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LA STORIA...Five Centuries Of The Italian American Experience by Jerre Mangione and Ben |
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| Chapters 3,4, and 5 of part two, entitled "The Land They Left"
,contains an excellent overview of why our ancestors from the southern half of the peninsula and Sicily were compelled to leave their homeland. Although there were more than a few
reasons for the emigration, economic hardship was the chief reason. In 1861 the Neapolitan Bourbons were deposed by the armies of the Northern Italian Piedmontese in the cause of "uniting"
Italy into a single nation. There was some support for the Risorgimento by the middle-class
intellectuals, but the peasants and the gentry supported their king.
There was a plebiscite in the south which decided in favor of
unification, however only a small percentage of the populace was allowed to
vote."...[T]he imposition of the 1848 Piedmont constitution on all the regions of
the nation without regard to their individual institutions and problems generated deep hostility throughout
the Mezzogiorno. When the southerners had voted overwhelmingly in favor of
annexation, they fully expected to be granted some form of regional
government; but once the voting was over, it became apparent that the ministers and parliament in Turin had no intention of
sharing their authority with any of the regions." (pp.59-60). The Turin government imposed new taxes and military conscription on the south and the rift between north and south had begun. "From the widespread rebellions that began erupting throughout the South, it soon became clear that the popolino wanted no part of the Turin government. The extent and violence of the rebellions prompted Massimo D'Azeglio, a former prime minister of the Piedmont, to write in August 1861:'At Naples we overthrew a sovereign in order to set up a government based on universal suffrage. And yet we still need sixty battalions of our soldiers to hold the people down, or even more since these are not enough. One must therefore conclude that there was some mistake about the plebiscite' The rebellions , which raged throughout the South for the next five years, requiring at one point the services of half the Italian Army, suggested that a second referendum might well have spelled the end of the Italian nation and the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy. It was disorganized civil and class warfare on a large scale, but fought in guerilla style, an expression of blind and suicidal hatred led by the only heroes the peasantry traditionally admired-brigands, whose deeds of violence and defiance, financed by the Papacy and the deposed Bourbons monarchy, reflected their own feelings against a society that had long held them in bondage.Many of the peasants were driven to join the brigand-led bands, at least on a part -time basis, to keep their families from starving; but brigandaggio, as it was euphemistically branded, also became a visceral response to forces that were pressing them beyond the limits of their patience. Wondering why so many of the southern poor were attracted to it, a parliamentary report of 1863 pointed out that the peasantry respected and emulated the brigand, 'not as the thief, assassin, the man of sack and rapine, but as the person whose own powers sufficed to get for himself and for others the justice which the law fails to give.' "(pp.60-61) JOHN A. STAVOLA RETURN TO BOOKS WITH A FOCUS ON SOUTHERN ITALIAN HISTORY, CULTURE, AND GENEALOGY |