Between 1815 and 1861, American slaveholders and southern
Italian landowners presided over the economic and social life of
two predominantly agricultural regions, the U.S. South and Italy's
Mezzogiorno. Enrico Dal Lago ingeniously compares these agrarian
elites, demonstrating how the study of each enhances our
understanding of the other as well as of their shared
nineteenth-century world.
Agrarian Elites charts the parallel developments of plantations
and latifondi in relation to changes in the world economy. At the
same time, it examines the spread of "paternalistic" models of
family relations and of slave and free-labor management that
accompanied the rise of large groups of American slaveholders and
southern Italian landed proprietors in the early-to-mid-1800s.
According to Dal Lago, the most articulate and enlightened members
of both elites combined the pursuit of profit with the
implementation of "modern" contractual practices in dealing with
their workforces. Both elites also used their economic and social
power for political advantage, opposing the intervention of their
national governments in local affairs. The search for ever-better
protection of their respective interests in slaveholding and landed
property led ultimately to their support for the creation of two
nations, the Confederate States of America and the Kingdom of
Italy, both in 1861.
Dal Lago brings together two subjects that have generated
considerable debate and research: systems of slave and nominally
free labor and the elites who employed them, and nineteenth-century
nationalism. With its pathbreaking approach and singular and
comparative insights, Agrarian Elites will inform not only American
and Italian studies but also the very practice of comparative
history.
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