San Leucio, the utopian social labor experiment in the pre-unification Southern Italy

Abstract

ABSTRACT San Leucio was an interesting experiment for the territorial development of Southern Italy before the Unification of the country. At that time, Southern Italy was a developing region. San Leucio was an experiment which, given its peculiar and unique features, may very well be an alternative model of development compared with what has been featured in the industrialization of modern Europe. Our reconstruction of the events in San Leucio shows us a complex reality, which may hardly be put under the lens of the canonical interpretation models of historiography, and that should be placed into an area rich with nuances and contradictions. Such a reality was doomed to clash with the structural critical issues of the Kingdom, but nevertheless represents an alternative experiment which is worth rediscovering within an epoch when the economic paradigms are questioned. This research shows how the workers (the artieri) fully grasped the initiative of the king, who advocated a policy of modernization from the top, while the bourgeoisie of the Kingdom was incapable of grasping the innovative instances, as it was too tied to maintaining its own rents.