How Italy Became the Most Divided Country in Europe: Understanding the Great Divide Between North & South

Pra­da, Alfa Romeo, Pel­le­gri­no, Fer­rari, Illy, Lam­borgh­i­ni, Guc­ci: these are a few Ital­ian cor­po­ra­tions we all know, though we don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly know that they’re all from the north of Italy. The same is true, in fact, of most Ital­ian brands that now enjoy glob­al recog­ni­tion, and accord­ing to the analy­sis pre­sent­ed in the Real­LifeLore video above, that’s not a coin­ci­dence. More than 160 years after the uni­fi­ca­tion of Italy, the south remains an eco­nom­ic and social under-per­former com­pared to the north, reflect­ed in mea­sures like the Human Devel­op­ment Index, GDP per capi­ta, and even vot­er turnout. At this point, the dis­par­i­ty between the two halves of the coun­try looks stark­er than that between the for­mer East and West Ger­many.

The rea­sons begin with geog­ra­phy: besides its obvi­ous prox­im­i­ty to the rest of Europe, north­ern Italy is home to the high­ly nav­i­ga­ble Po Riv­er and its sur­round­ing val­ley, the fresh­wa­ter (and hydro­elec­tric pow­er) sources of the Alps, and the deep-water ports at Tri­este and Genoa. What’s more, it does­n’t much over­lap with the fault zone under the Apen­nine Moun­tains of cen­tral and south­ern Italy, and thus isn’t as exposed to the earth­quakes that have tak­en such a toll over the cen­turies. Nor are any of the coun­try’s active vol­ca­noes — includ­ing Mt. Vesu­vius, which destroyed Pom­peii in the year 79 and killed thou­sands of Neapoli­tans in 1631 — locat­ed in the north.

After the fall of the Roman Empire, the polit­i­cal fates of what would become north­ern and south­ern Italy also diverged. Large parts of the south expe­ri­enced rule by Greeks, Arabs, Nor­mans, Spaniards, and Aus­tri­an Hab­s­burgs. As the video’s nar­ra­tion tells the sto­ry, “The long reign of for­eign pow­ers through­out south­ern Italy estab­lished a cul­ture of absen­tee land­lords, large land hold­ings worked by peas­ants, and feu­dal­ism that per­sist­ed for much longer than it did in the north, which for cen­turies after the Mid­dle Ages was con­trolled by var­i­ous thriv­ing, inde­pen­dent­ly gov­erned com­munes and city-states that built up large amounts of trust, or social cap­i­tal, between the peo­ple who lived there and the insti­tu­tions they built.”

Even at the time of uni­fi­ca­tion, south­ern Italy had less infra­struc­ture than north­ern Italy, a dif­fer­ence that remains painful­ly obvi­ous to any trav­el­ers attempt­ing to make their way across the coun­try today. It also had quite a lot of catch­ing up to do with regard to indus­tri­al out­put and lit­er­a­cy rates. Though cer­tain gaps have nar­rowed, the north-south divide has actu­al­ly become more pro­nounced in cer­tain ways since, not least due to the recrude­s­cence of Mafia influ­ence since the Sec­ond World War (a major fac­tor in the per­sis­tent lack of a bridge to Sici­ly, as recent­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture). Not to say that each half is homo­ge­neous with­in itself: spend enough time in any of the regions that con­sti­tute either one, and it will come to feel like a dis­tinct nation unto itself. Even­tu­al­ly, you may also find your­self in agree­ment with the Ital­ians who insist that Italy nev­er real­ly uni­fied in the first place.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Why There Isn’t a Bridge from Italy to Sici­ly – and Why the 2,000-Year-Old Dream of Build­ing the Bridge May Soon Be Real­ized

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.