Rassegna storica del Risorgimento

162
Paul Martin Howell
Between 1815 and 1861 the population of the Kingdom of Sardinia's mainland territorics grew by roughly thirty percent and urbanization increased by about a third in Piedmont and by roughly fifteen percent in the already substantially urbanized Liguria.2) In agriculture, a diversified crop mix was the general mie and the specialized production of fruit, olives, wine, and livestock, as well as of grains, for sale outside the zone of origin was widely practiced by the 1840s. Rice was cultivated for export in the irrigated plains of the Po valley.3) In industry, particularly after 1835, mechanization and other forms of technical and organizational modernization transformed to differing extents the drawing, spinning, and weaving of silk; the spinning and weaving of cotton and wool; and the working of iron and the making of tools and machines. Output rose accordingly, as did the consumption of raw and semifinished materiate.4)
A dose, industry-by-industry review of the available statistics would prove tedious and take us too far afield, but a few figures merit citing to illustrate the apparent trend of development. Between 1818 and the late 1840s the output of silk thread in Liguria grew by more than 250 percent and Piedmont's exports rose by 85 percent. Between the early 1820s and the mid-1840s, Piedmontese output of woven silk more than doubled. In the cotton industry, the output of both thread and cloth in Piedmont grew by roughly four times between 1822 and 1844. In the woolens industry, between 1819 and 1844 the number of spindles in Piedmont nearly tripled, while the number of looms more than doubled and the output of cloth almost did so. In ali three industries these trends continued, generally at accelerated rates, iato the 1850s and beyond.5)
In the iron-working industry, average annual consumption of pig
2) Howell, pp. 210a-213; Luigi Bulferetti and Raimondo Luraghi, Agricoltura, industria e commercio in Piemonte dal 1818 al 1848 {Turin, 1966), p. 12; Raimondo Luraghi, Agricoltura, industria e commercio in Piemonte dal 1848 al 1861 (Turin, 1963), pp. 8, 53; Giuseppe Melano, La popolazione di Torino e del Piemonte nel secolo XIX (Turin, 1961), pp. 59, 66, 73, 116-121; G. Muttini Conti, La popolazione del Piemonte nel secolo XIX, 2 vols. (Turin, 1962), 1:34 and 2:6-53; and Giuseppe Felloni, Popo­lazione e sviluppo economico della Liguria nel secolo XIX (Turin, 1961), pp. 52, 60, 191, 309.
3) Felloni, Popolazione, pp. 10-23; and Bulferetti and Luraghi, pp. 26-20, 33.
4) Generally, see Felloni, Popolazione; Luraghi; Bulferetti and Luraghi; Bruno Caizzi, Storia dell'industria italiana dal XVIII secolo ai giorni nostri (Turin, 1965); Luigi Bulferetti and Claudio Costantini, Industria e commercio in Liguria nell'età del Risorgimento (1700-1861) (Milan, 1966); Mario Abrate, Lo sviluppo della siderurgia e della meccanica nel Regno di Sardegna dal 1831 al 1861 (Louvain, 1960); and Valerio Castronovo, L'industria laniera in Piemonte nel secolo XIX (Turin, 1964) and L'industria cotoniera in Piemonte nel secolo XIX (Turin, 1965).
5) Bulferetti and Costantini, pp. 385-386, 425-428, 431435, 440452, 488490; Luraghi, pp. 147-161; Caizzi, pp. 2270"; Bulferetti and Luraghi, pp. 96-101, 110-113; Castronovo, L'industria cotoniera, pp. 180-181, 192, 287, and L'industria laniera, pp. 259, 267, 269, 463.