The End of the “Second Slavery” in the Confederate South and the Great Brigandage in Southern Italy: Some Comparative Suggestions

• Autor(a) principal: Dal Lago, Enrico
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Almanack (Guarulhos)
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.unifesp.br/index.php/alm/article/view/13335
• topic: Guerra Civil Americana; Grande Bandidagem; Estados Confederados da América; American Civil War; Great Brigandage; Confederate States of America

Between 1861 and 1865, the newly formed Confederate nation and theKingdom of Italy faced comparable crises of legitimacy, as the Southof the former United States and southern Italy underwent the horrificordeals of the American Civil War and of Italy’s “Great Brigandage”, alsoin itself a civil war. Even though on different scales and in different ways,the two civil wars affected relationships between the agrarian elites andtheir slave and peasant workers, leading to the shattering of the “secondslavery” in the Confederate South and to a deep crisis in the landowningsocio-economic system of southern Italy. Whereas the Confederate nationdid not survive the crisis of legitimacy and collapsed under combinedmilitary pressure from the Union and internal opposition, the Kingdomof Italy survived the crisis of legitimacy at the cost of strengthening thegovernment’s authoritarian character and of the indiscriminate use ofmilitary force.