While we southerners, in too many circumstances, feel compelled to “cry on ourselves”, we should remember that once upon a time, the most industrialized regions of Italy , before 1860 , were Campania , Calabria and Puglia : for the levels of industrialization the Two Sicilies ranked first in Europe ! In Calabria, for example, were famous Mongiana steelworks were famous, with two blast furnaces for cast iron, two Wilkinson furnaces for iron and six refineries, employed 2,500 workers. The decentralized silk industry employed over 3,000 people. The largest metalworking factory in the Kingdom was that of Pietrarsa, (between Naples and Portici), with over 1200 employees:
a record for Italy at the time. Behind Pietrarsa was the Ansaldo of Genoa, with 400 workers . The Neapolitan plant produced steam engines, locomotives, ship engines, preceding Breda and Fiat by 44 years. In Castellammare di Stabia , from the end of the 18th century, the most important and technologically advanced shipyards in Italy operated. The first steamship, the Real Ferdinando, was set up in this yard 4 years before the first English steamship. The first propeller ship in Italy and the first iron ship came out of Castellammare di Stabia . Abruzzo was important for the paper mills (also those of Lower Lazio and the Amalfi Peninsula are strong), the manufacture of blades and the textile industries. ThereSicily exported sulfur , which was very precious at the time, especially in the province of Caltanissetta , at the time one of the richest and most industrialized cities in Italy. In Sicily there were commercial ports from which ships departed for all over the world, especially the United States and the Americas. Finally, the chemical industry of Sicily was important, producing all the components and synthetic materials known at the time, acids, paints, glass. Puglia and Basilicata were important for wool and textile industries , many of which were already motorized:
The technology had also entered agriculture , where mechanical systems were used for the production of oil in Puglia , which greatly increased production. Apulian agricultural machines were considered among the best in Europe . Finally, the most important stock exchange in the kingdom was that of Bari. Once the Two Sicilies were occupied, the Turin government began the “cynical and systematic” dismantling of the industrial fabric of what had become the “southern provinces”. Pietrarsa (where in 1862 the Bersaglieri carried out a bloody massacre of workers to defend the claims of the private owner to whom the factory was entrusted) was condemned to an unstoppable decline. In the Castellammare construction sites 400 workers were dismissed. The Mongiana steelworks were quickly closed, while the Ferdinandea di Stilo (with 5000 hectares of surrounding woods) was sold for little money to a “Garibaldi colonel”, who arrived in Calabria following the “liberators”:
When today we think of foreigners who feel “proud” of having a territory “worthy of driving the whole world”, they should be reminded of the abuses that Southern Italy has suffered from the south for over 160 years, from the factories that have been closed down to South just after the unification to favor those of the North, the schools closed for a dozen years, the different taxes, the often lacking if not total lack of investments in the post-unification period up to the present day, whether they come from the national, European or extra-European circuit, they make us forget how, and at whose expense, certain regions are what they are today. This is not a “nostalgic” post nor polemical towards our friends from the North:instead, it is an analysis so as not to forget the history and potential of a land, the south, which should never feel second to none.
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