Settlements in Sicily in the Early Modern and Contemporary Ages. Crossed looks in the Mediterranean

Settlement in Sicily in the Early Modern and Contemporary Ages Acts of the international conference (Catania, September the 20th, 2007)

Crossed looks in the Mediterranean Enrico Iachello and Paolo Militello (Eds)

Edipuglia, Bari 2008

Abstracts (tranlated by Agata Aladio)

Foreword, Enrico Iachello and Paolo Militello The urban phenomenon in medieval Sicily, Henri Bresc Settlements and territory in Early Modern Sicily, Domenico Ligresti Cities and University Institutions (16th-19th Centuries), Giuseppe Baldacci Settlements and territory in Contemporary Eastern Sicily, Melania Nucifora Cities in Spain in the 16th and 18th Centuries, David Alonso Garcia Images of the settlement in Malta between the 17th and the 18th Centuries, Gianni Scaglione

The urbanization of France between 1700 and 1830, Nicolas Verdier Cities in Maghreb in the Early Modern Age: vector of modernity?, Abdelhamid Henia Ottoman cities in the 19th Century, Jean-Luc Arnaud The City as Settlement, Giuseppe Giarrizzo

Foreword Enrico Iachello and Paolo Militello pp. 189-190 This book is a collection of the acts of the international conference which was held at the

University of Catania, Faculty of Literature and Philosophy on the 10th September 2008. During the conference the results of the project called Prin 2004 «Construction and representation of the built-in areas in Sicily in the modern age» and coordinated by Enrico Iachello were presented. This project has tried to reconstruct some significant aspects of the processes concerning the construction, classification, and representation of the Sicilian built-up areas in the modern age through a different historiographical use of the category of «space» and through a comparison with the dynamics of settlement characterizing the widest possible view of the Mediterranean area.

The studies about the modes of settlement in Sicily in the modern age – apart from some recent contributions – don’t seem to be at an advanced stage, since some fundamental points of the ‘procedure’ (such as the polycentrism – with the presence of and the strong competition between Palermo and Messina first, and between them and Catania after – or the formation of the urban hierarchies and the territorial balances following the development of the recently founded cities or, in addition, the presence of areas with small- and medium-sized centres which were able to compete or compare autonomously with the great urban centres) are left unsolved and the modes of representation and the type of knowledge which are used for the administration of the urban space are not completely clear.

These issues have found new opportunities for development in the current orientations of the research, both in the national and international context, which aim at redefining the category of «space» in the historiographical field. The ‘space’ of the historians has still not been completely defined as an object to be constructed in the same way as the other objects of the research; it often remains just a piece of information, and, what’s more, inert information. It is necessary to put the spacial physicality of the researched phenomena in the foreground, but, above all, it is necessary to put the «artificial» operation carried out by the historian by defining a space to be investigated at the centre of the reflection. These reflections started from some indications provided by Fernand Braudel, and were then widely developed and renovated by some historians and geographers, from Jean-Claude Perrot to Marcel Roncavolo and Bernard Lepetit, from Lucio Gambi to Biagio Salvemini and, as for the Sicilian example, by Maurice Aymard, Giuseppe Giarrizzo and Enrico Iachello. Within this trend, the indications which define the specificity of the urban space prove particularly fruitful; the latter being a subject which, in the Sicilian example, would arouse great perplexity over an issue which, in Sicily, exemplified problems related to procedures and ideas of the city, but which, instead, have been retrieved by the historiography of the island, by accepting the image of a «land of cities» which has by now been acquired by the scholars.

These methodological premises constituted the leitmotif of the conference, its first part being dedicated to the analysis of the Sicilian settlement phenomenon. The division into periods selected for this work – which, in a certainly not rigid way, was based on a time span including, as well as the modern age, both the medieval age and the contemporary age – was an attempt to relate the events occurring in the island to those in the Mediterranean and Europe. Henri Bresc’s contribution thus deals with the theme of the concentration of the settlement and, consequently, with that of the level of urbanization in Sicily, through a long-term study which, starting from the Muslim period, takes into consideration different levels of the analysis, from the political level to the economic level, to organized town planning. The author has thus outlined that wide process of rural settlement following the Norman conquest which at the end of the Middle Ages entailed abandonments and fallback choices

of ‘land’ and fortified ‘farmhouses’, a passage being quite close to that which can be observed at the end of the first millennium: about a hundred powerful municipal bodies which were able not only to work as «relais» for the royal administration and to collaborate with the baronial authority, but also to oppose to it by controlling most of the grain territory of the island and by directly administrating vast ‘municipalities’ and numerous public functions. Biagio Saitta’s contribution offers us an example of this situation by analyzing the events concerning Catania during the Aragonese domination.

The characteristics peculiar to the settlements in Sicily in the following age are analyzed in Domenico Ligresti’s contribution. Here the author takes into consideration the “centralized” settlement as the constant and invariable element of the island, this being a characteristic belonging to many Mediterranean cultures which are marked by the untimely and stable presence of the cities and, therefore, by a still considerable population which can be qualified as «urban». This is a thesis which resolves the problem of the grain in Sicily and its «rural culture» once and for all, by falling in line with more critical approaches which have by now clearly highlighted the paradox of a Southern Italy – which was ranked among the first regions as for the density of the population living in urban centres, but which lacked a realistic and comprehensive historical interpretation of the urban phenomenon which developed in its geographic area – in the comparative studies on the urbanization rates in Europe.

Giuseppe Baldacci’s and Antonio Coco’s contributions – the first dealing with the relationship among university institutions, cities and local élites in the three main academic centres of the island (Catania, Messina and Palermo), the second concentrating on the case-study of Alimena, a small Sicilian city, which is, however, studied within wider territorial areas – give an example of the complexity of the island urban phenomenon. A complexity which can also be gathered from the expressions of the city rhetoric, that is, those graphic or literary «discourses» through which a settlement (but also its social groups and its citizens) represents itself. Lavinia Gazzé’s contribution on mid-16th century Francofonte provides a particular example of this complexity; here the function and the use of fiscal descriptions (the «riveli», i.e. censuses) and graphic images, which are for the first time considered the coherent and complementary product of a representation of the city as being born within the complex relationship between centre and periphery, are studied. Melania Nucifora’s contribution ends the first part of this volume. For the three areas (the Ionian-Peloritan area, the Ionian-Etnean area and the Ionian-Iblean area) which have been identified for study purposes, its author tends to highlight, besides the apparent homogeneity of the settling structures, the role which the different arrangement of the settlements in the modern age played in orienting the latest transformations, thus determining some significant differences which affect current issues.

The second part of these Acts deals with a comparison of models which is made by highlighting differences or similarities. The first two contributions take into consideration typologies of settlement very close to those of the Sicilian modes for geographical, political, economic, typological and other aspects: thus David Alonso Garcia’s contribution analyses the evolution of the Spanish urbanization between the 16th and the 18th centuries not only from a demographic point of view; Giannantonio Scaglione’s contribution, by taking into account literary descriptions and cartographic images, provides an up-to-date interpretation of the settlements in the Maltese archipelago. In Verdier’s contribution, cities and road networks are studied together in order to reconstruct the urban model in France between the 18th and the 19th centuries (the same period in which the French model will be exported to Sicily), whereas Addelhamid Henia’s contribution reconstructs the main elements of the settlements on the south-western coast of the Mediterranean, by taking into consideration, in particular, the cities as the places where the different aspects of the Maghrebian modernity are progressively built. Jean-Luc Arnaud’s contribution ends this section. It analyzes the Ottoman cities during the 19th century – the period in which the declining Empire moves on to an administrative reorganization which leads to the

passage from the traditional Muslim city to the modern city – through different scales (from the territorial scale to the urban one which is also taken into account within the housing typologies).

These are certainly only some of the all possible comparisons; the hope is that the Acts of the conference which are included in this volume will constitute the premise for a common project about the history of the settlements in Sicily and in the Mediterranean area.

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The urban phenomenon in medieval Sicily Henri Bresc pp. 191-193 The study of the urban phenomenon in medieval Sicily necessitates a long-term analysis starting

from the Muslim period. It is also necessary to avoid concepts like “rural” and “rural world” as opposed to “urban world” in an insular medieval context dominated by the latifundium. The long-term issue is that of the concentration of the settlement and, consequently, of the level of urbanization in Sicily. The disappearance of the casale (farmhouse), except in a few parts of Valdemone, left only one legal and political category of the rural built-up area, the ‘land’, very similar to the city as for the administration and political plans, which differs from the ‘land’ only for housing the Episcopal seat. The definition of a demographic level which would allow us to delimit an urban built-up area therefore seems an ingenuous and useless effort. At the end of the 13th Century, 65,6% of the inhabitants live in villages made up of more than 4,000 inhabitants, and 82,6% in built-up areas of 2,000 inhabitants; the standard, even in the main cities, with the exception of Messina, is that of the city inhabited by rural businessmen, the ‘borgesi’. The political context will be studied first because it affects the concentration of the built-up area, then the phenomenon of urbanization, and finally the projected city planning, which expressed the political will of the municipalities.

1. The political context The submission of the municipalities to the monarchic government, the stagnation of the

municipal development, and the persistence of the urban landscape traits are often highlighted, in the lack of municipal initiatives. These clichés are denied by the municipal vitality which expresses itself on three levels in the Norman kingdom: the political ideology, the institutions and the civic religion. The use of the word civis is resumed from 1183 and 1188; some independent municipal institutions may be found in Palermo as well as in Messina at the end of 13th century. If Catania retrieves Saint Agata and Syracuse Saint Lucia, Palermo, which has a “trilingual” population and is divided by religion, does not clearly identify itself with a saint however, a failure which will heavily affect its political capacity for a long time.

The survival of a municipal conscience explains the violence of the rebellions breaking out every time the dynasty showed its weakness, and the fierce suppression, both under the Normans, under Federico II, and again between 1250 and 1256, when a municipal movement enlivened by the Lombardy example and the papal propaganda was started by raising the Church insignia under a government of podestà, and by destroying the castles, which represented a ‘constraint’ to their freedom.

The adoption of the podestà regime and of the vocabulary of the People are connected with some alliances based on a collective oath, following the example of the Lombardy league. The revolutionary movement of the Vespro reveals again the existence of a People which aspires to be organized: the Palermo revolt ends up in a “People and Municipality” which wants to be federalist uniting itself with Corleone.

This attempt having failed, the war of the Vespro allows the municipality to take office, thus defeating the Aragonese reluctance. The municipal council, under the presidency of the royal baiulo (bailiff), takes back its Frederickean (Norman) name – the jurors – and comes out of the shadows in 1311. Frederick III then organizes the election of the judges, of the jurors and of the other officials following Messina’s and the other state cities’ model and according to the complex procedure of the ‘scrutinio’ (poll), which avoids fights among factions and secures a wide base to the municipal government: more than a hundred families taking part in the government every half century.

The cities also show immense ambitions, claim a perpetual state-ownership, and even the right to insurrection in case of a handover as a feud or in ‘rettoria’, display diplomatic capacities and try to exercise a parliamentary control over the monarchy tax and military administration. The most important cities – Messina, Palermo, Girgenti – tried in the end to obtain a ‘district’, that is a contado: in 1194 Messina’s superiority over Lentini and Patti was acknowledged by Henry IV who also granted it the right to call to its aid the urban militias of this area. The city of the Straits tenaciously kept to its plans, in 1254 by destroying Taormina which refused to acknowledge this quasi sovereignty, and by reinforcing its own jurisdiction over the ‘district’

2. The urbanization of the Island The uniqueness of medieval Sicily lies in the widespread proliferation of the casale (farmhouse),

which was the centre of exploitation and administration of a rural and permanently inhabited property, decentralized, linked to a more democratic ownership of the land, often connected through a type of common landscape made up of little streets, dry stone walls, low houses which open onto the vineyards and the gardens, little churches. The casale remained intact where the owners of the land were not the big landowners and where its exploitation left some free space to the most valuable cultivation, over the mountains of Messina and Naso, in the Plain of Milazzo, on Mount Etna, in Malta and in Pantelleria.

The most evident change leads to the disappearance of most farmhouses of the Norman period, to concentration and to urbanization. About 680 built-up areas – 664 of which were farmhouses – out of a thousand were abandoned between 1061 and 1500. 364 were abandoned in Val di Mazara, 186 in Val di Noto and 132 in Valdemone, where the casale built-up area was maintained in the 15th century. The abandonment of the farmhouses took place during three periods: Federico II’s wars against the Saracen rebels in Western Sicily and in Val di Noto, and against the ‘lands’ which had risen up in Valdemone, the destructions caused by the war of the Vespro and by the Angevin expeditions, and, finally, a period of conflicts and uncertainty, of a limited but lasting intensity, from 1349 to 1378, between the Catalan part and the Latin part first, then among the Vicars of the Kingdom.

The period of urban migration caused by the war of the Vespro has been connected with an intentional policy of fortification of the island which was meant to face the Angiovin landings in 1313-1345 and consisted of the construction of strongly equipped high ground cities such as Bonifato, Brucato, and Castroreale, to defend the seashores. It goes back to the ancient demiurgic tradition of the State, which was put into effect by the Byzantines, the Kalbids and Federico II, with waves of costly and visible foundations.

The surviving farmhouses of the 14th century became classified as ‘land’ through the construction of a powerful castle or a small fortress, often a tower. Between the 14th and 15th century, the barons, too, thus try to create new ‘lands’ and ask for privileges, and, particularly, the moratorium of the debts for the migrants and the jus affidandi which allows us to populate the new country with criminals. The agricultural reconstruction of the 15th century takes advantage of the presence of these fortresses, heralding the newly founded cities of the 16th century.

For too long the Sicilian city planning has undergone analyses of an essentialist type, where the concepts of “ethnicity” and religion rule over material and moral needs. The regular plan, made up of

parallel streets and long and narrow blocks, has been certainly inherited from the past, through the Byzantine foundations, but it also represents the planning and division into lots by the owners of the land in the medieval foundations and also in the new neighbourhoods. The concentric plan around the castle belongs to a classical model seen all over Europe. The most frequent plan with curvilinear streets along the contour lines has been related to the need for quick horse riding journeys. Finally, the ‘mazy’ urban thread made up of darbi (alleys) and courtyards has been called ‘Islamic’, while it clearly relates to the division between the male and female environments in a society jealous of its honour.

To imagine the medieval Sicilian city as a mosaic of foreign colonies, isolated family groups, and areas of influence of the feudal families, would be wrong: a strong awareness of the neighborhood doesn’t exist, except in the areas of immigration from Lombardy, and the unitary dynamism of the township always manages, instead, to unite all the neighborhoods through collective celebrations involving both civic and military rituals and large processions dedicated to the municipal saints. There’s not even one Jewish neighborhood, with the exception of Syracuse and Enna, but only a centre for the cult made up, apart from the synagogue, of the buildings necessary for the ritual life, a slaughterhouse, a death chamber, a warehouse and a hospital.

3. A voluntary urbanization Among the urban functions pertaining to the Jurors, there is the surveillance of the markets and of

the city walls, the protection of public spaces, hygiene and the embellishment of the city. The municipality assumes power over religious matters by regulating public ceremonies so as to ensure the respect of Christian virtues and ethics, and by organizing the Lent sermon and the processions. The municipality concentrates all the prostitution in one brothel, takes control of hospitals and brings them together in the 15th century, assembles the slaughterhouses along a small river.

This awareness of beauty and programme of embellishment can be seen in the decisions of the Jurors of Palermo, since 1329, and are found in Catania, especially in the so called regulation of 1406 which authorizes the expropriation of the houses close to an aristocratic building in order to create a decorative whole. Urban decorum explains the valorization and the protection of the old monuments, and the construction and the enlargement of the communal buildings (the Palazzo Pretorio in Palermo) or of ‘loggias’ in honour and for the dignity of the land and of all citizens.

While a hundred powerful municipal bodies, capable of working as a “relay” to the monarchic administration and of collaborating with the baronial authority, but also of questioning it, exercise a lasting control over the majority of the grain territory and directly manage vast ‘townships’ and numerous civic functions, the look of the city, cleaning, hygiene, the night watch, the presence of a medical officer, the construction of the loggia allows us to isolate a group of towns – a sort of leading group – such as Castronuovo, Cerami, Corleone, Enna, Girgenti, Mineo, Nicosia, Noto, Piazza, Randazzo, Salemi and Trapani, besides the major cities, which, if need be, could be their competitors in claiming a bishop. Overall, the geography of these centres for development hardly changes among the ‘cities’ from the end of the 11th century and the 14th century: it is a balanced division which leaves empty only the ‘Saracen’ background of Monreale and Alcamo, whereas the competition among them has caused demographic and economic imbalances, without setting up a political hierarchy.

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Settlements and territory in Early Modern Sicily Domenico Ligresti pp. 198-200 Foreword In the three thousand-year history of Sicily, the number of men who have inhabited it and the

number of settlements of various natures to which they have given birth represent a variable depending on the great socio-economic changes which have passed through it like waves, and varying greatly according to an irregular cyclic trend from age to age. It is, however, equally possible to identify a steady and invariable element, a quality belonging to many Mediterranean civilizations, which are characterized by an early and steady presence of the city, and consequently by an increasingly considerable amount of population which is possible to define as «urban».

Since the theory of the «one hundred cities» definitely contrasts with that of the grain-based Sicily and of its «agricultural civilization», it will be better to make clear, from the very beginning, the specific meaning of the two terms urban and agricultural, with their derivatives or related words, and then, base the evaluation on the quantitative data and on the coherence of the arguments.

Contemporaries would define the type of centres they lived in with some terms, which gave them a specific quality, ranging from the most elementary group (20/40 families) named casale, to land when it exceeded the number of 40 families and it possessed some sort of protection, and, finally, civitas, if they were important centres with either religious or decentralized state functions (more than 40 are Sicilian royal cities), including some important feudal centres. For the contemporary historian, however, it is difficult to identify a precise line from which to derive, with no doubt, the exact boundary between a city and a non city, and, in my opinion, every attempt in this direction has been useless, although, eventually, a somewhat empirical consensus in the mixed evaluation of administrative roles, urban functions, amounts of population and social complexity has been reached in historical moments and in territories which are “homogeneous”.

Before going deeper in the analysis of the settlements made up of groups of families, it is necessary to remember that the island lives and changes every day also through different types of settlement and it is modified by the different forms of production, but also by the military needs and by the spread of particular styles of social life: beside the communities, other types of settlements, structures, manufacturing and infrastructures are born and perish. During the modern age, we find, along the coasts, tuna fisheries (several dozens), salt mines, about a hundred new observation towers against piracy, the loaders for the storing and the exportation of cereals, small ports with warehouses; about a hundred plantations of sugar cane and trappeti (presses) for the production of sugar were set up near the woods and in the areas rich in water from the fifteenth century to the late sixteenth century; the expansion of the vineyard area goes along with the construction of palmenti (millstones), country houses and manor houses; the citrus production, in turn, will determine the spread of small businesses for the transformation and commercialization of the product; the exploitation of sulphur will bring about an increase in the population in the area of Caltanissetta and the formation of dozens of mining microstructures; in the eighteenth century, the habit of going on holiday makes the surroundings of the major cities (above all Palermo, in the district of Bagheria) richer in marvellous aristocratic villas, which are followed by the bourgeois ‘villini’ (smaller villas) in the nineteenth century; masserie and mandre, which are structures for the production of cereals and for cattle farming, keep dotting and modifying the rural landscape, where, near built-up areas, we can also find mills, fulling-mills, retteries, and oil mills, where oil, flax, cotton, hemp and sumac are processed.

Sources The most important, systematic, continuous and huge sources of information for the description

of the Sicilian population, which is observed in specific moments of its historical development during the modern age, is represented by the riveli generali di beni e di anime (general censuses of goods and souls). It is ‘official’ data which clearly refers to an a number of focuses and souls actually recorded in a census. The first rivelo was made in 1505; those of 1548, of 1569-70, of 1583, of 1593, of 1606, of 1616, of 1623-24, 0f 1636, of 1651, of 1681, of 1714, of 1747-56, of 1806, and of 1831, at different intervals, followed. The first general Italian census was carried out in 1861, and in 1737 and 1798 the ecclesiastical structures (parishes, curias) were called on by the State to provide a calculation of the souls on the basis of the conditions of the souls.

The riveli of goods and souls up to 1747, however differently articulated, have provided some particular documents: the ristretti edited, after control, revision and counting of data, first by the Court of the Royal Estate, then (since 1651) by the Deputation of the Kingdom, where all the main information on the demographic situation, municipality by municipality, was summarized; and the volumes, mostly kept in the State Archive in Palermo, in which the single declarations (or memorials) of the heads of family, including data on the composition of the family itself (sex, age of the males, degree of kinship with the head of the family) are collected, and the others on the patrimony, which was divided into real estate and movable goods (animals, wealth, credits, reserves, coins, gold and silver, etc.), financial burdens (short-term debts, management costs, rent, etc.), with the relevant values in onze.

Besides the sources on the ‘state’ of the populations in the Sicilian municipalities, the only sources of flow capable of describing their movements per day, month or year, are represented by the parish records of baptisms, weddings and burials.

The quantity and typology of the data which can be obtained from these and other sources is enormous, but we will here limit ourselves to exploiting them to determine the relationship between the number of persons and the number and nature of the settlements. We will start by presenting two tables summarizing the parallel evolution of these two factors.

The Sicilian municipalities grow, as it can be seen, from 158 to 358, with an increment of 200 units in only 356 years (1505-1861).

This means that, every two years on average, a new built-up area with formal administrative autonomy was ‘officially’ born. The number of new settlements doesn’t automatically depend upon the demographic trend, but on the economic and social processes. As a matter of fact, during the centuries of great demographic expansion – the 16th century and the 18th century – we find only a few settlements (about one every three years in both cases), whereas, in the period of demographic crisis – the 17th

century – we find almost a settlement per year. In addition to this, there is, as already said, the “informal” peopling of the territory, that is those new built-up areas which don’t appear in the censuses.

These different situations can be understood according to four processes of major importance which characterize the evolution of the island settling system:

a) the first one consists of the wave of new settlements, which were carried out between 1590 and 1650;

b) the second one, immediately following the earthquake of 1693, is not connected with - except for the case of Felicia Moncada in the feudal ‘state’ of Paternò - the constitution of new centres, but rather with some transfers of site and the huge work of reconstruction of dozens of centres completely or partially destroyed by the earthquake.

c) the third one, during the 18th century, is less evident, but equally meaningful; it is the splitting of the hill centres which form new settling extensions on the coast, and the formation of new built-up areas which, however, continue to be small towns and don’t become autonomous administrative bodies;

d) the fourth one, which is dated between 1820 and 1860, regards that process of territorial reorganization, of concession of the administrative autonomy to numerous centres which were formed according to the ways previously mentioned, and, vice versa, of pairing again, of hierarchization among the urban communities, which goes with the administrative reform of 1817 (the end of the Kingdom of Sicily as an autonomous state body and the extension to the island of the system of the intendancies, which had already been carried out in the Kingdom of Naples by Murat).

It is now possible to identify the number of settlements which are collocated on differentiated demographic levels according to each population.

The data detected and detectable from the Sicilian censuses in the modern age can enhance many types of analysis and studies, but first it is convenient to provide some methodological and theoretical reflections upon their meaning.

The historical problem of the city in medieval and early modern Sicily Compared to the Centre/North of the country where an independent Municipality had firmly

installed itself as an essential centre for the political and institutional, trade and manufacturing development, and where, after the 17th-century crisis, the regional States had gradually started a process of manufacturing and agricultural ‘modernization’ again, in order to later develop a relatively fast process of industrialization in a unified context, the South of Italy, since not very distant times, offered other elements of great significance to culture and historical analysis: the early formation of a monarchic State which was comprised of the city autonomies, the long Spanish presence, the hegemonic role which was taken and kept by the feudal aristocracy, the prevalence of the agricultural sector, the establishment of an economy which depended on the exportation of grain and raw materials or semi-finished goods towards the most developed areas and the consequent weakness of the local manufacturing production and the merchant class. Also the Southern culture, which followed the Risorgimento anti-Spanish culture, had on its part contributed polemically in showing a South dominated, even at the end of the last century, by the latifundium, by rural poverty, by the social disorganization and fragmentation of the built-up areas.

What is more, by changing the orientation, the perspectives and the methods of the historiographic task, the redefinition of the historical concept and role of the city (up to opposing the rhetoric of the inevitably pathogenic character of the urban growth to the tradition of the ‘virtuous’ city) and the affirmation of new interpretative laws of urban history have by now clearly shown, in the comparative studies on the urbanization rate in Europe, the paradox of a Southern Italy which is included among the first for density of population living in the city centres, but which lacks a realistic and comprehensive historical analysis of the urban phenomenon which took place in its geographical area.

It has been observed many times that the number of persons doesn’t automatically determine a level of urbanization in the absence of other qualifying ‘functions’, and it has been proposed to set up a sort of grid with predetermined parameters which are necessary to define the urban character of a centre (functions of a trading or exchange type, of a political and administrative type, of a judiciary type, of a religious type, the presence of social figures belonging to the upper- and middle- classes, the capacity of control over the territory); but there are already a series of studies which provide positive answers to a lot of such aspects, and, anyway, show how a comprehensive analysis of city dimension appears inevitable for the understanding of the history of the South.

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Cities and University Institutions (16th-19th Centuries) Giuseppe Baldacci pp. 200-202 After having briefly mentioned the trends in the studies on the history of the Universities, and the

historiographic production which is considered more significant from a methodological point of view, the state of the studies regarding the three historical Sicilian universities – those of Catania, Messina and Palermo – are analyzed. As for the two oldest universities – the Siciliae Studium Generale of Catania and the Messanese Studium Gnerale, the balance in recent publications is generally positive, also thanks to the work of the study centres which were suitably created and which have played an important role in the coordination of research. As far as Catania is concerned, the coordination of research was carried out, especially between the ‘80s and the ‘90s of the last century, by the Institute of History of Italian Law of the Faculty of Law. Again regarding Catania University, in recent years, research, that has benefited from the organization and promotion of the overall remarkable archival heritage available in situ, which has been stored mainly in the historical diocesan Archive and in the historical Archive of the University, has been intensified and its range has been expanded. It goes from a thorough analysis of the political and social context of the origins to the contributions to the social history, from the characteristics of the faculty, of the culture and of the profession of medicine to the definition of the role the Palazzo dello Studio played in the urban space. Great attention has been paid to the 18th-century and 19th-century transition.

In Messina, after the studies on the local University have become less frequent since the 1930s, their renewal is due to the activity of the “Centre for the documentation of the history of the University of Messina”, which was founded in 1986. It is committed to the twofold front of the systematic examination and of the editing of the sources, on the one hand, and of historical reconstruction, on the other. The obtained results are important and make this Centre a valid organizational and methodological point of reference.

The University of Palermo doesn’t have a recent bibliography at its disposal which can be compared to that of the other two Sicilian universities, although an overall reconstruction which was carefully documented was published at the time of its foundation.

The creation of a University of Studies in Catania – to resort to a term which is still used – is

collocated at the end of the Middle Ages, that is in that European context which sees a remarkable increase in the University seats thanks to the no longer autonomous initiative of students and academics, but to that of the political powers which are represented by the princes and the city authorities, and to a widespread preference, in Italy, towards minor cities rather than the capitals of the new territorial states which were being formed.

In that Sicily characterized by a rapidly consolidating urban reality – the 15th century in Sicily is referred to as the century of the cities – while the cities become more populated and require a more complex administration with regard to, for example, hygiene and supplies, the locally hegemonic élites urgently need medical and legal competence, which entails a process of definition of the respective institutional areas and of the dispute over the government properties. This explains the need to be the centre of attention of the cities in the field of the education, and even high education. On the other hand, the newly re-established union with the kingdom of Naples thanks to King Alphonse the Magnanimous makes Sicily feel the urgent need to define the cultural and, in particular, legal identity of the island in relation to Naples. And the presence of a place of study comes to be perceived as a fundamental starting point for the Sicilian jurists who were committed to the construction of a ‘Sicilian’ law. Requests were made, more or less simultaneously and insistently, by all of the three

major Sicilian cities, namely Palermo, Messina and Catania, but the possibility of paying something in return to the Etnean city, which for a long time was the seat of the royal court then entering a phase of decline, and of following a policy of balance among the three sister-rival cities, thus avoiding the sharp predominance of one of them, led to a preference for Catania. Whence, in 1434 the placet from Alphonse the Magnanimous to the request presented by the city, together with others which aimed at increasing its privileges. A, not short, procedure followed which, in October 1445, after the Papal bull of erection of Pope Eugenio IV which dates back to 1444, led to the inauguration of the lessons of the new University. It must be underlined that very soon - in fact immediately - Catania attempted to transform the uniqueness of its University from a fact into a right, with frequent appeals to the royal authority to stop the rise of other universities in Sicily.

But in the mid-17th century, after numerous requests were rejected, the institution of the University of Messina, whose hybrid origin halfway between the municipal university and the "college-university" represents a significant chapter in the relationship between the university institutions and the educational institutes connected with the religious orders, matures thanks to the influential negotiation of the Society of Jesus. Fully functioning only at the end of the 16th century, after a long and twofold dispute had set the city of Messina against the Jesuits, for the control of the Studium, and against Catania, which claimed the exclusive right to its own advantage, the Messanese Studium Generale undertook a cultural policy open to, in particular in the medical-scientific field, the innovations, by appointing ‘foreign’ academics of great prestige.

From this moment on, the Siciliae Studium Generale of Catania effectively became the only University of the Kingdom of Sicily and enjoyed the sole privilege for the Kingdom of issuing doctoral titles.

To put it more clearly, it was the only University where the Sicilians could get a degree which was recognized as valid in Sicily, also in order to practise a profession and to gain entry to public offices. It is necessary, however, to stress the limit of the monopoly of the University of Catania over university studies in Sicily. As it has systematically been verified at least for the last decades of the 18th century, this monopoly was greatly scaled down in its substantial, formative and cultural capacity through the institution of the exemption, thanks to which the doctors nominated by permission of the king, or, more often, of the viceroy would take only the final graduation exams at the University of Catania, in order to get the degree, without having attended the three-year course which was the rule at that time.

With the arrival of the Bourbons on the throne of Naples and Sicily from 1734 to 1860, a process of modernization parallel to the Enlightenment reformism on the one hand, and to the reorganization of the Kingdom after the revolutionary and Napoleonic storm on the other, and which had consequences even in the field of education, was attempted. In the first phase of this process, after the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767, the creation of a state school system, in spite of difficulties and hesitation, was started. In the second phase, the dynasty of Naples having been restored in 1815, the state aimed at giving uniformity and coherence to the educational system within a clear legal and administrative framework and under the leadership of the Public Education Commission, which was installed, for the island part of the Kingdom, in Palermo. As regards the University of Catania, the Enlightenment reformism was established through the reform of 1779, which introduced new elements, above all in the field of didactics and of teaching.

Meanwhile the decline of the age-old privilege of the exclusive right for Catania matured. In 1806 the University of Palermo was opened, after a lot of previous attempts, starting in the 15th century, had failed not only because of a generally unfavourable attitude of the monarchy towards it, but also because of a series of political contingencies and unfavourable circumstances. A few decades later, in 1838 to be precise, also Messina obtained the refoundation of the University, a measure which was considered useful in the debates about the better reorganisation of Sicilian education in those

decades, but it was also interpreted essentially as a form of punishment for the uprisings caused by the cholera outbreak of 1837 (particularly serious in Catania) while, at that juncture, Messina had gained the merit of loyalty.

*** Settlements and territory in contemporary Eastern Sicily Melania Nucifora p. 205 The current structure of the Eastern Sicily settlement is that of a wide, polycentric, fairly

integrated (on a functional level), urban region, whose clearly observable characteristics are caused by the presence of three “urban” centres (the provincial capitals) – two of which having a “metropolitan” dimension (Messina and Catania) – a strong coastal concentration, a consequent depopulation of the hill and mountain inland areas, the presence of a thick infrastructural area which, running parallel to the Ionian coast, supports land mobility and tends to strengthen the North-South axis of urbanization, to the detriment of the axes, infrastructures, communication networks, and inter-urban routes which cross it. Such a structure is the result of a series of processes of transformation of the territory, whose time articulation is anything but linear. On the contrary, it is characterized by a sudden acceleration that, beginning from the mid-‘60s, in many parts of the territory under consideration, marks the passage – within the period of a few decades – from the prevalence of a social dimension with strong rural characteristics to the spreading of urban lifestyles which were sustained by a process of significant tertiarisation of the economy. The consequences of the territorial transformations which happened during the aftermath of the second world war and can be explained by the interaction of processes on a local and national scale, is, in many ways, unprecedented: the relationship between “cities” and rural settlements is thus radically changed once and for all, not only from a morphological, landscape, and environmental point of view, but by fully affecting the socio-economic dimension of the territory, the mentality, consumer models, the housing ambitions of the population.

Under the effect of these transformations, at first glance, the landscape of settlements of Eastern Sicily appears more homogeneous than it actually is.

On closer inspection, however, there are many and significant reasons for the permanence, which, under the veil of the unexpected “unbalanced modernity” of Ionian Sicily, make the peculiarities of the modern age settling structures still observable. Research, whose objectives, method, and partial results are here briefly reported, tends to highlight the role that the different organization of the settlement in the modern age has played in orientating the most recent transformations, besides the apparent homogeneity of the settling structures, thus determining some significant differences, which affect current issues. The three areas identified as units of study (Ionian-Peloritanian, Ionian-Etnean, Ionian-Ibleian), beyond the recently acquired common characteristics, can be distinguished according to: the nature of the relationship between capital city and hinterland, the organization and statute of the rural world, the presence and role of centres of average sizes that are traditionally independent from the major cities around which a series of “intermediate local systems” have been organized. These systems house some functions which are predominantly of a tertiary type (for example, the latest generation of large commercial distribution) which have contributed to enhance their territorial role.

In the analysis of the contemporary age settlement, the concept of “local territorial system” appears more interesting and significant than both the traditional concept of “city” (whose crisis has been outlined in an extensive literature), and the more flexible concepts of “urban centre” or “metropolitan area”. It, as a matter of fact, assumes the reform of the local autonomies as its horizon of reference. This reform has represented the most significant cause of the redefinition of hierarchies,

roles and territorial identities, since the ‘90s, by defining a new geography of the Ionian settlement, which explains the organization of the settlements, in a better way than the geography based on the traditional administrative divisions (provinces, municipalities), not only in functional terms but also, and above all, in terms of “belonging”.

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Cities in Spain in the 16th and 18th Centuries David Alonso Garcia p. 206 In this paper, we analyze the evolution of Spanish Urbanisation between the 16th and 18th

centuries. During XVIth century, Spain had a large number of cities. The latest studies have demonstrated that urbanization rates were greater than those that J. de Vries has pointed out, especially for a model of villages with less than 10.000 people. In the Iberian Peninsula emerged different regions with an striking number of medium-sized cities. The highest urbanisation rates occurred in Castile and Andalusia due to cities with a population of between 50.000-10.000 inhabitants. As in other countries of Europe, urbanization rates increased between the XVth century and the last decade of the XVIth. If in 1530 about 13% of Castilians lived in cities, in 1591 this rate had increased by almost ten points. Moreover, there were regions like Andalusia or Murcia with higher rates. Thus, cities were important centres from a demographic point of view. They also had an important position in the economic system. Cuenca, Medina del Campo, Toledo, Burgos, Valladolid, Córdoba, Jaén and other cities had an economy based on industry and commerce, with an important integration with their hinterlands. At the same time, Valencia and Cartagena were integrated into the Mediterranean economy, and international trade with Italy and the North characterized their local economy. Seville, clearly, grew looking at America. Furthermore, cities – which means, oligarchies- had an increasing importance in the political system of the Spanish Monarchy. After the Comuneros revolt, the Parliament strengthened itself and controlled the tax system from 1536, when all the kingdom, city by city, had to collect the major part of the royal taxes in both urban and rural areas.

At the beginning of the XVIIth century, a new model of urbanisation emerged. During the XVIIth

crisis, Castile suffered from an important deurbanization, with the exception of Madrid. The periphery, both in the North and in the East, became the most dynamic part of Spain. Its population decreased between 1620-1660, but its cities started to recover earlier than Castile. Barcelona emerged as a new international economic centre and, in País Vasco, industry was developed. However, in cities such as Cuenca, Segovia, Burgos, Medina, Ciudad Real population decreased. Medina del Campo collapsed as a financial city and Castilian industry and commerce in general had a negative trend. Only the Madrid population and economy increased because of the presence of the court. Seville, on the other hand, had a remarkable number of people. The view that has been outlined so far is the general and traditional view. Recent studies are demonstrating that the fall of Castile was not so profound. First of all, its decline showed a lot of local or regional variations, with different demographic and economic rates. There was a decrease of urban rates but not a general and total crisis. It is even possible to discover areas of growth like Ocaña or Valdepeñas with demographic increases due to the development of communications between Madrid and Andalusia. A key issue of XVIIth deurbanization was the emigration from the cities to the countryside. However, at the same time, rural industry was developed in different regions, such as Palencia. We know the influence of this rural industry on the “protoindustry” theories, according to which economic transition to industrial revolution was influenced by the rural one. In this sense contemporary historians consider it an internal change in Castile, with negative elements of course, but not an absolute decline of the centre of Spain.

To better clarify the concept we have just presented, we have two models. The first of them was marked by a polinuclear growth, with a lot of central points of development. The second was characterized by Madrid, the Court, a single central point which began to grow more and more. Madrid, as the place of the kings, has been accused of causing Castilian decline because of the huge market demands. But this market was afflicted by other local causes of impoverishment, and even in Madrid, where there was an interesting industrial and financial growth. Great Castilian cities had already gone through a phase of decline, but not all of Castile.

In this paper we offer different data regarding this progress. We propose an explanation based on a long term view. On many occasions, historians have analyzed the Castilian crisis – or the change of model – taking into consideration only the XVIIth century. In our opinion, it is necessary to analyze the development since the XVth and XVIth centuries. First of all, the second model was a consequence, almost an evolution, of the first. For instance, Madrid had been developing as the Court of the Spanish Monarchy since, at least, the 1490s. It was elected as a permanent Court in 1561. Thus, its formation as the biggest Castilian centre started in the previous period. For this reason, in order to explain the “Decline of Castile”, we shouldn't think of a breach but of an evolution. Secondly, the urbanization and the deurbanization of Spain depended on demographic, economical, cultural and political structures. In this paper, we try to understand the process taking into consideration all the elements, not only from a demographic point of view.

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Images of the settlement in Malta between the 17th and the 18th Centuries Giannatonio Scaglione pp. 207-208 This work aims at reconstructing the standard procedures and the representations of the

settlement of the island of Malta in the modern age, through the analysis of the demographic data and of the literary and graphic representations of the time which is based on Stanley Fiorini’s, Joseph Brincat’s and Albert Ganado’s studies.

Malta was already a densely inhabited island in the 16th century. The setting up of the Order of St. John was a pivotal moment from the social, cultural, economic and also demographic point of view. Before its arrival, the Maltese population – almost exclusively rural – was concentrated in villages (farmhouses), which were scattered throughout the island and consisted of between 100 and 200 people on average (the most important farmhouses reached 3/400 inhabitants). As well as the villages, there were also three small fortified towns: one on the island of Gozzo (Rabat) and the other two in Malta. Mdina, the ancient capital, with no more than 500 inhabitants and a suburb (Rabat), and, finally, a seaport town (Birgù) with about a hundred inhabitants defended by a fort: Castello a Mare.

From this point of view, a further interpretation is provided by comparing the data which can be

found in the most representative works from the 17th and 18th centuries of Maltese history. In the Malta illustrated. Of the description of Malta, island in the Sicilian Sea, with its antique history, and other news, which was published in Malta in 1647 and written by one of the most important modern Maltese historians – the scholar and antiquarian Giovanni Francesco Abela – we find a long and detailed description of the lands and of the villages of the settlement, which contains the list of the family units and of the inhabitants of every single centre. The news reported in this text has been frequently used by various scholars over the centuries to write their works. Indeed, between 1772 and 1780, they will be edited again in the Malta illustrated, or the description of Malta, island in the Sicilian and Adriatic Seas, with its antique history, and other news… by the commentator F. Giovan Francesco Abela…

Corrected, enlarged and continued by Count Giovannantonio Ciantar, by Giovannantonio Ciantar, who, by keeping both the original text and the general structure, enlarges its content by inserting and expanding the news from Abela, using his 18th century notes.

By starting from the data used by Abela to represent the demographic condition of the island and by comparing it to the data later published by Ciantar, it is possible to obtain a general picture of the demographic processes which have affected the settlement in Malta during the 17th and 18th centuries.

In La Valletta the increase in family units, which passed from 1,891 of the first rivelo (census) to about 2,800, shows an increase of 48%; whereas the number of inhabitants, by passing from 10,744 to 20,780, represents an increase of 94%. Also the other towns show some growth; as for the towns of Senglea (+37%) and Borgo (+23%), this growth is quite contained; conversely, Burmula registers an increase in family units equal to 147%, and of inhabitants equal to 156%, thus incorporating de facto the demand for the construction of new housing in the area facing the port. Unlike the towns on the coast, Mdina, which lies in the centre of the island, increases the number of its inhabitants only a little (10%).

By analyzing in detail the data related to the growth of the inhabitants in the centres of the hinterland, it appears quite clear that, even in the short term, the small villages which lie near the seaport area grow more. The village of Zabbar, east of La Valletta, shows a remarkable growth (191% persons and 230% family units); but also in Biskallin, in whose growth we have to include Gioan, the number of inhabitants passes from 1,185 to 3,529 with an increase of +189%; Aasciak registers a demographic growth of 188%. On the contrary, the villages of Kircop (family units -31%, persons -28%) and Safi (family units -58%, persons -27%) show a decrease both in the number of family units and in that of persons.

As can be observed from the data, the majority of the villages which don’t present a demographic growth are to be found west of the capital; as in the cases of Balsan (persons -16%), Casal Gargur (persons -34%) and Attard (family units -16%, persons -28%), that lie near to Bircarcara, which, on the contrary, presents a growth in the number of inhabitants equal to 30%. In the same area, the casali (farmhouses) of Lia and Nasciano can be found, which, despite presenting a growth of 19% and 29% in the number of family units respectively, show a decrease in the number of inhabitants (-7% and -18% respectively).

The analysis of the collected data allows us to make further observations. According to the demographic growth and decline rates of the Maltese settlement, it is easy to notice that all those centres which are included in the area between the Grand Harbour and the port of Marsa Sirocco (South-East of the capital) present a demographic growth greater than that of the other areas of the island; these growths, which are all greater than 151%, are recorded in Burmula, where the number of persons passes from 2,778 to 7,112, thus marking an increase of 198%; finally, Biskallin, which passes from about 1,185 to 3,520 persons, shows an increase of 198%. According to the data reported by Ciantar, it is the seaport systems, with their hinterland, which are likely to work as a catalyst in the growth of the settlement thus determining the demographic success of this area.

On the other side of the Island, west of La Valletta, some villages (Nasciano, Gargur, Attard, Balsan, Lia) present a negative growth rate. Another area affected by demographic decline is that lying south of the capital where there are the villages of Krendi, Kircop and Safi: in these villages, unlike the previous example, we have to register a greater growth of the neighbouring centres (Zorrico and Mikabba). In Zorrico, the number of persons passes from 1,580 to 2,490, with an increase equal to 58%, while in Mikabba, by passing from 354 to 708, it doubles.

These descriptions, along with the images, give us the possibility to make a new interpretation of the Maltese settlement; a conceptual division between the city and the village clearly emerges which is typical of the modern age and somehow redefines the urban and island space as regards some new

vocations. As in the case of Sicily, to the eyes of the observer, the vacuum of the countryside contrasts with the plenum of the city, which is made up of concentrations of houses and people.

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The urbanization of France between 1700 and 1830 Nicolas Verdier pp. 209-210 The Diderot d’Alambert Encyclopédie offers a definition of the city which is based on one of its

major dualities. It is made up at the same time of buildings and streets. Two approaches, then, (one for the buildings, the other for the streets), simultaneously undergo an attempt to create a model. The cities of the Kingdom as a whole, as well as all of the streets, are thus described with the aid of a concept of hierarchy that spreads in the 19th century. As for the road networks, it is the general financial controller Philibert Orry who tries to classify them into different categories in his Instruction; as for the city it is Robert de Hesseln, to cite one example, who tries to organize the human agglomerations from the capital city up to the casale (farmhouse) in his 1771 Dictionnaire Universel de la France.

The works which have tried to combine these two approaches in a general overview of the cities of a country are, in the end, rare in France. From this perspective, Bernard Lepetit has a pivotal role in the historiographic urban landscape. After the anticipations of Braudel in Civilisation matérielle…, he is the historian of the synthesis of the research led on the one hand by the French strand of the New Urban History, and on the other hand by the researches on the communication networks which were started in France at the end of the ‘60s. After him, research has become ever more rare, touching on the liveliest part of the geographical field. The research which continues today specializes both on the aspect of the streets and on that of the cities.

This text aims at retrieving the dossiers started by others and by myself over the last few years. It will be thus necessary to go back to the relationships between urban hierarchies and transportation networks in France between 1700 and 1840. Besides, the use of cartographic, thematic representations as an aid to this purpose will allow us to overcome the more technical aspects to the advantage of spatial representations which should arrange the issue. More precisely, we will have to combine the urban hierarchies (population and administration) in relation to the transportation network: i.e. the routes of the Posta a cavallo (Pony Express).

To establish a connection between these two objects of study is anything but an experiment. Indeed, the link between these two elements is made clear by the very close quantitative evolutions which affect both of them. The comparison between the mileage accumulated by the network and the number of cities with more than 10,000 inhabitants shows a fine correlation despite the uneven chronological divisions. Thus emerges a growth which accelerates from 1740 to 1790, a decline during the French Revolution, then a return to a marked growth beginning from the end of the Empire (after 1815). However, the similarity of the processes does not inform us about the nature of the their relationship. From this point of view we can see that the economists of the time, from Monchrestien up to Quesnay or Jean-Baptiste Say, developed theories which connect the growth of the cities and that of transport networks. More prosaically, it should be underlined that the cities with more of 10,000 inhabitants which do not belong to the transportation network are rare. Apart from some interesting exceptions, the cities which are not linked to the network in a precise moment or end up being linked or disappear from the list of the cities with more than 10,000 inhabitants. The Mediterranean hinterland appears here in a negative light: it is the only area which, permanently, remains badly connected to the routes of the Posta a cavallo (Pony Express).

A second test which links urbanization and administrative functions is possible. There, too, the considerations about the city of the French 19th century insist upon the close relationship between two questions. By looking at the maps with geographical divisions, the relationship between administrative capitals and road networks is evident. After a difficult and expensive construction of the road network, in 1870, all the important capital cities are linked to the network. The Revolution, with its redistribution of the administrative functions, causes new tensions which concentrate on the Mediterranean hinterland. At the beginning of the 1830s, this area is still out of the network.

If a synthesis of these results is attempted by superimposing these two forms of urban organization a series of more complex maps appears. In 1708, the only capital city of «généralité» not to be integrated in the network is, at the same time, the only one whose population is lower than 10,000 inhabitants. On the other hand, it can be seen that the area of minor connection to the network is a wide sickle-shaped part which goes from the east to the south passing through the south-east. In 1783 all the capital cities of «généralité» (two of which have less than 10,000 inhabitants) are linked to the network. The area of minor connection is limited for the moment to the south of the Massif Central. In about 1830, things seem to have worsened: the French territory seems to have less roads compared to 1708 or 1780, there is, however, an area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Massif Central which stands out: there, some towns grow even though they are not served by a rapid transport network.

It is in this precise area that the questions concentrate. The explanatory model that associates urban organization and road networks, which has been inherited from the 19th century and seems to work perfectly for the rest of the territory, finds some limits there. Another model of city and urbanization would seem to have developed there. We have one example there of possible modes of development which has not followed the rule. Later, the area became very quickly depopulated to the advantage of the big French cities like Paris.

Our objective was that of evaluating the strength of the relationship between two structures, or, better, of two organizations of the territory: the city and the urbanization on the one hand, the network and its organization on the other. This allows us to pose further questions to a by now canonical model of the rank-dimension law which is often used to describe the process of urbanization. This method assumes a relationship among the urban populations which guarantees a relatively homogeneous distribution of the demographic growth among the cities. The fact that the model fails to define the nature of this relationship is clearly a limit of the model itself. The passage from the road network of the Posta a cavallo (Pony Express) seems to us to enrich the model by insisting upon what could be defined as the degree of the relationship with the urban system. In 1700, in France, 90% of the cities are linked to the network; in 1833, they are 96%. Urbanization is thus carried out also through the network. From that moment, another model starts to disappear, which is probably that of the local city versus the national city. It will be noticed that nowadays the theories about globalization reveal this same logic which connects the multicultural, or cosmopolitan, cities, which are bound together through social networks at the top of a world urban hierarchy.

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Cities in Maghreb in the Early Modern Age: vector of modernity? Abdelhamid Henia pp. 210-212 To talk about Maghrebian cities as a vector of modernity – which is the objective of this research –

could appear inappropriate at first sight, since the Maghrebian (i.e. «Arabian» or «Islamic») urban societies have been often negatively defined as, and not only, static and a-historic, by Orientalists. To understand better the role of Maghrebian cities in the socio-political process of their respective configurations, it is necessary to study them from a dynamic and historical perspective.

First of all, it is necessary to stress the mediocrity of our knowledge of Maghrebian urban history, as others have done. Studies in the colonial age have practically ignored the phase preceding the colonization to the advantage of ancient times, and when studies are dedicated to the pre-colonial age, there is the trend to give a negative image of it in order to better highlight the civilizing action of the «white man»: in this respect, the works of the French on Algeria in the Ottoman age are characteristic; this period is presented as an age of absolute «barbarity». This documentary inadequacy is clearly more or less important depending on the cities.

Some Maghrebian cities have often been the subject of serious monographies. Tunis and Fez, Constantine and Tripoli are relatively more studied than the rest of the Maghrebian cities. Historians, sociologists, geographers and architects have dedicated very advanced studies to these centres. Nonetheless, there are few overall studies, with the exception of Lucette Valensi and André Nouschi’s attempts. These latest studies are rare attempts to compare Maghrebian cities which soften the trends to hurried generalizations starting from a particular case. As a matter of fact, Le Tourneau’s work is one of those rare attempts which have been made regarding Maghrebian cities in general: unfortunately, this author has the tendency to generalize the knowledge which has been acquired about the city of Fez.

The period covered by our research ranges from the 16th century to the 18th century. It has been favoured because it represents an important moment in the history of Maghrebian cities; they (at least some of them) experienced a period of prosperity and stability with their social and political environment, before the negative consequences of the European expansion and of the local difficulties hit them starting from the beginning of the 19th century.

In general, therefore, this attempt to present a history of the Maghrebian centres in the modern age can be considered premature, if not reckless. It has not seemed useless, however, to try and sum up what we know about these cities, in the hope that this project, which is after all modest, will help contribute to a global view of the urban process and, particularly, to the appreciation of their respective roles in the political structures which emerged in Maghreb in that very same period, and, above all, will make it possible to show to which extent the cities have represented a vector of modernity for this region of the world. It has also appeared as an opportunity to put the validity of a certain (Eurocentric) way of interpreting the process of Maghrebian configurations to the test.

It is well known that Western European cities have been the main vector of modernity in all of its manifestations, and above all in the field of the construction of states. But the problem becomes more complex outside of the Western European area: is it necessary to acknowledge the idea – which has gathered an almost complete consensus – that modernity and all its components are a specifically European creation and that, consequently, Maghrebian cities haven’t any role in the process of the construction of the modern State and of modernity? And, to remain within the debate relative to the construction of the state and of modernity in the extra European area, is it necessary to talk about «importation», if we decide to follow Badie, or about «transplantation», if, on the contrary, we decide to give credit to Bayart?

Since the construction of state power is being dealt with, my hypothesis consists of the assertion that this type of power was started by the Almohads in the 12th century at the latest and with their representatives in Tunisia, the Hafsids, at the beginning of the 13th century. From this date, the premises of a modern State, which is symbolized by the birth of the institution of the Makhzen, start to appear. The term Makhzen, which literally means «warehouse» (or «store»), is a metaphor of the concentration and of the monopoly of the fiscal product. Moreover, it expresses the idea of institutional stability in the administration of power. As a matter of fact, the invention of the institution and of the term meet the need of the political actors of the time to get rid of the term dawla, which, at that time, more or less gave the idea of the rotation in the administration of power and, by extension, of that of the kingdom – a metaphor of the cyclic, pre-state power. Later, around the mid-19th century, the Tunisian political lexis reinvents the term dawla to identify the State in the modern sense of the word, thus giving up, at least gradually, the use of the term Makhzen and also that of the term beylik (i.e. literally «State ruled by a bey») which has meanwhile replaced it, at least in Tunisia and Tripolitania, and which identified a state formation more or less of the Ottoman type.

Such a semantic analysis of the terms of the administration of power allows us to infer that the state phenomenon is not specifically European, as is generally claimed, and that it takes different forms according to the various socio-political contexts. Consequently, the idea of the «importation» of the State or that of its «transplantation» becomes ephemeral. On the other hand this construction of the state is not an exclusive product of the centre. It is equally made from the bottom, above all through the action of the city societies and of the local élites, the notables. The aim of this essay is to try and understand the role of the cities in the process of state construction.

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Maghrebian cities in the modern age bear multiple evidence, both for the construction of state power and the organization of territories and the importance of economic activities. Indeed, behind the urban element there are the unique traits belonging to each of the Maghrebian cities. There are more cities which are sumptuous for their monuments in Morocco and Tunisia than in Algeria and Lybia. These sumptuous monuments serve, among other things, to construct the State in a strong way. They equally prove that these cities attract important revenues in the form of surplus of products which come from the surrounding countryside and from long distance trade.

Vectors of modernity, the Maghrebian cities are the places where the different aspects of modernity are gradually built, as happens in other parts of the rest of the world. However, the intensity, the vigour and the rhythm of such a modernity are functions of the conditions of existence. The role of the city societies in this process of modernization is stronger in Tunisia than in the rest of the region. In the other countries the societies negotiate this role with other local forces. It is not that these latest ones are insensitive to the modernist trend, but they join it only according to their own expectations and needs relatively to the resistance to the policy of territorialization led by the central power with the complicity of the city societies in general. Thus the modernity which we are talking about is not homogeneous, that is, it is not built in the same way and does not obey the same conditions. It is the product of a conflictual, unwilled and largely unconscious historical process which occurs in the disorder of the conflicts and compromises of different forces. It is, then, useless to believe that there is only one modernity and that its construction takes only one form and follows only one direction. It is multiple and has no reference to the European model.

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Ottoman cities in the 19th Century Jean-Luc Arnaud pp. 212-213 Starting from the beginning of the 19th century, the cities of the Ottoman Empire undergo an

unprecedented process of growth. In a few decades, tens of thousands of people settle in the cities. During this period the passage from the traditional Moslem city to the modern one occurs. Despite considerable differences, both in the potential of the cities and in the way they are affected by the reforms, it can be assumed that, on the eve of the dismantling of the Empire, at the beginning of the 1920s, a wave of modernization hits the majority of its agglomerations.

This process is part of a wider whole of transformations which go beyond the borders of the Empire. Beginning from the 1830s, progress in steam-powered shipping causes an increase in the volume of shipped goods. The cities which are mostly affected by this phenomenon are, above all, the ports: Thessaloniki, Istanbul, Izmir, Mersin, Beirut, Haifa and Alexandria. The communication networks between these ports and the cities of the hinterland play a crucial role in these processes. Following the first carriageways, it is the railway which allows the Western markets to enter the inner parts of the territories from the ports. Finally, thanks to the Balta Liman treaty, which was signed by the Sublime Porte, France and England in 1838, businessmen, financial capital and men travel more and more easily on the lands of the Sultan.

The 19th century is also the century when the Ottoman Empire is slowly dismantled. In this situation, at the end of ‘30s, the Porte carries out its first administrative reforms (tanzimat). It is therefore necessary to regain power over what is left of the Empire by exploiting, above all, the role of relais which can be played by the cities in order to guarantee a more effective control of the territory. Beginning from the first half of the 1850s, the creation of the first municipal structures is carried out. These new administrative services are assigned a long list of tasks, but the shortage of means with which they are provided doesn’t guarantee their creation. Finally, the competencies of the governor and the local assembly (majlis) respectively are badly defined. Despite difficulties, between the 19th and 20th centuries, all the biggest cities are provided with municipal services. These administrative structures and their functioning represent changes in the cities and in the management of their building and planning services.

The renewal of the administrative practice and the development of state services contribute to an increase the role of the cities. They become true relais of the central administration. These changes do not affect exclusively the administration. Following the tanzimat, a wave of secularisation leads the public powers to develop new activities whose institutions are for the most part located in the cities.

On the other hand, the production sector undergoes a deep transformation. This sector is affected in its competitive activities not only by foreign products but also by the demand for raw material from the European industry. The new urban functions are also determined by the development of the services linked to the spreading of the European communication and transport techniques. These activities do not always have a direct connection with the cities but the headquarters of the companies which start them are located in the urban centres.

In general, during the century taken into consideration, it is possible to notice an acceleration in the rearrangement of the social groups and of the activities inside the agglomerations. The new activities represent the main driving force of these rearrangements. The creation of a working class, the increase in the number of civil servants and office workers cause considerable imbalances which end up in the progressive loss of power of the traditional guilds.

Beginning from the middle of the 1830s, the importance of the offer of lands which can be exploited to create cities gives rise to a special type of organization of the new districts. Each division of land is targeted at a selected and homogeneous group of customers. In this context the social groups

organize themselves in the new districts in a far more segregating way than in the old system. To better ensure the management of the city, at the end of the 19th century, the public (local or national) authority divides, classifies, measures, designs… the different components. The categories which are built by these activities contribute in this way to reinforce the phenomenon of segregation. Finally, the law completes the tendency to organize the cities into functional areas. Bans against certain practices or certain populations in certain places multiply.

Thus, a new form of relationship between the organization of the urban space and the division of the society develops. Although the ancient cities are not isotropic, a passage occurs from a considerable mixture of activities and social groups to specializations which reveal new forms of segregation, and in some cases even exclusion.

In all the cities of the Empire we move from a model of the city built little by little, taking into consideration land and real estate markets which were not very dynamic, to a more open city with irregular urban structures whose circulation system forms a network by following new organizational rules. The extensions represent the most evident phenomenon of these changes, but the 19th century is also a time of the reconstruction of the city upon itself. The ancient streets are widened and aligned while the buildings undergo some transformations in order to organize their land areas in a more compact way than before.

These urban and architectural operations entail the creation of new centres which group together most of the administrative services and economic activities which are linked to modernity. On the other hand, the important religious places around the great mosques and the areas where retail trade is concentrated (souk and bazar) form historical centres which are partially downgraded.

Optimization of land income is not achieved only through the division of the lands. The construction of the first public buildings bear important witness to this. A new division of the undeveloped areas is carried out: public space is introduced in the heart of the city blocks in order to optimize their land value.

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The City as Settlement Giuseppe Giarrizzo p. 214

It is a sort of going back ‘from the territory to the city’, which the curators (Iachello and Militello)

could not avoid highlighting. They have both introduced themes which ‘contaminated’ geography and history into the Italian historiography, and they have made a clear distinction among the different branches of urban planning – i.e. between urban design on the one hand and the social community with its variable structure which finds its place in the urban organization on the other hand. To this purpose, they have provided a definition and an analysis of the territory, sometimes as stratification, sometimes as project. In the introduction they explain what convinced them, which can be seen as a change in the perspective, not to say an inversion in the orientation: the need for as well as the complexity of the concept of urban identity.

All the contributions, whether regarding the geo-political area of the three-pointed island or arousing from ‘cross perspectives’ on the modern and contemporary Mediterranean, limit the settlement to its foundation, development, urban cycle. This sometimes entails a tension between the city and the territory, of which some of the essays are an example, and I would like to bring back the attention to this very tension because it hits – on different levels of awareness – the main point of our problem. This problem consists of the constant dialogue with the anthropologists, and, above all, with those who – in the Anglo-Saxon, German or Latin areas – feel the presence of the historians, and, through the historians, they draw new nourishment from linguists and ‘scientists of religions’. Those who look at ‘global’ issues such as the Rom and residual nomadism, or the great migrations of disbanded communities or ‘peoples’ through Italian journalism and its provincial, media perspective, immediately perceive the state of confusion of our historiography which limits itself to pointing out the social aspects of politics, and in fact uses inappropriately outdated concepts of an old political history – which goes back to the 18th-19th centuries using such terms as nation and homeland. I have a vivid memory of the enthusiasm which was aroused by the rediscovery of Turner and of the ‘frontier’ in the ‘60s, and of the confusion which it brought into the field of “human geography” (which fed on sociology and history in those years).

There is also Ginzburg with his paradox, which is both ‘microhistoric’ and historic-universal, who failed to be the link between anthropology and historiography. Yet, it is necessary to start again from here, that is, from an extended concept of the territory, with its streets and stations, where the settlement was first experienced as ‘sedentariness’ and then as property appropriation through the limes (boundary lines), and where the city was seen as the place of the structured and institutionalized power. What does the ‘citizen’ still retain of the old migrations and the nomadic instinct in the way of building walls to defend themselves ‘from others’ or in that of carrying out the control of the territory through the land and water road network? Does it make sense to seek the urban identity in the symbolic control of power through the hierarchies of the buildings and the streets, before investigating the remote processes of that power which ‘sets’ the communities and founds the social hierarchies on the acquisition processes – which are seldom completed, even when resorting to genocide, with the total destruction of the ethnic-cultural memory, which, nevertheless, mostly surprisingly manages to resurface in the long-term processes?

Multiculturalism is, as we know well, a project of tolerant coexistence: a project for some, utopia for others. But it is also an anachronistic way of reading globalization as a phase of transition of post-imperialism: and so it reproposes the patterns of the ‘alternative’ culture of Europe as born between the 16th and the 18th centuries and as it then developed themes and orientations during the centuries of the

colonial or imperialistic Conquest. Old concepts for a culture which still resorts to an uncertain apologia and to the artifices of the ‘purification of the memory’. I will stick, then, to the idea of the territory both as stratification and as project: I think that the tendency to identify the settlement with the construction of the city is a calculated risk. Moreover, the reader will be able to grasp the differences in the texts which are here collected: as for Sicily, it was thanks to Leonardo Sciascia that, some decades ago, the Lipari controversy was taken away from the European jurisdictionalism in order to turn to the believer who was suddenly denied access to the catholic places of cult and the religious rites of the collective devotion. Since then, I have been asking myself what the ‘channels’ are to understand the labour of the converts (conversos, moriscos, etc.) or the immigrants (Orthodox, Greek-Albanians, etc.) in the Catholic countries as well as in the Muslim countries: there is no way of reading the practice of the new devotion with the old emphasis and affection. And I also ask myself whether studying modern Biancavilla or Ribera in terms of urban identity – in the same way as the old Greek or Phoenician or Arab influences – does not shift the attention to other heritage and legacies. The study of Gallo-Italic enclaves, which makes linguists and historians ‘spin’ around an issue which needs a more well-constructed and, at the same time, wider homogeneous perspective, is still problematic and inadequate.

This is not just a matter of terms, but rather one of ideas and images. What an amazing opportunity the history of the ‘religious revolutions’ in the modern Mediterranean offers today. Here, Sicilian, Spanish, Egyptian or Turkish cities have known violent or soft transformations of mosques into synagogues, or of churches into mosques: and places which are at times still familiar to the memory of old and new believers, hold cults and practices with modes which recall the late, old transition and the various ‘transformations’ which on-site anthropologists have designed for the Native Americans and, in general, for indigenous Americans and Africans. The historian is no longer interested only in the dialects or in syncretism, but in the linguistic and religious background of the community which is being studied – and this ‘territory’ keeps the memory of the past alive or attenuated among the modes of the settlement.

The authors of these contributions have foreseen the need to meet and exchange opinions in the future, and are aware of every aspect of method and of value of this complex issue. Therefore, it is correct to define these ‘conclusions’, which are an invitation to continue, and not a conventional point of arrival, as tentative.