After almost four weeks in Sicily, we crossed the strait of Messina and explored the rest of Italy, getting as far north as Verona. After a night in Villa San Giovanni, the town where the ferry lands, we proceeded to the small beach town of Pisciotta
I suspect that if there weren’t the constant government propaganda about the Risorgimento, that the southern half of the country would see it as colonization and imposition of a foreign culture on them.
As for where the boundary between the south and north is, linguists have a line that follows the Apennines and distinguishes important linguistic differences across the whole Romance language family:
Standard Italian is the Florentine dialect, which is from south of this line, so the Piemontese conquerors of the rest of Italy made some concessions in choosing a central culture to impose on the south.
A lot of people in the South (though not the majority) already see it as colonization. Though the dysfunctionality of Italian Unity has very little to do with colonization. It is closest to a simple failure of big state where the poorer area remains underdeveloped due to massive tranfers from the richer area, that only serves to fund the status quo, which is a disaster. This pattern has a long history. So they are mostly wrong.
Florentine was the basis for Standard Italian language waaaay before the Piedmontese conquest. It was not decided top down by a government, but a centuries-long, bottom-up process involving Italian intellectuals when they were living in separate states.
You can tell a good observer when you see one. A lot of Italians don't get this amount of things right about Italy, even the one who have spent several years in several different countries. Bravo.
I will only point out a couple of things.
3. I have spent at least two thirds of my life in the Rome area, but I am still unable to tell if it is true that prices in Rome are the highest. It really depends on the area. Yes, it does count that you were looking at restaurant and hotel prices. I would guess you were in the historical centre. Prices are higher than anywhere in the country there, but Rome extends far beyond the historical centre, and prices can get much, much lower.
14. Italian Nationalism: I think it is difficult to grasp what value people give to the "Nation" in Italy. Yes, there is the symbolism (Garibaldi) and all, but we only celbrated the Unity Day in 1911 (50 years), 1961 (100 years) and 2011 (150 years). People barely care about the Republic Day (June 2nd). But here's the most relevant thing: most people will tell you they care about their Region or even town than their country, a lot will claim they are not Italians at all. They'll refuse to say there is any Italian national dish, for there are only local dishes (true to some extent). The Italian language was forced onto Venetians (no it wasn't) and all that rubbish. At the same time, they won't complain a lot about people from other Regions "stealing their jobs" (not anymore) but they will complain about foreigners. Too many people are still nostalgic about Fascism, so they are just people who would celebrate a very particular time of Italian history. Italy and nationalism truly are in a weird relationship.
Well, they are many old people in Italy, so a fair bit, though most were kids.
But that is not the point. The people who are called nostalgics in Italy are not necessarily nostalgic of something they actually experienced, but maybe they wished they did.
You're conflating Italian centralization with Italian unification. German and Italian unifications both were a product of the same phenomenon: little countries couldn't resist being stomped upon by bigger neighbors like France or Austria.
Had proposed arrangements regarding the idea of Italy being unified under a confederal arrangement, won out over the centralized Savoyard regime, it'd have been much better.
A confederal arrangement was the favorite solution of most of those that eventually sided with the Savoy monarchy - even the piedmontese government itself. The main problem was that the pope would have nothing of it.
The other reason why a lot of people supported unification under Savoy was that other kings were highly conservative, anti-democratic and somewhat anti-modernity (including economically). Savoy was the only state with a constitution, a parliament and free (free-ish) press. And they pushed for increasing literacy and for industrialization.
Mind, Austria-dominated Milan was actually better on all these counts, but those were the times when no-one would accept being under a foreign government...
> My Italian contacts told me that the national government eagerly funds this omnipresent political cult. The locals barely care. Even I was surprised that my students in Palermo had no clue who Italy’s chief enemy in World War I was.
This doesn't surprise me, after reading Gay Talese's Unto the Sons last year. It's a family history of his Calabrian immigrant forefathers who came to PA/NY/NJ, and their relatives who stayed home in Maida. The book has an extended segment on an uncle's experience fighting on the Austrian front in WWI. Enthusiasm for the war - and for many things ordained by the central government - was low in the South.
For anyone who found this post and Bryan's Sicily post interesting, and is open to a deep but meandering path through Southern Italian history, I recommend Talese's book. If you like your history told straightforwardly, and you like your memoirs focused, I do not recommend the book.
Bryan, would you consider collecting links to your travel reflections on one page? I've searched 'Reflections' in your EconLog archive, finding the Yucatan, Guatemala, a Panama cruise, France, Texas, but I wonder if this misses some with different titles.
"The upshot is that Italy needs free-market policies more than most European countries"
The issue is that for forty years now, every government (left or right) had free-market policy among its top stated priorities. And additional pushes came from the EU. Now, many politicians talked big but did little, but in the end it added up. From selling state-owned companies and cutting public employees, to reforming utilities, banks, licensing and especially labor markets, large changes have been made.
Unfortunately, despite some successes, the overall results have been underwhelming. So -right of wrong- Italians now don't trust anymore promises to improve the country through freer markets.
Re: point 8, I definitely know what you mean, but on net I have the opposite impression of Italy. I think it's just a matter of what you're used to.
I've been living in Japan since Fall 2020, and let me tell you, if you think Italy is strict or overbearing about covid rules, then you haven't seen Japan.
My wife and I took a trip to Italy in October 2021, and it felt (literally and figuratively) like a breath of fresh air. There were no rules at the airport, no vaccine checks, no test, etc. We barely had to wear masks in crowded restaurants or supermarkets (they did want to see a photo of our vaccine cards before dining in).
And for the record, Japan hasn't lifted restrictions even now: everyone masks in all places (even outdoors), we have limits for in-person addendance for seminars on campus, we need a pcr test (not rapid) to reenter the country, and the country has been closed to tourists since March 2020.
Nationalism started with French Revolution, and militarist nationalism started with Napoleon. This bring up unifications (Germany and Italy) and so on.
"The ruins of both Herculaneum and Pompeii looked far more advanced than anything I’ve seen in Tikal, Chichen Itza, Uxmal, or elsewhere in the Mayan world."
The degree of technological sophistication was very different: Romans had sailing ships that could carry over 1,000 tons for long distances (archeologists noted that many Roman buildings in southern Italy were made of bricks imported from North Africa) and made extensive use of water and animal power in industrial applications (see Barbegal), while the Mayans were restricted to human muscles as energy source. In fact, the difference between between the Romans and the Mayans in per capita energy consumption was likely as big as between modern developed countries and the Romans.
Is the mafia an outgrowth of colonization/unification? It matches my understanding of history. They didn't trust the pollentoni, so they found a semblance of self-governance that metastasized over time.
I suspect that if there weren’t the constant government propaganda about the Risorgimento, that the southern half of the country would see it as colonization and imposition of a foreign culture on them.
As for where the boundary between the south and north is, linguists have a line that follows the Apennines and distinguishes important linguistic differences across the whole Romance language family:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Spezia–Rimini_Line
Standard Italian is the Florentine dialect, which is from south of this line, so the Piemontese conquerors of the rest of Italy made some concessions in choosing a central culture to impose on the south.
A lot of people in the South (though not the majority) already see it as colonization. Though the dysfunctionality of Italian Unity has very little to do with colonization. It is closest to a simple failure of big state where the poorer area remains underdeveloped due to massive tranfers from the richer area, that only serves to fund the status quo, which is a disaster. This pattern has a long history. So they are mostly wrong.
Florentine was the basis for Standard Italian language waaaay before the Piedmontese conquest. It was not decided top down by a government, but a centuries-long, bottom-up process involving Italian intellectuals when they were living in separate states.
For instance, this is legislation from the Kingdom of Two Sicilies. It's in Standard Italian (1800s style), not Neapolitan, not Sicilian.
The language was not imposed on the South.
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regno_delle_Due_Sicilie#/media/File:Dominii_citra_et_ultra_Pharum.jpg
You can tell a good observer when you see one. A lot of Italians don't get this amount of things right about Italy, even the one who have spent several years in several different countries. Bravo.
I will only point out a couple of things.
3. I have spent at least two thirds of my life in the Rome area, but I am still unable to tell if it is true that prices in Rome are the highest. It really depends on the area. Yes, it does count that you were looking at restaurant and hotel prices. I would guess you were in the historical centre. Prices are higher than anywhere in the country there, but Rome extends far beyond the historical centre, and prices can get much, much lower.
14. Italian Nationalism: I think it is difficult to grasp what value people give to the "Nation" in Italy. Yes, there is the symbolism (Garibaldi) and all, but we only celbrated the Unity Day in 1911 (50 years), 1961 (100 years) and 2011 (150 years). People barely care about the Republic Day (June 2nd). But here's the most relevant thing: most people will tell you they care about their Region or even town than their country, a lot will claim they are not Italians at all. They'll refuse to say there is any Italian national dish, for there are only local dishes (true to some extent). The Italian language was forced onto Venetians (no it wasn't) and all that rubbish. At the same time, they won't complain a lot about people from other Regions "stealing their jobs" (not anymore) but they will complain about foreigners. Too many people are still nostalgic about Fascism, so they are just people who would celebrate a very particular time of Italian history. Italy and nationalism truly are in a weird relationship.
How many Italians were even alive during fascism to remember it now?
Well, they are many old people in Italy, so a fair bit, though most were kids.
But that is not the point. The people who are called nostalgics in Italy are not necessarily nostalgic of something they actually experienced, but maybe they wished they did.
Where did your son get that "no solutions, only trade-offs" shirt?! I love it.
Great Write-up, Bryan! Caplans rule!!
You're conflating Italian centralization with Italian unification. German and Italian unifications both were a product of the same phenomenon: little countries couldn't resist being stomped upon by bigger neighbors like France or Austria.
Had proposed arrangements regarding the idea of Italy being unified under a confederal arrangement, won out over the centralized Savoyard regime, it'd have been much better.
A confederal arrangement was the favorite solution of most of those that eventually sided with the Savoy monarchy - even the piedmontese government itself. The main problem was that the pope would have nothing of it.
The other reason why a lot of people supported unification under Savoy was that other kings were highly conservative, anti-democratic and somewhat anti-modernity (including economically). Savoy was the only state with a constitution, a parliament and free (free-ish) press. And they pushed for increasing literacy and for industrialization.
Mind, Austria-dominated Milan was actually better on all these counts, but those were the times when no-one would accept being under a foreign government...
> My Italian contacts told me that the national government eagerly funds this omnipresent political cult. The locals barely care. Even I was surprised that my students in Palermo had no clue who Italy’s chief enemy in World War I was.
This doesn't surprise me, after reading Gay Talese's Unto the Sons last year. It's a family history of his Calabrian immigrant forefathers who came to PA/NY/NJ, and their relatives who stayed home in Maida. The book has an extended segment on an uncle's experience fighting on the Austrian front in WWI. Enthusiasm for the war - and for many things ordained by the central government - was low in the South.
For anyone who found this post and Bryan's Sicily post interesting, and is open to a deep but meandering path through Southern Italian history, I recommend Talese's book. If you like your history told straightforwardly, and you like your memoirs focused, I do not recommend the book.
Bryan, would you consider collecting links to your travel reflections on one page? I've searched 'Reflections' in your EconLog archive, finding the Yucatan, Guatemala, a Panama cruise, France, Texas, but I wonder if this misses some with different titles.
"The upshot is that Italy needs free-market policies more than most European countries"
The issue is that for forty years now, every government (left or right) had free-market policy among its top stated priorities. And additional pushes came from the EU. Now, many politicians talked big but did little, but in the end it added up. From selling state-owned companies and cutting public employees, to reforming utilities, banks, licensing and especially labor markets, large changes have been made.
Unfortunately, despite some successes, the overall results have been underwhelming. So -right of wrong- Italians now don't trust anymore promises to improve the country through freer markets.
Re: point 8, I definitely know what you mean, but on net I have the opposite impression of Italy. I think it's just a matter of what you're used to.
I've been living in Japan since Fall 2020, and let me tell you, if you think Italy is strict or overbearing about covid rules, then you haven't seen Japan.
My wife and I took a trip to Italy in October 2021, and it felt (literally and figuratively) like a breath of fresh air. There were no rules at the airport, no vaccine checks, no test, etc. We barely had to wear masks in crowded restaurants or supermarkets (they did want to see a photo of our vaccine cards before dining in).
And for the record, Japan hasn't lifted restrictions even now: everyone masks in all places (even outdoors), we have limits for in-person addendance for seminars on campus, we need a pcr test (not rapid) to reenter the country, and the country has been closed to tourists since March 2020.
So, as I say, a matter of perspective!
These posts made me really want for you to come to Brazil. I wonder the terrible things you will have to say about us.
Really Italy in a nutshell :)
Nationalism started with French Revolution, and militarist nationalism started with Napoleon. This bring up unifications (Germany and Italy) and so on.
"The ruins of both Herculaneum and Pompeii looked far more advanced than anything I’ve seen in Tikal, Chichen Itza, Uxmal, or elsewhere in the Mayan world."
The degree of technological sophistication was very different: Romans had sailing ships that could carry over 1,000 tons for long distances (archeologists noted that many Roman buildings in southern Italy were made of bricks imported from North Africa) and made extensive use of water and animal power in industrial applications (see Barbegal), while the Mayans were restricted to human muscles as energy source. In fact, the difference between between the Romans and the Mayans in per capita energy consumption was likely as big as between modern developed countries and the Romans.
Remember the famous quote from a politician from the Northern League: "Garibaldi didn't unite Italy. He divided Africa."
Re Italian nationalism —> fascism, this podcast on Gabriele D’Annunzio is really great:
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-rest-is-history/id1537788786?i=1000565720363
Is the mafia an outgrowth of colonization/unification? It matches my understanding of history. They didn't trust the pollentoni, so they found a semblance of self-governance that metastasized over time.
Great post, Bryan.