The essays collected in this volume explore the multiple connections and parallels between the histories of the American south and the Italian south. Leading historians of the two regions consider the comparability of issues as diverse as the stereotypes relating to the two souths, the ideology of the landed elites, the treatment of labourers on large landed estates, the importance of gender in the understanding of social relations, and the connections between progressive political forces and between migratory movements across the two sides of the Atlantic.

Autorentext
PIERO BEVILACQUA Lecturer in Risorgimento History, University of Rome and Editor of the journal Meridiana. GIOVANNA FIUME Lecturer in Modern History, University of Palermo. RICHARD FOLLETT Lecturer in American History, University of Sussex DONNA R. GABACCIA Charles H. Stone Professor of American History, University of North Carolina at Charlotte STEVEN HAHN Professor of History at Northwestern University J. WILLIAM HARRIS Professor and Chair in the History Department, University of New Hampshire PETER KOLCHIN Henry Clay Reed Professor of History, University of Delaware BRUCE LEVINE Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Cruz MARTA PETRUSEWICZ Professor of Modern European History, City University of New York LUCY RIALL Senior Lecturer in Modern European History at Birkbeck College, University of London

Inhalt
Notes on the Contributors PART I: THE TWO SOUTHS IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE Two Case-Studies in Comparative History: The American South and Italian Mezzogiorno ; E.D.Lago & R.Halpern The American South in Comparative Perspective; P.Kolchin Peter Kolchin's American South and the Italian Mezzogiorno : Some Questions about Comparative History; P.Bevilacqua PART II: LANDED ELITES AND RURAL WORKERS On the Edge of Modernity: Louisiana's Landed Elites in the Nineteenth Century Sugar Country; R.Follett Land-Based Modernization and the Culture of Landed Elites in the Nineteenth-Century Mezzogiorno ; M.Petrusewicz The Politics of Black Rural Labourers in the Postbellum American South; S.Hahn 'Ill-Contrived, Badly Executed [and] of No Avail'?; Reform and its Impact in the Sicilian Latifondo (C.1770-1910); L.Riall PART III: GENDER AS A CATEGORY OF HISTORICAL COMPARISON Gender in the Recent Historiography of the US South and some Speculations on the Prospects for Comparative History; J.W.Harris Making Women 'Visible' in the History of the Mezzogiorno; G.Fiume PART IV: CONNECTIONS Radicalism and Nationalism: Northern 'Liberators' and Southern Labourers in the Untied States and in Italy; E.D.Lago Two Great Migrations: America and Italian Southerners in Comparative Perspective; D.Gabaccia Modernity, Backwardness and Capitalism in the two Souths; B.Levine