From ‘virtuous’ to ‘subhuman’: representations of Italian peasants between the 1860s and the 1880s

This article reconstructs the representations and narratives of the rural world produced by the Italian dominant elite, especially the agrarian, during the period from Unification to the agrarian crisis of the 1880s, through the analysis of numerous published and unpublished sources. During this crucial period of transition, the idealized version of the peasant as a repository of ancient virtue was replaced by another, which cast the shadow of biological inferiority over the rural class. I argue that this process resulted from the influence of Lombrosian ideas then spreading through the society, in addition to the growth of socialism, and the economic, political, and social changes underway primarily in the north, where rural areas saw the implementation of a capitalist system. The analysis of this transformation sheds new light on the history of the Italian ruling class of the 1800s, highlighting the reactionary views and class-consciousness of the society.