In order to understand how the Italian state was engineered a couple of centuries ago, it is important to understand the political context of the time, mainly the crucial role that England and France played. The Kingdom of Sardinia (Piedmont or Savoy), mainly through the machinations of its cunning prime minister Cavour helped the demise and then the annexation of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Because in the end, the real objective was not unification but the expansion of the Kingdom of Sardinia to the entire peninsula. This post summarizes some of the main points that emerge from the interview of Eugenio Di Rienzo, professor of contemporary history at the University of Rome “La Sapienza” and director of the Nuova Rivista Storica“.
Di Rienzo addresses the relations between the European powers and the pre-unification Italian state with the most strategic position: the Kingdom of the Two Sicily. The topics examined in this post are more widely addressed in his book The Kingdom of the Two Sicily and the European Powers, 1830-1861, published for the types of Rubbettino. We’ll refer to some sections of the book and the related historical events and documents there described.
According to the “logic of the chessboard“, a united Italy was convenient to London as a counterpart to Paris. But first, it was necessary to demolish the Kingdom of the Two Sicily, unwilling to do “the business” of Her British Majesty. Stretching out into the Mediterranean, with thousands of kilometers of coastline to defend, united Italy, wanted and supported by London, would always have been blackmailed by the powerful English fleet. A project that did not always go the right way for the British.
The importance of Sicily for the Brits was very well summarized by Prime Minister, Viscount Castlereagh who, on June 21, 1821, recalled that the direct or indirect dominion of Sicily constituted, now as in the past, an “indispensable point of support” for making possible England’s control over southern Europe and northern Africa. Remember that the Suez canal officially opened in November 1869. It is one of the most heavily used shipping routes in the world and for England, it was a vital commercial and military route connecting with its vast colonial empire from India to Australia and eliminating the need to circumnavigate Africa.
British prejudices and business
Prejudices
The expression a “paradise inhabited by devils” referring to Naples and Campania was coined by Daniele Omeis, professor of morals at the University of Altdorf in Germany who, in 1707, gave a lecture academic, entitled “Regnun Neapolitaum Paradisus est, sed a Diabolis habitatus”, this judgment returns as a recurring motif in the diaries and correspondence of English gentlemen.
Remember, however, that this judgment, although based on some facts, was powerfully reinforced by religious and anti-catholic prejudice. The cult of San Gennaro in Naples and the sumptuous and pagan procession in honor of Santa Rosalia in Palermo appeared, in fact, the living testimony of how the Papacy and the clergy had deliberately kept the masses of the South in a situation of subjection and subordination, using in the most unscrupulous way, the precept of Machiavelli, nicknamed by the English Old Nick (Old Devil), according to which religion had to be “instrumentum regni”. All this was part of a concerted denigratory campaign against the Kingdom of Two Sicilies instigated by England, France, and Piedmont. They all had their own agenda to see the demise of the kingdom and, as we’ll explore in other posts, their strategy was psychological, military, and economic.. The kingdom was not perfect by any means, but we are talking about the nineteenth century. See what was happening at that time in England.
At the end of the 19th century, more than 25% of the population of Britain was living at or below the subsistence level. Surveys indicated that around 10% were very poor and could not afford even basic necessities such as enough nourishing food. Between 15% and 20% had just enough money to live on (provided they did not lose their job or have to take time off work through illness). If you had no income at all you had to enter the workhouse. The workhouses were feared and hated by the poor. They were meant to be as unpleasant as possible to deter poor people from asking the state for help. See Society in the 19th Century.
Business comes first
However, the relations between the Kingdom of Naples and Great Britain were not limited to these aspects. Business came first, obviously. In 1842, as an article published in the highly influential “Journal of the Statistical Society of London” described, a significant share of the British trade balance was represented by the import of raw materials from Sicily. The huge traffic was made up of wine, olive oil, citrus fruits, almonds, hazelnuts, sumac, barilla, and above all sulfur. In regard to sulfur trade, see On the Sulphur Trade of Sicily, and the Commercial Relations between that Country and Great Britain (excerpt from the Journal of the Statistical Society of London). Suflure was used for the preparation of artificial soda (used in the textile industry), sulfuric acid, and gunpowder which covered 90% of the world demand and of which twenty English firms had obtained a de facto exclusive control for the extraction and exploitation, thanks to the payment of a modest lease.
Sulfur
Sulfur was one of the cornerstones of the industrial revolution, it was the oil of the 19th century and England was prepared to go to war to defend its dominance. In England, sulfur started as the essential element in the textile industry for bleaching, and later on, gave rise to the chemical industry. It has hundreds of uses today, but it was the industrial revolution, and the ever-greater need for gunpowder, that spurred the growth of sulfur mining in Sicily in the late 1700s. Indeed, the British and French interest in Sicily was rooted in the presence of sulfur here. By 1800, Sicily had a virtual monopoly on the western world’s sulfur supply, and the British purchased most of it through exclusive contracts.
Sulfur was so important for the industrial revolution to the point of justifying military mobilization, and the worst burden of it was carried on the backs of Sicilian children. It suffices to say that the great contemporary chemist Justus von Liebig was well aware of the background motives of the conflict between Naples and England. This is what he said:
It is no exaggeration to say, we may fairly judge the commercial prosperity of a country from the amount of sulphuric acid it consumes. Reflecting upon the important influence which the price of sulfur exercises upon the cost of production of bleached and printed cotton stuff, soap, glass, &c., and remembering that Great Britain supplies America, Spain, Portugal, and the East, with these, exchanging them for raw cotton, silk, wine, raisins, indigo, &c., &c., we can understand why the EnglishGovernment should have resolved to resort to war with Naples, in order to abolish the sulfur monopoly, which the latter power attempted recently to establish (Liebig 1843, 40-1).
For more details, see See The sulfur frontier of the Industrial Revolution: child labor,
Sicilian sulfur was an important commodity for the industrial revolution (1750–1840). It was used for the finishing of textiles. Innovations in finishing were essential for the textile industry so that the productivity increases in spinning and weaving as well as in cotton plantations did not encounter a bottleneck. Eventually, it gave rise to a spin-off, the chemical industry as a separate branch of production. These developments rested on the appropriation of uncommodified labor force and nature in Sicily. Such processes unfolded in a trajectory determined by value relations, in which the investment in fixed capital in Britain was tied to the supply of cheap circulating capital (raw material) in the commodity frontier. When necessary to guarantee the supply of cheap sulfur against price and supply regulation, the British mobilized their Royal Navy. It in The Frontier of Hell: Sicily, Sulfur, and the Rise of the British Chemical Industry,1750-1840 article it is argued that the Sicilian frontier should be incorporated into the history of the industrial revolution. See also The Sulfur Age.
The Times of London on April 2, 1840. The king of the Two Sicilies, Ferdinand II, sent 35 thousand soldiers by sea, plus the cavalry, to defend the island. Some merchant ships were indeed detained and searched by the British. The“treaty,” signed in1838, aimed to control the volume of production and the price of sulfur extracted from the island. A threat of blockade of the Bay of Naples is not an unimportant historical event. And yet it is conspicuously absent in the historiography of the industrial revolution(1750–1840). For more details, see The sulfur war (1840): a confrontation between Great Britain and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in the Mediterranean. This article will argue that this seemingly outsized step is explained by the fact that the Sicilian sulfur mines were an important commodity frontier for the British capital, specifically for the textile industry. The supply of cheap sulfur was essential for the manufacturing of the chemicals used in the finishing of textiles, namely sulfuric acid, chlorine-based bleaching agents, and synthetic soda. Commodity frontiers restructure geographic space at the margins of the world economy, where uncommodified nature and the labor force is appropriated.
Napoleonic invasion and British tutelage
When the Bourbons were reduced to the possession of Sicily only by the Napoleonic invasion (1805), they found themselves under heavy English tutelage. Let’s see how long the British influence on Naples lasted after the Congress of Vienna, and how did it manifest itself.
After 1815, London did not consider the possibility of an intervention aimed at gaining a political-military presence in the Peninsula. The principle of non-interference in Italian affairs recorded, however, a sensational exception for what concerned the growing English interest in strengthening its hegemony in the Mediterranean and therefore in regaining that advantageous position, acquired in 1806 and further increased then, between 1811 and 1815, thanks to the political-military protectorate established by William Bentick in Sicily. Protectorate that had led to the expansion of the economic colonization of the island already started at the end of the eighteenth century, then destined to strengthen in the following decades, thanks to the activity of the great commercial dynasties of the Woodhouse, the Ingham, the Whitaker, and other Anglo-American merchant-entrepreneurs. See The story of Marsala wine. Very indicative in this regard was the position taken by the Prime Minister, Viscount Castlereagh who, on June 21, 1821, recalled that the direct or indirect dominion of Sicily constituted, now as in the past, an “indispensable point of support” for making possible England’s control over southern Europe and northern Africa. As, in fact, Giovanni Aceto would have argued, in the volume of 1827, “De la Sicile et de ses rapports avec l’Angleterre“, “this island does not represent for England only an important strategic outpost, to be preserved, at any cost, from a possible occupation of France that threatens it from its coasts, but also constitutes the center of all military and political operations that the United Kingdom intends to undertake in Italy and in the Mediterranean”.
Control of the central Mediterranean
The control of the central Mediterranean was among the main reasons for the conflict between Naples and London
Strategic and geopolitical interests dominated the policy of England towards the Two Sicilies from the mid-nineteenth century to 1860. In 1840, Palmerston used all the strength of gunboat diplomacy to maintain the English monopoly on Sicilian sulfur, ordering the British Mediterranean fleet to capture the Neapolitan ships and lead them to the bases of Malta and Corfu with a real act of piracy.
In 1849, also Palmerston supported the Sicilian separatist revolution with the aim of making the island an autonomous state governed by a prince of the house of Savoy.
During the Crimean War, Palmerston again proposed several times to the allies to carry out intimidating actions against the Reign of Ferdinand II, who had maintained an indulgent and more than benevolent neutrality towards Russia. Only the opposition of Queen Victoria prevented a “naval demonstration” in the Gulf of Naples in September 1855 which, in the intentions of the prime minister, should have favored an insurrection destined to overthrow the Bourbons.
The use of gunboat policy, to reduce or eliminate the sovereignty of the Two Sicilies, found, however, the full consent of public opinion in the United Kingdom. An editorial in the “Times” argued, in fact, that the visit of the British fleet had to obtain the same results as the missions to Japan led by Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry, in the Edo Bay, between 1853 and 1854, to reduce the resistance of the shogun with good reason, Ieyoshi Tokugawa, who opposed US commercial penetration. Just like the United States in the Far East, the article ended, Great Britain too could not tolerate the existence of “a Mediterranean Japan located a few miles from Malta and not too far from Marseille”.
Naturally, British interference was cloaked in humanitarian pretexts: the desire to dismantle the despotic regime of Ferdinand II and replace it with a constitutional and liberal system in which political and civil rights were guaranteed. Taking as a pretext the denunciation of Gladstone who, in the “Two Letters to the Earl of Lord Aberdeen” of 1851, had defined the regime of Ferdinand II as “the denial of God”, Palmerston used reserved funds from the British Treasury to finance an expedition. destined to free Luigi Settembrini (author, in 1847, of the virulent “Protest of the people of the two Sicilies”), Silvio Spaventa and Filippo Agresti sentenced to death in 1849, whose sentence had been commuted to life imprisonment to be served in the life sentence of the islet of Santo Stefano. The operation, planned for the late summer of 1855, did not come to fruition but the Secret Service Fund would be used in the following years and up to 1860 to destabilize the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.
England’s role in the fall of the Kingdom of Two Sicilies
What role did England play in the fall of the Kingdom of Naples?
The military, economic and diplomatic support of the United Kingdom was indispensable for the so-called “liberation of the South”. As the debate, held in the House of Commons, on May 17, 1860, revealed, the presence of the English frigates in the Marsala roadstead, which prevented the reaction of the Bourbon team, was not a simple coincidence but a deliberate act decided with full knowledge of the facts by the British cabinet.
London’s support did not end in this episode. In open violation of the Foreign Enlistment Act of 1819, which prohibited the recruitment of British subjects into foreign armies, Palmerston and the Foreign Minister Russell tolerated and encouraged “the subscription for the insurrectionists in Sicily” promoted by the Italian publicist Alberto Mario, to whom members of the Whig party and some ministers joined, all equally willing to donate “large sums to be used in the war against the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies” and therefore to financially support an enlistment campaign destined to swell the ranks of the red-shirted rebels. In addition, the English fleet collaborated tacitly with the Piedmontese in the protection of the convoys that carried reinforcements of men and materials destined to reach Garibaldi.
And that’s not enough! From the correspondence between Cavour and Admiral Persano in early July 1860, we learn, in fact, that in the preparation of the “pronouncement” against Francis II, which should have broken out in Naples to prevent a Mazzinian insurrection, “the Mr. Devicenzi, a friend of Lord Russell and Lord Palmerston, who will have the means of influencing the ambassador of His British Majesty Elliot and the admiral commander of the English squad ”. It was only, then, thanks to the veto placed by London that Napoleon III renounced to implement a naval blockade in the Strait of Messina that could have prevented Garibaldi from reaching the Calabrian coasts.
It was evidently not a question of disinterested favors. In fact, at the end of September 1860, Palmerston recalled the Italian exile Antonio Panizzi (who became director of the library of the British Museum) that “if Garibaldi had been able to occupy Naples and cause the King to flee to Gaeta, this was due to ‘England which, invited by France to prevent the attack on the mainland states from Sicily, refused “, adding that” moral aid and British influence were no less useful to Italy than French arms and that it would have been mere ingratitude for part of Italy to forget it ”.
Geopolitical Weakness of the Kingdom of Italy
Is it possible to say, therefore, that with unity the Kingdom of Italy essentially inherits the same position of the geopolitical weakness of the Two Sicilies and that London acquires, after 1861, a sort of protectorate over the Mediterranean politics of Italy?
Although perhaps the term “protectorate” is too strong an expression, one cannot fail to recognize that the arguments with which Palmerston justified the English action in favor of the Piedmontese conquest of the Two Sicilies aimed precisely at this goal.
In the letter sent to Queen Victoria, on January 10, 1861, Palmerston argued that considering “the general balance of power in Europe”, an Italian state extended from Turin to Palermo, placed under the influence of Great Britain and exposed to the blackmail of its naval superiority, was “the best possible adaptation” because “Italy will never side with France against us, and the stronger this nation becomes, the more it will be able to resist the impositions of any Power that will prove hostile to your Kingdom“. Prophetic words that, if we exclude the range of fascist foreign policy, history, up to our days, has never completely denied.
The Treaty of Alliance with the Central Empires, signed by the Italian government in May 1882, did not change in our favor the Mediterranean status quo that had been created with the French settlement in Tunisia and consequently strengthened our situation of dependence on the UK. Considering that, in the Mediterranean problems, Germany and Austria did not consider themselves committed to any solidarity with its ally, Italy, to stem the expansionism of Paris, found itself obliged to orbit in the sphere of influence of London, which was eager to enter into a pact of collaboration with our country which would have allowed her, at the same time, to put the French forces in a minority and to prevent a possible Franco-Italian agreement, the effect of which could have made communications between Gibraltar difficult, Malta and Egypt.
On February 12, 1887, an agreement was signed in which the British and Italian governments undertook to “maintain the Mediterranean balance and prevent any change that, in the form of annexation, occupation, protectorate, modifies the current situation to the detriment of the two signatory Powers “. With this convention, if Italy undertook to support the British penetration into Egypt, Great Britain declared itself willing “to support, in the event of interference by a third state, Italian action on any point of the northern African coast and particularly in Tripolitania and Cyrenaica”.
Renewed in 1902, this agreement would have allowed us to complete the Libyan enterprise in 1911. Even after this success, Italy remained, however, a “willing second” for London, destined to play a role in supporting its maritime system, but which could not have been allowed a wider expansion in the Mediterranean area. That this was the role reserved for our nation was demonstrated, in all evidence, in 1913, by the firm stance of the United Kingdom which excluded in principle “the possibility of preserving the Aegean islands, already belonging to the Turkish dominions, by the government of Rome, because such a solution would threaten to break the political balance in the eastern part of the Mediterranean ”. This declaration contained in a nutshell the master lines of British politics following the end of the First World War, when London, in agreement with Paris, worked tirelessly to prevent the full realization of the Italian aspirations on the Adriatic, supporting and fomenting the ambitions of Yugoslavia, Albania, and Greece in this crucial strategic sector ».
