Many submissions pointed out was the subdued nature of the celebrations of the 150th anniversary of the unification of Italy. Leaving aside the antics Lega (such as the burning in effigy of Garibaldi), the fact remains the lack of interest shown by the Italians for this event as if it were distant events that concern them most, to be relegated to the pages of history books. And instead of the Risorgimento remains topical, first of all because of its lack of popular revolution. Why in this failure, already evident to his contemporaries (from Marx to Mazzini), lie in the deep and true reasons of permanent crisis of the unitary state in its various institutional manifestations (monarchical, fascist, republican) and the fragility of a national identity ever become truly collective heritage. The article by Mary R. Calderoni is, despite some straining, a good starting point for a reflection that goes beyond the mere celebration of the desecration or an end in itself.
Maria R. Calderoni
Italy, 1861 The bad
that has arisen and will also be the helmet of Scipio She has bound her head. But looking at it, is scary, so much ugly, Italy Kingdom Year 1861. One statelet battered, poor, shabbily dressed, with statistics on homeless people, but the Brothers of Italy. A country that was the European powers like Cinderella to the Queen of England.
The population is just over 25 million want to count Veneto and Lazio (21 million without) and it is for almost two thirds of a nation of mostly farmers still almost serfs: Agriculture has been working in the field, 69, 7 percent of the total, only 12 industries, 13 in the tertiary sector (ie mainly in public administration, which accounts for about 9 per cent).
A people torn, poor and illiterate. While the government already craving the new state to be admitted the table of the Great Powers, almost half of Italians are made of unemployed, 25 per cent of newborns die within the first year of life, 44 within the first 5 years, and the general life expectancy is 33 years . Die young, in Italy, where the victory shows the crown, young and ignorant, poor people as true. Knowing how to write their name and read even a little ', it's almost unheard of, rare. In fact, over 80 percent are illiterate, to read or write or do arithmetic, the North and the South (78 percent in Veneto, 83 in the Marche, Umbria 84, 89 in Sicily, and God willing almost 90 percent in Basilicata). Italian? Stuff ever seen, and in fact spoken by 2 percent, the other 98 know only their own dialect (and just when the Piedmont land in Sicily, no one understands none). And though military service is compulsory and lasts an eternity and hateful, 5 years, in the name of that strange new thing called homeland.
great Italian poor. Always the same arid Statistics says that made 100 the power of an Italian in 1861, the relationship is with other European countries: Great Britain 220, Switzerland 200, France 170. And it is an abyss GDP, income per capita: Italy 196, England 775, France 650, Prussia 428.
Patience, with the new United Italy, under the Kingdom of Savoy and the Government at the time, things will change ... Yeah right. The elections that have to create the first Italian Parliament will take place on January 27th, of course, take place under the electoral law of 1848 Savoy: based on wealth. So, exactly according to the census, are found to have the right to vote, out of 25 million inhabitants, only 418,619 lucky, 1, 9 per cent. On paper, it goes to the polls only slightly more than half: in fact, Catholics, obedient to the "non expedit" papal boycott the vote. And so the relationship is of a voter on each 107 inhabitants, 63 are enough votes to elect a deputy, an explosion of democracy. In essence, a census of Parliament, released by a vote of property, which elects the Members of wealth.
Chi sono costoro, sui banchi del Primo Parlamento Italiano? 85 sono ex principi, marchesi, conti, duchi; 25 ex alti ufficiali; 72 avvocati, 42 professori universitari; 5 medici; 5 tecnici. Del popolo bue nemmeno l’ombra.
Per andare al di là dei meri numeri, bisogna aggiungere che la grande maggioranza degli eletti rappresenta la classe dei proprietari terrieri, dal momento che dei 40-45 miliardi che formano la ricchezza nazionale privata, ben 25 miliardi appartengono alla proprietà fondiaria. Che all’epoca succhia dal lavoro contadino qualcosa come un miliardo all’anno, una somma enorme, superiore al valore della stessa intera produzione industriale.
The population is just over 25 million want to count Veneto and Lazio (21 million without) and it is for almost two thirds of a nation of mostly farmers still almost serfs: Agriculture has been working in the field, 69, 7 percent of the total, only 12 industries, 13 in the tertiary sector (ie mainly in public administration, which accounts for about 9 per cent).
A people torn, poor and illiterate. While the government already craving the new state to be admitted the table of the Great Powers, almost half of Italians are made of unemployed, 25 per cent of newborns die within the first year of life, 44 within the first 5 years, and the general life expectancy is 33 years . Die young, in Italy, where the victory shows the crown, young and ignorant, poor people as true. Knowing how to write their name and read even a little ', it's almost unheard of, rare. In fact, over 80 percent are illiterate, to read or write or do arithmetic, the North and the South (78 percent in Veneto, 83 in the Marche, Umbria 84, 89 in Sicily, and God willing almost 90 percent in Basilicata). Italian? Stuff ever seen, and in fact spoken by 2 percent, the other 98 know only their own dialect (and just when the Piedmont land in Sicily, no one understands none). And though military service is compulsory and lasts an eternity and hateful, 5 years, in the name of that strange new thing called homeland.
great Italian poor. Always the same arid Statistics says that made 100 the power of an Italian in 1861, the relationship is with other European countries: Great Britain 220, Switzerland 200, France 170. And it is an abyss GDP, income per capita: Italy 196, England 775, France 650, Prussia 428.
Patience, with the new United Italy, under the Kingdom of Savoy and the Government at the time, things will change ... Yeah right. The elections that have to create the first Italian Parliament will take place on January 27th, of course, take place under the electoral law of 1848 Savoy: based on wealth. So, exactly according to the census, are found to have the right to vote, out of 25 million inhabitants, only 418,619 lucky, 1, 9 per cent. On paper, it goes to the polls only slightly more than half: in fact, Catholics, obedient to the "non expedit" papal boycott the vote. And so the relationship is of a voter on each 107 inhabitants, 63 are enough votes to elect a deputy, an explosion of democracy. In essence, a census of Parliament, released by a vote of property, which elects the Members of wealth.
Chi sono costoro, sui banchi del Primo Parlamento Italiano? 85 sono ex principi, marchesi, conti, duchi; 25 ex alti ufficiali; 72 avvocati, 42 professori universitari; 5 medici; 5 tecnici. Del popolo bue nemmeno l’ombra.
Per andare al di là dei meri numeri, bisogna aggiungere che la grande maggioranza degli eletti rappresenta la classe dei proprietari terrieri, dal momento che dei 40-45 miliardi che formano la ricchezza nazionale privata, ben 25 miliardi appartengono alla proprietà fondiaria. Che all’epoca succhia dal lavoro contadino qualcosa come un miliardo all’anno, una somma enorme, superiore al valore della stessa intera produzione industriale.
Lo Stato è bensì unificato, nel suo territorio, nella sua lingua, sotto un governo unico; le frontiere interne non esistono più, abbattuti gli intralci feudali. Ma i suoi vizi d’origine ne fanno quello Stato lì, debole, rachitico, reazionario. Con un re che è bensì a capo del primo Stato unitario ma che continua a chiamarsi Vittorio Emanuele II, un uomo debole, «superstizioso e rozzo, le cui uniche passioni erano le donne, i cavalli e la caccia», come scrive Denis Mack Smith, e che si prodigò moltissimo, ma nella moltiplicazione di titoli nobiliari, prebende e onorificenze. Clientelismo e corruzione furono subito di casa, «e nel dicembre 1861 dovette essere published a special warning against the private agencies that guaranteed to the people in the various ministries recommendations "(as you can see, this is a" bad habit "old ...).
The conscription and taxes, this is the business card of the new state: millions and millions of peasants still live in a closed economy of feudal, quasi-money in the countryside and the streets there as well, you live by barter miserable Trade is a word almost unknown and the only kind you buy in the countryside is salt. "For much of the year, a number of agricultural workers remained unemployed, while compressing the sovrapopolzione their wages to the level of mere subsistence. The farmers of the lower valley of the Po feed exclusively on corn and get sick of pellagra; in Puglia day laborers to eat virtually only barley bread cooked two or three times a year, hundreds of thousands of Italians living in caves, in huts made of twigs and mud, without windows, in a wet basement storerooms of Naples, in Rome in neighborhoods they live in ten workers per room. Malaria, tertian fever, tuberculosis, typhoid are endemic.
E 'remained the same, Italy described by Dickens in his book "Visions of Italy". He says the rest of the Sonnino: all the social legislation of the early decades of the unified Italy was reduced "to a provision books on postal savings in 1870 and a law of 1873, however, remained a dead letter on child labor in industry. "
"What do you mean by country, Sir? It 'a mass of miserable? We plant corn, but we do not eat white bread. Cultivate lives but we do not drink wine. We breed animals, but we do not eat meat. Nevertheless, we recommend you not to leave our homeland? But the country is a land where you can not live of their work? ". The question was rhetorical, and in fact in those years 'start' and very luntane bastimente to land. " Start the largest outflow of modern history: that of the Italians.
While at home in the southern laborers turned brigands are defined and decimated by sending an army of 120 men there.
(From: Liberation 02/18/2010)
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