Calabria has one of the oldest records of human presence in Italy, which date back to around 700,000 BC when a type of
Homo erectus evolved leaving traces around coastal areas. During the
Paleolithic period Stone Age humans created the "
Bos Primigenius", a figure of a bull on a cliff which dates back around 12,000 years in the
Romito Cave in the town of
Papasidero. When the Neolithic period came the first villages were founded around 3,500 BC.
Antiquity According to the Greeks, the region would have been inhabited before colonization by several communities, including the Ausones-Oenotrians (vine-growers), who were the Italians, Morgetes, Sicels, and Chone. It is said that it was from the mythical ruler
Italus that Calabria was called “Italy”. The figure of Italus is placed in the first half of the 15th century BC.
Antiochus of Syracuse, considered the first historian of the West, depicts him as “A good and wise king, capable of subduing neighboring peoples making use of persuasion and force from time to time”. Around 1500 BC a tribe called the
Oenotri ("vine-cultivators"), settled in the region. Ancient sources state they were
Greeks who were led to the region by their king,
Oenotrus. However it is believed they were an ancient Italic people who spoke an Italic language. During the eighth and seventh centuries BC, Greek settlers founded many colonies (settlements) on the coast of southern Italy. In Calabria they founded Chone (
Pallagorio), Cosentia (
Cosenza), Clampetia (
Amantea),
Scyllaeum (
Scilla),
Sybaris (
Sibari),
Hipponion (
Vibo Valentia),
Epizephyrian Locris (
Locri),
Kaulon (
Monasterace),
Krimisa (
Cirò Marina),
Kroton (Crotone),
Laüs (
comune of
Santa Maria del Cedro),
Medma (
Rosarno),
Metauros (
Gioia Tauro),
Petelia (
Strongoli),
Rhégion (
Reggio Calabria),
Scylletium (
Borgia),
Temesa (
Campora San Giovanni),
Terina (
Nocera Terinese),
Pandosia (
Acri) and
Thurii, (Thurio,
comune of
Corigliano Calabro). In the year 744 B.C. a group of
Chalcidian settlers founded the city of Rhegion (today Reggio Calabria) at the southern end of the Calabrian peninsula. Soon after, again the Chalcidans founded
Zancle (current Messina) on the other side of the strait, securing their dominion over that arm of the sea. Later Chalcidian settlers from Rhegion and Zancle would found
Metauros (Gioia Tauro), divided the
river of the same name (today
Petrace) from the Italic city of the Tauri. In 710 B.C. Ionian colonists founded
Sybaris on the fertile plain of the same name at the mouth of the
Crati. From this colony would later originate the founding of
Paestum (in
Lucania),
Lao (at the mouth of the
river of the same name) and Scidros (between
Cetraro and
Belvedere Marittimo). Ionian colonies were (in the area between
Amantea and
San Lucido),
Temesa (between Amantea and
Nocera Terinese),
Terina (in the plain of
Sant'Eufemia),
Krimisa (
Cirò Marina), Petelia (
Strongoli). Through
Alcmaeon of Croton (a philosopher and medical theorist) and
Pythagoras (a mathematician and philosopher), who moved to Kroton in 530 BC, the city became a renowned center of philosophy, science and medicine. The Greeks of
Sybaris created "Intellectual Property." The Sybarites founded at least 20 other colonies, including Poseidonia (
Paestum in Latin, on the
Tyrrhenian coast of Lucania),
Laüs (on the border with Lucania) and
Scidrus (on the Lucanian coast in the
Gulf of Taranto).
Locri was renowned for being the town where
Zaleucus created the first Western Greek law, the "Locrian Code" and the birthplace of ancient epigrammist and poet
Nossis. The Greek cities of Calabria came under pressure from the
Lucanians who conquered the north of Calabria and pushed further south, taking over part of the interior, probably after they defeated the
Thurians near Laus in 390 BC. A few decades later the
Bruttii took advantage of the weakening of the Greek cites caused by wars between them and took over Hipponium,
Terina and Thurii. The Bruttii helped the Lucanians fight
Alexander of Epirus (334–32 BC), who had come to the aid of
Tarentum (in
Apulia), which was also pressured by the Lucanians. After this,
Agathocles of Syracuse ravaged the coast of Calabria with his fleet, took Hipponium and forced the Bruttii into unfavourable peace terms. However, they soon seized Hipponium again. After Agathloces' death in 289 BC the Lucanians and Bruttii pushed into the territory of Thurii and ravaged it. The city sent envoys to Rome to ask for help in 285 BC and 282 BC. On the second occasion, the Romans sent forces to garrison the city. This was part of the episode which sparked the Pyrrhic war. With the passage of time the name Italy was consolidated in common usage beginning to define the inhabitants of the city-states of the
Mezzogiorno first as
Italiotes, then
Italics with the arrival of the
Romans, who would later include
Cisalpine Gaul.
Romanization ,
Sybaris At the beginning of the 3rd century BC the cities of southern Italy, which had been allies of the Samnites, were still independent but inevitably came into conflict as a result of Rome's continuous expansion as their expansion in central and northern Italy had not been sufficient to provide new arable lands they needed.
Pyrrhic War Between 280 and 275 BC the Tarentine War was fought between
Rome and
Taranto. The latter sought help from
Pyrrhus, king of
Epirus, who in 280, together with his allies, the Bruttians and Lucanians, defeated the Romans at the
Battle of Heraclea, thanks to the use of elephants. But Pyrrhus was later defeated by the Romans at Maluentum (current
Benevento) in 275 and retreated to Sicily, where
Syracuse needed help against the Carthaginians. Transiting through Calabria, Pyrrhus' army is said to have sacked the shrine of
Persephone in Locri, running - it is said - into the wrath of the gods. This, combined with the fact that Rome had formed alliances with some of the last poleis of Magna Graecia, including Reggio, caused Pyrrhus to return home. Rome subjugated southern Italy by means of treaties with the cities.
Punic Wars Between 264 and 251 BC the
First Punic War was fought in Sicily, between Rome and Carthage, which would end with the creation of the
Roman province of Sicily. Following the Carthaginian provocation with the
siege of Saguntum,
Spain, the
Second Punic War broke out in 217 BC. The Carthaginian general
Hannibal, after taking Saguntum and
Marseille, crossed the
Alps and defeated the Romans at the
Trebbia River, the
Ticino River,
Lake Trasimeno, and in 216 BC at
Cannae in Apulia. and Calabria was put under a military commander.
Roman era Nearly a decade after the war, the Romans set up colonies in Calabria: at Tempsa and Kroton (Croto in Latin) in 194 BC, Copiae in the territory of Thurii (Thurium in Latin) in 193 BC, and Vibo Valentia in the territory of Hipponion in 192 BC. Starting in the third century BC, the name
Calabria was given to the Adriatic coast of the
Salento peninsula in modern
Apulia. From 186 B.C., repression of the
Bacchanalia, and of the Greek cult of
Bacchus, is triggered throughout Magna Graecia as part of a plan to Romanize southern Italy. Emperor
Trajan will have the
Via Traiana opened during his rule, which is roughly traced by the old State Road 18 Tirrena halfway up the coast. The most well-known of them was the
Codex Grandior which was the ancestor of all modern western Bibles. Cassiodorus was at the heart of the administration of the Ostrogothic kingdom. Theodoric made him quaestor sacri palatii (quaestor of the sacred palace, the senior legal authority) in 507, governor of Lucania and Bruttium, consul in 514 and magister officiorum (master of offices, one of the most senior administrative officials) in 523. He was praetorian prefect (chief minister) under the successors of Theodoric: under Athalaric (Theodoric's grandson, reigned 526–34) in 533 and, between 535 and 537, under Theodahad (Theodoric's nephew, reigned 534–36) and Witiges (Theodoric's grandson-in-law, reigned, 536–40). The major works of Cassiodorus, besides the mentioned bibles, were the Historia Gothorum, a history of the Goths, the Variae and account of his administrative career and the Institutiones divinarum et saecularium litterarum, an introduction to the study of the sacred scriptures and the liberal arts which was very influential in the Middle Ages.
Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Emperor Justinian I, retook Italy from the Ostrogoths between 535 and 556. They soon lost much of Italy to the
Lombards between 568 and 590, but retained the south for around 500 years until 1059–1071, where they thrived and where the Greek language was the official and vernacular language. In Calabria and towns such as
Stilo and
Rossano and
San Demetrio Corone achieved great religious status. From the 7th Century many monasteries were built in the Amendolea and Stilaro Valleys and Stilo was the destination of hermits and Basilian monks. Many Byzantine churches are still seen in the region. The 10th-century church in Rossano, together with the "twin" church of Sant'Adriano in San Demetrio Corone (foundation 955, rebuilt by the
Normans on the, still, visible foundations of the previous Byzantine church), are considered between the best preserved Byzantine churches in Italy. They were both built by St.
Nilus the Younger as a retreat for the monks who lived in the tufa grottos underneath. The present name of Calabria comes from the duchy of Calabria. Around the year 800,
Saracens began invading the shores of Calabria, attempting to wrest control of the area from the Byzantines. This group of
Arabs had already been successful
in Sicily and knew that Calabria was another key spot. The people of Calabria retreated into the mountains for safety. Although the Arabs never really got a stronghold on the whole of Calabria, they did control some villages while enhancing trade relations with the eastern world. In 918, Saracens captured
Reggio (which was renamed
Rivà), holding many of its inhabitants to ransom or keeping them prisoners as slaves. It is during this time of Arab invasions that many staples of today's Calabrian cuisine came into fashion:
Citrus fruits and
eggplants for example. Exotic spices such as cloves and nutmeg were also introduced. Under the Byzantine dominion, between the end of the 9th and the beginning of the 10th century, Calabria was one of the first regions of Italy to introduce silk production to Europe. According to André Guillou,
mulberry trees for the production of raw silk were introduced to southern Italy by the Byzantines at the end of the ninth century. Around 1050 the theme of Calabria had 24,000, mulberry trees cultivated for their foliage, and their number tended to expand. At the beginning of the tenth century (), the city of Catanzaro was occupied by the Muslim
Saracens, who founded an
emirate and took the Arab name of قطنصار – Qaṭanṣār. An Arab presence is evidenced by findings at an eighth-century necropolis which had items with Arabic inscriptions. Around the year 1050, Catanzaro rebelled against Saracen dominance and returned to a brief period of Byzantine control. In the 1060s the
Normans, under the leadership of
Robert Guiscard's brother,
Roger I of Sicily, established a presence in this
borderland, and organized a government modeled on the Eastern Roman Empire and was run by the local magnates of Calabria. Of note is that the Normans established their presence here, in southern Italy (namely Calabria), 6 years prior to their conquest of England, (see
The Battle of Hastings). The purpose of this strategic presence in Calabria was to lay the foundations for the Crusades 30 years later, and for the creation of two Kingdoms: the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and the Kingdom of Sicily. Ships would sail from Calabria to the Holy Land. This made Calabria one of the richest regions in Europe as princes from the noble families of England, France and other regions, constructed secondary residences and palaces here, on their way to the Holy Land. Guiscard's son
Bohemond, who was born in
San Marco Argentano, would be one of the leaders in the first crusade. Of particular note is the
Via Francigena, an ancient pilgrim route that goes from Canterbury to Rome and southern Italy, reaching Calabria, Basilicata and Apulia, where the crusaders lived, prayed and trained, respectively. In 1098,
Roger I of Sicily was named the equivalent of an apostolic legate by
Pope Urban II. His son
Roger II of Sicily later became the first
King of Sicily and formed what would become the
Kingdom of Sicily, which lasted nearly 700 years. Under the Normans southern Italy was united as one region and started a feudal system of land ownership in which the Normans were made lords of the land while peasants performed all the work on the land. In 1147, Roger II of Sicily attacked
Corinth and
Thebes, two important centers of Byzantine silk production, capturing the weavers and their equipment and establishing his own silkworks in Calabria, thereby causing the Norman silk industry to flourish. In 1194,
Frederick II, took control of the region, after inheriting the Kingdom from his mother
Constance, Queen of Sicily. He created a kingdom that blended cultures, philosophy and customs and would build several castles, while fortifying existing ones which the Normans previously constructed. After the death of Frederick II in 1250, Calabria was controlled by the
Capetian House of Anjou, under the rule of
Charles d’Anjou after being granted the crown of the Sicilian Kingdom by
Pope Clement IV. In 1282, under Charles d’Anjou, Calabria became a domain of the newly created
Kingdom of Naples, and no longer of the Kingdom of Sicily, after he lost Sicily due to the rebellion of the
Sicilian Vespers.
Waldensian emigration in Calabria The settlement in the land of Calabria of
Waldensian peoples from the valleys bordering the
Western Alps - predominantly the
Germanasca,
Chisone and
Pellice valleys - might have taken place in the Swabian period, in the 13th century, although it spread mainly from the first half of the 14th century. Historian Pierre Gilles, author in 1644 of A History of the Reformed Churches, recounts how in 1315 some landowners in Calabria offered the Waldensians land to cultivate, in exchange for an annual fee, with the power to establish communities there free of feudal obligations. This would have favored the founding, or repopulation, of numerous urban centers, such as San Sisto and La Guardia (now called
Guardia Piemontese because of its Waldensian origins), inhabited mainly by Waldensians, thus giving rise to a linguistic island in central Calabria, where the most common dialect is
Occitan, a dialect typical of the
Aosta Valley and northern
Piedmont. Here the Waldensian community would live until the second half of the 16th century, when, during the
European wars of religion between
Catholics and
Protestants, the Waldensians adhered to the
Lutheran faith, suffering persecution by the
Spanish viceroyal authorities.
Early modern period In the 15th century,
Catanzaro was exporting both its silk cloth and its technical skills to neighbouring
Sicily. By the middle of the century, silk spinning was taking place in Catanzaro, on a large scale. In the 15th century, Catanzaro's silk industry supplied almost all of Europe and was sold at large fairs to Spanish,
Venetian, Genoan,
Florentine, and
Dutch merchants. Catanzaro became Europe's silk capital with a large silkworm farm that produced all the lace used in the
Vatican. The city was famous for its manufacture of silks,
velvets,
damasks and
brocades. In 1519, Emperor
Charles V formally recognized the growth of Catanzaro's silk industry, allowing the city to establish a consulate of silk crafts, charged with regulating and controlling the various stages of a production that flourished throughout the 16th century. In 1466, King
Louis XI decided to develop a national silk industry in
Lyon and called a large number of Italian workers, mainly from Calabria. The fame of the master weavers of Catanzaro spread throughout France and they were invited to Lyon to teach the techniques of weaving. In 1470, one of these weavers, known in France as Jean Le Calabrais, invented the first prototype of a
Jacquard-type loom. He introduced a new kind of machine which was able to work the yarns faster and more precisely. Over the years, improvements to the loom were ongoing.
Charles V of Spain formally recognized the growth of the silk industry of
Catanzaro in 1519 by allowing the city to establish a consulate of the silk craft, charged with regulating and check in the various stages of a production that flourished throughout the sixteenth century. At the moment of the creation of its guild, the city declared that it had over 500
looms. By 1660, when the town had about 16,000 inhabitants, its silk industry kept 1,000 looms, and at least 5,000 people, busy. The silk textiles of Catanzaro were not only sold at the
kingdom's markets, they were also exported to Venice, France, Spain and England. This period also saw the migration of entire communities of
Albanians to many towns in northern Calabria, called by the king of Naples himself in recognition of the services that the Albanian leader
Gjergj Kastrioti Skanderbeg had rendered to the crown against the Angevins. After 1478 the sovereign allowed these refugees fleeing from the Turkish advance in Albania after Skanderbeg's demise to occupy abandoned villages for the purpose of repopulating them, also granting them numerous royal privileges and franchises: hence the
Arbëreshë community was born. After the relative pacification, Calabria followed the historical and political events of the
Kingdom of Naples, also becoming the scene of struggles between the great powers of the time, France and Spain, for territorial control of the Italian peninsula. For example, on June 28, 1495, the
Battle of Seminara, north of Reggio Calabria, took place, where French troops that had occupied the Kingdom of Naples beat the Hispano-Napolitan army under the command of
Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba and
Ferdinand II of Naples, who, however, managed to take revenge and drive out the French the following year. A few years later, in 1502, Córdoba himself conquered Reggio, subjecting it to the rule of the Ferdinand II. From then on, Calabria was placed under Spanish rule for two centuries and was administratively divided into two parts: and , initially governed by a single governor, then, from 1582, by two separate officials. The administrative capital of Calabria Citeriore was Cosenza, which during the 16th century went through an impressive artistic and humanistic flowering, so much so that it was called the “
Athens of Calabria”. In fact, the city, in addition to being, until 1557, one of the most important cities of the realm in the head of law, became, after Naples, the second city to have a school of cartography, while in 1511 the
Accademia Cosentina was born, founded by
Aulo Giano Parrasio, followed by the philosopher
Bernardino Telesio, defined by
Francis Bacon as the first of the "new men". Instead, Calabria Ulteriore had two different administrative headquarters: the first was Reggio Calabria, which held the role of capital for 12 years, from 1582 to 1594, losing it due to
Turkish raids that sacked it several times; for this reason, from 1594 the seat of the administrative offices of the governorate was transferred to Catanzaro, which maintained this role for more than 220 years. In 1602 philosopher and poet
Tommaso Campanella wrote his most famous work, "
The City of the Sun" and would later defend Galileo Galilei during his first trial with his work "A Defense of Galileo", which was written in 1616 and published in 1622. In 1613 philosopher and economist
Antonio Serra wrote "A Short Treatise on the Wealth and Poverty of Nations" and was a pioneer in the Mercantilist tradition. Calabria was important to the Spanish monarchs since the reign of
Emperor Charles V of Habsburg, who also held the title of King of Naples, as when the sovereign granted numerous royal privileges to the city of Catanzaro, which had valiantly resisted on August 28, 1528, the siege by a French army supported by some Calabrian and Apulian nobles of
Francophile tendencies. In gratitude, Charles V granted the city the right to use the imperial eagle as its symbol, exempted it from royal tributes and gave it the power to mint coins worth one carlin. In addition, the emperor personally visited the region in 1535 on his return from the victorious capture of
Tunis, where, at the command of a fleet of as many as 500 ships, he had defeated the
Ottoman army and freed 20,000 Christian slaves. After the African conquest, Charles V landed in Sicily and then in Calabria, where, having passed
Aspromonte, he visited
Nicastro,
Martirano,
Carpanzano,
Rogliano, Tessano and Cosenza. From here the monarch passed through
Bisignano,
Castrovillari and
Laino, and then continued on to Naples. During Spanish rule in Calabria, many towns tried to defend themselves from Saracen raids, for example Gioja (current
Gioia Tauro), which was fortified with city walls reinforced by watchtowers to defend against incursions. Several Calabrian cities such as
Palmi (where the Saracen Tower still stands today) and Reggio Calabria were fortified with towers. by
Pope Clement XII transferred from San Benedetto Ullano to
San Demetrio Corone in 1794. . In 1783, a series of
earthquakes across Calabria caused around 50,000 deaths and much damage to property, so that many of the buildings in the region were rebuilt after this date. Following the
War of the Spanish Succession, the Kingdom of Naples passed in 1707 to
Austria, whose Emperor
Charles VI of Habsburg also became King of Naples: the
Habsburgs, while ruling for a short period, sought to modernize the political structures of the kingdom. In 1733, after the outbreak of the
War of Polish Succession, the Spanish
Bourbons, allies of France against Austria, decided to attack Naples and secure that kingdom for
Charles VII,
infante of Spain and son of
Philip V of Spain. Charles, who entered Naples in 1734, succeeded in defeating the Austrian troops at the
Battle of Bitonto, securing control of the kingdom, despite some pockets of resistance, one of which was Reggio Calabria, which fell on June 20, 1734. But after the
Battle of Velletri in 1744, in which King Charles VII repelled an Austrian invasion of the realm, the Austrian party disappeared, also decimated by the trials and inquisitions of the Bourbon authorities. established on June 4, 1784 the , a governmental body that was to manage the funds derived from the expropriation of abolished ecclesiastical property and monasteries and then devolve them into the reconstruction works; in reality it was the wealthy landowners, members of the nascent agrarian bourgeoisie in search of social climbing, who grabbed the best land at the best price, to the detriment of the baronage and local clergy. protecting the Christian and Royal Army, with Cardinal Fabrizio Ruffo on horseback, during its advance and fighting The new republican regime, however, did not consolidate well among the popular strata of the Mezzogiorno, especially in Calabria, where only Cosenza, Catanzaro and Crotone adhered to the republican cause, while the large Ionian centers and the area opposite the Sicilian coast, such as Reggio Calabria, Scilla,
Bagnara and Palmi, remained loyal to the Bourbons. This boded well for the Bourbon royals, in exile in Palermo, that they would be able to regain the kingdom in a short time: so Ferdinand gladly accepted Cardinal
Fabrizio Ruffo's proposal to mobilize the peasant masses of Calabria under the name of the king and religion, form an army and recapture Naples. Having received, on February 7, 1799, the title of “Vicar of the King”, Cardinal Ruffo landed the next day in Calabria, recruiting the first ranks in the family fiefs of Scilla and Bagnara. Soon Ruffo's army, dubbed the
Army of the Holy Faith because it marched under the banners of the Church and the throne, grew to 25,000 men, to which were added bands of brigands, stragglers, deserters. With these men the cardinal succeeded in conquering Paola and Crotone, which were strenuously opposed and cruelly sacked, despite Ruffo's attempts to prevent the looting and violence, and then succeeded, in only four months, in reconquering the entire Kingdom of Naples, granting, in June 1799 an honorable surrender to the last Neapolitan Jacobins barricaded at
Fort Saint Elmo. However, it was not respected by either the Bourbon rulers or Admiral
Horatio Nelson, who, reneging on the terms of surrender, had 124 Neapolitan revolutionaries hanged, depriving Ruffo of his command.
French interlude and the Bourbon restoration After regaining the throne, however, King Ferdinand was unable to consolidate his newly regained power, so much so that in 1806, faced with a new French invasion by
Napoleon Bonaparte's troops, he again had to take refuge in Palermo, under the protection of the
British navy, while the Kingdom of Naples was entrusted by Napoleon to his older brother
Joseph Bonaparte. However, numerous outbreaks of legitimist revolts did not mar in the continental Mezzogiorno, such as in Calabria, where a full-fledged popular insurrection, known as the Calabrian Insurrection, broke out, carried out by brigands, peasants and stragglers from the Bourbon army, supported also by British military units that had landed in the region. In order to tame the revolt, which lasted three years, it was necessary to commit substantial forces and two of the best French generals,
André Masséna and
Jean Maximilien Lamarque, who also employed cruel and ruthless means, such as the right of reprisal against entire villages that flanked the brigands and sung the Bourbon, as in the case of the massacre of
Lauria, perpetrated by Massena's soldiers. In spite of this, the period of Napoleonic rule caused great innovations and upheavals on the social and economic level: in fact, on August 2, 1806, Joseph Bonaparte decreed the subversion of feudalism, thus abolishing baronial jurisdictions, feudal-like personal benefits, and prohibitory rights, i.e., monopolies on certain productive activities. Lands and property put into liquidation and opened for commercial exploitation by the French government were purchased by members of the new agrarian bourgeoisie, which was beginning to gain increasing political clout. This was accompanied by an administrative division of the Kingdom, which by decree of Dec. 8, 1806, was divided into districts and boroughs: Calabria retained the division of the two provinces of “Citeriore,” whose capital remained in Cosenza, and “Ulteriore,”” which instead had Monteleone assigned as its administrative seat in place of Catanzaro, both because of its relative ease of communication and military necessity. Both Calabrian provinces, presided over by an intendant, were divided into four districts, placed under the jurisdiction of their respective sub-districts, which in turn were divided into districts, each of which grouped a certain number of municipalities. In 1810 there was a dynastic change on the throne of Naples: instead of Joseph Bonaparte, placed by the emperor his brother to rule newly conquered Spain,
Joachim Murat, Napoleon's brother-in-law as the husband of his sister
Caroline Bonaparte, became king of Naples. The new king resumed with more vigor the process of social and economic modernization of his new kingdom: he profoundly reformed the tax system, replacing the Bourbon tax levies such as the
testatico, the
focatico and the ''tassa d'industria'', with a single direct land tax that was levied on land ownership; from 1811 he initiated government inquiries to learn about the living conditions of rural populations, while in the economic sphere he showed an interest in the exploitation of mineral resources, as in the case of the mines connected to the
Mongiana ironworks in the Serre. In the years that followed, before the outbreak of the
revolutions of 1848, Calabria was the scene of numerous insurrectional uprisings of the liberal and
Mazzinian kind, all of which were suppressed by the Bourbon regime. The protagonists were both patriots from other parts of Italy, such as the Venetian
Bandiera brothers, who had arrived in 1844 to lend support to the aborted Cosenza revolt, only to be betrayed by one of their comrades and captured by the Bourbon gendarmerie, which shot them in August of that year in
Rovito after a summary trial, and Calabrians such as the (, , , and
Rocco Verduci), who in 1847 tried to make the
Gerace district rise up as part of the Mazzinian uprising in Reggio Calabria and Messina on Sept. 2, 1847, being shot after the suppression of the liberal uprising. Through King Francesco II of Naples had dispatched 16,000 soldiers to stop the Redshirts, who numbered about 3,500, after a token battle at Reggio Calabria won by the Redshirts, all resistance ceased and Garibaldi was welcomed as a liberator from the oppressive rule of the Bourbons wherever he went in Calabria. Subsequently, King Victor Emmanuel II decided the possibility of war with France was too dangerous, and on 29 August 1862 Garibaldi's base in the Calabrian town of
Aspromonte was attacked by the
Regio Esercito. The
Battle of Aspromonte ended with the Redshirts defeated with several being executed after surrendering while Garibaldi was badly wounded. Here, on August 29, Garibaldi's volunteers were attacked by a military column commanded by Colonel : after a brief firefight in which there were casualties on both sides (7 dead and 20 wounded for the Garibaldini, 5 dead and 23 wounded for the regular soldiers), Garibaldi, who wanted to avoid the clash, ordered a cease-fire. Also wounded in the left ankle bone, he surrendered to Pallavicini, who had him transported to Scilla and then to Paola, where he was embarked on a military ship, the , and transported to
La Spezia, where he was imprisoned in the
Varignano fortress. Although he was later amnestied, the affair caused a political earthquake in Italy, culminating in Rattazzi's resignation as head of government and accusations against the King that he had deluded Garibaldi about the feasibility of carrying out the enterprise, only to abandon it when things got complicated. As far as Calabria was concerned, the law was applied in the provinces of Calabria Citeriore and Calabria Ulteriore Seconda, while the Reggio area was exempted, as was the area around Naples and part of Apulia, as the situation in these territories was under control. The Pica law remained in force until December 31, 1865, and contributed to eradicating the phenomenon of banditry, albeit with repressive methods and without providing a substantial answer to the many social and economic problems of the southern territories. In the newly unified Kingdom of Italy, there were significant differences in level of economic development between the
Nord (north) of Italy and the
Mezzogiorno (the south of Italy). Calabria together with the rest of the
Mezzogiorno was neglected under the Kingdom of Italy with the general feeling in Rome being that the region was hopelessly backward and poor. In the late 19th century about 70% of the population of the
Mezzogiorno were illiterate as the government never invested in education for the south. Owing to the
Roman Question, until 1903 the Roman Catholic Church had prohibited on the pain of excommunication Catholic men from voting in Italian elections (Italian women were not granted the right to vote until 1946). As the devoutly Catholic population of Calabria tended to boycott elections, the deputies who were elected from the region were the products of the clientistic system, representing the interests of the land-owning aristocracy. In common with the deputies from other regions of the
Mezzogiorno, they voted against more money for education under the grounds that an educated population would demand changes that would threaten the power of the traditional elite. Between 1901 and 1914 Calabrians began emigrating in large numbers, mostly for North America and South America, with the peak year being 1905 with 62,690. On 28 December 1908, Calabria together with Sicily was devastated by an
earthquake and then by a tsunami caused by the earthquake, causing about 80,000 deaths. Within hours of the disaster, ships of the
British and Russian navies had arrived on the coast to assist the survivors, but it took the
Regia Marina two days to send a relief expedition from Naples. Most notably, after the king took charge of the relief efforts, the feuding between officials ceased and relief aid was delivered with considerably more efficiency, winning Victor Emmanuel the gratitude of the Calabrians. In addition, during the
Strafexpedition of June 1916, the 141st Brigade Regiment lost 38 percent of its components, with 333 casualties. '' dedicated to the Catanzaro Brigade In addition to being one of the most committed Italian military units decorated for valor during the conflict, the Catanzaro Brigade was also the first to trigger the only episode of open rebellion on the Italian front, which occurred in June 1917: the cause was the order to return immediately to the trenches despite the fact that the Calabrian soldiers had just been sent to the rear for a rest period. Many soldiers from some companies of the 142nd Regiment began a revolt against the officers, killing three of them along with four carabinieri. Having quelled the rebellion with the help of departments of cavalry, mobile artillery and carabinieri, the General Staff decided on the decimation of the Brigade, as a warning for possible uprisings: 28 soldiers were thus shot, while the survivors were sent back to the front line under armed escort. After the conclusion of the conflict with the
armistice of Villa Giusti on November 3, 1918, the demobilization of the ex-combatants, mostly of peasant extraction, to whom, during the war, had been promised the allocation of land derived from the fractionation of large estates, began. The lack of political will in the implementation of this promise, together with creeping nationalistic tensions in the country due to the
Fiume and
Dalmatian question, generated in Italy a climate of resentment and social unrest, which turned into strikes, nationalistic anti-government demonstrations and occupations of uncultivated land by the peasants in revolt, often organized in leagues or federations of different political coloring. For these reasons, on Sept. 2, 1919, the Italian government, headed by Francesco Saverio Nitti, issued the (named after the Minister of Agriculture, ), which gave prefects the power to temporarily assign uncultivated land for a period of four years to peasants formed in legally constituted leagues or agrarian bodies. A permit issued by a committee composed equally of peasant and landowner representatives, under prefectorial control, was required to obtain the land assignment, which also stipulated the duration of occupation and the rental price to be paid by the peasants to the landowner. However, seven months after the decree was passed, the land redistribution had very limited effects: it is estimated that only 27,000 hectares were allocated: many scholars have argued that the government measure was not intended to revive agricultural production, but rather to provide a pardon for the numerous occupations of uncultivated land by peasants. The Visocchi Decree was widely criticized by both conservatives and socialists:
Arrigo Serpieri, later minister of agriculture in the
Fascist period, judged the measure “one of the most infamous of the postwar period”, while socialist
Filippo Turati deemed it too “timid”. The 1920 parliamentary elections saw the affirmation of nationalist candidates, elected thanks to the decisive support of ex-combatants (Saraceni himself would be beaten in his Castrovillari constituency in favor of the candidate supported by veterans from the front), while the
Italian Socialist Party, while becoming the country's leading political force with as many as 156 deputies in Parliament, found itself internally divided between the maximalist current, advocating anti-bourgeois revolution, and the reformist current, in favor of dialogue with the government to push forward social reforms. This irreconcilable opposition led first to the expulsion of the reformists, such as Turati and Bissolati (who would go on to found the
Unitary Socialist Party), then to the split that took place at the
Livorno Congress in 1921, a fact that led to the birth of the
Communist Party of Italy (which later evolved into the
Italian Communist Party). In the same year the
National Fascist Party was officially founded by
Benito Mussolini, a former socialist expelled from the party for his interventionist positions on the eve of World War I, from an evolution of the earlier
Fasci di Combattimento, founded in
Milan in 1919 on the basis of an initially revolutionary and nationalist program. The aversion to socialism took concrete form in the assault by the fascist squads, the armed wing of the movement, on newspapers, cooperatives and party headquarters, whose exponents were truncheoned and forced to drink a strong purgative, castor oil. The squadrism was immediately financed by the large industrial groups and agrarians, fearful of a possible
Bolshevik revolution in Italy, in the wake of the so-called
biennio rosso, and was often not countered by the police, who on more than one occasion sided with the fascists. Subsequently, on October 4, 1922, at the inauguration of the Casignana Fascio, which was also attended by
Giuseppe Bottai, shots were fired, while a rifle shot wounded a fascist who was part of his entourage in the arm. In retaliation, the squadrists ravaged the house of the president of the “Garibaldi” cooperative, while the Carabinieri arrested a dozen antifascists. The penetration of fascism into Calabrian society was similar to that which took place in the rest of the country: in the city areas, the promoters of the fasces were the merchants and industrialists, who procured the support of the forces of law and order for the squadracce; in the rural areas, on the other hand, the backbone of fascism was represented by the large landowners and village notables, who decided to join the new party in order to weaken the “red” organizations and to maintain their socioeconomic position. In the morning, the people of Reggio Calabria learned that Mussolini was still prime minister, but several Fascist officials were dismissed for not suppressing the celebrations. The landed aristocracy and gentry of Calabria, through generally not ideologically committed to Fascism, saw the Fascist regime as a force for order and social stability, and supported the dictatorship. Likewise, the prefects and the policemen of Calabria were conservatives who saw themselves as serving King Victor Emmanuel III first and Mussolini second, but supported Fascism as preferable to Socialism and Communism and persecuted anti-Fascists. In spite of this, conditions in Calabria under the Fascist regime had not improved, as evidenced by the surveys conducted by
meridionalists (and
antifascists)
Umberto Zanotti Bianco and in 1928 and reported in the work '''', where they analyze the social and economic conditions of
Africo, a small village in Aspromonte: nestled on houses ruined by the previous 1908 earthquake and geographically isolated, it was plagued by disease, high infant mortality and indiscriminate taxation, lacking a doctor and school (classes were held in the teacher's bedroom), while the inhabitants ate bread made from lentils and chickpeas. Despite the government's desire to maintain the “rural” character of the country, with the introduction of restrictions and disincentives to peasants and laborers to move to the city, urban areas also experienced development, as demonstrated by the '''' project, that is, the idea of urban expansion and amalgamation strongly desired by the first Reggio podestà, , who succeeded in obtaining the merger to the city on the Strait of as many as fourteen neighboring municipalities and suburbs, such as
Catona, Gallico, ,
Podàrgoni, , Gallina,
Pellaro, ,
Villa San Giovanni,
Campo Calabro, and
Fiumara; the last four, by government decree of January 26, 1933, broke away to form the municipality of Villa San Giovanni (Campo Calabro and Fiumara became autonomous again after the war). The urban population thus exceeded 100,000. The reasons for this conurbation were many: there was a desire to speed up the post-earthquake reconstruction that the war had blocked, to make trade and communication by sea easier because of the city's expansion along the coast, and to entice emigration from small mountain towns into a single large urban center. Moreover, between the 1920s and 1930s Reggio Calabria was modernized with the construction of new neighborhoods: in fact, social housing districts sprang up and several public facilities such as the new
Reggio di Calabria Centrale railway station, the
National Museum of Magna Graecia and the were built. Other cities also benefited from the building policy of the Fascist regime: in fact, through the work of Minister of Public Works
Luigi Razza, the town of Monteleone di Calabria (renamed by royal decree Vibo Valentia, a name it still retains today), his place of origin, had a new municipal palace, inaugurated in 1935; after his death in the same year from a plane crash, his town paid tribute to him with a bronze statue, the work of sculptor Francesco Longo, inaugurated by the Duce himself in 1939. Vibo Valentia also named its military airport, stadium, a square and a street in the historic center after Luigi Razza. The camps which operated from 1938 to 1943 were not death camps, and the majority of those imprisoned survived, but conditions were harsh for the imprisoned. On June 10, 1940, with Italy's declaration of war on France and the
United Kingdom, Calabria also found itself involved in the events of World War II: the civilian population suffered from the first period of the war from starvation and undernourishment, due to the lack of labor, low wages and the increase in basic necessities, which were already scarce and rationed, while other foodstuffs, such as meat and sugar, could only be found on the black market, at triple the price. This was also taken advantage of by the large landowners, who, taking advantage of the wartime period, ambushed part of the crops, which were destined for storage, later reselling them on the black market. Allied aerial bombardments also sapped the morale of civilians, sometimes even claiming some excellent victims: on January 31, 1943, the archbishop of Reggio Calabria, , was one of 11 people killed during an strafing run by an Allied fighter-bomber while Montalbetti was on a pastoral visit to Melito di Porto Salvo. However, the landings in Calabria were a feint and the main Allied blow came on 8 September 1943 with the landing of the American 5th Army at
Salerno in Campania that was intended to cut off Axis forces in the
Mezzogiorno. The Germans anticipated that the Allies would land at Salerno, and as a consequence, there was relatively little fighting in Calabria. On the same day the Americans landed at Salerno, General
Dwight Eisenhower announced on the radio the
Armistice of Cassibile that had been signed on 3 September, and with the announcement of the armistice all Italian resistance ceased. In June 1944, celebrations in Reggio Calabria over the news of the liberation of Rome were disturbed by local Fascists. caused by an extremely backward agricultural sector, an industry in its “infantile state,” sparsely spread and crippled by the long and catastrophic conflict (the power plants in Sila were safe even if “the mass of electricity is partly transported elsewhere” as in the Fascist period), civil infrastructures, such as roads and aqueducts in themselves shoddy and insufficient, which had always connoted the backward degree of development and now appeared even more reduced and precarious due to the war outcomes. Gullo, who became the “Minister of the Peasants”, achieved two important results: the southern peasants' awareness of the state's non-stranger status to their problems and the realization by the laborers of their own strength if they acted united in cooperatives, in which all worked for the common goal. Thanks in part to cooperation with the trade unions, especially
Giuseppe Di Vittorio's
Italian General Confederation of Labour, Gullo's reform efforts were revived with two other decrees, concerning the taxable labor rate and placement lists: with the former, the trade unions were empowered to dictate the number of laborers who were to work a landowner's farmland, while with the latter, trade unionists could manage the placement of the men needed for laboring on the basis of seniority. With these measures they were at least able to avoid the war between the poor and make the union feel on the side of the peasants. The Communists thought of supporting revolutionary attempts that had their own origins in these social and economic demands, following instead the strategy of Secretary
Palmiro Togliatti, who preferred a slow transaction toward democracy together with Christian Democrat leader
Alcide De Gasperi to revolution. This was the case of the
Red Republic of Caulonia, proclaimed on March 6, 1945, by Pasquale Cavallaro, mayor of
Caulonia, a town where the clash between agrarians and laborers had been increasingly bitter since January 1944, when he had been appointed to the post by the prefect of Reggio Calabria, despite his communist faith, in place of Pasquale Saverio Asciutti, who was strongly colluding with fascism. In order to maintain public order, Mayor Cavallaro had empowered members of the local partisan section, commanded by his son Ercole Cavallaro, to go around armed with police and search duties. Not infrequently these searches ended in violence against the most prominent members of fascism and the agrarian class. During one such operation against two landowners, Ercole, with two comrades, was arrested by the Carabinieri on charges of theft. The mayor immediately did his utmost to obtain his son's release, causing the outbreak of the revolt: on March 5, 1945, Cavallaro's loyalists freed Ercole, closed the access roads to Caulonia, occupied the post office, the telegraph office and the Carabinieri barracks, while the following day, they hoisted the red flag with hammer and sickle on the bell tower, proclaiming the Republic. The Communist Party was immediately made aware of the event by telegram. Each had differentiated tasks: the partisan section took care of the armed defense of the territory, the women assisted the men with provisions, and the communist members had to keep in touch with the party federation. The revolutionaries also established a “People's Tribunal,” which was based in the town square and had the power to try “enemies of the people,” while an internment camp was also set up where many local agrarians and notables were locked up. The revolutionary experience worried both the conservatives and the communist leaders themselves, who pressed Cavallaro to calm tempers and end the flaring revolution: the mayor then became spokesman for the rebels and convinced almost all of them to return home and lay down their arms, although the most diehard refused to surrender and went into hiding. Finally, on March 9, 1945, after only three days, everything came to an end: the prefect of Reggio Calabria sent departments of carabinieri and police to Caulonia, who arrested 365 men, who were referred to the Locri court for constitution of an armed gang, murder, violence to private individuals and usurpation of public office, while on April 15, 1945 Cavallaro resigned as mayor. The "institutional continuity" of the bureaucracy of Calabria were committed to preserving the social structure. During the Second World War, the already low living standards of Calabria declined further and the region was notorious as one of the most violent and lawless areas of Italy. Attempts by the peasants of Calabria to take over the land owned by the elite were usually resisted by the authorities. On 28 October 1949 in Melissa the police opened fire on peasants who had seized the land of a local baron, killing three men who were shot in the back as they attempted to flee. Between 1949 and 1966 another wave of migration took place with the peak year of migration being 1957 with some 38, 090 Calabrians leaving that year. A group of Calabrian Christian Democracy parliamentarians from the agrarian class went to Rome, protesting and asking Interior Minister Mario Scelba to use force against the demonstrators. Scelba then sent units of the
Mobile Units, mechanized riot police, to Calabria, which stopped at
Melissa, in the province of Crotone, where there was a large number of protesters, camped out on the Fragalà estate, owned by local landowner Baron . The fund, in fact, according to the subversion of feudality and the
Napoleonic laws of 1811 was supposed to be assigned to the municipality, but the Berlingeri family had usurped it in its entirety over the years: now the peasants claimed at least half of it as municipal property, but the baron, as a sign of accommodation, was willing to cede only a third, resulting in a clear refusal. So it was that, on Oct. 29, 1949, police, after intimidating the crowd of peasants to clear out, fired at eye level, resulting in 15 wounded and 3 dead: 15-year-old Giovanni Zito, 29-year-old Francesco Nigro, and 23-year-old Angelina Mauro, who died later in the hospital. This massacre, combined with that of
Portella della Ginestra, in Sicily, which took place on May 1, 1947, provoked a series of strikes and peasant demonstrations throughout Italy, repressed by the police. The continuing state of unrest, however, induced De Gasperi to pass the first agrarian reform measures, which, however, did not result in an overall reform, but in individual laws valid for specific territories: therefore, on May 12, 1950, the Sila Law was passed, which initially concerned the territory located in the eastern Sila, and provided for the expropriation of latifundia exceeding 300 hectares, lacking improvements or reclamation. These two clauses provided a legal loophole for the agrarians who did not want to lose their estates, as they could subdivide the latifundia among relatives or plant temporary improvements on them. In addition to this, the geographical area to be expropriated was predominantly mountainous and forested, and therefore unsuitable for cultivation. A real agrarian law valid for the whole country, partly financed by funds from the
Marshall Plan, was passed on October 21, 1950, with most of the conservative Christian Democracy current abstaining or voting against, supported also by conservative members of Harry Truman's administration. The reform, which according to some scholars was the most important of the entire post-
World War II period, proposed, through forced expropriation, the redistribution of land to farmworkers, thus making them de facto small businessmen no longer subject to the large landowner. While this was a beneficial result, it also greatly reduced the size of farms, thus removing any possibility of transforming them into advanced entrepreneurial vehicles. However, this negative element was mitigated and in some cases eliminated by forms of cooperation: in fact, agricultural cooperatives arose which, by scheduling production and centralizing the sale of products, gave agriculture the entrepreneurial character that had been lost with the division of land. Thus there was a better yield of crops, which from extensive became intensive and thus a better exploitation of the land used. Agricultural labor, which until then had been unprofitable though very heavy, began to bear fruit. However, as a result of the development of industry, agriculture ended up becoming a marginal sector of the economy, but as a result of the development of modern cultivation techniques, it saw the income produced per hectare cultivated and thus the profitability of labor multiply. It was during that period that Italian industry, thanks to the modernization of its industrial apparatus, achieved through the purchase and use of American technological skills and equipment financed by the Marshall Plan, achieved a remarkable rate of growth in production, so much so that in one decade it increased by up to 10 percent, leading to the economic and social transformation of Italy, which was transforming from a predominantly agricultural country into an industrial one. Those who benefited most were the large industrial complexes in northern Italy, which obtained most of the U.S. funding, while small and medium-sized enterprises, although they could not count on programmed interventions, also managed to emerge, thanks to their flexibility and ability to adapt to the market. In addition, the construction of roads and highways made the movement of people and goods faster, favored the production and employment of vehicles the various employment sectors, and profoundly affected the lifestyle of the population. However, this was also due to the process of mechanization of agriculture, which between 1954 and 1964 produced a contraction of the agricultural labor force in rural areas (from 8 million to 5 million). Such was the situation in Calabria, where there had also been an increase in population in a land that offered no employment outlets or opportunities for survival, a factor that fostered a strong emigration of labor from the region after the forced blockade during the years of the fascist regime. The causes of the increased flow of migration were many and stemmed from numerous shortcomings: the unstable hydrogeology of the land, the lack of infrastructure works, the inclemency of the climate and, above all, the very high unemployment and underemployment prevailing in the Calabrian labor scene. The Parliamentary Commission for the Study of Misery certified this state of affairs: in fact, the inquiry showed that 179,500 Calabrians (37.7 percent of the region's total population) lived in a state of misery. It was the highest percentage in the entire country, compared to 1.5 percent in the North, 5.9 percent in the Center and the Mezzogiorno itself, where the percentage of misery was around 28.3 percent. In the decade between 1951 and 1961 as many as 400,000 Calabrians emigrated to seek their fortune elsewhere, especially to America (such as Canada or the United States) or to the industrial cities of
Northern Italy, especially those concentrated in the
industrial triangle, which saw their population increase considerably, especially
Turin (+42.6 percent) and Milan (+24.1 percent). In addition to this outward trend, Calabrian emigration also had an interregional one, that is, of people moving from inland areas, often mountainous and hilly, to settle in coastal centers, which were better connected and closer to the main arteries of communication, where there were more job opportunities in construction, urban services and commercial activities. This resulted in the complete abandonment of inland rural areas, with hydrogeological effects that are still felt today, while the ancient mountain and hillside villages lost autonomy and identity, falling into an irreversible crisis. One example is the ancient medieval village of
Badolato Superiore, near
Soverato, which has become, according to anthropologist Vito Teti, the “metaphor of the abandonment, ruin, flight, and hope of all of Calabria, of the entire Mezzogiorno”. Under the First Republic, starting in the 1960s, investment plans were launched under which Italian state sponsored industrialisation and attempted to improve the infrastructure of Calabria by building modern roads, railroads, ports, etc. The plan was a notable failure with the infrastructure projects going wildly over-budget and taking far longer to complete then scheduled; for an example, construction started on the A3 highway in 1964 intended to link Reggio Calabria to Salerno, which was as of 2016 still unfinished. Local Calabrian contrasts and rivalries were also reflected at the national level, when, in 1963, in the
first Moro government, ministers and undersecretaries from Reggio Calabria and Catanzaro were excluded from the executive: the only Calabrians with institutional appointments were the Socialist
Giacomo Mancini (who became Minister of Health) and the Christian Democrat
Riccardo Misasi (holder of the Ministry of Grace and Justice), both originally from Cosenza. In addition, economically there were also numerous frictions between Cosenza, Catanzaro and Reggio Calabria, among other demographically diverse areas. On March 21, 1968, the Reggio Calabria City Council, which was considering the law establishing the region, voted on an agenda declaring that the city on the Strait should be the regional capital. Thus, to preserve city interests, the “Agitation Committee for the Defense of Reggio's Interests,” headed by Christian Democrat lawyer , was born. However, the law establishing the Regions, which came into effect in 1970, confirmed the 1949 decision by which the parliamentary investigation committee appointed by the House Institutional Affairs Committee, with the delivery of the report called “Donatini-Molinaroli,” determined that, based on historical and geopolitical parameters, Catanzaro was the capital of the Calabria Region. This situation, which reverberated in the local and regional elections, in which the minor secular leftist parties (social democrats and republicans) elected their first representatives, mainly in the provinces of Reggio and Cosenza, induced the city's mayor, Christian Democrat , to give, on July 5, 1970, a heartfelt speech in Piazza Duomo in front of 7,000 people, to claim the city's just right to be the regional capital. On July 12, the prodrome of the uprising began in the city, with the creation of the first roadblocks and numerous public demonstrations, while, on the same day, in Villa San Giovanni, Senate President
Amintore Fanfani, who had come to the city to collect an award, was harshly challenged by the crowd. In retaliation to Fanfani's indifference, the regional deputies from Reggio Calabria (5 Christian Democrats and 1 Socialist), deserted the regional council meeting scheduled for July 13, as opposed to the Communist representatives, who went instead. The uprising was also supported by newspapers of liberal-conservative tendency (such as the
Gazzetta del Sud and
Il Tempo), and by various intellectuals, who asserted the city's political and social claims. Gradually the leadership of the protests passed from Mayor Battaglia, who did not want to go too far, to the far-right movements, particularly the
Movimento Sociale Italiano, seen as the least compromised with the republican regime; soon the Missini imposed their authority on the uprising, including through various slogans (famous was the
boia chi molla of D'Annunzian memory).
Ciccio Franco, a CISNAL trade unionist and Reggio Calabria-based Missini exponent, emerged as the undisputed leader of the situation. At this point barricades were erected, the railway station was occupied and all convoys and ferries leaving for Sicily were blocked. In the first months of the uprising, moreover, there were 19 days of general strike, 12 bomb attacks, 32 roadblocks, 14 occupations of the station, 2 of the post office, 1 of the television station, and 4 assaults on the prefecture, with a death toll of 5 (in addition to Labate, Angelo Campanella, a driver for the city's municipal bus company, also perished in the clashes, Vincenzo Curigliano, a policeman struck by a heart attack during an assault on the Questura; Antonio Bellotti, a 19-year-old officer hit by a stone while leaving Reggio by train with his department; and Carmelo Jaconis, a bartender killed by a gunshot), 426 arrested and 200 wounded during the police charges (whose members were insulted and vilified even by hospital doctors). Even, in some parts of the city, “autonomous republics” were proclaimed, such as the “Republic of Sbarre” and the “Grand Duchy of St. Catherine,” a clear symptom of the prevailing anti-statism among the protesters. The Italian government, presided over by
Emilio Colombo after the resignation of
Mariano Rumor, after appealing to the people of Reggio Emilia urging them to appease, threatening, in the event of a continuation of the violence, the use of force, decided, for the first time in the history of the Italian Republic, to repress the street demonstrations and urban guerrilla warfare by having the army and carabinieri intervene. Even far-left parties, such as the Communists and the
PSIUP, condemned the Reggio uprising, branding it as parochial and non-proletarian, often clashing with their own city voter base. Eventually, on February 23, 1971, after 10 months of rioting and agitation, the revolt ceased: the people of Reggio had to come to a political compromise with the government, which occurred, however, not in Parliament but in the regional council, where they had little political clout. The Prime Minister, meeting with the president of the Calabria Region, Christian Democrat , and various regional politicians from various parties, worked out a compromise agreement, known as the , which sought to bring all parties together: Catanzaro would be the regional capital, while Reggio would host the seat of the regional council; Cosenza, on the other hand, would be the site of Calabria's first university hub (today's
University of Calabria), while Gioia Tauro would be the fifth national steel hub and a massive chemical factory would be established in Saline Joniche. The agreement was accepted by the city's population, but the Gioia Tauro steel plant was never built, due to the international steel market crisis, while the Saline Joniche chemical plant, although built, ceased production almost immediately due to the Ministry of Health's provision that had declared the chemical feed supplements it produced to be
carcinogenic. The Reggio revolt remain to this day one of the most controversial pages in the history of Calabria and even Italy, partly because of the lack or absence of related documentation, which is often destroyed or secreted. In order to understand this historical episode, one must refer to historiography, which denies or approves of certain views: it was not a parochial uprising, but complex political and social motivations converged behind it; it was not a fascist uprising, although the Italian Social Movement was at the head of it, as the leftists (especially the communists) said, since it was an interclass, inter-party and intergenerational movement, while it was instead an anti-state uprising (see the case of the “autonomous republics”), spontaneous and without direction behind it, despite Mayor Battaglia's call to strike. In addition to this, recent studies have found that there were also strong infiltrations of the 'ndrangheta, colluding with the extremist subversive right (see the case of the Baracca anarchists), in the uprising; therefore, there are those who believe that deviated sectors of the state and secret services were also involved in the uprising, so much so that the Reggio revolt can be ascribed to a part of the strategy of tension that gripped the country in those years. In the 1980s, the social and economic situation in Calabria was anything but prosperous: as Piero Gagliardo, a professor at the University of Calabria, wrote, the region had no development plan of its own, was apparently abandoned to the various party clienteles, but was effectively run by power groups linked to organized crime and deviant
freemasonry. As a result, in Calabria, which is made to play the role of the poorest and most depressed region in Italy, social and economic initiatives, even very significant ones, are undertaken with exasperating slowness, and often based on a human and territorial fabric that is not always suitable for receiving them. In fact, in the region, many works, including those of significant public expenditure, had been initiated, but more for the benefit of the entrepreneurial hundred in the center than for the real needs of the periphery. In addition to this socioeconomic analysis, Gagliardo notes the persistence of widespread electoral clientelism, which the electoral political class, instead of eliminating, wanted to nurture for its own personal gain. Alongside this political, cultural and economic landscape, there was the gradual infiltration into the Calabrian social and economic fabric of the
'Ndrangheta, a criminal organization akin to the
Mafia and
Camorra, which began to make headlines thanks to the season of kidnappings of important hostages in order to demand a ransom to finance their criminal activities (such as the one of
John Paul Getty III, grandson of an U.S. oilman, kidnapped in 1973 and released along the
Autostrada A2 after the payment of a ransom of one billion seven hundred million
lire). In the 1980s, the Calabrian
'ndrine turned instead to international
narcotics trafficking, forging contacts with
South American drug cartels and enacting numerous internal feuds among the various Mafia clans for control of territory and drug areas. As in Sicily, the 'ndrangheta in Calabria infiltrated into the local political fabric, not infrequently placing its own affiliates in key posts in municipal administrations in order to pilot and profit on public contracts. The case of the Gioia Tauro harbor, completed in 1985, which was conceived as a trading port for the never-planned steel center envisaged by the Colombo Package, and later used as a transit hub for containers transported by transoceanic ships plying the
Mediterranean Sea, is well known: from the outset, the port facility was under the control of the
Piromalli and clans, who used it to bring drugs and counterfeit goods into Italy. In the 1990s, in order to quell the criminal phenomenon, which was flanking the Mafia in its massacre phase against men of the state (an act that materialized in the 1991 murder of Judge
Antonino Scopelliti, who was working on the Palermo
Maxi Trial), was implemented, where the army was employed, with a total of 1350 military personnel, while numerous maxiprocesses were subsequently carried out: “Wall Street,” ‘Count Down,’ ‘Hoca Tuca,’ ‘North-South,’ ‘Belgium,’ and ‘Fine,’ which involved many 'ndrine and the end of the
Siderno Group, an underworld consortium between Canada and Calabria that ran international drug trafficking. ==Economy==