Come recita il sottotitolo del frontespizio, il libro di Federico Pirro è un saggio antologico, ampiamente commentato, di brani di scrittori importanti che hanno parlato dei fatti che portarono alla cosiddetta unità d'Italia. Sono presenti oltre ad autori a noi contemporanei anche autori contemporanei ai fatti che si svolsero 150 anni fa. Se ne deduce che non tutti gli autori sono stati organici al potere e tromboni della storia scritta dalla parte dei vincitori e per osannarli. Anche se chi ha tentato di presentare e spiegare le ragioni dei vinti non ha avuto gli spazi, accademici e divulgativi, degli altri. Anzi sono stati boicottati o ignorati. Ora something is changing and Pirro's book bears witness. There are many books of this nature, fresh off the press, which are occupying significant space on the shelves of libraries. For some authors cite only "popular" they give, although to varying degrees, the defeated voice of so-called revival: April Pino, Giordano Bruno Guerri, Caprarica Antonio, Gigi Di Fiore, Eugenio Bennato, Lino Patruno, but there are many others books published by publishers of all sizes, who speak of "bandits" The unification of the South "bandits" of the time, I repeat once again, we assume an exclusively positive connotation, are in fact insurgents and partisans who lottato in difesa della loro terra, delle loro famiglie, della loro dignità. Scrive Pirro: «Può dunque dirsi, fuori da ogni faziosità, che il termine “brigante”, per l’evoluzione che hanno avuto gli avvenimenti, si distanzia sempre più da “bandito” per avvicinarsi sempre più a “partigiano”».
Federico Pirro ritiene che l’unità d’Italia era ineluttabile. «Infatti, – scrive – se, nonostante gli errori, l’elitarietà dei sostenitori, le brutalità, se, nonostante tutto questo, la penisola è diventata una, abbiamo la riprova evidente del fatto che, prima o poi, si sarebbe giunti a questo risultato». I, too, until not long ago, I was convinced that the unification of Italy was made, but not with the manner in which it was almost done. Now I begin to doubt this ineluttabiltà. However, but it is absolutely necessary to come out the other story, that the vast majority of the inhabitants of the former Kingdom of Two Sicilies, in which the unit was imposed by force, with weapons. In the words of Eugenio Scalfari, cited by Pirro, the Risorgimento was the work of a minority and this is his weakness. Catholic masses, peasants, workers, were absent and excluded from the institutions.
Luigi Pirandello writes that his Sicily was treated as a land of conquest: "Poor Islanders, treated as necessary to civilize barbarians. "
But the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was criminalized to provide the pretext for a war of conquest. The Kingdom was not the country of plenty, says Pirro, but it was not worse than others, indeed, in many ways maybe it was even better. The decline of Meriodione began with the invasion of Piedmont and their war of conquest.
The first Italian railway was built in the South in 1839 (the Napoli-Portici, which was not quite as propaganda Savoy called it a "real toy") and included in the draft two large dorsal Ferdinand II. The first was to connect Brindisi to Naples, then go up to Pescara, Ancona and Bologna, via Venezia, join networks Danube and Rhine. The second column, starting from Calabria and Basilicata, linked up with Rome, Florence, Genoa and Turin. This plan was based on mining rail Calabrian Mongiana, producing steel, and technological growth of the complex engineering of the Neapolitan Pietrarsa.
During the Bourbon Kingdom was built on the Garigliano's first iron suspension bridge built in continental Europe (1832), was built in Naples the first gas lighting in Italy (1839), was installed the first observatory on Vesuvius volcanic world (1841), was launched the first steamboat propelled propeller that has crossed the Mediterranean (1847). At the time of unification
heritage of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was 443 million gold ducats, which at that time corresponded to 60% of the assets of all the pre-unification states and small states combined.
But then in the country that mattered most in the world, England, was decided, for its business interests, that the throne of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies had to be destroyed. The operation - Lorenzo Del Boca writes in his "Damn Savoia" - was long thought out and scientifically planned in secret. In Britain, the United States of America and Canada were collected three million French francs, equivalent to 29 billion lire. With that huge sum was financed l'operazione Garibaldi (cosiddetta spedizione dei Mille) e furono comprati quasi tutti gli ufficiali dell'esercito borbonico.
L'annessione piemontese, scrive Pirro, ha avuto caratteri che non divergono molto dai genocidi seguiti, nei millenni, a ogni conquista. Il Sud lo si può ben raffigurare come una sorta di riserva indiana, simile a quei campi di concentramento che videro la graduale eliminazione fisica dei Pellerossa. Al minimo tentativo di ribellione, si organizzavano deportazioni verso le fortezze del Nord (i lager dei Savoia a Fenestrelle, dove furono fatti morire migliaia di prigionieri della guerra del Sud e disertori napoletani che non vollero passare nelle file dell'esercito nemico); chi non si fidava del “nuovo”, diveniva un brigante da giustiziare senza processo. Era prevista la fucilazione immediata se un contadino veniva sorpreso con una porzione di pane superiore a quella che, a parere dei boia piemontesi, doveva essere sufficiente per un giorno, perché quel di più nella bisaccia era la prova che si foraggiavano i soldati borbonici datisi alla macchia.
Antonio Gramsci così bollò con vigore la ferocia piemontese: « Lo Stato italiano è stato una dittatura feroce che ha messo a ferro e a fuoco l'Italia meridionale e le isole, crocifiggendo, squartando, seppellendo vivi i contadini poveri che gli scrittori salariati tentarono infamare col marchio di briganti » .
I briganti più Note, summarizes Pirro, were the Puglia and Basilicata Pasquale Romano Carmine Crocco, that their men have for several years hard time Piedmontese army. The robbers were joined by the Southern generals and foreign officials, the most famous of these was the Spaniard José Borges.
Pontelandolfo, Casalduni and many other countries were flattened and burned because they dared to rebel against the "liberators".
more you read the information on the birth of the Italian State - writes Pirro - and the more I became convinced that the "southern question" was designed precisely with the robbery of the Southern Piedmont, to the detriment of the people. And the southern
to escape from poverty and conditions of robbery by the new state were forced to emigrate. Only during the years 1806 to 1915 left Italy for six million poor South. This was the result of decades of neglect and exploitation of the areas most vulnerable politically. Crippled by the rapacity of Piedmont, which took hold even of the tracks to transfer to the North. And the biblical exodus of southerners continued in subsequent years.
Gaetano Salvemini wrote in 1899 that Garibaldi's expedition was an act of conquest itself, the province of Naples and Sicily, when they entered a part of Italy, had no debts, the Southerners were forced to pay the interest on debts made by the first North Unit. The Unification of Italy - yet Salvemini wrote - was a disaster for the South was right and the last king of the Bourbons, when, flying from Naples to Gaeta, told his former subject: " I lose the kingdom but the Piedmontese you leave only the eyes to weep ".
Federico Pirro's book discusses many other topics, including Cesare Lombroso, the Fasci Siciliani Workers, fiscal federalism, the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno, the Camorra, the mafia, the 'Ndrangheta, the Resistance in the South of 'Italy.
I close this review with the consideration with which Fred Pirro closes the annotated chronology of the events in Italy from 1800 to 1861, located at the end of the book: " On March 17, 1861 Vittorio Emanuele assumes for himself and his descendants the title of king of Italy, but remains and II I do not, as would have been legally and politically correct she was born a new reality. This particular confirms that it was a conquest rather than unification. All the injustices following the events listed, still living to 150 years away, were the inevitable result of these first acts ".
Rocco Biondi
Federico Pirro, United Force, 1861-2011, Essay anthology , Progedit, Bari 2010, pp. 182, € 20.00
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