Storicamente. 17 (2021).

Catastrofi e poi? Storia di ripartenze e ricostruzioni

Il terremoto di Messina e la ricostruzione del palazzo dell’Università: intervento statale, poteri locali, processi identitari
Luigi Chiara, Daniela Novarese

The essay relates the events of the long and complex reconstruction of the city of Messina after the catastrophic 1908 earthquake which destroyed its urban and social structure, by following the different phases and emphasizing both the contribution of the State and of private individuals. The reconstruction of the University building, in the general context of fascist Italy, is emblematic both of that long reconstruction and new political balances within the city.

Broeck-Parant Innovation and Resilience: Post-Disaster Architecture in Fourth-Century Delphi
Jean Vanden

In the 370s BC, Delphi was struck by a natural disaster. The temple of Apollo itself was severely damaged and needed to be rebuilt almost entirely. A few years later, the Third Sacred War (356-346 BC) interrupted the reconstruction. These two events must have been traumatic, yet the reconstruction of the temple of Apollo started relatively quickly after the catastrophe of the 370s and resumed swiftly after the end of the war. In addition to the temple of Apollo, other monuments were erected in the aftermath of these events. This paper focuses on the temple of Apollo, the Treasury of the Thebans and the so-called Limestone Temple and offers an interpretation of their architectural features in light of the distressing events that preceded them, using the concepts of anchoring innovation and conspicuous consumption. Resilience, it is argued, is not only evident in the vast funding scheme for reconstructing the temple of Apollo, but also in the design and construction of the monuments erected during that period.

Francesco Datini e Hildebrand Veckinchusen: il commercio internazionale dopo la peste del Trecento
Alma Poloni

In Europe the century following the demographic collapse caused by the Black Death epidemics was characterised by profound economic changes. This article approaches the subject from a particular perspective: the organisation of long-distance trade. It considers mainly two merchant communities that may seem very different in terms of technical and legal culture and commercial practices: the Florentines and the Hanseatic merchants. The article aims to show that actually these two communities adopted surprisingly similar organisational solutions to respond to the challenges and risks of the new economic context as it emerged in the second half of the fourteenth century. In particular, both of them moved towards a 'light' network organisation, based on reputation, trust and reciprocity. For the Florentines this was a major change, since in the first half of the fourteenth century, in a completely different economic context, the large, hierarchically organised company had prevailed.

Distruzioni e rinascite nella storia dei terremoti dell’Italia centro-appenninica (secc. XVII e XVIII)
Stefano Boero

The article deals with socio-political reorganisation and reconstruction in the Apennine communities affected by the earthquakes of 1639, 1646 and 1703. The requalification of the urban, cultural, social and religious framework over several decades reflects common elements. In Amatrice, L’Aquila and Norcia the post-emergency management, in their respective similarities and differences, appears to be characterised by an intervention of the local ruling classes and by a growing institutional involvement in the control of border territories far from the capital cities.

The 1755 Lisbon Earthquake: The Catastrophe and the Reconstruction
Ana Cristina Araújo

The 1755 earthquake, which ruined part of the city of Lisbon, shook Portugal and was felt even in other regions of Europe. The Portuguese State faced the situation of public calamity with emergency policies and with administrative and urban planning. The Lisbon earthquake raised several questions inside the philosophical debate of Enlightenment and represented a historical landmark in the change of the perception of natural accidents. The catastrophe had shaken man's rational confidence. The alarming news caused by the sudden and devastating disaster echoed in the modern European communication network through credible information, fake news, omens and images of devastation and ruin.

“Destroying Generation after Generation”: Outbreaks of Smallpox in the Cuchumatán Highlands of Guatemala (1780-1810)

The advent of Covid-19, unforeseen though it was, and destructive though it remains, affords timely opportunity to reflect on the occurrence of past pandemics and their impact on humankind. Devastating as the Black Death in fourteenth-century Europe is known to be, loss-of-life caused too, in the wake of World War I, by the Spanish Flu, both pandemics pale when compared to the mortality of Native Americans following the Columbus landfall. Guatemala and its Indigenous Maya peoples, especially those of the Sierra de los Cuchumatanes, are discussed as a case in point. Demographic collapse here, begun in the 1520s, continued well into the seventeenth century, after which attrition abated and recovery set in – slowly, and not without reversals, as scrutiny of the ravages wrought by the re-occurrence of smallpox between 1780 and 1810 vividly attests. As with the success of vaccines made to combat the scourge of Covid-19, so also did Edward Jenner’s experiments with inoculation prove beneficial, even when they reached and were administered in one of Guatemala’s most isolated and intractable parts. Thereafter, Indigenous numbers stabilized and began to grow, guaranteeing Maya survival.

Social Responses to Climate Change and Extreme Weather in the Age of Charlemagne (740-820)

Over the past two decades, the growing availability of paleoclimatic data has opened new opportunities for cross-fertilisation and comparison between natural and social sciences. The parallel history of climate and the environment is often undertaken in a holistic manner, assuming simple and direct causalities between the climate and social change. Faced with climatic series, the historian must question the nature of the data and their specific conditions of gathering, validity, and environment, as well as the methods and objectives of modelling. Comparing paleoclimatic data and primary sources requires considering their specific limitations and finding a common scale of observation. A historical case study has just been conducted using climate series and sources from the age of Charlemagne (740-820 AD), a time interval of 80 years that is compatible with the heuristic requirements of both disciplines. The investigation confronts paleoclimatic data and interpretations with Frankish sources from 740 to 820, starting from the analysis of the famines of 779, 791-794 and recurrent subsistence phenomena at the beginning of the 9th century, studying in parallel cosmologies and representations, and the political, economic, and social responses brought by the political system.

L’influenza “spagnola” e la Prima guerra mondiale: il caso italiano
Francesco Cutolo

The “Spanish” influenza pandemic appeared in three waves between 1918 and 1920, reaching its peak of lethality in autumn '18, when the Great War was entering its final stages. The conflict - characterised by general impoverishment, large movements of people and poor hygienic conditions - facilitated the rapid spread of the disease across the globe. However, the war mainly conditioned the management of the health emergency, which was subordinated to the needs of war. To ensure the functioning of the production industry, mild quarantine measures were applied. Medical and health intervention was concentrated on the army, to the detriment of civilians. States, through censorship and the involvement of patriotic public opinion, concealed the seriousness of the emergency from the population. In the post-war period, the “Spanish flu” dropped out of political debate and public memory: only in correspondence of the Covid-19 health emergency, the 1918-20 pandemic was rediscovered.

Il cinema italiano del secondo dopoguerra e la controversa questione della discontinuità: nuove strade, antichi territori?
Francesco Pitassio

Storia dell’arrivo del colera negli anni Trenta dell’Ottocento. Lo shock e la cesura tra il “prima” e il “dopo”

Cholera was the first truly global disease, appearing from obscurity to ravage Europe in successive waves. Arriving in the old continent in 1830, it affected entire continents. A traumatic global event, not comparable - in terms of morbidity and mortality - with wars, famines, natural disasters and earthquakes, which also engage a dialectic challenge-response, institutional and political resilience. But in the post-pandemic period, in cities devastated and impoverished by cholera, a typically urban disease, social resilience, rebirth projects and the rationalization of cities, where living conditions had not followed the pace of urban growth driven by industrialization, which had multiplied the possibilities of infection through contaminated water and food, came into play.

3.11 From One Disaster to Another: Japan’s Earthquake

This paper recounts the experience of the Great Eastern Japan Earthquake on 11th March 2011 and offers an assessment of reactions to it on personal, social and policy levels. Almost a decade after the event, it looks at traces of the disaster, discussing in particular the following questions. What were the consequences if any for Japan’s energy policy? What other consequences were there, for example, concerning crisis management? How did people integrate the earthquake into their view of history? How did the earthquake affect people’s life satisfaction? And how does it relate to current events? It argues that despite its for all concerned unprecedented severity the disaster led to gradual improvements, rather than fundamental change.

La peste come paradigma. Il medioevo in “Storia delle epidemie” di Frank M. Snowden
Tommaso Duranti

The scientific and historiographical debate about the pathological identity of the three plague pandemics is now apparently closed. New frontiers opened up by palaeogenetics allows a chronological reassessment, a global overview and a reinterpretation of the past that was unimaginable a few decades ago. But can the history of diseases be limited to a natural history oriented solely by current microbiological and epidemiological criteria? The chapters dedicated by Frank Snowden to the medieval plague allow us to reflect further on the methodology and purpose of historiography on diseases and their diverse consequences, not forgetting that a disease is also a cultural factor.

La memoria delle catastrofi nei processi di ripartenza. Una conversazione

Events, which like bombardments, massacres as well as “natural” disasters provoke the sudden, often unexpected destruction of living conditions for individuals and communities, are traumatic experiences whose effects can last for generations. Both the memory and the history of such traumatic experiences in 20th century’s Europe – bombardments during WWII and earthquakes until the 1980s – how they were perceived by the affected people and the reactions they unleashed are the subject of Gabriella Gribaudi’s recent study, La memoria, i traumi, la storia. La guerra e le catastrofi del Novecento (Viella 2020). How to resume after having lost everything, what individual and collective strategies do people adopt to create a new context of ordinary daily life, how to manage the tension between the wish to recreate the lost conditions and the need to shape a new prospect of life are the questions discussed with the author in the following interview.

Brigitte Studer, “Reisende der Weltrevolution”
Marica Tolomelli

John Gagné, “Milan Undone”
Angela De Benedictis

Paolo Fonzi, “Fame di guerra”
Cinzia Venturoli

Marcello Anselmo, “Il consumatore realsocialista”
Teresa Malice

Laura Ciglioni, “Culture atomiche”
Giulia Quaggio

Michela Cimbalo, “Ho sempre detto noi”
Enrico Acciai

Xosé Manuel Núñez Seixas, “Guaridas del Lobo”
Daniele Serapiglia

Gabriella Gribaudi, “La memoria, i traumi, la storia”
Stefan Laffin

Paolo Cammarosano, “Economia politica classica e storia economica dell’Europa medievale”
Lorenzo Tabarrini

Dana Fields, “Frankness, Greek Culture, and the Roman Empire”
Alessandro Rossini

Alberto Scigliano, “Simile di Solima ai fati”
Miriam Benfatto

Paolo Zanini, “Il «pericolo protestante»”
Guido Panvini

Roberta Pergher, “Dalle Alpi all’Africa”
Marco Bresciani

Antonio Trampus (ed.), “Venezia dopo Venezia”
Riccarda Suitner

Emilia Michelazzi, “Roma e il misterioso popolo della seta”
Martha Ripamonti

Rosamond McKitterick, “Rome and the Invention of the Papacy”
Maddalena Betti

Elisabeth van Houts, “Married Life in the Middle Ages”
Fabrizio De Falco

Yan Thomas, Jacques Chiffoleau, “L’istituzione della natura”
Paolo Tomei

Anselm Schubert, “Pasto divino”

Gregorio Sorgonà, “La scoperta della destra"

Pierre Nora, Françoise Chandernagor, “Libertà per la storia"

Silvano Montaldo, “Donne delinquenti"

John Thornton, “Polibio. Il politico e lo storico”

M’hamed Oualdi, “A Slave between Empires"

Fabrizio Gaetano, “Spazio e narrazione storica in Erodoto”

Tito Menzani, "Romeo Galaverni"

Elisabeth van Houts, “Married Life in the Middle Ages”

Yan Thomas, Jacques Chiffoleau, “L’istituzione della natura”

Valeria Palumbo, "Non per me sola"