American South and the Italian Mezzogiorno

PIERO BEVILACQUA Lecturer in Risorgimento History, University of Rome and Editor of the journal Meridiana. GIOVANNA FIUME Lecturer in Modern History, University of Palermo.RICHARD FOLLETT Lecturer in American History, University of SussexDONNA R. GABACCIA Charles H. Stone Professor of American History, University of North Carolina at CharlotteSTEVEN HAHN Professor of History at Northwestern UniversityJ. WILLIAM HARRIS Professor and Chair in the History Department, University of New HampshirePETER KOLCHIN Henry Clay Reed Professor of History, University of DelawareBRUCE LEVINE Professor of History at the University of California, Santa CruzMARTA PETRUSEWICZ Professor of Modern European History, City University of New YorkLUCY RIALL Senior Lecturer in Modern European History at Birkbeck College, University of London

• 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