RICERCA ITALIANA     

The Nature Of Power Relations In Italy Under Spanish Rule: Books, People and Structures

Università degli Studi di Palermo

Abstract

In line with a general trend in the analysis of other political-territorial realms in the modern age, new studies into the rule of the Catholic Monarchy in Italy are also being carried out by reviewing the general political background and taking a fresh look at the practice of favouritism in the quest for power, fundamental explicatory keys in examining all the different aspects - institutional and cultural, as well as socio-economic -characterising more than two centuries of Spanish rule over the Italian peninsula. In this sense the research programme outlined here covers a much wider and more interesting historiographic overview by attempting to bring together a number of themes and issues rather overlooked until now even by specific historiographic studies and still in need of proper cataloguing. The cross-the-board nature and multi-disciplinary approach of the main topic of the Research Programme (The Nature Of Power Relations In Italy Under Spanish Rule) will make it possible to focus on the great dynamism of the Catholic Monarchy's rule over Italy, analysing some of its relatively unexplored aspects: 1) the administrative practices of the ruling classes in minor cities of the realm and their direct interaction with the government in Madrid; 2) a survey into the "power of money" and the most distinctive aspects of social-climbing such as 3) stately homes as the spatial and symbolic epitome of power in both the town and country; 4) a survey into the cultural re-working >>>

Principal Investigator

Orazio CANCILA Università degli Studi di PALERMO

Research Objectives

The survey into the nature of Spanish rule as testified through books, people and structures is a wide-ranging and complex issue designed to put into practice the methodological-research guidelines arising from the studies referred to above. The aims of the programme are summed up by the following four basic issues:

a) The scope of mediation between the various forces supporting the Catholic Monarchy, particularly negotiations between central powers (Madrid and capital cities like Milan, Naples and Palermo) and local administrations (with specific reference to how fiscal policy was controlled and resources managed within the community, as well as relations between political power and the power of money) and the handling of conflicts, which, although latent on a political, economic and social level, actually broke out into revolts, particularly in the south, centred mainly in cities where there was a period of bitter rivalry between various social groups and the elite. In this respect there will be much deeper inquiry into how the political attitudes of the Council of Italy evolved, not just with a view to taking a closer look at how Spanish nobility settled in Italy and Italian nobility in the court of Madrid, but also in order to examine its relations to central government councils. With this in mind, it will be worth trying to clarify how factions and favouritism developed in Italy in relation to the various power groups holding sway in the Spanish court. >>>

First Results

The first part of the research programme will inevitably result in vast amounts of information being collected from the files and records of libraries in Italy and abroad. The information will not be collected haphazardly but carefully gauged to the key topics on the research programme. The material will be charted, classified and, if possible, filed away on computers. The results will be carefully studied and scrutinised by all the teams, and resulting discussions will set guidelines for publishing the results of all the inquiries.The final stage of the programme will certainly result in the publication of new papers, as well as articles, essays and monographs on the various lines of inquiry involved in the overall research programme. All the results will be carefully compared with both the full research programme and national historiographic studies on these topics.
There will also be publications in magazines dealing with the work of the various research teams or their scientific leaders (life, for instance, "Annali di Storia moderna e contemporanea" published by the Università Cattolica, and the two collections “Storia economica di Sicilia - Testi e ricerche" and "Mediterranea. Ricerche storiche" both of them directed by Orazio Cancila), that will provide the chance for further historiographic discussion and debate. There are also plans to publish the programme results on-line at the SISEM site to make them available to the entire scientific community.

Timescale

24 months

National and international background

The process of shaping a modern state, long considered to be an inevitable linear historical event, has over recent years been given a more critical reading by historiographic studies, so that the idea of a centre acting as the driving force behind unity and unification and the idea of the periphery expressing nothing more than opposition and resistance have been replaced by a more dynamic overview of their intricate relations. This has made it possible to focus on peripheral forces’ capacity to propose their own lines of action and practices capable of even redefining the centre and, at the same time, of casting light on the complex nature of mediation between sovereign authorities and local powers.
As regards the period between the latter half of the 16th and end of the 17th century, this has led to a considerable revision of how events taking place in Italy under Spanish rule are interpreted, so that, for instance, what happened in Sicily is starting to be re-read from a fresh angle, according to which the Island did not just adopt a passive attitude to the dictates of central authorities but, on the contrary, appeared to have clung onto considerable autonomy and powers of mediation. Cities on the island also served, to various degrees in different cities according to whether they were state-owned or feudal, to set the identities of the nobility and even became the favourite setting for political and social conflicts and unrest (F. Benigno, O. Cancila, D >>>