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The Middle Ages in Italy
The name Italy reminds olden times and magnificence
Toga-clad Romans, all-encompassing vistas of vineyards
and olive groves, the splendor of a Papal mass,
Dante's Comedia, and Leonardo's memorable Mona
Lisa. Few nations can possess as rich an imaginative
and artistic inheritance, and yet, the impression
of Italy as a single, self-governing political
unit is a young one, dating back a sheer 125 years.
Fragmented both by North-South competitions and
distant assaults, the peninsula fought back for
almost 1500 years subsequent to the fall of the
Roman Empire to become a unified whole.
The book, The Oxford History of Italy tells the
story of the rise of Rome from its origins as
a cluster of villages to the foundation of the
Roman Empire by Augustus and its consolidation
in the first two centuries AD. It also discusses
some aspects of the later Empire and its influence
on western civilizations, not least through the
adoption of Christianity.
The rich spectacle of Britain's history emerges
nowhere more colorfully than in the story of its
kings and queens. This impressive book offers
the most authoritative account of the British
monarchy ever published for the general reader.
It traces the crown's full history from Anglo-Saxon
times to the present.
In The Oxford History of Italy, two millennia
of political disorder and imaginative grandeur
are brought to life. Written by twelve foremost
scholars, this pleasingly designed volume paints
a brilliant portrait that ranges from the first
hints of an emerging Italian realization (which
often clashed with Rome's influence in the first
century), to the Fascist struggles of the twentieth.
We discover how the sack of Rome in 410 by the
Goths fashioned huge authority emptiness, filled
only by the propagation of city-states and the
pre-eminence of the Pope. The book examines the
artistic explosion of the Renaissance, illuminates
the heritage of the Medici family and the great
Italian masters—Leonardo, Michelangelo,
Donatello, and Raphael—and visits ports
such as Venice and marketable centers such as
Milan, which flourished in the reverberations
of the Black Death and the Great Schism. And the
contributors discover the succeeding economic
and political troubles of the following centuries:
sharp depressions, inter-state wars, foreign invasions
first by Spain, then by Austria and France.
It is known that the standard of living became
inferior in the whole of Italy between 1870 and
1900, particularly on the countryside. Diseases
and undernourishment were the chief causes of
relocation. Food had become the principal expenditure
for an Italian family. Many peasant families spent
about 75 % of their money on food. Regardless
of the high cost, this food often times failed
to even be full of an adequate amount of nutrition
to keep going a person. In the North, the population
suffered from pellagra, a disease that often resulted
in insanity and death, while in the south, fatal
malaria plagued the nation's residents. At first,
malaria only hit in the coastal areas, but this
changed as deforestation, erosion and flooding
enabled the malaria to increase. The conditions,
which people endured in these areas, were astonishing,
as 2 million Italians died each year. To make
matters poorer, the agricultural system of Italy
was not well run, and there was little hope of
humanizing the state of affairs. [Adrian Lyttelton,
1997]
Not until the 19th century increases in autonomist
enthusiasm, fueled by Garibaldi's triumphant war
in opposition to the Habsburg overlords, was Italy's
future as an independent nation assured. Yet even
today, Italy's political atmosphere is stormy:
from the persistent Fascist sentiments, to the
growing Northern separatist movement, to the uncontrolled
dishonesty that rocks the government and topples
Prime Ministers with appalling promptness, Italy
remains in a condition of instability.
Works Cited
Adrian Lyttelton "Chapter 9 - Politics and
Society 1870-1915" The Oxford Illustrated
History of Italy George Holmes New York - U.S.,
by Oxford University Press Inc 1997 P.238, 240
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