Crowding out the change: business networks and persisting economic elites in the South of Italy over Unification (1840–1880)

Schisani, Maria Carmela; Balletta, Luigi; Ragozini, Giancarlo

doi:10.1007/s11698-020-00204-3

Cited by 4 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 43 publications

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“…Yet, even in the works devoted to Southern politics in general (Capone 1970) and the 'Neapolitan Question' (Questione di Napoli) in particular (Aliberti et al 1971;Musella 2010), the Bank neither takes centre stage nor are its internal dynamics interrogated. Recently, the persistent power wielded by Southern financial elites in post-unification Italy has been documented quantitatively by Schisani, Balletta and Ragozini (2021) but overall the literature on the Southern Question, still flourishing today, remains focused on social, political, real-economy or purely cultural factorsa perspective from which financial institutions and agents are mostly expunged (see e.g. Petrusewicz 1998;Dickie 1999;Moe 2002;Daniele and Malanima 2011;Barbagallo 2013;Felice 2013;Pescosolido 2017).…”

Section: Requiem For a Bankmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Bank of Naples and the struggle for regional power in Risorgimento Italy

Chiaruttini

2021

Mod. Italy

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Drawing on the history of the Bank of Naples, this article sheds new light on the power struggle between the central government and the Southern elites in Risorgimento Italy. Since unification, the Bank has been portrayed as the archetypal victim of a predatory (Northern) Italian government. This article, by deconstructing the myth surrounding the Bank, shows how this characterisation was carefully crafted by its Neapolitan management. Exploiting to the fullest the new political and economic role they had acquired under the aegis of a constitutional government, the Bank's governors appropriated and invested with new meanings Risorgimento ideals to further the Bank's cause as well as their own. Constantly shifting the focus from finance to politics, they posed as champions of those municipal, regional or even national liberties the government was either unable or unwilling to defend. This narrative provided an ideological smokescreen obscuring the economic and partly private nature of the confrontation between the central government and the Bank, and reinforced the view of a South victimised by the new Italian state still in currency today.

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Section: Requiem For a Bankmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Bank of Naples and the struggle for regional power in Risorgimento Italy

Chiaruttini

2021

Mod. Italy

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Tracing the Connections of Transnational Financial Players with a Peripheral Country: Some Evidence from the South of Italy Over the First Globalization

Schisani,

Ragozini,

Rondinelli

2024

Islamic Financial Institutions From the Early Modern Period to the 20th Century

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Woe to the vanquished? State, ‘foreign’ banking and financial development in Southern Italy in the nineteenth century

Chiaruttini

2020

Financial History Review

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After Southern Italy became part of a new, national state in 1860, its financial sector was radically transformed under Piedmontese influence. This article challenges the conventional wisdom that the aggressive penetration of a Northern credit institution, the future Bank of Italy, into the South following unification harmed the local banking system and highlights instead its transformative role in modernising and deepening regional credit markets. On the basis of new statistics, banking and political records, this contribution shows that the introduction of ‘foreign’ banking from Northern Italy under the auspices of a national, constitutional government resulted in a financial revolution and a democratisation of credit supply to the advantage of the whole South. Public banking under the Bourbons had privileged the needs of an absolute government over those of the private economy and of the capital city over those of the rest of the country, retarding financial development. Credit undersupply and regional fragmentation could only be overcome through the integration of the South within a larger Italian market, in which, however, the lion's share went to a predominantly Northern institution.

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Crowding out the change: business networks and persisting economic elites in the South of Italy over Unification (1840–1880)

Cited by 4 publications

References 43 publications

The Bank of Naples and the struggle for regional power in Risorgimento Italy

The Bank of Naples and the struggle for regional power in Risorgimento Italy

Tracing the Connections of Transnational Financial Players with a Peripheral Country: Some Evidence from the South of Italy Over the First Globalization

Woe to the vanquished? State, ‘foreign’ banking and financial development in Southern Italy in the nineteenth century

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