Italy was not unified, but was conquered by the Piedmontese, interested only in the gold of Naples to cover their debts. But is this really the truth? Did the small and indebted kingdom of Piedmont and Sardinia really manage to conquer the great, rich and prosperous Kingdom of the two Sicilies? Or maybe there is something that the "Neo-Bourbons" do not tell?
We talk about it in this episode of the new series on Youtube, Neo-Bourbon Myths, but don't worry, because I will also put some information in writing in this article.
Let's start from the beginning, let's start from the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, that kingdom which, according to the neo-Bourbon narrative was, in the nineteenth century a modern and rich Italic kingdom, whose coffers were overflowing with gold and there was so much wealth and well-being to do envy to the rest of Italy, but above all, to be able to buy and liquidate the enormous Piedmontese public debt, and therefore "unify Italy" without any bloodshed.
This very romantic narrative starts from the volume of gold actually present in the coffers of the Banks of Naples and Palermo, about 65/70% of the gold that would have flowed into the coffers of the Bank of Italy after unification. In 1861, after unification, 213 tons approx. in gold ingots, out of about 330 tons which according to the historical archive of the Bank of Italy, were present in the coffers of the bank, presented the trademark of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and the remaining 35/30% had the trademark of the other banks, including that of the Kingdom of Piedmont, merged in the nascent bank of Italy.
The gold of Naples, however, was not a real indicator of wealth, and indeed, it was just a stale deposit which, according to the records of the Naples bank, had hardly undergone any kind of change since the time of the Spanish crown. The gold of Naples was gold of the former Spanish crown which was in Naples and Palermo before the birth of the kingdom of the two Sicilies, and which afterwards simply served as a guarantee for loans aimed mainly at covering the expenses of the royal house .
Naples before the Italian unification was a huge city, one of the largest cities in the world, second in Europe only to London and Paris by number of inhabitants, but this large presence of men in Naples was not synonymous with a thriving city, in economic growth and expansion, and this is because the kingdom of the two Sicilies did not invest in infrastructure, did not invest in modernization, did not renew public works and did not push towards the industrial revolution, in Naples, the crown was concerned only with having the granaries full , so as to give bread to the people, because in the extremely feudal vision of the kingdom of Sicily, if the people had bread, the people did not rise up and that was enough for the rulers to have no problems.
The kingdom of the two Sicilies, before Italian unification, had a lot of gold, but it was not rich, it was instead extremely poor and outside the cities, where by city we mean Naples, Palermo and very few other urban centers, there was nothing more absolute, all the land, all the lands were in the hands of a few aristocrats who lived in luxury in the city, while the countryside was populated by illiterate peasants and totally unaware of what was happening in the outside world. There was the large estate and there were the "settlers" little more than ancient serfs, men who cultivated a land that was not theirs, following the rhythm of the sun and the seasons, men who spent their lives in the fields and women who passed life in the courtyards to raise livestock, and look for ways to preserve as long as possible the products of the earth, the few products that remained in the family once the owners, the state and the church had collected their share.
When Garibaldi passes by in these countryside, followed not by soldiers but by men and volunteers, when a man arrives in those lands who promises the people that the land they cultivate would become theirs if they followed the cause of unification, these peasants find themselves having to choose between the absolute poverty in which they had always lived, and the possibility of living in decidedly more comfortable conditions or, in any case, of no longer suffering from hunger, and most of the settlers, farmers, fishermen have no doubts , the "popular masses" who lived in the countryside and on the coasts, join Garibaldi and increase the ranks of the Thousand.
While Garibaldi advanced with the favor of the peasant masses, the aristocracy and their mercenary militias tried to resist, without too many successes, but their rank, once Italy was unified, was preserved and those lands that Garibaldi had stolen from the lords local, were entrusted by the Italic crown, to the old lords so that they, in the name of the king, administered those territories.
Those who had followed Garibaldi and had fought for those lands that had returned to the old masters felt betrayed and the response to this betrayal was divided into two great phenomena.
On the one hand, some peasants organized themselves into private militias, clashing with the aristocrats, thus becoming brigands, groups outside the state that unofficially controlled the lands, whose evolution in the twentieth century would have given life to the mafia gangs, on the other hand, many the men of southern Italy rode the wave of dissent and used the strong popular dissatisfaction to start and strengthen their political career.
In the name of the broken promise and the people, many men of the south, more densely populated than the north in those years, thanks to the vote of the peasants and the support of the brigands, managed to get enough votes to be able to join the newborn parliament of the kingdom of Italy, and if we look at the members of the Italian parliament in the first years of unitary history, before the constitution of the regions which therefore distributed the number of parliamentarians in a more "uniform" manner throughout the peninsula, it can be observed that, most of those elected to the Italian parliament were southerners, but that's another story.
As we have seen, with the unification of Italy, there was no conquest, on the contrary, the peasant masses of southern Italy voluntarily chose to follow Garibaldi and overthrow the crown, de facto, producing a sort of peasant revolution, aimed at renewing the ruling class of the South which, for political reasons, has not been completed.