Walker - 1967 - A geography of Italy

FROM THE RENAISSANCE TO THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
went, not in improvements, but to maintain the absentee landowner at court in
Naples. I f the Campania was productive it was so in spite o f its nilers. D r John
Moore, a keen and sympathetic observer, prescribed just the sort o f medicine
one would expect o f an enlightened eighteenth-century Englishman.
I f the land was leased out to free farmers, whose property was perfectly secure,
and the leases o f a sufficient length to allow the tenant to reap the fruits o f his
own improvements, there is no manner o f doubt that the estates o f the nobility
would produce much more. T h e landlord might have a higher rent paid in
money, instead o f being collected in kind, which subjects him to the impositions
o f a steward; and the tenants, on their parts, would be enabled to live much
more comfortably, and to lay up, every year, a small pittance for their families.
Nearly two centuries after, such a modest ambition can scarcely be said to have
been achieved. It was certainly not o f the agriculture o f the Tw o Sicilies that
Arthur Young was thinking when he wrote, ‘Water, clover, cows, cheese, money,
and music! These are the combinations that string Italian nerves to enjoyment
and give lessons in government to northern politicians.’
The period from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century produced very few
startling changes in the industrial and commercial pattern o f Italy. Genoa’s
decline had preceded that o f her rival and coincided with the loss o f political
independence; she did not come into her own again until the development o f
railways. The outstanding development among the Italian ports was the rise o f
Leghorn, a creation o f the Medici. In 1551 the town had only 759 inhabitants.
A century later it had surpassed Pisa in size and importance. Not only were the
necessary physical improvements driven through, but the liberal policy adopted
towards religious and political refugees, in particular Jews and English Catholics,
established useful connections abroad. Furthermore, Leghorn was a free port.
O f the southern ports Naples remained pre-eminent, but as imfortimate in her
rulers as Leghorn was fortunate. The economic basis o f this inflated capital was
insecure.
Though Naples is admirably situated for commerce, and no kingdom produces
the necessaries and luxuries o f life in greater profusion, yet trade is but in a
languishing condition; the best silks come from Lyons and the best woollens
from England.
In the mid-eighteenth century the city is said to have had 350,000 inhabitants,
and was notorious for its noise, its crowds and the number o f its unemployed.
There is not perhaps a city in the world, with the same number o f inhabitants,
in which so few contribute to the wealth of the community by useful, or by
productive labour as at N aples; but the number o f priests, monks, fiddlers,
lawyers, nobility, footmen, and beggars is to surpass all reasonable proportion;
the last alone are computed at thirty or forty thousand. ^
Silk, stockings, soap, snuff boxes, ornamental furniture, marble, embroidery,
* Moore.
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