The Mezzogiorno

The the Mezzogiorno indicates the areas of Italy which correspond to the old kingdom of the Deux-Siciles, integrated into Italy in 1860, following the Expédition of the Thousand carried out by Garibaldi: the the Abruzzi, the Basilicate, the Campania (area of Naples), the Calabria, the Weakens, the Pouilles and the Sicily. Economically, the Sardinia is also attached to the Mezzogiorno, although it depended, before 1860, of the kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia.

Climate

How its one can modify??? The Mezzogiorno means in Italian midday (half of the day and by Antonomase, the cardinal point). The Mezzogiorno belongs to the same climatic zone as the North Africa and the Andalusia, characterized by hot and very dry summers, and sometimes torrential rains in winter. The strong volcanicity which prevails there offered remarkably rich grounds to the area of Naples (Vesuvius) or to the east coast of the Sicily, close to the Etna. But the Mezzogiorno remains, apart from these some favorable zones, an area of low mountains and grounds poor. The climate of the Mezzogiorno does not play in its favor, because the weather is hot, which causes a constraint for agriculture.

Sociology

This climate - and this geology led to the development of an extensive agriculture, supported on great properties of the type Latifundia S. the seizure of a rich person land aristocracy on the economy, and the scarcity of the middle-class delayed the emergence of a Industrie, still little developed today. The poor and farm laborer peasants, who a long time composed the majority of the population of the Mezzogiorno, there are appointed under the scorning term of " Terroni ".

The novelist Carlo Levi, sent in 1935-36 like Confinato (exiled) by the Fascistic capacity in the village of Aliano, in Basilicate, told with much accuracy the miserable condition of these peasants in his account Christ stopped with Eboli .

This antiquated economic organization was favoured just in 1860 by the absolutist monarchical State of the Deux-Siciles, with the head of which a branch junior by the family Bourbon was.

History

The Mezzogiorno corresponds to Large Greece of Antiquity, populated colonists come from the Greek cities. Syracuse, in Sicily, was thus the birthplace of Archimedes. Until the end of the Roman Empire, the area remains under the cultural influence of Greece. At the time of the reconquest of Justinien, with the Life century, the Mezzogiorno was the only part of Italy to be passed by again durably under the control of Byzance.

Thereafter, the Mezzogiorno knew the Arab influence, then Norman, in Sicily in particular. Angevins, French, conquer in 1260 a kingdom which covers the near total of the current Mezzogiorno, that they will preserve until 1440. At the end of the Middle Ages, the kingdom passes in the Spanish mobility, under which it will remain until 1743, installation date of a new French dynasty, connects junior by the Bourbons.

The forwarding of the Thousand of 1860, and the dictatorship of Garibaldi on the Sicily during the few weeks which followed, woke up an immense hope of social progress in the Mezzogiorno. But the brutal repression of a revolt of Calabrian peasants by Garibaldi, then the installation of a Piedmontese administration which was put up quickly with the great land property, put an end to these dreams. During the last decades of the XIXe century, the Mezzogiorno was struck, in reaction to this broken hope, of a wave of endemic banditism and lives to be born the first Mafia S, which were posed as defenders the poor against the Piedmontese State and the great landowners. In parallel, while North knew a rapid industrial rise, hundreds of thousands of peasants of the Mezzogiorno emigrated in the United States, where they exported, in particular, the Neapolitan pizza pie… and the Mafia S.

The cut of Italy in two was reinforced, in 1943 and 1944, by the American occupation of the southern part of the country, while North remained with the hands of the fascists, then of the Nazi Germany. The United States had made sure the support of the American branches of the Maffias to manage to put the foot in Sicily then on the continental part of Italy.

The emigration of the unemployed towards the North of Italy was particularly strong after the War. This strong emigration was one of the causes of the development of racism anti-south. It was one of the causes of the development of the Ligue of the North which preaches a secession of North.

Economy

Because of the strong delay of development of the South, an organization of State called " Case for Mezzogiorno" financed economic development and social these areas.

In spite of that, the unemployment rate of the South last east of 16,3% in 1992 to 22,8% today. With Naples, the three quarters of the young people of less than 25 years are without work.

GDP per capita of the Mezzogiorno east on average of 12.220 euros against more than 20.000 for all the areas of North. Although it represents a third of the Italian population (21 million inhabitants), the Mezzogiorno ensures only 10% of the total of exports of Italy.

The Mezzogiorno is today directly touched by a massive surge African and Albanian clandestine immigrants. Many farms misuse this vulnerable labor to exploit it under conditions sometimes close to slavery.

Random links: