Italy at the Time of the Industrial Revolution

Abstract

The fortunes of Italy without doubt are intermingled with those of Austria and Spain on account of the eight-century span of the Holy Roman Empire. The economic stories are very different, however, and, in view of the demise of the Empire in Napoleon’s time — roughly at the time the present study begins — there is little need to treat the countries as a unit, except for an occasional aside.¹ What remains, then, is an example of how a country that was not especially rich in human or physical capital — but possessed enough to get the job done — eventually and somewhat unevenly joined the group of industrial nations.