“Il declino dei beni comuni”. Il caso degli usi civici e dei demani comunali nell’Italia meridionale nei secoli XIX-XX = “The decline of the commons”. The case of civic uses and common properties in Southern Italy during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

Abstract

“The decline of the commons”. The case of civic uses and common properties in Southern Italy during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. According to the most recent contributions of Italian Contemporary Historiography about the commons, this paper intends to retrace the main phases of the so-called process of the decline of the commons in Southern Italy, from the 1800s until the beginning of the 1900s, conducted in the context of a most wide program of socio-economic transformation based on the consideration of civic uses and common properties as weights to be removed in favor of the full right to own property. In the present essay, the attention is focused on the case of the ancient province of Terra d’Otranto – now including the provinces of Lecce, Brindisi and Taranto – in order to retrace the several social conflicts triggered by the dismantlement of the civic uses and commons properties.