American South and the Italian Mezzogiorno

RICK HALPERN is Reader in the History of the United States at University College London. He has published extensively on race and the American working class and is currently researching a comparative study of migrant labour in the U.S. South and South Africa. ENRICO DAL LAGO is Lecturer in American History at the National University of Ireland, Galway. He is currently working on a book manuscript entitled Southern Elites: American Planters and Southern Italian Noblemen, 1815-1860.

• 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