THE MIDDLE AGES IN ITALY
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THE MIDDLE AGES IN ITALY
The name Italy reminds olden times and magnificence Toga-clad Romans, all-encompassing vistas of vineyards and olive groves, the splendor of a Papal mass, Dante's Comedia, and Leonardo's memorable Mona Lisa. Few nations can possess as rich an imaginative and artistic inheritance, and yet, the impression of Italy as a single, self-governing political unit is a young one, dating back a sheer 125 years. Fragmented both by North-South competitions and distant assaults, the peninsula fought back for almost 1500 years subsequent to the fall of the Roman Empire to become a unified whole.
The book, The Oxford History of Italy tells the story of the rise of Rome from its origins as a cluster of villages to the foundation of the Roman Empire by Augustus and its consolidation in the first two centuries AD. It also discusses some aspects of the later Empire and its influence on western civilizations, not least through the adoption of Christianity.
The rich spectacle of Britain's history emerges nowhere more colorfully than in the story of its kings and queens. This impressive book offers the most authoritative account of the British monarchy ever published for the general reader. It traces the crown's full history from Anglo-Saxon times to the present.
In The Oxford History of Italy, two millennia of political disorder and imaginative grandeur are brought to life. Written by twelve foremost scholars, this pleasingly designed volume paints a brilliant portrait that ranges from the first hints of an emerging Italian realization (which often clashed with Rome's influence in the first century), to the Fascist struggles of the twentieth. We discover how the sack of Rome in 410 by the Goths fashioned huge authority emptiness, filled only by the propagation of city-states and the pre-eminence of the Pope. The book examines the artistic explosion of the Renaissance, illuminates the heritage of the Medici family and the great Italian masters—Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello, and Raphael—and visits ports such as Venice and marketable centers such as Milan, which flourished in the reverberations of the Black Death and the Great Schism. And the contributors discover the succeeding economic and political troubles of the following centuries: sharp depressions, inter-state wars, foreign invasions first by Spain, then by Austria and France.
It is known that the standard of living became inferior in the whole of Italy between 1870 and 1900, particularly on the countryside. Diseases and undernourishment were the chief causes of relocation. Food had become the principal expenditure for an Italian family. Many peasant families spent about 75 % of their money on food. Regardless of the high cost, this food often times failed to even be full of an adequate amount of nutrition to keep going a person. In the North, the population suffered from pellagra, a disease that often resulted in insanity and death, while in the south, fatal malaria plagued the nation's residents. At first, malaria only hit in the coastal areas, but this changed as deforestation, erosion and flooding enabled the malaria to increase. The conditions, which people endured in these areas, were astonishing, as 2 million Italians died each year. To make matters poorer, the agricultural system of Italy was not well run, and there was little hope of humanizing the state of affairs. [Adrian Lyttelton P.238, 240]
Not until the 19th century increases in autonomist enthusiasm, fueled by Garibaldi's triumphant war in opposition to the Habsburg overlords, was Italy's future as an independent nation assured. Yet even today, Italy's political atmosphere is stormy: from the persistent Fascist sentiments, to the growing Northern separatist movement, to the uncontrolled dishonesty that rocks the government and topples Prime Ministers with appalling promptness, Italy remains in a condition of instability.

References
Adrian Lyttelton "Chapter 9 - Politics and Society 1870-1915" The Oxford Illustrated History of Italy George Holmes New York - U.S., by Oxford University Press Inc 1997 P.238, 240