Masonry and politics in Naples (1860-1914)

di Daniela Luigia Caglioti
in Memoria e Ricerca n.s. 4 (1999), p. 85

N. S. 1 (1998) Patrizia Dogliani National identity and land: natural parks and historical parks in Europe and in United States In her introduction to the special issue, Dogliani shows the exchange of models and ideas in preserving natural and historical areas both in United States and in Europe during the last century. After a long description of the history which made possible the establishment of a National Park Service in usa, she describes the late coming of european countries, including Italy, to a political, cultural and economic attitude in preserving the natural heritage. The last due parts focus on the description of the making of state and regional parks’ networks in Italy since the 1920s (within the parenthesis of fascist period) and on a special case: the transformation of land and wood in Emilia-Romagna region because of wars and industrialization during the twentieth century. Mary E. Daly Nature and Nationalism in modern Ireland The combined impact of an economic outlook that viewed the rural landscape in terms of its potential to provide employment and a cultural nationalism that was based primarily on language and history, resulted in the absence of a political demand for the creation of national parks or the protection of rural environment in Irish State. Irish natural heritage did not feature prominently in the cultural nationalism that developed during the nineteenth and the early twentieth century. Unlike the United States, irish nationalism made little reference to nature, other than to reiterate that the country’s manifest destiny lay in remaining as a rural, agrarian society, in direct contrast to an urban industrial Britain. Since the Great Famine in 1845, land and nature were also viewed primarily in terms of their capacity to support an increased population. The irish State established only one national park before the 1970s, which was donated to the State. Only in recent years, the possible conflicts between national parks and economic development have come to the fore. This change can be seen as evidence of Ireland’s transformation from a predominantly rural society to a more urbanised society and from an impoverished economy to a country that can afford to devote resources to protecting the natural heritage. Oscar Gaspari Wood as "necessary evil": trees and man in the italian mountain The relationship between man and woods is the overpopulated italian mountains during the early years of the twentieth century is a very difficult one: trees are necessary for the environmental balance, but man needs also growing fields and cattle pastures. The italian state policy of intervention in favour of woods causes protests among the mountains population and a few studious and politicians underline the importance of finding a balance between man and woods requires. That perspective of balance is given up during the fascism when hydroelectric industry, interested in the protection of mountain dams from the land erosion, backs the supporters of afforestation as the only outlook for the mountain development, in line with the increasing influence of tourist trade. The evolution of the relationship between man and woods in Italy has many interesting points in common with the development of the forestal policy in France. Costantino Felice From deforestation to "Green region of Europe": the Abruzzi-Molise mountain in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries The Abruzzi-Molise mountains include the most imposing and evocative Apennine complexes. This essay analyses the economic, social and cultural logics behind the man-environment relationship in this particular context. After centuries of uninformed "assaults on nature", whose most macroscopic forms consisted of deforestation, the great change came with the establishment of the Abruzzi National Park and the civil struggles – led by Erminio Sipari – which brought this event about during the early decades of our century. Environmentalist movements and culture have taken on a new lease of life, especially since the 60’s. Hard and impervious nature, for so long a scene of misery and abandonment, has been transformed into a formidable resource for the economic and social rebirth of the Apennine interior. The positive experience of the Abruzzi National Park, a model of the synthesis between conservation and development, has given the impetus for a whole series of similar initiatives to the extent of making the Abruzzi the "green region of Europe". Diego Leoni Fragments from a geographical-naturalistic discussion about the Great War: the Trentino case The first world war is analysed here through the changes imposed by the war itself on the territory on which it was fought. The research takes its impulse from the "Trentino Case", an Alpine region disputed by Italy and Austria in which the armed conflict took place as the extension of a scientific and mountaineering challenge that the Italian and Austrian middle classes had been involved in for some years. The mountain war fought in this limited Alpine territory had characteristics different from the war fought on other fronts, also due to its long and short term effects on the organisation of the area in question. These are analysed here from very different points of view and with disciplinary instruments which are not usually employed in the study of the phenomenon of war. Sandra Carli Ballola The Po Delta Regional Park between history and environment conservation The Po Delta Regional Park was established in 1998 and has been operational since 1995. It is an area where land and water interweave, a place of ecological interest for its flora and fauna, an "artificial" environment created by rational organisation of the waterways. Unlike other Italian parks, the Po Delta Park features a highly anthropic situation with a multiplicity of productive organisations. So a number of environmentalist proposals have been advanced for its safeguarding. Comacchio is the historical barycentre of the delta and the Park both for its special environmental and town-planning physiognomy and for the importance of its monuments. The town, which until a hundred years ago was an island surrounded by the waters of the "valle", today remains an unusual place whose beauty and uniqueness have fascinated and entranced generations of writers and film directors. Lorenzo Pazzi The National Park of Falterona Mount, Campigna and Casentino forests Nowadays, it happens more frequently that actions of environment politics are established for the safeguarding of areas of different kind (national parks, regional parks, ecc.). That is usually the right occasion to discuss and reflect on the questions which concern the relationship between the population involved and the resources of the territory. An historical analysis of this relationship give us the instruments to better understand the process in action. The national park of Falterona Mount, Campigna and Casentino forests consisted of a limited territory that, through the centuries, has been exploited in many different ways: to start from the speculative way employed by the Opera del Duomo di Firenze, to the enlightened action of the Camaldoli monks community, to the sylviculture, rationally applied by the Lorena thanks to the work of his bohemian forestal attendant, Karl Siemon, and finally, to the exploitation done by the local population for his own subsistence. In the same time in which the anthropic pressure on the forests lowered (because of the phenomenon of depopulation) the first instances for the protection of the environment were advanced; then, in two different but close moments, these proposals were finally realized, so that the territory in question was established as a National Park (1993). In the appendix, the interview to Fabio Clauser, managing director of the domain of the Casentino forests from 1950 to 1970. N. S. 2 (1998) Marco Fincardi Histories of differences and commonplaces Introducing this fascicle on the historical elaboration of ideas and stereotypes which contribute to define a region, we opted to present a studies review on this subject, trying to underline the concept of invented traditions. The building of the idea of region is proposed as a course both parallel and complementary to the several nation building processes in the last two centuries, particularly during this present crisis period – as far as the collective aggregations are concerned – a period in which, however, the cultural identities continue to be considered as a vehicle to carry on social strategies in order to get in to symbolic and material resources. Laurence Cole Monuments and Historical Memory: the Andreas Hofer Cult in Tirol The article analyses the cult that grew up around Andreas Hofer, the local national hero, amongst the German-speaking population of the Austrian province of Tirol in the 19th century. The leader of an uprising against the Bavarians and French in 1809, Hofer’s emergence as national hero involved a rehabilitation from rebel to patriotic martyr, a transfer from the liberal to the conservative political space, and the metamorphosis of an historical individual into a symbolic political programme. By analysing the most important monuments erected to Hofer in the late 19th century, it is possible to show how the creation of hero-cults are a product of the socio-cultural and political competition that takes place between different social groups in order to define a hegemonic interpretation of national identity. Maurizio Bertolotti End of the fraternity. The twofold memory of a festival 1848. At Castellaro, a village near Mantua, Basilio Cremonesi, landowner, tenant farmer and patriot, starts a political fight against the pro-Austrian mayor. Cremonesi, a democrat, tries to win the peasants’s support by offering them a banquet on Ash Wednesday. After Italy’s unification, the members of the democratic party at Castellaro set up a new festival, allegedly related to Cremonesi’s exploits. But the transformations the festival underwent in the 70’s and 80’s show that the event’s memory transmitted to the village comunity had a twofold implication. According to the moderates, the festival implied a message of social progress based on class harmony; according to the radicals, in the long run the festival legitimized peasants’ unrest and even rebellion. Jean François Chanet Emigration, belongings and regional action in the Haute Auvergne during the Nineteenth century The Félibrige, formed in 1854 to "keep Provence’s language and tradition alive" has developed late, since 1894, in Cantal, southern region of Auvergne but northern boundary of the provençal French. The geographic and social features of this rural region explain this delay as well as the variety of the component parts that the félibres had to synthetize. Torn between the protection of local patois and country traditions, the adoption of Mistral’s linguistic and literary model and the sociocultural influence of the cantalian emigrés in Spain, and particularly in Paris, the cantalian félibres linked together their own regionalistic sentiment and aspirations and the general stream of the french nationalistic revival. Stefano Cavazza Regionalism in a political transition: "La Piê" and the cultural identity of Romagna The author analyses the regionalism of Romagna starting from the idea of a cultural construction of regional and local identity. The foundation of such an identity, despite the historical background of each cultural element, is quite recent and began during the 19th century. The author points out the transformation of the regional stereotype of the Romagna-inhabitant, seen as a violent man, into a new one full of positive aspects. The building of the regional identity is the consequence of the activity of the intellectuals that edited regional periodicals and the First world war can be seen as the turning point not only for the abandoning of the negative stereotype, but also for the construction of a regional identity which didn’t refuse the idea of nation, but stressed its links to the "grande patria". The author analyses the special role played by Aldo Spallicci and by his group of enthusiasts of the popular and regional culture. Spallicci edited a journal "La Piê" which tried to revitalise the regional tradition of Romagna. The essay examines also the relation between the journal and the fascism. The fascists turned regional culture for their own purposes, refusing to it any form of political authonomy. The increasing conflict with the regime, that reached his peak with the forbidding of "La Piê", cannot be explained, according to the author, only as depending on the antiregionalistic approach of the regime, that started in the Thirtees, but much more as a consequence of the hostility of local fascists against Spallicci and his group. David Bidussa The closed society. Vichy and the political employ of the regionalist myth Regionalism in France has often been employed as a democratic ideological resource capable of hindering – or limiting – the centralizing and authoritarian effects of state centralism. The political experience of Vichy shows a different course of the regionalist myth and of the political and cultural space of the region: that of representing, beside a mythicized retrieval of ruralism, the essential ring for the definition of an authoritarian social project built on a scheme which does away with the idea of conflict and is based on a corporative dimension of society. Massimo Baioni Fascism and ruralist ideology: the festa dell’uva in Romagna and its images Among the popular initiatives promoted by the fascist regime, in the 1930s, the feast of grapes occupies a central position. Around this feast there came to rotate and intersect commercial promotion, rural ideology and mass mobilitation. In the home region of the Duce, Romagna, the feast of grapes spread everywhere, in every corner, village and town. Its popularity and longevity is confirmed by the fact that after the war (from the allegorical trucks to the coroses singing in local dialects) it was absort in the new "party feast", such as the pci "festa dell’Unità". N. S. 3 (1999) Serge Noiret History and Internet: historical research at the beginning of the third millennium This introduction to the special issue Languages and Spaces: the History Online has been conceived as a pragmatic approach to the topic. Dealing with history on Internet, today involves facing new languages, new professional practices and new communication procedures, which, at the beginning of the third millennium, should not be ignored anymore. Nevertheless, Italy still suffers from being underdeveloped in its Internet infrastructures. In this country the www is underestimated by the academic and istitutional set, and this essay tries to focus on how Internet could be used by historians. In order to understand the changes and to exploit the new virtual resources, three basic questions should be answered before entering the www. First, we should understand "what" may be found and what is not yet available on Internet. Answering this question requires a certain knowledge of Web developments and contents. How to find what one is looking for on Internet, is the second question. How an historian could best exploit the resources found on the net, is the last one. Answering these basic demands is the main object of this introductory paper. Michelangelo Vasta Internet and public policies: the patterns of development in Italy This essay focuses on pattern of development of Internet in Italy. For this purpose the author analyses the results obtained by different models of public policies: a first one, based on wide autonomy and introduced at local level, and a second one promoted at central level. The analysis deals with two different case studies regarding respectively reti civiche – Italian web pages promoted by local institutions – and a new system of evaluation for academic research projects. The main finding shows how in latecomer country such as Italy there are better possibilities to get good results in the diffusion of new technologies through the activity of a central institution. Peppino Ortoleva The Net and the Chain. Historians in the Internet times As the so called constructionist historians of science and technology have demonstrated, technical change is mediated by the "relevant social groups" that negotiate it, its pace and its effects. Thinking historians, and humanities scholars in general, as one of the relevant social groups in the advent of the Internet is not obvious. But if we think in these terms we may find some interesting phenomena: the convergence of amateurism and professionalism in the web culture; the tendency to substitute essays with data banks as privileged scientific output; the articulation of the global with the extremely localized and specialized are all fruits of a negotiation that has deeply involved the scientific communities, among the historians as among "hard" scientists. Luca Toschi Orchestrating texts. Multimedia beyond the digital dimension There is a great confusion concerning words as "multimedia", "hypertext", "hypermedia", "relational database management system", Web sites etc. The author gives a contribution to the definition of digital text. Multimedia is a new and, at the same time, a deeply-rooted language; however, it presumes a certain difficulty not only in being properly used, but even in being recognized as a linguistic system. Nowadays, our culture is ruled by the myth of an ubiquitous and omnivorous memory, based on the incredible and "unpublished" power of the digital support. It is the result of a commercial planetary trend, which, however, is progressively denying the linguistic and political nature of this new language, in other words, of our future memory. Renato Giannetti The electronic publishing and the academic recruitment The electronic publishing is changing a lot the scenario of actors on the stage of publishing: authors, publishing companies, libraries etc. This change could involve also the academia in a couple of ways. Firstly, and more obviously, electronic publishing is strongly enlarging the ability to publish; secondly, and less obviously, it could also change the way by which academia will screen and recruit its crew. This paper deals with the second point. In the first paragraph we depict some general views on "publishing and storing" which can result from the diffusion of electronic publishing; in the second one, we shortly summarise the dramatic reduction of costs of publishing because of electronics; and finally we sketch how academic selection could be changed by a network diffusion of academic research. Franco Andreucci The experience of H-Net The author discusses the experience of H-Net, the most important network of mailing lists in the field of historical culture. Created in 1992 by Richard Jensen and originally based on three lists and a few hundred subscribers, H-Net has now more than 80.000 subscribers in 90 countries. The lists are almost 100, dealing with themes like German and Urban history, France, Women, Labour, Holocaust, Political studies, Italian history and culture, Anthropology etc. Regarding the cultural profile of the organization, H-Net has moved from the area of historical studies to that of the humanities and social sciences, and from a network of mailing lists to a stabile institution with a rich and useful www site. George M. Welling The International Association for History and Computing on the Internet: a Dutch perspective The International Association for History and Computing was founded before the great Internet hype, but – being an association of computer using historians – needed a presence on the World Wide Web quite early. This started with a very unfrequently used ListServer, run from Goettingen (Germany), later as part of the H-Net listservers. In 1993 the Web-pages of the ahc were started from a server at Groningen University (Netherlands). Groningen was chosen because of the fact that here the expertise was available gathered from other web-projects. Since 1993 the ahc-webserver has attracted more than 100.000 visitors. Debra L. Morner, Robert Whaples, Samuel H. Williamson Economic History Online Started in 1993 with a gopher server and the first list in the field of economic history, Econhist, today EH.Net operates The Economic History Services Web site and hosts nine public scholarly lists, with more than 3,500 total subscribers. This article describes the development and evolution of these lists and web site resources. EH.Net is a chartered organization owned and directed by its sponsoring member associations: the Business History Conference, The Cliometric Society, the Economic History Association, and the History of Economics Society. Its objective is to provide a central source of information for scholars world-wide in the fields of economic and business history and the history of economics. Oscar Struijvé The History Data Service: using Internet technologies to provide access to historical resource collections This article introduces the activities of the History Data Service, the British national facility for preservation and dissemination of digital historical resources, integrated in the Data Archive at the University of Essex and part of the Arts and Humanities Data Service. It provides an overview of its principles and strategies to exploit information and communication technologies in order to disseminate information and to provide access to resources and documentation. Two case studies are incorporated, highlighting area’s of implementation where the Internet plays a key role. The first one deals with metadata and cataloguing developments, the second with online query and delivery facilities for special historical data collections. The article concludes with an attempt to generalise some of the issues involved, and sketches what can be expected over the next few years. Lynn H. Nelson Before the Web: the early development of history on line Before the release of the Mosaic browser in August of 1993, historians had already been working on the Internet for several years to create facilities and assemble materials for the use of historians generally. Although people were fascinated by the wealth of materials available when the World Wide Web was opened, few asked who had prepared these materials and so the work of these men and women is in danger of being forgotten. This articles traces the accomplishments of a group of these pioneers from their gathering on HISTORY@FINHUTC, the first Internet discussion list for historians, through their development of a world-wide network of History-oriented information servers, to the close of 1993 and points out the contributions they have continued to make since that time. In an addendum requested by the editor, the author recounts some of his own experiences during this period of growth. Citations are given to documents made available on the Internet and Web. Inaki Lopez Martin Internet and Spanish History between the present and the latest projects The current article has been organised around the possibilities offered by the World Wide Web for the study of the History of Spain at the present time. During the last four years the amount of pages containing hypertext information of historical interest such as resources collections, discussion lists, and electronic journals has grown greatly. These electronic tools have become already part of the daily life of thousands of specialists interested on Spanish History. Unfortunately, other aspects in particular electronic teaching, and large on line multimedia projects are still rare. These lines suggest an overall analysis of the present situation, with particular reference to some of the latest projects developed in the field of Spanish History. Marc J. Willem European Union on the Internet: reliable information source for historians? Firstly, we discuss if, generally speaking, we can trust the information sources available on the Internet. In fact, the historian has to evaluate the reliability of the source by using the same criteria as the journalist and the documentalist when they search for information. Secondly, we analyse the information provided by the European Union institutions on the Internet, taking into account the potential interests of modern historians. We try to answer the following questions: what is the dissemination policy of the European Union on the Internet? What information services and sources are available? What is the European Union’s position regarding information policy(ies) and research and development, both of which can influence the work of the modern historian? N. S. 4 (1999) Ignacio Chato Gonzalo Masonry and national identity in Portugal in the second half of the XIXth Century The birth and development of nationalistic movements in the xixth Century caused conflicts and discrepancies within masonic societies. The fact is that freemasons, loyal to the principle of Universal Brotherhood, believed in internationalism, and this was enough to induce the public opinion in several countries to suspect their societies of antipatriotic feelings. This problem was specially dramatic in Portugal in the second half of the century, when the United Lusitanian Grand Orient, of which some Spanish lodges were also members, was charged with being a tool of Spain and forsaking Portuguese nationalism for the sake of an Iberian ideal, i.e. Spanish hegemony in the Peninsula. To counter these charges Portuguese masonry emphasized its nationalistic spirit, and this put an end to any dispute about this question for the following decades. Luis P. Martin Spanish freemasonry in the early XXth Century: political cultures and identities The political commitment of Spanish masonry, already clear in the late xixth Century, grew particularly strong in the early xxth Century, when most masonic groups took sides with the republican parties. This essay examines the ideal bases of freemasons’ loyalty to the republican doctrine and the influence of European political cultures, among which that of the French democratic left wing during the Third Republic was particularly important. More in detail, it deals with the impact of secularization on Spanish society in the early xxth Century, and with anti-clericalism and its role as chief common constituent of all Latin masonic groups and informing force of their commitment in civil society and in the political contest. Pere Sánchez Ferré From the Catalonian-Balearic Grand Lodge to the Spanish Grand Lodge: an example of political vocation of the Catalonian Masonry (1886-1930) This essay deals with the history of the chief masonic group in Catalonia in the period of the Spanish Restoration and the dictatorial government of Primo de Rivera (1886-1930). The Catalonian-Balearic Grand Lodge was inspired by a very strong political commitment: it had been founded by men devoted to the ideal of a federal republic, met with favour in leftist circles particularly, and grew to be one of the pillars of the Spanish anti-clerical movement. Most of its members were tradesmen, professionals and office workers; in its early stage the lodge supported Catalonian nationalism. In 1921 it turned into the Spanish Grand Lodge and became gradually active on a national scale, in favour of a federal system, both in political life and the organization of masonic societies. Marco Novarino Fraternal association v. politics. Masonry in Turin and Piedmont from 1860 to 1925 In the decade 1860-70 the Turin and Piedmont societies had a national role. After the Italian Grand Orient moved to Rome they intensified their activity in their original areas: they extended their presence in civil society and promoted the advancement of a strongly secular associative spirit. Early in the xxth Century they became gradually sympathetic with the views of the democratic and socialist left, and their political role grew stronger again. This led to a considerable increase in the number of lodges and members, but also to harsh conflicts between their progressive and moderate wings, the latter being more strictly affected to the Anglo-Saxon masonic model, in opposition to a strong political commitment. Daniela Luisa Caglioti Masonry and politics in Naples (1860-1914) After 1860 some 60 to 70 lodges were active in Naples, loyal to the various rites present in Italy at the time. This essay examines their history, particularly with regard to the analogies and differences between them and other select societies. A database is available concerning 4,723 masons belonging to the Naples lodges of the Italian Grand Orient in the period 1880-1925; it is evidence of the basically bourgeois or petty-bourgeois character of these lodges and of their effective action toward promoting friendly relations with lower social groups in Naples. The emphasis is, therefore, on the role of Neapolitan masonry in public life in general, particularly in political controversy and elections.