Walker - 1967 - A geography of Italy

ITALY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Throughout the eighteenth century Austria’s grip on the Peninsula tightened as
Spain’s relaxed, but during the twenty years before Waterloo, Italy was forced to
recognize a new master in Revolutionary France. This was no mere change o f
garrison. With the French armies came new ideas sweeping away the inertia and
stagnation o f centuries, and putting into motion a series o f upheavals which was
to end in nothing less than the triumph o f Italian nationalism and the emergence
of a unified Italy in 1870. By previous standards French administration was
honest and efficient and serious attempts were made to further the economic
development o f the country. Agricultural schools were established and, particularly
in Naples, feudal tenures were reformed. Peasant proprietors were settled
on communal and confiscated church land, and tillage was extended, particularly
in Apulia, as the rights o f graziers were curtailed. Grandiose schemes for the
repopulation o f La Sila and for the control of the Po and Tiber were prepared,
and work was actually begun on the Pontine Marshes, but little enough was
actually achieved. The most lasting concrete improvements made by Napoleon
originated from his strategic needs. T o ensure better communications with
France Piedmont was annexed and vast sums were expended on the building o f
gently graded roads suitable for wheeled traffic over the M t Genevre, M t Cenis
and Simplon Passes. In Italy itself the roads were improved but many o f the
more ambitious projects, e.g. the Cisa Pass over the Apennines, were left tmfinished
when the French withdrew. With the fall o f Napoleon and the restoration
of the petty kingdoms o f Italy under the protection o f an Austria now more
firmly rooted than ever in Venetia and Lombardy, it seemed that the clock had
been safely put back. Actually this was the uneasy calm before vast political and
economic changes which revolutionized the geography o f Italy. Little more than
fifty years after the Restoration, Italy had become a political and economic unit,
the Alps had been pierced to link Calais and Brindisi, the Suez Canal had
changed the Mediterranean into a vital world trade route, and the population
had grown from 18 to 26 million. This last fact is o f the greatest significance, and
it is against the backgroimd o f a steadily and rapidly rising population that the
changing geography o f Italy in the nineteenth century must be reviewed.
Throughout the century Italy remained predominantly agricultural. The
extension o f the cultivated land continued, but at a quickened tempo. The
climate of much o f the country is such that cereals and vines may be grown at
quite high altitudes, commonly to three or four thousand feet, consequently the
cultivated zones moved up at the expense o f the forests, already seriously depleted
for grazing, fuel and charcoal. In Sardinia in 1820 one-fifth o f the area was
classed as woodland; a hundred years later this had declined to one-twentieth.
Continuous deforestation had been largely responsible for those intractable
marshes which now presented such a promising field o f agricultural extension in
the nineteenth century. Great progress had already been made but there were
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