Rosario Romeo ( 1924-1987)

Rosario Romeo (1924-87) made an original and outstanding contribution to the study of modern Italian history. He wrote extensively on the development of Italian capitalism and industrialization, developing his own concept of the 'primitive accumulation of capital' and drawing on theories of underdevelopment that became current after the Second World War to underline the particularities, the speed and breadth but also the limitations of Italy's economic growth. In his masterly biography of Cavour, as well as in numerous other essays, he confronted the questions of the birth of the Italian nation state, its origins, its political and moral tradition and its social life in the context of a deeply informed and penetrating vision of contemporary European history. The Risorgimento and Fascism, the nation and the nation state, liberal-democratic values and class struggle, modernization and secularization are the essential themes in his historical writings that were marked by deep erudition and methodological rigour, and inspired by great conceptual and moral breadth. Through his work Italy became a paradigm of the fundamental dimensions of the modern world thanks to that passion for liberty which for Romeo (he was also a member of the European Parliament) was rekindled by the events of the twentieth century, among whose major historians he ranks

Secularization · Underdevelopment · Italian Fascism and Post-war Society

• The nation and the South in the work of Rosario Romeo

  Open Access•John Dickie, Lucy Riall et al.•Modern Italy•2002

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• Risorgimento e Capitalismo

  Kent Roberts Greenfield, Kent Greenfield et al.•The American Historical Review•1960

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• Risorgimento e Capitalismo

  D Beales, Rosario Romeo•The Economic History Review•1959

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