Prehistory and antiquity In the 8th and the 7th centuries BCE, for various reasons, including demographic crisis (famine, overcrowding etc.), the search for new commercial outlets and ports, and expulsion from their homeland,
Greeks began to settle in southern Italy. Also during this period, Greek colonies were established in places as widely separated as the eastern coast of the
Black Sea,
Eastern Libya and Massalia (
Marseille). ,
Valle dei Templi,
Agrigento, Sicily They included settlements in Sicily and the southern part of the Italian peninsula. The first Greek settlers found Italy inhabited by three major populations:
Ausones,
Oenotrians and
Iapyges (the last of which were subdivided into three tribes:
Daunians,
Peucetians and
Messapians). The relationships between the Greek settlers and the native peoples were initially hostile especially with the Iapygian tribes. The Hellenic influence eventually shaped their culture and way of life. and their
dialect groupings in southern Italy The Romans used to call the area of Sicily and coastal southern Italy
Magna Graecia ("Great Greece") since it was so densely populated by coastal
Greek colonies; the ancient
geographers differed on whether the term included Sicily or merely
Apulia and
Calabria with
Strabo being the most prominent advocate of the wider definitions. With this colonisation,
Greek culture was exported to Italy in its dialects of the
Ancient Greek language, its religious rites and its traditions of the independent
polis. An original
Hellenic civilization soon developed, later interacting with the native
Italic and
Roman civilisations. The most important cultural transplant was the
Chalcidean/
Cumaean variety of the
Greek alphabet, which was adopted by the
Etruscans; the
Old Italic alphabet subsequently evolved into the
Latin alphabet, which became the most widely used alphabet in the world. Many of the new Hellenic cities became very rich and powerful like
Neapolis (Νεάπολις,
Naples, "New City"),
Syrakousai (Συράκουσαι,
Syracuse),
Akragas (Ἀκράγας,
Agrigento), and
Sybaris (Σύβαρις,
Sibari). Other cities in Magna Graecia included
Tarentum (Τάρας),
Metapontum (Μεταπόντιον),
Heraclea (Ἡράκλεια),
Epizephyrian Locri (Λοκροὶ Ἐπιζεφύριοι),
Rhegium (Ῥήγιον),
Croton (Κρότων),
Thurii (Θούριοι),
Elea (Ἐλέα),
Nola (Νῶλα),
Syessa (Σύεσσα),
Bari (Βάριον), and others. Although many of the Greek inhabitants of Magna Graecia were entirely
Latinized during the
Middle Ages, pockets of Greek culture and language remained and have survived to the present day. One example is the
Griko people in
Calabria (
Bovesia) and
Salento (
Grecìa Salentina), some of whom still maintain their Greek language (
Griko language) and customs. The Griko language is the last living trace of the Greek elements that once formed Magna Graecia. After
Pyrrhus of Epirus failed in his attempt to stop the spread of
Roman hegemony in 282 BCE, the south fell under Roman domination and remained in such a position until the
barbarian invasions (the
Gladiator War is a notable suspension of
imperial control). It was restored to
Eastern Roman control in the 530s after the
fall of Rome in
the West in 476, and some form of imperial authority survived until the 1070s. Total East Roman rule was ended by the
Lombards by
Zotto's conquest in the final quarter of the 6th century.
Middle Ages After the
Gothic War (535–554) until the arrival of the
Normans, much of southern Italy's destiny was linked to the fortunes of the
Eastern Empire even though Byzantine domination was challenged in the 9th century by the
Lombards, who annexed the area of
Cosenza to their
Duchy of Benevento. Consequently, the Lombard and the Byzantine areas became influenced by Eastern monasticism, and much of southern Italy experienced a slow process of orientalisation in religious life (rites, cults and liturgy), which accompanied a spread of Eastern churches and monasteries that preserved and transmitted the Greek and Hellenistic tradition. The
Cattolica monastery in Stilo is the most representative of these Byzantine monuments. From then to the 11th-century
Norman conquest the south of the peninsula was constantly plunged into wars between the Byzantines, Lombardy, and the
Aghlabid dynasty. The latter established two
emirates in southern Italy: the
Emirate of Sicily and, for 25 years, the
Emirate of Bari.
Amalfi, an independent republic from the 7th century until 1075, and to a lesser extent
Gaeta,
Molfetta and
Trani, rivalled other
Italian maritime republics in their domestic prosperity and maritime importance. From 999 to 1139, the
Normans occupied all the Lombard and Byzantine possessions in southern Italy, ended a millennium of imperial Roman rule in Italy and eventually expelled the Muslims from Sicily. The Norman
Kingdom of Sicily under
Roger II was characterised by its competent governance,
multi-ethnic nature and
religious tolerance. Normans, Jews, Muslim Arabs, Byzantine Greeks, Lombards and "native" Sicilians lived in relative harmony. However, the Norman domination lasted only several decades before it formally ended in 1198 with the reign of
Constance of Sicily, and was replaced by that of the
Swabian
Hohenstaufen dynasty, thanks to Constance's marriage to
Henry VI, member of this family. , built by
Frederick II between 1240 and 1250 in
Andria, Apulia In Sicily,
King Frederick II endorsed a deep reform of the laws culminating with the promulgation of the
Constitutions of Melfi (1231, also known as
Liber Augustalis), a collection of laws for his realm that was remarkable for its time and a source of inspiration for a long time afterward. It made the Kingdom of Sicily a
centralised state and established the primacy of
written law. With relatively small modifications, the
Liber Augustalis remained the basis of Sicilian law until 1819. His royal court in
Palermo from around 1220 to his death saw the first use of a literary form of an
Italo-Romance language,
Sicilian, which had a significant influence on what was to become the modern
Italian language. He also built the
Castel del Monte and in 1224 founded the
University of Naples, now called, after him,
Università Federico II. In 1266, conflict between the
House of Hohenstaufen and the
papacy led to Sicily's conquest by
Charles I, Duke of
Anjou. Opposition to French officialdom and taxation combined with incitement of rebellion by agents from the
Byzantine Empire and the
Crown of Aragon led to the
Sicilian Vespers insurrection and successful invasion by king
Peter III of Aragon in 1282. The resulting
War of the Sicilian Vespers lasted until 1302 the
Peace of Caltabellotta divided the old Kingdom of Sicily into two. The island of Sicily, called the "Kingdom of Sicily beyond the Lighthouse" or the Kingdom of Trinacria, went to
Frederick III of the
House of Barcelona, who had been ruling it. The peninsular territories, called Kingdom of Sicily contemporaneously but
Kingdom of Naples by modern scholarship, went to
Charles II of the
House of Anjou, who had likewise been ruling it. Thus, the peace was formal recognition of an uneasy
status quo. Although the king of Spain had seized both two crowns in the 16th century, the administrations of the two halves of the Kingdom of Sicily remained separated until 1816, when they were reunited in the
Kingdom of Two Sicilies. in 1154
Early modern history In 1442,
Alfonso V conquered the Kingdom of Naples and unified Sicily and Naples once again as dependencies of the
Crown of Aragon. At his death in 1458, the kingdom was again divided .
Ferrante, Alfonso's illegitimate son, inherited Naples. When Ferrante died in 1494,
Charles VIII of France invaded Italy by using the Angevin claim to the throne of Naples, which his father had inherited on the death of King René's nephew in 1481, as a pretext, which started the
Italian Wars. Charles VIII expelled Ferrante's successor,
Alfonso II of Naples, from Naples in 1495. However, he was soon forced to withdraw because of the support of
Ferdinand II of Aragon to his cousin, Alfonso II's son
Ferrantino. Ferrantino was restored to the throne but died in 1496 and was succeeded by his uncle,
Frederick IV. The French, however, did not give up their claim and, in 1501, agreed to a partition of the kingdom with Ferdinand of Aragon, who abandoned his cousin, King Frederick. The deal soon fell through, however, and the Crown of Aragon and France resumed their war over the kingdom, ultimately resulting in an Aragonese victory leaving Ferdinand in control of the kingdom by 1504. The kingdom remained disputed between France and Spain for the next several decades. The French efforts to gain control of it became feebler as the decades went on, and Spanish control was never genuinely endangered. The French finally abandoned their claims to the kingdom by the
Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis in 1559. With the Treaty of London (1557), the new
client state of
the so-called Presidi ("state of the garrisons") was established and governed directly by Spain as part of the Kingdom of Naples. ,
Naples: initiated by the
Anjou, it was heavily altered as it served as
Spanish headquarters until the 18th century. The administration of the Kingdom of Naples and Sicily, as well as of the
Duchy of Milan, was run by the
Council of Italy. The island of Sardinia, which had fully come to be under Iberian sovereignty in 1409 upon the fall of the last
indigenous state, was an integral part of the
Council of Aragon instead and remained as such until the first years of the XVIII° century, when Sardinia was ceded to Austria and eventually handed over to the
Alpine-based
House of Savoy in 1720. After the
War of the Spanish Succession in the early 18th century, possession of the kingdom again changed hands. Under the terms of the
Treaty of Utrecht in 1713,
Naples was given to
Charles VI, the
Holy Roman Emperor. He also gained control of
Sicily in 1720, but Austrian rule did not last long. Both Naples and Sicily were
conquered by a Spanish army during the
War of the Polish Succession in 1734, and
Charles, Duke of Parma, a younger son of King
Philip V of Spain was installed as King of Naples and Sicily from 1735. Charles inherited the Spanish throne from his older half-brother in 1759, he left Naples and Sicily to his younger son,
Ferdinand IV. Despite the two kingdoms being in a
personal union under the
House of Bourbon from 1735 onwards, they remained constitutionally separated.
Early 19th century Being a member of the
House of Bourbon, King
Ferdinand IV was a natural opponent of the
French Revolution and
Napoleon. In January 1799,
Napoleon Bonaparte, in the name of the
French Republic, captured Naples and proclaimed the
Parthenopaean Republic, a French client state, as successor to the kingdom.
King Ferdinand fled from Naples to Sicily until June of that year. In 1806, Bonaparte, by then French Emperor, again dethroned King Ferdinand and appointed his brother,
Joseph Bonaparte, as King of Naples. In the Edict of Bayonne of 1808, Napoleon removed Joseph to Spain and appointed his brother-in-law,
Joachim Murat, as King of the Two Sicilies, though this meant control only of the mainland portion of the kingdom. Throughout this Napoleonic interruption, King Ferdinand remained in Sicily, with
Palermo as his capital. in the 19th century After Napoleon's defeat, King Ferdinand IV was restored by the
Congress of Vienna of 1815 as Ferdinand I of the
Two Sicilies. He established a
concordat with the
Papal States, which previously had a claim to the land. There were several rebellions on the island of
Sicily against the King
Ferdinand II, but the end of the kingdom was not brought about until the
Expedition of the Thousand in 1860, led by
Giuseppe Garibaldi, an icon of Italian Unification, with the support of the
House of Savoy and its
Kingdom of Sardinia with its economic, political and cultural powerhouse in Northern Italy. The expedition resulted in a striking series of defeats for the Sicilian armies against the growing troops of Garibaldi. After the capture of Palermo and Sicily, he disembarked in Calabria and moved towards Naples, and in the meantime the Piedmontese also invaded the Kingdom from the
Marche. The last battles fought were
that of the Volturnus in 1860 and the
siege of Gaeta, where King
Francis II had sought shelter for help, which never came. The last towns to resist Garibaldi's expedition were
Messina, which surrendered on 13 March 1861, and
Civitella del Tronto, which surrendered on 20 March 1861. The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was dissolved and annexed to the new
Kingdom of Italy, which was founded in the same year.
Southern and northern Italy in 1860 from 1853, seven years before the annexation by the House of Savoy At the time of Italian unification, the gap between the former northern states of
Italy and the southern two Sicilies was significant: northern Italy had about 75,500 kilometers of roads and 2,316 kilometers of railroads, combined with a wide range of canals connected to rivers for freight transportation; iron and steel production was 17,000 tons per year. By contrast, in the former Bourbon southern state, there were 14,700 kilometers of roads, 184 kilometers of railroads (only around Naples), no canals connected to rivers and iron and steel production was 1,500 tons per year. In 1860, illiteracy rates on the Italian peninsula averaged 75%, with the lowest level of 54% in the northwestern
Kingdom of Sardinia (also known as "
Piedmont") and the highest in the south, and illiteracy in the
Kingdom of the Two Sicilies reached 87%. Also in 1860, the southern merchant navy amounted to 260,000 tons, and the northern merchant navy came to 347,000 tons, apart from the Venetian Navy, which was annexed in 1866 and assessed at 46,000 tons. In 1860 the whole Italian merchant navy was the fourth largest in Europe at about 607,000 tons. The southern merchant navy was made up of sailing vessels mainly for fishing and coastal shipping in the Mediterranean Sea and had very few steamships, even if one of the first steamers was built and fitted out in Naples in 1818. Both the merchant and the military navies were insufficient compared to the great coastal extent of southern Italy, defined by the Italian historian Raffaele De Cesare: "… a great pier towards the south". In the article "This is Not Italy! Ruling and Representing the South", it is clear how the northern elites considered the south. The Piedmontese north felt the need to invade the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and establish a new form of governance based on the northern system, since they viewed the south as underdeveloped and lacking in social capital. Those views of the south can largely be attributed to the letters of correspondents in southern Italy who sent biased letters to leaders of the north, specifically
Camillo Benso, urging the invasion and reformation of the south. Although those views of the south were condescending, they also came with a genuine belief that to create a unified Italy, help from the north was necessary. Viewing southern Italy as barbaric served as a sort of justification to allow the "civilized, Piedmontese north" (167) to intervene. Another view, however, was marked by disdain for southern Italy. According to the article, "such manifestations of the south's difference threaten the glowing and gloating sense of northern superiority" (167). These viewpoints clearly indicate the divide between northern and southern Italy in the 1860s. In an attempt to explain the striking difference between the annexed territory of the former Two Sicilies and the economic and political powerhouse centred in the north,
racist theories were postulated, suggesting that such a divide had its roots in the coexistence of two mostly incompatible races. The British historian
Denis Mack Smith describes the radical difference between Northern and the newly-annexed southern Italy in 1860 as both halves being on quite different levels of civilization. He pointed out that the Bourbons in the
Kingdom of the Two Sicilies were staunch supporters of a feudal system, had feared the traffic of ideas and had tried to keep their subjects insulated from the agricultural and industrial revolutions of Northern Europe. The study by Mack Smith is confirmed by the Italian historian and left-wing politician
Antonio Gramsci in his book
The Southern Question by which the author emphasizes the "absolutely antithetical conditions" of northern and southern Italy at the time of Italian unification in 1861, when south and north were united again after more than one thousand years. Gramsci remarked that in Northern Italy, the historical period of the
Comunes had given a special boost to history and in
northern Italy existed an economic organization similar to that of the other states of Europe, propitious to further development of
capitalism and
industry, but in southern Italy, history had been different, and the paternalist Bourbon administrations produced nothing of value. The bourgeois class did not exist, agriculture was primitive and insufficient to satisfy the local market, there were no roads, no ports and the few waterways that the region had were not exploited because of the region's special geographical features. ("brigands") from
Basilicata, The living conditions of the people of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies are also illustrated by Raffaele De Cesare, who reported that the King of Naples
Ferdinand II had no interest in doing useful works to improve the neglected condition of public hygiene, particularly in the provinces, where scarcity of sewer systems and often water shortages were known issues. The problem of brigandage is explained in the book
Heroes and Brigands by the southern Italian historian and politician
Francesco Saverio Nitti, outlining that brigandage was endemic in southern Italy, since the Bourbons themselves relied on it as their military agent. Unlike in southern Italy, there was little brigandage in the other annexed states of Northern and Central Italy, like the
Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia, the
Duchy of Parma, the
Duchy of Modena, the
Grand Duchy of Tuscany and the
Papal States. According to the southern Italian historian
Giustino Fortunato, and the Italian institutional sources the problems of southern Italy had existed way before Italian unification, and Giustino Fortunato emphasised that the Bourbons were not the only ones responsible for the problems of the south, which had ancient and deep origins in the previous centuries of poverty and isolation, caused by domination by foreign governments. In literature, the period around 1860 was depicted by the Sicilian writer
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa in his famous novel
Il Gattopardo (
The Leopard), set in
Sicily at the time of Italian unification. In a famous final scene, Prince Salina, when invited to join the senate of unified Italy, tells a high-ranking Piedmontese officer that "the Sicilian will never want to change, because the Sicilian feels perfect...". With these and other words, the author underscored the Sicilians' problems of having to change their old lifestyle and remaining on their island. The novel was adapted by
Luchino Visconti for his homonymous 1963 film
The Leopard.
After 1861 The southern economy greatly suffered after the Italian unification, and the process of industrialisation was interrupted. This situation of persistent backwardness in the socioeconomic development of the regions of southern Italy compared to the other regions of the country, especially the northern ones, is known as the
southern question. Poverty and
organised crime were long-standing issues in southern Italy as well and it got worse after unification. Cavour stated the basic problem was poor government, and believed the solution lay in the strict application of the Piedmontese legal system. The main result was an upsurge in
brigandage. As a result, the south experienced great economic difficulties resulting in massive emigration leading to a worldwide
Italian diaspora, especially to
North America,
South America,
Australia and other parts of Europe. Many natives also relocated to the industrial cities in northern Italy, such as
Genoa,
Milan and
Turin. A relative process of industrialisation has developed in some areas of the "Mezzogiorno" after the
Second World War. In the
1946 referendum, the region voted to keep the monarchy, with its greatest support coming in
Campania. Politically, the region was at odds with the north, which won the referendum to establish a republic. Into the 21st century, the south remains less economically developed than the northern and central regions, which enjoyed an "
economic miracle" in the 1950s and the 1960s and became highly industrialized. == Demographics ==