The Italian Mezzogiorno - i.e. the Reign of Two Sicilies during the first half of XIX century - was at the edge of the great stream of innovations that interested Euro-pean economy during the XIX century. However, this does not mean that the Reign was completely excluded from the processes elsewhere transforming both the pro-duction and consumption. Which was the effective participation of the Reign to the new technological paradigms that were imposing at international level? Scholars are very sceptical about this matter: the geographic marginality of Italian Mezzogiorno, worse by far to others economic and political problems, caused a technological gap still visible up to today. Nevertheless, this opinion seems too tranchant: in fact we know that in the Reign there was both a successfully importation of technology as well as several original inventions. Therefore, the main purpose of this paper, whose sources consist of the patents registered in the Reign from 1810 up to 1861, is to un-derline the work of several inventors, both local and foreign, who tried to modernize the productive system by means of their inventions. The exposition is divided in three parts. The first one examines the legislation on the intellectual property, describes the debate about the economic advantage of patents and proposes some data, including a taxonomy, concerning the patents themselves. In the second part, after having introduced inventors and their inventions, the impact of the innovative activity is analyzed by means of some case-studies. The third part exposes the main conclusions of the research: in particular the evidence that the ex-perience of the Reign of Two Sicilies is useful to understand the attitude towards the technological innovation that would have been typical of the whole of Italy starting from the second half of XIXth century up to today.
Technological innovation in the South of Italy during the first half of XIXth century: final results from a research regarding patents, inventions and inventors in a peripheral area.
Maurizio Lupo
2014
Abstract
The Italian Mezzogiorno - i.e. the Reign of Two Sicilies during the first half of XIX century - was at the edge of the great stream of innovations that interested Euro-pean economy during the XIX century. However, this does not mean that the Reign was completely excluded from the processes elsewhere transforming both the pro-duction and consumption. Which was the effective participation of the Reign to the new technological paradigms that were imposing at international level? Scholars are very sceptical about this matter: the geographic marginality of Italian Mezzogiorno, worse by far to others economic and political problems, caused a technological gap still visible up to today. Nevertheless, this opinion seems too tranchant: in fact we know that in the Reign there was both a successfully importation of technology as well as several original inventions. Therefore, the main purpose of this paper, whose sources consist of the patents registered in the Reign from 1810 up to 1861, is to un-derline the work of several inventors, both local and foreign, who tried to modernize the productive system by means of their inventions. The exposition is divided in three parts. The first one examines the legislation on the intellectual property, describes the debate about the economic advantage of patents and proposes some data, including a taxonomy, concerning the patents themselves. In the second part, after having introduced inventors and their inventions, the impact of the innovative activity is analyzed by means of some case-studies. The third part exposes the main conclusions of the research: in particular the evidence that the ex-perience of the Reign of Two Sicilies is useful to understand the attitude towards the technological innovation that would have been typical of the whole of Italy starting from the second half of XIXth century up to today.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
