Southern Italy, 1500–1700

Abstract

The history of southern Italy during these centuries coincides with that of the Kingdom of Naples (the Regno di Napoli). For numerous reasons, including historical and modern geopolitical designations, it is separate from that of Sicily and Sardinia. This history is one of constant change, of foreign influence, of internal turmoil and innovation, and of renewal. The Spanish period in southern Italy (1504–1707) shares the fate of early modern Mediterranean and Iberian studies. There are three major historiographical issues. The first is the overwhelming prominence of Naples both as a physical, political, cultural, and economic capital and as the focus of most modern research. These factors often eclipse the rest of the South. The second is the Question of the South, covered in Ronald G. Musto’s Oxford Bibliographies article “Southern Italy, 1300–1500.” The third, a corollary of the second, is the Spanish Black Legend. The early modern Regno, like its master Spain, has been the object both of this legend and of subsequent historiographical disdain among Anglophones for the monarchical and supposedly backward nature of its governance, economy, and Catholic culture. We address the Black Legend in this article. This bibliography includes more recent books and articles from both Anglophone and Continental scholars. It generally does not include dissertations. With Ferdinand the Catholic’s defeat of the Regno’s French invaders and the imprisonment of the last Aragonese claimant, the Mezzogiorno became part of the Spanish and then Habsburg global empire: another wealthy province like Mexico or the Philippines administered by a viceroy. But what the South lost in autonomy it gained in international position in trade and other economic activity, cultural exchange, and influence. The Regno’s politics and culture now reflected Spanish priorities. Under the Viceregency of Pedro de Toledo (1532–1553), the Regno began to see mass migration from rural areas of poverty and local political repression into its cities, most especially Naples. The Regno’s revenues increased rapidly but were just as rapidly siphoned off by Habsburg wars and display elsewhere in Europe and the Mediterranean. New arts and sciences flourished despite the pressures of Spanish autocracy that suppressed the humanist academies and of the Inquisition that periodically repressed religious and intellectual expression. By 1600, in the wake of earthquake, plague, food shortages, and fiscal mismanagement, the Regno was on the verge of economic exhaustion and widespread popular discontent, revolt (especially that of Masaniello in 1647), and subsequent repression. With the War of the Spanish Succession and the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, it became a possession of the Austrian Habsburgs. Many of the topics here also overlap with entries in Ronald G. Musto’s Oxford Bibliographies article “Naples, 1300–1700.”