ABSTRACT
In the introduction to a collection of essays significantly titled Mezzogiorno senza meridionalismo, Giuseppe Giarrizzo has recently recalled the circumstances in which a meridionalista discourse first emerged. The first articulation of the "Southern Question" was the work of some representatives of the Historic Right who were reacting to the defeat of their party in the southern regions in the elections of 1874, a defeat that paved the way for the Historic Left to attain power in 1876. It is the image of the South constructed through the authoritative practice of statistics that we must examine in order to understand more fully whether and to what extent the South appeared as a distinct socio-economic reality, if not an altogether distinct "civilization," in the 1860s and early 1870s, a reality that stood out in contrast to the rest of the country.
