Sicily and the Unification of Italy Liberal Policy and Local Power 1859-1866

by Riall, Lucy

• ISBN13: 9780198206804
• ISBN10: 0198206801
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1998-06-04
• Publisher: Clarendon Press

Summary

This is the first in-depth analysis of the impact of Italian unification on the hitherto isolated communities of rural Sicily. Traditional explanations of Sicily's instability depict a society trapped by a feudal past. Lucy Riall finds instead that many areas of the island were experiencing aperiod of rapid modernization, as local government increased their organizational efforts. Beginning with the period prior to the revolution of 1860, Dr Riall shows why successive attempts at political reform failed, and analyses the effects of this failure. She describes the bitter and violentconflict between rival elites and the mounting tide of peasant unrest which together threatened the status quo within the isolated communities of the Sicilian interior. Through an examination of the problems of local government - tax collection, conscription, the organization of policing - and ofattempts to suppress peasant disturbances and control crime, she shows that the modernization of the Sicilian countryside both undermined the control of the central government and made the countryside itself more unstable.

Author Biography

Lucy Riall is Lecturer in Modern European History at Birkbeck College, University of London.

Table of Contents

List of Maps	x	(1)
List of Abbreviations	xi
Introduction	1	(29)
1. Restoration Sicily: Poverty, Protest, and Power, 1815-1849	30	(32)
2. From Risorgimento to Revolution, 1849-1860	62	(14)
3. Garibaldi's Dictatorship: The Reality of Government, May-November 1860	76	(32)
4. From Moderate Liberalism to Destra Storica: The Impact of Unification	108	(30)
5. Liberal Policy and the Control of Public Order, 1860-1862	138	(18)
6. The Breakdown of Authority, 1862-1863	156	(23)
7. Criminals, Republicans, and Reactionaries, 1864-1865	179	(19)
8. Revolt Against the Government, 1866	198	(24)
Conclusion	222	(9)
Bibliography	231	(16)
Index	247