Zwei Landpfarreien im Umbruch: Agrarmodernisierung in der Po-Ebene im Zeichen von politischer Konfrontation und Mentalitätswandel (1850–1914)

Abstract

Two Parishes in Turmoil: Modernization in the Valley of the Po Between Political Confrontation and Changing Mentalities (1850–1915)

From the 1860s, the modernization of agriculture was generating a far-reaching crisis in the rural society of the Po valley, which was dominated by the clergy and the landed nobility. The micro-history of two local communities throws light upon the effects of this structural crisis from the viewpoint of the village priest and of the changes in village life. The economic inequalities and social tensions became so acute that from the 1880s the social life of the commune was increasingly polarized between the newly emerging counter-culture of day labourers and artisans united by secular and socialistic values on the one hand, and the new class of tenant farmers and agrarian bourgeoisie on the other. Leadership of the latter was taken over by the priests who from 1910 organised the opposition of the small farmers and leaseholders against the rise of socialist trade unions and cooperative movements among the farm labourers. The political and social confrontation in both communities may be interpreted as a conflict that had its roots in the changing mental attitudes of rural society, whose leading groups were particularly susceptible to urban lifestyles and examples.