than boys and were therefore more likely to be abandoned. In some regions girls had

been twice as likely as boys to be abandoned, and although the difference declined it was still noticeable in most Italian cities until the end of the eighteenth century. But in the early nineteenth century the discrimination disappeared completely and both boys and girls were abandoned in equal numbers.*® The condition of the infants who were abandoned also underwent an

important change. Traditionally the majority of abandoned children were illegitimate, but in the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth

century there was a massive increase in many parts of Italy in the abandonment of legitimate children. Around the middle of the century G. Boccardo noted that: In many villages, especially those with a strong Catholic awareness, abandoned

children are treated as foundlings even though their parents may be easily identified ... It is calculated that some 10 per cent of the children deposited each year in public hospices are legitimate.°°

Recent studies indicate that there were considerable local differences. In Milan, Brescia, Florence, and Cremona in the early nineteenth century

$0 per cent and more of the children abandoned were legitimate,” whereas at Chiavari, Perugia, and Camerino the proportion was very low (less than 10 per cent.” What was the reason for this exceptional increase in the numbers of abandoned children? Some historians have suggested that the phenomenon reflected the ‘indifference’ and ‘lack of love’ shown by parents (especially mothers) for their offspring. The abandonment of children, they argue, was a disguised form of infanticide, since the parent who placed a newly born infant in the Ruota of an orphanage knew that it had very little chance of surviving.** °° G. Da Molin, L’infanzia abbandonata in Italia nel? eta moderna. Aspetti demografici di un problema

sociale (Bari 1981); V. Hunecke, I trovatelli di Milano; Tittarelli, ‘Gli esposti all’Ospedale di S. Maria della Misericordia’. 8° G. Boccardo, Dizionario della economia politica e del commercio cosi teorico come pratico (Turin,

1858), pp. 156, 159.. 61 Hunecke, I trovatelli di Milano; Corsini, ‘Materiali per lo studio della famiglia in Toscana’; F. Della Peruta, ‘Infanzia e famiglia nella prima meta dell’Ottocento’. 82 M. Bianchi Tonizzi, ‘Esposti e balie in Liguria tra Otto e Novecento: il caso di Chiavari’, in Movimento Operaio e Socialista (1983); Tittarelli, “Gli esposti all’ospedale di S. Maria della Misericordia’; O. Bussini, Camerino fra XVI e XIX secolo. Evoluztone demografica e aspetti sociali

(Naples 1986), pp. 180-2. 63 E. Shorter, The Making of the Modern Family (New York 1975), p. 173; L. Stone, The Family, _ Sex and Marriage in England, 1500~1800 (London 1977).

126 MARZIO BARBAGLI Such explanations are unsatisfactory for a number of reasons, however. It is certainly true that a high number of foundlings died during the first year of life, but it has recently been shown that the very

high rates of infant mortality at the end of the eighteenth century, frequently cited to support the ‘disguised infanticide’ thesis, were exceptionally high in relation to both earlier and later years. It has also been shown that mortality rates for legitimate foundlings were much lower than for the illegitimate.°* And one has only to read the griefridden lamentations, the appeals for help, and the requests that the child be well looked after that were written on the cards left with the infants, to be aware that they were not abandoned through ‘indifference’ but

rather for love and in the hope that they might fare better than with their parents.” There is no clear correlation, however, between economic cycles,

food prices, or epidemics and the numbers of children who were abandoned each year in the early nineteenth century. Throughout the eighteenth century there had been a fairly close correlation between © economic crises and the number of children abandoned each year in the principal Italian cities. In crisis years the number doubled and even tripled, while there was a corresponding increase in the number of legitimate children who were abandoned. But in the early nineteenth century the correlation disappeared.” It seems very likely, therefore, that the huge increase in the number of children who were abandoned in the late eighteenth century and after had different causes in different places. In cities like Milan, Brescia,

and Florence, where there was a large increase in the number of legitimate children who were abandoned, the principal cause lay in the

economic condition of the families of the poor. Most critical of all, mothers needed to devote as much time as possible to earning money, either at home or outside. The typical Milanese mother who abandoned her child might easily fit the following description: an illiterate woman who worked either in a factory or at home would at a relatively early age marry an artisan who would be a few years older than her. Very soon she would start bearing children in rapid succession, most of which would be placed in the Ruota and then reclaimed between two and five years later. The risk to the new-born child had to be set against the advantages of

temporarily reducing the size of the family and enabling the mother to continue earning.*’ 64 Hunecke, I trovatelli di Milano. 6 Doriguzzi, ‘I messaggi dell’abbandono’.

86 Hunecke, I trovatelli di Milano; Tittarelli, ‘Gli esposti all’ospedale di S. Maria del

Misericordia’. 6? Hunecke, I trovatelli di Milano.

Marriage and the family in Italy 127 In other words, children were being abandoned in many Italian cities with the intention of being reclaimed later, because increasing numbers of mothers had no other choice. Whether or not the mother worked at home, she was obliged to work extremely long hours and had noone to help her since most couples lived in single-family households.

The second thing that contributed to the increase in child abandonment was the new interest which the governments of the Italian States began to show in the problem of child-abandonment in the second half of the eighteenth century. This resulted in the opening of new orphanages and the improvement of many of those that already existed. This in turn strengthened the popular belief that the foundling hospitals were a form of welfare designed to provide food and shelter for the children of needy families who had a right to public assistance. Indeed, in many cases the abandonment of a child was seen as a means of enabling a mother to be paid during the period that she was nursing her own child — a practice that was recorded in outraged tones by the director of a hospital in Siena: This scandalous occurrence is repeated daily, good Sirs. After leaving her own child in the hospital at night, the mother returns the following morning or else sends an intermediary and presenting herself as a wet-nurse takes the child away to feed and rear it for years at the expense of the public tax-payers.™ 58 E. Caravaggio, L’amministrazione degli Spedali Riuniti di Siena (Siena 1868), p. 110, cited by T. Bruttini, ‘Legittimi e illegittimi: aspetti istituzionali dell’assistenza all’infanzia abbandonata a Siena nell’Ottocento’, in Bollettino Senese di Storia Patria (1982).

| CHAPTER 6 After the Revolution: bandits on the plains of the Po 1345-54

PAUL GINSBORG

Three incidents by way of an introduction: 1 On the night of 24 August 1850 the families of Vincenzo and Luigi

Monesi, who lived in a house at Ficarolo, a village on the northern banks of the Po, went to bed as usual at about 9 p.m. At eleven Luigi’s

son Francesco was woken by voices calling the name of his uncle, Vincenzo. He opened a window on the courtyard and saw six or seven men armed with shotguns. Vincenzo went to the window and the men immediately demanded 50 talleri. If not, they said, they would set fire to the Monesi’s haystack. As Vincenzo Monesi replied that he had no money to give them, the leader of the band told one of his companions to set fire to a haystack with sulphur matches. The fire failed to take. The Monesi then offered the intruders salami, bread and wine, but their

leader insisted on having money. Vincenzo threw down into the courtyard five or six Austrian lire. The men continued to threaten the families, a little more money was thrown down from the window, and with it two salamis and two cheeses. The Monesi then started to call for help as loudly as they could, and the intruders ran off. Nine months later, on 17 April 1851, seven men were charged with this crime and faced an Austrian military court, presided over by Count A. Hoyos. All the men were local villagers, and they were all found guilty. Five were shot, and two sentenced to twenty years hard labour.’ ' From the ‘Notificazione’ of 17 April 1851, issued by the I.R. Commissione Militare Inquirente. The *‘Sentenze’ and * Notificazioni’ of the Austrian military court can be found in Archivio di Stato, Venezia (henceforth ASV), Commissioni in Este, bb. 14-17, as well as in the Biblioteca Gabinetto di lettura, Este, Classe III, b. A~VI. The archive of the military court

is housed in the Giudecca section of the Venetian state archive, and the archivist who has catalogued its papers has recently provided an indispensable introduction: M. P. Pedani, ‘Le ‘““Commissioni in Este” ed il loro Archivio (1850—1856)’, Archivio Veneto, 127 (1986), 71-89.

For the various measurements of money in circulation in Lombardy-Venetia at this time, see 128

After the Revolution: bandits on the plains of the Po 129 2 At eleven o’clock at night on 31 January 1850 three cowherds were sleeping in a cowshed in the middle of the countryside near Fiesso (Adria). In the cowshed there were twenty-five prime romagnoli oxen. They belonged to Silvestro Camerini, a man who had risen from being

a farm labourer to become one of the richest landowners in the southern Veneto. Suddenly the door of the shed was broken open, fifteen men burst in and threw ploughshares on top of the cowherds who were still in their beds. They told them not to speak or move: ‘perche se no, andé all altro mondo’. The intruders then chose the two best oxen and led them away. The following morning, the horns, the skins, the innards, and the tails of the oxens were found in a field not far from the cowshed. Eighteen months after this theft, on 22 April 1851, eight men were charged by the same Austrian military court. All eight were condemned to death, four were shot, and the other four were sentenced to between fifteen and twenty years’ hard labour.’

3 On the evening of 30 March 1849, Sante Cusin, a renter of land at Vighizzolo near Piacenza d’Adige was woken up at about 11 p.m. by noise in the courtyard of his house, and he saw a number of men trying to beat down his door. His wife and servant rushed to hide in the stable while Cusin himself went down in the cellar and hid in a small vat. But

the intruders soon found him there and asked him where his money was hidden. When he refused.to tell them they punched him a number of times and then tied his hands behind his back, put a rope around his neck, and threatened to hang him. While this was being done, Cusin saw the faces of two of his aggressors, who hit him in the face with the

butt of a dagger, leaving him with a bloody wound in the area of his eyebrows. The intruders decided not to hang him, but instead covered his face with two sacks and a skirt, and threatened to burn him alive if he refused to tell them where his money was. Still Cusin stayed silent. Straw and maize leaves were taken from his mattress, a fire was lit, and Cusin was held over it. The sacks and skirt caught alight. At this point Cusin finally started to talk, saying that his money was not in the house but deposited in the town of Este. His aggressors then left him alone, but took everything they could find in the house, including linen, gold U. Tucci, ‘Le monete del regno lombardo-veneto dal 1815 al 1866’, Archivio Economico dell Unificazione Italiana, 2 (1956), no. 3, I-41. * From the ‘Notificazione’ of 22 April 1851. For Silvestro Camerini, see the biographical note by S. Cella in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, vol. xvu (Rome 1974), pp. 188-00.

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130 PAUL GINSBORG

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Map 4 Geographical area of bandit activity on the plains of the Po

After the Revolution: bandits on the plains of the Po 131 rings, some money, clothes, food, etc. In all, according to Cusin, he and his family suffered material damage amounting to 1,202 lire. On 18 March 1851 the Austrian military court, sitting at Piacenza d’ Adige, found ten men, all labourers and artisans, guilty of the crime;

seven were shot immediately, and three were sentenced to twenty years’ hard labour.” These three examples, which are fairly typical, give some idea, first, of the nature of the banditry, if such it can be called, which took place in these years in the southern parts of the provinces of Padua, Verona, and Mantua, as well as in the Polesine; and, second, of the way in which

it was treated by the Austrians. The Austrian military court, which came to be known as the Commissione d’Este, from the name of the town in the province of Padua in which it first sat, was set up in June 1850 and terminated its activity in April 1854. In that time, but above

all in its first two years of activity, it tried 1,204 persons for acts of banditry. Only nine of these were acquitted. Of the remainder, 414 were sentenced to death and shot, and 781 were condemned to lengthy sentences of hard labour.* Those who were sent to prison in the Case di Pena of Mantua and Padua were held in appalling conditions which resulted in very high mortality rates, mainly from tuberculosis, gastroencephalitis and malarial fever.” The repression of the ‘bandits’ was

thus on a massive and ferocious scale which finds a parallel in the

history of the Risorgimento only in the way in which southern brigandage was stamped out in the period 1860-70. But whereas the events in the south are well enough known, those in the north are * From the ‘ Notificazione’ of 18 March 1851. See also the vivid account given by the Franciscan friar who was one of the priests who accepted the responsibility of administering the last rites

to those who had been condemned to death by the military court: Padre Bonaventura da Maser, Fatti storico morali avvenuti nell IL.R, Giudicio Statario in Este negli anni 1850-51 in causa

di furti ed assassini (Venice 1852), pp. 90-91. 4 ASV, Commissioni in Este, bb. 14-16. Various additions must be made to these figures. In the first place, before the military court at Este was instituted in June 1850, the Austrian army had

already taken sporadic action against a number of ‘bandits’, deserters, etc., who were threatening the public peace. Secondly, in November 1851, Radetzky briefly instituted another military court in the fortress of Mantua. The court appears to have passed only one sentence. Six men were shot for theft, but were later found to have been innocent. Third, in September 1853, a special civil court (or commission) was set up to flank the military one at

Este. Its initial brief was to bring to justice those responsible for crimes of theft, etc., committed before March 1849. Later, its jurisdiction was extended to crimes committed after this date as well. It ceased to function in March 1856 (see also p. 149). > See the official reports and mortality statistics from the Casa di Pena of Mantua, quoted in M. Vaini, I contadini mantovani nella rivoluzione nazionale (1848-1860) (Mantua 1982; Ist edn 1966),

pp. 83-4. The cholera epidemic of 1855 produced a fresh wave of victims in the LombardoVenetian prisons.

132 PAUL GINSBORG completely unknown except on a local level, and have hardly been studied at all.®

In order to give an introduction to these events, on which a great deal of work remains to be done,’ I have divided this chapter into five all-too-fleeting sections: the first attempts to describe the geographical location; the second, to analyse landlord—peasant relations within this

area; the third, to trace the history of banditry in the region, and to assess the importance of the revolution of 1848 in relation to this banditry; the fourth, to identify the type of banditry that took place after the Revolution, especially in the years 1849 and 1850; and the last,

to explain why the Austrians reacted the way they did. THE LOCATION

The plains that lie to the north of the Po as it flows towards its delta are a land of fertile fields which in the first half of the nineteenth century

were given over to the production of wheat, maize, and to a lesser * The most useful work to date is the unpublished degree thesis of P. Masiero, ‘ Brigantaggio sociale nel veneto austriaco: i processi del tribunale statario militare di Este (1849—1854)’, Universita degli Studi di Padova, Facolta di Scienze Politiche, 1978~79. See also Bonaventura da Maser, Fatti storico morali; G. Chimeili (the principal civilian magistrate working for the Este military court), Storia del grande processo di Este contro ladroni a ripulsa d ingiusto appunto al principale guidice istruttore dello stesso (Este 1887); T. Mozzoni, Di un avvenimento giudiziario memorabile, note storiche (Venice 1900); L. Lugaresi, ‘Il brigantaggio criminale e l’operato della ‘““Commissione in Este” nel dipartimento del Polesine di Rovigo (1851-1856)’, Studi Polesani, no. I {n.d.), 24-33; Vaini, I contadini mantovani pp. 71-87; A. Soster, Il brigantaggio e il giudizio statario in Este (Este 1960); P. Brunello, Ribelli, questuanti, banditi. Proteste contadine in Veneto e in Friuli 1814-66 (Venice 1981), pp. 216-17; T. Merlin, ‘Le radici storiche del socialismo nella

bassa Padovana’, Schema, nos. 9-10 (1982), 144-7; L. Piva, ‘O soldi o vita!’. Brigantaggio in bassa padovana e nel Polesine alla meta dell’Ottocento (Este 1984).

I am very grateful to Piero Brunello for his help and for the many discussions we have had together on the question of peasant conditions and the actions of the military court at Este; many thanks also to Tiziano Merlin and Francesco Selmin for taking the trouble to show me

the areas in which the ‘bandits’ operated, and for sharing with me their considerable knowledge of the local history of these events. A first version of this chapter was presented

to Prof. S.J. Woolf’s seminar at the European University Institute in May 1986; I am grateful for the comments and criticisms I received on that occasion, and to the EUI for its support of this research. * With the help of Maria Pia Pedani, Piero Brunello and I have done some preliminary work on the archive of the Este courts. It is already clear that the court trials give less insight into

peasant life than we had hoped, and are of course much less full and interesting than Inquisitional records which have yielded such extraordinary insights into popular culture in the Veneto in earlier centuries. The proceedings of the military commission, in contrast to the civil one, are particularly summary. None the less, the archive is an enormous one (more than 600 buste), we have done little more than scratch the surface, and an extended period of work could yield very interesting results. Unfortunately, access to the archive remains a very real problem. Until the end of 1989 the Giudecca section of the Venetian state archive, which houses the archive of the Este commissions, was only open three mornings a week, and from the beginning of 1990 it will remain closed for two years for the purposes of reorganization and restoration.

After the Revolution: bandits on the plains of the Po 133 extent wine. In the Mantovano, which like the rest of the Lombard plains was economically more advanced than the equivalent regions of

the Veneto, irrigated fields were used for rice growing and a more variegated agriculture.» The whole area was intersected by many waterways other than the Po, the most important of which was the Adige, a river nearly as grand, by European standards at least, as the Po itself. Over the centuries much of the marshland lying between these waterways had been laboriously reclaimed. Behind the high banks of the rivers, built up over time to protect the inhabitants from flooding, lay many of the large villages of the region, populated by casual labourers (the avventizi), rural artisans, some small proprietors or renters of land, and a restricted local professional class.

Out beyond the villages Iay the large fields of the great estates, stretching as far as the eye could see, their monotony broken by few trees or hedgerows. Nearly all the land was in the hands of medium or large proprietors. As Berengo has calculated, in 1839 in the lower part of the province of Padua, in the Veronese plains and in the Polesine, small proprietors (owning up to five hectares of land) held respectively only 5.36 per cent, 5.51 per cent, and 7.25 per cent of the cultivated land.®

The large and medium-sized estates were dotted with isolated farmhouses and their outbuildings in which lived the closest dependants

of the landowner —sometimes his agent or steward, always the ploughmen and their families. Stretching out in lines beyond this central nucleus were the primitive and squalid dwellings of the tied labourers (the obbligati), dwellings most often constructed with walls of brick or cane and roofs of thatch. In complete contrast to these crude

and often fragile one-storey houses were the local aristocracy’s grandiose villas. Sometimes these formed the buildings at the core of a working farm; more often they were isolated from production in their own gardens or parks.*®

Why was it that the countryside around Este was the epicentre of bandit action and that the town itself was the seat of the Austrian ® For the conditions in the province of Mantua, M. Romani, L’agricoltura in Lombardia dal periodo delle riforme al 1859 (Milan 1957), pp. 93-111; also Sir J. Bowring, ‘Report on the statistics of

Tuscany, Lucca, the Pontifical and the Lombardo-Venetian states, with a special reference to their commercial relations’, Parliamentary Papers, vol. xvi (1839), Reports from Commissioners,

p. 100. For the more backward agriculture of the Polesine, R. De Rosas, *Scrutture di classe e lotte sociali nel Polesine preunitario’, Studi Storici, 18, no. 1 (1977), 63. * M. Berengo, L’agricoltura veneta dalla caduta della Repubblica all’ Unita (Milan 1963), p. 154.

10 For the casolari of the tied labourers, ibid., pp. 207-8 and 222-3.

134 PAUL GINSBORG military court? The Venetian aristocrat Alvise Francesco Mocenigo, owner of major estates in the area, offered an explanation in the letter he wrote in January 1850 to the Austrian authorities, imploring them to come to the aid of the landowners: In reality, that part of the Province has always been infested in a special way. The many canals, the vast cane-breaks, the small number of farmhouses, and even more important the proximity of the Adige, with its many crossings and millers at work on its banks, all these are circumstances which combine to favour the villainous tendencies of many of the inhabitants."

Mocenigo was right, but Este and Monselice were particular in being at the foot of the Monti Euganei, the only outcrop of hills in the whole

area. The densely wooded slopes of these hills, immortalized by Shelley, offered an important refuge to those on the run. In August 1849, for instance, a large number of Austrian troops tried unsuccessfully to flush out a band of disertori and malfattori who had set up their base there.**

The Euganean hills were one refuge. The valli, large tracts of marshland which had not yet been reclaimed, were another. To the southwest of Este lay the Valli Grandi Veronesi; further away, to the southeast, were the marshlands of the deltas of the Po and the Adige. In the commune of Ariano, in close proximity to the Po delta, the marshes covered five-sixths of the land. This was a very different environment from the rest of the plains, dominated by giant reeds, flatbottomed boats, and small fertile islands at the centre of the marshes on

which maize was grown. The inhabitants were principally hunters, fishermen, and cannaroli, transforming the cane from the reeds into modest artisan ware. Theirs was a world which was more autonomous than that of the labourers of the plains, and one which was not easily penetrable by the authorities of the state. A final refuge was the frontier. On the other side of the Po lay the Papal States and the Duchy of Modena. Contraband activity across the Po had always been a flourishing business, and the villages on the banks of the great river had a reputation for illegal activity of every sort. As the Venetian proverb has it, Omo de confin, o [e] ladro o sassin. ‘11 ASV, LR., Presidenza della Luogotenenza Lombardo-Veneta, 1849-51, b. 7, 1, fasc. 8/1151, letter of 17 January 1850. 12 ASV, Commissione Imperiale Plenipotenziaria in Verona, 20 October 1848 to 10 November

1849, b. 45, Tumulti, no. 11083 and documents attached to it.

After the Revolution: bandits on the plains of the Po 135 LANDLORDS AND LABOURERS

The owners of the great estates of the region traditionally belonged

to the local nobility, but much land was also in the hands of the Venetian aristocracy, as well as that of Ferrara, Bologna, and Milan. In the period between 1796 and 1815 significant changes took place, here as elsewhere, in landownership. New men, coming up from the ranks

of the commercial and financial bourgeoisie, began to buy up the

estates from a declining nobility. They were bankers like the Papadopoli, tax collectors and sub-contractors of public works like the Camerini (the family whose oxen were stolen in 1850), grain merchants like the Comello, rich Jews like the Ancona — the Jews being permitted in the Napoleonic period to invest in land for the first time.** This new wave of landowners did not transform the way in which the land was farmed. Naturally, there were exceptions, more often to be found in the Mantovano than the Polesine. But the new proprietors, by and large, were more interested in steady income and status than in innovation. They, like the aristocracy, were for the most part absentee landowners, preferring to live in the cities, to leave the running of the estates to their agents, and to drain their land of capital. A minority of

the landowners’ agents, like Domenico Rizzi, were agronomists of considerable expertise. Most, however, were averse to innovation and

showed very little spirit of initiative. At best, they ran the estates according to the principles of authoritarian paternalism; at worst they regarded the labourers as their enemies, to be exploited as ruthlessly as possible. **

Without further research, it is impossible to say exactly what happened to landlord—peasant relations in the period from the end of the eighteenth century to the outbreak of the Revolution in 1848. It is a common thesis that it was the bourgeois landowners who, between

1796 and 1815, introduced a new rapacity into what was already a highly exploitative relationship. What is certainly true is that the conditions of the peasantry in the southern Veneto and southern 'S De Rosas, ‘Strutture di classe’, pp. 62-3. 14 For an example of the first attitude see the little pamphlet, Agenzia di campagna, Lettera di un possidente al suo fattore (Venice 1825); of the second, the letter of the general agent of the house

of Tiepolo of 18 September 1831: ‘I have no faith in our peasantry at all, and I only try to make them suffer less so as to satisfy our master. Really one needs to regard them all as enemies

and as so many thieves and ungrateful wretches’; ASV, Archivio Tiepolo, b. 15, quoted by Berengo, L’agricoltura veneta, p. 214, n. 3. Amongst Domenico Rizzi’s many writings, see Adria e lo stabilimento agrario dei _fratelli Scarpa (Rovigo 1838), and Lettera a co. Gherardo Freschi sui lavori di agricoltura e le industrie campestri (Venice 1848).

136 PAUL GINSBORG Lombardy had been on the decline for many decades, as the marshes were reclaimed, population increased, common lands were encroached by individual proprietors, and the peasantry became more and more a

labouring class. By the era of the Restoration, landlord—peasant relations on the plains of the Adige and the Po were appalling, far worse than in the hill areas further to the north, where both peasant proprietorship and share-cropping were more common.’®

With the small owning class on the plains being such a small minority of the peasants, the rural workforce can be substantially divided into two: labourers who were tied by annual contracts to work on the great estates (the obbligati); and those who worked there on a casual basis in the summer months only (the avventizi). Of course, as in every rural situation, there was an infinite number of variations on this basic divide. For instance, at Conselve we find half-tied labourers who

were only bound to the estates from 1 May to 15 October. One category of labourer often merged into another. There is also no way of saying what percentage of the rural poor were tied labourers and what percentage casual. A guesstimate would put the proportions at roughly equal in the first half of the nineteenth century; from 1850

onwards it was clear that the avventizi, the casual labourers, were becoming the majority.*®

Let me deal with the obbligati first. As has already been said, they lived on the great estates and were usually hired and fired on an annual basis, the day of reckoning being San Martino, 10 November. They and their families would be given a strip of maize-producing land to cultivate for the year (il diritto alla zappa), and would receive one-third of the crop which they would then use to make polenta, their staple diet. This strip of land, with its tall maize plants, would be tended principally

by the women and children of the family. The men were mainly © For the view that it was the Napoleonic period which broke a fragile equilibrium in the social relations on the plains, see T. Merlin, ‘Le radici storiche del socialismo’, pp. 139-40. Substance

for this thesis is afforded by the enquiry into Lombardo-Venetian agriculture ordered by

Count Pillersdorff in January 1839. The enquiry revealed that in the plains the new landowners were often exacting harsher terms than had the old nobility; see A. Bernardello, ‘Burocrazia, borghesia e contadini nel Veneto austriaco’, Studi Storici, 18 (1976), passim. The results of the Lombard part of the enquiry are summarized by S. Zaninelli, ‘I patti agrari in

Lombardia intorno alla meta dell’Ottocento’, in M. Romani (ed.), Aspetti di vita agricola lombarda (secoli XVI-XIX) (Milan 1973), pp. 287-307. For the longer term decline in peasant conditions throughout the Veneto, Brunello, Ribelli, passim.

16 De Rosas, ‘Strutture di classe’, p. 70, gives the impression that tied labourers were more important in the period up to 1850; T. Merlin, on the other hand, is convinced that by 1848 well over half of the inhabitants of the lower Veneto ‘are living outside the control of the landowners’: ‘L’osteria, gli anarchici e “‘la Boje” nel Basso Veneto’, Annali dell’ Istituto Alcide

Cervi, 6 (1984), 173. For half-tied labourers at Conselve and other variations, Berengo, L’agricoltura veneta, pp. 213ff.

After the Revolution: bandits on the plains of the Po 137 employed on other parts of the estate, in the wheat fields and in other farmwork. For this they were sometimes paid in kind, but more often in money wages on a day basis. The obbligati, then, were a typical early-

nineteenth-century mixture of wage labourer and bastardized sharecropper.

All contemporary commentators except the landlords’ agents concurred that the income of the obbligati was insufficient to keep them and their families alive. The result was a classic and chronic indebtedness

of the tied labourer to the landlord. Loans were made in the winter months and had to be repaid after the harvest at exorbitant rates of interest. The usury of the landlords was motivated as much by social as

economic considerations: the obbligati became totally tied to the landlord, hopelessly dependent upon him, in a condition which has been correctly described as being that of ‘complete moral and civil degradation’."’ The avventizi or non-obbligati, were rather different. They were the

dangerous class of the plains of the Po. As Fortunato Sceriman, agronomist and former Austrian official, wrote in 1854: “The labourers [braccianti} are the agricultural proletariat; a proletariat that is growing in size and which, as a result, fills the countryside with misery and with danger.’*®

In the summer the casual labourers would work for a few months on the great estates; they would strike as hard a bargain as they could with the landlord’s agent, knowing that their labour was necessary to bring

in the crop before it rotted. Usually they were paid in kind, but sometimes with a daily money wage. In these months, the labourers

would often gravitate towards newly irrigated zones, or to any agricultural area where they knew that the need for hands was intense and the local labour supply insufficient.’® For the rest of the year they would seek out what work they could find. Very often this would mean emigrating, leaving their villages especially in the winter to try and find work as porters or as building labourers in the towns and cities, or to work on the construction of the Milan—Venice railway.”’? Most often they returned in February or #7 See the excellent and documented account in De Rosas, ‘Strutture di classe’, pp. 64ff.

18 FB. Sceriman, ‘Dei braccianti...ecc.’, [1 Coltivatore, 3 (1854), 97-9; quoted in Berengo, L’agricoltura veneta, p. 189.

19 Merlin, ‘L’osteria, gli anarchici’, p. 175; De Rosas, ‘Strutture di classe’, p. 71; see also, for a

1981), pp. 277-8.

slightly later date, A. Lazzarini, Campagne venete ed emigrazione di massa (1866-1900) (Vicenza

20 For work on the Milan—Venice railway see a report from the village of Villafora near Badia (Polesine) of 15 April 1848: ‘when they go away to work on the railways they abandon their

138 PAUL GINSBORG March, the worst months of the year, to beg work of any sort at the

farmhouses in return for enough polenta to keep them and their families alive. This was the class that practised rural theft on an enormous scale, not

the single, isolated theft immortalized by Ermanno Olmi in his film L’albero degli zoccoli, but a ceaseless, almost systematic violation of

property rights. Thus at Merlara, to take only one example, the labourers, on going to work in the rice fields, crossed the landowners’ property every morning, taking grapes, collecting wood, sometimes cutting down crops on their way home. One report of 1857 from Badia

said that the men there ‘thought that by customary usage they had acquired the right to appropriate other people’s goods’.” Partially distinct from the avventizi were the valligiani, living in large villages like Cavarzere or Adria adjacent to the marshes. The conditions

of these most autonomous of the rural poor came under mortal threat

in the early 1850s. The valligiani had always enjoyed the right of vagantivo, that of wandering through the valli to hunt, fish, and collect

the products of the marshes. But in the early 1850s in the eastern Polesine, systematic land reclamation began, using steam-powered dredging machines. By 1855, 50,000 hectares of marshland had been reclaimed. In the 1860s, the Valli Grandi Veronesi underwent the same transformation. The whole livelihood of the valligiani was threatened, and they responded in various localities with invasions of the reclaimed land and attempts to insist upon their time-honoured rights.** To little avail; the valligiani of the 1850s were to become the casual labourers of the 1860s and 1870s. We have as yet few details of family life, popular culture, or religion amongst the inhabitants of the plains. There are some references to the casual labourer’s lack of stable family ties; the constant need to be on the move in order to find work certainly made family life more difficult

for them than for the tied labourers. On the other hand, in the documents of the military court at Este, there is a great deal of evidence of family life amongst the accused. It is also true, at least for a slightly wives, homes and children not just for three hours but sometimes for as much as four months’ ;

ASV, Gov. Prov. 1848-9, CPD, b. 832/Rovigo, no. 29.

21 The most thorough discussion of rural theft, though principally for the period after Unification, is F. Bozzini, If furto campestre (Bari 1977). For the examples from Merlara and Badia, see De Rosas, ‘Strutture di classe’, pp. 73-4. 22 For a detailed and extraordinary account of the villagers’ battle at Cavarzere, see Brunello, Ribelli, pp. 100-26. For the reclamation of the Valli Grandi Veronesi, F. Bozzini, L’arciprete e il cavaliere. Un paese veneto nel Risorgimento italiano (Rome 1985), pp. 14-15.

After the Revolution: bandits on the plains of the Po 139 later date, that men and women labourers emigrated together, and

worked side by side in the fields.” | In the records of the pastoral visits of Bishop Federico Manfredini of

Padua for the years 1859-65, there are some indications of the religiosity of the inhabitants of the province. At San Pietro in the diocese of Este, a parish composed almost entirely of rural labourers,

the parish priest reported that the inhabitants were ‘docile and subordinate to the authorities’. However, in nearby Boara Padovana, 230 of the nearly 3,000 inhabitants had not celebrated mass at Easter,

and the parish priest lamented ‘the scarce knowledge of Christian doctrine’. He complained also of the excessive number of feste and dances which the villagers organised.** All the authorities, whether ecclesiastical or secular, inveighed against the deleterious influence of

the village taverns, the source, according to them, not only of drunkenness but of crime and depravity.” The labourers of the plains were desperately poor, owning almost nothing. The most important object which a condemned man at Este could pass on to his relatives before being shot was his tobacco box: M— who a little while before had said a last goodbye to his son, rammaged in his pocket and brought out his tobacco box, carved in bone alla tirolese, with

the figure of St. Antony [of Padua] on its top. He kissed the image of the saint ...and said to me: ‘Father, take this box, give it to my son, and tell him to keep it for all his life in memory of his father.’*®

The thatched huts of the labourers had no proper windows, no proper floors, and inside they were blackened and tarred from smoke from the fire. A local doctor from Pontecchio described in the 1850s how the children usually slept on a ledge constructed near the ceiling, 28 Bowring noted of the Lombard plains in the late 1830s: ‘The women cultivate, root up, and spin the linen; they level the rice-grounds, weed the growing rice, dig about the buck-wheat, thresh it, in company with the men, and have part of the crop’ (‘Report on the statistics’, p. 104). For men and women labourers emigrating together, see Lazzarini, Campagne venete, p.

278, and §. Ortaggi Cammarosano, ‘Women workers in northern and central Italy in the nineteenth century’, in this volume, p. 172. From the statistical analysis carried out by Masiero, Brigantaggio sociale, of those condemned by the military court at Este (based on 49 Sentenze and Notificazioni and 1,104 persons found guilty), $8.7 per cent of the sample were married and another 4.5 per cent were widows or widowers; see his appendix, table 5. Friar _ Bonaventura da Maser was so concerned about the number of children left as orphans after the military court’s actions that in his Preface to Fatti storico morali he appealed to Count Hoyos

to help him set up a charity for them. 24 M. Piva (ed.), La visita pastorale di Federico Manfredini nella diocesi di Padova (1859-1865), vol.

1 (Rome 1971), pp. 263 and 267-8. 2° See especially T. Merlin, ‘Il ruolo sociale e politico dell’osteria nel Veneto meridionale’, Movimento Operaio e Socialista, 8 (1985), 23-40. 76 Bonaventura da Maser, Fatti storico morali, p. 78.

140 PAUL GINSBORG and how the animals, if they had any, were kept either in an adjacent barn or in the labourer’s hut itself; from both, according to him, there

emanated a ‘disgusting stench’ which rendered them almost unapproachable. In such conditions there was disease in every family: malaria in the marshes, pellagra on the plains. In 1855, the southern Mantovano was swept by cholera, which claimed over 4,000 victims in the course of a few months.”’

THE HISTORY OF BANDITRY AND THE REVOLUTION OF 1848

The banditry and rural theft of 1849 and 1850 had a considerable number of antecedents. Probably the most spectacular was the revolt that took place in the summer of 1809. By this date, as in so many other parts of the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy, the toll of conscription and of taxation had further alienated the rural poor. With Austrian armies near at hand a disorganized band of some 1,500 persons, among them

many deserters, took over the whole of the northern Po delta. On 7 July, led by a landowning priest by the name of Giocoli, they marched

into Rovigo, sacked the ghetto, and burned all the municipal and conscription records. French troops restored order only in October.”*

The year 1809 was the highpoint of lawlessness on the northern plains, but throughout the Restoration the region was never entirely free from bands of malviventi. The area around Este was particularly noted for the insecurity of its landowners, and the vulnerability of the isolated farmhouses on the great estates. Winter was, of course, the high

season for rural thefts. Both government and landowners seemed incapable of stopping them.” The coming of the Revolution of 1848 did not make any appreciable difference to the appalling relations of production on the plains. The

new Venetian revolutionary government abolished the much-hated poll tax and reduced the price of salt, but it would have needed a great deal more than Manin’s cautious and prevalently urban outlook to have 27 Vaini, I contadini mantovani, pp. 66-7. For a detailed history of pellagra, A. De Bernardi, I] mal della rosa. Denutrizione e pellagra nelle campagne italiane fra ’800 e ’900 (Milan 1984). The report of the doctor from Pontecchio is published by L. Caniato, I villici del Polesine (Vittorio Veneto

1973), esp. pp. 6-9. 28 For the situation at Este in 1809, see F. Selmin, ‘Una relazione inedita sulle insurrezioni dell’Aprile del 1809 nella Bassa Padovana’, Atti e Memorie del Sodalizio Vangadiciense, 1 (1975),

363-73. For the Polesine, De Rosas, *Strutture di classe’, pp. 76-9. 29 Piva, ‘O soldi o vita!’, pp. 31-2.

After the Revolution: bandits on the plains of the Po 141 initiated a process of agrarian reform and to have ameliorated the rural labourers’ conditions.*°

None the less there was considerable initial enthusiasm for the Revolution, both in the Mantovano and on the Venetian plains. Many of the local priests had been won over to the idea of a Holy War against

the Austrians, and their support for the Revolution was of crucial importance in the March Days of 1848. In the area around Mantua, the

priests mobilized many of the rural population, but the municipal council of Mantua refused to give any lead and the Austrians were able to secure the city and its vital, if rather neglected, fortifications.** In all the rural areas under Italian control, civic and national guards

were set up; their purpose was both to maintain order and to guard against possible military attack. In the Polesine this process was much less successful than elsewhere. The provincial revolutionary committee of Rovigo, on which there was a strong landowning interest, refused to pay peasants or artisans the fifty centesimi per day or night that they were demanding for service in the guard. Not surprisingly, the rural labourers, like those at Villafora near Badia, refused to serve in the guard unless they were paid. It is quite clear that many landowners

thought this a satisfactory outcome. The sight of labourers armed, whatever the ostensible purpose, was not for them a welcome one.” Rovigo’s main contribution to the war effort was the formation of a company of crociati (‘crusaders’), composed mainly of the criminal elements of the city. According to one eye-witness, this motley band,

on setting out from the city, left a worse impression on the nearby villages than had the brigands of 1809.**

By the late summer of 1848 the Austrians had launched their counter-attack and were once again in full control of the Venetian and

Lombard countryside, with resistance being confined to the city of Venice itself. Milan had already been recaptured. On the plains nothing

seemed to have changed at all. However, it is striking that the revolutionary months did not witness a major recrudescence of 3° P. Ginsborg, Daniele Manin and the Venetian Revolution of 1848-49 (Cambridge 1979), esp. pp.

31 P Dell; Peruta, ‘I contadini nella rivoluzione lombarda del 1848’, in F. Della Peruta, Democrazia e socialismo nel Risorgimento (Rome 1965), p. 85, n. $; Vaint, I contadini mantovani,

pp. 11-35. For the role of the clergy, P. Brunello, ‘Mediazione culturale e orientamenti politici nel clero Veneto intorno al 1848: il “Giornale dei parocchi ed altri sacerdoti”’, Archivio Veneto, 104 (1975), 139-86.

2 Ginsborg, Daniele Manin, p. 168, n. 21. Elsewhere in the Veneto the guards were paid up to two lire per day. 38 FE. Piva, ‘Prime armi 1848 (dalle Memorie del generale Domenico Piva)’, in 1848-1948. Celebrazioni polesane del centenario (Rovigo 1948), p. 12 and n. 4.

142 PAUL GINSBORG banditry. There were certainly many demonstrations demanding employment in public works projects, such as that at Solesino, a typical

village of avventizi, where 600 men were involved. There was also widespread fear among the propertied classes of what they chose to call ‘communism ’.** But there were few reports of roving bands of thieves,

and it seemed as if the labourers were waiting and hoping for something to come out of the Revolution for them. In this context it is highly significant that we have evidence from a few villages of labourers trying to take over communal government themselves; such incidents occurred at Fiesso and also at Cavarzere, which is classic valligiano territory. There is also evidence that some of the lower clergy were involved in helping them. The pattern that seems

to emerge, and this is only a hypothesis, is that in the revolutionary

months peasant protest was not to be found on the terrain of banditry but took other forms, the most notable of which was the attempt to establish control of village government.*® For a moment

there seemed a possible political outlet to social tension. Almost immediately, it was to be closed again by the government’s general

indifference to rural problems and above all by the speed of the Austrian counter-attack.

It was after the Austrians returned that banditry broke out on a massive scale. The single most important precipitating factor was Radetzky’s decree of 10 March 1849 forbidding the carrying or possession of arms on pain of death. The Austrian authorities had decided that a draconian measure of this sort was necessary to ensure that pro-Italian conspirators, from whatever class, would not have the necessary weapons to attempt a fresh insurrection. All over the plains, the authorities collected up arms. At Cerea in the province of Verona,

69 pistols, 34 rifles, 254 carbines, 131 long- and short-barrelled blunderbusses, as well as many swords and knives, were handed in. The net result was that the landowning classes suddenly found themselves disarmed in the face of the labourers, at least some of whom had hidden

away their weapons. In vain the local authorities protested that the well-to-do were now defenceless. In June 1849 the delegate of Rovigo

appealed for help to Lt-Marshal Count Thurn: ‘bands of 30-50 ageressors...are growing in audacity and in number, provoking the justified apprehension of the peaceful inhabitants of the villas, especially 34 A. Bernardello, ‘La paura del comunismo e dei tumulti popolari a Venezia e nelle provincie venete nel 1848-1849’, Nuova Rivista Storica, §4 (1970), nos. I-2, §O-I13. *° Ginsborg, Daniele Manin, pp. 175-6.

After the Revolution: bandits on the plains of the Po 143 in the districts of Massa, Occhiobello, Badia, and Lendinara’.*® Alvise Mocenigo reported the same state of affairs in the district of Este.*’ The

Austrians refused to revoke their decree. From the summer of 1849 until the spring of 1850 widespread armed theft spread through the plains. A TYPOLOGY OF THE BANDITRY ON THE PLAINS

What was the nature of this banditry ? I have been using the terms rural theft and banditry in tandem because it is quite clear that in this case the

one grew out of the other: in other words that the banditry on the plains of the Po was an extended form of pervasive rural theft. But the events cf 1849 to 1850 were not just rural theft. They were also banditry for the simple reason that those who stole were formed in bands, often up to thirty to thirty-five strong. They came together in the evening, often in the local tavern, after the word had gone round that a certain

house was to be attacked. Kinship ties were very important in the formation of the group and the organization of the crime. The group

gathered, waited, attacked the house, distributed the stolen goods amongst themselves, and then dispersed. Precious objects were almost certainly exchanged for cash using the contraband networks operating across the Po. This was banditry on a primitive scale because it seems that most of the members of the bands simply dispersed after the event, and returned to sleep in their homes. They almost always attacked local farmhouses; often they were recognized by their victims. This was not

a form of banditry where the group left home territory, swore allegiance to a charismatic leader, and lived an alternative life over a period of months or years. It was, rather, banditry which was closely linked to the rhythms and practices of the agrarian calendar, which grew out of rural theft, and which was rudimentary in organization and local in character. As such, the banditry on the plains of the Po differed radically from that in Sicily described by Giovanna Fiume elsewhere in this volume

(see above pp. 70-90). On the Venetian and Mantuan plains, the bandits were not in the pay of anyone, nor was their violence part of 36 ASV, Comm. Imp. Plenipotenziaria in Verona, 1848-9, b. 45, Tumulti, no. 7,309, letter of 8

June 1849. Banditry was not the only form of protest at this time. At Adria, close to the marshes of the Po delta, the inhabitants rioted rather than allow lots to be drawn for

conscription to replace the large numbers of deserters; ibid., no. 6,663, letter from the Delegate of Rovigo, 18 May 1849. 37 ASV, I.R.Pres. della Luogotenenza Lombardo-Veneta, 1849-51, b. 7, I, fasc. 8/1,151, letter of 17 January 1850.

144 PAUL GINSBORG a struggle for power between rival elite factions or families. There were

no higher levels of organization, as in Sicily, or collusion with the authorities of the state. Rather, this was banditry that grew directly out of the relations of production on the great estates, and was one type of response to the destitution of the rural poor.** During the Revolution, there had been a fleeting glimpse of another possible response as some

of the labourers had tried to take over village government. After it, there was a reversion to an older pattern. The temporary disarming of the propertied classes by the Austrians was an opportunity too good to be missed.

Who were those who took part? Masiero’s statistical analysis of 1,014 persons sentenced either to death or hard labour by the military court at Este offers a first, valuable picture of the composition of the bands.*? Of those condemned, 95.1 per cent were men, 4.9 per cent

were women. Over 63 per cent of them were either married or widowed. The bands, as these last figures suggest, were by no means composed only of the young. 56.7 per cent were over the age of thirty-

one, and of these nearly half were aged forty-one or over. As for occupation, there are great problems in trying to distinguish between different types of rural labourer. The categories used by the documents, such as bracciante, campagnolo, villico, do not usually allow us to distinguish tied from day labourers.*° Of Masiero’s sample, $5.2 per cent were agricultural workers of one sort or another. This was by far the largest category, followed, significantly, by millers with 8.3 per cent, carters 6.2 per cent, fishermen 4.1 per cent, and shoemakers 2.6 per cent. Another 4.1 per cent were deserters from the Austrian army.**

Who were their victims? As soon as we look at this aspect, it becomes apparent how far these rural labourers were from Hobsbawm’s definition of social bandits as ‘peasant outlaws whom the lord and state

regard as criminals, but who remain within peasant society, and are considered by their people as heroes, as champions, avengers, fighters for justice’.*? Indeed one suspects that most bandits do not fit this 38 Here there is a notable contrast, not only with Sicily in the early nineteenth century, but also with other parts of the Veneto in earlier centuries. See, for example, the hired band in the Friuli studied by N. S. Davidson, ‘An armed band in the local community on the Venetian terraferma in the sixteenth century’, in G. Ortalhi (ed.), Bande armate, banditi, banditismo (Rome

1986), pp. 401-22. %° Masiero, ‘Brigantaggio sociale’, appendix, tables 4-11. 4° Merlin, ‘L’osteria, gli anarchici’, p. 178, n. 16, claims that villico is a tied labourer, and that campagnolo is a day labourer, but we would need to be sure that this is a distinction which is valid for all the four provinces (Verona, Mantua, Rovigo (Polesine) and Padua) affected by the actions of the military court.

41 Masiero, ‘Brigantaggio sociale’, appendix, table 4. Masiero also has another category of operaio giornaliero (literally ‘day worker’) which accounts for another 4.2 per cent of his

sample. 42 E. Hobsbawm, Bandits (London 1969), p. 13.

After the Revolution: bandits on the plains of the Po 145 description. The victims in the southern Veneto and the Mantovano were not the rich proprietors, but those who worked for them, or those who independently had acquired a little capital. There were very few instances of assaults upon villas. Rather the isolated farmhouses or houses in villages were targets for attack. Those who suffered were the

cowherds and the ploughmen, the renters of land, small merchants, rural artisans, and shopkeepers such as fruit sellers. The banditry consisted of members of the poorest section of the community stealing

from those who were next up the social scale. This still makes the activity ‘social’, and there can be no doubting its economic origins, but it does not fit easily into the Robin Hood imagery of banditry. These were the poor stealing from the less poor, and often being pretty brutal

about it. They very rarely killed and they even more rarely raped.** But they forced the women of the households on to beds and they pulled off their rings from their fingers and earrings, they tied the men up and punched them and hit them with the butts of their guns until they told them where they kept their valuables. If this is a broad characterization of the banditry on the plains of the Po, it should immediately be said that there are some exceptions to the picture that is emerging. The most significant of these was the band led by Francesco Tenan, called Pippone, who was eventually shot by the Austrians in October 1852. Pippone is the only hero of this story. He came from Guarda Veneta, on the banks of the Po, a village renowned

for its contraband activity. The main evidence which we have about Pippone comes from a pamphlet written more than thirty years after the event by Giuseppe Chimelli, the Italian judge responsible for preparing all the cases for the Austrian military court. Chimelli’s pamphlet, which bears many signs of a guilty conscience, pays tribute to Pippone who refused to confess his crimes, unlike practically all the others who were caught. He told Chimelli: ‘there 1s no justice when some get rich while others languish, and I with my band have always

attacked only those vampires who thought solely of exploitation to enrich themselves [che studiavano di sfruttare tutto per sé]. We were truly

the avengers of crimes committed against humanity.’** Pippone took 48 See Masiero, ‘Brigantaggio sociale’, appendix, table 9. In his sample there were sixteen assassinations, or 1.6 per cent of all crimes committed. He does not list a separate category for

rape, and so far in my research I have not encountered a single case. 44 Chimelli, Storia del grande processo, p. 61. Piero Brunello and I have looked in vain in the archive of the Commissioni d’Este for further documents regarding Pippone. The only one of interest is a detailed description of his appearance: “He is a man of about thirty-six years

of age, tall, heavily built, with dark hair cut alla fiesco, normal forehead, grey eyes and eyebrows, a regular nose curving somewhat to the right, regular mouth, a dark red beard alla

cappuccina, an oval face of ruddy complexion. He is dressed in a black corduroy jacket,

146 PAUL GINSBORG care not to ill-treat his victims, and concentrated mainly on attacking the property of the extremely rich Camerini family. His most notable coup was when he and his band took over the village square at Fiesso, whose inhabitants had tried to elect their own representatives in 1848. Pippone broke into the house of a rich goldsmith called Migliorini, and escaped with goods worth many thousands of lire.*® Pippone, a true Robin Hood figure if we are to believe Chimelli, is

one exception to the typology. Another is the limited amount of evidence we have linking banditry and patriotism in 1849. A number of incidents show that at least some of the bandits were not interested solely in theft for theft’s sake, and that they belonged to networks which were certainly not criminal. The band of some thirty persons which hid in the Euganean hills in August 1849 was led by a deserter called Antonio Magagnin from Verona. When in August the Austrian authorities failed to find him, they made a number of arrests, among whom was the chaplain of the church of Torreglia, Giacomo Fabris, who was accused of ‘having on frequent occasions given refuge to deserters and of having hidden a rifle in his house’. The bell-ringer of the same church, Pietro Angelon, was also arrested for having hidden in the church’s loft two pistols and a carbine.*® In another incident two families from the village of Pozzonovo near Monselice in the province of Padua used money from their thefts to help smuggle provisions into the besieged city of Venice. In June 1849 the Muolo brothers, at the head of a band of rural artisans, robbed the house of a cooper in Pozzonovo. They were denounced for this some

three years later. Half the band was shot by order of the Austrian military court; the Muolo brothers, after confessing immediately, got twenty years hard labour each. The Monticelli family were similarly involved in trying to smuggle goods through the lagoon to Venice. The next generation of both Muolo and Monticelli were to be founder members of the anarchist circle at Monselice.*’ waistcoat with cream coloured stripes, dark green striped corduroy trousers, black leather boots, shirt of hemp with a cotton collar, tie of red wool, a threadbare hat of black wool with a low crown and a turned down brim’; ASV, Commissioni in Este, b. 47, no. 7,855. 45 ASV, Commissioni in Este, b. 14, ‘Notificazione’, no. xxx, Polesella, 12 October 1852. 46 ASV, Comm. Imp. Plenipotenziaria in Verona, 1848-0, b. 45, Tumulti, documents attached

to no. 11,083. Another of those arrested was Antonio Costello, tavern keeper in S.Pietro Montagnana. He was accused of taking Magagnin to Padua in a cart on 7-8 August. It also emerged that Magagnin had held Costello’s baby at a recent christening, but it is not clear whether this was at the church of Torreglia or not. The documents do not tell us the fate of those arrested nor of the band. In another incident of 22 March 1849, a stagecoach on its way from Brescia to Verona was held up by armed men who asked the driver if he was carrying dispatches or if there were ‘Germans’ on board. When the driver said there were not, he was allowed to proceed; ibid., b. 45, Tumulti, no. 5,552. 47 Merlin, ‘Le radici storiche’, pp. 144 ff.

After the Revolution: bandits on the plains of the Po 147 These examples, however, are almost certainly the exception not the

rule, and it would be an arduous task to show any extensive links between the patriots and the labourers who went out at night to rob the

farmhouses. The banditry that we are dealing with here must not be romanticized or glorified. It was one reaction to the intolerable social conditions in which the poor found themselves in this part of Italy. It _ was a violent, primitively organized reaction, directed with some brutality not at the landowners themselves but at those who served them, and at any member of the local community whose house seemed

likely to contain money or goods of some worth. THE AUSTRIAN REACTION

The final element that remains to be recounted and explained is the Austrian response to this banditry. In his recent study of the survival of the Habsburg empire in 1848-9, Alan Sked has argued that Radetzky, after his victory over the Italian forces, adopted a radical social stance towards the elites of Lombardy and Venetia. Furious at the landowners for their support of the revolution, Radetzky, according to Sked, was prepared to turn the peasantry against them. Sked goes so far as to dub Radetzky a ‘communist’, in the sense of his being willing to support the oppressed in a class war against their oppressors. *®

The origins of this thesis come from Austrian action in Galicia in 1846. There the liberal Polish landowners were plotting a nationalist insurrection but were slaughtered by their peasantry, and their bodies

were carried by cart into the neighbouring towns. The Austrian authorities praised the peasants’ actions; European outcry was very great, but the Austrians were unmoved, and the single word Galicia was enough to send a shiver down the spine of every liberal landowner in the empire.

However, in Italy after the Revolution the threat of a repeat of Galicia remained purely a piece of propaganda that had no basis in reality. Austrian practice, with Radetzky in supreme control, was much

more conventional in class terms, and tends to belie Sked’s interpretation. There is little evidence of measures in favour of the peasantry ;*° in the specific case of the Po plains, far from being friends

199-203. ,

48 A. Sked, The Survival of the Habsburg Empire. Radetzky, the Imperial Army and the Class War

(London 1979). Pt. mr of Sked’s book is entitled ‘Radetzky as communist’; see esp. pp. 49 M. Meriggi, I! Regno Lombardo-Veneto (Turin 1987), pp. 350-1. Radetzky’s concessions were limited to abolishing the poll tax, which Manin’s government had already done before him, pardoning deserters providing they returned to the ranks, promising not to raise a new levy, and issuing a number of what Meriggi calls “demagogic proclamations’ (p. 351).

148 PAUL GINSBORG of the rural labourers, the Austrians responded to the landowners’ pleas for help with a ferocity that at least equalled and probably surpassed that desired by the landowners themselves. The Austrian military commission at Este was set up in April 1850. The proceedings were extremely summary. The accused was asked to tell the court his or her surname, nickname, occupation, and place of

residence. The prisoner’s statement to the enquiring magistrate (Chimelli) was then read out, and he or she was asked to sign it if it was

a true record. Chimelli had urged all the prisoners to confess their crimes and to cooperate fully with the court; only if such cooperation was assured, argued Chimelli, was there any hope of lives being saved. The whole of the judicial procedure was based on confession, and on the now notorious figure of the pentito. The first pentito in this case was a certain Giovanni Nicoletti, who helped Chimelli build up an accurate picture of the bands operating in his area and the crimes committed. Nicoletti escaped, as a result, with twenty years’ hard labour.*° If the prisoner did not confess, he or she could be beaten, clapped in irons, and left without food. Once brought to trial the accused had no

defence counsel. As the court was comprised of Austrian officers, speaking in German, the accused could not understand its deliberations. Amongst those imprisoned and awaiting trial in the barracks of the ex-convent of St Francis at Este, there was the widespread feeling that

they would never again return to their homes. In June 1853 six prisoners managed to escape from the barracks. They were all from the.

province of Mantua, and had decided to try and make for the marshlands near their homes. Still with irons around their ankles, the fugitives’ progress was pitifully slow and they were easily recognized

and recaptured. Only one of them, a 32-year-old carpenter from Carbonara called Giuseppe Polli, got very far. He managed to free himself from his irons, swim across the Adige at night time, cross the

Po by boat at Villanova, promising the boatman to pay him on his return, but was arrested at Sermide when very close to his home

village. The leader of the group, Antonio Boselli, a 26-year-old weaver, explained that he had planned the escape after his wife had visited him at the barracks and told him that two of his friends had been

shot by the military court: ‘realizing that our lives were lost...I decided to try and flee’. He finished his deposition in striking manner: ‘I have only one face and one character; once having said something | , °° Chimelli, Storia del grande processo, pp. 15-27.

After the Revolution: bandits on the plains of the Po 149 will not go back on it, and so I confirm today the confession of the crimes J have committed. I tried to save my life by escaping because that is a natural instinct and I hope that as such the authorities will not

consider it a crime.” The military court reached its decisions very swiftly. The results

of its deliberations were then referred to the regional military command and it was habitual for some death sentences to be commuted to twenty years’ hard labour. The confirmation or commutation of the

sentences were read out to the accused at the place of execution.”

Having begun at Este, the court became itinerant, moving to Montagnana on 20 June 1850, Teolo the next day, Monselice in August, and so on. The macabre sight of the court, its soldiers, officers,

chaplains, and prisoners, moving from village to village, left an indelible impression in the Venetian countryside. The sentences handed out by the court were extremely harsh by any

standards, and the fact that only nine accused were acquitted out of 1,204 persons tried, casts more than a little doubt on the equity of the

proceedings. It is true that many of the members of the bands were reported to be carrying firearms, and that possession of a firearm was a capital offence after the Revolution. But in the Notificazioni, the big wall posters which gave details of the crimes committed and sentences passed, the Austrians did not put the stress on the carrying of firearms as justification for what they were doing. It was sufficient to have been a member of a band, to have stolen as little as a piece of lard or a salame

or a cheese to risk being sent before the execution squad. And if a prisoner did not confess, his fate was almost certainly sealed. From September 1853 onwards a civil court was set up in Este: its

principal task was to deal with incidents of banditry which had occurred before 10 March 1849, the date of Radetzky’s famous decree forbidding the possession of firearms. The civil court’s actions contrast

very markedly with the draconian proceedings of its military counterpart. In nearly two and a half years of intense activity, the civil court passed only two death sentences on those who came before it.”* 51 ASV, Commissioni in Este, b. $, fascicolo 100, 1, nos. 23,500, 23,$25, 23,571, 23,535, 23,564,

23,587, 23,769. *2 Mozzoni, Di un avvenimento giudiziario memorabile, pp. 24-5. 53 Pedani, ‘Le ‘“Commissioni in Este”’, pp. 81-4. I have looked in detail at the trial no. I.A.35.12 of the civil court, which was finally brought to a close with the Appeal Court’s judgement of 20 April 1855; ASV, Commissioni in Este, bb. 15253. The trial had at its centre the killing

on 1 September 1841 of Antonio Sacco, called Ridolfo, ‘campagnolo’ and sheep merchant. Antonio Carrion, a 44-year-old landless labourer, confessed to having killed Sacco, but was sentenced to only twelve years’ hard labour. His principal accomplices were given nine years’ hard labour each.

I§0 PAUL GINSBORG Legal proceedings against bandits in the Papal States in the same period also showed far greater leniency than did the Austrians at Este.**

Indeed, the repression in this area of Lombardy-Venetia would appear to be the worst in the whole of the empire. If Deak’s figures are to be believed, not more than 500 persons were executed in Hungary after the Revolution, and by the end of the 1850s most of those still in prison had been amnestied. The most famous bandit of the Hungarian plains, Sandor Rosza, who had begun to lead his band as early as 1841 and had become a sort of national guerrilla leader after 1849, was only finally captured in 1856. He was not executed, was pardoned in 1867,

and went on to live until the age of 65.° | Why was the repression so severe in Lombardy-Venetia? This is as

yet an unanswered question. One hypothesis would be that the Austrians, given the sort of person they were putting on trial, could act

with impunity and with little fear of denunciation from the exiled patriots in Piedmont or elsewhere. Presented as the straightforward repression of banditry, the actions of the military court at Este stood little danger of acquiring international resonance. Another hypothesis,

which is well substantiated, is that Radetzky was convinced that

Austrian rule had been too mild prior to the Revolution, and considered that mildness as one of the principal causes of the Revolution itself.°° Far from ‘Radetzky as communist’, we have the picture of the Austrians determined to put down lawlessness of any kind, and making

an example of the transgressions of the most destitute section of the population. CONCLUSION

The history of the banditry on the Po plains and its repression by the Austrians, a story of notable brutality and horror, has significance on at least two levels. First, it casts a quite new and disconcerting light on °4 See the excellent recent study by I. Rosoni of a band in the Marches between 1840 and 1844, and its eventual fate: Criminalita e giustizia penale nello stato pontificio del secolo XIX. Un caso di banditismo rurale (Milan 1988).

°° See I. Deak, The Lawful Revolution. Louis Kossuth and the Hungarians (New York 1979), pp. 329-37, and Hobsbawm, Bandits, caption to illustration facing p. 81, for Rdsza. This is not to

suggest that Haynau’s actions and those of the military courts in Hungary were in any way lenient, but the punishing of ex-revolutionaries in Hungary does seer to have been less severe than that of petty thieves in Lombardy-Venetia. To say that more work needs to be done on this comparison would be an understatement. °® ‘Tam thoroughly convinced that it is high time to stop bestowing favours on a country which all too often abuses them; that it is much more imperative and necessary to let the country feel the hand of its mighty and much offended lord, since everyone knows that the Italians fear a strict but just ruler and will do his bidding, while they despise a good and indulgent one’ ; Radetzky to Prince Felix zu Schwarzenberg, 13 April 1849, quoted in Sked, The Survival of the Habsburg Empire, p. 198.

After the Revolution: bandits on the plains of the Po 151 Austrian rule in Lombardy-Venetia. The efficiency and equity of Austrian government in Italy have been a long-enduring myth both in

certain sections of the historiography on the subject and in Italian culture. The savagery of the military court is in direct opposition to this

myth and seems to be quite without precedent in the history of Austrian rule in Italy. Indeed, it contrasts starkly with the Austrians’ own actions in 1839, when Pillersdorff had ordered the enquiry into agrarian contracts in the hope of converting destitute labourers into prosperous share-croppers. The rigours and humiliations which the Italians suffered after 1849 have long been known, but the actions of the

military court add a new and macabre dimension to neo-Absolutism. Second, it is worth trying to locate the banditry of 1849 and 1850 in the larger context of Italian labour history. Some thirty years later, in 1884, this region was the scene of the first extraordinary mass strike by Italian rural labourers, La Boje. During the strike the labourers refused to collect the harvest and remained united until the landowners granted some of their demands. Of course, much had changed by the 1880s. Land reclamation had continued apace, with the destruction of the remaining valli, the day labourers had become the clear majority of the population, agrarian crisis and a plentiful labour supply had kept wages very low.*” But perhaps the most significant change was the spread of anarchist and socialist ideas amongst the professional class and petty bourgeoisie of the little towns of the plains, such as Este itself. As Merlin

has rightly claimed, for the first time a link was built between the café and the tavern.°* This was something of which the revolutionaries of 1848 had never been capable. The banditry of 1849 and 1850, then, was a social protest deprived of that alliance between local intellectuals and popular classes which has been so strong and fruitful a characteristic of Italian labour history. The day labourers, millers, deserters, and valligiani of 1849 and 1850 met and drank in the evening in the osteria; went out, stole, and pillaged; were caught and shot by a government that felt it could act with moral impunity. Thirty years later that same dispersed, narrow and primitive

protest had been partially transformed, and was not so easily condemned. °? For the changes in agrarian conditions, see in particular A. Lazzarini, ‘Trasformazioni economiche e sociali del Polesine nella seconda meta dell’ Ottocento’, Annali dell’ Istituto Alcide Cervi, $ (1983), 275-93. See also R. De Rosas, ‘Lo-sciopero de “La Boje”’ nel Polesine e le sue origini’, Societa e Storia, 1, no. 1, (1978), 65-86. °8 T. Merlin, Gli anarchici, la piazza e la campagna. Socialismo e lotte bracciantili nella Bassa Padovana (1866-1895) (Vicenza 1980), passim.

CHAPTER 7

Labouring women in northern and central Italy in the nineteenth century SIMONETTA ORTAGGI CAMMAROSANO

THE LEGACY OF THE ANCIEN REGIME

In Italy, as elsewhere, waged work for women did not have its origins in the factory system. Quite the opposite is true: industrialization only reinforced and perfected tendencies which were already very much part of Italy’s previous economic development. In fact, at the end of the

nineteenth century the fierce objections to a bill regulating the condition of women’s factory work derived not only from women’s essential role in factories but also from their contribution to other crucial sectors of the economy, like agriculture and the putting-out system, both still organized along traditional lines. The condition of women in nineteenth-century Italy can best be summarized as follows: a yawning gap existed between the importance of women’s labour in

production and the minimum recognition accorded to them in terms of political and civil rights. So vast a discrepancy had its roots deep in the society of the ancien regime.

The case of Venice at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth illustrates the importance of women’s work in the economic life of a great urban centre. ‘Nearly all the women of the lower classes work for the Arti’, noted Apollonio Del Senno, author of a commentary on the 1797 census of arts and crafts in the city.’ The registers of craft guilds reflect the variety of women’s work, from the making of buttons, pearls, and bracelets to that of shoes and hats; from the working of gold, pewter, and glass to serving in barbers’ shops and selling spirits. According to the Venetian census of 1762, the number of women working in industry was 3,284, out of a 1 L. Dal Pane, Storia del lavoro in Italia dagli inizi del secolo XVII al 1815 (2nd edn, Milan 1958), p. 70.

1§2

Labouring women in northern and central Italy 153 total of 33,930 enrolled in the guilds, and nearly half of them were employed in the silk industry. But such statistics underestimated the real picture. According to a more reliable estimate of numbers in the silk industry in 1773, alongside the thousand or so wives and daughters

of the foremen and masters there worked no less than 5,000 other women. Theirs were the humbler and poorer paid jobs of winding and warping, and other work that could be done at home.’ Turning from the cities to the countryside, the focus of our attention shifts from the artisan shop to nascent capitalist industry, organized on

the basis of the putting-out system. “One cannot study eighteenthcentury labour’, wrote Luigi Dal Pane in his monumental Storia del lavoro,

without being struck by the very widespread presence of women in the textile

industries. In northern and central Italy, in every centre however large or small, spinning and weaving were being done for the merchants and the factories, and there was not a single merchant or manufacturer who did not have an overwhelming majority of female labour on his books.’

In the Piedmontese factories producing organzine, the greater part of the workforce was female. In Lombardy women were responsible for the spinning and winding of silk and often for its weaving as well. In Tuscany, the spinning and weaving of flax and hemp was women’s work, as was the drawing and weaving of silk and the making of straw hats.

The countryside played an ever greater role in this spreading industrial activity. Women worked in their own homes in the winter months; in the summer they alternated work in the fields with that at

the loom; throughout the year they provided a modest but indispensable contribution to family incomes. Their work supplied the nascent forces of capitalism with a nearly inexhaustible supply of labour

at low cost; it enabled the landowner to maintain the numerical strength of his workforce, in spite of the low level of agricultural revenues; and it contributed, in general terms, to lessening the social repercussions of industrial crises. At the time of the grave silk crisis of 1787 Cesare Beccaria stressed

how the ‘disorder’ created by unemployment was not ‘particular to the city of Como, but general to the whole State’. However, those inhabitants who were ‘scattered and spread throughout the country* Ibid, pp. 167 and 580-3. See also, by the same author, I! tramonto delle corporazioni in Italia

(secoli XVIII e XIX), (Milan 1940), p. 137. * Dal Pane, Storia del lavoro, p. 166.

$4 _ SIMONETTA ORTAGGI CAMMAROSANO side’ could more easily find ‘help and subsidies, which derived from the

self-interest of the local landowners if not from their humanity’. In Como itself, though, Beccaria suggested that only a State intervention along the lines of providing flax to spin in place of silk would alleviate the plight of a “great number of persons, mainly unemployed women’, whom the crisis had deprived of work.‘ In Piedmont, women’s contribution to the working of silk had, as early as 1667, become clearly defined as wage labour. In that year the Regulations passed by sovereign edict provided a code of discipline which governed the mode, the hours, and the payment of work. On

this last point the discontinuity of women’s work, due above all to domestic and family commitments, emerged very clearly; this was a

problem that was to become notorious when factory work was introduced at a later date. The Regulations, in fact, required that female

silk workers ‘continue to work for the whole season in order to gain greater skill by long practice, and in the case of legitimate impediment

they must provide substitutes who have been approved by the Deputy’.° It was above all in Tuscany, with the Grand Duke’s Enquiry of 1766, that we find the first wide-ranging account of the absolute prevalence

of women in industrial work, a phenomenon which was clearly to characterize the first half of the nineteenth century as well. The enquiry illustrated the various circumstances and characteristics of women’s

work: the decisive contribution of large and small rural centres, the waged nature of work and its exploitative character, the poverty of rural society which pushed women to look beyond domestic spinning and weaving, thus transforming their work into an external, specialized, and dependent activity.®

Flax and hemp, materials much in use amongst the peasant and popular classes, provided work for women spinners, a veritable army of dependent workers whose low wages were made lower still by the uses and abuses of the truck system, and for a great number of women weavers (in the large rural centre of Pontassieve the officials of the enquiry numbered almost 1,700 female spinners and 117 weavers). The * C. Beccaria, Opere, ed. S. Romagnoli (2 vols., Florence 1971), vol. u, pp. 520-1. * ‘Regole per i filatori, e lavoranti da seta, & altri venditori d’essa (14 maggio 1667), in Editti antichi e nuovi de’ sovrani prencipi della Real Casa di Savoia, ed. G. B. Borelli, part HI, book x (Turin 1681), pp. 1,088—9 (quotation from p. 1,089).

§ “Dati estratti dall’inchiesta ordinata da Pietro Leopoldo il 25 novembre 1766’, in Dal Pane, Storia del lavoro, appendix 3, pp. 477-561. The quotations which appear from here onwards in the text, with page references in brackets, are taken from this source.

Labouring women in northern and central Italy 155 weavers had a certain direct share of the market, providing poor peasant homes with the flax and hemp cloth used both for clothing and linen.

The destitution of these labouring women in the small and large rural centres of Tuscany constitutes something approaching a leitmotiv

in the pages of the Grand Duke Leopold’s Enquiry. Sometimes the functionaries took care to stipulate that the spinners were ‘the wives of

agricultural day labourers’ (p. 546); at others that the spinning and weaving of flax and hemp was ‘carried out in particular by donne miserabili’ (p. 518). They also underlined the difficulties created by the tax on looms: ‘Every loom is subject to a tax burden of nineteen soldi, with the result that the clamour of protesting women’s voices can be heard.’ The enquiry suggested the suppression of the tax, in order to

save ‘the poor weavers from the direct collection of the tax, which sometimes they have forgotten or have been unable to pay, and which costs a greater amount to collect than the income from the tax itself’ (p. 473). The enquiry demanded forcefully that steps be taken against the truck system, to ensure that ‘at least half of wages be paid in cash and the other half in goods which are genuinely of equivalent worth’ (p. $53).

Bearing in mind regional variations, the picture painted above is going to be a typical one for the following century as well, though with still sharper colours and clearer contrasts. The impoverishment of the rural population and the spread of textile working in the countryside,

accompanied by the widespread use of female and child labour, are

phenomena which grow in importance in the first half of the nineteenth century. To them we must add the new but connected processes produced by industrialization.

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: SOME QUANTITATIVE DIMENSIONS OF WOMEN’S WORK

Any attempt to reconstruct the statistical importance of women in the productive life of nineteenth-century Italy encounters more than a few difficulties. The language of economics and of statistics at that time was generally male in both tone and content: the surveys speak of operai, filatori, and tessitori, even when in reality these were women workers. Work done at home, almost exclusively a female preserve, all too easily escaped the statistician’s notice. To these defects must be added others:

156 SIMONETTA ORTAGGI CAMMAROSANO the delay in adopting protective legislation governing women’s factory

work (and as a result the lack of enquiries and commissions dealing

with the subject); the late date at which women’s work at home became a subject for study and research; the unreliable nature of all statistics in pre-Unification Italy. As director of the newly founded statistical office of the Italian State,

Pietro Maestri denounced the criteria which had governed the collection of statistics prior to Unification: “It is sufficient’, he wrote, to remember that only in the Kingdom of Sardinia had a free system of publicizing statistics already been adopted for a number of years. The

administrations of the other Italian States used statistics purely as a governmental instrument and often as a secret one at that. The result was that they came to conclusions which at best represented merely the exterior profile of the facts, or which gave rise to illusions and errors.

The statistics produced were thus ‘fragmentary, incomplete, and often contradictory ’.‘

If, therefore, it is quite impossible to attribute to pre-Unification statistics an absolute value, the language of numbers still retains a certain eloquence in relative terms. In the 1841 census of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, female workers are only a third of the number of male workers in agriculture, but in industrial activities they are more numerous than men. The slight predominance in this sector accorded by the census to women (102,105 as against 99,262 men) was probably

much greater in reality. The group of 288,695 women classed as housewives, of whom 227,586 were in the rural areas, certainly contained a large number of women working at home.’ This was not an isolated phenomenon, nor one limited to the first half of the century, but a national reality which was to be typical of the following decades. In 1864 a cautious supporter of the movement for female emancipation, Enrico Fano, drew attention to the importance of the role that working-class and peasant women played in the economic

life of the nation. ‘In our country’, he observed, quoting the 1861 census as evidence, “women work far more than men do. In manual industries 1,379,905 men are employed, compared to 1,692,740 women; in other words for every hundred male artisans there are 123 ” Le pubblicazioni della Direzione di statistica. Relazione a S.E. il Ministro di Agricoltura, Industria e Commercio con note bibliografiche e sommari statistici fatta dal Direttore Dott. Pietro Maestri e parere

della Giunta consultiva di statistica (Florence 1869), p. 12. | 8 Pp. Bandettini, La popolazione della Toscana alla meta dell’Ottocento, ‘Archivio Economico dell’unificazione Italiana’, vols. ui-tv, pt. I (Turin 1956), pp. 114~19.

Labouring women in northern and central Italy 157 females’ (the male-female ratio in the Italian population at that time was 1,000/998).°

Two realities underlay these statistics on the conspicuous role of women in industrial activity. The first was that of the enduring rural character of Italy; industry, carried out at home and on a seasonal basis, remained to a great extent integrated with agriculture. The second was that of a society in which the widespread employment of women and children in industry, even in the heaviest jobs and those most hazardous

for their health, was considered a natural state of affairs, having its origins in the long-standing traditions of rural society. In this context it was highly significant that the outcry over factory

conditions in Lombardy and Piedmont in the 1840s was aimed at protecting children, both male and female, but not the women who worked alongside them in equal numbers.’ Similarly, the bill of 1886 which aimed to regulate the conditions of both female and child labour, became law after a decade of discussions, but only after the removal of all clauses referring to women. Legislation covering women’s work in factories was finally passed in 1902.

The numerical preponderance of working women in industrial activities, so revealing a statistic of Italian social reality at the moment of Unification, had diminished by the time of the census of 1881. At that date the number of men employed in industry had become slightly greater than that of women (1,853,656 to 1,823,134). However, these

new figures did not represent the sudden reversal of a long-standing situation ; rather they were the result of a new method of classification,

which sought to represent industrial production in an exclusively modern and industrialized sense. The industrial ‘working class’ was separated from that great mass of women workers who, in the cities but above all in the countryside, continued to be involved in industrial production on a discontinuous and seasonal basis. In spite of their

disappearance from the official statistics, these labouring women remained an essential part of the economic and social fabric of the country. The weight of their numbers was clear from the 1871 census, which had classed no less than 4,067,449 women in the category of those of

1868), p. 224. : |

° E. Fano, Della carita preventiva e dell’ ordinamento delle societa di mutuo soccorso in Italia (Milan

10 See for example the well-known works of C. I. Petitti di Roreto, Del lavoro dei fanciulli nelle manifatture. Dissertazione (1841), now in Opere scelte, ed. G. M. Bravo (2 vols., Turin 1969), vol. 1, pp. 91-691, and of G. Sacchi, ‘Sullo Stato dei fanciulli occupati nelle manifatture’, in Annali Universali di Statistica, 73 (1842), 233-65.

158 SIMONETTA ORTAGGI CAMMAROSANO ‘unspecified employment’. This was precisely because of the difficulty of defining their work, varied and discontinuous as it was, and always

linked with the tasks of running a household and being a mother. However, in the census of 1881 this whole category was simply eliminated. Women of ‘unspecified employment’ were now grouped under the catch-all heading of massaie (housewives), a category which suddenly leaped from 393,839 persons in 1871 to 3,720,906 ten years later. Hundreds of thousands of women from the lower classes who added some form of productive work to their household duties in order to balance family budgets now figured, in statistical terms, simply as ‘massaie’.™

It is worth pointing out that in the census of 1881 women spinners

(filatrici) were grouped in a category of their own. Spinning had continued to be a major source of employment for country women throughout the nineteenth century. The enormous number of women and girls employed in this sector (877,837 women and 80,745 girls under the age of nine in 1881) represented for the compilers of the census an anomaly which threatened to obscure the modernizing image of industrial Italy on which they wished to focus. It was actually an indicator of another, equally important, social process: the increasing impoverishment of the rural population throughout the century, and the extra weight of responsibility thrust upon women as a consequence. As the rural population became poorer, the need for women to earn extra money became ever more important. The southern countryside

was most affected by this phenomenon, but all of rural Italy was touched by it in one way or another.

| SPINNERS Women’s work grew out of the multiform and variegated nature of domestic work. To spin and to weave for the needs of the family was as much a habitual part of a women’s day as it was to cook or to do the washing. As an independent activity, spinning was exclusively a female preserve; the Tuscan census of 1811 explained that spinning, even if

practised with ‘assiduity’, was only able to supply one-half of one person’s material needs. It therefore seemed appropriate that such work 1! L. Bodio, ‘Relazione finale sul censimento generale della popolazione del 1881’, in Ministero

di Agricoltura, Industria e Commercio, Annali di Statistica, 3rd series, vol. xIv_ (1885), pp. 87-114 (quotation from p. 100).

Labouring women in northern and central Italy 159 be consigned to women, who were able to integrate it with their other

activities.” |

The same census once again confirmed the predominantly rural character of this work. In Lombardy, in spite of the crisis in flax production after 1815, about 30,000 women continued to spin the material in the countryside; their low wages (not more than 24 lire for 150 days of part-time work) enabled the industry to survive.’ In the middle of the century the noted Piedmontese scholar and politician, Carlo Ilarione Petitti di Roreto, remarked upon the ‘immense number of females’ who were deriving some form of income from spinning flax and hemp by hand, at the distaff or on the spinning-wheel, and

expressed his fears for the future of agriculture once mechanized spinning deprived women of this source of income." However, the second half of the century did not see the decline of importance in spinning as women’s work. In 1861 there were ‘at least 300,000” peasant women across the country who were spinning flax and hemp.'’® And even before the census of 1881 brought to light the existence of a veritable army of women spinners, industrial statistics of

the late 1870s had noted with some preoccupation the solidity and tenacity of this type of women’s work in rural areas. For flax and hemp in particular, it was calculated that some $00,000 quintals of thread had been “spun by hand by the women of our countryside during the long winter veglie [the evening gatherings in the stables or kitchens]’, five times more than that produced by mechanical means.*®

By time-honoured custom, in fact, it was during the veglie of the

winter evenings that women’s work was done. At the end of the eighteenth century Giuseppe Baretti wrote that in the winter the peasants ‘gather in their stables where their animals are, and there they

sing, dance, work, tell stories and court each other’.'’ More than a century later, it was still within this intensely social context that women’s spinning found its principal place. Women of the Piedmontese

countryside, born at the end of the nineteenth century, remembered that the stables were opened in the autumn and closed at carnival time (February). The most popular stables were those ‘where there were 12 L. Dal Pane, Industria e commercio nel Granducato di Toscana nelleta del Risorgimento, vol. m: L’Ottocento (Bologna 1973), p- 47. 13 B. Caizzi, L’economia lombarda durante la Restaurazione (1814-1859) (Milan 1972), p. 137.

14 Petitti di Roreto, Del lavoro dei fanciulli, pp. 97-98. 15 P. Maestri, L’Italia economica nel 1868 (Florence 1868), p. 206. 16 V. Ellena, ‘La statistica di alcune industrie italiane’, Annali di Statistica, 2nd series, 13 (1880),

93 and IOI. 1? G. Baretti, GP Italiani 0 sia Relazione degli usi e costumi d'Italia (Milan 1818), p. 239.

160 SIMONETTA ORTAGGI CAMMAROSANO teenage girls’. For the boys ‘it was through the veglia that they met girls’; they went to the stables in groups, sometimes taking as presents the instruments of the spinning trade, ’! ruet e ’] pendulin, the distaff and

the rings with which to fix it to the belt.”® The fact that spinning took place during the veglia was taken by

contemporary accounts as justification for the fact that such work found a natural place in a women’s day. Thus in the Tuscan census of 1811, women were said to devote themselves to spinning ‘in the hours in which they are resting from their other duties’. In reality, the fact that even in their moments of ‘rest’ these rural women were at work merely confirmed that their days were made up of an incessant stream of activity, of household chores, family duties, and of work for others. In the first decades of the nineteenth century it was commonplace to note that the spinners earned for their labours little more than ‘a crust of bread or a few coins with which to buy some salt’. None the less,

this income was a crucial element in family budgets, and in both Tuscany and Piedmont grave fears were expressed that its elimination

would destroy irrevocably the fragile equilibrium of rural society.

Proverbs which were still in common usage in Piedmont at the beginning of the twentieth century bear testimony to this fact: Donna alla rocca, felice a chi tocca (‘Find a woman who can spin, you'll be as happy as a pin’), Donna al telaio, marito senza guaio (‘With the wife at the loom, a husband need fear no doom’).”” Oral testimonies of peasant life at the end of the nineteenth century reveal the continuing importance of spinning in women’s life, and of female children being involved in the work as a matter of course. Giovanna Mosca recalled: “At ten years old I was already able to spin the rista (a hemp fibre of inferior quality). ’ Such work gave girls the possibility of saving for their dowry; it could also be the source of odious forms of exploitation. One woman recalled how her mother, while still a child, went as a serving girl to a peasant

family in the years between 1870 and 1880: ‘if she worked until midnight spinning hemp she could expect a bowl of soup; if not, she got nothing ’.*! 18 N. Revelli, I! mondo dei vinti. Testimonianze di vita contadina (2 vols., Turin 1977), vol. 1, pp. 141-2 (Angela Ginsiano), 87 (Giuseppe Macario), 92 (Bartolomeo Spada), 84 (Anna Lucia Giordanengo). 19 P.O. Toscano, ‘Filande del lino in Toscana’, in Annali Universali Statistica, 52 (1837), 216-17 (quotation from p. 216).

20 L. Bertello, ‘Per uno studio della storia e della cultura contadina: i bollettini parrocchiali dell’ Albese’ in Quale Storia per quali contadini, ed. G. De Luna and P. Grimaldi (Turin 1987),

pp. 55-64 (quotation from p. 59). “1 Revelli, I! mondo dei vinti, vol. 1, p. 183 (Giovanna Mosca), and vol. 1, p. 32 (Caterina Toselli).

Labouring women in northern and central Italy 161 WOMEN WEAVERS

The cultivation of flax and hemp had, as we have seen, deep roots in the Italian countryside. Over the course of the centuries, weaving, like spinning, had provided peasant women with a steady flow of work. However, weaving had an element of specialization about it, even if carried out at home with constant interruptions. It also, as we have seen for Tuscany at the end of the eighteenth century, had limited but direct outlets onto the market through kinship and neighbourhood networks. As the market grew, it was natural that the manufacturers should seek to extend their control over dispersed rural production. In the Napoleonic era, many of the looms in the Tuscan countryside which were used for flax, wool, and hemp belonged to women who no longer worked for themselves, but for urban merchants and manufacturers (of whom there were about fifty in Florence at this time).?* By the middle of the nineteenth century, the picture had changed somewhat. On the

one hand, there was a greater specialization of work at the loom: ‘scattered through the villages of all Tuscany’, many women now ‘concentrated exclusively on the job of weaving, passing from one cloth to another according to the commissions given to them by particular buyers’.** On the other hand, there were the increased controls being exercised by the ‘manufacturers’, with looms sometimes being physically concentrated in one place. The women remained free to choose between work in the factory or

work at home. In fact, as one of the entrepreneurs explained when describing the system which was still in operation some three decades later, ‘because each loom is a hand loom, it can be taken by a woman either to her home or to the factory’.** However, this was a relative freedom. The women who chose to work at home received a lower rate of pay for piecework (in 1870 the rates were fifty centesimi for work

at home, and eighty for that in the factory). Home workers thus had the choice of recouping by working longer hours, which they had to try and fit in along with housework and looking after the children (who were, of course, the prime motive for staying at home); or else of resigning themselves to earning less. 22 Dal Pane, Industria e Commercio, vol. u, p. 48. 23 Rapporto generale della pubblica Esposizione dei prodotti naturali e industriali della Toscana fatta in Firenze nel 1850 (Florence 1851), p. 218. 24 Atti del Comitato della inchiesta industriale, Deposizioni scritte, vol. u, Tessitura del lino e della

canapa (Rome 1873), p. 13.

162 SIMONETTA ORTAGGI CAMMAROSANO At Prato the evolution from home working to factory production

was greatly aided by the presence of a large number of women weavers, working at home, highly skilled, and already to a great degree

dependent upon local manufacturers. In 1840-1, in the textile workshops of Prato, 1,298 women and only eighteen men worked on the old wooden looms, producing for the traditional sector of ‘cloth for the use of peasants’ (made of a mixture of wool and cotton, or cotton and hemp, or hemp and flax). In the woollen sector, the working of the new spinning machines was entrusted to men, but even here there were still far more women than men weavers (1,074 as against 338).*° During these years, the spread of cotton cloths, even amongst the popular classes, highlighted the difficulties of continuing to produce in an isolated and autonomous fashion. In 1835, for example, at Fucecchio,

a large town in the plain between Florence and Pisa, a major crisis shook the local textile industry, caused by the ‘low price of foreign cloths’. The linaioli, whom the merchants employed to distribute raw

flax to the spinners, were badly hit; but so too were ‘the women spinners and weavers, who have no employment’.*® The case of Fucecchio was part of a more generalized crisis, which affected various

parts of the country at different times and to different degrees, and pushed the women of the rural centres towards alternative types of employment such as lacework or making straw hats, or else into the factories. Where production had previously involved the whole family, factory labour dissolved the family as a productive unit, and radically changed the division of labour between the sexes. In the poorer agricultural regions, entire families once lived from the products of the looms. A peasant woman interviewed in the middle of

the 1970s, Margherita Lovera, described the work that she and her husband once did in a far-flung village in the mountains of the province of Cuneo in Piedmont. The period she remembered was the inter-war one, but the techniques she described for making the bails of hemp and cotton cloth for the peasants of the plain undoubtedly dated a long way

further back: ‘I had twenty threads at the bottom, and then in two hours I tied the thousand threads at the top. I worked with the reels and finally ... with a flour paste I glued the threads, I made them equal, and with the brushes I made sure they were all level.’ But the heaviest work 25 *Prospetto sommario della quantita, qualita e prodotti delle fabbriche opificiarie della citta di Prato dall’anno 1840 all’anno 1841’, in E. Repetti, Dizionario geografico fisico storico della Toscana, vol. tv (Florence 1841), p. 653.

8 G. Biagioli, ‘I problemi dell’economia Toscana e della mezzadria nella prima meta dell’Ottocento’, in Contadini e proprietari nella Toscana moderna, vol. 1, Dall’ eta moderna all eta contemporanea (Florence 1981), pp. 85-172 (quotation from p. 131).

Labouring women in northern and central Italy 163 was done by her husband; it was he ‘who made the loom work with the pedals, who pulled the cloth, and you needed a lot of strength for that’,*’ because it was necessary to launch the heavy wooden shuttle which inserted the weft along the whole length of the piece of cloth. Work such as this, except heavier still, as wool was the raw material, had made the reputation of the weavers of the Biellese. The mechanized wool mill also developed in areas which, like the

Biellese and the Vicentino, could boast a long tradition of home working. At Schio, when Alessandro Rossi took over his father’s mill in the middle of the nineteenth century, he brought into the factory all the old manual wooden looms, and encouraged immigration towards Schio from the surrounding rural areas. But he was well aware that

‘modern industry, being concentrated in factories, has created conditions that are little favourable to the operative, who has lost the possibility of working at home’. According to Rossi, employers had ‘to

make every effort to compensate the worker in some way for the family life of which he has been deprived ’.”* In spite of Rossi using the male form, operaio, he was well aware that these considerations were of particular importance for women. It was they who previously had been used to working at home, and to using all their ingenuity to keep their

children busy and content while they did so. Now they had to accustom themselves to the demands of uninterrupted work at the machines. It was for these women that Rossi founded the kindergarden

at Schio, which played an important role in favouring the influx of immigrant workers towards his mill.*°

In the factory, women at first performed the tasks to which they were already accustomed when working at home. They prepared the spools and the chains of the warp, they helped to choose the wools, they corrected with careful and delicate stitching the errors in weaving. But the introduction of the mechanized loom, and its diffusion in the 1870s

throughout the factories in the north, transformed the division of labour between the sexes; this was to be a traumatic experience in many ways and was to have grave repercussions on family life.

By eliminating the heavy manual work of launching the wooden shuttle, the mechanical loom made it possible to replace the work of the

man with the cheaper labour of women and girls. What was now 7 Revelli, [1 mondo dei vinti, vol. 1, p. 97 (Margherita Lovera). *8 A. Rossi, Dell’arte della lana in Italia e all’estero, giudicata all’Esposizione di Parigi del 1867 (Florence 1869), p. 216. 29 ‘Contribuzione per una statistica delle mercedi’, in Annali di Statistica, 3rd series, 14 (1885), 43-S.

164 SIMONETTA ORTAGGI CAMMAROSANO required of them was to reattach, precisely and swiftly, the threads which had broken under the strain of weaving. This was work which required ability and dexterity, but its only major physical prerequisites were a sharp eye and sufficient height to reach up to the looms. In this new job, women’s wages remained much lower than those of men, but were none the less greater than their average previous wage. Women’s status in the factory changed too, as did their role vis-a-vis the men. These processes became clear in the Biellese, where mechanized

looms gave work to the wives, sisters, and daughters of the male weavers, who continued to operate manually the old wooden looms. When this substitution of roles was combined with a crisis in the textile industry, the effects on the levels of male employment became clear for all to see. Social conflicts of considerable bitterness took place, with the

women and girls fighting alongside their husbands, fathers, and brothers, and in so doing conquering for the first time an equal status as workers.” Such was the pattern of events in 1878 at the Sella mill in Biella. Elsewhere in the rural centres, the old wooden loom continued to play an important role during the last decades of the century. According to the statistics of the time, 230,000 home looms were still operating at the

end of the 1880s; of these at least two-thirds were being worked by women in the countryside, mostly for flax and hemp, and sometimes for cotton.?? However, it was the silk mill which was to offer the

women of rural Italy the most obvious and frequently taken Opportunity for industrial work.

THE SILK MILL

The working of silk, like that of flax and hemp, was widespread in Italian rural society. It was to be found in both north and south, with the exception only of the regions of Apulia, Basilicata, and Sicily.** A few figures will give an idea of the ‘veritable army of peasant women’

who in the first half of the nineteenth century were mobilized every summer for three or four months at a time. For mainland Piedmont, Petitti di Roreto gave the figure of 36,535 women (as opposed to 3,000 3° See F. Ramella, Terra e telai. Sistemi di parentela e manifattura nel Biellese dell’Ottocento (Turin 1984), pp. 251-7. 31 B. Benedini, Le piccole industrie adatte ai contadini nelle intermittenze dei lavori campestri (Brescia

1894), p. 18. 32 Ellena, La statistica, p. 47.

Labouring women in northern and central Italy 165 men), half of whom were children. The women unwound the cocoons and the girls rotated the reel on which the threads were rewound. The normal working day was fourteen to sixteen hours long, with a break of one hour for lunch. In Lombardy for the same period, the 1840s and 1850s, the female labour force for the silk industry was estimated at 80,000 women and girls.**

The working of silk was not only the most widespread of rural industries; it was also the most important. It had been so in the preUnification States at the end of the eighteenth century and in the first half of the nineteenth century, and so it was in the second half of the century as well. In the late 1870s, Italy produced more raw silk than any other country in Europe, and in the world it was second only to China.

The productivity of Italian workers was one-and-a-half times greater than that of their French counterparts. These were achievements which

depended entirely on the quality and intensity of work done by women. “The working of silk’, admitted Vittorio Ellena, ‘requires little physical force and our women, as befits this most delicate of arts, have good eyes and swift fingers. Furthermore, our poor little women

accept wages which are little more than half those being paid in France’.** At the end of the seventeenth century the Piedmontese had been the first to introduce a technique which gave silk thread an extra

strength and lustre, but which could only be executed by the agile fingers of women.

The unwinding of silk was the first stage in its production: the cocoons were put to steep in very hot water (70 °—75 ° centigrade), in basins which were heated from below by small furnaces. The woman throwster took the cocoon in her hands, unwound the silk from it, and

wound the thread onto a reel. When winding — and this was the Piedmontese method — she had to cross the thread over and over and

twist it upon itself so as to make it stronger. The Piedmontese regulations of 1667 laid down that the number of these windings should be eight, and stipulated a daily wage rate rather than a piecework one,

so as to be sure that the process was properly executed. But in nineteenth century, when the Piedmontese technique had become standard practice and the need for high levels of productivity had made piecework payment habitual, the number of twists given to the thread became the object of numerous disputes and conflicts. The more the silk 33 See respectively Petitti di Roreto, Del lavoro dei fanciulli, p. 690 and G. Frattini, Storia e statistica del? industria mantfatturiera in Lombardia (Milan 1856), pp. 58-9. 34 Ellena, La statistica, p. 43.

166 SIMONETTA ORTAGGI CAMMAROSANO thread was subject to tension as it was wound, the more easily it broke. The women workers then had to re-tie it, losing both time and money as they were paid on a piecework basis.*° In the second half of the century various initiatives were taken which

rendered the silk industry more firmly industrial and more efficient economically. Steam powered the movement of the reels and heated the water; in the interests of productivity the throwster was no longer required to work at the basins, and a sbattitrice, usually a young girl, took her place. These changes accentuated the intensity of the work process. Henceforth, the pace of the throwster’s work was determined not only by the intrinsic difficulties of production, but also by the greater or lesser swiftness of the sbattitrice in supplying her with the thread to reel. Tempers flared between the women; the sbattitrice, younger than the throwster and firmly at the bottom of the factory hierarchy, could often expect to be on the receiving end of the older woman’s anger. Sometimes, indeed, the sbattitrici were made to pay for their mistakes in brutal fashion. Lea Baravalle recalled her experience of working as a sbattitrice in a silk mull in the years after the First World

War. If she and the others like her were not sufficiently quick in providing the thread, the throwsters ‘hit us and then scooped up the boiling water and splashed it in our faces, or drenched us from head to foot...as a punishment ... because they in turn had to meet the demands of production’.** Technical innovation did not substantially modify the manual nature of the work. Both in the steam mills and the older ones with furnaces,

which in any case survived for most of the nineteenth century, the sbattitrice and the throwster worked with bare hands in the boiling water used for steeping. As a result, of all the illnesses which afflicted the women silk workers (rheumatism, digestive difficulties, failing eyesight), that which tormented them most was the damage done to their hands.

The growth in the size of the mills in the second half of the nineteenth century led to major concentrations of women workers. This was no longer the rural industry of the first decades of the century,

which most often saw women return home in the evenings and °° B. Chicco, ‘L’industria della seta in Piemonte dal 1814 al 1860’ (unpublished degree thesis, Universita degli Studi di Torino, 1970-1), pp. 159—-6o.

86 N. Revelli, L’anello forte (Turin 1985), p. 140 (Anna Giorgis). For the testimony of Lea Baravalle see B. Guidetti Serra, Compagne. Testimonianze di partecipazione politica femminile (2

vols., Turin 1977), vol. u, pp. 538-9.

Labouring women in northern and central Italy 167 combine work in the mill with that of the fields. The silk mills had outgrown the time when the rural stage of nurturing the cocoons determined the months of production; now the mills were open for the

whole year, attracting women from a very wide radius. The ‘foreigners’ were given lodgings which combined the habitual poverty of a rural dwelling with the strangeness and squalor of the factory. In

the 1840s one report noted that the women slept ‘in ill-ventilated rooms, huddled up on the most rudimentary of bedding’. Later, dormitories were introduced, with no other furnishings than “wooden bunk beds with mattresses made from leaves’. The women hung the sacks containing their possessions on hooks on the wall, ‘and there were rats and mice which climbed over everything ’*’ In the second half of the century, the development of machines for

the unwinding of silk, as well as the mechanization of auxiliary processes like bobbin-winding, which had previously been done at home, opened up new possibilities of factory work for rural women. At Savigliano, an important industrial centre in Piedmont, by the end of the century there were generations of women who, from infancy to old age, had performed the whole gamut of jobs inside the mill. ‘When local hands were lacking and there was a lot of work to be done, then they went to call the furestre [the foreigners]... They came from the countryside and were over the moon at getting a factory job’.*® The reason for such initial enthusiasm can be more easily understood if we glance for a moment at what were the habitual conditions of women’s life in the countryside.

AGRICULTURE

For the whole of the nineteenth century the statistics for agriculture, in

contrast to those for industry, registered a clear majority of male workers. Yet in the rural centres, where the great majority of the population was concentrated (the small cities being little more than large agricultural agglomerates), female labour in agriculture was the natural state of affairs. Domestic labour itself had strong agricultural elements. The woman supplied the household with dairy products by milking the cows or goats; with fruit and vegetables (the essential basis

of working-class and peasant alimentation in Italy) by tending the 37 Sacchi, ‘Sul lavoro dei fanciulli’, p. 242 and Guidetti Serra, Compagne, vol. 1, pp. 537-8 (Lea

Baravalle). 38 Revelli, L’anello forte, pp. 12-13 (Margherita Lemasson).

168 SIMONETTA ORTAGGI CAMMAROSANO kitchen garden; with clothes and linen, by spinning and weaving. A whole series of domestic tasks, like going to fetch water and doing the washing meant carrying considerable weights; from the Alps to Sicily, women had made a speciality of carrying weights on their heads.

Spinning and weaving, too, were intimately connected with a specific agricultural job done by women. For centuries it was their task

to prepare the fibres of flax and hemp by letting the plants steep in stagnant water. In the seventeenth century this work had inspired more

than one artist, but its highly unhealthy aspects did not escape the

penetrating gaze of a famous early-eighteenth-century doctor, Bernardino Ramazzini. Referring to the illnesses which afflicted the peasants in the autumn, he wrote: In this season they have the habit of letting the flax and hemp steep in stagnant waters; the women, who have the principal responsibility for this task, stand with the water up to their. waists and pull the bundles of hemp out of the bogs

and ponds so as to dry them. And so no few number of them, having performed so wet a task, fall prey to violent fevers and expire within a very short period of time.*”

Nearly two centuries later, the job of letting the flax and hemp steep

in stagnant water was still, in the Piedmontese countryside, an exclusively female task. Anna Lucia Giordanengo remembered how at the end of the last century she spun hemp with her friends in the stables

of a hill village in Piedmont: ‘We planted the hemp ourselves, and when it was ready we set it to steep in cold water. Then we beat the bundles so as to split them up.’*° The breeding of silkworms was also a widespread activity in peasant homes all over Italy. It provided a peasant family with its first cash of the year, before the harvest, and involved women in intense activity. It was they who had ‘to put the seed of the worms to the warmth of their breasts, until the time that they were ready to hatch’. Theirs was

the tiring and unrewarding task, in which they were aided by their children, of providing a constant supply of mulberry leaves to satisfy the voracious appetite of the worms, and to clean up their droppings. ‘Left to look after those silk worms, what toil was that, I still dream about them even now’ ’, recalled one peasant. “Poor women, with their 39 B. Ramazzini, Le malattie dei lavoratori (De morbis artificum diatriba, 1713), ed. F. Carnevale

(Rome 1982), p. 174. Women extracting hemp from a macerating-vat is the subject of a painting attributed to Guercino (1591-1666), to be found in the Pinacoteca Civica of Cento; see [] Guercino. Catalogo critico dei dipinti, ed. Denis Mahon (Bologna 1968), n. I8E. 49 Revelli, I! mondo dei vinti, vol. 1, p. 84.

Labouring women in northern and central Italy 169 men leaving home early in the morning, while it was still dark, to collect the mulberry leaves, and them left at home to clean up the worms, to look after the children, the animals, everything. ’™!

The leading role of women in the breeding conferred on them a position of authority when it was time to sell. One Piedmontese cattle merchant remembered: ‘If the woman had decided to sell, we bought at a good price; but if the wife told the husband not to sell, there was nothing more to be done.’ And it was the woman who went to market to sell butter and eggs, or the products of her vegetable garden.” These tasks did not exclude women from working in the fields. A woman’s role in the family was intimately linked with the agricultural work she did, alongside her husband and her sons. She would help in

cultivating the peasant holding (if the family was one of renters, of share-croppers, or of coloni); or the small piece of land which, especially in the mountains and high hills, many peasants, even poor ones, owned.

‘We had nothing’, a Piedmontese peasant recalled, talking of his parents in the last decade of the nineteenth century. ‘My father had rented a little farm of three giornate’, and he and his wife worked it together. They cultivated it all by hoe, they hoed even at night time, the only animal they had was a sow. My father and mother went to work in the fields, taking me with them like a little bundle, which they deposited under a mulberry tree.

They dragged along the board with which to level the earth, my mocher in front and my father behind with a rope, and once they got the ground level they began to sow the grain.*®

In some forms of fixed labouring contracts, cash payments were accompanied by a home and a small piece of land, as well as gleaning rights for the rice and corn. In these cases the physical division of labour

between husband and wife was quite clear. It was the wife who cultivated the small piece of land and did the gleaning, and in so doing ‘gained by her labour half of the family’s daily bread’.**

The questionnaire prepared by Agostino Bertani in 1878 for his ‘study of the hygienic, sanitary, civil and economic conditions of agricultural workers in Italy’, contained two key questions relating to the condition of women in the countryside. The first asked ‘if women are accustomed to work in the fields and carry weights in ways which 41 See Revelli, I mondo dei vinti, vol. 1, respectively on pp. 52 (Teresa Bertolino) and 14 (Giovanni Forzano). * Ibid., pp. 94 (Bartolomeo Spada) and 34 (Caterina Toselli). 48 Ibid., p. 37 (Giuseppe Daniele).

** G. Gramegna, ‘Delle risaie e della loro influenza sull’umana salute’ (1852), in L. Faccini, Uomini e lavoro in risaia (Milan 1976), pp. 196-202 (quotation from p. 197).

170 SIMONETTA ORTAGGI CAMMAROSANO damage their health and physical development’. The replies of doctors

from a great many of the provinces of Italy confirmed that women were frequently asked ‘to do the same work as men, without any regard to the special conditions of menstruation, pregnancy and confinement’.*? Bertani’s second question, namely ‘if women and children work at home with their own family, or if they work for wages away from their homes’, focused on another and no less grave chapter of rural suffering.

A commune rich in manufacturing like that of Monza, close to Milan, denied the serious dimensions of the problem, which was limited to ‘very poor and numerous families with an excess of hands’.

However, in other provinces not far from Monza, like Cremona, Mantua, and Pavia, and in the lower half of the province of Milan itself, the list of rural wage labourers compiled over four decades (from 1847 to 1874) registered the agricultural wage labour of women as habitual.*®

If we listen again to the testimony of Lea Baravalle, we can understand better why working outside one’s own home was a particularly harsh fate and the object of a specific question in Bertani’s inquest. Baravalle belonged to a family of ‘extremely poor rural wage labourers’ in the province of Cuneo in Piedmont. In the last decades of the nineteenth century her grandfather had been a labourer and cap d’om

(an organizer of the labourers of his village). Both her mother and father were labourers, too, at the turn of the century, and Lea herself followed her mother’s example at the end of the 1920s: In my part of the country we went to Saluzzo because there was a big cattle market. In the piazza, on one side there were the animals and on the other there were those of us who were looking for work. My mother had gone there too, when she was young... The peasant proprietors came down from all the valleys specially to look for men and women... They looked in your mouth to see if you had healthy or decayed teeth, because if you had healthy teeth it meant that you’d eat more; and if they were decayed, then you’d eat less.*”

When Lea Baravalle was in the market square they looked at the 45 Agostino Bertani’s questionnaire, with the replies of the municipal doctor of Monza, is published in S. Zaninelli, Storia di Monza e della Brianza. Vita economica e sociale (Milan 1969), pp. 277-95. For the questions and replies referred to in the text, see p. 291. A collection of the doctors’ replies organized by subject-matter is to be found in M. Panizza, Risultati dell’ inchiesta istituita da Agostino Bertani sulle condizioni sanitarie dei lavoratori della terra in Italia. Riassunto e considerazioni (Rome 1890); the quotation in the text is on p. 381. The troubled history of the

questionnaire, and of the enquiry which Bertani wished to counterpose to that of Jacini 1s recounted in A. Caracciolo, L’inchiesta agraria Jacini (Turin 1973). 46 “Notizie sui salari raccolte dal prof. Rota’, in Annali di Statistica, 3rd series, 14 (1885), 6-7. *7 For the testimony of Lea Baravalle see Guidetti Serra, Compagne, vol. u, pp. $36 and $40-1.

Labouring women in northern and central Italy 171 knuckles of her fingers to see if she knew how to milk cows; and after that they inspected her teeth. At this point so great was her anger and indignation that she turned on her heel and fled from the piazza. The destiny from which she had fled, seeking refuge as a servant girl in the city, was a widespread reality in the Italian countryside in the

nineteenth century. It was not limited to families of labourers, but affected in a more general way — as the commune of Monza pointed out — ‘very poor and numerous families’, namely of small proprietors, share-croppers, and other kinds of tenants. The importance of women and children as rural labourers actually increased in the course of the century. This was because of the steady

spread in the irrigated plains of Piedmont and Lombardy of rice growing, which had first been introduced into Italy at the end of the eighteenth century. At the beginning of the nineteenth century one observer thought it worthy of note that the growing of rice ‘gives work ...to women and even children of eight and ten years of age’.*® In the second half of the century it was above all women and older children who were mobilized for work in the rice fields, sometimes moving considerable distances from one region to another. They spent April and May in sowing, their feet immersed in water, working the fields with hoes or shovels in a constant and rhythmic motion. In June and July, when it was important to rid the furrows of weeds which

threatened the growth of the rice shoots, they worked under a scorching sun, with their feet and legs immersed in the muddy water. The hours of work in the rice fields were governed by the rising and setting of the sun. A law of 1866 had sought to limit the working-day of the mondine (the women rice workers), stipulating that ‘work was not to begin until one hour after dawn and had to cease one hour before sunset’. However, even as late as the start of the new century the law was widely ignored.*® Work conditions in the rice fields evoked a vast literature of protest.

Deaths caused by malaria in the rice-growing regions, like the other illnesses which afflicted labouring men and women, were only the terrible culmination of their suffering and deprivation. In the Italian countryside deaths at childbirth remained at a high level because of the lack of midwives, and the alarming rate of infant mortality was in part 48 See L. Dal Pane, Economia e societa a Bologna nell’eta del Risorgimento (Bologna 1969), p. 96. 49 Memoriale sul lavoro nelle risaie presentato alle LL.EE. il Ministro del? Interno ed il Ministro di Agricoltura, Industria e Commercio dalle Associazioni Agrarie di Novara e Vercelli (Novara 1903), p. 6.

172 SIMONETTA ORTAGGI CAMMAROSANO due also to the wet nursing system, which forced peasant women to breast feed their own baby and that of another woman at the same time.

In the variety of circumstances which could force a woman to rely only on her own endeavour for the necessities of life (such as the death of her husband, or war-time conditions), the case of seasonal migration has a place all of its own. For centuries migration had been a habitual cycle in peasant life, and in the poorest regions had helped to maintain a precarious social equilibrium.

In the winter, when the women were most busy with weaving, spinning, or knitting, the men set off on their travels, following patterns of emigration established over the centuries. From the poor Apennine regions of Tuscany and the Marches, they went down into

the plains of Tuscany, Lazio, and Campania; from the Alps they crossed into northern Europe. They were mostly poor peasants, forced

to migrate by strict necessity, but there were also shepherds and artisans. Their itineraries changed little from the beginning of the eighteenth century through to the second half of the nineteenth. They were away from home during the winter and the spring; sometimes they even stayed in the plains for the early part of the summer, since in their own mountain valleys the season was less far advanced. By harvest-time, though, they would all be back home.”® However, with the increase in the middle of the century of railway construction and public works, the men began to work away from home as labourers, bricklayers, and brickmakers. This meant that they were often not at home in the summer as well, which was of course the busiest time in the agricultural calendar; all the rural work now fell upon the woman’s shoulders. It reinforced in her a physical resistance, which was not only typical of the Alpine regions or the Marches, but

in general of all the poorer areas where seasonal migration was a widespread phenomenon. Linked to seasonal migration was also the custom of using female

labour in local public-works projects. Such a practice was already common in the first half of the century, in very poor provinces of the north like Sondrio and Bergamo,*' and it became more so in the following decades, with the increase in migration all over the peninsula. °° See for example, Dal Pane, Storia del lavoro, pp. 250-2, 482 and 486, and Industria e Commercio, vol. 1, p. 79; F. Bonelli, Evoluzione demografica ed ambiente economico nelle Marche e nell? Umbria

del? Ottocento (Turin 1967), pp. 143-5; H. Desplanques, Campagnes Ombriennes (Paris 1969),

ol Novisie ei salari raccolte dal prof P. Rota’, in Annali di Statistica, 3rd series, 14 (1885), 23.

Labouring women in northern and central Italy 173 In the 1880s in Friuli, in the extreme northeast, young women described as ‘day labourers’ or ‘rural workers’ themselves began to

take the path of temporary emigration. They accompanied their husbands, parents, or brothers, to work in the kilns, where they carried bricks and mortar; or else they cooked and washed for the groups of emigrants.°* Another consistent group of young women escaped from rural labouring altogether by choosing the path which led them into the cities, and the jobs of domestic servants, wet nurses, and nannies. WORK IN THE CITIES

In the first half of the nineteenth century, the steady expansion of the textile industries in the countryside had left to the cities the difficult and

ancient art of silk weaving. Plain and worked silk cloth, velvet and satin, ribbons and silk umbrellas, braids, fringes and lace, all were destined for the homes and wardrobes of the aristocracy and the wellto-do. Their production was concentrated in the major cities and was to a great extent carried out by women working at home.

In the Napoleonic era at Bologna some 4,000 women had found

employment making veils,°* but two decades later, with the concentration and contraction of the market, their numbers had dwindled. None the less the predominance of female labour in this sector had been maintained or even perhaps increased. In 1824, 760 women out of a total of 921 workers (of whom 83 were children) were employed by the seven largest Bologna veil ‘factories’ (the term was

used not to describe a specific building containing all the looms but

rather the putting-out system controlled by a single merchant). Domestic chores severely limited the productivity of these women. It was reported that while men earned on an average 20 to 30 baiocchi per day, women (whose rate of pay was half that of men), earned only 4-6 baiocchi, since ‘they lost much time in household duties’.** In Florence, working at the loom to make silk cloth was, in the first half of the century, an exclusively female occupation. Apart from one

or two men, the whole workforce of 1,800 was female, and their conditions of life were appalling. Belonging to the poorest stratum of °* G. Cosattini, L’emigrazione temporanea del Friuli (1903), facsimile republication edn by the Direzione regionale del lavoro del Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Trieste-Udine (1983), pp. 37-8. 3 ‘Prospetto riassuntivo delle fabbriche e manifatture esistenti (1809)’, in L. Dal Pane, Economia e societa a Bologna nell’eta del Risorgimento (Bologna 1969), p. 273.

54 Relazione statistica della Camera di Commercio di Bologna (1824), quoted in Dal Pane, Economia e societa a Bologna, p. 231.

174 SIMONETTA ORTAGGI CAMMAROSANO the population, they usually lived in one room which contained bed, loom, and fireplace.°*°

At Milan, according to statistics of 1833, men and women were roughly equal in number in the principal silk manufactories of the city.

The same local statistics also recorded a great number of women engaged in the type-foundries or busy in a whole series of artisanal crafts: in making jewels, umbrellas, and hats as well as decorative fringes and galloons, in working coral and sealing-wax, morocco and leather gloves.*®

Work done at home was thus the principal female employment in the cities, with its part-time character and its overtones of oppressiveness, due, amongst other things, to the very restricted size of workingclass living quarters. It was significant that this was one of the principal motives which led men to abhor working at the loom. They preferred instead, even if it meant being much less well paid, jobs as ‘errand-boys in a haberdashers’ shop’. Equally significant was that young women

also sought to escape from the servitude of the loom, which bound them to ‘the sad and wretched habitation’. They too chose to be ‘assistants in dressmaker’s shops’ for a few paoli per week rather than to earn four or five paoli per day as weavers.” By the 1840s it was already clear that work at the loom was being replaced by sewing as the principal female occupation in the major

cities. This marked a significant change both in the hierarchy of different types of women’s work and in the division of labour between men and women. In this context, the Tuscan census of 1840 suggests a number of conclusions. At Florence, where working at the loom was

so exclusively a female occupation, by 1840 female weavers had become a small minority compared to the great number of seamstresses and needlewomen. Concurrently, the number of (male) tailors had also

dwindled in comparison to their female counterparts. In Napoleonic times, by contrast, tailoring along with carpentry and umbrella making °5 G.C. Vanni, ‘Cenni sul commercio della seta in Toscana, e sui mezzi di aumentarlo’, Continuazione degli Atti dell’ I.e R. Accademia economico—agraria dei Georgoftli di Firenze, 9 (1831),

7-21 (quotation from p. 15). A tradition which was already dominant in the Napoleonic era was perpetuated in this way; see S. J. Woolf, ‘The domestic economy of the poor in Florence in the early nineteenth century’, in Mélanges de Ecole Francaise de Rome, 99 (1987), pp. 9OI-I15,

table 3 on p. gIT. 6 See respectively : ‘Prospetto statistico dello Stato delle manifatture e fabbriche in attualita di esercizio nella citta di Milano nell’anno 1833’, in M. Romani, ‘L’economia milanese nell’eta

deila Restaurazione’, in Storia di Milano, vol. xiv (Milan 1960), pp. 675-742, pp. 702-3; L. Sabbatini, Notizie sulle condizioni industriali della provincia di Milano, Annali di statistica, 44 (1893), 375; Maestri, L’Italia economica nel 1868, p. 207. °7 Vanni, Cenni sul commercio della seta, pp. 14-15.

Labouring women in northern and central Italy 175 had been considered among the trades to be taught to boys, while girls

learned to spin and weave.*> By 1840 the number of seamstresses in Florence and the other urban centres of Tuscany was almost equal to that of female servants. This was another significant statistic, if we bear in mind that ‘going into service’

traditionally constituted one of the most important forms of employment for the women from the lower classes, and if we remember that most of the seamstresses were only between fifteen and twenty-five years of age.°® It is more than possible that working-class girls were going to work in tailors’ shops not just to escape from the servitude of the loom and their cramped living conditions, but also to

avoid domestic service, which certainly took them away from their poor and barren homes but only at the price of humiliating personal subordination.

In Rome at the same period the sort of domestic service which involved living in the employer’s home was usually performed only by single girls who had recently emigrated to the city.*° Lacking a home,

family, or kin in the city, they saw this sort of work as a possible solution to the problems of lodging, employment, and, quite often, personal safety. But those women who had a roof over their heads, who were wives or daughters in a family of their own, and who had a network of acquaintances in a popular quarter of the city, chose only to work as domestic servants for certain hours during the day. In so

doing, they preserved their own autonomy and privacy, and could combine or alternate domestic service with other activities. When combined with subletting a room (or even a bed), domestic service could not only assure survival but even sometimes a relatively tranquil existence.

Sewing and needlework also appealed to the many Roman women who, lacking steady work or a training, had accepted service in other people’s homes. The choice was in no way connected to better wages. A woman who once ‘had lived comfortably and had put aside a bit of money’ as long as she lived as a domestic servant ‘in the house of her 8 S.J. Woolf, ‘ The treatment of the poor in Napoleonic Tuscany’, in Annuario dell’ Istituto Storico Italiano per PEta Moderna e Contemporanea, vols. XXIN—XXIV (1971-2), pp. 435-74 (quotation

from p. 449). > Bandettini, La popolazione della Toscana, pp. 119 and 68. In Florence seamstresses and domestic servants represented, respectively, 14.06 per cent and 12.71 per cent of the female population;

in the other Tuscan urban centres, 7.94 per cent and 8.64 per cent. 6° For the situation in Rome, see M. Pelaja, ‘Mestieri femminili e luoghi comuni. Le domestiche a Roma a meta Ottocento’, Quaderni Storici, 68 (1988), 497-518. The quotations in the text are

from pp. 500-1.

176 SIMONETTA ORTAGGI CAMMAROSANO employees’, was hardly able to ‘make ends meet’ once she started working as a seamstress for “various tailors’ shops’.

The general scarcity of productive jobs for women in the urban centres of Italy was relieved in some cities by a type of manufacturing

work which was traditionally reserved for women, namely that of making cigars from tobacco. This was an industry which predated Unification, and which was tied to manual methods of production throughout the nineteenth century.

Both the pre-Unification States and the Italian one exercised a monopoly over tobacco. In 1861 there were about twenty factories, mostly in the north and centre of the country, all with a predominantly female workforce. In 1880 there were 13,707 women employed in the

industry as against 1,947. men. The Italian state had encouraged a tradition in the industry by which mothers could hand on their jobs to their daughters if they so wished.**

The women did various jobs in the factory, including the most important one, that of actually making the cigars. They sat on high wooden stools, which must have been quite uncomfortable since the management of the factory at Lucca allowed its workers to ‘bring a

cushion of their own’. Workers were either grouped around long tables or else sat in twos at smaller ones with marble tops. Once the filling of the cigar was ready (and at Modena this consisted simply of a small amount of tobacco taken from an apron pocket), the worker cut a large slice of tobacco leaf, coated it with glue, put the filling inside, and wrapped it up. The cigar was now ready and all that remained to be done was to use a measuring stick and cut the cigar to the right length.*®*.

Piecework was the norm in the cigar factories: at Lucca about 500 sigariste produced 700 kilos of cigars per day. In the winter the working day lasted from eight in the morning to four in the afternoon (with one hour for lunch at 11.30 a.m.). In the summer, work began at 7 a.m. and finished at eleven at night, with one and half hours in the middle of the

day ‘to lunch or to go and eat at their homes’.®* Work discipline was reinforced and made more odious by its being linked with repressive moral control, which was exercised over the workers not as workers but as women. At Modena the documents of 81 See Ellena, La statistica, p. 123; Fano, Della carita preventiva, p. 219; P. Nava, ‘Storie di vita e di lavoro. Le operaie della Manifattura Tabacchi di Modena’, Memoria, no. 3 (1982), 99-107 (for a more detailed treatment by the same author, see La fabbrica dell emancipazione. Operaie della manifattura tabacchi di Modena: Storia di vita e di lavoro, Rome 1986). 52 See Cenni sul tabacco e dei modi di sua manifattura nella R. Azienda di Lucca (Lucca 1862), pp. 43-4

and Nava, ‘Storie di vita e di lavoro’, p. 102. 83 Cenni sul tabacco, pp. 66-7.

Labouring women in northern and central Italy 177 the cigar factory archive have revealed that the managing director was

in direct contact with the police, the carabinieri, and the local magistrate’s court. Anonymous letters, or those written by foremen, denounced ‘the immoral behaviour inside and outside the factory’ of this or that female worker.”

Yet the principal problem for the women cigar workers in the decades after Unification was not the very low wages, nor the long hours of work, nor even the employers’ surveillance. The real calamity

for these women was rather one which came not just from the factory but from the social context in which they lived, and which killed off many of them while they were still young: tuberculosis. The personal records of 1,100 female workers kept in the Modenese archive referred to above and which cover a period from 1861 to the

First World War, have revealed the horrific reality of hundreds and

hundreds of young women who died from tuberculosis. Even an exclusively technical and economic report like that of 1861 from the Lucca factory could not ignore the reality of ‘daily illnesses’ with their consequent absences amongst the workforce, and especially amongst the cigar makers. Some women in Modena, as Nava has written, ‘had tuberculosis in the family already, and they brought it with them to the cigar factory, or else they contracted the disease there, working every day shoulder-to-shoulder, on those stools all in a line’.® This grave health problem conditioned the interpersonal relations

amongst the women workers; on some occasions diffidence and hostility triumphed, with the management being informed when a sick woman tried to hide her illness; on others, solidarity and affection won the day, with collections being made to help those whom the illness had forced to give up work. Indeed, the two attitudes were not necessarily incompatible.

By the end of the nineteenth century major changes were taking place in the nature of women’s work in the cities. A great number of them were drawn into industrialization through the changes realized in

the ancient art of sewing and needlework. The sewing-machine transformed this sector, and in centres like Milan women workers became involved in industrial production in the modern sense.*® 64 Nava, ‘Storie di vita e di lavoro’, p. 103. 55 At Lucca ‘daily illnesses’ were reported both in the department of spulardaggio, where the leaves were cleaned and selected, and in that where the cigars were made (Cenni sul tabacco, pp. 27 and 40). For Modena see Nava, ‘Storie di vita e di lavoro’, p. 104. 6 In 1868 Enrico Fano noted, in relation to the ‘revolution’ brought about by sewing-machines ‘in the habits and customs of women’, that none the less half of them were still ‘armed with needles and thimble’, and gained their living in that way (Della carita preventiva, p. 221). By 1880 Vittorio Ellena was emphasizing the great utility of the machines, and the transformation

178 SIMONETTA ORTAGGI CAMMAROSANO Sewing-machines were widely used by women workers for the first

time in the 1870s. Their introduction left unchanged the traditional organization of work, but naturally raised expectations in terms of productivity, and contributed to increasing the hours of work, stress, and exhaustion.

These transformations were most evident in Milan amongst the women workers in the shoe and leather industry. This sector had developed rapidly in the 1870s, combining factory work with the putting-out system. Around a series of large factories gravitated a whole constellation of houses and tiny workshops where women laboured at hemming and at putting the finishing touches to bags, shoes, suitcases, and other leather goods.®’ Some of the details of this way of life have come down to us thanks to an enquiry carried out by

Luigi Carozzi, an eminent scholar of medical problems active in the first years of the twentieth century.® It brought to light health and working conditions which had developed over a long period of time, and to a great extent were typical of all. As far back as the first half of the nineteenth century the sewers of gloves in Milan constituted an important category of female industrial workers: the statistics of 1833 noted the ‘very large number of women employed by leather firms to make gloves of every sort’. With the introduction of a sewing-machine for family use, which was adapted in

various secondary ways from the original industrial model, the productivity of work increased enormously. In the 1880s, according to technical experts, the sewing-machine for gloves enabled a woman worker to make between fifteen and twenty pairs per day. But in Milan, at the time of Carozzi’s survey, a worker

only managed to produce at most fourteen pairs, and that after a twelve-to-fourteen-hours’ day. Indeed, a series of tasks had to be added to the sewing work pure and simple, which by itself took some thirtyfive minutes: repairing eventual faults (just a few wrong stitches meant beginning all over again), finishing off by stitching and reinforcing the sewings (prior to that, the women workers licked the gloves, because

this was said to ensure that the needle entered the leather better). In addition, they frequently had to stop the machines to look after their that they had brought about in work done at home (La statistica, p. 103). See also the entry, ‘macchina da cucire’, by A. Galassini in the Enciclopedia delle Arti e Industrie, eds. R. Pareto and

G. Sachert (Turin 1885), vol. v, pt. 1. 87 Sabbatini, Notizie sulle condizioni industriali della provincia di Milano, pp. 318-19, 343-6, 380-1.

88 L. Carozzi, ‘Il lavoro a domicilio delle guantaie’, I! Lavoro, 3 (1906), 1-27.

Labouring women in northern and central Italy 179 young children and do household chores. Often, too, they had to stop because of pains in their legs or shoulders. The only solution, then, was to go on working for twelve to fourteen hours a day.® In this way the Milanese gloveworkers worked far into the night. Even in the daytime their work was done in very unhealthy conditions, in rooms which lacked air or light, in the porters’ lodges on the ground floor of the residential buildings of the old city, or else in rooms which had to serve as kitchen, work room, dining room and often bedroom all in one. The hours of sleep which they lost increased the stress and exhaustion in constitutions which already suffered from the ‘organic denutrition’ typical of the working classes. Many of the glovemakers admitted that they took to drinking in order ‘to find the energy to get to the end of the working day’.

The glovemakers, and needlewomen in general, suffered from chronic pains in their legs, shoulders, and backs, caused by the many hours they spent bent over their machines. The sewing machine for gloves had a particular drawback. To allow the leather for the glove to be fed slowly under the needle without causing it to ruck, the machine was fitted with a third pedal in addition to the two standard ones. The need to use this pedal forced the worker into a contorted position, with all her weight concentrated on one side of her body. However, the most dramatic health problem for the glovemakers as for the cigar workers was that of the high incidence of tuberculosis,

with the terrible toll that it took of young women workers. The situation at the end of the nineteenth century was almost certainly as dramatic as that described by Luigi Carozzi a few years later.’ The spread of the disease was favoured by working conditions which, by accentuating tiredness and stress, diminished the defence mechanisms of the worker’s body.

The world of the glovemaker had many similarities with the social reality prevailing in other occupations in the major cities, of women labouring within the narrow confines of their own homes, making tassels, fringes, and lace trimmings, constructing boxes or binding books, all of which barely sufficed to give them enough to live on. It 59 The sewing-machine for gloves described in the Enciclopedia of 1885 (pp. 674-82) was the same machine which Carozzi described as being used by the Milanese glovemakers at the beginning

of the twentieth centry (‘Il lavoro a domicilio della guantaie’, pp. 5-7). 79 See Carozzi, ‘Il lavoro a domicilio delle guantaie’, pp. 8-18. In 1904, for example, tuberculosis was responsible for 40.69 per cent of deaths amongst the needlewomen, and of 72.73 per cent

(p. 15) of those amongst glovemakers. Carozzi underlined that there were no cases of there having been a history of the disease in the families.

180 SIMONETTA ORTAGGI CAMMAROSANO was a reality largely ignored by statisticians as well as by politicians: the law of 1902 for ‘the safeguarding of the conditions of work of women and children’ represented only the first steps towards the recognition of

the rights of working women. SOCIAL INFERIORITY

Women’s subordination was a general condition in Italy as elsewhere,

affecting all social classes and enshrined by law. The institution of maritalis auctoritas, for example, which made a wife dependent upon her

husband in a whole series of juridical and patrimonial ways, was abolished only in 1919. In the rural and urban working class, where women were involved from childhood onwards in productive activity, a woman’s subordination was in strident contrast with the substantially equal role that she played in supporting the family. Young workingclass women sometimes had a certain financial autonomy as well. In Piedmont a councillor of state noted in 1834 that the girls who worked. in the silk mills not only could put aside some of their wages for their dowry, but also earned notoriety as ‘young girls on the look out for

husbands’, ‘with money of their own’, ‘ready to make good marriages.” Women’s social inferiority, which existed in all sections of the population and often assumed the most odious of forms amongst the working classes, had its origins in the society of the ancien regime. Although demands for women’s equality had not been absent from the Italian Enlightenment, they were reinforced by the revolutionary wave which reached Italy from France at the time of the Jacobin Republics. Some women proudly declared their equality with, and even their superiority to men and ‘the right to have a say in all public affairs’.”? However, these were always an intellectual elite, nor did the historical conditions exist in Italy at that time which would have allowed women workers and peasants to contribute to the battle for emancipation. As

a result, their lives were destined to be the same as those of their mothers and of the generations which had preceded them. Discrimination against women began at the level of education. In the highly civilized region of Lombardy, an enquiry of 1840 revealed that of “1 Quoted in Chicco, ‘L’industria della seta’, p. 209. 72 ‘La causa delle donne. Discorso agl’Italiani della cittadina ***’ (1797), in D. Cantimori and R. De Felice (eds), Giacobini italiani, vol. n (Bari 1964), pp. 455-64 (quotations from pp. 456 and 462). On the eighteenth-century debate see E. Rodocanachi, La Femme italienne avant, pendant et apres la Renaissance (Paris 1922), pp. 45-6.

Labouring women in northern and central Italy 181 127,900 children who had not completed compulsory primary school, a good two-thirds were girls.”* In every Italian region it was common for the percentage of illiteracy among women to be constantly higher than amongst men. In adult life, one of the most constant discriminations against women was their low level of wages. In agricultural as in industrial work, in

work done at home as well as that in the factory, women regularly received half the wages of men for doing the same jobs. This ratio remained constant over many decades, in different sorts of jobs and, as Petitti di Roreto noted, over a whole geographical area, which included not only Italy but France, Switzerland, and the Rhineland as well.’* It testified to the presence of customs and attitudes which went very far back in time. However, there were no limitations to the range of women’s work.

In the words of Giuseppe Civelli, ‘women can be seen wielding the hammer of the blacksmith with the same force as a man, riding and guiding horses and then moving on to needlework with the greatest of

ease; they are used to carrying heavy weights and to the most backbreaking work in agriculture and in the workshop’.” The variety of women’s work was indeed unending. In the quarries of Liguria they carried the slabs of alabaster and of slate, and in the Sicilian sulphur mines they ended their days with grave physical deformities as a result of carrying the calcaroni, the great blocks of mineral from which the sulphur was extracted. In the Sardinian mines

they were given the task of washing the minerals that had been extracted. Women, too, were at work as navvies on the roads and railways, in northern and central Italy as well as in Naples and in Calabria. In Tuscany a great many women worked in highly unhealthy industries like matchmaking, porcelain, and glass, without the slightest precautions being taken in the event of their being pregnant.’® None the less the discriminations against women in terms of work

and pay meant that if they were alone it was all too easy for them to 73 Sacchi, ‘Sullo Stato dei fanciulli’, pp. 241-2.

*4 Petitti di Roreto, ‘Del lavoro dei fanciulli’, p. 604. See also Woolf, ‘The domestic economy of the poor’, pp. 908-9. This ratio was not substantially modified in the second half of the century. > G. Civelli, ‘Risposta all’interrogatorio formulato dalla Commissione consultiva sugli istituti

di previdenza e del lavoro presso il Ministero di Agricoltura, Industria e Commercio’, in Ricerche sopra la condizione degli operai nelle fabbriche, Annali del Ministero di Agricoltura, Industria

e Commercio, 103 (1877). Attached document A, pp. 117-20 (quotation from p. 117). 76 Ricerche sopra la condizione degli operai, pp. 5, 8, 38 (Liguria), 93 (Sardinia), 130 (Tuscany), 141 (Naples).

182 SIMONETTA ORTAGGI CAMMAROSANO slip from poverty into indigence. Women were the principal targets of nineteenth-century charity, both public and private. Amongst the lists

of the welfare institutions in the Italian cities in the middle of the nineteenth century, those dedicated to single women reoccur with obsessive monotony: there were those for ‘imperilled women and girls’, ‘corrupted girls’, ‘repentant women’, ‘converted women’ etc.” Lacking any material resources, single women took to prostitution as a matter of course. They were the zitelle, smgle women who needed a dowry in order to marry, or at least some sort of work in order to live; and also widows, whose indigence was an ever-present feature of urban society.

Factory work forced the working day of a married woman well beyond the number of hours customary in the different trades. As an observer stressed in the first half of the century, the working day of women employed in unwinding the silk was far from over when they left the mill in the evening. Many had more or less lengthy walks in order to arrive home; all of them, because they had to abandon their homes and children during the day have to provide for their children’s immediate needs and for those of the morrow, as well as to put

their homes in good order. For all this several hours of labour are indispensable, with the consequence that for some women the hours of repose

are reduced to five or six.” |

It was usual, however, that a married women with small children, who had no mother or other relatives to help her, gave up work in the factory, and chose to work at home. This was why female employment was looked on with diffidence. As Vittorio Ellena pointed out, ‘it was the source of many problems. When a woman sets up home, either she abandons the factory or she works there irregularly ’.”® Further evidence of the long-standing discrimination against women

can be found in the very limited participation of women in the development of professional associations. At the end of 1862, the mutual-aid societies, which at that time were the principal expression of workers’ self-defence had only 10,198 women members as against 101,208 men.®° Still more significant was the diffidence with which male workers greeted women’s participation in workers’ associations.

Under the ‘objective’ pretexts which were used to justify their "7 C. Bianchi, Geografia politica dell Italia (Florence 1843; see for example, pp. 732, 735, 806-08,

78 Rhee “Osservazioni igieniche sulla trattura della seta in Novi’ (1845), quoted in Chicco,

‘L’industria della seta’, pp. 210-13. 9 Ellena, La statistica, p. 33. 80 Maestri, L’Italia economica, p. 175 and Fano, Della carita preventiva, pp. 224-5.

Labouring women in northern and central Italy 183 hostility — the scantiness of women’s work or their propensity to illness®* — lay an ancient spirit of corporation, which sought at all costs

to defend men’s jobs from female competition. In 1879 the Milanese

Chamber of Labour reported: ‘In this year as well in the Milan district we have had cause to deplore more than one strike called by men workers who had the intention of forcing the factory owners not to take on apprentices or female labour. ’**

Women’s economic equality, indeed, was inseparable from their emancipation at the level of political rights and of family and marital relations. Underneath male hostility to women being taken on in the

factories and doing the same work for the same pay lay a more profound fear, that of the calling into question of male dominance in the family. These were problems which the nascent socialist movement had to confront; at the end of the century it assumed the mantle of women’s

emancipation as part of that of the working class. In the valleys surrounding Biella, generations and generations of worker-peasants had lived by cultivating their small holdings and as domestic weavers

of wool. In the course of the century workers’ attitudes were profoundly transformed both by the changes in the productive system (the introduction of spinning, weaving machines, the passage from

working at home to work in the factory, the growth of women and children’s labour), and by the introduction of socialist ideas. By the end of the century workers’ attitudes to the employers had altered radically : so too had those of their sons who had freed themselves, at least in part, from overriding paternal authority, and no longer gave all their wages

to the family but only a clearly stipulated part of them. But no such transformations had occurred in the Biellese in workers’ attitudes to their wives. ‘You must’, exhorted the local social newspaper, the Corriere Biellese, ‘respect your womenfolk and make them respected: you must not be ashamed to be in their company and to help them when you can and when they have need of it.’** It was the turn of the century. Only the First World War, with its profound transformations and its unprecedented demands upon women would create the conditions for a substantial step forward in the cause of female emancipation. 81 Fano, Della carita preventiva, p. 201. 82 FE. Friedlander, I! lavoro delle donne e dei fanciulli (Rome 1886), p. 128.

83 The ‘Corriere Biellese’ of 24 November 1900 is quoted in S. Merli, Proletariato di fabbrica e capitalismo industriale. Il caso italiano (1880-1900) (Florence 1972), p. 846.

CHAPTER 8

Garibaldi in England: the politics of Italian enthusiasm

, DEREK BEALES

Pre-eminent in the Liberal Calendar of Saints, alongside Oliver Cromwell, George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln, stands Giuseppe Garibaldi." In Italy he was all but deified in his lifetime: some

saw him as ‘Christ the Second’,* artists depicted him crucified and ascending, and, according to one of his modern biographers, this expressed ‘no more than the feelings of the great mass of the Italian people, especially in the southern provinces’.’ ‘The People of Italy’, it was said, “idolize Garibaldi, they have tabooed him, and no one ventures

to touch him.’* The nuns of a Palermitan convent, promising to love him and pray to St Rosalia for him, compared him to St George, ‘sweet The first version of this essay was written for delivery to the Confraternitas Historica of Sidney Sussex College in 1954. It has since done regular duty as a paper to schools, universities, Italian societies, and branches of the Historical Association, and has been progressively amended in the light of their reactions and new publications. An earlier form of section v appeared as ‘Il governo inglese e la visita di Garibaldi in Inghilterra nel 1864’, in V. Frosini (ed.), I! Risorgimento e l' Europa: Studi in onore di Alberto Maria Ghisalberti (Catania 1969), pp. 27-40 (see n. 109 below).

I received generous help in writing the first version from Denis Mack Smith, then my research supervisor, and he has continued to influence its later versions. There is much that he could add to it, and he has of course given an account of Garibaldi’s visit to England in his Garibaldi (London 1957), ch. 13. | hope there is something here that is new to him. I should record thanks for grants from the microfilm fund of the Cambridge Faculty of History. I have accumulated debts to many individuals. The late Mr C. S. Colman and the late Professor G. M. Trevelyan both passed on to me memories of their families’ enthusiasm for Garibaldi as well as giving me their advice as historians. Others who have helped me include Dr M. E. Barlen, Dr E. F. Biagini, the late Mr H. N. Blakiston, Prof. M. R. D. Foot, Mr G. D. Goodlad, Dr K. T. Hoppen, Dr B. Porter, Mr C. Seton-Watson, Dr E. D. Steele, Dr M. Taylor, Mr G. A. Vowles and Mr K. J. Woodrow. I owe particular thanks to Dr J. P. Parry for searching criticism.

* The theme of the revolutionary saint is developed in A. Soboul, ‘Religious feeling and popular cults during the French Revolution: “patriot saints”’ and martyrs for liberty’, in S. Wilson (ed.), Saints and their Cults (Cambridge 1983), pp. 217-32. * Massimo d’Azeglio to Panizzi, 25 July 1864: Lettere ad Antonio Panizzi di Uomini Illustri e di Amici Italiani (1823-1870), ed. L. Fagan (Florence 1880), p. 480. Henceforth, all date references are to 1864 unless otherwise stated.

> G. Sacerdote, La vita di Giuseppe Garibaldi (Milan 1933), p. 22, and passim for the whole paragraph. Pictures on pp. 23, 830, 843, 848, 945. * Christopher Wordsworth’s travel journal (1863), quoted in H. W. Rudman, Italian Nationalism and English Letters (London 1940), p. 318.

184

Garibaldi in England: the politics of Italian enthusiasm 185

and beautiful as a seraph’; and a Milanese crowd gasped at his resemblance to St Ambrose.* Many relics are preserved and venerated:

for example, some of his red shirts, locks of his hair, the bullet that pierced his ankle at the skirmish of Aspromonte in 1862, and the stretcher, stained with blood, on which he was carried wounded from the field. I

Italians, with their tradition of hagiolatry, might perhaps be expected

to go to extremes in their devotion to their national hero. More surprising was—and is— the adoration of the English, especially as shown during Garibaldi’s visit to England in 1864.° For the great Evangelical, Lord Shaftesbury, Old Testament references were as heavy with significance as prayers to St Rosalia were for Palermitan nuns: he

likened Garibaldi to Gideon, Solomon, and Judas Maccabaeus.’ Notwithstanding Garibaldi’s lack of religion and his notoriously casual

attitude to matrimony, he was considered a fit recipient for gifts of English, Scottish, and Italian Bibles and of The Pilgrim’s Progress.® A prominent Nonconformist divine, the Revd Newman Hall, described his life as ‘a most powerful lesson of moral and political right and of true practical religion’.? Lord Ebury, another aristocratic Evangelical,

declared when speaking at a reception for Garibaldi at the Reform Club: There is one quality which I hope I may claim for my countrymen, and which, though not specially pointed out in any of his addresses by our distinguished guest, cannot have escaped his penetration — one, without which all others would be little worth — namely, that we are a religious people. We

believe that there is a superintending Providence ordering all things, both in heaven and earth; that when, as in this case, the Almighty decrees that some great benefit shall be conferred upon a portion of our race, He raises up fitting agents for the work, and endues them with power to accomplish His high © G. Garibaldi, Autobiography (trans. A. Werner, 3 vols., London 1889), vol. m, p. 455 (J. W.

Mario’s Supplement). ,

5 The fundamental account is in G. Guerzoni, Garibaldi (2 vols., Florence 1882), vol. u, pp. 338-93. In English, as well as Mack Smith’s, the most important treatments are C. Hibbert’s in his Garibaldi and his Enemies (London 1965), pp. 339-51, and J. Ridley’s in his

Garibaldi (London 1974), ch. 36. See the extensive bibliography by A. P. Campanella, Giuseppe Garibaldi e la tradizione garibaldina: una bibliografia dal 1807 al 1970 (2 vols., Geneva

1971), vol u, pp. 678-02. * Shaftesbury’s diary, 12 June 1860 (E. Hodder, The Life and Work of the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. (popular edition, London 1892), p. 563); The Times, 22 April; G. B. A. M. Finlayson, The Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, 1801-1885 (London 1981), p. 458. ® The Times, 19 April; Hodder, Shaftesbury, p. 596; Bedford Times and Bedfordshire Independent,

19 April. ® The Times, 9 April.

186 DEREK BEALES designs. It was, then, with a deep thankfulness to the Supreme Disposer of events for raising up such a man as yourself, that we first heard and read of your deeds.*®

A Methodist minister uttered a cruder version of the same sentiment from his pulpit in Bedford. He took his text from Jeremiah: Thou art my battleaxe and weapons of war; for with thee will I break in pieces the nations, and with thee will I destroy kingdoms... And I will render unto Babylon and to all the inhabitants of Chaldea all their evil that they have done

in Zion in your sight, saith the Lord.

The Lord’s battleaxe was Garibaldi, selected for the role on account of his especially high moral character. Babylon represented the papacy with its temporal power, pernicious not only to the world at large but to Catholicism itself.‘ For many people in Britain Garibaldi stood ‘for the worshipful and holy cause of a nation’s redemption, and for the hope of religious liberty through the downfall of the Papacy’.’®

There were other grounds of attraction, of course. He was worshipped by many of the most exalted British ladies, at least three duchesses among them, so that Cavour thought it worthwhile to send to Emanuele D’Azeglio, his minister in London, for distribution to the more influential of these admirers, a lock of the hero’s hair.'* The dowager duchess of Sutherland walked off with him to her boudoir, where he smoked. This caused great astonishment and amusement, as this boudoir...has been considered such a sacred spot that few favoured mortals have ever been admitted into its precincts; and to allow someone to smoke in it 1s most astonishing to all who know the Duchess." 0 Address of Lord Ebury ... at the Reform Club (London 1864), p. 7. Another version in L. Fagan, The Reform Club: its Founders and Architects (London 1887), pp. 108-9. 1) Bedford Times, special edition, 19 April. 12 From a circular requesting donations for the ‘Excursionists’ of 1860 (Bishopsgate Institute, George Howell Library, no. 3956 (collection of newspaper cuttings)). My emphasis on the Protestant character of the demonstrations in favour of Garibaldi is, I think, one of the novelties of this chapter. The reluctance to stress this element has been partly due to the secularism of most modern historiography, especially in Italy, and partly to the rise of the ecumenical spirit and of Christian Democracy. Recent English writing has somewhat

redressed the balance for other periods of the nineteenth century: see esp. J. P. Parry, Democracy and Religion: Gladstone and the Liberal Party, 1867-1875 (Cambridge 1986). For English attitudes to Italy see my brief early manifesto, ‘Il Risorgimento protestante’, Rassegna storica del Risorgimento, 43 (1956), 231-3, my England and Italy, 1859-60 (London 1961), esp.

pp. 22-5, and, more extensively, C. T. McIntire, England Against the Papacy, 1858-1861 (Cambridge 1983). When I broadcast on this theme on the Italian service of the BBC in 1961,

I was asked not to say that Garibaldi hated the pope, though allowed to call him anti-papal. 13 Cavour to E. D’Azeglio, 1 August 1860: Cavour e l’'Inghilterra: carteggio con V. E. d’ Azeglio (2

vols., Bologna 1933), vol. u, part 1, p. 119. 14 Earl of Malmesbury, Memoirs of an Ex-Minister (London 1885), pp. $93—4 (his diary, 13 April).

Garibaldi in England: the politics of Italian enthusiasm 187 Mrs Seely, another of his hostesses in England, the wife of an MP,

wrote him a doting letter begging to be allowed to keep the handkerchief which she had had the privilege of helping to tie round his head.’? When he went to the opera at Covent Garden, the Floral Hall through which he passed was packed, at Ios. 6d. a seat, with an audience composed of five women to every man. According to the Scotsman,

Women, more or less in full dress, flew upon him, seized his hands, touched

his beard, his poncho, his trousers, any part of him that they could reach... They were delirious with excitement and behaved in the proverbially barbaric manner that Englishwomen of the middle class always do when they

are unduly excited and bewildered by anything that they consider splendour... Would any class of people in any other country under the sun —

always, of course, excepting America—conduct themselves in such an indecent manner ??°

His popular appeal was not confined to self-conscious Protestants

and women ‘temporarily a little out of their minds’.'’ Many other influential groups looked to him as a model and champion. The Volunteer Rifle Clubs, founded during the war scare of 1859-60, treated him as a patron, and some of them imitated his dress in their uniforms.'® Freemasons knew him for one of themselves. Working-

Men’s Associations, including trade unions, had no doubt that he belonged among them and that their class was ‘the class whom fhe] loves and delighteth to honour’.”® Lord Granville, leader of the House of Lords at the time of Garibaldi’s visit, explained to Queen Victoria: [He] has all the qualifications for making him a popular idol in this country.

He is of low extraction, he is physically and morally brave, he is a good guerilla soldier, he has achieved great things by ‘dash’, he has a simple manner with a sort of nautical dignity, and a pleasing smile. He has no religion, but

he hates the Pope. He is a goose, but that is considered to be an absence of diplomatic guile. His mountebank dress, which betrays a desire for effect, has

15 Sacerdote, Garibaldi, p. 8. Picture, p. 588. 16 Scotsman, 19 April. , 1? Granville to the queen, 21 April (ed. G. E. Buckle, The Letters of Queen Victoria ... between ... 1862

and 1878 (2 vols., London 1926), vol. 1, p. 176).

18H. Cunningham, The Volunteer Force (London 1975), p. 108, and many references in the

Bishopsgate Institute material (see n. 12 above). ,

19 E.g. references in J. Fyfe (ed.), Autobiography of John McAdam (1806-1883) with Selected Letters

(Scottish History Society, Edinburgh, 1980), pp. 69, 70, 73. Scotsman, 19 April, describing a masonic deputation being received at Stafford House. 20 Beehive, 9 April. Cf. the large collection of press cuttings about Italian aspects of working-class

political activity in the Bishopsgate Institute (see n. 12 above). I have been told by a member of Garibaldi’s family that they consider too much has been made of his lower-class origins.

188 DEREK BEALES a certain dramatic effect...His political principles, which are nearly as dangerous to the progress and maintenance of real liberty as the most despotic systems, are thought admirably applicable to foreign countries.”*

Granville’s condescending cynicism told only part of the story. To an

extent unmatched by any other figure, historical or contemporary,

Garibaldi combined the attributes of a film-star with those of a successful revolutionary, general, and dictator. He had been a real-life

cowboy hero in South America. He almost had won wars singlehanded. He had exhibited a saint’s self-denial in quietly retiring to his island of Caprera after conquering two kingdoms, and won a martyr’s crown when wounded by the soldiers of his own country — the country he had himself made — at Aspromonte. His deeds had been widely publicized in Britain by the IlIlustrated London News, and Punch’s coachman —a more articulate version of Private Eye’s taxi-driver —

despised him as ‘a revolootionary leeder, similar to those in the peny-papers’.** He reminded the educated of Cincinnatus and Joan of Arc.”* To the radical working-class Reynolds’s Newspaper he ranked as ‘the greatest man by whom England has ever been visited’.*“ His red shirts and blouses became fashionable, and biscuits and sweets

were named after him.” During his stay in London, his hosts’ servants

sold at exorbitant prices soapsuds supposed to have come from his wash-basin.”” Among numerous artefacts made to represent him were several Staffordshire figures.’ There are or have been Garibaldi Streets

in Grimsby, Liverpool, Manchester and Woolwich, and Garibaldi pubs in Yarmouth, Redhill, Guildford, Staines, Slough, Bourne End, Burnham, St Alban’s, Northampton, Worcester, Stourbridge, Swansea, Manchester, Oldham, Haltwhistle — and certainly elsewhere. I know of only two other non-royal foreigners who had pubs called after

them in the nineteenth century, Bliicher and Lincoln. There remain 21 See reference under n. 17. This quotation comes from pp. 175~6. 22 G. M. Trevelyan, Garibaldi’s Defence of the Roman Republic (London 1912), p. 110 and n. Punch,

23 April. 23 E.g. Bedford Times, 19 April; Scotsman, 4 April. 24 Reynolds’s Newspaper, 1 May. George Reynolds, the paper’s owner, called one of his sons Kossuth Mazzini (V. Berridge, “Popular Sunday Papers and Mid-Victorian Society’, in G. Boyce, J. Curran, and P. Wingate (eds.), Newspaper History from the Seventeenth Century to the

Present Day (London 1978), p. 258). , Generally on Garibaldi’s appeal, C. Seton-Watson, ‘Garibaldi’s British Image’, Atti del LI Congresso di Storia del Risorgimento italiano (Genoa, 10-13 Nov. 1982), pp. 247-58.

25 Unfortunately I don’t know exactly when these fashions began. 26 Rudman, Italian Nationalism and English Letters, p. 327 (citing W. W. Vernon’s Recollections of Seventy-two Years). 27 See A. Oliver, The Victorian Staffordshire Figure: A Guide for Collectors (London 1971), esp.

p. 162. The author brings out (pp. 73, 159-61) the importance of Astley’s ‘hippodramas’ with which the sale of many images was associated. Astley put on Tom Taylor’s Garibaldi in 1859.

Garibaldi in England: the politics of Italian enthusiasm 189 more British inn-signs depicting Garibaldi than either Gladstone or

Disraeli.2? Moving into the twentieth century, one of Henty’s adventure stories is entitled Out with Garibaldi.?° Biographies of him

appear in Britain as regularly as in Italy. Among modern British historians he is as much a hero to Denis Mack Smith as he was to G. M. Trevelyan. And I have myself heard him set up as a paragon of Christian leadership from a Yorkshire Baptist pulpit. II

It was on Monday, 11 April 1864, that he made his astonishing triumphal entry into London. He arrived at Nine Elms station, near Waterloo, at 2.30 p.m. The Times in the morning had announced that he was expected at Stafford House, now Lancaster House, then the town palace of the duke of Sutherland, at 4 p.m. He eventually reached

it, by the natural direct route, at 8 p.m. The fact that it took his procession more than five hours to cover roughly three miles testifies

to the density of the crowds. People frequently blocked his way to make sure of a chance to shake his hand or, failing that, to touch his clothes. Apparently no regular troops had been brought in to control the demonstration, though there were companies of Volunteers along the route; and the police had strict orders not to interfere except to prevent accidents. All the same, The Times reported that ‘perfect good

order and decorum’ had prevailed; ‘the frank, cordial smile of Garibaldi... when he did appear dissipated any feeling of vexation on the part of the spectators. ’*° The most vivid account of the scene, which has so far been ignored 28 This information comes from observation and from working through current directories and yellow pages, and is certainly incomplete. I have not pursued the question systematically back into nineteenth-century sources. It would be interesting to know how far the use of Garibaldi’s

name involved displacing an old name and/or making a partisan point, phenomena remarkably rare on British streets. It seems unlikely, however, that ‘Garibaldi Street’ had quite the overtones of, say, ‘Mandela House’. See E. R. Delderfield, British Inn Signs and their Stories (Dawlish, 1965). On p. 55 he mentions that a pub in Islington called The Independent

was named after Kossuth, but that seems in a different category from the flaunting of Garibaldi’s own name. Some streets, but not (I believe) pubs, were named after the president of the United States, Garfield, assassinated in 1881 and seen as a man of the working class.

After writing this chapter, I lighted on ‘Caprera Villas’, part of a terrace in Roman Road, Colchester, another section of which is dated 1862. Whether this is a unique case I do not know. 29 G. A. Henty, Out with Garibaldi (London 1901). There is also H. Hayens, One of the Red Shirts

(London n.d.). Winston Churchill planned in 1898 to write a biography of Garibaldi (R. S. Churchill, Winston S. Churchill, vol. 1 (1874-1900) (London 1966), p. 383). 30 The obvious source is The Times of 12 April, but I have used also the Illustrated London News, the Beehive, Reynolds's Newspaper, the Scotsman and Punch.

190 DEREK BEALES in the literature on Garibaldi, was written by Arthur Munby, the wellconnected clerk in the Ecclesiastical Commission Office who made a fetish of observing the behaviour of the working class, especially its

women.” I went out about 3.40. Scotland Yard was full of loungers, & mounted police from the country, in felt helmets, riding in to reinforce the native peelers... By four o’clock the crowd was impassably dense as far as one could see, from Trafalgar Square to Parliament Street. It was a crowd composed mainly of the lowest classes; a very shabby and foul smelling crowd; and the women of it, young and old, were painfully ugly and dirty & tawdry...

Yet for three hours, from four till seven — for I stood on the steps of a tobacconist’s shop all that time — this coarse mob behaved with the utmost good humour and peacefulness, though their patience must have been taxed to the utmost... The procession, such as it was, came in sight at 5, and went on continuously until 5.50. Then it suddenly ended... No one could tell — not even the very few police who were present — what was become of Garibaldi himself... Still there were no cries of disappointment or impatience: the mob

waited calmly, as before, for another hour. Then at last the rest of the procession struggled up: more banners of Odd Fellows and the like, more carriages and cabs, filled with working men and foreigners, who looked all unused to the luxury of riding; more trades unions on foot, from all parts of London; a young lady on horseback (who was she?) ...; a small bodyguard of Garibaldians; and the General himself, seated on the box of a barouche, in brown wideawake and what looked like a blue blouse. The excitement had been rapidly rising, and now, when this supreme moment came, it resulted in such a scene as can hardly be witnessed twice in a lifetime. That vast multitude rose as one man from their level attitude of expectation: they leapt into the air,

they waved their arms and hats aloft, they surged & struggled round the carriage, they shouted with a mighty shout of enthusiasm that took one’s breath away to hear it: and above them on both sides thousands of white kerchiefs were waving from every window and housetop...

And He, mean while, sat aloft, sometimes taking off his wideawake or gently waving his hand, sometimes sitting quiet and gazing around and upwards as if he could scarcely believe that this great greeting was meant only for him. I was not near enough to see his features closely. But one would have known that heroic face among a thousand: and in his bearing and looks there

was a combination utterly new and most impressive, of dignity and homeliness, of grace and tenderness with the severest majesty. Others who saw him nearer have since told me this most emphatically:

Ralston for instance, who was converted on the spot by that grand countenance, and who says it was ‘by many degrees more beautiful than any face he ever saw’.** 31 Munby’s diary for 11 April (Trinity College Library, Cambridge, MSS.). See D. Hudson, Munby, Man of Two Worlds: The Life and Diaries of Arthur J. Munby, 1828-1910 (London 1972),

. 186-7.

32 Piston was a friend of Munby’s who worked in the British Museum and was known for his translations of Russian literature. Garibaldi’s personality captivated almost everyone, whether

Garibaldi in England: the politics of Italian enthusiasm 191 This of today has been the greatest demonstration by far that I have beheld or, probably, shall behold. No solider was there, no official person: no King nor government nor public body got it up or managed it: it was devised & carried out spontaneously by men and women simply as such; and they often

of the lowest grade. It was the work of the rough but lawabiding English people, penetrated with admiration for something divine, and expressing themselves as usual in a clumsy earnest orderly way. Contemptible as a pageant, it is invaluable for its political and moral significance, and for the good it reveals in the makers of it, and for the good they themselves receive by reverencing a guileless person. How rare, and how beautiful, to see

hundreds of thousands of common folks brought together by motives absolutely pure, to do homage to one who is transcendently worthy!

This passage is as remarkable for what it reveals about the attitudes of

the educated civil servant, Munby, and his friends, as about the welcome itself. They see Garibaldi as spotless, even divine, deserving

the capital H in ‘He’; his beauty and manner overwhelm them; implicitly, the cause associated with him is equally immaculate. | People searched for precedents for such a vast, enthusiastic yet peaceful demonstration. In 1851 the exiled Hungarian national leader, Lajos Kossuth, had attracted large crowds, but not on this scale.** An

obvious comparison was with the huge turnout for the arrival of Alexandra, the new princess of Wales, in 1863, but Munby contrasts ‘the shouts of simple welcome’ produced on that occasion with the

‘ardour and the sort of deep pathetic force about’ the cheering for Garibaldi.** Lord Palmerston, the Liberal prime minister, who kept only a sparse and laconic diary, wrote in it for this day: ‘Garibaldi met with such a reception as no one ever had before. ’*° Munby was not alone in drawing morals from the proceedings. The Times claimed that, while ‘in every country of the Continent there may

be seen brilliant pageants and well-drilled battalions’, only in free England could associations of working men ‘conduct a revolutionary hero through a capital thronged with their own class, and yet not excite a fear in the mind of any politician that danger might spring from the gathering ’.°° Ministers assured worried monarchs that English working men ‘delighted to conduct their hero to the house of a Duke and to see at a distance or in conversation. Dr H. C. G. Matthew very kindly referred me to Gladstone’s description of his ‘seductive simplicity of manner’ (The Times, 4 June 1883). 38 See e.g. D. A. Janossy, Great Britain and Kossuth (Budapest 1937), esp. pp. 83-112. *4 Hudson, Munby, p. 187. The comparison is also found, e.g. in The Times and Reynolds’s.

*> Palmerston’s diary, 11 April (Broadlands papers, consulted in the National Register of

Archives). 3° The Times, 12 April.

192 DEREK BEALES | him taken by the hand by the aristocracy’.*’ The welcome became celebrated in Liberal historical writing: The western world [wrote Morley in his Life of Gladstone] was in one of its

generous moments. In those days there were idealists; democracy was conscious of common interests and common brotherhood; a liberal Europe was then a force and not a dream.*®

Garibaldi spent twelve hectic days in London, during which the level

of enthusiasm scarcely diminished. He received notable welcomes wherever he appeared. The ‘Establishment’ overwhelmed him with hospitality, and Palmerston had decreed that the government itself ‘ought not to show a cold shoulder to a man to whom the whole nation are about to give a warm reception’.*? As well as being féted whenever

possible by the Sutherlands and Seelys, Garibaldi dined with Palmerston, with the chancellor of the exchequer, Gladstone, and with

the marquess of Clanricarde, one of the most infamous of Irish landlords; he lunched with the foreign secretary, Lord Russell, breakfasted with the Reform Club and was banqueted by the Fishmongers’ Company; he received the freedom of the City, went twice to the opera and twice to huge demonstrations at the Crystal Palace, and was shown over Woolwich Arsenal; he visited both houses

of parliament; he met Lord Derby, the leader of the Conservative Opposition, and sundry bishops; he was painted by G. F. Watts, called on Tennyson and Florence Nightingale, and was finally himself called on — to the fury of the queen — by the prince of Wales.*° III

Palmerston boasted that the welcome had ‘afforded great pleasure to the bulk of the nation, as a proof of the community of feeling among all classes’.*’ But the applause was not universal. Punch put into the mouth of its coachman remarks which must have reflected, even while caricaturing, the feelings of some conservative observers: Dis-gusting! the karrige of the Dook of Sutherland, K. G., torn in peeces, if I may

be aloud so strong an eggspression, by the beestly mob, drored together to 37 Clarendon to Russell, 15 April (Public Record Office [PRO], Russell Papers, 30/22/26), reporting what he said to Napoleon IH. Cf. Palmerston to the queen, 18 April (Letters of Queen Victoria, 1862-1878, vol. 1, p. 173).

38 J}. Morley, The Life of William Ewart Gladstone (3 vols., London 1903), vol. u, p. 109. 39 Palmerston to Russell, 6 April, PRO, Russell Papers, 30/22/15.

4° For this paragraph chiefly The Times. On the queen and the prince of Wales, E. Longford, Queen Victoria (London 1964), pp. 363-4; P. Magnus, King Edward the Seventh (London 1964),

41 Palmerston to Queen Victoria, 18 April (Letters of Queen Victoria, 1862-1878, vol. 1, p. 173).

Garibaldi in England: the politics of Italian enthusiasm 193 welcum General Gariballdi, wich I ave reason to beleeve he have no regular

Kommishun...[It was] about the beestliest, wust-dress’t, and I may say haltogether workin-classedest mob ...as I ever see... That ’ere karrige was the

British Konstitooshin, the Dook cheek by jowl with a man of low eggstrackshun and revolootionary principles represented the Lords a-forgittin theirselves and the ouse of Kommons sich as Reform Bills and anti-Corn Law Leegs has made it.*”

Catholics were bound to feel offended by the strident anti-papalism expressed by many of Garibaldi’s hosts. Cardinal Manning wrote a condemnatory pamphlet, and the marquess of Bath, a Conservative

whip in the Lords, resigned in protest at his leader’s joining in the celebrations.** Disraeli, busy cultivating the support of Irish Catholic MPs, refused to meet Garibaldi, and a group of Tories succeeded in preventing the Commons from adjourning in his honour.** From an utterly different standpoint Karl Marx derided such popular enthusiasm for ‘a pitiful... donkey’.® Outright hostility to Garibaldi such as these examples show was not

widespread in Britain, though it was in Ireland.*® But among his sympathizers serious differences of approach were evident at every stage. They came to a head after the announcement on 18 April that his

planned tour of the provincial cities of Britain was being cancelled, ostensibly because of his poor state of health. In the remainder of this essay I shall discuss the significance of these differences in relation to three questions: why and on what basis was he invited and welcomed in the first place? Why did he go away so soon? And what importance has the whole affair for British political history ? 42 Punch, 23 April. 43H. E. Manning, The Visit of Garibaldi to England: A Letter to the Right Hon. Edward Cardwell,

M.P. (London 1864), republished in Manning’s Miscellanies (3 vols., 1887-8), voll. 1, pp. 123-48. Malmesbury, Memoirs, p. 594; F. M. L. Thompson, English Landed Society in the Nineteenth Century (London 1963), pp. 272-3. ** G. E. Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, vol. rv (London 1916), p. 327. Cf. J. Vincent, The Formation of the Liberal Party, 1857-1868 (London 1966), pp. 261-7 and K. T. Hoppen, ‘Tories, Catholics, and the General Election of 1859’, Historical Journal, 13 (1970), 48-67. J. Cartwright (ed.), The Journals of Lady Knightley of Fawsley, 1856-1884 (London 1915),

PP. 75, 275, reveals the Commons episode, thereby explaining Granville’s cryptic remark to the queen: ‘It is much for the dignity of Parliament, that some demonstrations in Garibaldi’s favour, which were threatened, did not take place’ (Letters of Queen Victoria, 1862-1878, vol. 1,

_ -p. 176). Cf. Malmesbury, Memoirs, p. 595, on similar disputes in the Lords.

According to the Beehive of 16 April, an employer sacked workers who had asked permission to go to see Garibaldi, saying the hero had come ‘to cause an insurrection and ruin

p. 215. .

the building trade and constitution of this country’. 4° Marx to Engels, 19 April (Karl Marx-Frederick Engels Collected Works, vol. xt (1985), pp. 516-17). 46 See the angry article in the Dublin Review, new series, 3 (1864), 132-55; E. R. Norman, The Catholic Church and Ireland in the Age of Rebellion, 1859-1873 (London 1965), pp. 84-5; below,

194 DEREK BEALES Iv

At least since 1860, Garibaldi had been accumulating invitations from English public men in their private capacities. They included the duke of Sutherland, who had landed from his yacht at Caprera and asked Garibaldi to his home in return; Lord Shaftesbury; three MPs, P. A. Taylor, James Stansfeld, and Charles Seely ; and Joseph Cowen, junior, a Newcastle manufacturer and newspaper-proprietor, who had already received the hero on Tyneside in 1854. Invitations had been issued by some of the Britons who had taken part in the expedition of 1860 to Sicily and Naples — at the Crystal Palace they mustered thirty or forty,

‘mostly slight young men, the best of whom looked like undergraduates and the worst like medical students’. Members of the Italian community in Britain wished to salute Garibaldi. In addition, many working-men’s and other organizations, and many towns, had asked him to come.*’

From the first, his would-be hosts were at cross purposes. Nationally, the ‘respectable’ upper-class section represented in the

Garibaldi Reception Committee vied with the supporters of the Working-Class Garibaldi Committee, and a similar division was to be

found in every locality. Feelings ran high between the two groups. Reynolds’s Newspaper scorned ‘the thick and incense-laden atmosphere’

of Stafford House and ‘the oily, greasy adulation’ of the City merchants, while the Illustrated London News hoped that Garibaldi will not be allowed to fall into the hands of the “working man” and his friends; not, of course, ...of the true working man, who is a thinker as well as a worker, but of the mouthing, ranting, mad-headed, confused syllabub of Secularism, Mormonism and decayed Radicalism which is represented by rabid papers and idiotic political writers.**

The complexity of the divisions among Garibaldi’s hosts is most clearly

apparent from letters in the Cowen MSS. at Newcastle.*? Cowen’s 47 Guerzoni, Garibaldi, vol. u, pp. 339-40 and 340n; Finlayson, Shaftesbury, p. 458; Munby diary, 18 April; Bishopsgate Institute material (see n. 12 above) and Cowen MSS. (see below, n. 49). 48 Reynolds's Newspaper, 10 April, 27 March; Illustrated London News, 2 April. Evidence of the

social split is everywhere, not only in newspapers of all persuasions, but e.g. in McAdam’s Autobiography (see n. 19 above) and the Cowen MSS. (see n. 49 below). There was even rivalry in promoting the grant of the Freedom of the City of London to Garibaldi (e.g. The Times, 8 April, but also as long ago as 1860 (Cowen MSS., C 1594, Holyoake to Cowen, 6 Dec. 1860)).

*° The Cowen MSS. are now in the Tyne and Wear Record Office, Newcastle-upon-Tyne. I am grateful to the archivists there for their help. Dr D. F. Mackay kindly sent me a copy of his article, ‘Joseph Cowen e il Risorgimento’, Rassegna storica del Risorgimento, 51 (1964), 5-26, a useful survey of Cowen’s Italian activities and of the relevant MSS. Professor John Davis very

kindly supplied me with a copy of his valuable study, “Garibaldi e il movimento radicale e operaio inglese (1848-70), in G. Cingari (ed.), Garibaldi ¢ il socialismo (Bari,1984), pp. 191-207.

Garibaldi in England: the politics of Italian enthusiasm 195 correspondents included Mazzini and many of his British sympathizers

such as P. A. Taylor and William Ashurst. Rightly or wrongly, an agent thought Cowen enough of a revolutionary to be willing to use his business contacts to provide cover for the despatch of a hundred revolvers to assist Polish rebels.°® He had certainly been active in raising

money for some of Mazzini’s enterprises and to support Garibaldi’s expedition of 1860.°' So it is no surprise that nearly all those who wrote

to Cowen about the proposed visit saw it as a means to ‘strengthen Garibaldi’s position’ and were engaged in trying to obtain ‘pecuniary

assistance’ for him in his ‘leadership of a combined revolutionary movement in Italy, Hungary, & Poland’.°* Many of them agreed with Ashurst ‘that the best thing will be for him to go to the provinces first’ and that he should be made to see ‘the importance of coming out as much as possible as a pro-Mazzite — & this is less likely if he begins with the

Londoners & the aristocrats’. But even these radical supporters of the Italian cause quarrelled among themselves. ‘All the factions’, wrote another correspondent on 25 March, ‘are trying to turn Garibaldi’s visit to their own selfish account.”°* There was bound to be difficulty in deciding the order in which Garibaldi would visit the numerous places that wanted him to come — the correspondence mentions Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Derby, Leicester, York, the Tyneside towns, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee, Hawick, and even the Highlands — and

3 54 * + .

it was proposed to write to ‘the proper people in all the principal towns’.°* But a spirit of goodwill should surely have prevented the irascible radical, Jacob Holyoake, from threatening to prosecute the spokesman of the Italian community, Negretti, for assaulting him during Garibaldi’s train journey to London. Holyoake claimed that ‘being an Englishman [he had] more natural authority’ than Negretti, who was ‘a vain Italian tradesman’.”° °° “Walewski (?) to Cowen, 24 April (Cowen MSS., A 808), 27 April (A 815), 29 April (A 817).

Walewski claimed that Garibaldi wanted this done. It is not clear whether Cowen did what was asked, but it is exactly the kind of thing he was supposed to be ready to do (E. R. Jones, The Life and Speeches of Joseph Cowen, M.P. (London 1885), pp. 16-19). °! This is evident from his and other newspapers, but see also Cowen MSS., e.g. letters of August

1860 (Cowen MSS., G 15-17) and material in M 812. *2 Holyoake to Cowen, 6 Dec. 1860; J. Davis to Cowen, 23 March (Cowen MSS., C 1594 and A 733).

®8 Ashurst to Cowen, 23 March; Torrens to Cowen, 25 March (Cowen MSS., A 734, A 738). *4 J. Davis to Cowen, 27 March (Cowen MSS., A 740), and Cowen MSS passim. Some other towns should certainly be added to the Scottish list (McAdam, Autobiography, pp. 165-6). °° The quotations are from a letter of Holyoake of which only pp. 5-7 seem to survive in the Cowen MSS., between A 780 and A 781, and from G. J. Holyoake, Sixty Years of an Agitator’ s

Life (2 vols., London 1906), vol. 1, p. 120. But there are many other allusions to the incident in the Cowen MSS., e.g. in Holyoake to Cowen, 14 April (A 770); and Holyoake’s indignant account in Sixty Years runs to five pages.

196 DEREK BEALES Communication with Caprera was never easy, and it was partly for this reason that from the beginning of 1864 the main negotiations with Garibaldi, on the part of both aristocrats and Mazzinians, seem to have been entrusted to Colonel Chambers, a colonel in the Volunteers, and his wife, who went out to the island and stayed there for three months

to besiege Garibaldi into making the journey to England.*® P. A. Taylor considered the Chamberses ‘a most disastrous element. They are described to me as Tories — Liverpool Tories.’ Holyoake wanted them

‘abolished’.°’ But they retained the respect of some radicals, and it is clear that they were supporters of Palmerston rather than Derby.”® However, Mrs Chambers’ lack of sympathy with the extremists was apparent when she wrote on 16 April: ‘very great efforts have been made to induce the General to speak out as it is called which would soon make him the guest of a small party instead of the guest of a great nation. °° The hero himself was anxious to please his British friends. But in that

category he emphatically included the Government, whose policy he believed to have been a decisive factor in his success in southern Italy. He did not intend to visit England without the sanction of Palmerston. When the prime minister let it be known that a private visit would not be unwelcome, Garibaldi gave in and agreed to make the journey.” Palmerston had been told that he was coming chiefly for his health which is in a very bad state and may be improved by a sea voyage and change of climate, next on account of his wound which is not healed and still cripples him, and lastly because his English friends wish to give

him good advice and wean him from the party of action,

to which was later added his desire to ‘thank the English Govt and nation for the support more efficient than they may perhaps be aware of which they have given to the cause of freedom and unity in Italy’. Palmerston said he did ‘not believe that he is come over here to put himself at the head of a European revolutionary conclave ... He is more anxious about cows and rabbits and agricultural implements than about

rifles and cannon.”*' It seems that Garibaldi did from time to time

throw out suggestions to his entourage that he might acquire in 56 Guerzoni, Garibaldi, vol. 0, pp. 342-3, 345—Onn., 347-8. 5? PD. A. Taylor to Cowen, 16 April (Cowen MSS., A 785); Holyoake to Cowen, [28/9 April] (A 759). Guerzoni, Garibaldi, vol. 01, p. 342, also calls Chambers a Tory. 58 See McAdam’s remarks in his Autobiography, pp. 67. 74-5; [J.H.] Chambers, Garibaldi and

Italian Unity (London 1864), p. 5. This book seems undoubtedly the work of Col. John Chambers, but all bibliographies give O. W. S. Chambers. 59 Mrs Chambers to Cowen, 16 April (Cowen MSS., A 786). 69 Guerzoni, Garibaldi, vol 11, pp. 341, 343-6. $2 Palmerston to Russell, 23 March and 6 April (PRO, Russell Papers, 30/22/23 and 30/22/15). Cf. The Times, 29 March.

Garibaldi in England: the politics of Italian enthusiasm 197 England some pirate-ships to fight Austria on behalf of Denmark — the war over Schleswig-Holstein was in progress — or to obtain weapons

and money for Grecian, Galician, and Polish expeditions, or to free Rome and Venice; and when he was on his way back to Caprera, he revealed what he called ‘the secret wish of his heart’ in ‘recommending the cause of oppressed peoples to the most generous and sagacious of

nations’.®? But it is unlikely that he was deceiving Palmerston and

Russell when He told them that he was not contemplating any revolutionary attempts for the present. He had for a long time been

estranged from Mazzini and the party of action.® In any case his | wound precluded his undertaking any martial enterprise for the moment. When he arrived in England, he gave a note to Negretti asking that there should be no political demonstrations in connection

with his visit. Because the Government was later suspected of causing his early departure from Britain, its motives in approving his coming deserve scrutiny. In 1861 Palmerston and Russell had been privately asked how

they would view the possibility of Garibaldi visiting England. They had agreed that they could not help it if he wished to come, and that he might be doing much worse mischief elsewhere. They were not put off by Cavour’s hint that he would be the tool of Mazzinians and Radicals.© In 1864 Palmerston evidently took a rather more positive

line.° The past behaviour of the two ministers makes it virtually certain that they actually wanted him to come. As foreign secretary in 1851 Palmerston had only with great difficulty been prevented from receiving Kossuth.®’ As prime minister in 1855 he had conspired with Antonio Panizzi, the librarian of the British Museum, against the lawful

king of the Two Sicilies, using the Secret Service Fund to assist an attempt to free political prisoners interned on islands in the Bay of Naples.®® Russell was always likening Garibaldi’s expedition of 1860 to

the ‘filibuster’ of King William III which led to the ‘Glorious 62 Guerzoni, Garibaldi, vol. u, pp. 347, 391. The Times, 28 April. 63 Russell to the queen, 13 April (Letters of Queen Victoria, 1862-1878, vol.1, pp. 169-70).

Guerzoni, Garibaldi, vol. 1, pp. 215-16, 338 and n. 54 The Times, 4 April. 85 Palmerston to Russell, 21 Jan.; Hudson to Russell, 2 Feb. 1861 (PRO, Russell Papers, 30/22/21

and 30/33/68). 86 See reference in n. 60 above. Although Guerzoni makes out that Palmerston was most reluctant, his evidence and the other statements already quoted do not support that interpretation. 6? 1D. Southgate, The Most English Minister...’ The Policies and Politics of Palmerston (London 1966), p.285. More fully, Janossy, Great Britain and Kossuth, pp. 85—7, 107-10. 88 G. B. Henderson, ‘Lord Palmerston and the Secret Service Fund’, English Historical Review, $3 (1938), 485-7; E. Miller, Prince of Librarians: The Life & Times of Antonio Panizzi of the British Museum (London 1967), pp. 252-6.

198 DEREK BEALES Revolution’ of 1688, and had taken delight in endorsing at the first possible moment the annexation of Naples and Sicily by Sardinia in

1860.°° Gladstone too had campaigned on behalf of these same prisoners in his Letter to Lord Aberdeen of 1851, describing the Neapolitan government as ‘the negation of God’, an exploit which earned him from Garibaldi the title ‘precursor’.”” And the whole Government had pursued a policy during the crisis of Unification which was intended to be as pro-Italian as was reconcilable with official neutrality and suspicion of France.”? Furthermore, in this unique period the settled policy of Britain was

to give free entry to all comers and to leave resident foreigners undisturbed. This policy had been confirmed in 1858 when, after the

discovery that Orsini’s plot to assassinate Napoleon HI had been hatched in England, the House of Commons refused to accept a Conspiracy to Murder Bill directed against such activities, bringing down Palmerston’s Cabinet which had proposed it.’* Both in 1860 and

1862 the Government promised, if it became necessary, to give permanent asylum to a much less congenial visitor than Garibaldi, the pope himself.’* So even the dangerous tension between Catholics and

Protestants in Britain, which was particularly likely to erupt into violence on Italian issues, as was shown by the serious riots in London, Birkenhead and elsewhere after Aspromonte in 1862, did not deter the authorities from welcoming to Britain the archpriests of both factions.”4 From the standpoint of the late twentieth century the liberal attitude of

parliament and the nonchalance of ministers towards potentially embarrassing foreign visitors seem equally remarkable.

However, the Government did show some mild anxiety about Garibaldi’s coming. Palmerston had stipulated that the visit should be private and he said he would “have a good talk with [Garibaldi] as soon as he comes to town, and I will not only give him good advice but cross examine him as if I was an Old Bailey Counsel’.”* He refused to allow the Volunteers to parade officially for the entry into London, on the 8° E.g. Russell to Hudson, 29 Oct. 1860 (G. P. Gooch (ed.), The Later Correspondence of Lord John

Russell (2 vols., London 1925), vol. a, p. 267). 70 R. Shannon, Gladstone, vol.1 (London 1982), pp. 230-2, $02. ’! Beales, England and Italy, passim. 2 For the whole paragraph B. Porter, The Refugee Question in mid-Victorian Politics (Cambridge 1979), esp. ch. 6,

*8 See McIntire, England against the Papacy, p. 60; N. Blakiston (ed.), The Roman Question (London 1962), pp. 82, 235~7.

4S. Gilley, ‘The Garibaldi Riots of 1862’, Historical Journal, 16 (1973), 697-732; F. Neal, ‘The Birkenhead Garibaldi Riots of 1862’, Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and

Cheshire, 131 (1981), 87-I11. :

*? Palmerston to Russell, 6 April (PRO, Russell Papers, 30/22/15).

Garibaldi in England: the politics of Italian enthusiasm — 199

ground that this was a political occasion. Paradoxically, the Metropolitan Police commissioner, Sir Richard Mayne, issued a notice banning the display during the procession of any political and religious banners or placards.’® Lord Shaftesbury, Palmerston’s son-in-law and eminence grise, was prominent among Garibaldi’s hosts and appeared to shadow him everywhere — except on Sundays and at the opera. The

queen was led to believe that the Government was joining in the celebrations in order to keep him ‘out of dangerous hands’, and Granville talked of taking ‘the democratic sting (as to this country) out

of the affair’.’”” Such phrases of course were chosen to humour the addressee. But ministers’ motives were clearly mixed, if not confused. They seemed at times to believe that Garibaldi was a revolutionary of

a different stamp from others, or scarcely a revolutionary at all, and

therefore an entirely acceptable visitor. At other times they saw themselves as working to detach him from the baleful influence of Mazzinians. They knew that his visit might cause them embarrassment, but they did not have the legal power to prevent it, and if they had tried informally to stop him coming and the fact had become known, they would surely have been severely criticized. More positively, they must have seen a chance to make political and electoral capital for the Liberal

party and the ‘Establishment’ out of association with such a transcendently popular figure as Garibaldi, who claimed to be coming to England expressly to offer them his thanks.” Vv

Why he decided so suddenly to depart so soon has always been something of a mystery.’® His dramatic change of plan has commonly been ascribed to Government pressure. At the time it provoked letters to the press, questions in the House and protest demonstrations. The Radical leader, John Bright, summed up popular suspicions in his diary: He is going away. It is said, and doubtless truly, that the Government wants

him out of the country. They fear he may excite political feeling in the 76 Illustrated London News, 9 April; Beehive, 9 April.

*? The queen to Granville, 21 April, echoing if not exactly quoting Palmerston’s letter to her of 4 April: Granville to the queen, 21 April; Letters of Queen Victoria, 1862-1878, vol. 1, pp. 175,

78 Thi motive, which I don’t think any minister avowed, was imputed to Palmerston by both tories and radicals (e.g. Dublin Review (1864), p. 135; Torrens to Cowen, 25 March, Cowen MSS., A 738: ‘Depend on it that Palmerston finding himself in uncommonly shallow water, would like to make use of the great soldier’s cloak for an electioneering flag [??plug].’; Cobden to Chevalier, 3 May (J. Morley, The Life of Richard Cobden (London 1903), p. 911). *? The best discussion of the detailed manoeuvres of Garibaldi’s first week in London is in Ridley,

Garibaldi, pp. 553-8. There is no account that relates them very effectively to the general political situation. The best of the older versions is J. L. LeB. and L. B. Hammond, James Stansfeld, a Victorian Champion of Sex Equality (London 1932), ch. 6.

200 DEREK BEALES provinces; or his presence here be annoying to the French or Austrians; or the Queen is irritated at the manner in which he has been received. Perhaps there is truth in each of these stories.®°

A study of the evidence shows that ministers were put under pressure to hasten his departure and that there were apparently powerful reasons for their doing so, but that they remained largely unconcerned and, as a Cabinet, appear to have had little or nothing to do with his decision to leave.

The queen certainly complained to them about ‘the extravagant excitement respecting Garibaldi, which shows little dignity ...in the nation, and is not very flattering to others who are similarly received ’.*!

The king of the Belgians was staying with her until 20 April, and cannot have been pleased to be ignored by press and public. On 9 April The Times reported a public statement by the Revd Newman Hall that Garibaldi’s visit was a greater honour for Britain than ‘the visit of all

the crowned heads of Europe put together’. Further, the enthusiasm shown at Garibaldi’s public appearances highlighted the queen’s almost total seclusion since the death of her husband in December 1861. It was

on 1 April that The Times first ventured to criticize her withdrawal from her public functions in an article to which the queen herself felt it necessary to publish a reply.*? But Palmerston and Russell consistently

resisted her interference on every front, reminding her from time to time, with studied impertinence, of the lessons of the 1688 Revolution.” In any case, her formal protest against ministers’ part in the welcome

to Garibaldi was written on 21 April, three days after he had decided to leave.**

In that letter, however, she drew attention to aspects of his visit which she and many others considered embarrassing, if not discreditable, to her Government. The excuse she gave for writing was that she had read a newspaper report of speeches by Garibaldi and other revolutionaries at a lunch he had attended on Sunday, 17 April, at the house of the great Russian agitator, Alexander Herzen, in Teddington.

Garibaldi had made in his speech a handsome acknowledgement of Mazzini’s contribution to the cause, and had joined in toasts to Polish, 80 R. A.J. Walling (ed.), The Diaries of John Bright (London 1930), p. 277 (19 April). 51 The queen to Russell, 13 April (Letters of Queen Victoria, 1862-1878, vol.1, p. 169). 82 The Times, 20, 9, 1 and 6 April. 83 E.g. Russell to the queen, 11 Jan. 1860: A. C. Benson and Viscount Esher, The Letters of Queen Victoria ... between ... 1837 and 1861 (3 vols., London 1908), vol. m, p. 383. 84 The queen to Granville, 21 April (Letters of Queen Victoria, 1862~1878, vol. 1, pp. 174—5). It is

interesting that the queen did not hear of the lunch until 20 April and that the editor did not recognize the name Herzen (the printed text says ‘Stergen’).

Garibaldi in England: the politics of Italian enthusiasm — 201 Russian, and universal nationalism.** As the queen said, this showed that the Government had failed ‘to keep Garibaldi out of dangerous

hands’. He had already called on Mazzini, but the respectable newspapers had disguised that as a visit to ‘Mr France’.** Efforts had been made to persuade him that Mazzini was discredited and should therefore be shunned, but he had answered: ‘had he found Mazzini in prosperity he would have avoided all misunderstanding by not seeing

him; but finding him in adversity, he could not throw him aside’. Shaftesbury commented that this attitude was ‘truly generous, tho’ not politic ’.®”

As the queen again pointed out, the envoys of many foreign Powers had good reason to protest at the ‘unusual adulation shown in official quarters to one professing objects so hostile to their royal masters’. The only diplomats who would attend the functions in his honour were the Turks and the Americans.** The rulers of the new Italy took serious alarm at his reception, knowing that any financial and moral advantage

he derived from it would probably be employed against them.*° Though Britain could generally afford to disregard foreign sensibilities, especially those of so weak a Power as Italy, at this particular moment she needed international sympathy more than usual.”” The Government,

and particularly Palmerston and Russell, were engaged in trying to extricate themselves from a diplomatic impasse into which their own folly — what Lord Derby called their policy of ‘meddle and muddle’ — had brought them. They had been publicly encouraging Denmark in

its dispute with Prussia over Schleswig-Holstein. But, by the time when Prussia declared war on Denmark early in 1864, it had become clear that Napoleon UI of France would not support his ally, Britain’s, stand. So there was now no prospect of Palmerston’s and Russell’s words being backed by deeds. An international conference was to meet 85 English text of Garibaldi’s speech in A Selection of Garibaldi’s Speeches and Messages on the Occasion of his Visit to Britain (London 1982), p. 3. See Guerzoni, Garibaldi, vol. u, pp. 359-61 and nn.

86 See n. 85. The Times, 15 April. Lord Stanley was among those who commented that ‘our papers suppress these visits’: J. Vincent (ed.), Disraeli, Derby and the Conservative party : Journals and Memoirs of Edward Henry, Lord Stanley, 1849-1869 (Hassocks 1978), p. 213 (16 April).

87 Shaftesbury to Palmerston, 9 April, Palmerston Papers (Broadlands). 88 The Times, 14 April. 89 Mack Smith, Garibaldi, p. 146. PRO, Foreign Office 45/57, and Russell Papers 30/22/70: letters of Elliot from Turin. 8° On the Schleswig-Holstein question and the Conference, W. E. Mosse, The European Powers and the German Question, 1848-71 (Cambridge 1958), esp. ch. 7; his article, ‘Queen Victoria and her Ministers in the Schleswig-Holstein Crisis, 1863-1864’, English Historical Review, 78 (1963), 263-83; and K. A. P. Sandiford, ‘The British Cabinet and the Schleswig-Holstein Crisis, 1863-1864’, History, 58 (1973), 360-83.

202 DEREK BEALES in London at the end of April to discuss the affair, but it was likely to be left with no alternative but to ratify the fait accompli of Prussian victory, while the British Government saved its face as best it could. In this exercise ministers still hoped for Napoleon’s cooperation, and on 13 April Lord Clarendon, a former foreign secretary who had just rejoined the Cabinet, left London for Paris to try to obtain it. British Radicals were convinced that he brought back with him on 18 April a demand that, as the price of French support, Garibaldi should be expelled from England.*? Frenchmen understandably found it galling that Garibaldi

lost no opportunity while in London to thank the English for their assistance to the Italian cause and to show his hostility to France, even to the point of offering his sword in the service of England against her. France under Napoleon had, after all, fought a war for Italy in 18509, while Britain had talked piously of the virtue and efficacy of a policy of non-intervention.”” Moreover, Garibaldi’s arrival happened to coincide with a domestic political crisis involving both French and Italian issues. At the trial in

France of Greco, who had plotted to assassinate Napoleon III, the prosecution suggested that Mazzini was involved, and linked Mazzini with Stansfeld, who in 1863 had become a civil lord of the admiralty

in Palmerston’s Government. In fact Mazzini had not actually encouraged Greco to murder, and Stansfeld had had no part in the affair at all. But he had, many years earlier, allowed letters for Mazzini to be

addressed to ‘Mr Flower’ at his house in order to evade the investigations that the Home Office was still at that period pursuing into the activities of foreign revolutionaries. Stansfeld claimed to have forgotten the fact, and it had all happened long before he became a minister. Palmerston backed him up and did not ask for his resignation. But Disraeli was exploiting the affair for all it was worth, The Times was treating it as a moral issue, and Stansfeld decided he must give up his office. He announced his resignation to the House of Commons on 4 April, the very day when Garibaldi was receiving the civic welcome

of Southampton.” It was certainly unfortunate that the Government should be embroiled with both of the Continent’s arch-revolutionaries when it was about to host a conference of foreign ministers at a time of diplomatic embarrassment. 91 See below, pp. 203, 210. 82 E.g. the article by Assolant from the Courier du Dimanche reproduced in The Times of 11 April. For Garibaldi’s remarks, Russell to the queen, 13 April (Letters of Queen Victoria 1862-1878,

vol. 1, p. 170).; Garibaldi’s address to the English people, 26 April (Selection of Garibaldi’s Speeches and Messages, esp. pp. 2-3, 6).

°3 Hammond, James Stansfeld, ch. 5. The Times, 5 April.

Garibaldi in England: the politics of Italian enthusiasm — 203

The foreign-policy case for hastening Garibaldi’s departure can be made to seem strong. But it does not appear to have bothered ministers. One aspect of it, the displeasure of France, was greatly exaggerated by radicals. During Clarendon’s discussions with Napoleon the visit had naturally been mentioned. But the emperor, himself once an Italian revolutionary, half-admired the great reception given to the hero, and

said he did not believe what his people believed, that the British government had sent for Garibaldi to frighten the rest of Europe. In any event, after the experience of the Orsini affair, Napoleon knew better than to make a formal complaint, and the Government could not have survived giving way to French pressure.** The only countries which actually lodged protests were Belgium and Italy, and ministers treated them with contempt: Palmerston attributed the Italians’ to cowardice; and Russell wrote, three days after Garibaldi’s decision to leave, ‘The King of Italy is very angry that the English people are paying to Garibaldi the debt of gratitude which he ought to have paid himself.’*’ As for Stansfeld, even after he had resigned, Palmerston defended his actions to the House of Commons in the strongest terms.”®

Ministers retained their insular—and popular — indifference to the susceptibilities of foreign Powers. Bright suspected that the Government wanted Garibaldi out of the

country not only to placate the queen and other Powers but also because ‘they fear he may excite political feeling in the provinces’. The

radicals certainly believed that outside London it would be more difficult for the ‘Establishment’ to keep control of the visit, that the provinces would subscribe liberally to revolutionary causes, and that

Garibaldi’s appearance there would strengthen the campaign for domestic reform.”’ Upper-class conservatives were worried by his insistence, even while he was staying in the greatest houses in London, on keeping in touch with his British working-class sympathizers. He received their deputations before his hosts were up, contenting himself —to the admiration of all true democrats — with a breakfast of bread and cheese left over from the previous night’s supper.** At these early hours aristocratic surveillance broke down. Sir Randal Cremer, then

Cremer of the Joiners’ Union, left an account of one of these dawn 94 Clarendon to Russell, 14 and 15 April (PRO, Russell Papers, 30/22/26). Porter, Refugee Question, pp. 203-5.

%° Palmerston to Russell, 6 April (PRO, Russell Papers 30/22/23). Seton-Watson, Afti del LI Congresso di Storia del Risorgimento, p. 251.

9° The Times, 5 April; Reynolds’s Newspaper, 10 April. %? This theme runs through the Cowen MSS. and the letters of Mazzini (see n. 104). 98 Most fully in J. T. Bent, Life of Garibaldi (London 1881), p. 229.

204 DEREK BEALES meetings: ‘On one occasion — he was talking in his broken English —

he said something that I could not make out for a long time: ‘I vant to see ze fabreek de beer, where ze men flog Haynau.’ And so off they went the next day at eight in the morning to inspect Barclay & Perkins’ brewery, like Cavour and Kossuth before them, to thank the draymen for having attacked General Haynau, ‘the Austrian Butcher’, in 1850. At the brewery Garibaldi drank to the workmen of the world. ‘This’,

says Cremer, ‘gave great offence to some of our party, who were strong teetotallers, and who thought that Garibaldi was the same.’®® More will be said later about the domestic political situation. But Cremer’s anecdote helps to explain why ministers appear to have been untroubled by the supposed threat of provincial radicalism. In 1850 Palmerston, though foreign secretary, had applauded the action of the

draymen and told the Austrian ambassador it was only to be expected.'°° So long as this sort of issue absorbed the attention of working class activists, the Government had nothing to fear from them and could only gain by their enthusiasm for Garibaldi. Pressure was, however, brought to bear on Garibaldi to hasten his departure. But it came from his hosts or ‘friends’ rather than from the

Government, and its object was to curtail, rather than to cancel, his provincial tour. Who was the real prime mover, and for exactly what reasons, it is impossible to say.'®' But those mainly concerned, among a group of his ‘friends’, were Sutherland, Shaftesbury, Seely — and Gladstone. We know of a meeting of some of these ‘friends’ at Stafford House while Garibaldi was lunching at Teddington on 17 April, but that was clearly

not quite the beginning of the story. At that meeting it was arranged that in the evening much the same group should return to Stafford House, to be joined this time by Gladstone. They were to consider what action to take on a medical opinion provided by the distinguished surgeon, William Fergusson, who had been attending Garibaldi since

his arrival in England, to the effect that his contemplated provincial 9° Daily Chronicle, 2 July 1907 (Bishopsgate Institute collection, see n. 12 above). A. Briggs, Victorian People (London 1954) says that Applegarth was in charge. Ridley, Garibaldi, p. 553, cites another instance of the discomfiture of teetotallers by the hero’s habits. 100 Southgate, ‘ The Most English Minister’, pp. 283-4.

101 Of the first-hand accounts, Guerzoni, Garibaldi, vol. u, pp. 373-81, has the chronology hopelessly muddled, but he was involved in the Italian side of the story and he also quoted in his footnotes the main English versions. For the English side see Gladstone’s (The Times, 22 April, 11 May), Seely’s (The Times, 21 April), Shaen’s (The Times, 9 May) and Stansfeld’s in The Review of Reviews, 11 (1895), §12—-13.

Ridley, Garibaldi, pp. 553-4, has made the only convincing reconstruction of the earliest stages of the intrigue, but I think there is more. to be said of Seely’s part.

Garibaldi in England: the politics of Italian enthusiasm 205 tour would overtax his strength. The tour, as now planned, included a round of official functions in all the principal towns of Great Britain — thirty at least, according to some accounts sixty.*°” But earlier in the day, when approached on the subject, Garibaldi had inconveniently declared that his health had never been better,.and doctors could be found who differed from Fergusson and had even written to The Times to say so. A spokesman was needed to talk the great man round. The

‘friends’ wanted Gladstone to try, but he at first refused. Then Garibaldi himself asked to speak to him. Several accounts exist of the meeting of ‘friends’, but only two of

the crucial conversation between Garibaldi and Gladstone, which apparently took place in another room and in Italian. One of these accounts is Gladstone’s own and was repeated with only minor variations to the House of Commons and to Radical deputations. The other is by the hero’s secretary, Guerzoni, who claims to have been in a position to take notes. The accounts tally in most respects, though Guerzoni is obviously anxious to show Gladstone in a bad light.*°* This is Guerzoni’s: Gladstone said he was speaking as a friend, not as a minister; he rejected, as unworthy of refutation, any suspicion of foreign pressure or ulterior political motive: he assured the General that whatever his decision no Englishman could allow himself to be wanting in the duties of hospitality ; he merely wished to impress upon him that, London visited, the principal object of his journey had been accomplished, and that these same splendid ovations which were one of the most marvellous events of our time, instead of growing, might with endless repetition decrease in dignity and splendour: anyway no one could claim that the engagements he had made had to be considered irrevocable and absolute;

so that if he did not mean to give them all up there remained always the expedient of restricting his visits to the more important places, taking _ advantage elsewhere of the conclusive argument of his health and of his need for rest, which would cut short all protests and complaints.

Guerzoni continues that Gladstone’s powers of persuasion.were by no means yet exhausted, but Garibaldi was beginning to understand, for the more carefully Mr Gladstone steered around the principal reason that had moved him to speak, the more clearly this reason, as by a chiaroscuro effect, 102 The Scotsman, 21 April, gives the figure 60; Le May, ‘Mr Gladstone and Italy’, p. 43n., cites 32 (see n. 109 below). Fergusson is wrongly identified by Vincent, Disraeli, Derby and the

Conservative Party, p.372n as Dr Robert Ferguson, the obstetrician. This was William Fergusson, the surgeon (1808-77), who also has an entry in the Dictionary of National Biography.

8 Gladstone’s in The Times, 22 April, 11 May, and other newspapers; Guerzoni, Garibaldi, vol. i, pp. 376-8 and nn.

206 DEREK BEALES stood out; the further away he struggled to keep the shadow of the Government from his speech, the nearer that shadow approached and the nearer his thoughts came to the surface.

According to Guerzoni, Garibaldi, inferring that Gladstone was speaking on behalf of the Cabinet as well as for his friends and hosts, rose from his chair and announced that he could not choose between

his engagements; it was all or none; he would go tomorrow. If Guerzoni’s version is right, there had to be further discussion to prevail

upon Garibaldi to complete his programme in London. But both accounts agree in ascribing to Garibaldi himself the decision to abandon

the whole tour: both depict Gladstone mentioning the possibility of a shortened tour, which the General rejects, cancelling all the arrangements. Even Mazzini complained that Garibaldi had given his word too soon, and so could not withdraw when he was later assured that the Government had had no part in the approach.’ As lord Shaftesbury wrote to The Times in carefully chosen words, “it was...the General’s

own and unsuggested decision to give up the provincial journey altogether’.'°? Garibaldi’s private dissatisfaction with his position in

England must be taken into account. He found his programme in London exhausting, he was subject to continual and conflicting pressures from a vast range of sympathizers, and his family and ‘suite’

were treated with scant. consideration. He was determined not to

outstay his welcome.'®° , The fact that Gladstone, a leading minister, took such a prominent

part in the business naturally strengthened suspicions that the Government was involved, especially since Garibaldi plainly shared them.*®’ But Gladstone hotly denied the charge, and so did Palmerston and Clarendon in parliament.’°* Maybe Shaftesbury, Sutherland, and

Seely deliberately exploited the duality of Gladstone’s position as ‘friend’ and chancellor of the exchequer; perhaps his classical Italian proved difficult to follow; certainly his talent for circumlocution was unequalled. But Gladstone himself, despite the impression he created 104 Mazzini to Bagnasco, 3 May (Scritti editi ed inediti di Giuseppe Mazzini (106 vols, Imola,

1906-73), vol. LXXVIII, p. 143). 105 The Times, 23 April (my italics). 106 Malmesbury, Memoirs, p. 594 (18 April) ; Guerzoni, Garibaldi, vol u, pp. 363n., 380n.; Ridley,

Garibaldi, pp. 548-9. The prince of Wales told the queen on 23 April after seeing Garibaldi that he was ‘quite knocked up...and was anxious to get back to Caprera’ (Royal Archives, Windsor Castle, J.36.137, quoted with the gracious permission of Her Majesty the Queen). 197 Not only Guerzoni’s account but Garibaldi’s statements to radical sympathizers reveal his suspicions (e.g. Cowen MSS., A 809, 810). But, having insisted in the early days that he was obbligato to leave England, he later wrote to If Movimento denying that he had been put under pressure (Ridley, Garibaldi, p. 563). He seems to have had a Reaganesque way with words. 108 The Times, 20, 22 April, 11 May.

Garibaldi in England: the politics of Italian enthusiasm — 207 on Garibaldi, clearly supposed he was acting in a private capacity and felt aggrieved with Garibaldi for not at first accepting his assurances to

this effect.‘ It must be admitted that the distinction between the doings of ministers and the actions of their great aristocratic relatives is a fine one.

It is beyond discovery whether Palmerston tipped the wink to Shaftesbury, or Granville to his cousin, Sutherland.'!° The story might be seen as a choice example of the ‘Establishment’ and the Government working together to frustrate every attempt to pin responsibility on to ministers. Moreover, the Cabinet had its regular weekly meeting on Saturday 16 April, when in theory a plot might have been hatched. But

the way in which Palmerston and Granville reported Garibaldi’s change of plan to the queen strongly suggests that they, and ministers

as a whole, were innocent of complicity in the intrigue. Neither claimed for the Government any of the ‘credit for getting him away’, despite the fact that the queen would have strongly approved their taking such action. Palmerston ascribed it to Shaftesbury, Granville to Sutherland. Neither mentioned the role of Gladstone. Although both welcomed the cancellation of the tour, neither seems to have felt much apprehension about it.””? If the Government’s motives are not in point, those of the ‘friends’

who suggested the curtailment of the tour certainly are. According to

their own public statements and to Palmerston in the House of 109 Cf. Gladstone’s letter to Clarendon, 23 April, BL Add MSS 44534, f. 72, partly quoted in Morley, Gladstone, vol. 0, pp. 112-13. ] cannot see how H. C. G. Matthew in his introduction to vols. v and vi of The Gladstone Diaries (Oxford 1978), vol. v, p. xxvii n., can write that this letter ‘shows the extent of Gladstone’s involvement in persuading Garibaldi of the cabinet’ s

embarrassment at his presence in Britain’ {my italics). It is certainly additional evidence of Gladstone’s involvement. But Gladstone expresses in this letter his feeling of grievance that Garibaldi has taken him for the spokesman of the Cabinet. To justify describing Gladstone’s conduct in this affair as ‘shuffling’ (p. xxviii), Matthew does not need this letter. At the least, Gladstone certainly found himself in an equivocal position. However, I have myself come to feel less critical of his role since I wrote my article in Frosini, Il Risorgimento e Europa. There (p. 38) I suggested that Gladstone misled his critics

when he told them he knew nothing of any meeting at Stafford House on 17 April before 9 p.m., whereas his diary for that day (vol. v1, p. 269) records: ‘At Stafford House 53-63 & 97-125 on Garibaldi’s movements.’ However, having looked at the evidence again, it seems to me that the entry is reconcilable with his public statements, because what he was denying was first-hand knowledge of negotiations and of any meeting at Stafford House before ‘the evening ’.

Cf. the very useful treatment in G.H. L. Le May, ‘Mr Gladstone and Italy, to 1874’, Gladstone Prize Essay, 1951, Bodleian Library, Oxford, pp. 40-4. 4° Tt seems at first sight indicative that the appointment of the duke of Sutherland was gazetted on 30 April, but it had obviously been decided long before (see the Punch quotation on p. 192

above). : |

‘1! Palmerston to the queen, 18 April, Granville to the queen, 21 April (Letters of Queen Victoria, 1862-1878, vol. 1, pp. 172-3, 176).

208 DEREK BEALES Commons, action had been taken ‘purely and entirely on the score of a regard for [Garibaldi’s] health’."’* This concern must have been genuine. Mrs Chambers maintained that it was Seely who had set about trying to reduce Garibaldi’s commitments after seeing him apparently

exhausted and even fainting at the end of a crowded day, and that Fergusson had privately threatened him with ‘parilesis’ if he continued to overtax his strength.*** It must seem very questionable whether he could have stood such a strenuous programme as the provincial tour would have entailed, especially since the arrangements for his reception had not been fully worked out."!* However, there is no doubt at all that considerations other than Garibaldi’s health weighed with the ‘friends’. Gladstone’s suggestion that the repetition of popular welcomes in town after town might cheapen them was reasonable and harmless enough to

be echoed even by two of Cowen’s correspondents.'!? Much more damagingly, Palmerston told the queen that ‘those who have taken an

interest about him, and especially Lord Shaftesbury, thought that politically, and with regard to his health, it was very desirable that these

visits should not be made’. Unfortunately, the prime minister did not explain what he meant by ‘politically’. Stansfeld, who was involved in some of the meetings of the ‘friends’, stressed their fear that Garibaldi might encounter in the provinces hostile Irish demonstrations leading to violence."’® But even the ‘friends’ cannot have been desperately

alarmed about the political situation, or they would not have been content with proposing the curtailment, rather than the cancellation, of the tour.’*’ "2 The Times, 20 April (Palmerston’s statement, and also Clarendon’s in the Lords), 21 April (Seely’s), 22 April and 11 May (Gladstone’s}, 23 April (Shaftesbury’s).

113 Mrs Chambers to Cowen, 4 May (Cowen MSS., A 823) (a very important letter). This is exactly what Seely said publicly (The Times, 21 April). 114 Toulmin Smith, a veteran Radical and correspondent of Cowen’s, while convinced that Garibaldi was the victim of Napoleon III’s machinations, expressed contempt for the organizers of the hero’s provincial tour and said they had not been as ‘discriminating’ as Kossuth’s promoters in 1851 (Toulmin Smith to Cowen, 24 April, Cowen MSS., A 809; Parliamentary Remembrancer, 7 (1864), 71).

"5 John Lang to Cowen, 19 April, 1. McFarlane to Cowen, 7 May (Cowen MSS., A 796, A 826). The latter wrote: “it is all over for the present heaven be praised.’ “86 For Palmerston’s letter see n. 111 above. Review of Reviews (1895), p. $13.

117 Seely in his explanations talked about six or eight towns, Gladstone of only three. But it would have been hard to choose even three major towns without a substantial Irish minority. Even accepting that Gladstone was acting in a private capacity, the question still arises: did he have private political motives? Shannon, Gladstone, p. 502, thinks he did not want Garibaldi outdoing him as ‘former and director of public opinion’. But I have come across no evidence for this suspicion, and Shannon gives none, from either Gladstone himself or any contemporary. There is just as much evidence for the following argument: Gladstone, being uniquely experienced in provincial speaking tours and knowing what a strain they were, had special reason to fear for Garibaldi’s health.

Garibaldi in England: the politics of Italian enthusiasm — 209 VI

After leaving London, Garibaldi spent a few days at Cliveden, another

Sutherland mansion —hence the numerous Garibaldi inns in the neighbourhood. He then paid a visit to Colonel Peard, one of his old

comrades-in-arms, in Cornwall, and left England on the duke of Sutherland’s yacht on 28 April. The only provincial towns of any size which had seen much of him were Southampton, where he had landed, and Bedford, to which he had been taken on a day trip from London before there was any question of his leaving the country.'’® He took

with him back to Caprera no financial contributions to the revolutionary cause. To the fury of Mazzini, he would not accept even the small permanent income that was offered to him by the grandees of the Garibaldi Reception Committee; their aim had been to assist him personally without encouraging his revolutionary enterprises. The best

that could be said from the Italian standpoint was that the English welcome had had a notable ‘ moral’ effect in Europe.""? And, it seemed,

in Britain too. But in fact the visit proved to be an important incident —more important than has been realized —in the prehistory of the Liberal revival that culminated in Gladstone’s victory in the general election of 1868.

Bright observed, while watching Garibaldi’s entry into London on 11 April: ‘If the people would only make a few such demonstrations

for themselves, we could do something for them.’ His great collaborator, Cobden, commented a month later: ‘nothing except foreign politics seems to occupy the attention of the people, press or parliament’.’*° Palmerston’s rise to political pre-eminence had depended on the displacement, between the Repeal of the Corn Laws and the suppression of the 1848 revolutions, of concern with domestic reform by concern about developments abroad. Russell, prime minister from 1846 to 1852, having identified himself with proposals for further

parliamentary reform, lost the leadership of his party in 1855 to Palmerston, now recognized as the mouthpiece of John Bull. The major excitements of the Crimean War, the Indian Mutiny, Italian Gladstone did tell Manning (2 July, BL Add MSS 44534, f.97, quoted by Morley, Gladstone, vol. u, pp. 110-11 and Shannon, Gladstone, p. 504) that he ‘read the speech at the luncheon with surprise and concern’, and viewed Garibaldi’s ‘attenuated belief’ with ‘the deepest sorrow and concern’. But Gladstone learned of both these failings after he spoke to

Garibaldi on 17 April. 8 The Times, 23-28, 4 and 16 April.

119 Hodder, Shaftesbury, p $98; Mazzini to Onnis (Scritti, vol. xxv, pp. 134-5). It was claimed that the visit weakened the Italian and Belgian governments (Grey to Russell, 28 April, PRO Russell papers 30/22/15). 18° Cobden to Potter, 10 May (Morley, Cobden, p. 911n).

210 DEREK BEALES Unification, and the American Civil War maintained interest in international affairs at a high pitch. Working-class organizations in Britain were at least as preoccupied with these issues, and with other foreign events like the Polish rebellion against Russia in 1863 and the Danish War of 1864, as with internal reform. The Government can have had little reason to fear that Garibaldi’s provincial tour might excite demands for domestic change.*”" In the last months of 1863 and the first half of 1864 the Cabinet was bitterly divided over the Danish question — so much so that Palmerston and Russell were to talk of resignation in early May.’** The Government was thought to be in its death throes as first Stansfeld and then, on 18

April, another junior minister, Robert Lowe, had to explain to the Commons why they had left office.!** Parliamentary opposition to their Danish policy was mounting. Amid all these difficulties Garibaldi’s visit, despite the squabbles among its promoters, constituted one of the best proofs of the breadth of support Palmerston could still command, inside and outside the Commons, even in his eightieth year. Virtually

all Liberals and Radicals, and quite a lot of Tories, took part in the celebrations under the leadership of the prime minister, expressing once

again their contempt for the despotic governments of the Continent and their satisfaction with their own condition and constitution. Garibaldi’s early departure, too, though it caused disappointment and indignation, especially at first, seems to have been widely accepted

as unavoidable.’** Cowen’s conduct in the month following the announcement shows that he and some of his fellow radicals came to

have doubts about the wickedness of the Government or the ‘Establishment’. When the news broke of Garibaldi’s decision to leave, Cowen rushed up to London to see him. On 19 April a telegram was sent to some radical newspapers by Cowen, or in his name, asserting

that Garibaldi had been practically ordered out of the country to placate Napoleon, whose demands Clarendon had brought back from Paris: ‘Worse than Conspiracy Bill... Will Englishmen submit to this.’

On 25 April P. A. Taylor urged Cowen to publish what he knew, which ‘with other communications would go near to smash Gladstone 121 Beales, England and Italy, esp. pp. 9-20; F. E. Gillespie, Labor and Politics in England, 1850-67

(Durham, NC 1927), esp. pp. 213-26. 1'** Mosse, English Historical Review (1963), 277. 123 T owe resigned because he had been (wrongly) censured by the Commons for ‘mutilating’ the reports of school inspectors before publication. On the general weakness of the Government see, e.g., Reynolds's Newspaper, 17 April. 124 Dr T. A. Jenkins kindly supplied me with a transcript of Sir John Trelawny’s diary (Bodleian

MS. Eng. Hist. D. 415) for 21 April, from which it appears that the Commons were highly unsympathetic to attempts to blame the government for Garibaldi’s departure.

Garibaldi in England: the politics of Italian enthusiasm = 211

and Shaftesbury’. But on 29 April Taylor wrote: “We can’t disprove the Govt denials — and can only attack Gladstone personally ~— & that can’t be done till we have more facts published.’ Eventually,

Cowen disavowed the telegram of 19 April; and, when asked by the Working-Men’s Garibaldi Committee to give his version of events,

replied on 19 May that, while Garibaldi had certainly believed Gladstone to have been speaking for the Government, Gladstone ‘says distinctly that he did not... This declaration ought to be sufficient for all of us.’ On 31 May Cowen claimed to Holyoake that his ‘ part in the business’ had been misrepresented : I have I think some ground of complaint against some of our London friends on this Garibaldi business which I will explain when I see you — I hate disputes or I would have written publicly to explain sundry matters —

In any account of the business you will please not involve any of us in further controversy — I am heartily sick of the entire business & I will give you

good reasons for being so when you get down here.”

The related story of the meetings called to protest about Garibaldi’s departure leaves a similar impression. The first, on Primrose Hill on 23 April, was broken up by the police because it had not been officially

sanctioned and also because it got mixed up with a Shakespeare Tercentenary celebration. It is revealing that the mélée arose partly from the fact that the committees organizing these two meetings on such disparate subjects had several members in common.’** Answering _ questions in the House, the Home Secretary maintained that the police action had been lawful but none the less apologized for it, blaming it on decisions taken at a junior level.'*’ A second meeting followed, which

dissolved in confusion because there were no police present to keep order. It was clear to the radicals that this demonstration had been a failure.’*®

However, the organization both of the welcome and of the protests anticipated and influenced future Liberal activities. In Birmingham, though the committee on the projected visit was supported by almost all sections of opinion, an attempt to dominate it was made by the 125 Cowen MSS.: A 797, 810, 816, 826, 832, G 75. 126 The Times, 25 April,; Reynolds’s Newspaper, 1 and 8 May; Beehive. 30 April; R. Foulkes, The

Shakespeare Tercentenary of 1864 (London 1984), pp. 20-1, 42-4. Newspapers of every complexion regarded the tercentenary arrangements as inefficient. 127 The Times, 26 and 28 April; Beehive, 30 April. 128° The Times, 7 and 9 May. The coverage of this demonstration in the working-class newspapers was eclipsed by reports of Gladstone’s explanation to the working-class deputation on 10 May

and his speech on the 11th. Cf. Cowen MSS. A 839 (P. A. Taylor to Cowen, 11 June).

212 DEREK BEALES young Joseph Chamberlain and colleagues such as George Dixon,

William Harris, and the Revd R. W. Dale, who would soon be working together in the larger tasks of running the Birmingham Liberal Association (1865), the National Education League (1869), their

city corporation, and the National Liberal Federation (1877). Foreshadowing their later techniques, they were already talking in 1864 of forming committees of 200 and even 1,000 members.’?* Among the active participants elsewhere are to be found great Liberal names of the future such as Forster, Goschen, Edward Miall, and John and Samuel

Morley.'*® After the police had dispersed the first London protest meeting, ‘the committee at once adjourned to a tavern at the foot of the hill, and determined to start a Reform League’. They could not carry through their intention at once, but they continued to work together and helped to found the National Reform League in the following year, with Garibaldi as honorary president.'*' The same Edmond Beales who presided over the protest meetings, and who figured in almost every radical organization of the period, was ‘in the chair’ when the league defied the Government by holding two huge meetings in Hyde Park in 1866 and 1867, which contributed both to establishing the right of assembly there and to the passage of the Second Reform Bill.’** In a more restricted sphere, the Workers’ International was founded late in 1864 by much the same group of sympathizers with overseas nationalism. Though the Polish question had been its main

stimulus, one of the steps in its formation had been an exchange of courtesies between Neapolitan and London working-men under the auspices of Garibaldi.***

At the level of high politics, too, the visit proved to be a portent. It was one of the stages in the process by which Gladstone, the destined

leader of the Liberal party in the House of Commons, was drawn towards a more radical position partly by way of his general support

for the Italian cause and his particular admiration for Garibaldi. Gladstone, previously inclined to ridicule ‘Lord Palmerston and his nationalities’,’** had first become known for liberal views on foreign policy with his Letter to Lord Aberdeen of 1851. When he accepted the 7° Cowen MSS. A 783. This early manifestation of the caucus spirit seems unknown to biographers of Chamberlain and historians of Birmingham and the Liberal party. 139 The Times, 2 April; Beehive, 2 April; Reynolds's Newspaper, 10 April; Scotsman, 21 April. 131 Gillespie, Labor and Politics, pp. 219, 250-1. 132 Gillespie, Labor and Politics, chs. 8 and 9. R. Harrison, Before the Socialists (London 1965), chs. 3

and 4. 133° Gillespie, Labor and Politics, pp. 220-6.

134 Morley, Gladstone, vol.1, p. 402.

Garibaldi in England: the politics of Italian enthusiasm — 213 exchequer from Palmerston in 1859, his main point of agreement with the prime minister had been enthusiasm for the Italian cause.'** In the early sixties he was discovering and eliciting sympathy for his moralist approach to politics outside the ruling classes, among the people at

large. He was beginning to have dealings, as chancellor, with trade unions;'®8* and his cultivation of relations with Nonconformists, particularly in the person of the Revd Newman Hall, became serious at almost exactly the time of Garibaldi’s visit.'*’ His state of mind can be glimpsed in one of his cryptic diary entries, for the night when the hero went to a gala opera performance: ‘It was good, but not like the people.’'** Disraeli rightly guessed that Gladstone had been stirred, and suggested that the popular welcome for Garibaldi helped to account for the chancellor’s notorious Commons speech of 11 May on Baines’s parliamentary reform bill:'*? Gladstone, hitherto considered unsym-

pathetic to extending the franchise, now declared that all men ‘not presumably incapacitated’ deserved to ‘come within the pale of the constitution’. When criticized by Palmerston and eulogized in the radical press for what he had said, Gladstone denied that it was anything new ; but the impression that it was could not and cannot be effaced.'*° He had actually told a deputation at the end of March that he intended soon to make an important statement on parliamentary reform.'** But

he had more recently been awed by the vast, fervent, and orderly 185 Beales, England and Italy, pp. 27, 86-91. 186 The main authority on Gladstone’s general progression to liberalism (and therefore for this whole paragraph) and particularly on his connections with trade unions is H. C. G. Matthew,

most conveniently in his Gladstone, 1809-1874 (Oxford 1986), ch. 5. See also Vincent, Formation of the Liberal Party and W. E. Williams, The Rise of Gladstone to the Leadership of the Liberal party, 1859 to 1868 (Cambridge 1934).

137 G.I. T. Machin, ‘Gladstone and Nonconformity in the 1860s: the Formation of an Alliance’,

Historical Journal, 17 (1974), 347-64. 7

188 Diaries, vol. vi, p. 269 (14 April), Gladstone’s underlining. D. M. Schreuder in his provocative

article, “Gladstone and Italian unification, 1848-70: the making of a Liberal?’, English Historical Review, 85 (1970), gives this famous quotation a novel meaning, viz. that Gladstone

thought such behaviour uncharacteristic and unworthy of the people at the opera. But Shannon, Gladstone, gives other examples of Gladstone using ‘the people’ generally and admiringly (e.g. p. 277). It seems to me that the article much exaggerates (?invents) Gladstone’s hostility to Garibaldi. For the crucial later months of 1860 assertions are made (p. 492) which are not supported by any evidence, whereas statements like the following are not quoted: Gladstone to Russell, 16 Aug. 1860: ‘I wonder whether the stars and Garibaldi will let you finish your month by the Dee in peace. That fine fellow has three mouthfuls to swallow yet: 1. Naples. 2. The Pope and 3. Venetia’ (PRO, Russell papers 30/22/19). 139 Disraeli to Derby, 13 May (Buckle, Disraeli, vol. 1v, p. 404). 440 The Times, 12 May. Letters between Palmerston and Gladstone, 11-23 May (P. Guedalla, Gladstone and Palmerston (London 1928), pp. 279-87). The popular newspapers are full of the

significance of the speech. 141 Reynolds’s Newspaper, 27 March.

214 DEREK BEALES reception given to Garibaldi, and then embarrassed by having to justify to a working-class deputation on 10 May his role in bringing the visit

to an early end. The strength of his pronouncement on Reform may well have owed something to both experiences. In declaring himself an active parliamentary reformer, Gladstone was setting himself up against Palmerston and his system of domestic politics in a manner certain to be applauded by Garibaldi and the British working-class movement. But at virtually the same moment he began to show signs of another shift of position which was both more surprising in the light of his own previous career and more problematic in relation to British politics. It was at a Stafford House reception for

Garibaldi that Gladstone and Bright first discussed the Irish church question, and Gladstone talked of having to leave his constituency, Oxford University, in order to be free to support a more advanced programme of reform.'** In the following year he publicly abandoned his support for preserving the Irish branch of the Church of England intact, a departure from views with which he had been particularly _ identified for over thirty years. He duly lost his seat at Oxford.’** As Trevelyan pointed out, the conversation at Stafford House was the first

proposal of the terms of the pact which in 1868 reunited the Liberal party after two years of internal disagreement over parliamentary

reform and enabled it to win its massive election victory under Gladstone’s leadership on the issue of the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland.'** In 1864, however, to contemplate action that would please Roman Catholic Irishmen and anger Protestants was to defy the spirit both of Palmerston’s system and of the welcome to Garibaldi. In 1850 Russell, by condemning the erection of a regular Catholic hierarchy in England, had destroyed for a generation the longstanding political alliance between Whigs, Liberals, and Irish Catholics.

Palmerston’s leadership only widened the split: his foreign policy, especially over Italy, was explicitly anti-papal, and he felt no sympathy with the grievances of Catholic Irishmen.'*? Even when in July 1864 he

was threatened by defeat in the Commons on his Danish policy, ‘he saw greater advantages in being defeated by Popery, than in conciliating ‘2 Walling, Diaries of John Bright, p.276 (13 April). This meeting is not mentioned in J. R. Vincent’s stimulating ‘Gladstone and Ireland’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 63 (1977),

193-223; it bridges a gap in his chronology of Gladstone’s concern with Ireland. 43 Matthew, Gladstone, pp. 44, 144-5 and 145n. P. M. H. Bell, Disestablishment in Ireland and Wales (London 1969), p. 79. Parry, Democracy and Religion, pp. 38-9. ‘4G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London 1913), p. 331. 149 J. H. Whyte, The Independent Irish Party, 1850-9 (Oxford 1958). K. T. Hoppen, Elections, Politics, and Society in Ireland, 1832~1885 (Oxford 1984), p. 263.

Garibaldi in England: the politics of Italian enthusiasm — 215

it’.““° Garibaldi considered the papacy to be doomed, and cheerfully denounced it to English Protestants. His visit, as Manning wrote, was

for the Irish ‘the most refined and deadliest insult which could be directed against all that they cherish on earth, and dearer than life itself’.'*” Gladstone made no pronouncement on this issue in 1864, as he did on parliamentary reform. The time was not ripe: Palmerston won his vote without the aid of the Catholics.’** It is paradoxical that Bright and Gladstone should have discussed the Irish Church question

at a reception for Garibaldi. But by the end of the year, partly in reaction to the Protestant extremism displayed during Garibaldi’s visit, a National Association had been founded in Ireland, with the blessing

of Bright, which brought together British Nonconformists and Irish Catholics in a programme including Irish disestablishment, and became one of the pillars of the triumph of 1868.**°

At the time of Garibaldi’s visit, however, all this was in the unpredictable future. The year 1864 marked in many respects the height of the conservative reaction under Palmerston. Gladstone was justified in saying to the prime minister that opinion on parliamentary reform seemed to have moved backwards even since 1860, when the Government had dropped its own bill on the subject.°? Discontent certainly existed on the Left, as Cowen’s correspondents testified. But as yet it had not spread far beyond the limited group of radical activists who staffed a large range of interlocking societies for the furtherance of incompatible good causes.'°' Later in 1864 Palmerston was to disgust Cobden and Bright still further by winning an enthusiastic popular reception in radical, industrial Bradford.”’* At the end of 1865, just before he died, the Liberal party under his leadership won a general election with an increased majority; and the victory was at least as much his as the radicals’.*°* The great aristocrats, Whig and Tory, in

a period of anxiety about foreign affairs and complacency about domestic, of blatant Protestantism and contempt for the Irish, still 46 Vincent, Formation of the Liberal Party, p. 262.

14? Manning, Miscellanies, vol. 1, pp. 132, 141. 148 Bell, Disestablishment, p. 79. 149 Norman, The Catholic Church and Ireland, pp. 84-5 and ch. 4. 15° Gladstone to Palmerston, 11 and 13 May (Guedalla, Gladstone and Palmerston, pp. 280, 282-3). Diaries, vol. v1, p. 275 (11 May).

5} On interlocking societies see B. Harrison’s ‘State Intervention and Moral Reform’, in P. Hollis (ed.), Pressure from Without in Early Victorian England (London 1974), pp. 289~—-322.

152 Vincent, Formation of the Liberal Party, p. 149 and n. 153 So far as I know, this election has so far escaped intensive study. My statement is based on the general literature and my impressions, strengthened by a paper on the subject written for my

seminar at Harvard in 1965 by Mr W. M. M. Fairweather.

216 DEREK BEALES ranked not only as the leaders of Society but, for almost the last time, as the effective representatives of the nation as a whole. VII

Henry Adams was in London in 1864, acting as secretary to his father, the American minister. He singled out two social occasions during his

seven years’ stay ‘that seemed to have any meaning for him, and he never knew what that meaning was’. The first was the appearance at Devonshire House of Mme de Castiglione, Napoleon III’s mistress; the second was the reception for Garibaldi at Stafford House. Mme. de Castiglione and Garibaldi covered, between them, too much space for simple measurement; their curves were too complex for mere arithmetic. The task of bringing the two into any common relation with an ordered social system tending to orderly development — in London or elsewhere — was well fitted for Algernon Swinburne or Victor Hugo, but was beyond any process yet reached by the education of Henry Adams.**

It is no wonder that he found it difficult to come to terms with such an event as Garibaldi’s visit. What seems surprising about it now is not the misunderstandings and embarrassments that accompanied it, but that it

could ever have taken place at all. Garibaldi was an outlaw, a revolutionary, an uncrowned king in his own right, the political philosopher’s Natural Man, to Protestants, Liberals and nationalists a saint. Such a visitant could not be indefinitely accommodated in civil society, even in mid-Victorian Britain; and his apparition was bound to presage change. But in the short run the unique festival of his visit helped Palmerston, his friends and colleagues, to preserve the social and political consensus of ‘the age of equipoise’. 154 FH. Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (New York, 1931), pp. 198-9.

CHAPTER 9Q

The middle classes in Liberal Italy

ADRIAN LYTTELTON

It seems by now generally agreed that the movement for national unification cannot be explained in terms of the immediate interests or needs of the Italian bourgeoisie. If there was a ‘bourgeois revolution’, it was not the bourgeoisie which made it.* The industrial bourgeoisie was in its infancy, and from the standpoint of its restricted interests the

creation of a national market was premature. Even in 1860 Italian industrialists were far from ready to exploit the opportunity offered to them. There was, indeed, no Italian industrial bourgeoisie in the strict sense of the term, only a number of regional groups. Industrialists were in the main concerned to protect their little enclaves from competition. The impulse for free trade had to come from outside. Long ago, in his classic work on the Risorgimento in Lombardy, Greenfield observed that even in the most advanced region of Italy it was the intellectuals

and publicists, not the industrialists or merchants, who were in the forefront of the movement for economic modernization.” I do not think that this should lead the historian to discard the usefulness of the notion of ‘bourgeois revolution’ when applied to the Risorgimento but rather to reformulate it in a less mechanical fashion. The sense in which the concept can be applied to the Risorgimento has been well defined | by Luciano Cafagna: ‘the Risorgimento movement exists within the European age of the bourgeois revolution ... Through the Risorgimento it is the bourgeoisie which grows, not other social classes... Through the transformations ...it is the bourgeois mode of property and of the ’ For a convincing theoretical disclaimer, see P. Ginsborg, ‘Gramsci and the era of bourgeois revolution’, in Gramsci and Italy’s Passive Revolution ed. J. A. Davis (London 1979), p. 37, ‘many anti-Marxist historians (and some Marxists as well) have made the mistake of assuming that in all circumstances it must be the bourgeoisie who make the bourgeois revolution ... The specificity of bourgeois revolution, as has been outlined above, does not depend on its leading

actors but on its contribution to the general development of bourgeois society.’ 2 K. R. Greenfield, Economics and liberalism in the Risorgimento (2nd edn, Baltimore 1965), p. 263.

217

218 ADRIAN LYTTELTON use of the labour force which affirms itself, not others’.? This leaves open the question, however, of what social forces in Italy actually made

the Risorgimento. There is a danger that by discarding the bourgeois demiurge we may return to a conception of the Risorgimento in terms of disembodied ideas. It is certainly beyond the ambition or possibilities of this essay to answer the question just posed; however, it 1s possible

at least to suggest one area of research which has been strangely

neglected by historians. |

If we turn to the history of the Liberal State in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, a contrast is apparent. In the literature on this period the grande bourgeoisie of capital has too often been treated as a kind of deus ex machina, whose intervention is enough to determine the

course of history. Liberalism becomes accordingly a mere mask for capitalist interests. It would be difficult to deny that Italian Liberalism was a class-bound ideology; but if we are to make sense of it we have to work with a wider and more flexible definition of class. If we do this

we may be able to eliminate some contradictions, and to soften the apparent discontinuity between an ‘idealistic’ Risorgimento and a ‘materialistic’ post-Risorgimento.

Italian authors have tended to distinguish the bourgeoisie proper (holders and users of capital) from the middle classes or ceti medi: strictly speaking, one should translate this as “middle orders’. The reference is

more to status than to economic function. The German distinction between Besitz and Bildung, between property holders and those whose status depended on culture and formal qualifications, is also relevant to

Italy. It is a commonplace that society can be structured according to

several different criteria: profession, ownership of property, and education furnish overlapping but not identical principles for analysing class divisions. For the historian, moreover, the subjective aspects of

class identification are of particular interest, though often highly elusive. In this respect, I would suggest that the distinction made by the English sociologist Anthony Giddens between ‘class awareness’ and

‘class consciousness’ may be useful here. He argues that ‘class awareness’, while it entails the ‘acceptance of similar attitudes and beliefs, linked to a common style of life’ may take the form of a ‘denial of the existence or reality of classes in general’, and an image of society

based on the hierarchical ranking of individuals.* I think that this * L. Cafagna, ‘Sviluppo economico e movimento nazionale’, in Istituto per la storia del Risorgimento italiano, Grandi problemi della storiografia del Risorgimento (Atti del XLVIII Congresso di Storia del Risorgimento Italiano (Rome 1978)), p. 401. 4 A. Giddens, The Class Structure of the Advanced Societies (London 1973), pp. 111, 185.

The middle classes in Liberal Italy 219 analysis holds good for Italy. Indeed, if one compares Italy with France

or Germany during the period down to 1914, I would argue that the middle classes’ sense of corporate identity and capacity for collective action was notably weaker. It is none the less my contention that the problem of Italian Liberalism, and of its eventual failure, cannot be understood without considering the role of the middle classes in their full extent and variety. The emergence of the free professions in Italy had been precocious. Italy led all other parts of Europe in the development of a university system. Both the economic and the public life of the free communes ensured a high demand for the services of lawyers and notaries and many doctors and surgeons received regular stipends, paid out of public funds. As early as the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the colleges of university teachers were making effective attempts to limit the right to

practice law or medicine to those who had passed the relevant examinations. However, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the professions had participated in the general process of the aristocratic

involution of urban society. The dignified professions of law and medicine were sharply separated from the inferior occupations of the notaries and the surgeons, and the colleges which controlled admission to the former became closed bodies confined to those who could claim noble status.” This situation changed in the later eighteenth century, when the reforming governments of Lombardy and other Italian states took steps to open access to the professions, and to reform university education so as to make it more functional for the new needs of public

service. These reforms laid the foundations for the growth of the modern professional classes. Similar developments took place in other European countries at around this time. However, if one compares Italy

with England, important differences become evident. In Italy the demand and the initiative for the development of the professions came primarily from the state, whereas in England the role of civil society and of pressure from below was much greater. It was the growth of a centralized, reforming, administration and not that of industrial society which accounts for the initial emergence of the professions in Italy.

Austrian Lombardy preceded England by about fifty years in the efficient regulation of the professions, and in the abolition of the obsolete distinction between surgeons and doctors. At the same time, * See C. M. Cipolla, ‘The professions. The long view’, The Journal of European Economic History, 2, Spring 1973, 37-52 passim.

220 ADRIAN LYTTELTON new professions achieved recognition; engineers and surveyors were

required to have university degrees.° |

The ancien regime State called into being a new educated middle class.

Yet after the Restoration this class was generally perceived as a threat

to the stability of the old order. More than any other group, it had benefited from the Napoleonic regimes, through the abolition of status distinctions and, even more important, through the great expansion of the administration. Instead, in the Restoration period resentment at the

restoration of noble privileges (in fact, much attenuated) was exacerbated by a sharp reduction in employment opportunities. A recent study of the Lombardy-Veneto argues that in the age of the Risorgimento it was the professional classes, rather than the agrarian or commercial entrepreneurs, who formed the most distinctive and self-

conscious section of the bourgeoisie.’ By the middle of the 1830s Lombardy and the Veneto were clearly suffering from a phenomenon characteristic of the epoch in Europe as a whole: a surplus of educated men.® The number of university students approximately doubled in twenty years, while the number of those studying law rose even more rapidly.? While opportunities in the free professions are not quantifiable, the number of paid jobs in the administration certainly grew far more slowly.*® The problem of making a living was particularly acute

for students from relatively modest social backgrounds, since both government employment and several of the professions required a long period of unpaid apprenticeship, which poor families could ill afford to

subsidize. The Austrian government made increasing use of unpaid ‘pupils’ as an expedient to reduce the costs of administration; by the end of the 1830s an official might be expected to serve as many as twelve years without a salary before admission to a paid position. It is ® See the illuminating essay by E. Brambilla, ‘La medicina del Settecento: dal monopolio dogmatico alla professione scientifica’, in Storia d'Italia, Annali 7, Malattia e medicina, ed. F Della Peruta (Turin 1984), p. 131. * M. Meriggi, I! Regno Lombardo-Veneto, Storia d'Italia, ed. G. Galasso, vol. xvu, pt. 2 (Turin 1987), p. 149.

’ For European comparisons, see L. O’Boyle, ‘The Problem of an Excess of Educated Men in Western Europe, 1800-1850’, Journal of Modern History, 41: 4 (1970), pp. 471-95 (no specific evidence on Italy). ° In the University of Padua, the number of law students quadrupled between 1817 and 1842, rising from 19 per cent to 41 per cent of the total enrolment. In Pavia the proportion of law students to the total was about the same (1843). But in papal Bologna, where the chances of government employment were still severely restricted, the proportion was only 20 per cent; M. Berengo, ‘L’organizzazione della cultura’, in L. Ambrosoli et al., I] movimento nazionale e il 1848 (Storia della Societa italiana) ed. G. Cherubini et al., pt. 5, vol. xv, p. 81; Meriggi, Regno, p. 154. In the late eighteenth century medical students had been the group in most rapid expansion; Brambilla, ‘La medicina’, p. 133. 10 Meriggi, Regno, p. 159: paid jobs grew by only 15 per cent between 1828 and 1847 while

unpaid positions multiplied by four.

The middle classes in Liberal Italy 221 understandable that in these conditions state service failed to attract the

able and ambitious. Moral considerations were also important; in contrast with the Napoleonic administration, the Austrian was marked by an obsessive concern with formalities and hierarchy, and allowed little initiative to those in junior positions. If noble privilege was a less important problem than formerly, another grievance helped to channel

discontent in a nationalist direction. Many high posts in the administration (particularly in the politically sensitive roles of the judiciary and the police) were reserved to ‘foreigners’ from other regions of the empire. Although in Lombardy the number of ‘German’ officials was not as large as it was often made out to be, in the Veneto

their presence was massive.’’ The result was a plethora of underemployed professionals, in fierce competition amongst themselves, dissatisfied and politically restless. The lawyers in particular were naturally drawn to political activity, and their lack of security militated

against caution. In 1833, an intelligent Austrian functionary warned against the danger they presented: ‘The only hopes they have are... for a political upheaval. They can only put their trust in a revolution and prepare it. These are desperate people.’’* Doctors and engineers, though less inevitably drawn towards politics, shared many of the same grievances. We are much less well informed about the situation in other Italian states. However, the importance of the professional classes in providing

leadership for the democratic left of the partito dazione seems to be evident in Italy as a whole. Clara Lovett has examined a sample of 146 democratic leaders; as against 32 substantial landowners, 63 derived their income primarily from commerce or the established professions.

But a large number also came from more precarious and marginal occupations; they were schoolteachers, journalists, private tutors, artists, and actors.'* In the provinces of the south, even democratic politics showed a prevalence of landowners. But the concentration of ambitious young provincials interested in a professional career in Naples provided another focus for discontent. Those who failed to establish themselves in the big city might find that a Naples law degree was no passport to success in the provinces either. Costabile Carducci, a democratic leader from a family of Cilento landowners who studied law, tried his hand at several undistinguished occupations, including

those of innkeeper and carrier, although he always dressed as a 11 Meriggi, Regno, p. 84. The most favoured group of ‘foreigners’ were not in fact ‘Germans’,

but bilingual natives of the Trentino. 12 Meriggi, Regno, p. 169. 13 C. M. Lovett, The Democratic Movement in Italy 1830-1876 (Cambridge, MA 1982), pp. 68—70.

222 ADRIAN LYTTELTON gentleman.'* The early career of a much more famous politician, Francesco Crispi, shows how professional frustrations could foster revolutionary politics. On graduating, Crispi won a competition for a post in the Sicilian judicial administration, but it was unpaid. After petitioning the King unsuccessfully for a judgeship, he resigned his post and moved to Naples to practice law. He had considerable success as a

representative for Sicilian interests, but his clients were slow about paying. His most profitable transaction throws a curious light on what lawyers might be expected to do; he was paid 100 onze (c. 1,2'75 lire) for promising to obtain for a client a post as consigliere d’intendenza

within four months. His turn to conspiracy came after two more petitions to the king for employment had been turned down.’ Such disappointments nourished the feeling that the system had no room for men of talent, and must be changed. This is not to say that conspiracy was confined to the impoverished ; the liberal Carlo Poerio was the son of one of Naples’ most famous lawyers. Censorship and restraints on political activity were resented by those who felt that in an open society

they would be natural leaders. On the other hand, there is some evidence that the Bourbon government was able to exert considerable influence over the professions through its powers of patronage. In the early days after unification, Pasquale Villari reported that ‘In the free professions, there were a small number of persons who, through their relations with the government, had in their hands almost all business, and all the others of the same profession depended on them.’ No one could deal with the ministries except through the recommendations of these powerful mediators, and the government had it in its powers to ruin anyone in the professions. Villari’s account is all the more plausible in the light of later complaints that the workings of the Liberal system in Naples were not very different."®

If we do not focus our attention exclusively on the bourgeoisie of

true capitalists, it becomes easier to view the outcome of the Risorgimento as a triumph for the middle classes. Contemporaries described the middle classes as the mainstay of the Liberal regime. In 1878 Leone Carpi, the author of a very interesting study of Italian

society, described the middle class as ‘the life, the strength and the

M Ibid., pp. 153-4. |

15 See R. Composto, La giovinezza di Francesco Crispi (Palermo 1972), pp. 139-40, 151-63. 16 Villari to L. Farini, La liberazione del Mezzogiorno e la formazione del Regno @ Italia, Carteggi di

Camillo Cavour (Bologna 1949-54), vol. Iv, p. 41 (9 Dec. 1860). He also reported that architects had formed a kind of cartel to share public works’ contracts; the architect who carried out the contract would take 43 per cent, while 55 per cent would go to his colleagues (ibid., p. 78).

| The middle classes in Liberal Italy : 223 backbone of the nation’.*’ It was a common assumption in the late nineteenth century that the influence of the middle classes had become decisive in politics and culture as well as economic life. Yet at this time

the new industrial bourgeoisie was only beginning to emerge as a

significant social force. Even the numbers of those who could confidently be described as ‘bourgeois’ were very small. In 1879, in his book La tirannide borghese,‘® Pietro Ellero concluded that the members of this tyrannical class — families included — were only a little over $0,000. This included all those with a taxable income of over 2,500 lire, or £100 sterling. The ‘old middle class’ of the free professions and the

urban rentiers are of particular importance in the Italian case. The Italian bourgeoisie, like the Italian aristocracy, in the majority lived in

the town or off the land. The free professions were in large part recruited from, and sustained by, this class of urban-dwelling landholders.

Nevertheless, within the provincial cities of north and central Italy power tended to shift from the old landowning families to a new elite of ambitious professionals who could exploit the opportunities of local politics and municipal expenditure.’? At a higher level, professional men, and particularly lawyers, increasingly replaced landowners as the personnel of both parliament and government.*” The ‘parliamentary revolution’ of 1876 which brought the Left to power was something of a watershed in this respect.

How large were the middle classes—in the broader sense — in nineteenth and early twentieth century Italy? It is difficult to give a precise answer. The categories of Italian census takers changed frequently, and more important still, the significance of occupational groups in society does not remain constant. It may be legitimate to include small agricultural proprietors among the middle classes in contemporary society, but in the nineteenth century a peasant was a peasant.

To a lesser degree, the same problem arises for the artisans. In 1881

they were estimated at 15.9 per cent of the employed population in Italy as a whole, and 23 per cent, in the south. It is safe to assume that

the majority were closer in living standards and education to the 17 L. Carpi, L’Italia vivente (Milan 1878), p. 299. 18 P Ellero, La tirannide borghese (Bologna 1879), pp. 29-30.

™ See A. Polsi, ‘Possidenti e nuovi ceti urbani: Pelite politica di Pisa nel ventennio postunitario’, Quaderni Storici, 19, $6 (1984), 493-516. 20 P. Farneti, Sistema politico e societa civile (Turin 1971), pp. 169-85, 245-74. In governmental positions the share of lawyers rose from 15 per cent during the period 1861~76 to 29 per cent

during the period 1876-1903. ,

224 ADRIAN LYTTELTON workers than to the petty bourgeoisie. Even their economic independence was often largely fictitious. However, by the First World

War, when industrial workers had come to outnumber artisans by more than three to one, the status of the latter had clearly improved. If one excludes artisans from the calculation, it becomes clear that the

urban middle classes in late-nineteenth-century Italy were not numerous. In 1881, proprietors, industrialists, the professions, private and public employees, teachers, and shopkeepers numbered little over one million or 6.7 per cent of the entire population. The comparable figure in France was 14 per cent, more than double. The gap was least pronounced in the public sector: there were 173,000 civil servants in Italy, excluding teachers, compared with 200,000 in France. Modern

services and distribution were in their infancy in Italy: whereas in France there were three private employees for every public one, in Italy the figures were reversed. In 1893 Olindo Malagodi drew attention to

the absence in Italy of the class of private employees present in

developed industrial societies. It was for this reason that the impoverished petty bourgeoisie laid siege in desperation to government

employment and the professions.** Although the number of white collar workers in private firms in the north of Italy doubled between 1881 and 1921, in the nation as a whole the ratio between public and private employees did not alter. The author of a guide to the choice of careers wrote in 1913, ‘fortunately, we know that outside government employment, there are those who reward merit’,** but this did not stop

him devoting much more space to the conditions of entry into ministries and local government than to opportunities in business. Occupation is, of course, no sure guide to income. According to the

English historians Balton King and Okey, around the turn of the century the top lawyers might make as much as £4,000 a year, the most successful doctors around £3,000: but they estimated average

incomes in these professions at around £350-300. This was still definitely in the prosperous middle-class range: but public doctors (medici condotti), paid by the commune, were in a less fortunate position.

An exceptionally fortunate medico condotto might make as much as £190 with free housing thrown in; but others received as little as £65. Clerks in government offices started at about £80 (2,138 lire); the minimum rates for professors in secondary schools varied between £80

and £100 on the eve of the war. Local government salaries varied "1 Critica Sociale (Antologia), ed. M. Spinella (Milan 1959), vol. 1, p. xxx. 72 C. Dompé, Come devo scegliere una professione: guida per il padre di famiglia nella scelta di una carriera per i suoi figli (Milan 1913), p. 305.

The middle classes in Liberal Italy 225 widely : the secretary of a big city might get £200, but the minimum

in a small commune was under £40. The salaries of university professors, with £,300—-400, did not compare unfavourably with those

in the top ranks of the civil service; a director-general got £360. But teaching assistants were expected to work for honour rather than

reward; their salary was about £60. Even this was a marked improvement. In the 1890s, temporary professors (Incaricati) were being paid the same as the lowest grade of postman.** As for primary-

school teachers, their poverty was notorious. Their pay varied according to the size and prosperity of the commune where they were employed. At the time of Unification, the highest-paid teacher in a city school earned 1,200 lire, but the lowest stipend for a rural schoolmaster was $00 lire, and a for a schoolmistress 333 lire. Even so, the expense of their salaries, which fell on the communes, was bitterly resented by the peasants as an unnecessary expense. In 1886 the writer Matilde Serao

publicized the cases of schoolmistresses who had died from hunger,

exhaustion, and neglect.*4 Primary-school teaching was the only profession in which women competed on equal terms with men. By

1896 60 per cent of teachers were women, and the proportion continued to increase. Although pay improved considerably between 1876 and 1911, teaching remained easily the worst paid of any whitecollar profession. Low status and high female employment were almost inseparable at this time. In 1980, 70 per cent of schoolteachers earned

between £30 and £43. In Rome they were paid less than the average wage for an operative. It is clear from these figures that for a large part of the salaried middle classes their status was only precariously based on their official income. Even a department head (capo-sezione) in Rome in 1878 found it hard with a family to live the full bourgeois life on £140 a year. ‘ Almost no

one buys books or sends their sons to the university [this soon changed]... Taxes, landlords and the cost of food do not permit it.’*° The city administration of Naples discovered that large numbers of its employees were heavily in debt to local usurers. Hence the widespread need for expedients to make ends meet; many middle-class families

depended on additional sources of income to supplement meagre 23 G. Bolton King and T. Okey, Italy To-Day (London 1901), pp. 125ff.; Dompé, Guida, pp. 119-23, 293-4; Istituto Centrale di Statistica, Sommarie di statistiche storiche del? Italia, 1981-1965 (Rome 1968), p. 129; Critica Sociale, vol. 1, p. 684.

24 G. Vigo, ‘Il maestro elementare italiano nell’ottocento: condizioni economiche e status sociale’, Nuova Rivista Storica, $1, 1-2 (JJan.—April 1977), 49, 53-7. G. Bini, ‘Romanzi e realta

di maestri e maestre’, in Storia d'Italia. Annali 4, Intellettuali e potere, ed. C. Vivanti (Turin 1981), pp. 1201, 1209, 1216. 2° Carpi, L’Italia, vol. 1, p. 490.

226 ADRIAN LYTTELTON official salaries. Many petty officials took to the roads as travelling salesmen in their spare time. The regular traders of Ancona in 1906 denounced the presence of one hundred illegal salesmen in the province

compared with six or seven licensed commercial travellers; eighty of the hundred were public employees. In the Naples of 1862, a public employee was granted a special reward for merit on the grounds that

he did not have a second job.*® The ‘black economy’ is not an invention of the 1970s.

Yet there is evidence that the middle classes, defined in terms of income and property, improved their position relative to that of the really wealthy in the years between unification and the first world war.

The increase in the salaries of civil servants in the later nineteenth century benefited the lower ranks more than the higher; between the 1860s and the 1900s the salary of a director-general rose by 15 per cent, that of a clerk 40 per cent. Whereas the share of private wealth owned by the richest 2 per cent of property holders declined from 58 per cent

in 1890 to $1 per cent in 1914, that of the next 18 per cent rose from 2§ per cent to 36 per cent.”” Progress, however, was not without its shocks. The bank crash of the late 1880s brought ruin to many of the petty bourgeoisie of employees, shopkeepers, and artisans in Piedmont as the panic spread from the large banks involved in Rome building speculation to the banche popolari and the savings banks. More than 100 million lire in savings were wiped out and the levels of 1887 were not reached again till after 1900. In the worst year, 1890-1, there were 587 bankruptcies, twice as many as in the depth of the great depression in the 1930s."° In a sense, the Piedmontese petty bourgeoisie paid dearly for its relative enterprise and precocious involvement in the capitalist system. Elsewhere, a higher degree of caution prevailed. Viewed under

another light, the distribution of wealth shows the strong hold of tradition on the propertied classes. Land, buildings, and furniture accounted for more than two-thirds of all personal wealth in the period before the First World War; shares, industrial plant, cash deposits, and government bonds only totalled 24.5 per cent. Only in the industrial northwest had the newer forms of wealth become predominant.*® The agrarian crises of the 1880s did, however, lead to a flight of capital from

the land. A study of Lucca shows that between 1880 and 1900 the 26 B. Caizzi, Il commercio, Storia della societa italiana dallunita a oggi, vol. um (Turin 1975),

27 v. Zamagni, ‘The rich and the richest in a late industrializer: the case of Italy, 1800-1945’, in W.D. Rubinstein, Wealth and the Wealthy in the Modern World (London 1980), p. 139. 28 V. Castronovo, I! Piemonte (Turin 1977), pp. 117-25. 2° Zamagni, ‘The rich’, pp. 136-7.

The middle classes in Liberal Italy 227 wealthier bourgeois withdrew capital from the land and invested it in government securities. They were also less likely than before to employ

their money in personal loans as bank credit became more easily available.*? Provincial Italy was moving towards a more impersonal

society, in which economic transactions became increasingly independent of personal relationships. But the partial shift away from investment in land did not imply a preference for capitalist enterprise.

Industrialists and a minority of improving landlords united in denouncing passive rentiers for diverting capital from productive uses.

For this tendency they also blamed the state, which combined high taxation with a growing public debt and high interest rates. _ The status system reinforced the distrust of private enterprise (often justified from a material point of view). Entrepreneurs deplored the

preference not only for government bonds but for government employment. In late-nineteenth-century Piedmont, the family of a poorly paid employee in government service would look down on a self-made businessman.** One can ask how serious such social barriers within the middle classes remained. How far did new rankings based on wealth supersede older and more absolute forms of social distinction ? The importance attached to titles is a reasonably good index of the

rigidity of status distinctions. Talcott Parsons has pointed to the fondness of pre-Nazi Germany for titles as the characteristic of a society

in which social and personal relations were hierarchical and highly formal.** The case of Italy is harder to judge. Certainly titles were important; any bourgeois could expect at least to be addressed as dottore, whether or not he had in fact graduated from a university. The

lawyer, the engineer, and the professor were all addressed by their distinctive professional titles: and so were the holders of government decorations. It would be a terrible faux pas for a subordinate in a government office not to call his superior cavaliere once he had been granted the title.°* Lower down the social scale, the accountant and the

maestro of music or the arts had their titles too. Even commerciante (shopkeeper, trader) was a regular title, which one would use in a letter though not in speech. The idea of the qualification or licence is what underlay all these professional titles; status was more secure if it had been endorsed by public authority. 3° A. M. Banti, ‘Ricchezza e potere. Le dinamiche patrimoniali nella societa borghese del XIX secolo’, in Quaderni Storici, 56 (1984), pp. 404-9. 31 V. Bersezio, ‘Le miserie di Monssu Travet’ (1863), in Il Teatro Italiano, vol. v, La commedia e il dramma borghese dell ottocento, ed. S. Ferrone (Turin 1979), part 2, pp. 221-2. 32 T. Parsons, Politics and Social Structure (London 1969), pp. 71-2.

°3 Bersezio, ‘Le miserie’, pp. 257-60.

228 ADRIAN LYTTELTON However, foreign observers often commented on the relative weakness of status distinctions in Italy. The sociologist Roberto Michels, an acute observer who knew Italy well, found a marked contrast between Italian and German society. Whereas in Germany cafés were strictly segregated according to class, in Italy one could find workers, employees, and professors at neighbouring tables. Among the bourgeoisie social relations were much more informal; there were few events which it was obligatory to attend. Even the families who gave

regular receptions once or twice a month were content to offer vermouth and biscuits instead of the oppressive hospitality which the Germans felt called upon to offer in similar circumstances. The order of visits was less rigorously prescribed. In public places, strangers would

enter into conversation without being introduced. Individuals in Italy were less totally absorbed by their professional roles: in Germany one was a lawyer, in Italy it was something one did.** Almost certainly, Michels’ picture is too favourable. Oppressed by German society, he overemphasized the freedom of Italian social relationships. There was much suspicion of social mobility and nostalgia for a society in which ranks were fixed. If one reads, for example, Emilio De Marchi’s novels about Lombardy one finds that characters who aspire to a higher class usually finish badly, especially if they are women.” The openness of Italians in dealing with the lower classes, noted by Michels, was more likely due to an old-fashioned familiarity based on a secure consciousness of social distance than to modern sentiments of equality. This familiarity was noted by Taine in 1864 as characteristic of papal Rome, together with the lack of ‘little constraints’.** The

unthinking assumption of superiority was in fact beginning to be oppressive. The popular writer on etiquette, Anna Vertua Gentile, warned against the insulting use of the second person, still standard in

dealing with servants, waiters, and workers generally.*’ Michels’ observations were presumably based mainly on the cities of north and central Italy. In the southern countryside there was an abyss between the only two classes which really mattered, the peasants and the civili. It is true that within the circle of the privileged social distinctions were

not particularly rigid; the landowning and professional classes had largely merged, and even comparatively humble public employees 54 R. Michels, I] proletariato e la borghesia nel movimento socialista italiano (Turin 1908), pp. 298-310.

35 See E. de Marchi, Demetrio Pianelli (Milan 1890); E. de Marchi, Giacomo lidealista (Milan

1897). 8° H. Taine, Voyage en Italie (Paris 1864), p. 419. 37 A. Vertua Gentile, Come devo comportarmi? (Milan 1897), p. 177.

| The middle classes in Liberal Italy 229 were accepted as part of polite society. But the provincial middle classes of the south were united by exclusiveness and parochialism, not open‘mindedness. There have unfortunately been few serious historical investigations

of the mentality or professional activities of the middle classes.** However, an interesting impression can be derived from the enquiry

carried out by Leone Carpi in 1878. Carpi drew up a detailed questionnaire which he sent out to the prefects as well as to eminent

friends. For Carpi, the middle classes were identical with the bourgeoisie ; however, they were defined by status rather than property,

and separated from what he called ‘the aristocracy of finance and business’. He made no secret of his preference for the middle classes

over other groups. They were the classes from which nearly all intellectuals originated, and they provided the elites of law, commerce,

and politics. Morally, they were marked by the prevalence of hard work over inertia, patriotism over scepticism, and by a domestic piety

which avoided the contrary evils of indifference and bigotry. Nevertheless, he admitted that some defects were widespread. The more prosperous tended to retire early and live on unearned income. Successful industrialists, traders, or farmers educated their sons to be lawyers or doctors instead of continuing their business. This search for social status was creating an intellectual proletariat which not even the rapid growth of journalism could absorb. Carpi recognized that these preferences were inextricably bound up with the backwardness of large

parts of Italy. The rentier mentality was hard to shake off in milieus

which were both urban and accustomed to living off agriculture. Where industry and commerce were weak, impiegomania (positionmania) and dolce far niente were bound to flourish. In the south, an idle middle class and an idle lumpenproletariat were two sides of the same problem: a lack of profitable employment.** In such circumstances,

private enterprise as well as bureaucracy could be parasitic: in thousands of villages, particularly in central and southern Italy, ‘the most important person is the usurer’.*® 38 However, see the special number of Quaderni Storici, ‘ Borghesie urbane dell’ottocento’, ed. P.

Macry and R. Romanelli, vol. xiv, n. 2, August 1984. 39 However, note the reaction of Quintino Sella to his first experience of Naples: the inertia of the populace had been much exaggerated: ‘I start to believe that there is more lazzaronismo in the employees and in the so-called civil class [cefo civile] than in this extraordinarily lively populace [plebe]’ (Q. Sella, Epistolario (Rome 1980), vol. 1, p. 313). 40 Carpi, L’Italia, vol. 1, p. 320. On Carpi’s ideology, see $. Lanaro, Nazione e lavoro. Saggio sulla cultura borghese in Italia, 1870-1925 (Venice and Padua 1979), pp. 22-32.

230 ADRIAN LYTTELTON Carpit’s informants give a vivid if sometimes prejudiced picture of the habits of the social classes in different regions of Italy. The most

exemplary contrast was between Milan and Palermo. The middle classes of Lombardy were work-loving and active both in industry and

agriculture, and did not look to the government for employment. Their desire to rise in the world was even criticized as excessive. Love for education extended to girls as well as boys. The Palermo middle classes, on the other hand, lived mainly off government employment with a minority in the free professions. They lacked the northern spirit of thrift, living from hand to mouth and often in debt. Women were poorly educated and the ‘violent jealousy’ of the males excluded them

from useful employment. The younger generation, initially discontented by the failure of the 1860 revolution to improve their position, had mainly been bought off by government jobs, and now showed signs of ‘discipline and affection’ towards the government. ‘There still remains a multitude of youths without an occupation of any kind, but the State is great ...’*! There was somewhat more similarity

between attitudes towards consumption in the two cities. Both were former capitals in which the middle classes too wanted to be smart, and the women in particular were criticized for excessive love of fine dress. The popularity of the theatre was another point in common. However, Palermo could not rival the intense and widely-diffused social life of the Milan cafes and other meeting-places. The Milanese liked to take trips in the country, a habit for good reason lacking in Sicily. The attractions of the traditional feste were still strong in Palermo, while in Milan the carnival was in decline. A recent study of Naples tends to confirm Carpi’s negative picture

of the middle classes in the capital cities of the south. There was an extraordinary contrast between the reluctance of the middle classes to

meet their obligations towards the state and their expectations of assistance from it. They evaded jury duty, service in the National Guard, and the payment of taxes. On the other hand, the government was inundated by petitions for subsidies, pensions, scholarships, and jobs. In a society which was still rigidly stratified, the emphasis was on the maintenance of inherited status. Hard-up professional men found it natural to petition the government for subsidies to help them maintain an appropriate style of life.** Northern domesticity and Sicilian love of public display formed 41 Carpi, L’Italia, vol. 1, p. 174. #2 P. Macry, ‘Borghesie, citta e stato’, Quaderni Storici, 56 (1984), 373-

The middle classes in Liberal Italy 231 another contrast. The middle class of Syracuse copied the aristocracy in its love for fine dress, but inside their houses luxury and even cleanliness were almost unknown. However, this does not seem to have been so

true of the mainland south; the Calabrian bourgeoisie invested in expensive furniture, mirrors, and candelabra. The contrast between north and south must not be overdrawn; appreciation of religion as a spectacle was not confined to the south for all the new emphasis on the home. Impiegomania and a love of public amusements were characteristic also of former capital cities ike Modena or Venice, used to ducal

or civic extravagance. The Modenese were noted for their love of spectacle in church and piazza and their comparative neglect of the household. The Venetian middle class, traditionally subordinate to the nobility, tended to imitate its style of life and to wear its idleness with

presumption. Here too the government job was the solution for all problems. The autonomy of the middle classes also differed widely from region

to region. There was a contrast between regions with a strong aristocracy which had kept a large part of its prestige, where the bourgeoisie was still under its influence, and those where the latter had

emancipated itself. This contrast did not follow the main line of division between north and south: it opposed the Sicilians to the inhabitants of the Neapolitan provinces, where the old nobility had

little influence either as patrons or as models of behaviour. The bourgeois, indeed, tended to despise the nobility for their lack of education. In Tuscany, by contrast, the nobility were still dominant and

the attitude of the middle class was described as one of resentful subservience. The Tuscan middle classes were singled out for their lack

of influence and their pious susceptibility to direction by the clergy. The same patterns of aristocratic and clerical hegemony and middle class deference certainly prevailed in large parts of the rural northeast.

Deference was reinforced by strong ties of interest and personal patronage. In Palermo, the connections between the clergy and their administrators survived even the nationalization of church property. In Bologna, important sections of the middle classes still gravitated around the aristocratic families whom they served as lawyers or as administrators of their estates. Every region had its backwoods, which were slow to adopt the new patterns of life of the major centres. In the rural areas of central Italy, like Umbria or Siena, the active interest in education of the middle class

of the provincial capitals contrasted with the apathy of the minor

232 ADRIAN LYTTELTON centres. In general, Carpi’s survey is biased in favour of an emphasis on

change and the new earnestness of the middle classes; most of his

correspondents almost certainly underrated the influence of the clergy.** Even so, the picture that emerges is one of a middle class in

its majority strongly wedded to tradition. Michels described the average member of the Italian middle classes in the late nineteenth century as still enclosed in ‘the little world of the past’. Most families of the urban middle classes retained some links with the land, and their outlook was still provincial. The bourgeoisie spent long periods of the year on holiday in the countryside, and travelled little. Their attitude to time was still leisurely and pre-industrial. Michels might think that the Italian middle classes were democratic, but he did not think that they were modern.** The gospel of sober hard work and enterprise preached by men like Carpi, however, found a hearing. It was probably the petty bourgeoisie of employees, tradesmen, and prosperous artisans who sent their sons to the technical schools, who account for the enormous popularity of the literature of self-help. The translation of Samuel Smiles’ famous book of that title ran into sixteen editions between 1865 and 1877; another

of his books sold 1,000 copies in the first year. The government furthered this trend deliberately, as did leading industrialists such as Alessandro Rossi. In 1867 the foreign minister Menabrea staged a competition for an original Italian work with a Smilesian message. The competition was won by. Michele Lessona with Volere @ Potere (Will is

Power), and the imitation was even more successful than the original, selling 20,000 copies between 1869 and 1883. Publishers such as Barbera

in Florence, the Utet firm in Turin, and above all the Swiss Hoepli in Milan founded series to meet the need of this new public, anxious for self-improvement. They conveyed a mixture of moral uplift, social Darwinism, science, and practical advice.*” Smiles’ translator Straffarello called for a new utilitarian attitude to education which would seek above all to inculcate steady work habits in the place of ‘disorder and

apathy’. He blamed the excessive emphasis on the past for the widespread preference for the free professions and politics over industry. Lessona criticized the tendency to consider industry and commerce inferior occupations, and the caution which led fathers to *8 See Carpi, L’ Italia, vol. 1, pp. 125-239. 44 R. Michels, Italien von Heute (Zurich and Leipzig 1930), pp. 66-7. 45 G. Baglioni, L’ideologia della borghesia industriale nell Italia liberale (Turin 1974), pp. 327-54; C.

Giovannini, ‘Pedagogia popolare nei manuali Hoephi’, Studi storici, 21 (Ianuary to March 1980), n. I, 95-121.

The middle classes in Liberal Italy 233 prefer to place their sons in safe administrative jobs. Although all these writers, true to Smiles, insisted on the possibility of success through hard work for all classes, the middle classes were sometimes singled out as those among whom the right attitudes were most widely diffused.

The years of the vogue for the literature of self-help immediately precede and in part coincide with the victory of the Left, and the extension of the political suffrage. This was the period, in other words, when the petty bourgeoisie won political recognition and when their educational aspirations began to be noticed. Self-help literature may have owed some of its popularity to the situation of groups which were in the process of achieving a new self-respect and independence, and

which had not yet absorbed the cultural models of the upper middle classes. Even the latter did not remain static. The 1880s were, in fact, a period of decisive change at all levels of Italian society. The culture of deference and traditional patronage inherited from the ancient regime was seriously eroded, at least in urban society. Sources of income and channels of patronage became more diversified. But this did not imply

an adoption of the models of a competitive industrial society. The vision of a society based on competition and hard work, with the industrial entrepreneur as hero, though it did introduce a new element into the culture of the lower middle classes, was still at odds with a reality in which the opportunities for enterprise and innovation were limited. It is not surprising, therefore, that the change in social attitudes

was less than complete. ,

One way to define the middle classes is through education. Indeed, phrases like the ‘ceto colto’ or the ‘ceto medio istruito’ were often used. The status system founded on education had its own logic and values: we have seen the importance of the titles it conferred. The prestige of the learned professions remained supreme: the doctor and the lawyer rather than the industrialist presented the most popular image of social success. As late as 1948 (admittedly a time when economic prospects were bleak), 27 per cent of a national sample, in reply to the question ‘What profession do you intend your sons to follow?’ said that they would direct them to the free professions.*® The experience of the south after unification reinforced traditional patterns of job-seeking. We have seen how Carpi denounced the impiegomania of Sicily and Naples. After he wrote, the situation if anything worsened. If the habit of petitioning 46 Pp, Luzzatto Fegiz, Il volto sconosciuto dell’ Italia (Milan 1956), pp. 1037-45, 1050. Preference for

private over State employment: north 47 per cent private, 34 per cent State, south 27 per cent private, 46 per cent State, islands 24 per cent private, $6 per cent State.

234 ADRIAN LYTTELTON the government for outright assistance declined, the obsessive search

for public employment continued. ,

In 1897, Salvemini analysed the reasons for the crisis of the urban petty bourgeoisie in a study of his own home town, Molfetta (Apulia). Before 1860, there had been a reasonably prosperous class of small-scale

manufacturers. The priesthood had provided a way of taking care of sons of the family without giving them land, and was a most important channel for social mobility. Two generations of priests could raise a family into the group of local notables. The first blow to this class came

with the impoverishment and declining prestige of the church after 1860. Not being able to make their sons priests, fathers tried to make them employees or professionals. But the surplus of candidates over positions soon made itself felt. Then, from the 1880s onwards, the small

landowners were ruined by the agricultural depression. Those who were not reduced to peasant status faced a desperate struggle to keep up appearances. Burdened by debts, which absorbed all their rents, incapable of manual labor and always in search of a position which they never find, bled white by the tax collector and the usurer, with all their sons students or professional men without business, they suffer the most squalid poverty beneath the decorous exterior which every respectable family has to keep up in a small town.*

The desperate hangers-on and place-seekers drawn from this class were known as the morti di fame. The southern petty bourgeoisie swelled the

numbers of university students and of aspirants to jobs in the state administration. A much higher proportion of boys who. entered secondary schools went on to the university than in the north, because of the difficulty of finding employment. It was better to put off the evil day and hope that the laurea would prove a good investment.** But this only swelled the mass of underemployed professionals. They formed the mercenary army of local politics, following whoever could promise them a job as municipal clerk or tax inspector. The skills they cultivated were particularly those of the mediator.

The poverty of other channels for social mobility meant that the

hopes placed in education and the professions were not wholly irrational. Historical studies of social mobility in Italy are scarce, but *? G. Salvemini, Movimento socialista e questione meridionale (Milan 1968), p. 21. 48 M. Barbagli, Disoccupazione intellettuale e sistema scolastico in Italia (Bologna 1974), pp. 140-2.

In 1910, in the age-group 10-15, only 33 per cent of boys in the south were at school,

compared with 49 per cent in the north. But in the age group 15-21 (roughly corresponding with the liceo and the university), the south led with 9.42 per cent against 6.65 per cent in the north.

The middle classes in Liberal Italy 235 one contemporary statistical study of Rome in 1900 shows that mobility between generations was higher in the professions than in trade or industry.*® It seems that Unification created a new structure of opportunities; the higher professions (law and medicine) ceased to be

a self-recruiting elite and opened their ranks to the sons of lesser professional men (notaries, chemists, and surveyors) and tradesmen.

Although law remained the most prestigious profession, its preeminence was no longer unchallenged. In Bourbon Naples, ‘the careers of doctor and architect ... confer no rank in society’, but by the end of

the nineteenth century this was no longer true.” The professional classes dominated political life, and not only in the south. They were the standard-bearers of liberalism, individualism, and education. Yet their position was more ambiguous than might appear at first sight.

Liberal ideology celebrated the victory of free enterprise; but the professions by their nature aimed to restrict competition. In 1875 the famous lawyer and later Prime Minister Giuseppe Zanardelli announced

in an inaugural speech that ‘we are not a privileged corporation, we

are, according to the terms we inherit from Roman tradition, an order’;°? What he actually meant by this was that lawyers should have the right to corporate self-government. This had been denied by the ancien regime and had been one of the first demands put forward once representative government had been granted. The Order should have

absolute control over the admission of new members, and the possibility of appealing against its decisions should be abolished. It

should also have the exclusive right to conduct disciplinary proceedings.°* Even within the profession competition was not to be encouraged indiscriminately. The individual lawyer should preserve his

dignity by abstaining from ‘employments which draw him into the mercantile arena of business, mediation and enterprise’; he should not be allowed to sit on company boards. More demeaning still to the profession were those lawyers who actively hunted for clients, offering their services in circulars and advertisements, or even employing prison 49 F. Chessa, La trasmissione ereditaria delle professioni (Turin 1977), pp. 53-4. #0 G. Laurita, ‘Comportamenti matrimoniali e mobilita sociale a Napoli’, Quaderni Storici XVII (1982), pp. 446-450. *1 G. Zanardelli, L’avvocatura: scritti e discorsi (Florence 1879), pp. 4-5. *2 Lawyers were in fact the first profession to have their corporate Order recognized by the state, in 1874-5. The legal profession was a model for the organization of the other free professions,

but it took some time before they could achieve similar recognition. The doctors’ Order was

recognized only in 1910, along with those of vets and chemists (W. Tousijn, ‘Tra stato e mercato: le libere profession in Italia in una prospettiva storico-evolutiva’, in Le libere professioni in Italia, ed. W. Tousijn (Bologna 1987), pp. 45-6.) See also V. Olgiati, ‘Avvocati e notai tra professionalismo e mutamento sociale’, in ibid., pp. 83-102.

. 53 . -

236 ADRIAN LYTTELTON officers as their agents.’” The professions, in fact, were menaced both

from within and without in their claims to dignity; from within, by overcrowding, giving rise to intense competition and unemployment; from without by the services of unlicensed practitioners. The major

professions defended themselves against the minor, as well as the unqualified. The defence of professional privileges by lawyers was fierce,°* and certainly not confined to the conservative. The one-time Socialist firebrand Enrico Ferri led the agitation of lawyers against measures extending the competence of notaries and allowing accountants to represent the parties in bankruptcy cases.°° Competition was particularly hard for lawyers. In 1901 there were 24,000 in Italy; Prussia, with a slightly higher population, had only about 4,000.°° The concentration was greatest in the south, and as other professions opened themselves up in the industrial areas the gap tended

to become wider. By 1911 the south had more than twice as many lawyers per head of the population as the north.®’ In 1881 backward Basilicata outdid even Campania. in this respect. At the turn of the century, the law faculties every year were producing about twice as many lawyers as there were vacancies available. About half the law graduates who did find employment became practising lawyers; the rest were absorbed by the magistracy and the administration. In these circumstances most young lawyers were condemned to a Darwinian struggle for existence. The important thing was to acquire connections

and to become known, even at the cost of a dubious reputation. Lawyers paid to have themselves written about in newspapers, or founded short-lived news-sheets themselves. But they were quick also

to accuse their competitors of malice, so that this petty journalism frequently gave rise to duels. Standing for local office was another way of getting known. Lawyers forced their company on magistrates; even

if their attentions were unwelcome, they might deceive clients into thinking they had influence.”® °$ Ibid., pp. 133-4; E. Ciccotti, Cause ed effetti: note sulle presenti condizioni dell’ avvocatura e su di un nuovo ordinamento di essa (Turin 1889), p. 6.

°4 When the lawyers of Naples protested against a proposal that the Ministry of Justice should regulate legal fees, they appealed not to the principle of free competition, but to their ‘ancient privileges’ (Macry, ‘Borghesie’, p. 358). °° E. Ferri, La nuova legge sul notariato, lo stato d’animo degli avvocati e la riforma organica della loro

professione (Rome 1913), pp. 2-5.

°® Michels, Proletariato e borghesia, pp. 118-20. See Barbagli, Disoccupazione, pp. 38-9 for a refutation of Michels’ argument that this figure included those qualified to practise law, but

actually in other professions. *? Barbagli, Disoccupazione, p. 63. °8 «In Naples he who starts a legal action begins by asking who are the friends of the judge’ (the prefect Senise, quoted by G. Alberti, Citta e campagna nel Mezziogiorno tra [ Otto e il Novecento (Naples 1972), p. 100).

The middle classes in Liberal Italy 237 The professions had engaged in a long struggle for influence with the

clergy and they expected to inherit many of their functions. Like the doctor, but with perhaps less reason, the lawyer in his more uplifted moments saw himself as a kind of ‘lay confessor’, present in all the crises and the rites de passage of the family, the direct confidant of all their secrets. The lawyer, too, often took over the role of the priest in conciliating private quarrels. However, it is not difficult to imagine that in circumstances of acute competition the ancient suspicion of the lawyer as someone who promotes and prolongs litigation must often

have been justified. Proverbially such lawyers were known as strascinafaccende (draggers-out).°” Certainly litigation as well as lawyers

reached its peak in the south. In 1894 there were almost three times as many law cases in proportion to population in Naples or Sicily as in the north, and in 1908, though the gap had narrowed, the proportion was still 2:1.°° It would be unfair to blame this disparity primarily on the

lawyers: the peculiar habits of peasant litigation were probably the main cause, not to speak of the southern primacy in crime. But even in the most serious cases (civil and criminal), Naples had a lead. May this

not have had something to do with the concentration of lawyers there 2°! The most one can say is that the influence was reciprocal. Around the turn of the century, litigation began to show a decline. This was partly because new non-judicial arbitration procedures had been introduced in industry and elsewhere. But the increased cost of legal proceedings was also responsible. Those who were unwilling to accuse

lawyers of promoting litigation found a convenient scapegoat in the large class of faccendieri, or unlicensed middlemen. In the 1880s it was hard for an ordinary lawyer to obtain clients directly, without using the services of one of the seedy crowd of hangers-on who infested the lawcourts and carried on a regular business of selling cases.** Driven out of

the magistrates’ courts after 1900, they retreated to the new ‘Conciliation Offices’, which handled the humbler levels of litigation. Especially in the large cities, they competed with regular lawyers for this petty business, ‘without offering any guarantee of knowledge or skill’.*?

°° M. Donati, Gli avvocati (Rome 1913), p. 21. Compare with the spicciafaccende — those who wait in queues and persuade officials to conclude business: a regular profession in the south. 69 Ministero di Grazia e Giustizia, Atti della Commissione di statistica e legislazione, reports and transcriptions of discussions (Rome 1912). °t The suspicion was an old one; see the comment of Luigi Conforti, in G. Alongi, La camorra (Turin 1890), p. 25: ‘there is no city in the world where one litigates as in Naples, which is chock full of lawyers, and in which the law courts are innumerable’. ®2 Ciccotti, Cause ed effetti, pp. 10-11. ®8 Ministero di Grazia e Giustizia, Atti, p. 771.

238 ADRIAN LYTTELTON Why did the legal profession continue to attract so many recruits, when its risks were so notorious? It was not just a question of the absence of alternatives. First of all, entrance was easy. To become a

doctor was a lengthy business, all too likely to be rewarded by provincial tedium. Teaching required serious study and the life was monotonous. A law degree, on the other hand, was the easiest kind to obtain and law students were notorious for their easy-going attitude to study. In theory, the university degree was supposed to be only the first

stage in qualifying. The laureato had to complete two years’ apprenticeship with a practising lawyer, and he had to pass two further examinations to qualify first as a procuratore (junior) and then as a full avvocato. Finally, the order had to judge that he was morally worthy of

admission. But none of these requirements was taken seriously. The lawyer with whom the pupil served his apprenticeship was neither paid by him, nor was the former able to use his services. As a result, all he asked was not to be bothered. He might meet his student only twice,

once to accept him and once to deliver the certificate of two years’ attendance. The apprentice lawyer was also supposed to attend cases in the law courts, but he could get round that by bribing the usher. One

could actually qualify in this way as a procuratore while still at university. The professional examinations were lax, and in some law courts clerks could be bribed to reveal the answers. Few even bothered to take the final examination to become avvocato: under a law of 1874 one could be admitted to the order automatically after six years as a procuratore. In any case, the procuratori were able to take on most categories of legal business, and many of them assumed the title of avvocato before they had a formal right to it. Finally, the order seldom excluded anyone unless he had been convicted of a serious crime.™ Law was, of course, a ‘noble’ profession of ancient prestige which offered the chance of a brilliant career at the top to compensate for early

hardships. The successful lawyer was a master of incomprehensible learning, cunning, and ready eloquence, qualities which together form a Mediterranean archetype of intelligence. The great lawyer was a verbal athlete in a contest which was widely appreciated as popular entertainment. Carlo Levi in his exile in the Basilicata in the 1930s noted ‘the widespread admiration for legal eloquence’. One of the villagers knew the names of all the leading lawyers and could recite long passages from their most famous perorations.© In provincial 64 p. Calamandrei, Troppi avvocati! (Florence 1919), pp. 132-60. % C. Levi, Christ Stopped at Eboli (New York 1976), pp. 171-2.

The middle classes in Liberal Italy 239 towns, the law courts were very often the hub of social life as well as a vital source of employment. To suppress even a pretura (magistrate’s court) was notoriously one of the hardest things for a government to achieve. As for Naples, at the turn of the century the law courts were described by Arturo Labriola as the only centre for the formation of

new currents of public opinion.*® |

Zanardelli and other lawyers of the liberal period attached particular importance to eloquence. The fruit of passion and natural genius, it was a quality of a higher order than the ‘aridity’ of mere reasoning. Before 1860, secrecy and censorship had prevented lawyers from exercising

their gifts to the full. Under the Austrian legal code all the essential

proceedings were conducted in writing, so that eloquence was irrelevant. Under Liberalism, oratory was the path to a political reputation though the lawyer was not expected to be just a star performer in the courts. In the country which had invented academic law, he was also a savant. Law was essentially a deductive system, and the lawyers who earned lasting fame were those whose written treatises elucidated its logic. There was no such clear division as in England

between the mentality of academic and professional lawyers; the former were in a sense the heads of the profession, and their success in

politics was as remarkable as that of the pure orators. The positivist

tried to update legal science by making the lawyer into a ‘moral anatomist’, with society as his dissecting room. The 1890s were the great decade of criminology, when law and medicine joined hands, confident of their ability to prevent and detect crime by the methods of modern empirical science. This movement involved practising lawyers, like Enrico Ferri. However, this was only a phase. Fascism was to encourage the revival of strict legal formalism as a guarantee against

arbitrary interpretation. ,

The prevalence of lawyers in the political class came under fire in the

late nineteenth century. The legal mentality was accused of conservatism and procrastination. Pasquale Villari and Francesco Nitti both blamed legal education for the politicians’ formalism and ignorance of social realities. They loved to discuss insignificant points of detail while

really serious questions aroused little interest or understanding. ‘No class is more affected by atavism and by hatred for the new than that of the jurists’;°’ they were confined within an archaic framework of 6° p. A. Allum, Politics and Society in Post-War Naples (Cambridge 1973), p. 80.

8” F.S. Nitti, ‘La legislazione sociale in Italia e le sue difficolta’, in Scritti sulla questione meridionale, vol. 1 (Bari 1958), p. 184.

240 ADRIAN LYTTELTON ideas. These judgements, though they may have applied to the majority of lawyers in politics, should not be taken as the whole truth. In fact,

lawyers were no less common among Socialist deputies than in parliament as a whole: in 1909 they numbered sixteen out of a group

of thirty-four. Their leader Turati disagreed with the prevailing argument that the high numbers in the professions were a social evil.

It meant that there were more lawyers to defend the rights of the poor,*® and that even small villages could have resident doctors. Turati’s view was that of a northerner. Few southern Socialists or Radicals agreed with his positive judgements. In these same years, Salvemini and Nitti denounced the lethal influence of the southern petty bourgeoisie of graduates. Ironically, the leadership of the revolutionary syndicalists, who attacked middle-class dominance of the parliamentary socialist party, were themselves largely recruited from the ‘intellectual petty bourgeoisie’ of the South. Doctors did not arouse the same antipathy as lawyers; however, their profession had many of the same problems. There were 19,000 doctors and surgeons in 1861, or 0.8 per 1,000 population, a higher proportion than in France or Germany, and as with lawyers they were thickest on the ground in the south.® This figure excludes an inferior category of practitioners, the ‘bloodletters’ (flebotomi). These were still numerous, while in the whole of Italy there were little more than 200 dentists, and even they did not have to have degrees. The contrast says something about the state of medical science. Doctors felt even more keenly than

lawyers the need to struggle against unlicensed competitors. They complained that the authorities turned a blind eye to the practice of medicine by charlatans, clairvoyants, bone-setters, ointment sellers, and wise women. Official medicine still had to fight for recognition against

folk medicine. In villages and small towns, the doctor’s authority in medical matters was also challenged by the chemist. Pharmacy was a specialized profession, for which a degree was required. Chemists were

much more certain of finding employment than doctors and the 88 However, one of the complaints against the law and lawyers was that the poor did not receive effective assistance. Several of the pre-Unification States had an effective system of legal aid, the Avvocatura dei Poveri, paid for out of public funds. Instead, against the wishes of the legal

profession, in the new state legal aid became an ‘honorific’ function, which received no remuneration. Lawyers were fond of referring to the obligation of giving gratuitous aid to the poor as a proof of their public spirit, but in fact it became notorious that only the beginners

or the unemployed would make themselves available, and that the assistance was often perfunctory. Socialism may have made some difference here, but it could not remedy the institutional deficiency (Olgiati, ‘Avvocati’, p. 92). °° Ministero di Agricoltura, Industria e Commercio, Statistica del Regno d'Italia. Popolazione. Censimento generale, 31 dicembre 1861.

The middle classes in Liberal Italy 241 profession became increasingly attractive to families of good status.

Chemists believed that they had more up-to-date knowledge than doctors, and made fun of. the latter’s old-fashioned and unscientific remedies. The chemist also had a great social advantage over the doctor. His shop was often the chief meeting-place for the local elite and the centre of gossip. Rivalry between doctors and chemists was common: but so was co-operation, and in this case it was the doctor who depended on the chemist, using his shop as an office and relying on his good word to get patients. This was denounced as an abuse, on the grounds that is led doctors to prescribe unnecessary medicines. In the earlier nineteenth century, professional etiquette prevented

doctors from charging a fixed fee for their services, or indeed demanding to be paid at all. Relations between the doctor and his patients were still conducted according to the norms of an aristocratic society, based on the reciprocal obligations of patrons and clients. In practice, this meant prolonging a humiliating state of dependence on the rich and the influential; the doctor had to be careful not to offend. By the late nineteenth century, the scientific revolution in medicine had greatly increased the prestige and popularity of the medical professions.

Yet traces of the old relationship survived. Doctors still found it difficult to get paid, and their patients did not always acknowledge their status. The advance of science itself created new problems within the profession. By 1870, there were already complaints that the prestige of the family doctor was suffering from the rise of the specialist. Doctors did not perhaps go to the lengths of lawyers to secure clients; but they

were notorious for the bitterness of their professional rivalries. University chairs of medicine and jobs in hospitals were the object of furious intrigues. The leading medical professors expected, and got, a degree of personal submission from their subordinates even greater than in other disciplines. ‘The clinic is the Church... It is only doubtful whether the clinician should be described as a bishop or a God.” Only about half the doctors in Italy were private practitioners. The rest were medici condotti (public doctors), employed by the communes.

So, unlike the lawyers, the medical profession was sharply divided between a private and a public sector. Like the schoolteacher, the medico condotto found it hard to insist on his rights when he was at the mercy of municipal patronage. The ‘liberalism’ of the new state, with its strong emphasis on private choice, actually worsened their conditions of employment. The medici condotti served under two different types of © G. Pasquali and P. Calamandrei, L’universita di domani (Foligno 1923), p. 154.

242 ADRIAN LYTTELTON contract. They might be paid a full stipend for providing free medical care to all members of the community, or they might be expected to treat only the poor for free, and to supplement their income through fees. Doctors complained that in the latter case the list of the poor was often arbitrarily extended to cover most of the commune’s inhabitants, and that in addition mayors and councillors exacted free treatment as the price for reappointment. The medici condotti were among the first professional groups to form an effective national organization to lobby for the redress of their grievances. Crispi’s public health law of 1888 finally gave them some real security of tenure, and, equally important, made them responsible for the enforcement of public health regulations. Previously, their efforts to improve hygiene and control epidemics had

frequently been frustrated by the deliberate inaction of the local authorities.

The 1888 law was a real watershed for the medical profession. It legitimized the doctors’ growing sense of confidence in their public

mission. The state unequivocally endorsed their monopoly of knowledge, and in the cities at least they were able to take effective

measures to suppress unlicenced competitors. By the end of the century, the successful private practitioners of medicine had achieved a

status at least equal to that of the lawyers. They were powerful, respected, and almost invulnerable; the courts became increasingly unsympathetic to plaintiffs who alleged malpractice or negligence.” However, the grievances of the medici condotti were by no means removed by the 1888 law. Even now, the medico condotto had to undergo

a three-year test period before he got tenure, so he was not altogether freed from dependence on the good-will of the local elite. As a public health officer, he was now heavily burdened with bureaucratic duties. The division between public and private medicine came to coincide to

an increasing extent with that between town and country. Private practitioners tended to abandon the unprofitable rural areas and concentrate in the cites, although this tendency was less marked in the south. The medici condotti felt keenly the disadvantages of their isolation

and poverty compared with their more fortunate colleagues with paid practices in the cities. Cut off from contact with their colleagues, and unable to afford the subscription to medical journals, they could not keep up with the latest trends in medicine. But the dissatisfactions of the medici condotti were not purely personal. Their responsibility for public *l See A.Lonni, ‘Medici, ciarlatani e magistrati nell’Italia liberale’, Malattia e medicina, pp. 801-40.

The middle classes in Liberal Italy 243 health led them naturally towards a wider concern with social reform.

They were in the forefront of the battle against rural poverty, ignorance and superstition. Their anti-clericalism and their anger against the inaction and penny-pinching of successive governments led many of them to sympathize with the radical Left. Doctors were very well represented among the founders of Italian socialism. In 1906 the National Association of medici condotti elected a socialist president. Yet the medici condotti must be seen as a group subject to contradictory pressures. The tension between the ideal of the free profession and the

ethic of public service was never resolved. The medici condotti consistently favoured the principle of restricting free health care to the

poor, because it left the door open for them to engage in private practice. The system of universal health care had always been rare in the south, and in this case it was the southern model which prevailed. In the

years before the great war, the friction between the public doctors’ desire to maintain their bourgeois status on the one side and a more aggressively proletarian socialism on the other produced a growing friction.”? In 1890, it was calculated that every year 900 new doctors graduated,

while there were only 600 positions in public and private practice. By

the end of the decade, prospects were even worse.There was some decline in the pressure of new entrants in the more prosperous years after 1900: with more opportunities for employment elsewhere, the number of students of medicine declined by almost a third. None the less

between 1901 and 1911 more than half the new graduates may have been unable to find employment in Italy. For many the answer lay in

emigration. This may have contributed more to alleviating the problem of the intellectual proletariat than even the development of the

home economy. About 2,000 members of the free professions emigrated every year after 1900: this was about half the number of new graduates who came onto the market. The universities were often criticized for producing unemployable

humanists when they should have been training the experts and technicians that society needed. This criticism was only partly justified. Down to the 1890s graduates in letters and philosophy were among the

least affected by unemployment, since there was a grave shortage of 7? See T. Detti, ‘Medicina, democrazia e Socialismo’, Movimento operaio e socialista, 2, no. 1 (1979), 3-50. In 1908 the leaders of the Association of Medici Condotti proposed that it should

join the Confederation of Labour. But the proposal was withdrawn, largely due to the conspicuous lack of enthusiasm of the trade-union organizers (p. 35).

244 ADRIAN LYTTELTON qualified secondary-school teachers. On the other hand, demand for engineers, managers, and technicians was slow to develop. In 1891, out of a sample of 337 recent graduates in agriculture, 123 were employed

in managing their own property, 111 became teachers, 67 went into professions unconnected with agriculture, and only 13 were employed as farm managers.”* In the 1890s, only 14 per cent of engineers were employed in industry, and the demands of government and building could not absorb all the rest. The engineers, too, saw emigration as the only answer.’* However, for them the expansion of the new economy after 1900 did make a more direct difference. Industrial engineers were always in demand, and even civil engineers were successfully absorbed _ after 1906 by the expansion of public works and the modernization of

the railways. The cliché that industrialists educated their sons to be doctors and lawyers was no longer true by 1911. In Italy industrialists had no inhibitions about sending their sons to study engineering : it was not, as in England, an inferior subject. L’ingegnere was a common way

of referring to the boss or, later, the executive. The Milan Polytechnic, financed directly by business, became the nursery of a new elite of technically proficient entrepreneurs.’ Foreign travel to more advanced industrial nations was an essential part of their training. The industrial elite acquired a cultural self-confidence and modernity of outlook which made them more effective critics of the traditional hegemony of humanist learning, the political mediation of the professional classes, and the inefficiencies of the administrative machine. As critics had feared, the difficulties of the professional classes were

a powerful stimulus to the growth of bureaucracy. If private demand was inadequate, jobs in the administration could always be invented. However, it is wrong to think that this tendency was unchecked, or that the growth of bureaucracy was wholly irrational. The best study concludes that down to 1950 the administration did not grow faster than was warranted by the expansion of state functions.’® Conspicuous waste was the result of poor allocation rather than of an overall excess

of numbers. There were many complaints at the time of unification 73M. Rossi, Universita e societa in Italia alla fine dell’800 (Florence 1976), p. 119. 74 Barbagli, Disoccupazione, p. $1. > See C: G. Lacaita, Sviluppo e cultura: alle origini dell’ Italia industriale (Milan 1984), pp. 169-87; also C. Dau Novelli, ‘Modelli di comportamento e ruoli familiari’, in Borghesi e imprenditori a Milano dall’ Unita alla prima guerra mondiale, ed. G. Fiocca (Rome and Bari 1984), p. 274. *6 S. Cassese, Questione amministrativa e questione meridionale. Dimensioni e reclutamento della burocrazia dall Unita ad oggi (Milan 1977).

The middle classes in Liberal Italy 245 that the new state was a bureaucratic monstrosity. In 1863 Marco Minghetti denounced bureaucracy as ‘a form of socialism’ and promised cuts of 15 or 20 per cent in expenditure.’” Many employees of the old governments were kept on to appease political discontent, while in the south both the Garibaldians and the Right had operated a

spoils system. Nonetheless unification in fact made possible considerable savings, by abolishing frontiers and customs posts, and by eliminating the useless duplicates of central government offices. There

are difficulties in interpreting the statistics, because of changing definitions. But it seems that if teachers and magistrates are excluded, the number of civil servants may actually have been lower in the 1880s than before unification. Expenditure did increase, but this was due to

the payment of higher stipends. A study in 1891 showed that the growth in state employment had been concentrated in the post office, education, and public works, where there was a legitimate need to expand services. Expenditure on police and tax collection had been reduced.’® But the administration of justice was a black spot; in 1865 there were as many officials in the Ministry of. Justice as in France, which had nearly twice as many law courts.

During the Giolittian period, the complaints became more vociferous. Salvemini denounced Giolitti’s government as a case of ‘bureaucratic elephantiasis’. Nitti in 1907 described the Italian budget as ‘the civil list of the bourgeoisie. The rich bourgeoisie has the public debt ... the lesser has the employees.’’’’” By a technique still functioning today, employees were first taken on as ‘provisionals’ (straordinari). In the second phase, they agitated vigorously for permanent status, and

once they had achieved that, they demanded higher salaries. Once again, there was some exaggeration in these accusations. Over the whole period from 1861 to 1911 civil servants did not increase faster

than population. Under Giolitti, expansion was justified by a considerable growth in state intervention in the economy and in the provision of social services. It is true, however, that centralization increased at the expense of local government. Also the bureaucracy was

becoming top-heavy. The proportion of civil servants in the higher administrative grades increased from 4 to 6.75 per cent between 1882 and 1914.°° Ironically it was the war, supported by Giolitti’s opponents, *? Nitti, Questione meridionale, vol. u, pp. 587-91. "8 Cassese, Questione, p. 25. ”® Ibid., pp. 30, 88-9. ®° By the 1970s the proportion had doubled. Problems of definition make comparisons dubious, but it is noteworthy that in the 1960s one in eight Italian civil servants belonged to the quadri

direttivi (administrative grades), whereas in England the proportion was under one in 200 (ibid., pp. 52, 66-7, 131).

246 ADRIAN LYTTELTON which provoked the really great expansion of numbers. Between 1911 and 1921 the numbers employed by central government increased by more than 3, compared with an increase of + in the previous decade.

By the end of the century, patronage within the ministries was giving way to a more automatic system of promotion by seniority (except at the top).°’ This benefited the officials, but enhanced the tendency of the bureaucracy to become a closed and self-interested corporation. Turati complained in 1899 that ‘the bureaucracy responds exclusively to the needs of the bureaucracy itself’; the real evils were a lack of competence or desire to serve the public. The impiego was not regarded as a duty but as a simple privilege to claim income.

After unification, the Piedmontese had at first dominated the administration. At the end of the century northerners were still overrepresented at the higher levels.’ But slowly the bureaucracy was taken over by southerners. Unfortunately, we have no way of gauging the timing of this process. The only good figures are from recent years.

These show that in 1961 63 per cent of all civil servants of the administrative grades came from the south, and another 10 per cent from Rome. Although Nitti tried to deny the charge, it seems likely that at the lower level the change had begun in the 1880s and 1890s; with the increased influence of southerners in government and the social crisis described by Salvemini, Giolitti was accused of appeasing the discontent of the south by granting employment to the clients of his

supporters.°* The long-term effect of southern colonization of the bureaucracy was to widen the gap between administration and society.

As society became more progressive, the bureaucracy became more traditional in its outlook. It is the south which ensured the continued prevalence of law graduates among Italian administrators, and the low premium on technical skills. Unfortunately, the study of the independent petty bourgeoisie has been even more neglected than that of other sectors of the middle classes. In both Germany and France, concern with the social roots of nationalist and fascist movements has stimulated research into the conditions and attitudes of shopkeepers and artisans, but there has been no parallel in Italy. It is possible, however, to draw some provisional 81 This process was confirmed by the law on the legal status of employees prepared by Zanardelli and Giolitti, and passed in 1908. For patronage, see Macry, ‘Borghesie’, p. 372.

82 Nitti, Questione meridionale, pp. 605-6. |

83 Turati complained in 1913 of the negative effects of the accentuated ‘ meridionalization’ of the bureaucracy (S. Cassese, ‘Giolittismo e burocrazia nella “cultura delle riviste”’’, Storia @ Italia Annali 4, Intellettuali e potere, ed. C. Vivanti (Turin 1981), p. $14).

The middle classes in Liberal Italy 247 conclusions from the first results of unpublished research on the shopkeepers of Milan.**

Compared with their French or German counterparts, Milanese shopkeepers turn out to have been surprisingly committed to economic liberalism. They were remarkably free from xenophobia, and did not

blame immigrants, foreigners, or Jews for their difficulties. Nativeborn Milanese were a minority in most trades, and the struggles of newly arrived migrants from the countryside were viewed with a

certain sympathy, in spite of the fact that retailing became very overcrowded during the economic depression of the early 1890s. The shopkeepers defended the principles of free enterprise and free trade,

and, unlike the French, they did not demand protection from the competition of large department stores. It is true that this competition

was only really a problem in the clothing trade, with the success of Ferdinando Bocconi’s famous store.*” Shopkeepers as a class did not

identify with the grievances of tailors and shoemakers who were threatened with proletarianization. They did, as elsewhere, see themselves as ‘little men’, oppressed by the powerful. But they had no nostalgia for a pre-capitalist, corporative past. Rather, they complained

that the rules of ‘fair competition’ were not being upheld by the political authorities.** Nevertheless, under the stress of crisis, shop-

keepers tended to evolve away from an early identification with radicalism. In the mid 1880s, ‘small shopkeepers felt most threatened by

the elite that held power in the city; as they became more integrated into political society it was the external threat of socialism and the hold it might exert over workers, including their own, that worried them’.

In 1886, suburban shopkeepers had sided with workers in the micca riots, protesting against the municipality’s attempt to check evasion of the dazio consumo. In general, shopkeepers naturally sympathized with $4 J. Morris, unpublished MS made available by author. See also his later ‘The Political

Economy of Shopkeeping in Milan 1885-1905’, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1989. 85 On Bocconi, see A. Lyttelton, ‘Milan 1880~—1922: the city of industrial capitalism ’, in Peoples and Communities in the Western World, ed. G. Brucker (Homewood 1979), vol. 1, pp. 276-7.

The reaction to Bocconi’s success raises an interesting problem about class identification. Certainly, shoemakers and tailors (many of whom still combined production with retail), menaced by proletarianization, showed great hostility to Bocconi and other larger enterprises. But they tended to identify themselves as small producers, which made it easier for them to

subscribe to socialist anti-capitalism. On the other hand, the prosperous bakers (who also produced food as well as selling it) were active in promoting shopkeeper organization and were afraid of labour militancy.

86 Like members of the free professions, shopkeepers did expect that competition should be limited to the qualified. They tried to persuade the authorities to suppress street trading and door-to-door peddling on grounds of decency and hygiene (Morris, MS.).

248 ADRIAN LYTTELTON the Extreme Left’s criticism of wasteful military expenditure and high taxes on articles of popular consumption. But shopkeeper radicalism was eroded by the issue of the co-operatives. Co-operatives became a scapegoat for the depression. The shopkeepers accused the government and the grande bourgeoisie of selling out liberal principles by conceding special tax privileges to the co-operatives in the hope of buying social peace. Ironically, the co-operatives had little success in winning over the shopkeepers’ clientele among manual workers. The key factor was

the willingness of the small shopkeepers to extend credit to their customers; even if they charged lower prices, the co-operatives insisted on cash.°’ Where the cooperatives instead were successful was among the growing class of white-collar employees. So the lower middle class was in fact deeply divided. Shopkeepers expressed considerable hostility to government employees, as a privileged class enjoying an enviable

security. On the other hand, the majority of shopkeepers were very close to the working class. Most shopkeepers’ wives came from a working-class background. But the political expression of the working class — socialism — was immediately perceived as a threat. The Socialist

prophecy of the extinction of the petty bourgeoisie was taken very seriously, although the shopkeepers, with some justification, believed that this would be brought about by political means, not through the

inevitable workings of capitalism. It was this which made political mobilization urgent. ‘The party of the future [the Socialists], if it finds

shopkeepers inactive, will take the upper hand’, and then the shopkeepers would be ruined. Shopkeepers voiced the characteristic petty-bourgeois fear of being ‘trapped between two fires’, between a hostile proletariat and an indifferent elite. ‘What will become of our Milan when the shopkeepers have been suppressed?’ Such expressions of a beleaguered mentality were certainly excessive. By the end of the century, in fact, the shopkeepers’ political position had improved; by organization and lobbying they had forced political and business leaders to take notice of their grievances, and in the context of a growing fear

of socialism co-operatives became suspect. But the Socialist threat

revived as labour disputes spread to the retail sector. It was the shopkeepers’ representatives who caused the fall of the democratic city

administration in Milan in 1905. | It would be clearly wrong to assume that Milan was typical of Italy as a whole. We do not know if belief in free enterprise and tolerance of outsiders were so common in cities which lacked Milan’s tradition 87 As Senator Alessandro Rossi wrote ‘It is the baker who acts as banker to the common man’ (Morris, MS.).

The middle classes in Liberal Italy 249 of active commerce. But, as with other social groups, Milan provided

the most effective model for collective action.22 Even in Milan, however, the scope of organization was limited. Shopkeepers saw association exclusively as a way of influencing outsiders. They were quite unreceptive to attempts to use their organization as a vehicle for modernization, and obstinately refused to listen to the advice of leaders who urged them to modify their traditional practices. They continued to bargain instead of charging fixed prices, they refused to keep books, they went on giving credit to impoverished customers, and they even stuck to the custom of making gifts to their clients at Christmas. It 1s

by no means clear that they were wrong to do so. Where abstract efficiency conflicted with social custom, it was the former which had to give way.

The middle classes were expected to be at the same time a force for economic progress, political liberalism, and social stability. This was to ask for too much. Even their loyalty to the liberal state could not be

taken for granted. Rather than forming a compact bloc, they were divided by conflicts of interest, disparate levels of income, and differences of culture and mentality. The free professions were probably

the most self-conscious and certainly the most influential element (excluding the industrial bourgeoisie), but we have seen that they were

internally divided between a minority which enjoyed wealth and respect, and a majority whose conditions were precarious. In the last few years before the First World War, the middle classes in Italy became the object of increased study, and attempts were made to define them in a new way. With the decline in the importance of the aristocracy and the prominence of the socialist view of class conflict, the middle classes were now seen as those who occupied the space between

the bourgeoisie proper and the proletariat. They would include the better-off peasants and artisans, shopkeepers and employees. There was some disagreement about whether to include the free professions. But could these various groups be described as forming a single class? It seemed as if they had little collective consciousness: there were rather a number of different middle classes not easily reducible to a common denominator. The main reason for the increased interest in the middle classes was 88 Also characteristic was the failure of shopkeeper associations to take root in the south. Southern shopkeepers were frequently in conflict with local municipalities over price controls; in Catania, bakers called no less than five lockouts between 1878 and 1890. But they

did not take the step from periodic protest to permanent organization (Morris, MS.).

250 ADRIAN LYTTELTON political, They were seen as potentially capable of exercising a mediatory function between capital and labour. At the same time, all attempts to found a party for the defence of middle-class interests had failed. Peculiarly enough, whereas in other countries the organization of the middle classes had been successfully undertaken as an antiSocialist move, in Italy the Socialist party had often defended middleclass interests. They had supported the agitation of state employees, and

now they were showing sympathy for the grievances of peasant proprietors. Indeed Turati as early as 1892 had warned the Socialist party not to forget the interests of ‘the immense nebula of intermediate

people ...the most various and perhaps still most numerous class... schoolteachers, public doctors, small professional men, landowners, small employees and small shopkeepers of every kind, small shareholders... ®? But there were conflicting signs that some groups, like the small shopkeepers, were organizing in opposition to socialism.°” How were these ambiguities to be resolved, and what were their implications

for the Liberal State? After 1900, Giolitti provided liberalism with a new strategy. He was assisted by Turati, who was perhaps the only politician of the time who tried to reconcile middle-class interests with a progressive vision of economic development. However, the new liberalism suffered from some very serious contradictions. Deprived of a true mass base and wedded to old local and clientelistic forms of representation, the liberal strategy became essentially one of mediation. This was well suited to

the nature of the professional middle classes who were its main exponents. But it had the disadvantage that liberalism came to seem an

opportunistic and uncertain creed, and that class interests were organized outside its influence. The middle classes themselves, slow to organize, became increasingly uneasy at the surrender of the State to more powerful groups. Lacking adequate representation, the groups on

whom liberalism most relied became in the end an element of instability. At the same time, industrialists, who described themselves as the ‘producers’, became increasingly restive at the costs and results of

mediation by a ‘parasitic’ political class, drawn mainly from the free professions and the universities, which seemed incapable of understanding their problems. In the ideological sphere, the revolt of the ‘producers’ was articulated by revolutionary syndicalist and nationalist

intellectuals. With the war, the pressures for a ‘new deal’ became overwhelming. Unfortunately, the new deal turned out to be Fascism. 89 Antologia Critica Sociale, vol. 1, p. xxiv. °° B. Scarselli, I! problema delle classi medie (Milan 1911), p. 189.

CHAPTER IO

Francesco De Sanctis: the politics of a literary critic DENIS MACK SMITH

The name of Francesco De Sanctis has never been widely known outside Italy because literary criticism travels less well than literature and is almost inevitably less durable. For thirty years after his death, none of his writings was translated except a single lecture into German, and in England he rated only one brief reference by George Saintsbury.

But according to Benedetto Croce he was one of the truly great intellectuals of Italian history; and Gaetano Salvemini, who disagreed with Croce on almost everything, placed De Sanctis among the four Italians of his century who could be called a genius: the others were Leopardi, Cavour, and Cattaneo.’ These four in Salvemini’s judgement took precedence over Manzoni and Verdi who for many people would

come first to mind, and ahead of Mazzini and Garibaldi for whom Salvemini had a special veneration. De Sanctis is known for his critical studies of individual writers - among them Dante, Petrarch, Foscolo,

Manzoni, and Zola—but above all for a general history of Italian literature published in 1870—1. Less well known is his interest in politics,

an interest that was both practical and theoretical and which made him an illuminating critic of Italian society. De Sanctis was someone of great originality of mind who lived for literature but was fascinated by the development of Italy as a nation. In particular he was puzzled by the question of why the immense potential

of this country was apparently unrealized despite the creation of a unified national State, and he located the main explanation in its defective political system. He had once promised people that a unified Italy would become the richest and most powerful country in Europe,’ but this promise was a long way from being realized in his lifetime, and * Gaetano Salvemini, Scritti sul Risorgimento (Milan 1961), p. 9. * Scritti e Discorsi Politici, ed. Nino Cortese (Naples 1939), vol. 1, p. 61 (16.10.1860).

251

252 DENIS MACK SMITH he had to conclude that a country rich in enterprise and brains was frustrated by a kind of political block that stood in the way of progress.

Personally he was never very successful as a practical politician, because by nature he was a cross-bencher who deplored that Italy had a superabundance of professional politicians while she was strangely lacking in independent political thinkers and commentators. Yet he was

in parliament for over twenty years and five times minister of education. Some of his friends and pupils criticized such an involvement in active politics as a useless dissipation of his energies when his best

talents lay elsewhere, but he himself rejected such an imputation. He felt obliged to be a critic of society as well as of literature, believing that the two things could not be divorced from each other and were perhaps

equally important. It was a real worry to him that there continued to

be too great a division between culture and society. Professional politicians were unfortunately a class apart and remote from the real life

of the country. They were a small group of people who were ignored or even despised by intellectuals and the creators of material wealth. This division in society he saw as a danger for the future, and it was dangerous not only for politicians but for intellectuals and the captains of industry. De Sanctis was born in 1817 and died in 1883. His birthplace was Avellino not far from Naples. He was thus a southerner, and also more of a provincial than most prominent politicians of his time. He took an honourable part in the failed Neapolitan revolution of 1848 against the

Bourbons, after which he was imprisoned for three years in the notorious dungeons of the Castel dell’Ovo that were made famous by

Gladstone. This experience as a conspirator gave him an early and unusual insight into the world of active politics. Exiled subsequently to Piedmont, he lived penuriously teaching at a girls’ school at Turin, and

later in the 1850s sought refuge as a lecturer on Italian literature at Zurich where he met Wagner and Burckhardt. What brought him back to Italy was Garibaldi’s conquest of Naples in 1860, and for a short period he became Governor of Avellino during the revolution that united southern and northern Italy. Unlike many of his fellow academics, he remained a great admirer of the two radical

revolutionaries Garibaldi and Mazzini. Indeed he seems to have admired them more than he admired any other contemporaries,

though he was realistic enough not to accept their outright condemnation of Count Cavour and the conservatives who supplanted Garibaldi at Naples in November 1860. On the contrary, he became a

Francesco De Sanctis: the politics of a literary critic 253 member of Cavour’s cabinet in 1861 when Italy was at last declared to be a united kingdom. The prime minister on that occasion began what became the familiar practice of dividing Cabinet posts among the main regions of Italy, recognizing that talent and political ability might be

less important than the gratification of regional pride. Cavour knew little if anything about De Sanctis before appointing him, but had difficulty in finding a Neapolitan of sufficient credibility, until this name was suggested as belonging to the only southerner whom most southern politicians liked and respected for his integrity. The respect and liking by other politicians of all parties was something that he retained for all of his life.

When Cavour died three months later, De Sanctis remained a minister in the next government under Baron Bettino Ricasoli, but he

soon became disenchanted with the moderate conservatives who monopolized Italian politics during the first years of the new nation’s existence. One of his criticisms was to blame Cavour for having been unnecessarily divisive in fighting against the followers of Mazzini, Cattaneo, and Garibaldi, three men who made a major contribution to the patriotic revolution. He thought it unfortunate that the radical Left was virtually excluded from the mainstream of parliamentary politics.

Regrettably Cavour and successive prime ministers tended to be dangerously high-handed with opponents and to over-exaggerate the ‘principle of authority’.* Public meetings were sometimes banned by them in what seemed a clear violation of a precise clause in the written constitution. Opposition newspapers were often sequestered on flimsy pretexts, while pro-government newspapers were secretly subsidized from mysterious funds at the disposal of the Ministry of the Interior. There was also improper intervention by the authorities in hampering the freedom of parliamentary elections. During fifteen years of almost unchallenged supremacy in office, conservative governments easily became authoritarian and insensitive to public opinion, partly because the various small parties in opposition were so weak and divided that governments were insufhiciently called to account for their actions or inaction. This fact persuaded him to desert the governing coalition and work towards creating an organized

opposition, without which he thought that parliament and the constitution would never function properly. In particular he blamed successive governments of the Right for their lack of interest in social 3 Ibid., 280-1 (September 1865).

254 DENIS MACK SMITH. reform. Nearly 75 per cent of the population was illiterate according to the census after 1861, while in Sardinia and the south the percentage was much higher. His conclusion was that, if the moral and material conditions of the poor were not improved, there would be a danger of revolt whenever a bad harvest pushed people near to starvation. The peasants of Sicily and the south had greatly contributed to Garibaldi’s

patriotic revolution of 1860. They could as easily turn to support a counter-revolution if they gained nothing from the new order, and in that case the country might split again into its component regions, so reversing the great achievements of the Risorgimento. But ministers were mainly concerned with the fewer than 2 per cent

of the people who were enfranchised and voted. Politicians hardly needed to bother with the other 98 per cent who were outside the pale

and had no vote either in local government or in. parliamentary elections; with the result that social reform received a very low priority in governmental calculations. This was an issue that kept De Sanctis

close to Mazzini and Garibaldi, distancing him from the moderates who took their political direction from Cavour and Ricasoli. Italy in 1861, except for the one region of Piedmont, had no real

experience of parliamentary government, and even in Piedmont representative institutions had to grow up empirically by trial and error. De Sanctis was one of the first to identify some of the weaknesses

that gradually appeared in the somewhat makeshift political system which Cavour imposed on the country in a time of national emergency. As this system developed, there was no tradition of parties alternating in power and no more than a very loose concept of party allegiance.

Instead, every government was a coalition of different groups and hence contained different opinions on fairly fundamental questions such

as regional devolution, the royal prerogative, or relations between church and State, or on tax policy and social reform. Each element in the coalition, each leading politician with his personal clientele, was

preoccupied with jockeying for position, and there was a new government almost every year as the coalition shifted slightly to the right of centre or to the left in order to maintain itself in power with

a parliamentary majority. |

One important objective for those in office was to prevent the appearance of any alternative majority that would endanger their future. It was therefore sensible not to talk prematurely about reforms, at least not until the restricted electorate demanded them and threatened

if necessary to create such an alternative majority. It was better

Francesco De Sanctis: the politics of a literary critic 255 whenever possible to play down or circumvent serious discussion of vital questions such as military expenditure, foreign alliances, or the desirability of colonial adventures. The result was that successive

governments lacked a well-defined programme on some quite fundamental issues, and also that there could be changes of people in

government without changes in policy. Too often parliamentary debates were wasted on discussing purely local matters rather than more important issues affecting the whole country that would be more divisive.

De Sanctis, being a critical commentator rather than a dedicated party politician, and also because he was immune from the temptations of political power, was a more detached observer of events than most

of his contemporaries. He could usually penetrate better than ‘they could behind realities of politics, and he came to agree with those who concluded that, ideally, a two-party system was a desirable norm for making parliament function effectively — one party being conservative, the other progressive, so that the electorate would be presented with a

clear alternative between policies on each important question of policy.* This would be the ideal solution, but in Italy a two-party system showed no signs of coming into existence. Without an organized opposition there was too little check on those in power except from small ineffective groups on the extreme Left and Right,

and this was equally bad for the efficiency and honesty of the government, as it was bad for the political education of the country. Instead, from the very beginning, Italian governments developed a tendency towards immobilismo, so avoiding some of the more divisive

issues that threatened to undermine their cohesion. Often politicians when not in office hardly bothered to turn up in parliament. This was true of Crispi and Giolitti, as earlier it was true of Cavour, Ricasoli, and

Sella. Sometimes abstention was because they thought parliamentary Opposition a waste of time; sometimes it was to avoid committing themselves and to make their return to the government benches easier in some later rimpasto. Each prime minister in turn was obliged to construct a broad coalition in order to increase his chances of survival, which meant that policies were sometimes purposely fudged and a sufficiently powerful opposition had great difficulty in coming into existence. 4 Opere di Francesco de Sanctis, ed. Carlo Muscetta, Franco Ferri, Nino Cortese, and Giuseppe Talamo (Turin 1960), vol. xv, p. 452 (4.11.1865).

256 DENIS MACK SMITH De Sanctis noted this in the 1860s, and perhaps only someone uninterested. in the perquisites of office could be so perceptive and outspokenly critical. He watched how leaders of the Centre Left, notably Urbano Rattazzi, were sucked into the system as they learnt that politics was about power, with all the prestige and profit that went with power, whereas any attempt to propose controversial reforms was likely to weaken their availability for any new alignment in parliament.

Governments therefore, just as he had foreseen, had insufficient challenge from responsible parliamentary criticism and so lacked a necessary incentive to avoid becoming ineffective and corrupt. De Sanctis was realistic enough to accept that the practice of broad centre

coalitions would be needed at times of national emergency, for example during the period when Cavour’s coalition carried out the immense achievement of turning seven separate Italian states into one

unified nation. What he complained about was that the practice continued even when the emergency was over. In part it continued because of habit and inertia, but more importantly because this was a convenient system that suited any politician who had an expectation of

one day winning power. Here was a useful method by which a notvery-large political class, despite minor differences of belief, conspired

to keep a virtual monopoly of government, which in his view had unfortunate results for the country. When Rattazzi became prime minister for brief periods in 1862 and 1867, this brought Depretis and others of the moderate Left into office, but proved in practice to be what De Sanctis called ‘the same music

with a different conductor’.” These were two out of a dozen governments which succeeded each other in the ten years after 1861 and which each introduced slight differences of emphasis, but none of them

felt strong enough to take a firm position on some of the major problems that hindered the development of Italy. Nor was there ever a coherent opposition strong enough to frighten successive govern-

ments into reforms, whether to ensure that taxes were fair and the money well spent, or at least to convince politicians that they were answerable for their actions to parliament and public opinion. One result of this lack of answerability was the tragically unsuccessful

war against Austria in 1866 which was conducted with almost unbelievable inefficiency. When a considerably superior Italian army

was defeated on the very first day of fighting, and when this was > Scritti, ed. Cortese, p. 269 (1.7.1864).

Francesco De Sanctis: the politics of a literary critic 257 followed by the defeat of an equally superior Italian navy, many people were baffled and could find no obvious explanation. Few traced any connection with the fact that parliament was given little say in foreign

policy or in matters of military provision. But the truth was that an incompetent general staff, being subject to no outside control save that of the king, was so insulated from reality as to be confident of an easy

victory, and too late it was discovered that the army was almost completely unprepared. No serious strategic plans were ready for a war that the government had deliberately and carefully provoked. Nor had it even been decided who was in effective command of the army, and this fact alone meant that defeat was inevitable. Of course the reasons for such a disaster, once it had happened, were as far as possible kept away from public scrutiny. Nor was this the only

occasion when, in order to boost popular morale and conceal the

responsibility of the king and his ministers, the history of the Risorgimento and united Italy was deliberately falsified so as to give a

deceptive illusion of national strength and unity. De Sanctis was convinced that to perpetuate such illusions was a political error because concealment was almost bound to lead to similar disasters in the future.

He thought that Italians should have the honesty and courage to see themselves as they really were — weak, divided, and dependent in their

foreign policy on help from abroad. He also was reinforced in his opinion that the parliamentary system must be somehow at fault if politicians collectively connived at such a concealment of unwelcome truths. To explain his views for the benefit of a wider audience he turned

to journalism, and for two years edited a Neapolitan newspaper L’Italia. Breaking away from former colleagues, he set himself as a newspaper editor to convince people of the urgent need to reconstitute the Left, or at least to bring together such elements on the left of centre as could be welded into a more critical opposition. He failed, because he was attempting something way beyond his capacity and no doubt

beyond the powers of anyone, let alone of one editor in a provincial town. What he was trying to do was to see if through journalism he could create a more informed public opinion, one that was less wedded

to the system, and one brave enough to raise urgent questions about

national objectives and indeed about national identity. The main danger to society, as he saw it, did not come from the radical Left, not so much from Garibaldi and the Party of Action as Cavour liked to think, but from the moderates of the Right, who were in some respects

258 DENIS MACK SMITH too authoritarian, too divisive, too unaccountable to public opinion, and lacking sufficient interest in practical social reform.° One prevalent assumption he attacked in his articles was the idea that the state should be more or less neutral in economic life or in its attitude towards the class struggle.’ De Sanctis instead wanted more government intervention with the aim of reducing the social turbulence of the times. He wanted ministers to‘ accelerate social change’ by spending less

on the army and more on education. They ought to modify the tax system which by unfairly serving the interests of the rich was making Italy all the more a divided society. Wealthy people were regrettably continuing to evade taxation and even to regard such evasion as one of

their main objectives in politics. They preferred to continue the practice whereby too many taxes were at a flat rate on necessaries which even the unemployed were obliged to procure. The imposts on bread,

flour and salt, so De Sanctis explained, were something that other civilized countries had diminished or abandoned altogether because, quite apart from any question of morality, such indirect taxation on food was bound to build up huge resentments and could only increase the threat of rebellion against society.

He once hazarded the guess that the first political party that succeeded in assimilating the poor into the rest of community would effectively dominate Italy, just by the fact of bringing the masses into the system instead of their being forced into opposition.® He feared that

the militant Catholics and clericals might be the politicians who succeeded in doing this, in which case the church of the ‘Syllabus of

Errors’ would drag Italy back into the middle ages. But, as events would show, the Vatican stood aside or on the margin of Italian politics until 1929 and failed to address the task of mobilizing the masses. Nor

did the liberals take up the challenge formulated by De Sanctis. The party that succeeded was fascism which used it as a means to defeat Liberalism and win dictatorial power. If he was able to sympathize with the hopes and fears of poor farmers

and farm labourers, this was because he had more experience than others of provincial life in the deep south. Almost all the leading politicians came from urban society and most of them from the north. But De Sanctis never forgot his experience during Garibaldi’s conquest 5 Opere, vol. xv., 394 (28.7.1864), p. 414 (21.5.1865); F. De Sanctis, Lettere Politiche (1865-1880), ed. G. B. Gifuni (Naples 1970), 7 (1.11.1865). * Opere, xvul, 179 (9.7.1864); ibid., xvi, 8 (23.1.1874). ® Scritti Politici, ed. G. Ferrarelli, Naples 1889, 115 (7.10.1877).

Francesco De Sanctis: the politics of a literary critic 259 of Naples in 1860, when he had been frightened to observe how the illiterate peasantry, realizing that their time might have come and hoping that Garibaldi was a saint sent from heaven for their deliverance, turned to violence. The contadini round Avellino were permanently in

a state of submerged war against the rich landowners, and even more

against the petty landed bourgeoisie in their localities. This was a partially concealed class war directed against the notabili and village

bosses who tyrannized over much of the south, where they were virtually the only effective government. He had witnessed terrible things in 1860 when a peasant revolt led to the indiscriminate slaughter

of men, women, and children.’ This tragic episode went almost unrecorded by historians, mainly because politicians tried to conceal such facts out of a misplaced sense of patriotism and national dignity. He himself thought that the truth should be told, because that would at least be a means of forewarning people about the nature of their society and stopping anything like it from occurring again. As he saw the situation in Italy, two levels of civilization existed

alongside each other, or rather one level of civilization alongside another of barbarism. He still kept a qualified confidence in the future,

but only if the peasants could be shown that they had more to gain from a united nation. There would be little hope if such large numbers of people were left permanently short of food in a situation where they had almost nothing to lose from revolt and perhaps something to win.

Here he located what he took to be another danger for the future, namely that different classes had little contact with each other and little chance of mutual understanding.'® The miniscule political class refused to take remedial action against this danger because they were too much

immersed in their petty intriguing for power, whether they aimed at

central power in parliament or local power in the provinces. The notabili in each village were above all concerned to retain their control

of local tax policy and control of apportioning contracts and appointments to jobs, because only by monopolizing these essential elements in provincial administration could they preserve the privileges of their own class against the advance of democracy. This is one reason why De Sanctis moved over to the Left or CentreLeft of politics in the mid 1860s. For a brief moment he thought he had

begun to break the system when, in what he once called the most ® Ibid., 118-9 (20.10.1877); Scritti, ed. Cortese, 56 (11.10.1860). 10 Opere, vol. XVI, pp. 11, 23-4 (23.1.1874); Scritti, ed. Ferrarelli, 233 (30.5.1878).

260 DENIS MACK SMITH meritorious act of his political life, he actively campaigned to return many new members of parliament from the Left in the general election of 1865.'' He imagined for a short while that this might be the first

move towards widening the small political class and creating a progressive party which, through economic and administrative reforms, could make society more stable. But within a few months the old system began to reassert itself as these new deputies were absorbed

into the familiar power game. He had hoped for what he called a ‘transformation’ of parties, and he used this word many years before the word trasformismo became a catchword in politics."* The later trasformismo of the 1880s came to mean a variation of the old practice inherited from Cavour, signifying the practice of ‘transforming’ a

government majority so as to keep abreast of public opinion and preventing the growth of a substantial parliamentary opposition. De Sanctis had used the word with a different meaning, in fact almost its opposite; he had hoped to transform politics by creating something akin to a two-party system. His newspaper L’Italia lost money and some issues were sequestered,

for instance when it hinted at criticism of the king. After two years it was compelled to stop publication. As he had to admit, he was too optimistic in thinking that mere journalism, even at its best and most responsible, could ever make much of a dent on the reality of politics. Mazzini’s newspapers had sometimes reached only several hundred subscribers, while even in the middle of the twentieth century it could be said that serious journalism in Italy had an informed public of fewer than 2,000 readers. Leading articles were read by some politicians who needed to sense public opinion, but newspapers could hardly do much

to change society. What was more depressing, the newly elected members that he had helped to bring to parliament realized fairly soon that they had little to gain from the unrewarding task of opposition. This same tendency continued more or less in subsequent periods. Most deputies in every parliament learnt that, if they wanted a good career and the perquisites of power, they would be well advised not to

offend the Minister of the Interior, because they might need the government and the local prefect to support their candidature in the next election. Official endorsement was usually a winning card in the battle for survival during elections. Hence criticism was artificially muted and a division of deputies into two groups of progressives and 1! Francesco de Sanctis, Un Viaggio Elettorale, ed. Denis Mack Smith (Florence 1983), p. 105. 12 Opere, xv, p. 435 (29.9.1865); Scritti, ed. Ferrarelli, 41 (3.1.1866).

Francesco De Sanctis: the politics of a literary critic 261 conservatives turned out to be impracticable. Whatever their private convictions, there was always a strong practical incentive for most members of parliament to vote on the government side.

After this disillusioning experience as a journalist and active parliamentary politician, De Sanctis decided in 1867 to return to his job

as a professor in Naples university, and in the following years completed what became his major treatise on the history of Italian literature. In a moment of depression he once confessed that his apparent lack of political success might make him withdraw from politics altogether. But in fact the return to academic life was a change of gear and not a fundamental change of direction. No doubt education

and writing were his true professional vocation, but he was soon reasserting his firm belief that without parallel political action his contribution as a university professor would be ineffective if not largely

meaningless. If Italy could not devise a more efficient system of government she was probably doomed, and so were the young students in whom he placed his hopes for the country’s future.

The conventional interpretations of Italian history after the Risorgimento have usually agreed on a division into fairly clear-cut periods, so that we talk of government by the conservative Right from

1861 to 1876, and subsequently a new period of government by Agostino Depretis and the Left. But this is too easy and schematized a version of events. Successive coalitions of the Right before 1876 had sometimes included ministers of the Left who fitted into the scheme without much difficulty ; and again after 1876, governments sometimes

seemed even more variegated and confused, because successive coalitions could not remain in power without catering for a wide spectrum of opinion. It still remained possible for the same cabinet to include uncompromising monarchists alongside ex-republicans, also anticlericals as well as friends of the Vatican, administrative centralizers as well as believers in regional devolution, and champions of laissezfaire alongside proponents of state intervention. No wonder if it was

sometimes hard for an honest man of principle to know where his allegiance lay when many apparently contradictory views could be held by different members of any one government. Some people nevertheless hoped that a big change was taking place in 1876 and went on referring to this date as a great watershed in Italian history. Depretis became Prime Minister for the first time in that year and held the office eight times over the next decade. He was a politician

of the Left, who had been unenthusiastic about much of Cavour’s

262 DENIS MACK SMITH policy and who sometimes proposed fairly radical reforms. He it was who in 1882 widened the parliamentary suffrage to enfranchise as many as 6 per cent of the population. And De Sanctis welcomed this reform, because though the feared universal suffrage as something that might be

exploited by demagogues and clericals, he also hoped that, if every literate adult had a vote, a more informed public opinion would help to weaken the tradition of immobilismo and the practice of machine politics.'* Once again, however, he was too confident. After an initial delight that political power had moved to the left, he was shocked to find that newspapers and public meetings continued to be sometimes banned, while the all-important Ministry of the Interior was given by Depretis to an authoritarian and corrupt machine politician, the Baron

Giovanni Nicotera, with whom no compromise was possible for people of firm principle. Depretis was more of a liberal and a democrat than his predecessors and that was all to the good, but he soon showed himself to be as much of a ‘manager’ and time-server as the rest, and successive governments of the Left continued the old practice of being not party governments but broad coalitions divided more over personalities than principles. The reality of politics was confirmed as being not organized parties, but personal clienteles which rallied round a local boss in the hope that he

could lead them into some new government coalition and provide them with the prestige and emoluments of power. Prime ministers continued to succeed each other at the rate of one a year in what superficially appeared to be a chronic state of political instability, as different parliamentary leaders tried their hand at shuffling the pack. Nevertheless, changes in the composition of cabinets could sometimes

take place over no very obvious issue of policy. Regularly a prime

minister would resign without waiting for a parliamentary vote because a victorious motion of no-confidence might force the king to turn to his opponents. Any clear-cut vote might in any case polarize politics and label a retiring minister as being too decided a progressive or conservative, and any such label might disqualify him from joining some future governing majority. Just as before, it remained hard for broadly based governments to take policy decisions without inviting

self-destruction. ,

So the years of the Left after 1876 saw a continuation of the familiar

politics of compromise and transactions whereby successive Prime 13 Opere, vol. xv, 382 (14.6.1864) ; Ibid., xvi, 31 (23.4.1874); Scritti, ed. Ferrarelli, 82 (24.7.1877).

Francesco De Sanctis: the politics of a literary critic 263 Ministers were intent on periodic ‘transformation’ of their government

coalition so as to bring potential dissenters into the administration. Much as under Rattazzi and Minghetti before 1876, there was still the same fear of taking too firm a public position on controversial points of policy, because Depretis and Cairoli saw their best hope of survival

to lie in a general confusion of ideas that would prevent too clear a polarization in parliament. De Sanctis observed this process more clearly than most. Once again he concluded that there was little hope of releasing the economic and intellectual potential of the country unless some way could be found of introducing more clarity into political programmes, as well as more

courage in taking a stand on principle and more honesty in communicating with the electorate. Nor could there be much progress until a clearer division could be seen to exist between progressives and

traditionalists in politics. Preferably there ought always to be an alternative government in readiness with some hope of winning power,

an alternative which would possess its own distinct character and policies which the electorate could judge. Once again De Sanctis had to admit that ordinary citizens could only be confused by what they saw and reinforced in their disillusionment

with politics, which opened another frightening prospect for the

future. He described how, when a new government loan was announced, or a new railway contract negotiated, people invariably suspected a carrozzone or piece of jobbery, and the assumption was made that some powerful notabile must be arranging to bribe the electors of his particular constituency at government expense.** Politics under the Left were becoming corrupt, even more corrupt than before, because the new generation of politicians were men on the make more than their patrician predecessors from the Right. Many seemed to be in

the game chiefly for private gain and the conferment of honours. Membership of parliament was sought because you could then charge higher fees in your medical or legal practice. What was worse, ordinary people laughed if anyone suggested that politics could ever be anything more serious. The rot went down to the smallest villages, where the local bosses kept themselves and their families in positions of power and affluence by nourishing a personal clientele of acolytes and dependants. The simple rule for this kind of politics, as De Sanctis formulated it, was ‘grab for yourself, and then help your friends and clients to feather their 14 Seritti, ed. Ferrarelli, 66 (11.6.1877).

264 DENIS MACK SMITH own nest’. He himself was convinced that honesty ought to be the primary requisite for a politician, yet the widespread and disastrous assumption seemed to be that no one could be in politics unless he was

somehow dishonest.'® This assumption was a tragic fact that would take years to change, and indeed has never been entirely eliminated. One other fact that De Sanctis discerned behind the political facade was that any real change would become increasingly difficult because

of an administrative system that was gradually building up into something solid and intractable. The allocation of jobs by politicians to

their friends and relatives created a large number of appointees in positions of power, who had a vested interest in the system as it existed and a determination to block or delay change. The same would be true in the next century under Giolitti who was prime minister five times and personally selected most senior civil servants in the period when he

virtually ruled Italy from 1903 to 1914. Or again, Mussolini’s government for twenty years after 1922 could rely on a similar thick texture of administrative interrelationships, and much the same has

been said more recently of politics after Christian Democrat governments became solidly entrenched in nearly fifty successive years of power. The system of official appointees and government patronage affected not only the senior civil service and major public agencies, but continued through the prefects, down to postmasters, village teachers,

and refuse collectors. This helped to ensure that there was a built-in obstacle to reform. Many people were against any major change in government because they or their relatives had jobs to lose along with all the esteem and power that went with jobs in the administration. The influence of this sottogoverno was identified by De Sanctis over a century ago.

For two years after 1876 he avoided speaking in parliament and turned his attention to what again he hoped would be a more effective political involvement in journalism. The paper he now wrote for was Il Diritto, and a series of splendid articles revealed his talents as a great journalist, but also as a great moralist and political educator. By the age of sixty he had learnt a great deal in his experience of political life. Often in these articles he was deliberately provocative in criticizing his

friends on the Left, pointing out how they were copying their predecessors in defiance of the same basic civil rights that had been enshrined in the written constitution of 1848. They were making the 15 Thid., 94 (14.8.1877), 108 (9.9.1877), 120-1 (20.10.1877).

Francesco De Sanctis: the politics of a literary critic 265 same amorphous coalitions, indulging in the same internal squabbles and the same alternation of quick cabinets. They were splitting up into similar small groups of parliamentary deputies, into correnti and clientele

which clustered round individual leaders and often represented purely regional interests.

Here were two of the main scourges of Italy, regionalism and clientelismo, which even became more dangerous after 1876.'° The Left was evidently yet another partito omnibus that, partly because of its lack

of definition, opened the way to adventurers such as Nicotera. These adventurers brought parliament further into disrepute, because they habitually used their position as ministers to spend government money in their constituencies so as to consolidate a personal following among the ‘grand electors’ and local bosses. Everyone knew about the socalled ‘electoral railways’ that were built not because such railways were badly needed, but rather because their circuitous routes helped to under-pin the electoral base of some notabile.

These were disillusioning facts to emerge after twenty years of exaggerated hopes and politically slanted history. The Risorgimento

had reached its triumphant fulfilment with an expectation that representative government would bring higher standards of life and efficient administration now that foreign oppression had been at last removed. But the elevated ideals of Mazzini, Garibaldi, and Cavour had in a short course of time been watered down. Instead of Italy becoming what Cavour called a nation able to conquer the world, or what Mazzini called a ‘Messiah nation’ leading the rest of Europe into a nobler period of peace and international cooperation, instead she was to all appearance a second-rank power disregarded and even despised by many foreigners. Instead of being the rich and powerful nation that De Sanctis and others of his generation had hoped, here was an Italy that in 1866 and 1870 depended absolutely on the assistance of other nations, without which in these two years she could hardly have won her unredeemed provinces of Rome and Venice. Her political system seemed not to work, or at least not to work well. There was a sense of apathy and disillusionment where ordinary citizens seemed not to care

whether Right or Left was in office, and few knew which of them was.'’ Already by the early 1880s and before De Sanctis died, the first

rumours were circulating of the bank scandals that later rocked the whole political edifice and threatened to end the political careers of 6 Tbid., pp. 111-12 (7.10.1877). ™? Tbid., pp. 176-7 (30.1.1878).

266 DENIS MACK SMITH Giolitti and Crispi. Nor was it considerations of abstract moralism that

led De Sanctis to denounce affarismo and to uphold honesty as the supreme virtue for a politician. He was moved rather by a pragmatic and realistic vision of the consequences if nobody pointed out what would follow from ignorance about what was occurring behind the scenes.

But he was not content to be pessimistic. In fact he remained a moderate optimist, who nevertheless thought it necessary to confront the negative aspects of Italian society instead of concealing them out of shame or from unenlightened self-interest. He realized, as Cavour realized before and Giolitti later, that the movement towards a more egalitarian democracy was something inevitable, but which with equal

inevitability would bring dangers in its train: the danger of demagoguery, of social turbulence, even the danger of caesarism, as was revealed later through Fascism. All the more important therefore to make people understand the nature of the society in which they lived. All the more important to work towards the betterment of the poorer classes so as to lessen the distance separating class from class, and to do

this before it was too late, before the poor resorted to the mindless violence he had witnessed in 1860. Another danger he had observed during his electoral campaigns was how almost nothing was being spent on education in the rural countryside, and how local authorities over much of the south were controlled by people who deliberately obstructed the official policy of free and compulsory education.!® What he called the ‘moral unification of Italy’ had still not been completed, not even by 1880, because the divisions between regions and between

classes contributed towards blocking any real modernisation of the country.’® Italians could hardly become a force in the outside world, let alone a force for good, when their energies were taken up in solving or failing to solve such basic internal problems. His hopes for the future lay chiefly in education, because this was his

own expertise on which he could speak with authority. Repeatedly, if

only for short periods, he was Minister of Education, first with Garibaldi, then under Cavour, under Ricasoli, and with Cairoli in 1878-9. His chief preoccupation as a minister was with elementary schooling as the aspect of the educational system most urgently in need of improvement,”° and this preoccupation with elementary education 18 Un Viaggio Elettorale, p. 147. 19 Opere, vol. XVI, P. $15 (29.1.1883). 20 Scritti, ed., Ferrarelli, p. 245 (30.5.1878); Camera dei Deputati, Discussioni, p. 568 (19.6.1880).

Francesco De Sanctis: the politics of a literary critic 267 came to some observers as evidence of a surprising scale of priorities. He

saw his first problem as finding money for more school buildings, especially in the more backward areas of the country. Then the need was to find enough young idealistic teachers prepared to renounce the attractions of urban existence and live the primitive life of villages far away from civilized pleasures; and he knew from experience that these

rural school teachers might not even be greatly appreciated by the people among whom they had to work.*! The remedies that he proposed in education were no doubt correct however long they would take to carry out. What Italy needed, he said, was not policemen so much as school-teachers, because ideas could be

fought by other ideas much better than by police action.”” A proper sense of the state and of law and order would come from a long-term process of social education and from nothing else. It could not be

imposed on people by the carabinieri whom Nicotera and Crispi preferred to rely upon. De Sanctis tried with not much success to take

elementary schools away from the hostile supervision of the local notabili who starved them of funds. Sometimes he had to bring teachers

and administrators from northern Italy to the south, so provoking outraged protests from his own fellow-southerners.** Here he was pitting himself against another almost insuperable opposition from a system that would need generations to change. Equally courageous, when he discovered that most professors in

Naples university were giving no lectures but still drawing their salaries, he tried to make university administrations send a monthly list to Rome with the names of each individual defaulter.** One can see from this that he spent little time courting popularity or seeking votes.

And to this extent he was unrealistic, which meant that in one important sense he was a bad politician. His periods of ministerial office

lasted only nine months or less, because he could not help being the victim of a system where government coalitions were continually changing by the laws of trasformismo. There were in fact twenty-four Ministers of Education in the first nineteen years of parliamentary government. None of them had sufficient time to analyse the problems

of their department and think out a programme of necessary improvements. Later ministers, and this included such intellectual giants as Pasquale Villari, Benedetto Croce, and Giovanni Gentile, "1 Seritti, ed. Ferrarelli, pp. 234-5 (30.5.1878). 22 Ibid., pp. 222—3 (10.12.1878). 23 Opere, vol. xvi, pp. 322-4 (November 1879); ibid., vol. xx1, p. 306 (5.10.1861). 24 Scritti, ed. Cortese, p. 170 (28.5.1861).

268 DENIS MACK SMITH came to grief on this very same hurdle, and we have seen today in the 1970s and 1980s how hard it is for any government composed of a coalition of parties to agree and carry through a comprehensive plan of university reform. Another of his projected changes in university education derived from his strong preference for quality over quantity. Since resources were limited he suggested that teachers’ training colleges and technical schools should take priority over further university building; and not only should elementary education take precedence over secondary, but schools should give more attention to physical and technical education. He also fought against the kind of open numbers’ university favoured

in Italy to which every family claimed a legal right to send their children. Instead he wanted a numero chiuso in universities, with a strictly limited number of undergraduates so as to improve academic standards, with more severe examinations at the finish; and he even tried to introduce that unheard-of requirement, an entrance examination to exclude those who would be wasting their time and public money.”° The decision on this point went against him, because popular pressure kept university fees very low and higher education continued above all to be sought as a necessary element in the process of upward mobility. The universities that he had to administer in the 1870s were, as he

lamented, not serious centres of culture but more like factories for turning out professionally qualified doctors and lawyers, that is to say people of whom Italy had and still has too many for the jobs available. Universities were, he said, churning out a mezza cultura that was almost worse than pure ignorance. The great majority of intellectuals were being encouraged by current ideas in education to look upon politics as either irrelevant or something to be despised, as if political life was the concern of merely a few and not of everyone.*® This was something he deplored, as he also deplored that parliament treated the educational

system as though it were outside the mainstream of national life. Education was to him the most urgent matter of all, yet when there were debates in parliament on educational matters, senate and chamber of deputies suddenly emptied and newspapers thought the discussions

barely worthy of being reported. Governments preferred to spend available money on the army, or on remote African colonies, or on 25 Scritti, ed. Ferrarelli, po. 246-7 (30.5.1878); Opere, vol. xvi, pp. 310 (8.6.1878). 28 Saggi e Scritti Critici e Vari, ed. L. G. Tenconi (Milan 1936), vol. rv, 252 (16.11.1872); Scritti, ed. Ferrarelli, p. 70 (13.6.1877).

Francesco De Sanctis: the politics of a literary critic 269 electoral railways and other carrozzoni, but never enough on the elementary schools that could cure the crippling handicap of illiteracy. Since De Sanctis was above all and by profession an educator, his confidence in Italy’s future depended first on curing popular illiteracy, and second on bringing intellectuals more into political life. Education, he used to say, would one day redeem the country after three centuries of intellectual decadence. Education was not just instruction but must

also be the moulding of character. Italians had to be changed ‘physically and morally’. They had to be cured of what he called the disease of having too much of Machiavelli and too much of St Ignatius Loyala in their intellectual inheritance. They still had far too much affection for rhetoric and rhetorical exaggeration, and he once called

this the most damaging predisposition of Italians. In the very last paragraph of his literary history he came back to the same theme, because to him it was one of the most important lessons to be learnt from studying the national literature: his conclusion was that the tendency to rhetoric and over-emphasis was a main reason why Italy remained in the second rank among nations. These were vices that derived from the past, from the empty epics and speeches of Arcadia; whereas the schools of the new Italy ought to be an integral part of

ordinary existence, not Arcadia and not Accademia, but a part of everyday life as experienced by ordinary citizens.*’ These were views he reiterated in the last years of his life, and in a sense were the central message of his educational writing and political involvement. But he was ahead of his time. Pasquale Villari could call

him ‘the true voice of our national conscience’,”® and Salvemini commented that ‘he was certainly the most open and liberated Italian of his century’.?® But if he was indeed a genius as Salvemini claimed,

he was too much of a solitary genius. As a journalist he failed to contribute as much as he hoped to the political education of his fellow countrymen, and as a minister and member of parliament he left little that could be seen as a practical legacy of his involvement with national problems, or at least left little behind except his teaching and example. Nor did other professors of the time give him his due. He was never

elected to the prestigious Accademia dei Lincei to which many intellectuals and politicians belonged, some of whom are now quite 27 Storia della Letteratura Italiana (Naples 1913), pp. 353-4; La Critica, ed. B. Croce (Naples Nov. 1913) (speech by De Sanctis at Chieti, 9.5.1880); Opere, xvi, 516-17 (29.1.1883). 28 La Giovinezza di Francesco De Sanctis, ed. P. Villari, 18th ed. (Naples 1926), pp. 360-1. 29 Salvemini, Scritti sul Risorgimento, p. 203.

270 DENIS MACK SMITH forgotten. Perhaps Machiavelli and Loyola remained too strongly entrenched in Italian education.

De Sanctis had to wait for any real recognition until Croce effectively excommunicated the positivists and elevated De Sanctis into

the canon many years after his death. Croce in retrospect expressed ‘mortification and remorse’ that Italians had not listened in time to this prophetic analyst of what was wrong in Italian society.*° Only later did enough people accept his enthusiasm for education as the great hope for the future. Only later could rhetoric and trasformismo be identified as among the main evils to be fought in universities and parliament. Only

in more recent years has it become more generally accepted that a healthy political life ideally needs some kind of alternation of parties in power. The problems posed by De Sanctis are now at least recognized

as problems even if they have not found an altogether satisfactory solution. 3° Benedetto Croce, Pagine Sparse (Naples 1943), vol. 1, p. 364.

Bibliography of Denis Mack Smith’s writings on Italy

1 MONOGRAPHS AND COLLECTIONS OF ESSAYS Cavour and Garibaldi. A Study in Political Conflict, Cambridge 1954 (2nd edn 1985)

Cavour e Garibaldi nel 1860 Turin 1958 Garibaldi London 1957 (2nd edn 1982) Garibaldi: una grande vita in breve Milan 1966 Italy. A Modern History Ann Arbor 1959 (2nd edn 1969) Storia dell Italia dal 1861 al 1959 Bari 1959 Da Cavour a Mussolini Catania 1967 Medieval Sicily 800-1713 London 1968 Modern Sicily: After 1713 London 1968

Storia della Sicilia medievale e moderna Bari 1970 , The Making of Italy 1796-1870 London 1968 (2nd edn 1988) Il Risorgimento Italiano; storia e testi, Bari 1968 Victor Emanuel, Cavour and the Risorgimento Oxford 1971 Vittorio Emanuele II Bari 1972 Mussolini's Roman Empire London 1976 Le guerre del Duce Bari 1976 Un monumento al Duce Florence 1976 Cento anni di vita italiana attraverso il ‘Corriere della Sera’ Milan 1978 L’ Italia nel Ventesimo secolo Milan 1978 Mussolini London 1981 Mussolini Milan 1981 Cavour London 1985 Cavour Milan 1985

A History of Sicily M.1. Finley, D. Mack Smith and C. J. Duggan, London 1986

Breve storia della Sicilia Bari 1987 Italy and its Monarchy London 1989 I Savoia Milan 1990

2 EDITED VOLUMES British Interests in the Mediterranean and the Middle East Oxford 1958 271

272 BIBLIOGRAPHY OF DENIS MACK SMITH’S WRITINGS Nelson History of England (1962- ) Garibaldi New Jersey 1969 (and edn 1984) G. Bandi, I Mille, da Genova a Capua Milan 1981 E. Quinet, Le rivoluzioni d Italia Bari 1970 G. La Farina, Scritti politici Palermo 1972 Garibaldi: una vita a piu immagini Florence 1982 F. De Sanctis, Un viaggio elettorale Florence 1983 Iris Origo, War in the Val D’Orcia, 1943-1946 Boston 1984

3 ARTICLES AND ESSAYS

February 1948

‘The politics of Senator Croce’, The Cambridge Journal October 1947 and ‘Cavour’s attitude to Garibaldi’s expedition to Sicily’, Cambridge Historical Journal, 9 (1949). ‘A peasants’ revolt in Sicily’, in Studi in Onore di Gino Luzzatto, Milan 1950 (now in Victor Emanuel, Cavour and the Risorgimento)

‘A prehistory of Fascism’ Occidente January 1953 and November 1954 ‘Vittorio Emanuele e 1 suoi primi muinistri’, Rassegna Storica del Risorgimento, 9 (1954) ‘Cavour and Parliament’, Cambridge Historical Journal, 13 (1957) (now in Victor Emanuel, Cavour and the Risorgimento)

‘Cavour and the Tuscan Revolution of 1859’, in J.H. Elliott and H. Koenigsberger (eds.), The Divinity of History: Essays in Honour of Sir Herbert Butterfield London 1970 (now in Victor Emanuel, Cavour and the Risorgimento)

‘The latifundia in Modern Sicilian History’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 51 (1965).

‘Federico da Montefeltro’, in The Italian Renaissance, ed. J. H. Plumb, London 1965

Introduction to An Illustrated History of Italy, ed. M. Gendel, London 1966 ‘Radicals and moderates in Florence, April 1859’, in Inghilterra e Toscana nel? Ottocento, Florence 1968 (now in Victor Emanuel, Cavour and the Risorgimento)

‘Regionalismo e patriotismo nel Risorgimento’, in Bollettino della Societa di Studi Politici July 1970 ‘Palmerston and Cavour: British policy in 1860’, in Atti del XX XLX Congresso di Storia del Risorgimento, Rome 1961 (now in Victor Emanuel, Cavour and the Risorgimento) ©

‘Anti-British propaganda in fascist Italy ’, in Inghilterra e [ Italia nel 900 Florence 1973

‘La cucina italiana del rinascimento’, in Afti del Quarto Convegno dell’ Accademia Italiana della Cucina June 1973, Bologna ‘Croce e la storia d'Italia’, Nuova Antologia April 1973

‘Regionalism’, in Modern Italy: A Topical History Since 1861, ed. E.R. Tannebaum and E. P. Noethe, New York 1974 ‘Benedetto Croce: history and politics’, in Historians in Politics, ed. W.

Laqueur and G. Mosse, London 1974 ,

Bibliography of Denis Mack Smith’s writings 273 “Mussolini as a military leader’, University of Reading, 1974 ‘Vecchio e nuovo trasformismo’, Nuova Antologia August 1976 ‘Gaetano Salvemini’, Encounter, April 1978 ‘Mussolini e il ‘‘caso Matteotti’’’, in L. Bedeschi (ed.), Studi e ricerche su Giacomo Matteotti, Urbino 1979 ‘Modello inglese e modello italiano nel giornalismo’, in Il Giornale e il NonLettore, ed. W. Tobagi, Florence 1981 ‘Mussolini’s secret illness’, in L’Osservatore Mediterraneo, August 1981

‘Garibaldi e Inghilterra’, Nuova Antologia, April 1982

‘Appeasement as a factor of Mussolini’s foreign policy’, in The Fascist Challenge and the Policy of Appeasement, ed. W. Mommsen, London 1983 ‘Manipolazione della storia’, in Il Fascismo e gli oggetti storici oggi, Bari 1988 ‘Storici inglesi del Risorgimento’, Nuova Antologia, July 1986

‘The Italian Armistice of 1943’, Rivista: Journal of the British Anglo-Italian Society, November 1989

| Index

62 66

Accademia dei Georgofili (Florence), $7, Bentham, Jeremy (1748-1832), 54-5, 61,

Accademia dei Lincei (Rome), 269 Berengo, Marino (historian), 133 Adams, Henry (1838-1918), 216 Bertani, Agostino (1812-86), 169 Agrarian Association (of Turin), 65 Bianco di Saint Jorioz, Carlo

agriculture, 4, 75-6, II0-17, 132~40, (1795-1843), 4I

167-73, 229 Bocconi, Ferdinando (1836-1908), 247

agricultural labourers, 100, 113-153, Bolton King (historian), 224

132-40, 167-73, 258-9 Bonaparte, Joseph (1768-1844), king of see also: common lands; enclosures; Naples and Spain, 24, 39 land reclamation; peasants; share- Branda de Luccioni, Viora, I

cropping Bright, John (1811-89), 199-200, 209, Albantans, 11, I2 214-15 ‘amoral familism’, 84 bureaucracy, 224-30, 244, 250, 264

anarchism, I51 see also: civil servants; professions Annali Universali di Statistica, 63

anti-clericalism, I4—-I5, 243 Cairoli, Benedetto (1825-89), 263, 266 aristocracy, the, 17-18, 74, 77, 80, 93, Calabrian earthquake (1783), 4, 15

99-100, 133-5, 227, 231, 249 Capponi, Gino (1792-1876), 113

armies (1821-31), 122

armed bands, 75-91, 143-7 : Carlo Felice di Savoia, king of Sardinia Kingdom of Italy (1805—14), 26-48 Carpi, Leone (1810-98), 222-3, 229 Kingdom of Italy (1861-7), 256-7 Catholicism, 62, 64, 65, 186, 258

of the Santafede, 2-5, 11-16 Catholics, English, 186, 193, 198 Ashurst, William jr (1819~79), 194-5 Catholics, Irish, 193, 214-15 Austrians, 128-32, 140-3, 196, 204, 256 see also: anti-clericalism; Christian Austrian government in Lombardy- Democrat Party; clergy; religion,

Venetia, 128—32, 140, 147-SI, popular; the Vatican

220-1, 239 Cattaneo, Carlo (1801-69), 63, 251, 253 cattle rustling, 82-4, 89

banditry, 42, 70-91, 128-31, 140-7 Cavour, Count Camillo Benso di see also: armed bands; rural theft; (1810-61), xill, xiv, 50, 64, 67-8,

smuggling; vendetta. 186, 197, 204, 251, 252, 253, 254,

Bavaria, $5 255, 2§7, 260-1, 265-6

Beauharnais, Eugene (1781-1824), 26, Chadwick, Edwin (1800-90), $5

44, 47 Championnet, General Jean-Antoine-

Beccaria, Cesare (1738-94), 153-4 Etienne (1762-1800), I, § 274

Index 275 charity, 4, 49, 51, 53-4, 57, 60, 62-5, de Gérando, Joseph-Marie (1772-1842),

68-9, 126-7 49-52, $7-62

see also: pauperism; state and poor De Jacobis, Angelo, 6, 8, 23-4

relief delle Beccache, Uombuono, 6, 9-10

children, 70, 93-8, 122-7 ~ De Nicola, Carlo, 5, 15-16, 21

child abandonment, 122-7 Depretis, Agostino (1813-87), 256,

child labour, 63, 155, 157, 165 261-3 child-rearing, 122-7 De Sanctis, Francesco (1817-83), xiv,

see also: foundlings 251-70

chimneys, 55-6 Derby, 14th earl of (1799-1869), 196, Christian Democrat Party, 264 201 cities, 99, 123, 125-6, 172-9 deserters, 27, 33, 144

civil rights, 264 Diavolo, Fra (Michele Pezza,

206 242 217-19, 259 202, 213

civil servants, 224-6, 250, 264 1771-1806), 2, 7, 21, 24

Clarendon, 4th earl of (1800-70), 202-3, disease, 36-8, 45-7, 131, 166-71, 177-9,

class, 4, 13-14, 24~5, 70, 136-40, Disraeli, Benjamin (1804-81), 189, 193, see also: deference; middle classes; divorce, 16, 98

peasants; women; workers see also: family; marriage; women clergy, 14-16, 40-1, 141, 231, 234, doctors (physicians), 34-5, 219, 221,

258 237-8, 240-3, 250, 268

see also: anti-clericalism ; religion,

popular Eden, F. M. (1766—1809), $1, 54

clientelismo, 263-5 education, 60-1, 180, 218-19, 233-4, Cobden, Richard (1804-65), 209, 215 266-9 Coletti, Francesco (1866-1940), 119 see also: schools; universities

colonies, 268 Ellero, Pietro (1833-1933), 223 Commissione d’Este, 13I—$I emigration, 139, 171-3

common lands, 4, 7-8, 19, 76-8, 132-40 enclosures, 4, 7-8, 19, 21, 81, 132-40 communities, rural, 19-20, 24—s, 60, engineers, 28, 220, 244

72-3, 136-8 England, 49, 50, $1, 52, $3, 58, 60, 66,

Congresses of Italian Sctentists, 63 68-9, 71, 87, 107, 184-216, 244

conscription, 27 English manufacturers, 65

co-operatives, 248-9 Enlightenment, the, 4, 16-17, 50-1,

Cossacks, 47 57, 180 courts, 78-9, 128-31, 145, 148—50 Europe, Central, 39 see also: lawyers; magistrates

Cowen, Joseph jr (1831-1900), 194-5, factionalism (in the Mezzogiorno and

208, 210-II, 215 Sicily), 9-11, 24-5, 72-8, 81-4, craft guilds, 152 230-1 Cremer, Sir Randal (1823-1908), 203-4 _ factories, 62, 152, 157, 161-7, 175-9, Croce, Benedetto (1866-1952), 251, 267, 181-2 270 tobacco factories, 176 Crispi, Francesco (1818-1901), 222, 242, see also: child labour; women

255, 266-7 workers

Cuoco, Vincenzo (1770-1823), 3 family, the, 60, 81-4, 92-127, 179-83 see also: ‘amoral familism’;

Dal Pane, Luigi (historian), 153 households; inheritance customs, D’Azeglio, Emanuele (1816-90), 186 kinship; marriage

deference, 231-3 Fascism, xiv, XV, 3, 240, 264, 266

276 Index Ferdinand IV di Borbone (1751-1825), Lambruschini, Raffaelo (1788-1873), 69

king of Naples, 1, 2 landowners, 4, 13, 20, 75-QI, 133-40,

Ferrara, Francesco (1810-1900), 64 144-5, 153, 221, 223, 226-7, 250

feudalism 138—40

Ferri, Enrico (1856-1929), 236, 239 land reclamation, consequences of, abolition of in the South, 4, 12-13, Laslett, Peter (historian), 107, 109

17-22 latifundist estates (in Sicily), 80, 85

in Sicily, 73-6 lawyers, 219-21, 224, 235-40, 250, 268

food, 32, 55-6, 81, 258 Leopardi, Giacomo (1798-1837), 251

foundlings, 122-7 Leprotti, Carlo Felice, 118-20 , Franchetti, Leopoldo (1847-1917), 74 Levi, Carlo (novelist), 238 France, xvi, 49, $9, 60, 61-2, 68-9, 72, Liberalism, xiv, 218-19, 235, 239, 241,

107, 219, 224, 240, 245, 246-7 247-8, 250, 258

freemasons, 187 see also: Liberals; parliamentary government; political parties Garibaldi, Giuseppe (1807-82), xili-xiv, —__ Liberals, 3, 25, 50, 63, 67-8, 211-12 184-216, 245, 252-3, 257-8, 265-6 —_ Lovett, Clara (historian), 221 Gentile, Giovanni (1875-1944), 267

Germany, Xvi, $2, $5, 57, 69, 107, 219, Mafia, 73, 74

227, 228, 236, 240, 246-7, 251 magistrates, 90, 235-7 Giddens, Anthony (sociologist), 218 see also: lawyers; courts | Gioia, Melchiorre (1767-1829), 62 Malthus, Revd Thomas Robert Giolitti, Giuseppe (1841-1928), 245-6, (1766-1834), 49, $4, 58-0, 64, 66

250, 255, 264, 266 Manin, Daniele (1804-57), 140

Gladstone, William Ewart (1809-98), Maria Carolina, queen of Naples

189, 198, 204-16, 252 (1752-1814), I, 21, 22-3

Granville, 2nd earl of (1815-91), 187, Marengo, battle of (1800), 24

199, 207 marriage, 65, 92-127

Greenfield, K. R. (historian), 217 age at, 107-22

guerrilla warfare, 41-5, 77 and household, 92-106, 180-1 Guizot, Francois-Pierre-Guillaume masse (irregular troops), 7

(1787-1874), 59 Marx, Kari (1818-83), 49, 193

: Mazzini, Giuseppe (1805-72), 41, 194-7,

Hajnal, John (historian), 107, 109 201, 202, 206, 2090, 251-4, 260, 265 Herzen, Alexander (1812-70), 200 Melzi D’Eril, Count Francesco Hobsbawm, E. J. (historian), 71, 144 (1753-1816), 26, 29 Holyoake, Jacob (1817-1906), 196 mezzadria, LII-17

hospitals, 34-6 see also: share-cropping

households, 92-127 Michels, Robert (1876-1936), 228, 232

humanism, 244 middle classes, 68, 217-50

bourgeois revolution, 217

inheritance customs, 117-22 industrial bourgeoisie, 217, 244,

infanticide, 125 249-50 Ireland, 193 middle-class families, 93-9

petty bourgeoisie, 224, 248-50

Jesuits, 18 Sicilian bourgeoisie, 76~7

journalism, 229, 260 Southern bourgeoisie, 13, 19~20, 24-$, 230-1, 234

kinship, 9, 72-3, 81-3, 143 Venetian bourgeoisie, 135-7

204 professions

Kossuth, Lajos (1831-1914), I91, 197, see also: education; landowners;

Index 277 Minghetti, Marco (1818-86), 245, 263 Pellico, Silvio (1789-1854), 62

monarchy, the Italian, 257 Pettiti di Roreto, Count Ilarione Munby, Arthur (1828-1910), 190-1 (1790-1850), 50, 65-7, 164, 181 Murat, Joachim, king of Naples pharmacists, 240-1

(1767-1815), 24-5 Pietro Leopoldo, Grand Duke of

Mussolini, Benedetto (1883-1945), 264 Tuscany (1747-092), 154-S

mutual-aid societies, 182 Poerio, Carlo (1803-67), 222 police, 267

Napoleon I, emperor of the French and bandits in Sicily, 84-91

(1769-1821), 24, 41 political parties, 251-2, 254-7, 261-6

Napoleon III, emperor of the French see also: Liberals; parliamentary

(1808-73), 198, 201-3 government ; trasformismo

Napoleonic administration in Italy, 24, Polytechnic, of Milan, 244

$5, $8, 61-2, 72 Portugal, 65

Napoleonic Civil Code, 98 prisons, 32-4, $4, 65-6, 131 Neapolitan Republic (1799), the, 1-3, professions, 218-23, 250

5-6, 13-16, 19-21, 24-5 see also: civil servants; doctors;

Nelson, Admiral Horatio (1758—1808), engineers; journalism; lawyers;

I, 23 pharmacists; shopkeepers; teachers;

New Poor Law Amendment Act (1834), technicians

$0, $I, 54-5, 56, $8, 61, 64 prostitution, 182 Nicotera, Giovanni (1828-94), 262, 265 Prussia, 201-2

Nitti, Francesco Saverio (1868-1953), see also: Germany

108, 117, 239, 240, 245-6 public health, 30-2, 34-8, 242 public works, 172 Orsini Plot (1858), 198 Radetzky, Field Marshal Count Johann

Palmerston, Henry Temple, 3rd (1766-1858), 142, 147-50 viscount (1784-1865), I9I-2, railways, 137, 172 196-203, 207, 210, 212-15, 216 Rattazzi, Urbano (1808-73), 256, 263

Panizzi, Antonio (1797-1879), 197 regional differences, 231, 265 ,

Parliamentary Enquiries bureaucracy and, 245-6

on Agriculture (1882), 113 in household structures, 99—100

on the Conditions of the Peasants in middle classes and, 230-3 the Southern Provinces (1910), 108 religion, popular, 15-17, 139-40 parliamentary government (in Italy), Restoration (1814-15), 25, §7, §8, 140, 220

254-7, 261-6 revolutions

see also: revolutions, ‘parliamentary ’ bourgeois revolution, 217 of 1876; political parties; suffrage French (1789), 3, 52

reform; frasformismo 1848, 50, 78, 140-3, 147-8, 264

pauperism, 49-69 ‘parliamentary revolution’ of 1876, dépots de mendicité, 51-4 223, 261-70 outdoor relief, 51-4 Ricasoli, Baron Bettino (1809-80), 253, State and, 53-6, 60-2, 67-9 254-5, 266 vagrancy (in Sicily), 70 Ricci, Ludovico (1742-99), $1, 53

peasants, xv, I, 7-9, 19-21, 24-S, 29, rice growing, I7! 70-4, 76-9, 100-21, 128-51, 154-5, Ridolfi, Cosimo (1794-1865), 62

162-83, 223, 228, 234, 249-50, Romeo, Rosario (historian), 67

258-9 ~ Rossi, Alessandro (1819-98), 163, 232 see also: agricultural labourers; share- § Ruffo, Cardinal Fabrizio (1744-1827), 2,

cropping II—13, 14-16, 18-19, 22-3

278 Index rural theft, 138-47 Sutherland, 3rd duke of (1828-92) and

Russell, 1st earl of (Lord John) the (dowager) duchess (his

(1792-1878), 192, 197-8, 200-1, mother) (1806-68), 186, 189, 192,

203, 209-10, 214 194, 204, 206-9

Russia, 47-8, 210 suffrage reform (1882), 233, 262 ‘Syllabus of Errors’, the (1864), 258 Santafede, the, 1-25

Say, Jean-Baptiste (1826-96), 50, 56 tailors, 174 Salvemini, Gaetano (1874-1957), 234, taxes, 20-1, 81, 155, 223, 230, 248,

245-6, 251, 269 258

Scandinavia, 72, 107 Taylor, A. J. P. (historian), xti

sclence, 241 210-II seamstresses, 174—5 teachers, 219, 225, 233-4, 250

schools, 60-2, 181, 267 Taylor, P. A. (1819-91), 194, 196, Serao, Matilde (1856-1927), 225 technicians, 244

Shaftesbury, 7th earl of (1801-85), 185, | Thompson, Benjamin Count Rumford

194, 199, 201, 204, 206—8, 211 (1753-1814), 55-7, 61-2

share-cropping, III~I$ trasformismo, 260, 263-70 see also: mezzadria see also: parliamentary government; shopkeepers, 227, 246-9, 250 political parties silk industry, 153-4, 164-7, 173-4 Trevelyan, G. M. (historian), xiii, 189,

silk worms, rearing of, 167-9 214

Sismondi, Jean-Charles-Léonard Simon truck system, 154-5

de (1773-1842), 50 see also: workers’ wages

Smiles, Samuel (1812-1904), 232 Turati, Filippo (1857-1932), 240, 250 Smith, Adam (1723-1790), $4

smuggling, 72 universities, 219, 233-6, 261, 267-9 social protest, 4-7, 15, 24, 70-4, 137-8,

140-2, I§1, 266 Valerio, Lorenzo (1810-65), 64 social reform, 253—4 Vatican, the, 258, 261 socialism, I1§1, 243, 245, 247 see also: clergy; religion, popular;

Socialists, 239, 240, 248—50 ‘Syllabus of Errors’ Spain vendetta, 72-3 charity in, 65, 69 Victoria, Queen (1819-1901), 187, 192,

Italian troops in, 39-47 - 199, 200

Speenhamland, 51, $3 Villari, Pasquale (1826—1917), 222, 239, Stansfeld, Sir James (1820-98), 194, 267, 269

202-3, 208, 210 Viva Maria! (insurrections), 1, 4

State, the Volunteer Rifle Clubs, 187, 198 ancien régime, 5, 16-19, 24-5

the Liberal State, 218, 222, 251-70 Weber, Max (1864-1920), 91

and abandoned infants, 126-7 women, $I, 68, 92-121, 152-83, 225,

and banditry, 72-3, 75-6 230, 248

and local administration, 72-3, 81-2, age at marriage, 107—12

263 in agriculture, 167-72

and poor relief, 67-9 wives, 98

and the middle classes, 219-22, workers, 152-83

249-50, 262—4 and the law, 120-1, 180-3

and the professions, 219-20, workers

249-50 domestic, 152-83

statistics, 56, 64, 67, 156-7, 167 industrial, 156—8, 224, 249

Index 279

silk, 152-4, 164-73 and wages, 152-5

spinning, 154-5, 158-60 see also: Women; peasants weaving, 154-5, 161-7

women, 152-83 Zanardelli, Giuseppe (1826-1903), 235,

and education, 60-1 239