esercito e città dall'unità agli anni trenta. tomo i - Sistema ...

490 JOHN A. DAVIS
n or Generai of Tuscany complained to Turin about the disruptive behaviour
of Piedmontese troops in Florence, especially the Carabinieri:
' ... qualche parte di quei Carabinieri erano ragazzi tratti dal civile l'anno
scorso, senza precedenti e senza istruzione militare, ed altri erano viziosi
trascuranti dei loro doveri che marciavano sbandati per la Città associandosi
a compagnevoli Brigate invece di serbare un contegno dignitoso e marziale
ed eseguire il loro servizio ... 15 .
There are many aspects of the army's presence in the leading cities of
the annexed states once the immediate emergiencies of Unification were over
that need to be studied more closely. For example, was conscription imposed
with the same rigour in urban as in rural areas? It would clearly have
been much easier for many sections of the urban petty bourgeoisie an d also
for many workers (shopkeepers, craftsmen etc) to obtain exemptions, and
it would be worth knowing whether urban conscription was skewed to fall
more heavily on the marginai sections of the urban population -
unemployed migrants in particular 16.
In the period of commerciai recession and of major economie readjustments
that followed the extension of the Piedmontese tariff system to
the annexed states, the military garrisons provided an important focus of
urban economie activities, especially in the former capitai cities. In Naples,
for example, contracts for military provisions, materials and uniforms were
one of the few elements of continuity and one of the few safeguards in the
otherwise devastated economie life of the ex-capitai in these years.
The materia! an d physical requirements of the mìlitary garrisons touched
o n the li ves of many different groups of citizens, an d provided tradesmen
and suppliers with a regular livelihood. But although the military garrisons
were an important focus of demand in the economie life on the Italian cities,
i t was a matter of policy that a wide range of servìce industries w ere create d
within the army, and this policy continued long after it had been abandoned
by many other European states where services of this sort were contracted
out. As a result, a relatively large number of Italian soldiers (both conscripts
and long-service men) were were in fact 'soldati-operai', performing fune-
15 ACSR, Min. Int., Gabinetto, B. 4, fascic. 8 (186o).
16 On the comparative leniency of the Italian conscription quotas, and in particular
the wide range of exemptions, see A. CHAPPERON, L 'organico militare fra le due Guerre
Mondiali 1814-1914, Roma 1921, pp. 398-406.
THE ARMY AND PUBLIC ORDER IN ITALIAN CITIES 491
tions from generai maintenance to boot and shoe-making, saddle-making,
carpentry, building etc 17 .
In addition to the 'soldati-operai' that worked in and around the urban
garrisons there were also large numbers of urban workers who were subject
to direct military discipline. This was the case ofthe workers employed
in military and naval arsenals, and a range of other workshops. The killing
of a number of workers at the Neapolitan Pietrarsa arsenal in 1862 when
an attempted strike was repressed by force on the grounds that it constituted
a mutiny 18 was a clamorous but by no means isolated example of the ways
in which many key groups of urban industriai workers were permanently
under military law, while the expansion of the engineering, ship-building,
munitions and armaments industries in the years that followed meant that
their numbers increased. The forms of discipline and regulations that
operated in these military workshops were also used as models and applied
more widely in other state-run eneterprises - notably the state-run Tabacco
Factories - that had no connection with the military 19.
The authority that the military exercised over these sections of the labour
force was an important aspect of the day to day contacts between the army
and urban society in Italy in the late 19th century. It is also worth noting
in this context that it was when the crude politics of repression in the face
of organized labour gave way after 1900 to the more subtle Giolittian tactics
of consensus that the threat of militarization against groups of workers
who were deemed capable of jeopardizing key national interests (eg the
railwaymen in 1904) began to be used more frequently.
The Army and Urban Order
Once the immediate emergencies of Unification had been overcome,
however, it was widely accepted that the professionalization of the army
required clearer distinctions between civil and military policing. That distinction
had first been established by the Pinelli Law (1848), and took institutional
form in Piedmont in 1852 when the office of Questore was established
in ali towns with a population greater than 20,000. Responsability for
polizia amministrativa in each town and district lay with the Questore,
17 Ibid., p. 549.
18 Cf. A. SciRocco, Il Mezzogiorno nella Società italiana, Napoli 1979, p. 70.
19 Cf. L. SPINELLI, 'Disciplina di fabbrica e lavoro femminile: le operaie della Manifattura
dei Tabacchi 1900-1914', Società e Storia 1985, pp. 319-373.
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