ABSTRACT
Technology and the print media bring together themes that invite a re-examination of the relationships between economic development and culture in ways that touch very directly on issues of critical importance for any broader reconsideration of Liberal Italy. In comparative terms, the Italian case that Italy's political, economic, social, and cultural development after Unification was exceptional has never been made convincingly, while more recent studies on fascism and its origins have instead drawn attention to the universal complexities and contradictions of modernity. The print media would have been identified primarily and almost exclusively with the newspaper press, which again would have been seen as a key indicator of comparative backwardness. The French rulers published numerous government-supported newspapers, but also used the print media to circulate information, laws, and decrees, and for other bureaucratic and administrative purposes as well. The media and their markets would have been identified primarily as key indicators of what made Liberal Italy in some sense exceptional.
