ABSTRACT
One of the striking aspects of the southern question is its persistence through time. The liberal-oligarchic period (1861 to 1882) had its southern question; as did the liberal-democratic period (1882 to 1922). Under Fascism (1922 to 1945), for all the regime’s repeated declarations that it had ‘solved’ the problem, and during the half century of the Republic, there was nevertheless a southern question. It is all too apparent that we are not dealing with something that is merely the effect of the far-off events of national unification-despite the fact that, at the time, Piedmontese hegemony and the defeat of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies did create a political imbalance between the component parts of the new realm. In the more or less recent past, there has been a greatly exaggerated emphasis on this incipit to the history of the united Italy: people have even talked in terms of a ‘colonial model’. In reality, by the 1870s, the situation was already changing with the formation of a national power bloc of which the southern ruling class came to form a legitimate part.
