ABSTRACT
Daniela Felisini1 Introductory remarks In recent decades, economic historiography has widely analysed and debated the role played by the railway in economic growth dynamics, warning against establishing rigid causal connections.2 At the same time the importance of the relationship between the railways and the economic, social and financial modernisation of the European countries has been acknowledged. For Italy, in particular, the spread of railway lines affected not only economic values, but also political and symbolic ones, both for the progressive achievement of the home market and for the process of national unification connecting populations and territories. The entire ruling class of the Risorgimento took
1 This paper has been translated by Dr. Elisa Bracalente, Dottorato in Lingue e
Letterature Straniere, Università degli Studi di Roma ‘Tor Vergata’. 2 In the trail opened by Robert W. Fogel and continued by the researchers of the
‘New Economic History’ as for example, Patrick K. O’Brien, we can find studies about Italian railways by Stefano Fenoaltea. See R. W. Fogel, Railroads and American Economic Growth: Essays in Econometric History (Baltimore 1964); P. K. O’Brien, The New Economic History of the Railways (London 1977), and S. Fenoaltea, ‘Le ferrovie e lo sviluppo industriale italiano 1861-1913’, in G. Toniolo, ed., Lo sviluppo economico italiano 1861-1940 (Rome and Bari 1973), 157-86, and ibid., ‘Italy’‚ in P. K. O’Brien, ed., Railways and the Economic Development of Western Europe 1830-1914 (Oxford 1983), 49-120. Alexander Gerschenkron has already emphasised the missed coincidence between ‘industrial spur’ and ‘railway mania’. See A. Gerschenkron, ‘Osservazioni sul saggio di sviluppo industriale dell’Italia 1881-1913’, in ibid., Il problema storico dell’arretratezza economica (Turin 1965), 71-87, here 82-3. A different orientation emerged in the classical studies by Rosario Romeo and recently Guido Pescosolido pointed out again ‘the connection between industrialisation and availability of a railway system’. See R. Romeo, Risorgimento e capitalismo (Bari 1959); ibid., Breve storia della grande industria in Italia (Bologna 1961), and G. Pescosolido, ‘Arretratezza e sviluppo’, in G. Sabbatucci and V. Vidotto, eds, Storia d’Italia, vol. 2: Il nuovo Stato e la società civile 1861-1887 (Rome and Bari 1995), 273-7.
