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.

Brings together in dialogue leading scholars from these two southern regions of Italy and America

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