What if: Small Italian Diaspora

[Hvalrossen]

c. 140 million
Italy: 55,551,000[1]
Italian diaspora and ancestry: c. 85 million

Italians - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

OTL there is more people that claim Italian descent outside Italy than inside it, as a consequence of considerable emigration. What if Italy experienced little emigration, such that less than 20 million identified as Italian diaspora. What changed would be needed to lower Italian emigration? How would Italy be shaped by less emigration, and probably a greater population?

 

[isabella]

Preventing the OTL Italian unification, who destroyed the South Italy would be a good start...

 

[Hvalrossen]

Preventing the OTL Italian unification, who destroyed the South Italy would be a good start...

Why do you say that?

 

[lukedalton]

Avoid the commercial war between France and Italy in the last two decades of the 18th century under Crispi, it really do some pretty nasty numbers to the italian economy

Preventing the OTL Italian unification, who destroyed the South Italy would be a good start...

I always forget how the south was the land of honey and milk till the big bad savoyards come

 

[isabella]

Why do you say that?

Avoid the commercial war between France and Italy in the last two decades of the 18th century under Crispi, it really do some pretty nasty numbers to the italian economy



I always forget how the south was the land of honey and milk till the big bad savoyards come

Emigration from the South Italy started only after the unification and was the majority of it...
And whatever was the South BEFORE Garibaldi and unification AFTER it was without doubt destroyed....

 

[Hvalrossen]

Emigration from the South Italy started only after the unification and was the majority of it...
And whatever was the South BEFORE Garibaldi and unification AFTER it was without doubt destroyed....

One factor was probably that Northern Italy had lower population growth than Southern Italy. France is famous for it's lack of population growth in the 19th century, while the population growth in Northern Italy was higher than France, it was not enough to keep up with Southern Italy. In addition to structural differences that made it more prone to emigration. Such as less economic development, and cities to move into. Ofcourse there is likely more to it.

 

[lukedalton]

One factor was probably that Northern Italy had lower population growth than Southern Italy. France is famous for it's lack of population growth in the 19th century, while the population growth in Northern Italy was higher than France, it was not enough to keep up with Southern Italy. In addition to structural differences that made it more prone to emigration. Such as less economic development, and cities to move into. Ofcourse there is likely more to it.

Oh sure, there was the commercial war with France thanks in great part of Crispi (a proto-Duce in his own right) and nobody can say that Savoyard management of the south economy has been good, all the contrary...and more damning the liberals in the north basically formed a pact with the big landowner in the south to keep things as they are, making modernization (both social and economic) an uphill battle resolved only almost a century later.
Said that, there is a subsect in Italy that believe the Kingdom of the Two Sicily at the eve of the Garibaldi 'Impresa dei Mille' was something else of a barely functioning state with tons of problem that ended with a wimp and not with a bang ; honestly it tell much of the state of the nation if corruption and promise had been enough to cause a massive popular revolt and botch any serious attempt to stop it