Section 1. Meridionalism, neo-meridionalism, and the agrarian question

The ‘southern question’ has been one of the most debated topics in Italian political and academic history for the last 140 years. Leading intellectuals and politicians of all ideological backgrounds have offered a wide range of interpretations of the historical origins of the economic-social problems of southern Italy, from the Middle Ages to the present (Russo, Reference Russo1955; Galasso, Reference Galasso1965; Daniele, Malanima, Reference Daniele and Malanima2011). The debate was especially strong in the last decades of the nineteenth century and from 1945 to the 1980s. As such, it is customary to distinguish historical southernism from neo-southernism, with an interlude in the twenty-year Fascist period, during which the ‘southern question’ was silenced to avoid exposing historical problems of economic backwardness to the world or foment internal debate. The fascist government also banned emigration, effectively blocking the population flow that alleviated the ‘land hunger’ chronic in the Mezzogiorno, and also confiscated emigrants’ remittances, which for entire families represented an extremely important source of income. From the end of the nineteenth century, Southern Italy experienced an unprecedented phenomenon of mass emigration. Millions of southerners left their lands in search of better opportunities in America and Northern Europe. This exodus had profound demographic, economic, and cultural implications, altering the social fabric of rural communities and influencing family and gender dynamics (Bevilacqua, Reference Bevilacqua1993; Cipolla, Reference Cipolla2009).

Intellectuals such as Giustino Fortunato, Pasquale Villari, Antonio De Viti De Marco, Guido Dorso, and Francesco Saverio Nitti belonged to the first generation of meridionalists, those who identified the existence of a ‘southern question’ in the phase following the Risorgimento (1870–1922). They did not constitute a monolithic intellectual bloc since there were divergences, ideological and programmatic. Giustino Fortunato, for example, took an analytical and often pessimistic approach, emphasising the deep historical roots of southern problems (Villari, Reference Villari1988; Salvemini, Reference Salvemini1955; Bevilacqua, Reference Bevilacqua1993). Fortunato’s thesis, which attributes the gap between North and South to historical factors linked to the different evolution of economic and social structures, is among the most convincing in the history of southernist thought.

Like Fortunato, Villari, De Viti De Marco, Dorso, and Nitti also pointed their finger at the resilience of the feudal economic system, based on the latifundium and low productivity of the land (Villari, Reference Villari1875; Dorso, Reference Dorso1925), although they rejected Fortunato’s fatalism and his deterministic conception of the gap between North and South Italy. Francesco Saverio Nitti took the debate in a new direction, being among the first to argue that the industrialisation of southern Italy would benefit the national economy by stimulating the demand for goods and services. Furthermore, he emphasised the importance of technical education, taking the German model into account, as the key to economic progress in southern Italy (Barbagallo, Reference Barbagallo1984). He anticipated the idea of European cooperation as a means to ensure peace and economic development, recognising the interdependence between nations. In addition to undertaking both theoretical reflection and political action, Nitti was a teacher for a new generation of southernists. His first pupil was Alberto Beneduce, later the founder of public bodies for intervention in the economy, especially during fascism. He was very attached to a ‘technocratic socialism’, with a strong sense of the state, and, therefore, far removed from the fascist ideology to the extent that, despite his leading role in the fascist movement, he was repeatedly subjected to the control of the secret political police, the OVRA (Franzinelli, Reference Franzinelli2020). Nitti’s influence on Beneduce’s work can be traced to the structure of the bodies created, as in the case of the Institute for Industrial Reconstruction: a few highly specialised employees, tending to be apolitical but with a strong sense of responsibility towards the state.

Beneduce’s career was a fundamental link between classic and neo-meridionalism. Beneduce’s last IRI (Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale), issued in the late 1930s, was dedicated to the economic-financial issues of southern Italy (Cringoli, Reference Cringoli2019), and in this context, there was a renewed interest in the South, albeit unofficial due to the regime’s veto on the southern question. Beneduce did not train southernist intellectuals in the traditional sense, but his vision of public intervention in the economy and the creation of solid financial institutions influenced a generation of economists and politicians who dealt with the development of the Mezzogiorno, namely, the neo-meridionalists: Donato Menichella, Francesco Giordani, and Pasquale Saraceno, together with Nino Novacco and the socialist Rodolfo Morandi, first of the Svimez (the company that promoted the creation of CasMez) and, finally, of the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno. Menichella, who among the neo-meridionalists was the one who had the most direct relationship with Beneduce in the IRI, can be considered the true founder of neo-meridionalism, as well as of extraordinary practical interventions. As Saraceno wrote: ‘The law that, by instituting extraordinary intervention in 1950, gave life to a new southern policy, is essentially the work of Donato Menichella. The text was drafted in his office as governor of the Bank of Italy with the assistance of Francesco Giordani, who had been president of IRI at the time Menichella was its director’.

Neo-meridionalist thought, rather than investigating the historical causes of the South’s economic backwardness, sought a way to reduce the gap. This was because it was made up of exponents of that section of economics, which, established in the shadow of Beneduce, looked technically at problem-solving. Neo-meridionalism attributed a fundamental role to the state in promoting the economic development of the Mezzogiorno (Galasso, Reference Galasso2011). It was argued that the market alone could not overcome the deep regional disparities. The state therefore had to intervene through targeted economic policies, public investments, and strategic planning. Neo-meridionalism advocated the need for economic planning at the national and regional levels (Saraceno, Reference Saraceno1990). Through planning, the state could coordinate investments, allocate resources efficiently, and ensure that development policies were coherent and integrated. Svimez, founded in 1946, was the institution in which these Southern-related theories of development matured. Neo-meridionalists were well aware that the modernisation of the rural Mezzogiorno, and consequently, the solution to the agrarian question, was the basis for launching a development programme that could permanently alleviate the suffering of the population. Rossi-Doria in particular believed that the underdevelopment of the South was closely linked to backward agrarian structures, characterised by unproductive latifundia and a scarce presence of small peasant property. He argued that profound agrarian reform was needed to redistribute land and promote the development of modern agriculture. With his scientific and analytical approach to the problem, Rossi-Doria also emphasised the importance of integrating agriculture with other economic sectors, promoting industrialisation and diversification of production (Bernardi, Reference Bernardi2010). On this basis, the ‘first half’ of the ‘Extraordinary Intervention’ (1950–1962) focused on bridging the agricultural and infrastructural gap between the two areas of the country (Figure 1).

Section 2. The Cassa per il Mezzogiorno and the modernisation of rural Southern Italy

The promoters of the extraordinary intervention worked to prepare a territorial and productive redevelopment, linking on a political level to the attempt to modify property relations promoted by the recent agrarian reforms.Footnote ² But there were additional agendas: the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno (hereafter CasMez), the public body created to implement these plans, was also a laboratory for the application of Keynesian policies in Italy (Saraceno, Reference Saraceno1976), between an initial growth phase of demand stimulus and a subsequent phase dedicated to industrialisation, inspired by Rosenstein-Rodan’s Big Push theory (Smith, Reference Smith and Gualerzi2015; Alacevich, Reference Alacevich2021; Murphy, Shleifer, Vishny, Reference Murphy, Shleifer and Vishny1989). Lepore has defined the basic theory of extraordinary intervention as supply-side Keynesianism, which underpinned CasMez’s actions during its most expansive phase, coinciding with the Golden Age years (1950–1973) (Crafts, Reference Crafts1995): the policies adopted were not only aimed at stimulating aggregate demand but also at creating the infrastructure necessary to sustain planned and sustainable economic growth (Lepore, Reference Lepore2013). These interventions included building roads, reclaiming agricultural land, creating industrial clusters, and improving the education and technical training of the workforce. The inspiration for this activity was the TVA, established in 1933 to solve the structural problems of one of the poorest areas of the United States during a critical phase of the Great Depression (Kline, Moretti, Reference Kline and Moretti2014). CasMez took the same theoretical basis as the TVA (Lepore, Reference Lepore2013) and shared as an objective the breaking of the isolation of the most depressed inland areas and the modernisation of agricultural production. The first structured twelve-year plan supported the modernisation of agricultural productivity in the Mezzogiorno, including through the electrification of inland rural areas. On the administrative side, in the first twenty-five years of its activity, CasMez, like the TVA, enjoyed substantial autonomy from central government, and, on the strength of this independence, CasMez’s managers and technicians scrutinised every project that came from the peripheral organisations of extraordinary intervention. The institution was closely linked to the central government, which guided its strategic objectives and guaranteed its funding. At the head of the structure was the President, a high-profile technical or economic figure appointed by the government, with the task of coordinating the Cassa’s activities and representing it institutionally. The president was supported by the board of directors, a decision-making body composed of experts in disciplines such as engineering, economics, agronomy, and town planning. The Board was responsible for defining strategic guidelines, approving projects, and monitoring the progress of works.

Figure 1. The territory concerned by the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno’s intervention (divisions by agricultural reclamation basins).

Source: CasMez (1955). La Cassa per il Mezzogiorno. Il primo quinquennio (1950–1955). Istituto Poligrafico di Stato.

A central role in CasMez’s operation was played by the technical offices, composed of specialised professionals who were responsible for the design and implementation of the interventions, providing technical assistance to the local authorities and verifying the technical and financial suitability of the proposals. Projects were implemented through a structured process: initially, the needs of the area were identified through technical studies and socio-economic analyses, on the basis of which multi-year plans were drawn up. The project proposals were assessed by the board of directors, which verified their technical, economic, and temporal sustainability. Once approved, the projects moved on to the execution phase, with work being entrusted to private companies, selected through public tenders. During this phase, the technical offices monitored the progress of the works to ensure that they were on schedule and met the required quality standards. The financing of CasMez’s activities came mainly from the state budget, supplemented by international loans. Funds were distributed according to the priorities established in the strategic plans, with centralised management leaving little room for local autonomy. CasMez also operated as a link between the central government and local administrations, such as municipalities, reclamation consortia, and industrialisation areas and cores. However, operational and strategic control remained highly centralised, reducing the role of local institutions to mere executors of central directives, at least until the creation of regional administrations in the early 1970s.Footnote ³

In fact, CasMez’s archives reveal a capillary control of its top management over each local initiative; this control was made possible by the mobilisation of a conspicuous number of technicians, who assessed the feasibility of projects after in-depth studies. One of the results of this was that CasMez was transformed into a highly qualified technical body, as well as a training ground for professional categories of various kinds (engineers, surveyors, agronomists, geologists, geographers, etc.). The minutes of the CasMez board of directors reveals the broad strategic direction to which the organisation was committed and there was a resulting general absence of debate on strategy and a focus on the technical features of projects over theoretical issues. Moreover, as the archival record shows, in the first seven years, the vast majority of interventions approved concerned problems relating to agriculture and infrastructure: land reclamation, roads, aqueducts, bridges, railways – anything that could break the isolation of the inland areas of southern Italy and connect them first with the urban areas of the south, such as the coastal areas of Campania and Puglia, and then with the rest of the country.Footnote ⁴

The co-presence of Rosenstein-Rodan at the top of both the World Bank and Svimez demonstrates two fundamental elements of the Italian State’s extraordinary intervention in the South: first, that the Mezzogiorno was part of a prospective international strategy, hypothesised by the World Bank to resolve socio-economic imbalances in particular areas of the world, as the South-Eastern area of Mediterranean Sea. As Lepore shows, the World Bank actively participated in the effort to modernise the rural Mezzogiorno through loans to the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno (Lepore, Reference Lepore2023). Second, partial and sporadic interventions to support the economy were rejected as isolated investment initiatives were not sufficient to overcome structural obstacles and trigger a virtuous cycle of economic growth. Thus, central planning, resource mobilisation (domestic financing and international loans) and inter-sectoral support were taken up by the Big Push theory and implemented by CasMez to support an initial modernisation of the rural Mezzogiorno through investments in land infrastructure, to create a springboard for the subsequent launch of the land industrialisation policy.

The foundation of the Cassa del Mezzogiorno took place in 1950, a crucial year when the national reconstruction programme, supported by Marshall Plan funds, was already in full swing (Pescatore, Reference Pescatore2008; Lepore, Reference Lepore2013). The birth of a new institution dedicated to the development of the best productive forces in southern Italy was linked politically to the Sila land law and the agrarian extirpation law for Campania, the Maremma, the Po basin, and the Fucino territories. This was aimed at completing a programme of agricultural property settlement, which had begun with the Christian Democrat governments after the 1948 elections, intended to solve the historical problems arising from the predominance of latifundium in the rural areas of the territory. Moreover, the foundation of CasMez consolidated the planning carried out in the three-year period 1948–1950 by Italian and American technicians towards supporting southern agricultural productivity through land reclamation programmes, the result of the collaboration between the Svimez, the technicians of the European Recovery Program (ERP) plan, the Bank of Italy, and the Ministry of Agriculture (Raftopoulos, Reference Raftopoulos2009; Bernardi, Reference Bernardi2015). The origins of the CasMez experience were therefore partially dictated by American demands, eager to accelerate the effects of the Marshall Plan for geopolitical reasons and address the problem of unemployment and underemployment of the peasant masses in the south (Bernardi, p. 338). The productive sector in which the Marshall Plan had the greatest influence in southern Italy was agriculture. Marshall Plan aid was used to build basic infrastructure in Southern Italy, including land reclamation and irrigation projects. Aid was also used to promote the purchase of fertilisers and agricultural machinery and to improve agricultural production, contributing to an increase in productivity.

Although these measures had a positive impact on some areas, they failed to radically transform the economy of the South, which continued to suffer from emigration and underdevelopment. Moreover, the unequal distribution of aid between the North and the South partly widened the gap: the primary intention of the ERP was to revive industrial productivity, and considering that the most industrialised area of the country was the North, most of the interventions were allocated to that part of Italy (Villari, Reference Villari1988). As described by Pescosolido, the effectiveness of the Marshall Plan in Southern Italy was limited, underlining how the ineffective management of aid and the absence of an industrial strategy reduced the impact of investment on the long-term development of the Mezzogiorno (Pescosolido, Reference Pescosolido2017). In 1950–1951, the gross saleable production per hectare of agricultural land in the North was 154,000 lire, while in the South, it was 91,000 lire. Greater disparity still was found in the modernisation and mechanisation of rural labour: the number of tractors per thousand hectares of land was 7.6 in the North compared to a modest 1.6 in the South; the use of fertilisers per kg/ha in the South was less than half that of the Centre-North.Footnote ⁵ In 1950, the rural population of the South was very dense; its activity consisted mainly of the exploitation of cereal crops and the cultivation of fruit trees. Rossi-Doria, a leading economist reconsidering the southern ‘agrarian question’, spoke of ‘pulp and bone’, distinguishing areas of high agricultural productivity, the ‘pulp’, that is, the plains, and areas unattractive to rationalised agricultural settlements, the ‘bone’, that is, the inland areas (Rossi-Doria, Reference Rossi-Doria2005). This highlighted an initial triple gap in the South. There were, on the one hand, the few plains that were productive and connected to areas of industrial processing of agricultural products, as well as close to the few urbanised areas of the South, and on the other hand, the ‘bone’, lagging far behind both the more advanced areas of the South and the rest of the peninsula; finally, there was a gap between the country system and the rest of the western countries of Europe such as France and England, which at the time represented the centre of the economic system of the old continent (Cringoli, Reference Cringoli2023).

International influences were also felt when the second half of CasMez was officially inaugurated in 1957. That year, the Treaty of Rome was signed, a fundamental step in the process of building an economically united Europe. Like Italy, other European countries experienced trajectories of regional imbalances, as industrialisation tended to be located in areas that were convenient in terms of energy, infrastructure, and demand for goods. The ‘transport revolution’ from the nineteenth century created synergies between centres and peripheries, and in most cases, geography and resource scarcity accentuated the divide. Besides Italy, the countries with significant territorial gaps were Spain, Finland, Greece, Yugoslavia, the United Kingdom, and Ireland. Except for Spain, these nations participated in World War II, resulting in disastrous human and productivity losses for Greece and Yugoslavia, although less so for Finland. From the 1950s onwards, these nations experienced a development trajectory similar to other Western nations, taking advantage of the positive Golden Age trend and partially or fully catching up on their territorial gaps. International monetary stability and the application of Keynesian-style economic policies benefited these territories. Fundamental was the contribution of the public sector, both industrial and tertiary, since unlike a market left unconstrained, the state was able to allocate resources in proportion to the population (Viesti and Prota, Reference Viesti and Prota2012).

Two case studies of other nations facing regional imbalances and government responses can be usefully outlined here: Scotland and Ireland. The gap between the centre of the British economic system and the Scottish Highlands deserves a more in-depth comparative discussion, as it had its origins in the long-running Scottish agrarian question and the state attempted to make up the gap by establishing public agencies, in a way similar to the case of Southern Italy. Industrialisation, which began in Britain in the eighteenth century, had a major impact on the economies of the different regions. London, the Midlands, and the north of England benefited from the emergence of heavy industry, textile manufacturing, and, later, the chemical and automobile industries. These areas saw the growth of an urban working class and a sharp increase in GDP per capita. In contrast, the Scottish Highlands, characterised by a predominance of agriculture and animal husbandry, remained relatively isolated from industrial developments for much longer. The region suffered heavy depopulation due to the Highland Clearances and their aftermath, a series of forced dispossessions that led to the rural population emigrating to the cities or abroad, mainly to North America and Australia (Richards, Reference Richards2016). The history of the economic divide in the United Kingdom is also linked to state intervention. After World War II, the British government introduced policies to reduce regional disparities, but with mixed results. The Highlands benefited from some specific interventions, such as the creation of the Highlands and Islands Development Board (1965), which aimed to stimulate economic development in the poorer areas of Scotland (Devine, Reference Devine2001). However, these initiatives often failed to compensate for the lack of significant infrastructure investment and the demographic decline that continued to affect the region. The neo-liberal policies adopted in the 1980s under Margaret Thatcher’s government further accentuated regional inequalities, as economic deregulation favoured already wealthy areas at the expense of rural or formerly industrial regions. Ireland saw a similar regional divide, specifically between the West and the richer, more urbanised East. After the Great Famine of 1845–1852, the West of Ireland suffered a drastic demographic decline due to high mortality rates and mass emigration. This region, heavily dependent on subsistence farming, was particularly hard hit compared to the more economically diversified eastern areas. The lack of economic opportunities led to continued migration to eastern cities and abroad, further impoverishing the western region (O’Grada, Reference O’Grada1995). The geography of the West of Ireland, characterised by mountainous terrain and less fertile soils, limited intensive agricultural and industrial development. In addition, the distance from the main European trade routes and the lack of transport infrastructure hindered access to domestic and international markets. During the twentieth century, national economic policies favoured the development of eastern urban areas, particularly Dublin, which attracted most of the industrial investment and infrastructure. An export-oriented industrialisation strategy focused on regions with access to major ports and a more skilled workforce, leaving the West in a continued marginal position (O’Grada, Reference O’Grada1994). With the accession to the European Union in 1973, Ireland began to benefit from structural funds for regional cohesion. However, the distribution of these funds failed to compensate for existing disparities. Most investments were directed towards already developed areas, further enhancing the economic attractiveness of the east and south of the country (O’Hagan, Newman, Reference O’Hagan and Newman2014). Although these were comparable experiences, in terms of the problems, responses, and results, no gap within European states matched that of Italy, primarily because it affected a very large territory covering more than a third of the nation, and millions of citizens.

Land hunger was an endemic characteristic of the agrarian question in Southern Italy and one of the causes of the low productivity of the land, as fertile areas were congested (Mori, Reference Mori and G.1992). The concept of ‘natural poverty’ in the Mezzogiorno derived from the liberal approach of Giustino Fortunato’s meridionalist thought, which considered the disproportion between population and land as the basis of the Mezzogiorno’s backwardness. Rossi-Doria, who developed an analysis on the backwardness of the South by amalgamating the different schools of Southernist thought, decoupled the concept of ‘natural poverty’ from Fortunato’s pessimism (Graziani, Reference Graziani2020): he noted that this disproportion was loosened by migratory outflows from the 1880s onwards, when the ratio of people to land in the South was rebalanced and migrants’ remittances allowed for limited income formation. However, Rossi-Doria identified an exacerbation of the quantitative problem of the Mezzogiorno’s population in the migratory blockade policies imposed by the fascist regime (D’Amico, Patti, Reference D’Amico and Patti2018), which obstructed the natural poverty outlet for propaganda purposes and to emphasise the agrarian nature of fascism, which had been the armed arm of landowners against the demands of the labourers and sharecroppers. As a solution, Rossi-Doria considered necessary, albeit painful, a resumption of the exodus from the South to rebalance the relationship between population and land (Graziani, Reference Graziani2020, p. 482).

Aware of these debates, the CasMez’s managers allocated the first investments to integral reclamation activities for the adjustment of mountain basins, to hydraulic-forestry and hydraulic-agricultural interventions (CasMez, 1955), and then to equipping the land with infrastructure suitable for long-term planning. The aims set by the policy were precise to improve the rural landscape and then create fertile ground for the settlement of productive activities of other kinds, from trade to industry. Thus, in the first years of the CasMez’s activity, 75% of the funds were committed to the agricultural sector with the establishment of reclamation districts, precisely identifying areas of intervention for the primary sector. From the provinces of Ascoli to Ragusa, passing through Sardinia, 112 reclamation districts were created, mainly touching on the Apennine areas, and 235 perimeters of mountain or coastal reforestation, covering about 16 million ha (CasMez, 1955, p. 31). Part of these interventions included the reorganisation of past programmes that had never been completed or had been carried out in an inappropriate manner. A breakdown of the data shows that most of the reclamation work in the CasMez’s first period was carried out in Sardinia (24.3% of the total); in Calabria, on the other hand, more funds were allocated to the ‘mountain reclamation’ category (33.7%) and to ‘mountain and coastal basins’ (29.5%).Footnote ⁶ On the whole, from 1950 to 1955, CasMez spent 2.73% of the total on studies and research, 7.25% on mountain district drainage, 30.65% on hydraulic systems, and 34.15% on irrigation works, while on ‘road and civil works’, which allowed for the modernisation of the whole of Southern society, the institution spent 25.22% of the funding.Footnote ⁷

‘Mountain reclamation’ was very important to the overall purposes of all the CasMez’s intervention in agriculture. It was necessary to create stable support for the population living in the more peripheral and less connected areas of the south, which were difficult to inhabit both climatically and economically. In addition, mountainous settlement was a key goal, seen as vital to support intensive agriculture in the reclamation areas. In a short time, measures were implemented to prevent hydrogeological instability and to regulate the flow of mountain waters; local agricultural activities were financed and, above all, the references expressed in Law No. 991 of 25 July 1952, which included favourable measures for mountain territories, were put into practice.Footnote ⁸ This law was part of the parliamentary regulatory activity in the framework of the definition of extraordinary intervention measures. A Central Census Commission was established, with the task of compiling a list of municipalities falling into the mountain category. Interested local authorities could apply for inclusion in the list or were automatically included in it by the Commission itself. To make everything more efficient, the Central Commission was flanked by Provincial Commissions, which studied the territories from a hydrogeological and socio-economic point of view.Footnote ⁹ As part of the concessions, the legislature established the possibility of using improvement loans granted by agricultural credit institutions in favour of direct cultivators, small and medium-sized owners, livestock breeders, and artisans in mountain municipalities.

This approach exposed a tension between immediate production needs and long-term socio-economic transformations: subsidised loans represented an attempt to facilitate private investment in key sectors such as agriculture, animal husbandry, and raw material processing. However, the real innovation was the state guarantee on losses, which shifted part of the risk from individuals to public institutions. This intervention model reflected a risk redistribution-oriented vision, but not necessarily combined with an accompanying strategy to strengthen local entrepreneurial capacity. With the establishment of twenty-five consortia and a multi-year financial plan, mountain reclamation highlighted the ambition to transform the territory through systematic interventions. The allocation of funds, which initially stood at 4 billion lire for 1952–1953 and later increased to 7 billion annually, was part of a broader framework of extraordinary intervention for rural areas that mobilised over 887 billion lire.Footnote ¹⁰ The size of the resources was such that these funds translated into a partial structural change: the increases in productivity, amounting to 7,000 lire per hectare, and the increase in employment, 25,000 new jobs, were significant in absolute terms, even if they did not stop the flow of migration to other areas of Italy and industrialised Europe.

In addition to mountain reclamation, the irrigation programme emerged as the focus of extraordinary intervention, both for its strategic importance and for the technical difficulties it posed. Water scarcity, identified as the main obstacle to the creation of intensive agriculture, was addressed through the construction of reservoirs and irrigation complexes on a regional scale. These interventions not only responded to practical needs but reflected a productivist conception that aimed to maximise the agricultural potential of the areas concerned. As can be seen from the reports published by CasMez technicians, this type of work was central to the structure of the twelve-year plan 1950–1962 (CasMez, 1955, pp. 43–44). During the first phase of the extraordinary intervention, collective irrigations were put into operation over an area of 61,801 hectares, in addition to privately financed works. In order to organise the intervention, forty-eight irrigation complexes were identified throughout southern Italy (Pescatore, Reference Pescatore1959), although the implementation of the plan highlighted a critical dependence on external technical expertise, such as that of engineers and agronomists, which risked reducing the autonomy of local communities in adapting the works to their own needs.

On the infrastructure front, the improvement of the water and road network was crucial for integrating the South into the national economic system. The priority given to the construction of aqueducts and the improvement of the sewerage network, with a total allocation of around 200 billion lire,Footnote ¹¹ reflected the urgent need to tackle sanitation problems that were penalising productivity and the quality of life. The direct involvement of the Cassa Depositi e Prestiti in the financing of the most complex works highlighted the need to resort to more substantial funds in order to quickly build infrastructures that were fundamental for the population. The improvement of the road network, with the construction of more than 2,600 km of new roads, was one of the most tangible successes of the plan. The percentage of asphalted provincial roads in the South increased significantly, from an initial 13.61% to 65% already by 1955, up to 90% in 1960 (CasMez, 1960). In addition to carriage roads, the road network was also improved in rail transport; 75 billion lire was spent on the upgrading of several lines connecting Southern Italy until 1955 (Rindone, Reference Rindone2015). This intervention not only facilitated the mobility of goods and people but also stimulated sectors such as tourism, especially in regions like Campania and Sicily (Cassar, Creaco, Reference Cassar and Creaco2012). Above all, the consequentiality of CasMez’s phases of activity emerges in this context: the infrastructural improvement, although necessary, was not sufficient in itself to bridge the economic gap between North and South but was fundamental to launching the next phase of the extraordinary intervention, where the industrialisation of Southern Italy was aimed at in decisive terms. All this had an extraordinary significance for the inhabitants of the areas concerned. The arrival of certain aspects of modernity in the twentieth century changed the face of rural landscapes that had stood still for centuries. In addition, new communication routes allowed for greater mechanisation of agriculture and brought the consumer market closer to the producers.

As underlined by the accounts of the first five years of the CasMez’s work, the founding purpose envisaged the ‘economic and social progress of the Mezzogiorno’,Footnote ¹² including ‘the general development of the Mezzogiorno […] [and of] the process of industrialisation of the Mezzogiorno’.Footnote ¹³ In 1952, the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno launched an accelerated programme of industrialisation for the South in order to narrow the gap with the rest of the country. This industrial programme was based on a theoretical line that indicated the promotion of an industrial take-off to integrate the process of socio-economic development originated by the first interventions of the institution (Palermo, Reference Palermo2019). However, industrialisation of the southern part of the peninsula did not begin until 1957, with the establishment of industrialisation areas and cores. Despite this, the emergence of the electrification programme and the initial promotion of a food processing industry also indirectly facilitated the progression of an agriculture aimed at marketing the final product, linking agricultural and industrial areas more closely.

To finance the creation of small and medium-sized industrial plants, CasMez invested for about a year (1952–1953) exclusively in loan funds from the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), the future World Bank. Starting in 1953, the Italian state reorganised the structure of medium-sized credit. CasMez injected 40% into each of the endowment funds of the three medium-sized credit institutions identified to support the industrialisation of the Mezzogiorno: Isveimer (Institute for the Economic Development of Southern Italy), Irfis (Regional Institute for Financing Industries in Sicily), and Cis (Sardinian Industrial Credit) (Lepore and Palermo, Reference Lepore, Palermo, E., A. and S.2015). The targeted sectors for the institution’s financial forces were agricultural processing products, small and medium-sized enterprise plants, and large industrial plants related to the energy sector. In the first phase of the CasMez’s activities, 303 projects were already in the pipeline for plants for processing agricultural products, of which about half were in operation after an investment of 4,041 million lire, creating work for hundreds of workers. New grain mills, milk plants, and fruit and vegetable plants were created. By 1955, there were 254 projects for small and medium-sized industries, of which 87 had already been implemented, with a total planned expenditure of 46 billion lire, employing 15,855 people. With the support of the banks of Isveimer, Irfis, and Cis, sugar refineries, wool and cotton mills, and other companies dedicated to the processing of products deriving from agricultural activity were also built.

This new Mezzogiorno support body generated a real revolutionary breakthrough for the inhabitants of the region from a social, economic, and cultural point of view. What was planned and built after the first phase of intervention led to a further improvement in the situation of rural Southern Italy; in fact, most of the projects that had been put into the pipeline were completed, other programmes came into being, and, above all, investments were concentrated on strategic sectors that could make up for the country’s lack of energy resources, such as the electro-commercial sector. Originally, the ‘electricity question’ was not part of the main programmes. If until 1952 the SME, Società Meridionale di Elettricità, relied on Isveimer to finance its activities,Footnote ¹⁴ from 1953 onwards, the CasMez’s intervention methods changed structurally: as already mentioned, parliament authorised the Cassa to participate in the initiatives of the special medium-term credit institutions, Isveimer, Irfis, and Cis. In the meantime – and this is one of the decisive elements in understanding the activities of the institution in its early years – the first loan with the IBRD-World Bank was signed on 10 October 1951. In summary, this aspect of CasMez’s activities was a great success, as for the first time, the foundations were laid for the two areas of the country, North and South, to grow together, transforming divergence into convergence for at least two decades (1953–1973).