In Italian historiography, the southern question () is the perception, dating back to the aftermath of the unification of Italy,Francesco Barbagallo writes in Mezzogiorno e questione meridionale (1860–1960): "The history of the southern question is the history of the South within the Italian state and of the reflection on the particular kind of relationship realized between the South and the state, between different economic structures and social classes. The southern question thus emerges at the time of unification as a problem of the South within the Italian state, as a particular form of southern expansion linked to the unitary model of capitalist development set in motion in the decades after 1860." that southern Italy is persistently backwards in terms of socioeconomic development compared to the other regions of the country, especially the ones in northern Italy. First used in 1873 by Lombard classical radical and Historical Far Left deputy Antonio Billia, meaning the disastrous economic situation of the south of Italy compared to other regions of united Italy, it is used in common parlance even into the 21st century. The great southern emigration began only a few decades after the unification of Italy, where in the first half of the 19th century it had already affected several areas in the north, particularly Piedmont, Comacchio, and Veneto. The historical reasons for the first southern emigration in the second half of the 19th century are to be found in widespread literature both in the crisis of the countryside and grain, and in the situation of economic impoverishment affecting the south in the aftermath of unification, when industrial investments were concentrated in the northwest,IZA - Institute for the Study of Labor, "the industrialisation process being concentrated mainly in the North western regions" . as well as in other factors.
Between 1877 and 1887 (the governments led by Agostino Depretis, a member of the Historical Left who practised trasformismo), Italy had passed new protectionist tariff laws to protect its weak industry. These laws penalized agricultural exports from the south, favoured industrial production concentrated in the north, and created the conditions for the corrupt mixing of politics and economics. According to Giustino Fortunato, these measures determined the final collapse of southern interests in the face of those of northern Italy.Giustino Fortunato, Il Mezzogiorno e lo stato italiano, Vol. II. With the First World War, the relative development of the north, based on industry, was favoured by the war orders, while in the south, the conscription of young men to arms left the fields neglected, depriving their families of all sustenance, since, in the absence of men at the front, southern women were not accustomed to working the land like peasant women in the north and centre; in fact, in the south, the arable land was often far from the homes, which were located in the villages, and even if they had wanted to, southern women would not have been able to do the housework and work the land at the same time, which was possible in northern and central Italy, where the peasants lived in farmhouses just a few meters from the land to be cultivated.
The policies implemented in the Italian fascist era to increase productivity in the primary sector were also unsuccessful: in particular, the agrarian policy pursued by Mussolini deeply damaged certain areas of the south. In fact, production focused mainly on wheat (battle for wheat) at the expense of more specialized and profitable crops that were widespread in the more fertile and developed southern areas. As for industry, it experienced during the "black twenty-year period" a long period of stagnation in the south, which is also noticeable in terms of employment. In the late 1930s, fascism gave a new impetus to its economic efforts in the south and in Sicily, but this was an initiative aimed at increasing the meagre consensus the regime enjoyed in the south and at popularizing in the south the world war that would soon engulf Italy.Rosario Villari, p. 521.
The southern question remains unresolved into the 21st century for a number of economic reasons. Even after the Second World War, the development gap between the centre and the north could never be closed because between 1971 (the first year for which data are available) and 2017 the Italian state invested, on average per inhabitant, much more in the centre-north than in the south, making the gap not only unbridgeable but on the contrary accentuating it. According to the Eurispes: Results of the Italy 2020 report, if one were to consider the share of total public expenditure that the south should have received each year as a percentage of its population, it turns out that in total, from 2000 to 2017, the corresponding sum deducted from it amounts to more than 840 billion euros net (an average of about 46 billion euros per year).
Situation before the unification of Italy
Political situation and framing
The origin of economic and social differences between Italian regions has long been controversial, partly because of the related ideological and political implications. The prevailing historiographical current argues that the differences between the different areas of the peninsula were already very pronounced at the time of unification: the intensive agriculture of the Po Valley, the drive to build roads and railways of Piedmont, and the role of trade and finance are contrasted with the approach that characterized the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.
According to journalist and essayist Paolo Mieli, based on Vittorio Daniele and Paolo Malanima's work, Il divario Nord-Sud in Italia 1861-2011 (Rubbettino), the Bourbon territories presented in the years of national unification, economic conditions quite similar to those of the northern areas and that indeed the per capita GDP of the south was higher, albeit slightly, than that of the north. In contrast, American economist Richard S. Eckaus argued there was an economic depression in the south prior to unification.
According to Francesco Saverio Nitti, between 1810 and 1860, while states such as Britain, the United States, France, Germany, and Belgium experienced progress, pre-unification Italy had great difficulties in growth, largely due to various issues such as internal rebellions and wars of independence.Francesco Saverio Nitti, L'Italia all'alba del secolo XX, Casa Editrice Nazionale Roux e Viarengo, Torino-Roma, 1901, p. 19. The situation was also exacerbated by malaria, which plagued the south of Italy in particular.Francesco Saverio Nitti, L'Italia all'alba del secolo XX, Casa Editrice Nazionale Roux e Viarengo, Torino-Roma, 1901, p. 21. Nitti believed that, prior to unification, there were no marked economic differences at the territorial level, and in every area of pre-unification Italy there was a scarcity of large industries:Francesco Saverio Nitti, Nord e Sud, Roux e Viarengo, 1900, p. 2.
About the conditions of economic and productive development in pre-unification Italy, Antonio Gramsci took a different view than Nitti, and according to the Marxist politician and historian at the date of Italian unification there were instead profound differences in economic organisation and infrastructure between the northern and southern parts of the Italian peninsula.
According to Denis Mack Smith's exposition in his work History of Italy from 1861 to 1998, starting in 1850, Cavour's Piedmont was led by a liberal elite that marked a radical acceleration, with the declared aim of confronting the major European powers. The civil code was reformed on the model of the more advanced but decidedly centralist French code. A new bank was founded to provide credit to industrial enterprises, and duties were significantly reduced by an average of 10 per cent in comparison with 100 per cent in the south. Technicians were sent to England to study the war industry, and infrastructure was greatly developed: the Cavour canal, begun in 1857, made the Vercelli and Novara region fertile, railways were expanded so that by 1859 Piedmont possessed half the mileage of the entire peninsula, and by 1868, the Moncenisio railway (since 1871 replaced by the Fréjus tunnel) soon made it possible to reach Paris in a single day's journey. Nitti argued that this transformation entailed huge public expenditures that led the Sardinian kingdom into a deep financial depression, as many public works proved unproductive. According to Nitti, without detracting from the great merits of Piedmont in the face of Italian unification, the situation of the Kingdom of Sardinia, in order to avoid bankruptcy, could only be resolved by "mixing Piedmont's finances with those of another, larger state".Francesco Saverio Nitti, Nord e Sud, Casa Editrice Nazionale Roux e Viarengo, Torino-Roma, 1900, p. 30.
In the climate of restoration following the Sicilian uprisings of 1848, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies had pursued a conservative policy. The Bourbon government, according to Mack Smith, traced an aristocratic model, based on lower levels of taxes and low spending on infrastructure. Economic policy was paternalistic: domestic production was protected by high duties on the import of goods and food prices were kept low by the prohibition of exporting grain, while land ownership was concentrated among a few landowners who held it as a latifundium, or held in mortmain by the Church, while feudal rights to tithe and public use of communal lands still applied. Nitti assessed that the system adopted by the Bourbons was due to a lack of vision, a refusal to look to the future, a principle he judged to be narrow and almost patriarchal,Francesco Saverio Nitti, L'Italia all'alba del secolo XX, Casa Editrice Nazionale Roux e Viarengo, Torino-Roma, 1901, p. 111. but which at the same time guaranteed a "rough prosperity that made the life of the people less torturous than it is now".Francesco Saverio Nitti, L'Italia all'alba del secolo XX, Casa Editrice Nazionale Roux e Viarengo, Torino-Roma, 1901, p. 118.
The causes of the southern problem must be sought in the many political and socio-economic events that the south has undergone over the centuries: In the absence of a communal period, which would have stimulated intellectual and productive energies; in the persistence of foreign monarchies, incapable of creating a modern state; in the centuries-long domination of a baronage, holder of all privileges; in the persistence of the latifundium; in the absence of a bourgeois class, creator of wealth and animator of new forms of political life; in the nefarious and corrupting Spanish domination. Of particular importance was the almost systematic alliance between foreign monarchies and the nobility, based on the maintenance of the feudal regime. This alliance prevented the emergence of an active, enterprising bourgeoisie.Carmelo Bonanno, L'età contemporanea nella critica storica, Editrice Liviana, Padova, 1979, vol. 3, p. 209. The problems of integrating the south into the new unified nation-state were also generated because of the profound socio-cultural differences between the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and the other pre-unitary states:
The situation was exacerbated by extensive and widespread administrative corruption.Il Risorgimento italiano, Denis Mack Smith, p. 526.Il Mezzogiorno e lo Stato italiano, Giustino Fortunato, vol. II, pp. 341-342. In the years following national unification, the average life expectancy in the south was several years shorter than in the north, and there was a higher incidence of malnutrition and undernourishment. The socioeconomic situation in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was succinctly described by British historian Denis Mack Smith as follows:
Economic situation