What happened to southern Italy? We know that now it's a shithole but historically what went wrong...

Naples is the only other significant place in Italy other than Milan during the age of enlightenment

Non-white admixture.

South Italy hosted many mathematicians, intellectuals, Philosophers, saints, etc. more than most places. This is bitchy regionalism at its finest.

Anyways, simplifying, the economical problems stems in the seventeenth century.
Until then the south provided food for Northern Italy, but during those years it experienced a population growth that ate all the food surplus.
The north diversified its economy and became able to sustain both its industries and its population, while the south didn't industrialize.
Reason for that was in part the politics of the bourbon Kingdom (heavy taxes for goods transiting at the borders) and in part for the politics of the kingdom of Sardinia (which killed the little industry there was in favour of the piedmontese/lombard industries)

Can you name some of them? Never heard of important mathematicians, intellectuals, Philosophers born in southern Italy

Archimedes, Euclides, Pythagoras, Zeno, Gramsci

See

Gramsci was sardinian, doesn't really count.
Pirandello was Sicilian though

Were the first four ethnically Italian though?

>ethnically italian
>as if the concept of "ethnic Italian" isn't a 19th century construct
>as if the eons of Greek DNA suddenly vanished from South Italy once they achieved a vague sort of ethno genesis with the North.

Baron Julius Evola. One of the greatest minds of our era.

>greatest minds

he was an aristocrat of the spirit, not the intellect desu brah.

He was rather bright to be able to translate eastern text into Italian.

compare him to Godel m8

Despite Italy not being unified until the 19th century, there still was previously an idea of who Italians were, which were ethnic groups who traditionally spoke Italian. And although there were less mutually intelligable languages there before Roman times, native peoples who had migrated there before civilisation could still be distinctly recognised as people of the Italian peninsula.

Also it needs to be established how much the Greeks interbred with the locals and if they did, how much interbreeding they did.

South Italy has always been extremely Greek. Even during the Byzantine period South Italy and ties to the Greek world. If anything the question is "how many people were on the edge enough to be considered Italian when the unification process occurred, and how many were too Greek even then."

Is this a joke

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greeks_in_Italy
An interesting read. Greeks were Italicized in the Middle Ages but continued to migrate to South Italy into the 17th century.

I would assume it's because they did not have city states. They were rather a part of big empires or unified under the kingdom of Naples.

I get your point.

I would still dispute your second point though, as southern Italy had been under the control of the French and Spanish long before and leading up to unification and those cultures I think would've substituted or at least heavily supplemented Greek culture there.

So this applies to romans too. Italians are part greek part italic part romans and part germanic (tho southerns didn't get influenced by germanic people that much). It's also true that modern Italians are the heir of the romans since they were born in the same territory and have roman DNA (as well as greek in the south and germanic in the north). Not really sure about this but I guess as said DNA doesn't just randomly vanish when in contact with another culture

Were the Ancient Romans (as in the ethnically Italic people of that time) more Northern or Southern Italian? As in the people that would have been the aristocracy and whatnot at the time. Would they have been closer to today's Southern or Northern Italians? anyone know?

The original Romans were almost entirely male, since they formed their new society from criminals, vagabonds, and exiles from all over the Italian peninsula. They had to steal women from surrounding tribes and cities.

It was basically the best example of a successful beta uprising.

>since they formed their new society from criminals, vagabonds, and exiles from all over the Italian peninsula.
That's an interesting way to say "Latin tribes."

Also criminals aren't usually beta as it takes daringness and extroversion to be a criminal in that sense.

>criminals aren't usually beta
>takes daringness and extroversion to be a criminal
>criminals
>extroverted

kk

it's not like you turn to crime cause Chad out-competes you in legitimate fields or anything

>doesn't realize chads are prideful dicks and "bad boys"

Literally bourbon decadence and corruption. The Mafia has always existed in Sicily. It's a culture.

>italy

It was to Northern Italy what Poland was to the Hansa, a breadbasket where northern merchants could speculate endlessly on crops while striking exploitative deals with the local nobility.

I recall reading something that southern Italians and Sicilians were still for the most part over 90% similar to the rest of the Italics and only about 5% or so of their ancestry has Greek roots.

T. Italian American whose grandmother's last name came from Greek

Io sgozzo i maiali a denti

This doesn't mean anything about what OP said. They talked a lot of different languages but the problem were the bourbons and the fact that they were under spanish control for too much time that's why they suck today

I don't know, but the Piedmontese treating it as a conquered land after unification certainly didn't help.

>What happened to southern Italy?
southern italy didn't see the constant reform in government that north italy saw
this reform empowered the merchant class, which allowed far more freedom in trade and venice specifically was free to trade with the ottomans which was a huge fuggin deal
this extremely wealthy and relatively large merchant class became patrons of the arts, which funded the shit out of renaissance art, which is why there was so much cultural development directly tied to northern italian cities

naples saw stagnant growth compared to the north due to the lack of reform and absolute power kept within the nobility and royalty

For all the Voltaire jokes, there is a good correlation between being historically part of the HRE and becoming a decent place to live afterwards.

same goes for literally everything north and west of them in europe m8, wouldn't say the HRE helped much more than it hurt the cause of economic development

How come the
>
>
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Helped develop the countries inside it

Nope

The correlation becomes even more obvious if you take into account that prior to WWII Saxony was the most prosperous region in Germany.