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 regime 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 I 860s; the emergence of an Italian middle class; women workers; and the politics of Francesco De Sanctis. Contributors: Marzio Barbagli, Derek Beales, Simonetta Ortaggi Camma­ rosano, John A. Davis, Giovanna Fiume, Paul Ginsborg, Adrian Lyttelton, Franco Della Peruta, Denis Mack Smith, Stuart Woolf SOCIETY AND POLITICS IN THE AGE OF THE RISORGIMENTO Society and Politics in the Age of the Risorgimento Essays In honour of Denis Mack Smith Edited by JOHN A. DA VIS and PAUL GINSBORG The fight of the UniYl:'rsily of Cambridge to print and self all manner of books w(./~ graflh,d by Henry VUI in 1534 The Universily has printed and published continuous!y sine(' 1584. 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 CB2 lRP 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY roOII, USA 10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia © Cambridge University Press 1991 First published 1991 Printed in Great Britain by the University Press, Cambridge British Library cataloguing in publication data Society and Politics in the Age of the Risorgimento: essays in honour of Denis Mack Smith. 1. Italy, Social conditions. 1814-1861 I. Davis, John A. (John Anthony) 1947-- 11. Ginsborg, Paul 1945- HI. Mack Smith, Denis, 1920- 944· 083 Library oJ 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. ca. 'Bibliography of Denis Mack Smith's writings'. Includes index. Contents: 1799: the SantaJede and the crisis of the ancien regime 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- . Il. Davis, John Anthony. Ill. Ginsborg, Pau!' HN475·S56 1991 306'.0945 - dC20 90-1927 CIP ISBN 0521 36592 9 hardback UP Contents List offigures and maps page IX List of contributors X Preface XllI 1799: the Santafede and the crisis of the ancien regime in southern Italy 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 GIOVANNA FlUME 5 Marriage and the family in Italy in the early nineteenth century 92 MARZIO BARBAGLI 6 After the Revolution: bandits on the plains of the Po 1848-54 I28 PA UL GINSBORG 7 Labouring women in northern and central Italy in the nineteenth century 152 SIMONETTA ORTAGGI CAMMAROSANO 8 Garibaldi in England: the politics of Italian enthusiasm 184 DEREK BEALES vu V111 CONTENTS 9 The middle classes in Liberal Italy 217 ADRIAN L YTTELTON IQ Francesco De Sanctis: the politics of a literary critic 251 DENIS MACK SMITH Bibliography of Denis Mack Smith's writings on nineteenth- century Italy 27 I Index 274 Maps Italy in r 8 r 5 page XVll 2 Italy in r870 XIX 3 Italy - place-names XX-XXI 4 Geographical area of bandit activity on the plains of the Po r30 Figures r Age at marriage for men and percentage of owner-farmers in Piedmont and Liguria in r88r Ilr 2 Age at marriage for women and percentage of owner- farmers in Piedmont and Liguria in r88r Il2 3 Permanent nubility and percentage of owner-farmers in Emilia Romagna, Tuscany, Umbria, and the Marche in r88r Il6 4 Permanent nubility and percentage of owner-farmers, lease­ holders, and share-croppers in Emilia Romagna, Tuscany, Umbria, and the Marche in r88r Il6 IX Contributors MARZI0 BARBAGLI is 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 10 stesso tetto: mutamenti della Jamiglia 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 If: Volume I, In the Shadow oJ Maria Theresa, 1741-1789 (London 1987). J 0 H N A. D A V 1 S is 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). F RAN COD ELL APE RUT A 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). GI0VANNl FlUME 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 oJ Contemporary Italy. Society and Politics, 1943-1988 (London 1990). ADRIAN L YTTEL TON holds the chair in contemporary history at the University of Pisa and writes widely on Italian social and political x CONTRIBUTORS Xl history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: he is author of The Seizure oJ Power: Fascism in Italy 1911)-29 (London 1974). DENIS MACK SMITH is emeritus fellow of All Souls College, extraordinary fellow of W olfson 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 is 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 l'industria 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 oJ Italy, 1700-1870 (London 1979) and The Poor in Western Europe (London 1986). ~~-~--------------------------------------------..- • 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 con­ temporary 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 non­ specialist - 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 ofItaly, 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. Xll1 XIV 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.