This myth is particularly important to the Independent Neapolitan Nation and a wider group of southern Italians called Neo-Bourbons. Part cultural heritage organization, part secessionist movement, the devout members believe the 1860 unification of Italy was wrong and wish to restore the former Kingdom of Two Sicilies and crown the rightful heir of the House of Bourbons. [...]
The north-led unification left some feeling liberated, especially the wealthy landowning elite while others felt conquered and excluded. Ninety percent of the south didn’t even speak Italian at the time when Turin was named the new nation’s capital city. “Naples had been a capital of a kingdom for hundreds of years,” says Dr. Enrico Dal Lago, a National University of Ireland lecturer who researches links between American and Italian history. “That was a strong regional culture that simply vanished into thin air and became incorporated into this Kingdom of Italy overnight.”
Coincidently, America’s Civil War raged at the same time, and to some, distinctly mirrored the Italian conflict: an unjust northern power smothering an independent southern nation and its way of life. Some southern Italians looked to the American Confederates as brothers in arms, feeling slighted by the north for various reasons. In 2015, the south was half as wealthy in terms of GDP with twice as high unemployment according to The Economist. Only 65% of households have access to broadband internet, 10% less than in the north. But nowhere has the symbolic disconnect between north and south been so visible as the Salerno Reggio Calabria Highway. The highway has been under construction since the 1960s and should connect the southwestern coast of the Italian peninsula with the rest of Italy and Europe. North Italy’s section of this highway was completed half a century ago.
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