The Bank of Naples and the struggle for regional power in Risorgimento Italy

Published online: 16 April 2021Drawing on the history of the Bank of Naples, this article sheds new light on the power struggle between the central government and the Southern elites in Risorgimento Italy. Since unification, the Bank has been portrayed as the archetypal victim of a predatory (Northern) Italian government. This article, by deconstructing the myth surrounding the Bank, shows how this characterisation was carefully crafted by its Neapolitan management. Exploiting to the fullest the new political and economic role they had acquired under the aegis of a constitutional government, the Bank's governors appropriated and invested with new meanings Risorgimento ideals to further the Bank's cause as well as their own. Constantly shifting the focus from finance to politics, they posed as champions of those municipal, regional or even national liberties the government was either unable or unwilling to defend. This narrative provided an ideological smokescreen obscuring the economic and partly private nature of the confrontation between the central government and the Bank, and reinforced the view of a South victimised by the new Italian state still in currency today.Is based on the author's EUI PhD thesis(2019) chapter 28 'Master and Servant