Quello che i numeri non dicono. L’Italia nel commercio internazionale tra ’800 e ’900 istituzioni, tecniche, protagonisti . What the numbers do not tell. Italy in international trade between'800 and'900: institutions, techniques, protagonists

The result of a workshop organized by the ‘Orientale’ University of Naples, the collected papers here published examine the place of the Italian economy in international commerce between the nineteenth century and the First World War. Through this prism, the volume’s authors share the view that historical and economic research must be approached by way of a new narrative that takes as its focus the interaction of the period’s main actors. Against the background of the triangulation of ideas, interests and institutions that contributed to the opening up of the Italian economy to the supranational market, and with particular attention given to the local reality of the various areas of the new geography of international commerce, the papers outline an unresolved tension between the acceleration in international economic dynamics and the attempt to take on these transformations as the base of the nation’s economic behaviour. As a whole, the volume shows that it is still worth developing further the study of the ways in which post-unification Italy prepared itself for international economic competition at the time of its first globalization.