著者

北村 暁夫

出版者

社会経済史学会

雑誌

社会経済史学 (ISSN:00380113)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.59, no.2, pp.291-319,343, 1993-07-25 (Released:2017-07-01)

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From the 1870s to the beginning of the First World War, numerous emigrants left Calabria, southern Italy, for the American countries. A large number of them were young single men who had worked in the agrarian sector in Italy. This article examinens the causes of the peasant emigration and its effects on rural areas in Calabria, using emigration statistics and contemporary surveys of agrarian inquiries. The emigration began in the northern part of the mountains of Calabria. Tha peasants of these areas traditionally participated in a subsistence economy supplemented by domestic industry and seasonal employment, especially in the plains, where the cereal latifondo was under cultivation. But when the decline in domestic industry and the consequent decrease in employment opportunities was accelerated by the agrarian crisis of the 1880s, many peasants were compelled to emigrate abroad as an alternative to traditional employment. Most emigrants eventually returned home and purchased a piece of lands. This disproves the contention that the emigration led to a general proletarialization of the peasants. While returnees with a lot of savings were able to become independent farmers, those who had not saved enough were forced to emigrate again, often permanently. In this way, the emigration charged the traditional subsistence economy and polarized the peasant structure of the area.