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The endemic poverty of souther Italy has been notable in modern times. It was a factor in the flood of Italian emigrants that poured into the United States after the Civil War (1861-65). One economist claims that economic conditions on the south were not really about what went wrong, but more about what went right in the north, especially the northwest. 【Zamagni】 There is some truth in this. A lot did go right in the north, but what went wrong in the south cannot be easily dismissed. Problems emerged in both agriculture and the nascent industrial sector. Since ancient times, the domestic economy was based primarily on agriculture. And here Italy, especially the south had major advantages over northrn Europe because cereal (wheat and other grains) thrived in warm, sunny climates. Northern Europe was meither warm or sunny. Advances in transportation, settlement of the vmerican Midwest, and mechinization of agriculture all meant that low-cost wheat flooded the European market. Southern Italian farmers were still largely using the same methods employed by the ancient Romans on fields with declining fertility. The long-standing protectionist policies of the Bourbon Kingdom of Naples (southern Italy) were replaced by the the free trade policies of the new unified Itallian Kingdom (1860s). The Italian royal dynasty was the House of Savoy, (northern Italy). Thus it was particularly atuned to the interests of the commercial farmers of the North, Italy's most productive agricultural region. This exposed sputhern farmers and farm workers to the rigors of the international market in which because of their inefficent methods they were ill-prepared to compete even in te domestic market. The industrial sector was smaller, but fared even worse. At the time of unification, Naples in the south was the most industrialized city in Italy. This did not mean heavy industry, probably mamufacturing is a better description. Some heavy industry meaning primarily steel-based industries were energing. Manufacturing in Naples favired by the same Bourbon monarchy that protected sourthern agriculture. This meant, however, that southern manufactuting was not as efficient as elsewhere in Italy and Europe as a whole. The new unified Royal Government implemented a free-trade policy, which quickly bankrupted the south's emergent steel foundaries and railway locomotive builders. The Royal Governent three decades later adopted protectiinist policies (1890s). This was, however, too late for the bankrupted siuthern industries. The industrialization of the north had developed and the northern-oriented Royal Government wanted to protect those indutries. The southern industries were gone, but protection of the northern industries meant that prices for manufactured goods rose for southern consumers, both rural agricultural workers and city workers who no longer had manufacturing jobs. The liberal government, including those led by southern politicans (1860-early-1920s), did attempt to dael with theeconomic problems of the south. Mussolini's Fascists seized power (1922) also based on a northern power base. They aldo failed to deal with the problems of the south. Actually they were even less interested than the liberal Royal governments.
Zamagni. Vera. Economic History of Italy 1860-1990
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