Dr.Iraci replies to Mr Savella's Anti- Italian Rants

The ANNOTICO Report

Dr. Giorgio Iraci is a retired  former head of Neurosurgury at the University of Perugia, in the city in which he now resides, who spent many of his academic years in the US, who is unusually well read and informed, and while he hasa great deal of Italian pride is also very realistic, not filiopiestic.

Mr. Italo Savella, from Philadelphia, on the other hand, received his PhD very late in life (in his late 40s?), has dealt with  a lifelong  ailment , and has been unable to secure a position as a professor at ANY university, the combination which seems to have made him a very cantankerous, and seemingly self loathing of his Italian heritage, that has resulted in Mr. Savella writing a series of articles, lectures and sending unending posts to H-ITAM, (Italia American History Academic Bulletin Board) for years, that exhibit disdain, scorn, contempt, and are almost without exception degrading and disparaging of anything Italian or Italian American.

He appears to be a self appointed Minister of Disinformation and Negative Propoganda. Beware of the Enemies amongst US, they are so much more dangerous than those Without.They are like maggots who gnaw at your heart and soul, and sap your will to protect  and promote your culture.

Mr. Savella has earned my Contempt, and your Caution!!!!

Below,  Dr. Iraci replies to a few of Mr. Savella's more mild distorted rants, and meanwhile puts European history in thumbnail focus, that makes one wonder why one would EVER read a book of Fiction when Actual History is SO much more Fascinating and Educational!!!

There have been a couple of notions, assiduously plugged in around - by now, for some time - by detractors of Italy and Italians, to the detriment of the same.

According to one of them, Italy and Italians would have been "in the backwaters" of every conceivable  cultural progress of mankind  for 350 years, "since Galileo Galilei's was gagged by the church" (let alone that the latter was a temporal power extraneous to the Italian people). This notion has been taken care of in 3 installments, the first one concerning medical sciences, the second one other sciences, the third one the humanities.

The other, (earlier) notion is that  the Italians have been exceedingly lazy, incompetent and haggard in re-establishing a national unity after the fall of the Western Roman Empire (476 A.D.). A comparison is established with the bravery and determination of the American people who, at the end of the XVIII C., kicked the British out of their territories and established their Independence.

This can be easily accepted, and the Americans must be hailed for having done it. Amen.

What follows deals with the other part: the comparison with Italy.

As far as Europe is concerned, the disparagement is also established between the Plantagenets of England, the Valois of France and the dynasty that eventually, for good or for bad, obtained the unification of Italy in the 2nd half of the XIX C., the Savoia's, rulers of the kingdom of Sardegna which included, with that island, Piemonte.

I have been reading:

"... The Medicis of Florence or the Sforzas of Milan did not posses, like the Plantagenets of England or the Valois of France, a strong enough base, AND A VISION [caps mine, G.I.], from which to slowly absorb the rest of the country"."... the Italian states jealously fought each other only to allow the country to become the battleground of other European powers. It was the French and the Spaniards at first, later on the French and the Hapsburgs of Austria, while the Mediterranean, the Roman Mare Nostrum, became eventually the preserve of the British fleet. ".

"... The cities that had been the beacons of the Renaissance, Florence, Rome and Venice had been reduced, by the early 19th century, to small towns in the backwaters of European culture. Florence was the capital of an insignificant grand duchy, Tuscany, ruled by, what else! a foreign dynasty, the Hapsburg-Lorraine; Venice had been incorporated since Napoleon's times into the still mighty Austrian empire and was a peripheral port-city of that empire having lost her commercial primacy in the Adriatic to Trieste; as for Rome, it vied with Bourbon Naples as the seat of the most corrupt and sleepy of Italian regimes, the Papal States. As for the other states, such as the Duchies of Parma and Modena and the principalities of Lucca and Massa, they were truly the European equivalent of banana republics."

The spatial, temporal and historical/geographical disorientation, the warping of information, the acrimony, the artefact, the ill-faith thus manifested are appalling.

Be they the Plantagenets in England or the Valois in France, it took them some hundreds of years to unify the respective countries. The real unification of England didn't really come about until the end of the War of the Two Roses and the instauration of the Tudor dynasty.

England: if one wants to exclude (but it can't be seen why it ought to be allowed), from the succession of dynasties that tried to put their hooks on the whole of the British Islands as presently known, 1. the Angevins, 3. the Lancastrians, 4. the Yorkists,  5. the Tudors, so be it. But, the first try-outs were actually started in 1272. The Plantagenets were #2 dynasty. Let's also forget the Norman kings, that were an imported one

France: here, too, let's forget the Carolingi and the Merovingi dynasties. The dynasty of theValois Capetingi was started off by Louis IX the Holy (1214-1270), King of France 1226-1270. The last two Valois were Charles IX (king 1560-1574) and Henri  III, king 1574-1589. However, a real unity of France as we know it now was acquired when the Huguenot (Protestant) King of Navarre of the Bourbon dynasty, Henri III, assumed the kingdom of France as Henri IV ("the Great King Henri"), too, converting to catholicism in the bargain ("Paris is well worthy of a Mass") in 1589. So,  the unification of France took from 1226 to 1589: 363 years.

And, if one wants to go back into the details of the ascent to power of these families, one can see that their methods were quite ruthless and sneaky, too.

The Savoia's have also been imported into Italy (Piemonte) from France: the Savoie is a vast region of South Eastern France. Nobody, please, try to come out with the spiel that the Savoia's were really a French dynasty: it's known a dynasty takes up the citizenship of the  country over which it rules (witness the name of the present British dynasty, that was changed to "Windsor"  after it had been for a long time Hannover-Sax-Coburg-Gotha, that - if I'm not mistaken - has fought it out fiercely against Germany, the nation of its provenance, on at least 2 occasions (WW-1 and WW-2).  Neither can the other spiel be accepted, that the language normally spoken within the Savoia family was French, not Italian: they were doing so out of snobbery, French being at that time THE international language of elegance and diplomacy. The same was true with the Romanov family of Russi! an Czars, and nobody can maintain THOSE were French.

It took the Savoia's twelve years (1848-1860) to unify Italy - well, let's set it to 1861, the year of the "plebiscite" (and that makes 13) - or maybe even to 1870 (occupation of Roma): it becomes 22. Seventy (until 1918), if one includes WW-1, which obtained the return to Italy of the Regions of the Trentino-Alto Adige (yeah, YEAH, the Austrians call it "South Tirol") and of the Friuli-Venezia Giulia.All those insurrection wars have been labelled as "frauds", and "fraudulent" has been called the "Risorgimento", the entire 1848-1870 iter. WHY? because it was something done in Italy??!!!

There has surely been a lot of rhetoric in the presentation of the "Risorgimento" after unification, including the hiding of shameful episodes of repression by the police and the troops of the newly-formed kingdom on the people of Southern Italy and Sicilia. The resentment of a good many immigrants to the America's, to Africa and to Australia against the Savoia dynasty, as the heads of a nation that was harassing those populations, is well known.

In my years of schooling, with the study of Italian history (1936-1944), the books and the teaching kept absolutely mums about the less edifying aspects of the Italian Risorgimento and its aftermath: everything had been positive and glorious. A more critical view began to appear in the years of senior high school (1944-1947).

But this is not the issue. The issue is, here: were the Italians really so lazy and slothful in not trying to do something about it much earlier, let's say at the same time the Plantagenets and the Valois got on the move in their countries?

Let's see. George Orwell (in "1984") says that, "since the beginning of recorded history", society has always been formed of three classes: the High, the Middle and the Low (in Orwell's book, the "Inner Party", the "Outer Party" and the "Proles", short for "Proletarians").

The High Class have always had it good, the Middle Class so and so, the Proles - forget it.

The purpose of the High Class has always been that of keeping the Power (and the annexed Wealth, Well-Being and Good Life); the Middle Class has always had the aim of overthrowing High Class and implanting itself up there in its place, whereas High would become, in its turn, Middle and start up a similar conspiration; and the Proles would be excited  by Middle Class of the moment to help it in overthrowing High Class "ditto", but in the end they'd get the dirty end of the stick - and remain Proles.

Even in the Italian case, that has proven true: it's true that a large part of the population mass, through the peninsula, was indifferent to unification, and had to be whipped into it by a Middle Class of intellectuals and leaders, with the added feature that, this time, there was an independent state, with an army (though undoubtedly small to be effective on its own against the "still mighty Austro-Hungarian Empire) and the capacity of contracting alliances and signing treaties, such as it was done by the "sly and cunning" Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour (1810-1861), premier (1852-1859) of the Kingdom of Piemonte. "Sly and cunning" he may have been, but he was, also, effective.

Typical examples of the alliances contracted in that period, the one with France for the 2nd (1859), and with Prussia for the 3rd (1866)"War of Independence".

Waiting for France to be in difficulties against Prussia (1870) and thus unable to give military support to the papacy was, also, an effective maneuver (premier Giovanni Lanza, minister of economy Quintino Sella) for the occupation of Roma, up to then "untouchable" because of the French stance.

Give us, any time, a governing body that knows what has to be done, and does it timely. 


So, for centuries the dukes and grand-dukes, and assorted ruling families of Italy, had no interest in seeking a national unity: all of them were related to some reigning European dynasty. Many a time, their head and founder had been a cadet member of said dynasty, who had been fretting about his sad lot and maybe griping about not being the king himself, and ready (or suspected of being ready) to make trouble about it in his country. In homage to the old "adagio" "promoveatur ut amoveatur" (grossly, let's promote him as long as we can get him out of the way over here), he'd be told "look, there's a nice territory for you, with annexed grand-duke's title, down there in Italy, take it with the title, go down there, be a good boy and stop pestering us".

Add in the presence, in Italy, of the Pope with its Vatican States, for whom every catholic reigning monarch (e.g., of France and of Spain) was anxious to appear as the Great Protector and Defender of the Faith. One can say anything about the priests, save that they are not clever: the existence of so many small states, with their  reigning families connected by blood ties with the major monarchs of Europe, played very well into their hands and they were eager to keep it up. Excommunication, or the threat of it, has been. for a long time an effective weapon.

Astride the XV-XVI C., one man had been judged by a fine political mind, Nicol? Machiavelli, to have the numbers for trying out to be the leader towards an unification of Italy: Cesare Borgia, a.k.a. "il Valentino", son of pope Alessandro VI Borgia, of Spanish provenance. His trouble was, he'd shown such delinquential features in his personality, that the people wouldn't hear about him, and he quickly followed his father, His Sanctity, in the downfall.

Ridiculous is the statement "... the Italian states jealously fought each other only to allow the country to become the battleground of other European powers". It sounds as though they fought each other WITH SUCH A PURPOSE, which is clearly absurd. It might have been different if worded "the Italian states jealously fought each other, ALLOWING the country to become the battleground of other European powers"

Venice? Venezia has had for hundreds of years to keep busy at staving off the Turks, indeed it had sustained the main brunt of it: it had been for centuries the main stronghold and major power in doing that, and was alone. At the decisive naval battle of Lepanto of 1571, the Venetian navy supplied the great majority (more than half) of the Christian fleet. About Venezia, see more underneath.

We now come to the comparison between the success of the American War of Independence as a sign of the determination and better efficiency of the Americans in comparison with the slobbish and uncaring Italians is unwarranted. It can be disposed of very quickly.

It seems that it can be strongly "suspected" (can one "suspect" something that's already happened?) that England's distance from the American continent was a major factor in the ultimate American success: the lines of supply were 5,000 miles long. Italy had possible occupying powers right on its doorstep (cripes, even Hannibal had been able to come in from Africa with his elephants, through the Alps!!!), ready to pounce with troops on any insurrectional movement against their friendly Italian side-dynasty.

So, "banana states"? Of little, insignificant  power, yes. But weren't the geographical positions such as to favour it?

It seems evident that the USA have begun to have a taste of what the occupation of a far-away foreign country can be like, when the majority of the local population does not accept it. Not all countries are Panama's and Granada's, right on the doorstep and within easy reach.

Venezia as a peripheral port city in comparison with Trieste under the Hapsburg rule: the decline of  Venezia's economy, thus of its military power, had begun with the distraction of the main lines of commerce from the East and Asia to the West and the America's, which Spain, Portugal, England, France and Holland were much closer to (look up on an atlas Venezia's geographical position, bottled up there at the northern end of the Adriatic Sea - or maybe the Venetians are GUILTY of that position??!!!). When Napoleone occupied it and delivered it to the "still mighty" Austro-Hungarian empire, Venezia's resources were exhausted. Anybody with a minimum knowledge of geography can understand why, once the goods brought in by sea had landed, the land communications from Trieste to the innards of the Austrian-Hungarian empire were much better than from Venezia, from where - even if for a short trait - they would have had to go by sea again.

So, to sum it up: Italy got its independence in 22 years.

Let's forget for a moment feelings of animosity towards the Savoia's, and that for Southern/Insular Italy the unification under the new dynasty was a delusion: 22 years to make one nation out of a myriad of small states was no minor feat. Cavour might have been cunning and sly, but he got it done.

Southern and Insular Italy  suffered torts from the new Italian state, yes. But the functionaries sent down there from Piemonte and Lombardia were known for their honesty, whereas both the Papal states and the Kingdom of Napoli were known for their corruption ("... Rome ... vied with Bourbon Naples as the seat of the most corrupt and sleepy of Italian regimes, the Papal States").

At any rate, in conclusion, let's stop the contemptuous attitude toward the Victims of subjugation of neighboring states, because it took time for Italy (like so many occupied states) to throw off the yoke of oppression, and achieve national unity and independence.