History - Southern Italy - page 459

The Southern Question
The unification of Italy meant sudden and dramatic changes for all the southern provinces.
The huge upsurge in brigantaggio (banditry) and social unrest throughout the last decades
of the 19th century is often attributed to widespread disillusionment about the unification
project. Though remembered as a leading figure in the push towards unification, it was
never the intention of 19th-century Italian statesman Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, to
unify the whole country. Even later during his premiership, Cavour favoured an expanded
Piedmont rather than a united Italy.
For southerners, it was difficult to see the benefits of being part of this new nation state.
Naples was stripped of its capital-city status; the new government carried away huge cash
reserves from the rich southern Italian banks; taxes went up and factories closed as new tar-
iff policies, dictated by northern interests, caused a steep decline in the southern economy.
Culturally, southerners were also made to feel inferior; to be southern or 'Bourbon' was to
be backward, vulgar and uncivilised.
After WWI the south fared a little better, experiencing some slow progress in infrastruc-
ture projects like the construction of the Puglian aqueduct, the extension of the railways
and the improvement of civic centres including Bari and Taranto. But Mussolini's 'Battle
for Wheat' - the drive to make Italy self-sufficient in food - compounded many of the
south's problems. It destroyed even more valuable pastureland by turning it over to the
monoculture of wheat, while reinforcing the parlous state of the southern peasantry, who
remained uneducated, disenfranchised, landless and at high risk of malaria. To escape such
a hopeless future, many of them packed their bags and migrated to North America, north-
ern Europe and Australia, starting a trend that was to become one of the main features of
post-WWII Italy.
The Nazis took Naples in 1943, but were quickly forced out during the quattro giornate di Napoli (four days of
Naples), a series of popular uprisings between 26 and 30 September. This paved the way for the Allies to
enter the city on 1 October.
The south was the only region to vote against the 1946 referendum that established the
Italian Republic. In Naples, 80% voted to keep the monarchy. Still, change moved on
apace. After the wreckage of WWII was cleared - especially that caused by Allied air raids
in Sicily and Naples - the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno reconstruction fund was established to
bring the south into the 20th century with massive, cheap housing schemes and big indus-