Regionally differentiated archives

Once the basic criteria of importance and disciplinary appurtenance have been defined, it must be noted that to some extent the disparity between regional data banks does not stem from subjective reasons, such as the different scientific interests of researchers. Rather, it is the result of the very history of Italy, which may help to explain the diverse nature of cultural layers, especially, in our case, those concerning the development of economic thought.
For historical reason, while some cities or states attracted educated classes, others witnessed a migration of intellectuals towards these "centre of gravity". Thus Naples, for example, a capital for centuries of a vast kingdom that included most of southern Italy, performed as the political, administrative, economic and cultural centre of this state. Hence economists, like other members of the intellectual classes, left other regions in southern Italy (except for Sicily and obviously Sardinia) to go and live, study and work in the capital. The Kingdom's administrative classes were educated at Naples University, and in the city there flourished various kinds of cultural initiatives: it was the focal point of a great variety of publishing houses, producing journals and newspapers, also with an economic content. Peripheral areas had few such opportunities. Moreover, thanks to its role as a great European capital, Naples also attracted intellectuals from the rest of the Italian peninsula (and from other European countries): amongst these was an intellectual deeply interested in economics, the Genoese Paolo Mattia Doria, who was active from the end of the 17th to the mid 1750s. His writings are kept at the Biblioteca Nazionale in Naples. These circumstances explain why this city still has the papers of many economists in the period prior to Unification, not only from Naples and Campania, but also from other regions in southern Italy (such as Ferdinando Galiani from Abruzzo, or Luca de' Samuele Cagnazzi from Puglia).
By contrast, other regions are less well-endowed in this respect. This is why, for objective rather than subjective reasons, the databases of the research units working in the latter regions generally record, for the pre-Unification period, writings of less celebrated economists. Our choice not to consider merely the better-known and hallowed economists, but include (to adopt a term of Schumpeter's) also the "troops", arises from the needs to trace, albeit within well-defined boundaries, the many paths in the development of economic thought in such a variegated cultural context.

After Unification, Rome rapidly became the new centre of attraction. This accounts, amongst other things, for the high concentration in the capital of writings 20th century Italian economists, while Naples, despite the presence of the great intellectuals (such as Croce, whose interesting correspondence with economists has been conserved), gradually lost its dominant intellectual role on the southern Italian scene. However, the other southern Italian regions gained non benefit from this change, as Naples was simply replaced by Rome as a centre of gravity for the main economists (like de Viti de Marco), who often bequeathed their writings to the country's new political centre.
What happened in the other geographical areas? Both before and after Unification, the situation in the regions of central and northern Italy was always politically and culturally more "polycentric" than in the south. Together with the greater strength of the economy, higher living standards, and the presence of many universities and publishers, this accounts for the fact that in these regions interesting manuscript collections are spread more widely than in the south: as our research is showing, Turin, Milan, Venice, Padua, Bologna and Florence have extensive repositories of manuscripts by high-profile economists. And since, after Unification, some of these cities, despite losing their status as political capitals, did not lose their role as economic and/or cultural capitals, they also conserve interesting archives of 20th century economists. As an example of this continuing cultural vitality, we may take the case of Florence where, in the archives of Altiero Spinelli, the papers of major 20th century economists are kept, housed in a recently founded institution which reflects political developments in the last few decades: the European University.

To conclude, the search for the papers of Italian economists enables us to re-discover, from a new perspective, some fascinating aspects of Italy's intellectual history. At the same time, it requires complex coordination. Some differences cannot be eliminated, arising from the local evolution of the science of economics which, in turn, is rooted in many historical, political, economic and cultural factors. The criteria that we are setting up must be flexible enough to adapt to specific historical and cultural legacies in the various areas of Italy, but at the same time they must be strict enough to make our priorities clear and define common standards for all our research units.