Space and Administrative Boundaries at the Birth of the Italian Kingdom

Napoleon’s reflections on the ›singular‹ geographical configuration of the Italian peninsula from his exile on St Helena still make interesting reading. His secretary, Emmanuel de Las Cases, describes him on his hands and knees on a large map of Italy spread out on the floor, intent on measuring distances. In addition to noting the exceptional length and limited width of the country, both geographic features that impacted on its political destiny, the former emperor was struck by the clarity and certainty of its ›natural borders‹, which were all either maritime or, in the case of its sole land border, marked by the mighty semicircle of the Alps, the easiest to defend »of all […] the European borders«.

Emmanuel de Las Cases: Memoriale di Sant’Elena, ed. Luigi Mascilli Migliorini, vol. 2, Milano 2004, p. 1282–1293, at p. 1288.

Mazzini’s words show, on the one hand, the power of the theory of a natural border

On the theory of the natural border, which developed in the second half of the 16th century, see Daniel Nordman: Frontières de France. De ľespace au territoire, XVI^e – XIX^e siècle, Paris 1998, p. 88–122; Peter Sahlins: »Natural Frontiers Revisited: France’s Boundaries since the Seventeenth Century«, in: The American Historical Review 95 (1990), p. 1423–1451.

That geography provided political discourse and the creation of the Italian nation with solid anchorage is attested by the significance that representations of the territory and their circulation through cartography – especially on a small scale – assumed for the construction of a national identity (which has remained somewhat weak, in truth) and the establishment of a spirit of belonging. The image of Italy and the unitary representation of its territory, where political and natural borders are one and the same, became a powerful channel of communication for patriotism at the time of the Risorgimento. It was able to provide an evocative indication of the objective of national unification to a country characterized by extreme variety, profound territorial imbalances, and ancient political divisions.

Maria Luisa Sturani: »Le rappresentazioni cartografiche nella costruzione di identità territoriali: materiali e spunti di riflessione dalla prospettiva della storia della cartografia«, in: Luigi Blanco (ed.): Organizzazione del potere e territorio. Contributi per una lettura storica della spazialità, Milano 2008, p. 189–213; Gilles Pécout: »La carta ďItalia nella pedagogia politica del Risorgimento«, in: Alberto Mario Banti / Roberto Bizzocchi (ed.): Immagini della nazione nelľItalia del Risorgimento, Roma 2002, p.69–87; Maria Luisa Sturani: »›I giusti confini delľItalia‹. La rappresentazione cartografica della nazione«, in: Contemporanea. Rivista di storia delľ800 e del ’900 1 (1998), p. 427446. On knowledge and representations of the territory of the peninsula, see Claudio Cerreti: »La rappresentazione del territorio«, in: Giovanni Sabbatucci / Vittorio Vidotto (ed.): Ľunificazione italiana, Roma 2011, p. 69–87; Sandro Rinauro: »La conoscenza del territorio nazionale«, in: Francesco Cassata / Claudio Pogliano (ed.): Storia ďItalia. Annali, vol. 26: Scienze e cultura delľItalia unita, Torino 2011, p. 497–523.

The other great issue that animated political debate and practice during the Risorgimento, that is, the question of where the capital should be located, was also linked to the physical and political geography of the country. Once again, it was Napoleon who emphasized the problem of identifying the capital of the future united Italy which, although its regions had »much more in common« compared with countries that had already achieved political union, such as the »various British kingdoms«, »lacks central cities due to the manner in which it is configured«.

Las Cases: Memoriale, vol. 2, p. 1288, 1290.

Moreover, the lack of centrality that is a feature of the peninsula from a geographical perspective had to be considered together with the large number of cities that enjoyed the role and status of capitals of their respective states prior to political unification. This number began to be dramatically reduced immediately after the political restructuring sanctioned by the Congress of Vienna, and it continued gradually as the process of formation of the unified state progressed, starting with Genoa, Venice, and Palermo, and continuing with Milan, Parma, Modena, Florence, and Naples. To this loss of importance, which preceded the more general restructuring of the urban and spatial hierarchy in the various territories, must be added the rapid transfer of the capital which happened on two occasions between the proclamation of the kingdom of Italy and the completion of political unification with the conquest of Rome.

The issue of the capital was also closely associated with the political solution that was determined to be most appropriate, or fitting, to the history of the country for the purposes of accomplishing unification. Those who were in favour of federal or confederal solutions proposed projects for the organization of the new state more focused on the morphological features of the peninsula and its political history. While certain aspects of these projects were of interest, others were wholly fanciful and extravagant, proposing a bipartite or tripartite subdivision of Italy

Durando: Della nazionalità italiana; Luigi Torelli (anon.): Pensieri sulľItalia di un Anonimo lombardo, Lausanne 1846; Giovanni Fabrizi: Delle eventualità italiane. Considerazioni politiche, Bastia 1856.

By contrast, the supporters of unification immediately identified the strategic objective: to achieve political unification, which could not but be linked to the conquest of the eternal city, Rome, where the seat of the new capital of the kingdom could and had to be located. In one of the first sessions of the new national parliament, Rodolfo Audinot from Bologna presented an interpellation in the Chamber of Deputies on the ›Roman question‹ that would inspire a lively debate on Rome as the capital. For Audinot, »Rome needs Italy« and »Italy needs Rome« because »the entire nation cannot be governed forever from this distant strip of Italy«, meaning Turin, and because »Rome as the capital city of Italy is the highest expression of the unity and independence of the nation«.

Atti del Parlamento italiano. Discussioni della Camera dei deputati [API DCD], VIII Legislatura, Sessione del 1861, 25. 3. 1861, p. 282, online at: storia.camera.it/regno/lavori/leg08/sed022.pdf (20. 9. 2017).

In the context of the parliamentary debate inspired by Audinot’s interpellation, one of the first acts following the proclamation of the kingdom, the Boncompagni agenda, was proposed. A good ten years before the breach of Porta Pia, this agenda, which supported Cavour’s policy and was approved »almost unanimously«, as the minutes of the parliamentary session report, requested that Rome, »the capital acclaimed by public opinion«, be rejoined with Italy.

API DCD, VIII Legislatura, Sessione del 1861, 26. 3. 1861, p.303, online at: storia.camera.it/regno/lavori/leg08/sed023.pdf (20. 9. 2017); API DCD, VIII Legislatura, Sessione del 1861, 27. 3. 1861, p.334, online at: storia.camera.it/regno/lavori/leg08/sed024.pdf (20. 9. 2017).

Underlying the relationship between geography and politics to which I have pointed here in relation to the processes of political unification and redefinition of urban hierarchies is a more general question, one whose roots may be found in the debates that took place in the French revolutionary Constituent Assembly on the creation of the departments as the basic units of a new administrative division of the national space.

See Marie-Victoire Ozouf-Marignier: La formation des départements. La représentation du territoire français à la fin du 18^e siècle, Paris 1989; Pierre Bourdieu: »Ľidentité et la représentation. Éléments pour une réflexion critique sur ľidée de région«, in: Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 35 (1980), p. 63–72.

The Italian historiography of the process of political unification has devoted little, if any, attention to the territorial factor, which is closely linked to the measurement of space and the collection of statistical data. In light of the recent historiographical trends of the ›spatial turn‹ and of ›border studies‹, it seems to me that it can be very useful to give increased consideration to the profound influence of the spatial dimension, and especially to the social and political construction of space. This will provide us with a better understanding of the complexity and the historicity of the processes by which political and administrative spaces are constructed, such as those that took place during Italian unification.

In a wide-ranging analytical portrait of the political and administrative situation of the Italian Kingdom written at the end of the first unitary parliament,

The first parliamentary assembly of the new Kingdom of Italy continued the numbering of the Subalpine Assemblies of the Sardinian state, referring to itself as the eighth legislature and thus underlining the continuity of the two states. Likewise, the first King of Italy retained the same ordinal number he had used as King of Sardinia-Piedmont: Vittorio Emanuele II.

The words of the Tuscan liberal very clearly illustrate the peculiar, confused situation in the country, with its plurality of political formations brought together within the new state structure, and the disorder that had intensified during the crucial years of the national unification process. The situation was made even more complicated by the very limited knowledge of the various political and administrative – and socio-economic – realities that had given life to the new unified state. From a political standpoint, unification was not completed by convening a constituent assembly (notwithstanding the vote by Lombardy in far-off 1848 which had been approved by the Subalpine Parliament); it was carried out and legitimized through adhesion or annexation to the Piedmontese constitutional monarchy by means of a plebiscite. Administratively speaking, on the other hand, it was not accomplished until 1865, again through the use of exceptional procedures, after the signing of the September Convention, which led to the transfer of the capital from Turin to Florence. At this point, the new municipal and provincial law, the first law of administrative unification, was also extended to Tuscany, which had enjoyed a fleeting autonomy up to that time. After all, how could the capital be transferred to Florence without resolving the anomaly of Tuscany’s administration, which had persisted since the Kingdom had been proclaimed? This was openly acknowledged by Francesco Restelli, who had introduced in parliament the Lanza Bill on administrative unification, which also requested parliament to delegate the restructuring of administrative districts to the government:

A revisitation of the construction process of the new national state that takes account of the extraordinary diversity of the political forms merged into that state cannot, however, start from its outcome, that is, from the achievement of political and administrative unification and the simultaneous expansion of the Franco-Napoleonic administrative model, as reinterpreted during the Sardinian-Piedmontese experience of the Restoration. On the contrary, it must encompass a broader diachronic horizon that starts from what might rightfully be considered the decisive turning point as regards administrative organization and the propulsion towards unification in the Italian peninsula: that is, the ›triennio rivoluzionario‹ and the subsequent Napoleonic era.

It is not possible here to review the controversy at that time – which is still current today – between unitarists and federalists,

On the structure of federalist theories in Italy and their fundamental weakness, see most recently Luca Mannori: »Quale federalismo per la cultura politica risorgimentale?«, in: Luigi Blanco (ed.): Ai con – fini delľUnità ďItalia. Territorio, amministrazione, opinione pubblica, Trento 2015, p. 41–86.

From this perspective, the case of Italy offers aspects of special interest for the study of administrative divisions: pre-unification state pluralism, the weight of the various administrative traditions, the differing political and constitutional roles of municipalities in the former Italian states, regional imbalances in territorial organization, a peculiar national unification process that actually consisted in a simple expansion of Sardinian-Piedmontese institutions and organizational models – these are all more than adequate to justify the renewed attention that is being paid to the question of the territorial and administrative districts of the new national state.

On the subject of administrative districts in unified Italy, with particular regard to the provincial fabric, see the volume gathering the initial results of a research group coordinated by Francesco Bonini at Libera Università Maria SS. Assunta, Rome: Francesco Bonini et al. (ed.): Orizzonti di cittadinanza. Per una storia delle circoscrizioni amministrative delľItalia unita, Soveria Mannelli 2016.

In an age of national states, the position of those promoting the unitary solution had an unquestionable advantage over the supporters of a federation, given the circumstances and forces in the field. Mazzini himself declared that he would even accept a monarchy if this made it possible to achieve the unification of Italy, and – referring to the long-standing formula of Aragonese constitutionalism – stated: »Create Italy and I am with you. If you do not, I am not«.

This reference to the Aragonese principle, which was also taken up by Daniele Manin, is prominent as an epigraph in a text written in 1831; see Giuseppe Mazzini: »A Carlo Alberto di Savoja, Un italiano: ›Se no, no!‹«, in: Giuseppe Mazzini: Scritti politici, ed. Terenzio Grandi / Augusto Comba, Torino 2011, p. 157–177.

Matteucci’s considerations on the new Kingdom’s political organization would make Carlo Cattaneo feel less isolated, and would induce him, in his famous prologue to the 9th volume of the »Politecnico«, to firmly condemn the »doctrine of absolute centralization« that had established itself in Italy with the extension of the Rattazzi Law to Lombardy and the newly-annexed provinces. Cattaneo was not happy with the administrative decentralization proposed by Matteucci, to whom he objected that »if there is in Italy a social entity called the province of Pisa or Cremona, there is also a larger and no less real entity called Tuscany, Lombardy, or Sicily, and each of these states or united kingdoms is not a merely administrative body, but also includes a complete legislative structure«. Nonetheless, the spirit that inspired his reflections was very close to that of Matteucci when he suggested that the progress made in certain Italian states in the areas of legislation and administration should be taken into account and used, instead of reducing its effect. It is helpful to reread this extremely well-known passage:

During this same period, this standpoint was endorsed – albeit without Cattaneo’s broad political horizons – by the editor of the »Annali universali di statistica«, Giuseppe Sacchi, who, writing on the work of the Piedmontese, issued this categorical condemnation:

In the context of Italian administrative unification, the annexation of Lombardy and the extension to it of the Piedmontese system of administration is of exemplary and paradigmatic value. Initially, a commission was created consisting of representatives of moderate Lombard liberalism, charged with the task of establishing the measures most appropriate for reconciling the particular Lombard administrative tradition with the Piedmontese system,

On the Giulini Commission, named after its chairman Carlo Giulini della Porta, see Nicola Raponi: Politica e amministrazione in Lombardia agli esordi delľUnità. Il programma dei moderati, Milano 1967; Nicola Raponi (ed.): Atti della Commissione Giulini per ľordinamento temporaneo della Lombardia (1859), Milano 1962. The commission met in Turin, from its seventh meeting onwards in a room at the Palazzo del Parlamento, which had been closed following the granting of special powers to the king due to the outbreak of hostilities, and it worked feverishly from 10 to 26 May. The projects approved by the Commission, which were applied by Cavour to establish Lombardy’s temporary system after its liberation, were also used for the provisional systems in the provinces of Modena and Parma.

The Lombard local government applied a Theresian model and was based on the institution of the ›convocati‹ (literally, ›the summoned‹), that is, the general assembly of ›estimati‹, or landowners. Its superiority over the Sardinian-Piedmontese system had been acknowledged even in Piedmontese liberal circles; in a letter to his wife, count Giulini wrote that Cavour had confided in him that »he well knew that at the time the two countries were on the point of being joined together, Piedmont had more to learn as regards administrative systems than it had to teach«.

Bruno Malinverni: »Alcune lettere del conte Cesare Giulini Della Porta riguardanti la sua missione a Torino, maggio – giugno 1859«, in: Il Risorgimento. Rivista di storia del Risorgimento e di storia contemporanea 11 (1959), p. 117–138, at p. 129. On the mythologizing of the Theresian local system by Cattaneo and others, see Ettore Rotelli: »Carlo Cattaneo e gli ordinamenti locali lombardi«, in: Carlo G. Lacaita (ed.): Ľopera e ľeredità di Carlo Cattaneo, vol. 1: Ľopera, Bologna 1975, p.283–305.

After Lombardy, the Rattazzi Law, which maintained the Franco-Napoleonic administrative system basically unchanged, was also extended to the former states that were annexed between 1859 and 1861.

After Lombardy, the law of 23. 10. 1859 was enacted with only a few amendments in Emilia and Romagna on 27. 12. 1859, in Sicily on 26. 8. 1860, in Umbria and the Marche at the end of September 1860, and in the Neapolitan provinces on 2. 1. 1861.

A dynamic similar to the one that occurred at the time of the annexation of Lombardy also took place in 1866 on the annexation of Veneto, which was the first region to be included in the Kingdom following enactment of the administrative unification law. As in Lombardy, there was widespread discontent in Veneto, and in this case too, a commission was appointed, presided by Cesare Correnti, who had previously been a member of the Giulini Commission – but no representatives from Veneto were included in it. In an editorial dated 15 October 1866, before Italian troops arrived in Veneto, the »Gazzetta di Venezia« warned of the risks of a pure, uncritical extension of the Piedmontese administrative system:

In the opinion of the journalist, the mistake was to have believed that it would be possible to administer a large structure such as the new Italian state by applying tools that had been used to administer the small Piedmontese kingdom:

Theories on the territorial division of the Italian peninsula had been proposed even before its political unification was completed. These proposals were closely associated with the various views on the form that the new state should assume – unitary, federal, or confederal –, and were initially put forward in order to identify an adequate and realistic response to the problems of achieving national unification. In particular, these theories were suggested by a number of geographers and politicians who were in some way protagonists of the national unification process, and whose attention was focused more closely on the morphological and geopolitical features of the peninsula.

Of interest here are the observations of Carlo Frulli in 1845 on the geographical division of Italy, which have recently been brought to our attention again by Lucio Gambi. Frulli, who was from Bologna, was not at all interested in the political and jurisdictional divisions of the peninsula. He declared from the outset that he wanted to »proceed with a more regular physical division which, in order that it may be considered natural, we wish to be based solely on the orography and hydrography of our beautiful country«.

Carlo Frulli: »Fisiche regioni peninsulari ed insulari delľItalia«, in: Annuario geografico italiano (1845), p. 92–104, at p. 92–93. The piece is reproduced anastatically in a recent article; see Lucio Gambi: »Ľinvenzione delle regioni italiane«, in: Geographia antiqua. Rivista di geografia storica del mondo antico e di storia della geografia 7 (1998), p. 89–106.

Entirely different was the work of Cesare Correnti, in the early 1850s and thereafter, to identify more homogeneous and solid regional areas.

Cesare Correnti: »Fisionomia delle regioni italiche«, in: Il Nipote del Vesta-Verde. Strenna popolare 5 (1852), p.42–61; Cesare Correnti: »Casa nostra«, in: Il Nipote del Vesta-Verde. Strenna popolare 8 (1855), p. 138–164. See also Cesare Correnti: »Nozioni storico-geografiche su ľItalia«, in: Il Nipote del Vesta-Verde. Strenna popolare 1 (1848), p. 13–38. On Correnti as a scholar and politician, see Marco Soresina: ›Non potendo esser fiori contentiamoci di essere radici‹. Una biografia di Cesare Correnti, Milano 2014.

In addition to the fact that the regional divisions delineated by Correnti would, after later adjustments, give rise to the statistical ›compartments‹ of the country, what is to be underlined is his awareness of the partiality of his administrative system and of its imprecise correspondence to the requirements of the future unified state. He was also acutely aware, and would become even more so thereafter, of the differences and dissimilarities that characterized the numerous states of the peninsula, also from a jurisdictional and administrative point of view:

As noted previously, this moment in time was not only foundational as regards the administrative fabric of the nascent unitary state, but was also linked to the subsequent creation of the statistical divisions on the basis of which the first census of the population of the Kingdom was carried out.

On the genesis of the unitary administrative divisions, see Luigi Blanco: »Territorio e amministrazione: appunti di lavoro sul tema delle circoscrizioni amministrative nelľItalia unita«, in: Piero Aimo / Elisabetta Colombo / Fabio Rugge (ed.): Autonomia, forme di governo e democrazia nelľetà moderna e contemporanea. Scritti in onore di Ettore Rotelli, Pavia 2014, p.25–37.

In the 1864 edition of the »Annuario statistico Italiano«, and particularly in an extensive section devoted to »Topography«, Correnti and Maestri reviewed the administrative divisions of the former states of the peninsula, comparing them to the territorial division of the new Kingdom. In their view, the Kingdom was characterized by a worrisome confusion that had resulted in a veritable »territorial labyrinth«, which was also due to the work of the ministers who had succeeded one another at the various ministries in the early years of unification. For Correnti and Maestri,

In their view, the picture that emerged from the territorial and administrative analysis of the divisions was a result of the »lack of agreement on the criteria that had led to the reform or conservation of the territorial districts«; this deficiency »caused very great inconvenience in every part of the administration, and even greater inconvenience to citizens, who have not found a guide to proceed through this tangle of jumbled divisions lacking any clear design«.

Cesare Correnti / Pietro Maestri: Annuario statistico italiano. Anno II. – 1864, Torino 1864, p.45–46: »tante vorrebbero essere le topografie amministrative, quanti sono i ministeri: e ancora non basterebbe, dacchè Il ministero, per esempio, delle Finanze, ha diviso Il regno in cinque regioni pel debito pubblico, in sei per le consulte legali del contenzioso, in quattordici pei catasti, in diciotto per le Direzioni del Tesoro, in ventisette per le direzioni delle gabelle, in cinquanta per la direzione del Demanio: e i sottocompartimenti di codeste partizioni sono anch’essi diversi e s’intralciano e s’intersecano variamente. […] ne venne ad ogni parte delľAmministrazione un disagio grandissimo; e un disagio più grande ai cittadini i quali non trovano chi li possa scorgere sicuramente in codesto viluppo di partizioni ammattassate [sic] e accavallate senza fermo disegno«.

In the contemporaneous »Statistica del Regno ďltalia«, the official publication of the Ministry of Agriculture, Industry and Trade, Maestri, as director of the Central Office of Statistics, explained what the term ›statistical districts‹ should be taken to mean, and clarified the procedure by which they had been identified. It is helpful to consider the reasoning he set forth:

Maestri’s brief but dense introduction is entirely focused on dispelling any suspicion that the statistical compartments might in some way reproduce the peninsula’s old political divisions, and emphasizing that the identification of fourteen »great compartments of the Kingdom« into which statistical data would be divided was not »a definitive, scientific division of the national territory«, not even »from a purely statistical and economic stand-point«. On the contrary, he claimed, »it will not be possible to achieve a final definition of the economic and statistical compartments until topographical, meteorological, and agronomic studies have matured«.

In his pioneering work on the Italian administrative fabric and regional system over the long term, Lucio Gambi, analyzing the writings and works of Correnti and Maestri, identified the underlying »misunderstanding« of administrative geography in Italy, which consisted in confusion and overlap between statistical compartments

They were officially renamed ›regions‹ in 1912.

Everything, or nearly everything, has already been written on the regional projects presented by the Bolognese Marco Minghetti to the »Extraordinary and Provisional Legislative Commission at the Council of State«, whose activity lasted from 13 August 1860 to 25 October 1861, the date on which the proposals were officially withdrawn, although their fate had been sealed from the time when the government had decided not to support them in March of the same year, citing the ›cabinet issue‹.

The obligatory point of reference here is Roberto Ruffilli: La questione regionale dalľunificazione alla dittatura (1862–1942), Milano 1971.

It is a widely-shared historiographical theory, and one openly endorsed already at that time, that what led to the failure of the regional projects was the ›discovery‹ or ›conquest‹ of the South and the fear of potential separatist movements raised by the Piedmontese ruling class, which was therefore increasingly decisively oriented towards immediate annexation through a plebiscite. But it was not only the fear that the former states might arise again under the guise of regions that brought about this failure; another important factor was the spirit of ›cittadineria‹ – the »spirit of enmity« to which Correnti referred at the beginning of the 1850s as one »among the many curses« of the peninsula.

Correnti: »Casa nostra«, p. 160.

Despite the long dispute between minister Minghetti and the commission, the final rejection of the regional projects put an end to any notion of an expanded district to which coordination of local administration could be entrusted, and confirmed the unexpected centrality of the provinces as an intermediate body between municipalities and the state. As Adriana Petracchi claimed when she drew attention to the close association between the projects to reform the Piedmontese administrative system after 1848 and those for the new unified state, the ›regionalist‹ ministers of the Kingdom of Italy were unable to achieve what Urbano Rattazzi had succeeded in doing in 1859 when he replaced the small Piedmontese provinces with larger divisions, which were increased in number and redesigned as to their boundaries to resolve the most evident territorial imbalances, making them the cornerstone of the Piedmontese territorial district.

See Petracchi: Origini delľordinamento, vol. 1, p. 183–240. According to the same author, who emphasizes the extremely close ties between Piedmontese administrative reforms and the administrative system of the Kingdom of Italy, the original reform projects also derived from the discussions in Piedmont, and in particular from the work and direction of Gustavo Ponza di San Martino, as evidenced by a letter from Minghetti to Giuseppe Pasolini dated 23 April 1860; Petracchi: Origini delľordinamento, vol. 1, p.294.

When the idea of the region was abandoned, however, this only led to the return of the long-standing problem that had accompanied discussions on the administrative system and territorial partitioning at the dawn of Italian unification and had led to the emergence of two opposing factions in the Kingdom of Sardinia – supporters of the provincial district (›provincialists‹) and those of the larger division (›divisionalists‹). Similarly, the reproposal of the Piedmontese municipal and provincial law of 23 October 1859 merely increased criticisms of the administrative structure, which clearly derived from the French system, and the territorial partitioning imposed on the unified state. For example, in one of his many writings expressly devoted to the territorial partitioning of the Kingdom of Italy, Consiglio Norsa of Mantua passed very severe judgment on the work of Rattazzi, whom he blamed for having – like a »barbarian« – »razed Italian institutions to the ground without knowing anything about them«. Norsa continued:

These were by no means isolated criticisms in the debate on the political and administrative system of the new unified state, nor were they original; they were, however, distinctive insofar as they analytically discredited the choices made on the administrative subdivision of the national territory, comparing them with the format of French departments, stigmatizing the confusion that had been created, and suggesting drastic simplification and rationalization.

Similarly, although of different political orientation, especially on the regional issue, see Leone Carpi: Del riordinamento amministrativo del regno e del sistema proposto dal Ministro delľInterno nel suo discorso inaugurale dei lavori della Commissione speciale presso il Consiglio di Stato. Considerazioni, Bologna 1860; Pier Carlo Boggio: »Riordinamento amministrativo del Regno ďItalia«, in: Rivista amministrativa del Regno 12 (1861), p. 81–90, 217–243; Carlo De Cesare: Il passato, Il presente e ľavvenire della pubblica amministrazione nel Regno ďItalia, Firenze 1865; Pietro Ruscone: Sul compartimento territoriale e sulľordinamento giudiziario ed amministrativo del Regno ďItalia. Cenni, Milano 1867.

As mentioned before, the cause of the controversy was the 1859 Rattazzi Law. Issued pursuant to the plenary powers granted to the sovereign for the war against Austria on 25 April 1859, it was not very different from the similar Sardinian law dating from 1848, except for the names of the territorial divisions: the divisions (›divisions‹) became ›provinces‹, and the provinces were renamed ›districts‹ (›circondari‹). The territorial division introduced at this time would remain unaltered on the basis of the subsequent »Law for the Administrative Unification of the Kingdom of Italy« of 20 March 1865 and its »Attachment A: Municipal and Provincial Law«.

The law had six attachments: the Municipal and Provincial Law (Attachment A), the Law on Public Safety (Attachment B), the Law on Public Health (Attachment C), the Law on the Council of State (Attachment D), the Law on Administrative Disputes (Attachment E), and the Law on Public Works (Attachment F). It was followed a few months later by the Organic Law on the Legal System (6. 12. 1865). On the parts of the Municipal and Provincial Law discussed here, see Francesco Bonini: »Comuni e Province, circoscrizioni (all. A)«, in: Storia Amministrazione Costituzione. Annale delľIstituto per la Scienza delľAmministrazione Pubblica 23 (2015), p.55–90.

As is evident from the accompanying report presented to the king by Rattazzi, in whose opinion the law was meant to »centralize the political system and emancipate the administrative system«, the territorial entities actually intended by the two laws were municipalities and provinces. The former, which were »the cradle of modern freedoms throughout Europe«, represented the original core of community life and the greatest glory of Italian civilization; the latter, which would be given a central role according to the minister’s plan, were »a great association of municipalities intended to protect the rights of each of them and manage their collective moral and material interests«. They had been »created on a broad basis comprising substantial and homogeneous economic and moral interests«.

Petracchi: Origini delľordinamento, vol. 3, p. 151–155.

Although Italian administrative historiography takes account of the various interpretations of the centralization of the new unified state,

There is an updated review and analysis of the question in Piero Aimo: »Comuni e Province, funzioni e controlli (all. A)«, in: Storia Amministrazione Costituzione. Annale delľIstituto per la Scienza delľAmministrazione Pubblica 23 (2015), p. 7–54.

It is sufficient to study the 1857/58 and 1864 volumes of the »Annuario statistico italiano«, the work of Correnti and Maestri, to gain a picture of the critical reflections inspired by the administrative restructuring of the Kingdom of Italy. These reflections are all the more interesting if we consider that most of them had already been formulated before unification was achieved. In the earlier volume, the focus is on the differences »between the municipal institutions of central and continental Italy and those of southern Italy and its islands«, whose differing origins are highlighted: »feudal« in the case of the latter, and »municipal« in the case of the former, especially in Lombardy and Tuscany.

Cesare Correnti / Pietro Maestri: Annuario statistico italiano. Anno I. – 1857–58, Torino 1858, p.502–507, at p.506: »In Sicily, as in France, the municipality is a creature of the State; in the rest of Italy, on the other hand, the State, with the exception of Savoy and Rome, comes from the municipality«. On the life of the »Annuario«, see Barbara Fiocco: »Le ›misure‹ delľItalia nelľAnnuario Statistico Italiano«, in: Documenti ISTAT, online at: www3.istat.it/dati/pubbsci/documenti/documenti2009.html#2009_3 (20. 9. 2017).

These latter questions are discussed analytically in the subsequent 1864 volume, in which, after raising the issue of the »virtually insuperable difficulties faced by a legislator who intends to reduce all the Kingdom’s municipalities into one single legal norm«, taking statistical data as a starting point, the focus is on the »very considerable disproportions in the municipality« in regard to demographics and surface area.

Correnti / Maestri: Annuario statistico 1864, p.48–49: »with regard to the number of inhabitants, [municipalities] in Lombardy, not counting the cities and villages, barely exceed an average of 1,000, whereas in Tuscany and Romagna the number is seven times larger. There are also rural municipalities in Tuscany that have the same population as a large city. The disproportion in the size of municipal territories is even greater. In Lombardy, the average size of a municipality is less than 10 square kilometres, whereas in Tuscany it is only a little under 100. This means that if one takes its population and territory into account, a Tuscan municipality might resemble the former census district of Lombardy and the administrative district of the old Piedmont«.

At a supra-municipal level, too, the administrative system – that is, the provincial structure – could not fail to register the same enormous variety of situations, a consequence of the decisions and circumstances that had driven the process of formation of the unified state and the plan for administrative division. For Correnti and Maestri, this was another case of »piedmontization«: instead of doing away with the »old, small Sardinian provinces, […] these nerveless, lifeless bodies which are the districts were invented«. The result was that instead of pursuing a general plan, »the territorial division« of the new Kingdom remained that of the »former little kingdom of 50 provinces«, and the remainder of the country was divided into 59 provinces, »which included some, like Porto Maurizio and Massa, that are stumps and patches, urban districts like Livorno, and some that are only a little less than regions, like Turin, Genoa, Umbria, and Basilicata«.

Correnti / Maestri: Annuario statistico 1864, p.44–45: »delle quali ve n’ha che sono, come Porto Maurizio e Massa, toppe e rapezzi; o distretti urbani, come Livorno; o poco men che regioni come Torino, Genova, Umbria, Basilicata«. See also, along the same lines, Carpi: Riordinamento amministrativo; Andrea Calenda: Le circoscrizioni amministrative, Massa 1865.

The contradictions illustrated by the inventors of the statistical compartments were not extraneous to the considerations and proposals that the Minister of the Interior, Minghetti, would develop in his bill on the »Division of the Kingdom and Government Authorities«, which he presented to the Chamber of Deputies together with his other projects for reforming the administrative system on 13 March 1861.

Marco Minghetti: »Ripartizione del Regno e autorità governative«, reproduced in Petracchi: Origini delľordinamento, vol. 3, p. 335–343.

The most interesting proposal put forward by Minghetti in his project, however, relates to the creation of a parliamentary commission appointed »to carry out special studies and provide appropriate suggestions« for resolving the most evident contradictions in the administrative network.

Minghetti: »Ripartizione«, cited from Petracchi: Origini delľordinamento, vol. 3, p. 338.

It is not possible here to provide a detailed analysis of the most uncertain and confused territorial areas of the Italian administrative network, to which Minghetti did not fail to refer in his project. In order to propose some concluding thoughts, however, it will be appropriate to itemize the structural problems that were central to the debate on territorial division at the dawn of the Kingdom of Italy. Besides involving scholars from various disciplines, as well as politicians and administrators, the main arenas for this debate were not only the chambers of parliament and the councils of local bodies, but also the columns of the specialist journals in the sector, for example, the »Rivista dei comuni italiani« and the »Rivista amministrativa del Regno«.

The first problem on which the interest and attention of insiders and public opinion focused was the ›size‹ of the intermediate administrative districts, that is, the optimal dimensions of provincial districts – an issue that was in turn closely associated with the desired format of the state. The option for small provinces was mainly supported by the promoters of administrative centralization, while it was more often the supporters of decentralization who were in favour of a larger intermediate district. In one of the many works devoted to this topic, it was claimed that division into districts of a smaller size was appropriate for »small states«, while large states required a great deal of »centripetal force in their governmental authorities«, which needed to be appropriately countered by the provision of larger districts.

Calenda: Circoscrizioni, p.68.

Proposals to reduce the number of provinces were also linked to a second issue, which was also frequently raised: the need to simplify the administrative-territorial framework, with the objective of reducing and rationalizing the costs of the administrative apparatus, and to address at the same time the problem of bureaucratic elephantiasis. This cost-cutting objective clearly related not only to the ›political‹ or general-purpose administrative districts, but also – if not primarily – to sectoral districts for specific tasks that depended on the various ministries and were located across the country.

Pietro Castiglioni: La riforma amministrativa e la questione degli impiegati. Studii e proposta di una nuova Circoscrizione, Torino 1864; De Cesare: Passato.

Demonstrating the structural role played by particularism and municipalism in the constitutional history of Italy, discussions on how to divide the territory were also almost completely absorbed by an endless series of issues of local interest relating to individual cities or territorial areas. An example is provided by the borderline case of Livorno, where the provincial territory was the same as the municipal area, so that it became necessary to reorganize the adjacent provinces in order to ensure that the province of Livorno achieved the dimensions required of a province.

Giovanni Fabrizi, in the Chamber of Deputies, called Livorno an anomalous case of a »province without a territory«, and asked Peruzzi, the Minister of the Interior, how his modifications to the provincial and municipal law could apply there, given that they required the Provincial Delegation to exercise protection and control over the municipalities; see API DCD, VIII Legislatura, Sessione 1863–1864, 6. 7. 1864, p.5971–5972, online at: storia.camera.it/regno/lavori/leg08/ sed663.pdf (20. 9. 2017). The province was eventually expanded to include two municipalities from the province of Pisa, the entire district of Volterra, some municipalities of the province of Florence, and the island of Elba. See also De Cesare: Passato, p. 144–145.

Complaints and petitions on the part of former provinces that had been suppressed or reduced in size as part of the new territorial partition of the Kingdom of Italy, which often gave rise to institutional conflicts, were so frequent that they became a recurrent theme of the times: from Savona to Lodi, from Crema to Grosseto, from Reggio Emilia to Vercelli, and from Sarzana to Fermo, there ensued a spate of memoranda, pamphlets, and historical papers underlining the importance of the city in question and the historical, topographical, demographic, economic, and territorial justifications for its reinstatement.

The cases are too numerous and the literature too extensive to provide an exhaustive picture. As examples, see V. Salmini: »Della ricostituzione della provincia lodigiana e delle vicendevoli ragioni di Lodi e Crema«, in: Rivista dei comuni italiani 6 (1862), p.311–324; Delle pretese e dei diritti di Crema per avere un’autonomia provinciale, Lodi 1861; Carlo Donati De’ Conti: Sulla riforma dello scomparto territoriale in relazione al territorio cremasco. Memoria, Crema 1860; Ragioni della necessità della restaurazione della provincia di Savona, Torino 1862; Petizione del Municipio di Grosseto perché sia mantenuta la autonomia ed integrità della provincia grossetana del 12 Dicembre 1863 e documenti di corredo, Grosseto 1864; Delľimportanza storico-geografica che ha la città di Sarzana relativamente alla Lunigiana per essere centro ďamministrazione economico-civile. Promemoria, Genova 1861–1862; Per la ricostituzione della Provincia di Vercelli. Petizione al Parlamento Nazionale, Vercelli s. d.

One final question, which is no less important than the previous ones, lies at the core of these discussions: the lack of a unitary design for the fabric of administrative districts in the new unified state. This was the result of the »lack of agreement on the criteria« that was criticized by Correnti and Maestri. Many observers at the time emphasized the intolerable confusion that was created in the various territorial divisions, which was a source of very considerable inconvenience for citizens and of insupportable costs to public administration. In an extremely clear and detailed contribution, Pietro Castiglioni, one of the scholars most attentive to the framework of the territorial administration of the state, referred to the unacceptable »multiplicity« of administrative partitions, which generated »a frightening level of confusion«. He sought to remedy this by making radical proposals for reforms, starting with the suppression of the districts (›circondari‹), to be countered by a simultaneous increase in the number of provinces to 100. He arrived at a highly advanced, and almost unrealistic, proposal for one single system of territorial partition which would be effective for both the general and political administration of the state and the sectoral activities of the various ministries. He provided a list of the very numerous general and special partitions by which the Italian state was fragmented: there were 32 in all, from the electoral districts to those for the judiciary, the military, commercial administration, the postal service, civil engineering, public education, public works, and the forest service, not to mention the multiple systems used by the financial administration. From this panorama, the considerable work that would be necessary to reduce the reigning confusion even slightly, and to make the public administrative apparatus more efficient, emerged with blinding clarity.

Castiglioni: Riforma amministrativa. Strongly opposed to the theory of the one hundred provinces supported by Castiglioni was Basile: Circoscrizioni, p. 18–19.

To conclude, we can say that the confusion and irrationality of the administrative fabric of the new unified state was the result, on the one hand, of the peculiar patterns and timeframes of its political unification, and on the other, of the inability of the liberal Italian ruling class to create and complete a unitary, homogeneous plan for territorial division. It is no surprise, therefore, that in the face of this confusion and irrationality, even the most carefully thought-out and innovative proposals for the reform of the peninsula’s territorial divisions during the passage from the former states to the new unified state, such as the regional projects of Farini and Minghetti, came to naught. It is also not surprising that a large variety of peripheral territorial divisions instituted by individual ministries for their activities persisted alongside the general administrative constituencies of the state.

From a territorial standpoint, the new unified Italian state focused primarily on its external borders, the lines delimiting the space of national state sovereignty, as has traditionally been the case for all modern states, and especially at the time when nation-states were emerging. Far less attention was devoted to internal administrative divisions, which in Italy, as I have tried to underscore, were highly problematic and complex and certainly would have required more careful consideration. The decisions made, in contrast, were dictated by considerations of urgency. Generally, this same pattern was perpetuated in the subsequent history of the state, despite variations and interventions that often remained at the planning stage.

Successive projects devised in liberal Italy to reform the territorial constituencies failed to overcome the opposition between, on the one hand, the importance of continuously adapting territorial divisions to the changing needs of society and the economy, and on the other hand, the presumed ›inalterability‹ or ›inertia‹ of the administrative grid.

See Maria Luisa Sturani: »Ľ›inerzia‹ dei confini amministrativi provinciali come problema geostorico«, in: Filiberto Agostini (ed.): Le amministrazioni provinciali in Italia. Prospettive generali e vicende venete in età contemporanea, Milano 2011, p. 62–79. A work by Pietro Castiglioni allows one to appreciate that the inalterability of administrative boundaries was more a »sort of common belief« than an actual fact. Produced only a few years after unification, this reference work lists no less than 119 changes to territorial partitions, albeit modest in scope; see Pietro Castiglioni: Circoscrizioni amministrativa, giudiziaria, elettorale e diocesana, e dizionario dei comuni del Regno ďItalia, comprese le provincie venete, Firenze 1867, p. 54–57.

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