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Home , Naples, Pietro Colletta, Ponza, Sicilians, Strait of Messina, Stromboli

Ida Fazio

Women and men in illicit trades between the Kingdom of and the Kingdom of during the commercial crisis of the Continental Blockade and the (, 1808-1816)

This paper focuses on men and women, given their position in the household economy, in their participation in illicit trade carried out on the small Sicilian island of Stromboli (one of the seven islands of the Aeolian Archipelago, which was part of the ) during the years of the Napoleonic wars (1803-1815) and Continental Blockade (1806-1814). I will address some hypotheses on the impact that the ensuing international crisis in legal trade involving the warring European states in the Mediterranean had on the local economy, which combined and agricultural activities on a family basis. The Blockade prohibited English ships from docking in French or allied ports, and vice versa, and trade between and England and their respective allies was forbidden.1 This was a drastic blow to international trade2 and illicit trade developed in in an attempt to circumvent the prohibitions.3 Illicit trade flourished also on Stromboli, and the island, due to its position on the border between the two fronts (the Kingdom of Sicily allied to England and the under the domination of France), became a favored place for smuggling and illegal sale of ’s prize goods who, during the war, authorized by the states’ governments, attacked ships flying the enemy flag. The hypothesis here proposed is that the international trade crisis was an additional resource for Stromboli and its inhabitants (who had gradually populated the island just during the previous century) as it was a chance to integrate itself into the network of maritime traffic that until then had been dominated by the two biggest islands of the archipelago, and Salina. The war and the Continental Blockade deeply shook international trading and the institutions which regulated and controlled it in the entire Mediterranean, thus making the island a highly strategic location between the fighting kingdoms of Naples and Sicily, the former being allied to France and governed first by Bonaparte’s brother and then by his brother-in-law, and the latter allied to England. The English protectorate in Sicily opened the way to nearly a century of development of maritime trade for the whole archipelago, and the Blockade was an opportunity to fully integrate the relatively new economic and social fabric of Stromboli into the international commercial network, in which, according to the most recent historiography, licit and illicit trade did not contrast one another, but rather coexisted as complementary forms of trade. This paper will highlight, first of all, the importance of illegal trade during the Continental Blockade in the entire area of the lower , along with the reform of the institutions which controlled them (Customs, Health, Prize Courts) in the years of the turn of the century, and at a local level. Subsequently, as there are no sources or testimonies on the economy of Stromboli before the beginning of the Nineteenth century, the roles of men and women in the island’s household economy of and fishing will be detailed as emerges from the earliest accounts from the Nineteenth century. Finally, I will analyse the differences between their roles in two different types of illegal trade which flourished in Stromboli during the international crisis of legal sea trades of the Napoleonic period: traffic in prize goods and salt smuggling. The results of two judiciary inquiries that I will be taking into consideration show how the roles of men and women, heavily integrated into, and often overlapping in household economies based on agriculture and fishing, were instead different in illegal trading. From the two judicial inquires carried out by the government to defeat salt smuggling and the illegal sale of prize goods, indeed, it emerges that the women in Stromboli were fully involved in minor traffic associated with fraudulent sale of prize goods but were excluded from large smuggling operations, in terms of quantity, value of goods and connivance with the institutions. Thus, the household economy seems to have coped with the crisis of the Continental blockade using it as an additional resource, showing however a significant asymmetry between male and female roles in illicit trades, while women had an active position in other household economic activities. The subject matter of this study, therefore, also involves the question of the position of women in the family economy in Mediterranean Europe between the early modern and modern ages. Historiographic debate has discussed and criticized the paradigm of women’s exclusion from extra-domestic work because of the “honour-shame complex”, which was a strong point of “Mediterranean anthropology” that in the years after World War II and in the 1960s undertook studies that influenced the social history of communities of southern .4 Some criticisms have been raised against this interpretation by women historians and anthropologists regarding agricultural and urban work and the history of the family,5 but no analysis has been carried out yet with regard to informal trade, where sources of information are more fragmented, dispersed throughout various archives, from notarial to judiciary documentation. An analysis of the role of men and women in illegal trading during a commercial, diplomatic and military crisis in an apparently peripheral context - while actually a very important traffic intersection - may show how women’s involvement has suffered from some gender associated asymmetry in a context where in effect women’s work outside the home was important.

Illicit activities and fraudulent practices in the Mediterranean between the Kingdom of Naples and the Kingdom of Sicily: privateer prize and smuggling.

Before examining the case of illicit trades on the island of Stromboli, it might to helpful to outline the geo-political context and the historiographical analyses that have set the phenomenon of illicit traffic in the period of the Napoleonic wars and the ensuing trade crisis in the maritime field which the island belongs to: the ports, the Mediterranean coasts and islands, and, in particular, the southern Tyrrhenian sea. Ports and islands are particularly suitable for illicit trade, and some of these areas even specialized in trade tied to fraud and smuggling during the Ancien Régime.6 Thus, ports and islands become excellent places to study the modalities through which local communities became part of vast commercial circuits, bypassing institutions and regulations, and connecting different strata and actors belonging to asymmetrical social, cultural and institutional spheres: labourers and ruling classes, officials and simple citizens, men and women. Events such as wars, revolutions, and institutional changes, with all the consequent radical alterations in the productive and commercial fabric, accelerate and intensify these practices,7 and this also happened on Stromboli. According to Anne Montenach,8 illicit activities and fraudulent practices arise in a significant way precisely in periods of crises, as they offer versatile solutions for most of the population. Fraud was, in fact, a factor which introduced flexibility into an economy of the Ancien Régime where the actors were forced to operate in a permanent state of uncertainty.9 Studies by Silvia Marzagalli10 have underlined how, in Europe in the years of the Continental Blockade and the Napoleonic Wars, there was a turning point when fraud and smuggling – which involved the leading players of the “great trades”, together with the informal economy of harbour, costal and island populations – intensified. Marzagalli shows that sea and businessmen reacted to the crisis of legal sea trade carried out under national flags through the use of neutral ships, alternative routes and smuggling, and that this was a consolidated practice of the time in Europe. As Biagio Salvemini wrote, “active trade”, a source of ‘Public Happiness’ continued to be looked for with every means possible in times in which bureaucracy and war promoted it and at the same time hampered it.11 During the Anglo-Napoleonic war and the Continental Blockade,12 the southern Tyrrhenian Sea between (the most southern region of the Kingdom of Naples) and the Kingdom of Sicily, where the , which Stromboli is part of, are located, was a geopolitical and economic area in which these dynamics played out. Fraud and smuggling intensified, carried out in different ways and with different roles by actors from various spheres of society and institutions: coastal communities, local officials, high-ranking representatives of the institutions, and merchants of different kinds and calibre. Illicit forms of economy on the borders were deeply intertwined with licit trades, in a system of negotiations between the actors of economic networks in a phase of rapidly changing rules and institutions as in times of war. Research carried out by Marc Heurgon in the 1960s on smuggling precisely in the area of the Strait of and of the Aeolian islands, highlights this with great clarity. ‘To the entrance of the French into Naples, 14th February 1807, the British replied with their first landing in Sicily on the 16th. This is the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (sic) 13 which became a high stake in the Franco-British struggle; in the eight years to follow it was to be cut in two; in Naples and two rival were installed, both subject to foreign domination. Initially, the breach between the two regions was total, and economic exchanges were reduced to nothing. Once installed in Naples, introduced imperial decrees which closed the Continent to British products. On his part, Ferdinand I established a blockade for all ports not occupied by Anglo-. […] From then on, the lost its function as an important commercial way becoming a frontier-trench, on whose banks the opposing armies were positioned in battle array. […] But the war, rather than suppressing, altered relationships between neighbours: […] battle fields, unceasing skirmishes and struggles for areas of interest, land of intrigue, of clandestine exchanges, black market – in a word, a prime seat for smuggling’.14 Smuggling was one of the many means of mercantile exchange between Sicilians and Neapolitans.15 However, Heurgon noted a significant intensification of both small “filtration”16 smuggling in the Napoleonic years and of more relevant illegal exchanges between Calabria and Sicily organized by individuals at the top- and mid- ranking levels of local and national institutions.17 This type of traffic intertwined with traffic which was authorized by the English licence system, i.e. licences for authorized trade that continental ship owners and merchants could obtain and circulate without any difficulty, overcoming thus the obstacles of the Blockade.18 There were also other authorizations purchased from time to time, and even some traffic in false licences carried out in Naples.19 The Strait of Messina, ‘an undivided space, a treacherous ‘river’ crowded with boats’,20 opens onto that wide triangle of maritime space of the southern Tyrrhenian where we find Stromboli and the Aeolian archipelago. It is a triangle with its tips at the important Sicilian ports of Palermo and Messina (with its free port, additional point of attraction for smugglers and hidden exchanges, and indeed protected by civilian power),21 and, on the continental coast of the Kingdom of Naples, the peninsula between the gulfs of and Naples. From here, the coast of southern and Calabria stretched out, dotted with numerous marines, ideal places for unloading, and harbours of various sizes which connected the hinterland to the sea. 22 In the years of the Napoleonic wars, the Aeolian archipelago like the rest of the Kingdom of Sicily, was moreover also involved in the economic transformations brought by the English who already held the protectorate of the Kingdom of Sicily, where King Ferdinand of Bourbon and his court had taken shelter after having fled the French occupied Kingdom of Naples. Once separated by the war from the continental part of the Bourbon Kingdom, Sicily became, together with , the only place in the Mediterranean that was not under the French rule and the Continental Blockade. Thus, Sicily was involved in the international trade crisis furthermore emphasizing its role as a sales market for British goods.23 As François Crouzet pointed out, ‘the impact of the wars upon the long-term development of industry […] was felt mostly through the dislocations in international trade which were brought about by the twenty-year long conflict between Britain and France and by the progressive involvement of all other European countries in which economic warfare played the prominent part.’24 With its large population, the Kingdom of Sicily could buy and consume imported goods far more than Malta could and, what is more important, it provided local commodities (wheat, wine, oil, soda ash, these last two in great demand for industrial use) to load the vessels returning to England. Numerous British merchants settled in Sicily and, after the end of the war, many of them were to remain permanently.25 The actual economic repercussion on the Aeolian islands due to the new interest of Great Britain in Sicily and the lesser islands is hard to tell,26 but certainly the economic and demographic development of the entire archipelago from that moment grew steadily for the first three quarters of the Nineteenth century.27

The economy of Stromboli: men and women in agriculture and fishing

What were the features of the household economies involved in the increase in illicit trades on Stromboli following the international maritime trade crisis? What was the social and productive context? The Aeolian archipelago, which was central in this maritime area of penetrable, conflictual borders, is made up of seven islands, with the principal being Lipari, then see of a rich bishopric, and the second in importance, Salina, which had a flourishing agricultural economy, and which was to develop a substantial commercial and fishing fleet over the Nineteenth century. Stromboli, the furthest to the north-east, is an active and the closest to the continental coasts of the Mezzogiorno (). At the end of the early modern age and in the Nineteenth century, Lipari and Salina were considerably populated and included several villages. They were the centre of thriving economic activities related to agriculture (especially wine and raisins, i.e. dried grapes), , and sea trade. Salina harboured an affluent middle class of “sea merchants”; Lipari’s social stratification was more layered as it was the main centre of the archipelago and an important and wealthy episcopal see.28 Of the four peripheral islands (, , and Stromboli), with very few inhabitants, in the Nineteenth century Stromboli was to become the most important, with more inhabitants. During the first three-quarters of the Nineteenth century the economy of the Aeolian Islands grew thanks to the development of pumice stone, alum and sulphur mining, and from an extension of sailing routes that connected coasts with the harbours of Salerno, Naples, and Calabria passing through the archipelago. This positive trend stopped only in the last quarter of Nineteenth century due to various causes, among which the completion of a steam boat service connecting Palermo and Naples that bypassed the Islands, and the spread of the vine blight (phylloxera) that severely damaged the grape harvests at the end of the 1880s. In the 1890s, as these two activities suffered a setback, an acute, permanent crisis of the marine ensued.29 Unfortunately, there are no demographic sources nor notary acts relating to Stromboli and the Archipelago before the second decade of the Nineteenth century.30 Therefore, to obtain information on any time previous, one can only rely on the reports of travellers, scientists and naturalists that in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth century visited Stromboli and the volcanic archipelago. The population of Stromboli was quite small and grew slowly only when, in the first three-quarters of the Eighteenth century, the Bishops assigned some of their lands in emphyteusis so as to encourage settlement,31 a practice that was carried out on other small Italian islands in the same period.32 According to the well-read Pietro Campis (1694), at the end of the Seventeenth century, Stromboli was uninhabited and supervised only by two custodians entrusted with notifying Lipari of the passage of Barbary corsairs. In 1737, the abbot Vito Amico noted that the inhabitants of the nearby islands were planting cotton there on Stromboli. In 1776, the traveller and painter Jean Houel came ashore and found the few, welcoming inhabitants gathered on the beach, seeing also the cultivation of wheat and malvasia grapes. In 1781, the geologist Déodat de Dolomieu met generous, helpful inhabitants, and observed the cultivation of vines, as did the scientist Lazzaro Spallanzani in 1788. The diplomat William Hamilton, in 1769, and the poet Ippolito Pindemonte, in 1779, estimated that the population consisted of around one hundred families.33 Only in the following century, after the conclusion of the concessions of episcopal lands to the inhabitants, did the population increase rapidly, until there were around 1800 in the 1860s.34 And we have travellers35 who tell us of an island where the land was cultivated up to the high levels of the slopes of the volcano with wheat, capers, figs, and vines, which produced wine and raisins for export. Neither does information on household economy date back to before the Nineteenth century, and what there is comes from travellers. Work on the land was integrated with sea trading. This included fishing and coastal trade, and men often worked as sailors in the local cabotage fleet or as skippers in vessels travelling long distances. This type of multi-activity seemed based on the integration of male and female work. In fact, women too toiled in the fields to support the family, and they contributed to processing agricultural and sea products (salting fish and capers, preparing raisins). They also participated in maritime activities, like fishing and rowing.36 In 1826, Alexis de Tocqueville, blocked by a storm on Stromboli during a trip to Sicily, saw a boat coming in to moor with three generations of men and women rowing, all belonging to the same family.37 ‘Often it is the whole family, father, mother, sons and daughters, that goes to the fishing boat, which represents, as they say here, the entire household’, but it was also very common that ‘it is the women themselves who sail their boats stern forward, so that it is not difficult to identify a boat sailed by women, even if from a distance’, as the Archduke Ludwig Salvador Von Österreich, son of Leopold II of , traveller, naturalist, and amateur anthropologist, who from 1869 onwards visited and studied the Aeolian archipelago wrote. On Stromboli ‘after five o’clock in the afternoon… a merry crowd of girls and women, swimming and laughing, would bring their boats ashore for the night, or come back from fishing, or from tilling the soil on the distant slopes of the volcano’.38 It is not clear, however, whether this system was in force from the first substantial settlement of population on the island, at the very beginning of the Eighteenth century. We have similar reports on women’s work in the 1800s on other islands of the archipelago, as on the nearby island of Panarea, and on Lipari, where ‘little girls can be seen carrying heavy loads of pumice stones on their shoulders. […] They work merrily and fast, all on their own’. ‘It is not only the men who carry out the work on the Aeolian Islands, but also women work. They till the soil most meticulously and perform the manliest tasks. They hoe the ground, and look after their vines with the highest expertise, and harvest capers, grapes and muscadine with the utmost care’, wrote the botanist Michele Lojacono Pojero.39 Women were also involved in the transfer of property. As shown in notarial records,40 in Stromboli women usually owned both movable goods and immovable property, like plots of land and houses. This devolution system was characterized by partibility of wealth between the heirs, bilateral descent, and often equality of inheritance shares and/or endowments to sons and daughters, with the possibility, which was in fact practiced, of swapping, assembling, and disposing of shares through sales and permutations between relatives. The wives/mothers who survived the husband held the usufruct of either the whole or a significant part of his properties, which they managed together with their children, or on their own when the latter were minors.41

The sale of the prize goods on Stromboli

The island was semi-deserted for centuries as a consequence of some volcanic eruptions42 and Barbary raids that in the Early Modern age flagellated the archipelago during the wars between and , as were other islands of the Mediterranean (Lipari was sacked by in 1544 and then repopulated to replace the islanders who were taken into slavery en masse).43 The island, however, was highly attractive for illicit or semi-licit traders: wild and inhospitable, at the same time it stretched out toward the coasts of the Kingdom of Naples, and thus was the outpost of Sicily which was closest to the southern coasts of the . The entire Aeolian Archipelago often features in the history of Mediterranean slavery, both as a place of origin of captives brought to the and as a place of meetings and exchanges: in this regard, some cases of exchange of slaves are known to have taken place on the island of Stromboli.44 Between the end of the Eighteenth and the beginning of the Nineteenth century, during the Anglo-Franco conflict, Stromboli exploited this position. At the time, the Aeolian islands became fully recognized as being ‘a key zone, and their role throughout those years was intensified by the disjointedness of the current of traffic and political-military events’:45 in particular, Stromboli, seat of ‘disorder and disorientation’,46 according to the Sicilian government, due to continual smuggling and frauds. Indeed, as we will shortly see, with the war, the island was used as a base for salt smuggling and the fraudulent sale of prize goods of the who during the war raided the seas for the King of Sicily. Prizes, according to the law of the sea, had to be judged legitimate by a special court in Palermo, the Prize Court of the Kingdom of Sicily. After a sentence of legitimacy, the prize could be sold, but 10% of the value went to the State. To avoid paying this tax, privateers (who were not only captains, but also businessmen who invested in this type of enterprise) tried to sell prizes on the quiet in an intermediary stop, Stromboli, which was at the centre of the route between Sicily and the Kingdom of Naples. The combination of prohibitions between the fighting nations created, along with many obstacles, additional opportunities tied to the special border position of the island in respect to the Kingdom of Naples, ruled by , the Anglo- Bourbon Kingdom of Sicily, and the local public and private food supply markets of the archipelago. The privateers became so embedded in social relationships and the economic fabric as to represent a constitutive reality of the economy of the island. Goods that were part of the privateer’s prizes, and those transported in both directions by smuggling, which was carried on with the Kingdom of Naples through Calabria and the Strait of Messina, were an important resource for that border economy. In this sense, Stromboli was the sorting house of that traffic, directing the goods transported and exchanged toward other islands of the archipelago, above all toward Lipari. I have examined elsewhere, in a study on maritime fraud, the case of the fencing of privateers’ prize goods in Stromboli between 1807 and 1811,47 under close observation during an investigation of the Prize Court of the Kingdom of Sicily, set up between 1808 and 1813 to regulate and legitimate the capture and re-sale of the prize won by privateers armed by Ferdinand I, as well as by other warring parties, in the Mediterranean during the Napoleonic wars. I return here to the subject to consider the involvement of local families in the exchanges between privateers and islanders, the presence and roles of women, and to examine similarities and differences with trafficking in smuggled goods (salt, but also wheat, cattle, and goats, ropes and tar, , rice, salted meat) that were to be investigated and repressed soon after. The border economy of Stromboli used its strategic (and difficult to control) position as a resource. Local officials from the Health and Police departments, who were in charge of controlling the circulation of men and goods, took advantage of their power of acknowledging or turning a blind eye, to expose clandestine landings or to facilitate them. Police, health and customs surveillance in Sicily were all intertwined as were their powers and officers. The system of health inspections was improved in the second half of the Eighteenth century, after the plague of Messina in 1743.48 The customs and police systems, on the other hand, were reformed at the very beginning of the Nineteenth century. Between 1806 and 1808, the institutional structure of the sea police was established, who monitored everything entering and leaving the Kingdom: people, goods and ideas.49 The customs reform, passed in 1802 for the purpose of safeguarding the interests of the Kingdom’s Revenue and regulating the collection of indirect taxes according to clear criteria, reshaped maritime customs and abolished some special exemptions from duties in Lipari.50 The years of the war and the Blockade, the same period during which the Prize Court was operating, thus, were also the years of the difficult launch phase of these recently reformed institutions, still stuck in the logic of bargaining between local powers and unable to control the lawfulness of the trades. On Stromboli, the relationship between a rather confused institutional set-up and a network of personal alliances merged with the opportunity that the war and privateering opened up for illegal trade. The entire population (a community which had created extensive and intricate commercial, familiar, working relationships with the officials themselves and with the privateers) provided warehouses and stores for illicit exchanges, along with boat-repairing services, hospitality, care and services for the privateers and their crews during their stay, or in illness, custodial services of equipment and goods, credit and supplies in money and in kind.51 Many participated in the purchase and re-sale of objects and goods which made up the cargo of the ships raided by the Bourbon corsairs,52 and which, instead of being sent on to Palermo to be resold after a sentence of legitimacy on capture by the Prize Court and after payment of the tax owed to the Royal Treasury, were unloaded onto the island to be resold furtively. The situation on Stromboli was no secret to anyone and was even well-known to the Royal Secretary, the Secretary of State, War & , and the high offices of Police in Palermo, where already in 1807 complaints and reports had arrived on ‘serious inconveniences which have been and continue to be committed on the island of Stromboli by Sicilian privateers, hiding there […] with the pernicious passing off of goods from captured ships’.53 Nevertheless, the Camerale processo, an inquiry into behaviour on Stromboli in 1810-1811 on the part of the Prize Court to uncover the network of complicity which supported the small-time fraudulent sale of prizes was initiated because of a breakdown in the equilibrium of collusion and complicity, caused by a conflict at a local level.54 The big business that could be realized with the privateer system was quite another thing, as in the case of the Amministrazione dei corsari di conto regio (Administration of privateers working on behalf of the Monarch), an institution through which the Monarchy managed its own army of privateers, arming vessels to attack ships flying the enemy flag. It was controlled in Palermo by Queen Maria Carolina and above all by her emissary, chief of the Bourbon police, Giuseppe Castrone.55 These prominent figures, at the highest levels of the Bourbon privateers, were not averse to the strategic position of Stromboli. Both Gaetano Gambardella, probably the most powerful, unscrupulous and well-fitted in complicity among all the privateers hiding in the Aeolian islands, and Castrone himself, sometimes sold off prize goods in Stromboli56. The archipelago, however, was only one of their many business locations, along with other landing places in the Tyrrhenian, such as , as well as and the islands off the Dalmatian shore. Around these figures, in Stromboli, there moved a crowd of men and women who carried out small purchases and resales, or who operated or worked the goods unloaded by the privateers for themselves. These trades are described in the testimonies collected in the Camerale processo by clerks of the Prize Court who went to the island to investigate between 1810 and 1811. They allow us to outline, with some examples, the most important facts. Trades would seem to have been regulated in a certain sense by the randomness with which one cargo or another arrived, from the captures, meetings and pursuits which the Bourbon corsairs carried out in the southern Tyrrhenian sea. The islanders took advantage of the arrival of prize cargo in every way possible. The goods served to supply the community, as in the case of oil bought many times from the privateers on Stromboli on behalf of the Giurati (the Council) from Lipari, and also on behalf of Albanese troops in the employment of the Bourbons stationed there.57 The goods could be bought and sold in retail and in dribs and drabs by people on the beach where the ships of the privateers were hauled ashore, and used to supply families with everyday and artisans with materials for work: vats, soles and thread for shoemakers, iron, headrope and hempen rope, cattle, liquorice, pasta and oil, raw silk to work and sturdy fabric to make clothes and bedlinen, hemp and cotton yarn.58 Amongst the individuals active in this trading we often see familiar groupings, given that licit and illicit trades were inextricably interwoven, becoming part of household economies: a set of brothers, like Domenico and Vincenzo Cincotta sons of the late Girolamo Cincotta, who bought nautical equipment, cables and raisins from the privateers Senese, Gallo and Gambardella;59 or like Gaetano and Giuseppe Cincotta who, with their 70-year old father Simone, creditor for the privateers, bought fishing nets and equipment, vats, sheep, oil, and a heifer from the privateers Gambardella, Mulinaro, Di Mauro;60 or like the Pajno brothers, Gaetano, Giuseppe and Vincenzo, (“boat owners”, lending money to, and supplying, privateers, deeply involved in the case of corruption),61 who, with various smuggling activities, purchased large amounts of raisins, oil, cattle, a shotgun, a boat and other goods.62 We also find married couples involved in illegal trafficking, such as Maria Tesoriero ( on her own behalf, or mediating for others) and her husband Giuseppe Panettieri,63 or entire families, such as the D’Albora family, made up of two married couples of different generations, and a mother-in-law and a sister, whose men were closely tied to the privateers, being fully complicit and providing storehouses, while the women were active in trading and working the silk that came from Calabria.64 Investigation on prize goods allows us to identify numerous women who, like the D’Alboras, bought, sold, assessed, worked and had others work the smuggled silk which arrived on Stromboli. While the D’Alboras or Maria Tesoriero Panettieri played a family or couples ‘team game’, others acted on their own,65 including two bizzoche66 (house-nuns), Sister Maria Galletti who bought an empty vat from the privateer Gaetano Gambardella, and Sister Maria Tesoriero, who bought three vats and some oil from the privateers, which she then exchanged on the island for some wine. Women did participate, therefore, in this type of illicit trade, as was the case in all other economic transactions on the island.

Salt smuggling from Stromboli with Calabria

The presence of women in the trading of smuggled objects and goods from the privateers is a feature that we do not find in the case of smuggling of salt and other goods followed in another investigation67 conducted by the government at the end of the war, between 1814 and 1817. Whilst being maybe the most important and most profitable illegal economic activity practiced on the island in those years and having many of the same figures coinciding in the fraudulent resale of prize goods, this activity would appear to have worked in a different way, with women being completely excluded. Organized smuggling on Stromboli and on its seas to transport quantities of salt from and other salt pans in Sicily to the Kingdom of Naples, bringing back other goods to the archipelago, without paying custom taxes, was very well planned and coordinated between 1814 and 1816 by a group of accomplices set up in key custom, police, and health institutions, led by the most important of them, chief of the customs on Lipari, Lieutenant Colonel Don Felice Tricoli. Gaetano Gambardella was also part of the group, a leading figure, as usual, in the most audacious trafficking. The inhabitants of the island who had an interest in this smuggling were those well-to-do owners of boats and warehouses,68 who would tranship, transfer, and stock goods, making excellent profits. Other inhabitants of the island, instead, were involved in subordinate functions as sailors and porters, but no women were involved. The effect of salt smuggling on the economy of Stromboli would therefore appear to have been quite controlled and mediated. The island was suitable for transiting, hiding and handling large quantities of salt and other goods; the former to the Kingdom of Naples through Calabria, and the latter to supply shopkeepers and small traders of the archipelago. The situation was slightly different from that of the nearby Strait of Messina where there seems to have been, alongside the vast trafficking organized by merchants using the free port,69 also out-and-out filtration smuggling widely practiced by some of the coastal population on both shores, with a high number of small boats worked by locals, rowed by men and women who, thanks to the very short distance between the two shores, ferried limited quantities of goods from not well guarded locations on the coasts or, more often, loaded them at sea from ships in transit.70 As with any other free port, Messina attracted and facilitated smuggling. Illegal importation and exportation were carried on by the merchants themselves as one aspect of ‘active trade’, a normal functioning of the market in contact with the neighbouring Calabria, which used the sickle-shaped port as its traditional outlet to international markets. In the Kingdom of Naples, salt was a monopoly product from which a significant portion of taxes was derived, guaranteeing the public debt (arrendamenti).71 The law had always foreseen heavy sanctions for smugglers, albeit with poor results. One particular concern was possible smuggling from the nearby Kingdom of Sicily, site of many salt pans, with the most important being those on the coasts of Trapani and . At the end of reforms of Sicilian custom laws,72 in 1803, a decree was issued indicating rigid regulations regarding the shipping of salt to the Kingdom of Naples or abroad. The regulations closely controlled routes and destinations so as to impede smuggling. With the war, the arrival of the French in Naples and the transfer of the court of the Bourbons to Sicily, the law was to become more flexible, starting from the evolution of the war and the control of ports and islands.73 Special measures were in force regarding the ships of the Royal Marine and the Royal-owned ships under the control of the cavalier Castrone, who we know was active in privateer business.74 Knowing his unscrupulousness well, it was feared that these ships would load salt in greater quantities than amounts needed for the crew, thereby suspecting smuggling on the part of the chief of Police and the itself. During the years of the war and the Blockade, however, smuggling, including salt smuggling, was supported by all: on the one hand, by the Bourbons who had sought refuge in Sicily and who no longer controlled the monopoly of salt in Naples, which had been taken away from the contractors and confiscated by the state, by Joseph Bonaparte in 1806; on the other hand, by Bonaparte himself and then by Murat, worried about supplying the Kingdom of Naples in any way possible. With the return of the Bourbons to Naples the restrictive legislation was modified:75 salt shipments for Naples were to be made on the basis of a contract with the General administration of indirect taxes of the Kingdom of Naples, and ship owners were obliged to have certificates for loading and unloading issued by the custom authorities or consuls. Not surprisingly, salt smuggling taking place on Stromboli was reported for the first time soon after the King’s return to Naples.76 In the autumn of 1815, the sovereign, the Minister of Internal Affairs, Duke of Gualtieri, and the Secretary of State for Business and Commerce, the Marquis Ferreri, were informed by the Police Deputy of Stromboli, Lieutenant Francesco Casselli, that ships loaded with salt, headed for Naples, arrived on the island without due shipping licenses, and that the largest of them, so as not to come too close to Calabria, where the scorridori (raiders), a kind of vessel of the Bourbon Navy, could seize it, sold the salt at sea, transferring it to smaller boats. Throughout the following year, the chief of customs on Lipari, the major suspect in supporting the smuggling and even of being in charge of it, tried to clear himself, accusing instead the Police Deputy of stopping the ships with the purpose of extorting a componenda (bribe) to pay for impunity. Marquis Fardella, chief of customs in Trapani, where most of the salt shipments came from, denied the fact that ships headed to the Aeolian islands for smuggling left from Trapani. Smuggling, however, could no longer be denied when, on 6th September, a vessel of the Royal Navy captured a fishing boat off the coast of Stromboli, having been loaded with smuggled salt in Lipari. The owner and his three sailors were arrested, and the Ministers informed by the Police Deputy and the chief of customs in Messina, Prince Sant’Elia, decided to ‘carry out a formal investigation’ regarding the smuggling.77 At the same time, the Police Deputy of Stromboli raised the stake, reporting that in the warehouses on Stromboli, some belonging to Fr. Tesoriero, there were large quantities of salt which were shipped by Fr. Famularo on a boat belonging to the former privateer, Gambardella. The latter was arrested in Calabria and brought to Naples, to the prison, while the sailors imprisoned on Lipari managed, instead, to escape. Deputy Casselli reconstructed the dynamics of the smuggling in many reports in the month of November, highlighting how the organizer of trafficking was the chief of customs on Lipari himself, Tricoli, with his main collaborator, Cristoforo Ventrici, while the ‘meddlesome priest’ Famularo obtained false witnesses in view of the formal investigation. The 27 cases of salt smuggling reported in the Prospetto drawn up by the investigators show how the accomplices, having brought the salt to Calabria, sold it to Calabrian smugglers who presumably convoyed it toward Naples. Smaller quantities of salt were also sold on Lipari. Revenue from the sale of salt was used to purchase merchandise to bring back to the Aeolian islands on the return journey, once again, smuggled thanks to the chief of customs who was the main businessman behind this trade, evading all checks. The merchants of Lipari were thus supplied with cattle and sheep and goats, wheat, oil, pasta, rice, lard and ham. Tricoli and Gambardella also transported oil from the Aeolian islands to Ponza, in the Gulf of , an island that like Stromboli was at the centre of privateer activity during the war. On our island of Stromboli, the main figures were the same as those who played a leading role in the resale of the prize goods: Fathers Tesoriero and Famularo, the Pajno brothers, the Cincotta brothers and some others. They managed the trafficking and warehouses and owned and piloted the boats that passed over to Calabria. They got rich on smuggling, avoiding prison thanks to very costly guarantees, and their goods were never subject to seizure. It was not so with those who masterminded the smuggling. We know nothing about the privateer Gambardella after news of his imprisonment in Naples. Would an adventurer of his calibre, ‘a true corsair in all things’,78 have managed to get away with it? We know instead of Lieutenant Colonel Tricoli, chief of customs on Lipari, imprisoned, and with his goods confiscated. He was brought to trial on Lipari and jailed in Palermo, as was his accomplice Ventrici. Following the political uprising of 1820, the two men left prison along with other prisoners, arousing ‘great palpitations’ in the judge that had condemned them, who was in the city and who feared revenge.79 Confined by the Police in Patti, in 1822, Tricoli petitioned to be transferred to , the coastal centre closest to the Aeolian islands,80 but three years later the special military Board of Palermo sentenced him to serve 20 years in the Castle.81 In 1836, he made a will, leaving a farm, some warehouses and a rent to the Women’s Hospital in Lipari, dying soon after.82

Conclusions

During the international commercial crisis of legal trade linked to the Continental Blockade the population of Stromboli, who gradually settled the semi-deserted island during the previous century, was ready to use the favourable position which geo- political circumstances had bestowed on them to their advantage, a position which was the maritime border between two alliances, the French and the English. It was here that the importance of salt smuggling and other goods had increased and where the King of Sicily’s corsairs fraudulently resold prizes. People from Stromboli integrated themselves into the illicit trades offering services pertaining to intermediation, provisioning, credit, labour and warehousing, and added these sources of income to their household economies that intertwined agriculture and fishing activities. The phenomenon attracted the attention of authorities in the Kingdom of Sicily who duly investigated it, leaving us some new documents on networks and material in a time quite lacking in any demographic and/or economic information on the smaller islands of the Aeolian Archipelago. From these sources it emerges that women were involved in the fraudulent resale of prizes while they do not appear amongst the leaders of smuggling of more valued and larger quantities of goods. When the Napoleonic wars ended, also the restrictions on maritime trade ceased, the trade crisis finished, and international trade restarted following the rules of trading treaties. Moreover, the corsairs’ war was interrupted with the French conquest of in 1830, and in 1856, with the Treaty of Paris after the Crimean war, it was finally prohibited.83 The fraudulent sale of prize goods, which women were involved in, therefore finished, while the salt smuggling between Sicily and Calabria was to last until Sicily, in 1860 part of the united Italy, was granted a concessional rate on salt (seeing that it was produced in Sicily) compared to the rest of Italy.84 Illicit trades had been an opportunity to integrate into the circuit of maritime exchanges, which the wars and the Blockade had put into crisis from a legal point of view, but which developed in an unlawful way. The international crisis therefore had opened new opportunities on Stromboli and for its household economies, which combined agricultural activities with maritime activities and with trade and intermediation. The return to normal trading conditions did not interrupt the involvement of Stromboli in maritime exchanges in the southern Tyrrhenian, which, as historiography points out, lasted until the marginalization of the entire Aeolian fishing and commercial fleet from the 1880s.85 Yet, there are still some interesting points worth discussing regarding the difference in involvement between men and women in illicit trading. While women were fully involved in the sale of objects and peddled prize goods, there is no evidence that they were involved in bigger sized deals linked to the smuggling of salt, which needed the complicity of customs and police officers. Thus, the level of participation of families and women in illegal traffic was quite different from each other, starting from the nature of the trafficking itself. Salt smuggling, shipped in large quantities from the salt pans of Marsala and Trapani and other minor Sicilian salt pans (Augusta, Salina) needed complicity and logistic organization which required the selection of the main local players: boat owners, merchants of cabotage, owners of warehouses who would work with or for corrupt custom authorities, with firm contacts and accomplices in destinations points. On the contrary, the resale of prizes, made up of the fortuitous fruit of the privateers’ assault on ships loaded with the most varied of goods, allowed not only the better-off and dynamic members of the community to participate in the trading of the biggest shipments, along with the corsairs, but also less well-off or organized men and women to take advantage of the unloading and small time resale of the more perishable goods, utensils, equipment, and work tools for themselves, or along with their family members. The size and characteristics of the exchanges would therefore seem to depict the participation of the islanders in different types of illegal exchanges, diversifying their participation depending on gender and on the type of activity. The theme of female participation in smaller scaled smuggling, ‘filtration’ smuggling through ports and across borders86 is common to many contexts, not only maritime, as seen in studies by Anne Montenach on the calico smuggling in many border areas of Eighteenth century France, where poor women appear to be particularly implicated at the lower levels of the smuggling trade87. Salt smuggling between Sicily and Calabria also seems to have women involved only in those areas, such as the Strait of Messina, where it was possible to smuggle small quantities hidden amongst clothes or aboard small boats for short stretches which could be crossed by row boats, without needing the complicity of custom officials.88 On Stromboli, salt and other commodity smuggling, which required longer crossings, bigger loads, and the complicity of officials remained the prerogative of the men. Examining the crimes of women in Police documents from the Kingdom of Sicily from the Bourbon period (1819-1855), Giovanna Fiume, following Arlette Farge,89 has spoken of “banal crimes”.90 Indeed, the transgressions were carried out involving objects (food, utensils, goods), actions (work, daily walks ) and spaces of daily life, even if they were not just private or domestic spaces: as Cristina Vasta has noted,91 in Early Modern Italy streets, courtyards, churches, fountains and neighbourhoods were travelled by women busy in work and relationships. In coastal villages and on the islands also the beaches and landing places are included amongst these spaces. Applying these considerations to the type of participation on the part of women in the illicit economy on Stromboli allows us to question the conclusions of the Mediterraneanist anthropologists which underlined the exclusion of women from extra-domestic work and relationships in southern Italy because of the “honour and shame complex”92 that we referred to above. The separation of public and private spheres which we find in ideology and that was active in the legal sphere (marital authorization, exclusion from public office) did not however exclude the women of this island of southern Italy from economic and relational agency. Nevertheless, it placed them in an asymmetrical position in contexts where the institutional apparatus was decisive. This was the case, in Stromboli, of salt smuggling organized by officials and merchants, as against trading in goods and utensils carried out by corsairs after their raids. The case in hand suggests that on the Aeolian island the women, together with their families or for themselves, were certainly participants in the local economy, and not relegated to the house, carrying out domestic chores. However, their role was still asymmetric, suffering from their exclusion from the public sphere of institutions, which represented an important point of control and complicity in the organization of more profitable illegal transactions.

 The study on smuggling was carried out within the PRIN 2015 project Alla ricerca del negoziante patriota. Mercantilismi, moralità economiche e mercanti nell’Europa mediterranea (secc. XVII-XIX) 1 The Austro-Hungarian Empire, Russia, Prussia, , the Kingdoms of Sicily and of , the Papal State and some German Duchies fought beside England; France was allied with the states which were gradually conquered, like , the Kingdoms of Netherlands, Italy, Naples, Bavaria, Saxony, Württemberg, Westphalia, Denmark-Norway 2 This resulted in a decrease of the volume of trades in the ports involved: see Silvia Marzagalli, Formes et enjeux de la contrebande et de la fraude à l’époque napoléonienne, in Marguerite Figéac- Monthus, Christophe Lastécouères eds, Territoires de l'illicite: ports et îles. De la fraude au contrôle (XVIe-XXe siècles), (Paris 2012), 189-201, 190 3 Marzagalli, Ibid., 190: ‘La France Napoléonienne impose à ses vassaux éuropéens des contraintes commerciales et des obligations supplémentaires qui visent à mettre l’économie éuropéenne au service de l’Empire et qui créent autant de situations incitant à la fraude’. See also III section Adapting to Economic Warfare: New Networks and Illicit Trades of Katherine B. Aaslestad, Johan Joor eds., Revisiting Napoleon’s Continental System. Local, Regional and European Experiences: Margrit Schulte Beerbühl, ‘Trading Networks across the Blockades’, 135 -152; Jann M. Witt, ‘Smuggling and Blockade-Running During the Anglo-Danish War 1807-1814’, 153-170; Bård Frydenlund, ‘Defying the Continental System in the Periphery: Political Strategies and Protests by Norwegian Magnates’, 171-186; Rowe ‘Economic Warfare, , and the Collapse of Napoleon's Empire’, 187–207 4 Appreciation of the problems and a critique on Mediterranean anthropology in Dionigi Albera, ‘Anthropology of the Mediterranean: Between Crisis and Renewal’, History and Anthropology, 17, 2 (2006), 109-133 5 Jane Schneider, ‘Of vigilance and virgins: Honor, shame and access to resources in Mediterranean societies’, Ethnology, 10, 1 (1971), 1-24, and ‘Trousseau as treasure: some contradictions of late Nineteenth century change in Sicily’, in Eric B. Ross ed., Beyond the of culture: essays in cultural materialism, New 1980, 323-356; Giovanna Fiume, ‘Making Women Visible in the History of the Mezzogiorno’, in Enrico Dal Lago and Rick Halpern eds. The American South and the Italian Mezzogiorno: Essays in Comparative History, Houndmills-New York, 2002, 173-196; Ida Fazio, ‘The family, honour and gender in Sicily: models and new research’, in Modern Italy, 9, 2 (2004) 263 -280 6 Jean Pierre Poussou, ‘Du role economique et social positif de la fraude, essentialement aux XVII et XVIII siècles’, in Marguerite Figéac Monthus, Cristophe Lastécouères eds., Territoires de l’illicite: ports et iles. De la fraude au controle, Paris 2012, 39-53 7 Marguerite Figéac Monthus, Cristophe Lastécouères, Introduction. Ports et iles, espaces indisciplinés de l’echange, in Figéac Monthus, Lastécouères, Territoires de l’illicite 8 Anne Montenach, ‘Une économie de l’ombre? La fraude dans le commerce alimentaire à Lyon au XVIIe siècle’, in Gérard Béaur, Hubert Bonin, Claire Lemercier eds., Fraude, contrefaçon, contrebande de l'Antiquité à nos jours, Geneva 2007, 515-538 9 Jean-Yves Grenier, L'économie d'Ancien Régime. Un monde de l'échange et de l'incertitude, Paris 1996 10 Silvia Marzagalli, Les Boulevards de la fraude. Le négoce maritime et le Blocus continental 1806- 1813. Bordeaux, Hambourg, Livourne, Villeneuve D'Ascq 1999 11 Biagio Salvemini, ‘Virtù, mercantilismi e mercanti dell’Europa settecentesca. Qualche considerazione introduttiva’, in Biagio Salvemini ed., Alla ricerca del «negoziante patriota». Moralità mercantili e commercio attivo nel Settecento, monographic issue of Storia Economica, 2 (2016), 369– 384, 380. Some recent publications on Italy have combined interest in economic practices and relationship networks with the institutional dynamics: Biagio Salvemini, Roberto Zaugg eds., Frodi marittime tra norme e istituzioni (sec. XVII-XIX), monographic issue of Quaderni storici, 143 (2013); Livio Antonielli, Stefano Levati eds., Contrabbando e legalità: polizia a difesa di privative, diritti sovrani e pubblico erario, 2016; Paolo Calcagno ed., Per vie illegali. Fonti per lo studio dei fenomeni illeciti nel Mediterraneo dell’età moderna (secoli XVI-XVIII), Soveria Mannelli 2016. For an updated international bibliography, see Introduzione by Paolo Calcagno in the latest volume, 5 - 14 12 See François Crouzet, L'économie britannique et le Blocus Continental, 1806-1813, Paris, 1958, 2 vols., and Id., ‘Wars, Blockade, and Economic Change in Europe, 1792-1815’ The Journal of Economic History, 24, 4 (1964), 567-588; Katherine Aaslestad, Johan Joor, eds., Revisiting Napoleon’s Continental System. Local, Regional and European Experiences, London 2015 13 From an institutional point of view there were two distinct Kingdoms, with the same sovereign wearing both crowns. Until 1806 the Kingdom of Sicily was the seat of a . The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was born with the Restoration, December 1816. 14 Marc Heurgon, ‘Le contreband en Calabre durant la période napoléonienne’, in Atti del secondo Congresso storico calabrese, Naples 1961, 123-137, 125 15 Reported by Heurgon, ‘Le contreband’ , 126; see also Alida Clemente, ‘Quando il reato non è “peccato”. Il contrabbando nel Regno di Napoli tra conflitti diplomatici, pluralismo istituzionale e quotidianità degli scambi (XVIII secolo)’, Quaderni storici 143 (2013), 359-394. On the Strait of Messina and the southern Tyrrhenian, some examples during the brief period of the Savoy rule of Sicily, in the 1710s: Ida Fazio, ‘Rappresentazioni di un'economia urbana. Le proposte all'amministrazione sabauda e il rilancio economico di Messina dopo la crisi di fine Seicento’, in Bollettino storico bibliografico subalpino, 94, 1 (1996), 213-272, 229; in the same years, on the small- time smuggling of salt in the Strait, Vincenzo Cataldo, ‘Commercio e contrabbando di sale in provincia di Calabria Ultra agli inizi del Settecento’, Incontri Mediterranei, 22 (2012), 65-73, 66. Other cases from the eighteenth century in Saverio Di Bella and Giovanni Iufrida, Di terra e di mare. Itinerari, uomini, economie, paesaggi nella costa napitina moderna, Soveria Mannelli 2004, 110-111. 16 Defined by Marzagalli, Les boulevards de la fraude, “fraude douce”: pp. 195 -203 17 Heurgon, Le contrebande en Calabre, 129-132, identified the cases of Generals Cavaignac and Manhes, objects of rumours, of , Intendant in Calabria Ultra, and of Saliceti, Minister of War, Navy and Police who, in alliance with the USA Consul in Messina, Broadbent, used police vessels for smuggling. 18 Marzagalli, Les boulevards de la fraude, 149-152 19 Broadbent himself (Heurgon, Le contrebande en Calabre, 131) imported salt from Naples to Sicily loading, in exchange, products from the town, with an express authorization. On false licenses, Ibid. See also Michela D’Angelo, Mercanti inglesi in , 1988, 129-136 20 Biagio Salvemini, Annastella Carrino, ‘Porti di campagna, porti di città. Traffici e insediamenti sulle coste del Regno di Napoli nella prospettiva di Marsiglia (1710-1846)’, Quaderni storici, 121 (2006) 209-254, 234 21 Ibid. 235 22 Ibid. 232-233 23 Michela D’Angelo, ‘The Mid-Mediterranean as an Alternative Market: British Merchants, Ships and Merchandises during the Napoleonic Wars’, in Proceedings of the 4th International Conference of Maritime History, , 21-27 June 2004, CD-ROM 24 Crouzet, Wars, Blockade, and Economic Change, 567 25 D’Angelo, Mercanti inglesi in Sicilia; Rosario , ‘British merchants and goods in Palermo (1797-1816)’, in Michela D’Angelo, Gerlina Harlaftis, Carmel Vassallo eds., Making waves in the Mediterranean, Messina 2010, 483-491; Raleigh Trevelyan, La storia dei Whitaker, Palermo 1988;

Michela D'Angelo, Comunità straniere a Messina tra XVIII e XIX secolo: alle origini del British Cemetery, Messina 1995; Maria Cristina Ventimiglia, ‘Investimenti a cambio marittimo di operatori stranieri a Messina (1819-1862)’, Archivio Storico Messinese, 63 (1993), 125-150 26 Quantitative data on trade between Sicily and Great Britain can be distinguished from trade with Italy as a whole just between 1807 and 1815. Data on exports from Sicily of some typical Aeolian products, such as pumice, raisin and capers between 1809 and 1815, are scanty and piecemeal. Also the evidence of Malvasia wine supplies sent from the archipelago to Messina for the English troops stationed there, for urban consumers and for export are erratic. D’Angelo, Mercanti inglesi in Sicilia, 198 – 216, reports the value in GBP of British exports and imports in Sicily between 1809 and 1815. See also Giuseppe La Greca, Passolina, uva passa e malvasia. L’economia vitivinicola delle isole Eolie, Lipari 2016, 85; Marcello Saija, Alberto Cervellera, Mercanti di mare. Salina 1800- 1953, Messina 1997 on arrivals of ships from the Aeolian Islands to Messina in 1810-11, and on exports of Malvasia in 1815 (22-24) 27 Saija, Cervellera, Mercanti di mare. 28 Angelo Adornato, Due millenni di storia eoliana. Sintesi cronologica comparata, Messina 2000; Giuseppe Arena, Bibliografia generale delle isole Eolie. Seconda edizione riveduta e continuata sino alla fine del XX secolo, Messina 2003. 29 Ida Fazio, ‘Parentela e nell’isola di Stromboli’, in Renata Ago, Benedetta Borello, eds., Famiglie. Circolazione di beni, circuiti di affetti in età moderna, Roma 2008, 123-163, 125-127; Saija, Cervellera, Mercanti di mare, 19-27 30 Notarial records for the entire archipelago, filed in the Archivio di Stato di Messina (thereafter ASM), begin in 1809 due to the destruction of the Archive repository during WWII. Civil records start from 1812. No census was carried out before the (1860). 31 A list of 178 concessions of episcopal lands granted on Stromboli, conserved in the Archivio della Curia Vescovile di Lipari, goes from 1699 to 1778 and has been transcribed by Vincenzo Moreno for his study on human settlement on the island, not yet published. My thanks to the author for having let me see them in advance and for discussing the results of his research with me. See also Ettore Barnao, Appunti per servire alla storia di Stromboli, Lipari 2017, 131 32 See the case of the Tuscan island, Giglio, with the perpetual lease of land from the Grand Duke: Alessio Fornasin, ‘L’economia di una piccola isola durante l’età moderna: prime indagini sul Giglio’, Ricerche Storiche, 37, 1 (2007), 199–213, 202; or the case of the Sicilian island of Ustica, Carmelo Trasselli, Il popolamento dell’isola di Ustica, Sciascia, 1966 33 A complete list of reports in Barnao, Appunti per servire alla storia di Stromboli, 127-184. 34 The first post-Unification census (1862-64) counted 1828 people on the island. Ludwig Salvator von Österreich-Toskana, Die Liparischen Inseln, 8 voll., Prag 1893-1896; Italian translation Pino Paino ed., Le isole Lipari: riproduzione litografica dall'originale con traduzione in italiano, Lipari 1979-1987 VII, Apparato; VIII, 12 – 13 35 Ibid., 223-319 36 Fazio, Parentela e mercato, 127-128 37 Alexis de Toqueville, Correspondance et oeuvres posthumes de Alexis de Tocqueville, Paris 1866, 149 - 153 38 von Österreich-Toskana, Le isole Lipari, VII, 6; VIII, 120 39 Michele Lojacono Pojero, Le isole Eolie e la loro vegetazione, Palermo 1878 40 ASM, notary Angelo Florio, voll. 2458-2461 (1809-1814) and voll. 2472-2492 (1829-1868); notary Angelo Florio Pajno, voll. 3318-3319 (1860-1861). 41 Ida Fazio, ‘Brothers, sisters and the rearrangements of property on the Sicilian island of Stromboli in the nineteenth century’, European Review of History: Revue européenne d'histoire, 17, 5 (2010), 805-815

42 M. Rosi et al., ‘Geoarchaeological Evidence of Middle-Age Tsunamis at Stromboli and Consequences for the Tsunami Hazard in the Southern Tyrrhenian Sea’, in Scientific Reports vol. 9, Article number: 677 (2019), https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-37050-3 43 Giuseppe Iacolino and Bartolo Famularo, Pietro Campis, Disegno historico, o siano l'abbozzate historie della nobile e fidelissima Città di Lipari (1694), Lipari, 1980; Giuseppe Restifo, ‘Un drammatico sradicamento e un convulso ripopolamento. Lipari dopo il 1544’ in Sergio Todesco ed., Atlante dei beni etno-antropologici eoliani, Messina 1995, 45-59 44 Some letters of Christian captives in Barbary, kept by the Arciconfraternita per la redenzione dei captivi of Palermo, show that at the end of the sixteenth century some corsairs stopped over Stromboli to trade slaves: Giovanna Fiume, Schiavitù Mediterranee. Corsari, rinnegati e santi di età moderna, Milan 2009, 33-35; Giovanna Fiume, ‘Lettres de Barbarie: esclavage et rachat de captifs siciliens (XVIe- XVIIIe siècle)’, Cahiers de la Méditerranée, 87 (2013); Barnao, Appunti per servire alla storia di Stromboli, 61-82 and 185-222. See also Giuseppe Bonaffini, La Sicilia e i Barbareschi. Incursioni corsare e riscatto degli schiavi (1570 - 1606), Palermo 1983 45 Rita Foti, Giudici e corsari nel Mediterraneo. Il Tribunale delle prede di Sicilia 1808-1813, Palermo 2016, 165 46 Ibid. On control of the Aeolian Islands and Stromboli on the part of the Secretary for War & Navy, the Police, the Court of the Privateers’ Prize in the Kingdom of Sicily, 164–167. 47 Ida Fazio, Rita Foti, ‘Scansar le frodi. Prede corsare nella Sicilia del decennio inglese’, Quaderni storici, 143, (2013) 497–539, 506-511 48 Ibid., 536-538 49 See Simona Laudani, Brigitte Marin, Introduzione a Polizia-Polizie, special issue of Polo Sud, 2 (2012), 11-22, and bibliography; Filippo Fiorito, ‘«Oggetti e ministri dei governi dispotici». Capitani di giustizia, Inquisitori di Alta polizia e Direzione generale di polizia di Palermo’ Polo Sud, 2 (2012), 41-62; Fazio, Foti, ‘Scansar le frodi’, 538-539 50 Pietro Simone Canale, La riforma doganale siciliana del 1802: conflitti e resistenze nella "grande trasformazione". VII Congresso dell'Associazione Italiana di Storia Urbana "Food and the City", 2015. http://www.storiaurbana.org/index.php/it/component/content/article/9-congressi/682-il-cibo-e- la-citta-paper-food-and-the-city 51 Information comes from testimonies recorded in an inquiry carried out by the Prize Court of the Kingdom of Sicily in 1810-11: Archivio di Stato di Palermo (herein ASPa), Consultore del Governo, Prize Court, v. 270, Camerale processo ammanito per le vendite delle robbe fatte dai corsari nell’Isole di Lipari, 16-16v, 23, 26, 37v-38, 41, 61, 67v., and from notarial records: ASM, Fondo Notarile, notary Angelo Florio, vol. 2458, 11.5.1810, Procura di capitan Filippo Carpanzano comandante del legno corsaro siciliano La Felice a don Aniello Di Gregorio di Stromboli; 28.5.1810, Capitan Giovanni Radonic comandante del legno corsaro siciliano La Vittoria riceve da Giuseppe Pajno di Stromboli pane vino e denaro; 31.5.1810, Altro debito di Capitan Radonic 52 The file of the Camerale Processo records 72 testimonies given from December 31st 1810 to April 6th 1811. It allows to reconstruct the figures and roles of 148 people; among them 18 corsairs, the Police and Health deputies, some of the City Councilors of Lipari, the military governor of the garrison, and some priests and nuns. The majority are boat owners and sailors. 127 are men, 21 women. 53 ASPa, Real Segreteria Incartamenti (herein RSI), vol. 1821, August-September 1807 and 10 December 1807, 82 and 97-98; v. 4869, 30 November 1807 and 21 December (Foti, Giudici e corsari, 162) 54 Fazio, Foti, ‘Scansar le frodi’ 506–509. The conflict was triggered by the ownership of a bale of raw silk used as a bribe. 55 Foti, Giudici e corsari, 199-225

56 Ibid., 162 – 165. 57 Camerale processo, 12, 25, 43 v., 53, 54. 58 Ibid., passim. 59 Ibid. 24, 30 v., 33 v., 43 60 Ibid. 6 v., 7, 7 v., 26 61 Amongst the many acts which regard the Pajno brothers, in ASM, Fondo Notarile, notary Angelo Florio, see vol. 2458, 28.5.1810, supplies for privateer captain Giovanni Radonic, from Dalmatia, of money, bread, wine, pasta “for the crew and for sailing”. 62 Camerale processo, 6, 7, 7 v., 11, 20- 22, 23, 24, 25, 26 v., 27 v., 32, 32 v., 33, 35, 36 v., 42 v., 48, 49 v., 50, 53 v. 63 Ibid., 24, 33, 45 v., 68 64 This is Mastro Bartolo D’Albora with his wife Eleonora Lo Curcio, daughter Maria, son Pietro with his wife Giuseppa and mother-in-law Maria Moleti. Ibid., 15, 16 v., 19, 25, 25 v., 36 v., 37, 38, 40 v., 54 v., 59 v, 60, 65 v., 66, 67, 70, 70 v. 65 The following names were mentioned in the inquiry: Giuseppa D’Albora Moleti, 33 yr., ironer; Maria D’Albora, 20 yr., silk winder; Eleonora Lo Curcio D’Albora, 44 yr., silk winder; Maria Moleti, widow; Catarina Russo; Maria Tesoriero, 33 yr.; Rosalia Cincotta, fisherman; Maria Bartolo, daughter of a corporal; Giuseppa Lambrosa, 26 yr.; Maria Palmisano, 23 yr.; Maria Russo, daughter of a sergeant, 34 yr., “maestra” silk-winder; Francesca Giannone, 60 yr, wife of a soldier of the garrison on Lipari, “maestra” silk-winder; Maria Felice; Maria Di Francesco, 26 yr.; Concetta La Jana; Maria Tesoriero, 50 yr., nun; Maria Galletti, nun; Maria Giannone; Maria Bongiorno; Giovanna Costa; Maria Cincotta. 66 Women who took their vows without joining any order, born into well-to-do families, but destined neither to marriage, nor to a convent. After being consecrated, they continued to live in their own houses. 67 ASPa, RSI, vol. 5440, Prospetto del processo de’ controbandi, immissioni ed estrazioni del sale in Stromboli, reporting a summary of 27 different episodes of smuggling between 1814 and 1817, and listing the individuals questioned: Nota delle persone inquisite per controbandi, e dei modi con cui si è cautelato il Regio Erario. 68 ASM, Fondo Notarile, notary Angelo Florio, vol. 2458, 20.7.1810. Don Giovanni Bongiorno sells to Giuseppe Pajno, his brother Gaetano Pajno, Vincenzo Di Navi, Antonino Panittieri, Maestro Vincenzo Cusolito, Gaetano Di Mattina some palms (ancient Sicilian unit of measure) of land along the seashore of Ficogrande, in order to build some warehouses. 69 The chief of customs of Messina, Prince of Sant’Elia, drew up a project to remove smuggling associated with the free port in 1817. ASPa, RSI, vol. 5440, passim, but in particular see correspondence with Minister Ferreri: Il Segreto P.pe di Sant’Elia a S.E. il Segretario Ministro di Stato presso il Luogotenente Generale il Signor marchese Don Gioacchino Ferreri, 11.9.1817 e 30.11.1817 70ASPa, RSI, vol. 5440, regarding smuggling carried on by the people from Messina and Calabria from Messina and the coastal villages of Divieto and Bauso in October 1816. 71 Luigi De Rosa, Studi sugli arrendamenti del Regno di Napoli. Aspetti della distribuzione della ricchezza mobiliare nel mezzogiorno continentale (1649-1806), Naples 1958, 3-99. See also Stefano D’Atri, Il sale di Puglia tra marginalità e mercato. Monopolio e commercio in età moderna, Salermo 2001. On salt arrendamenti in Calabria Ultra, Vincenzo Cataldo, Commercio e contrabbando di sale, 65-67. 72 On custom reform between 1791 and 1813, see Pietro Simone Canale, La Suprema Giunta delle Dogane (1786-1813), unpublished Master’s thesis, University of Palermo, (2009-2010), 61-130.

73 ASPa, RSI, vol. 5440, Sovereign resolution of 28.9.1803; dispatch 18.8.1807; rewritten 7.11.1807. With the occupation of Reggio, and in 1809, ‘with communication with Calabria being reopened’ the resolution of 1803 was called up again. Ibid., dispatch of 15.6.1809 74 The figure and multiple activities of Colonel Giuseppe Castrone, from Naples, chief of the High Police in Palermo and of the privateer fleet ‘on behalf of the King’ are laid out in Foti, Giudici e corsari, passim. 75 ASPa, RSI, vol. 5440, Dispatch of 7.7.1815 of the Secretary of the Inland Revenue. 76 The source of this reconstruction is in ASPa, RSI, vol. 5440: a group of 94 loose sheets, and the Prospetto del processo de’ controbandi, immissioni ed estrazioni del sale in Stromboli 77 The chief of customs of Messina, Prince of Sant’Elia, in October 1816 communicated to the King through the Royal Secretary of State and Finance to have chosen Dr. Don Pasquale Cicala, judge of the Regia Udienza (a Royal Court) of Messina as ‘councillor’, and representative of the Inland Revenue to complete the procedure. 78 Foti, Giudici e corsari, 13 79 Vincenzo Di Giovanni, Scritti letterari e filosofici postumi di Antonino Franco, Palermo 1875, XXXIII 80 ASPa, Real Segreteria di Stato presso il Luogotenente Generale in Sicilia, Ripartimento Polizia, 11, 396, 5 September 1822 81 ASPa, Real Segreteria di Stato presso il Luogotenente Generale in Sicilia, Ripartimento Polizia, 70, 1635, 22 December 1825 82 Giusepper Tricoli’s will, 23 November 1836, notary Giacomo , in Collezione delle Leggi e de' Decreti Reali del Regno delle Due Sicilie, Naples 1838, 98 83 Antonino Blando, Rita Foti, ‘Guerra di corsa e trattative diplomatiche per il riscatto del principe di Paternò’, Quaderni Storici, 126, 2007, 841–875 84 Concessional rate ended by the mid-twentieth century. Criminal trials for smuggling during the Bourbon period were held by the Giudicature Circondariali of Calabria (1817-1862), whose records are filed in the State Archives of , Lamezia and 85 See Saija, Cervellera, Mercanti di mare, passim 86 Marzagalli, Les Boulevards de la fraude, 195-203 87 Anne Montenach, ‘Uncontrolled Crossings. Gender and Illicit Economic Territories in Eighteenth- Century French Towns’, in Elaine Chalus, Marjo Kaartinen eds., Gendering Spaces in European Towns, 1500-1914, New York 2019, 135–151. On the two kinds of smuggling (as a part of the ‘makeshift economy of the poor’, and as a more organized activity run by soldiers, clerics, customs officers, see also Julius R. Ruff, Violence in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1800, Cambridge 2001, 240- 246. 88 A government official, reporting from Calabria at the beginning of Eighteenth century, wrote on the ways of the small-time smuggling of salt on the coast of the Straits on small boats, the ‘barchette’, ‘with even the women sailing’: Vincenzo Cataldo, Commercio e contrabbando di sale, 66. Women from Bagnara, on the Calabrian coasts of the Strait, became famous for salt smuggling until mid-Twentieth century, but academic studies on the topic are still lacking. 89 Arlette Farge, André Zysberg, ‘Les theatres de la violence à Paris au XVIIIeme siècle’ Annales. Economies, Sociétés, Civilizations”, 34, 5 (1979). 984-1015: ‘la violence qui sourd de tous les actes et de tous les gestes de l’existence quotidienne, violence banale’ 90 Giovanna Fiume, ‘Violenza femminile nella Sicilia dell'Ottocento: la criminalità banale’ Incontri meridionali, 3 (1984), 7- 27 91 Cristina Vasta, ‘Per una topografia della violenza femminile (Roma, secoli XVI-XVII)’ Genesis. Rivista della società italiana delle Storiche, XIV, 2 (2015), 59 - 82 92 John G. Peristiany ed., Honour and Shame: The Values of Mediterranean Society, London 1965. In the 1980s, a new generation of Mediterraneanist anthropologists, led by Michael Herzfeld, deconstructed the concepts of honor and shame: Michael Herzfeld, ‘Honour and Shame: Problems in the Analysis of Moral Systems’, in Man (N.S.), 15 (1980), 339-351.