ABSTRACT
The pattern of Italian economic development in the period of the prima industrializzazione was characterised by various forms of dualism, in the first place by the coexistence of a modern industrial sector alongside ‘backward’ forms of production, i.e. the artisan sector. Dualism also developed on a geographical basis, the localisation of major centres of manufacturing industry in north-western Italy, the industrial ‘triangle’ of Milan, Turin and Genoa, as against the limited growth in the centre and the extremely marginal development in the south. In the latter, the economy remained overwhelmingly agrarian, and that agriculture was characterised by the survival of semi-feudal forms of landholding and backward methods of agriculture. Dualism also persisted within the agricultural sector itself, between small-scale subsistence farming virtually everywhere in Italy and large-scale capitalist farming, especially on the dairy farms of the Po Valley but also, exceptionally, in a restricted area of Apulia in the south.2
