Sicilian peasant leagues won contract improvements but were brutally crushed when crisis triggered revolt

Evidence

Fasci dei lavoratori (“workers’ leagues”), led by socialists, spread throughout Sicily in 1892-93. They were basically peasant organisations, and their main aim was the break-up of the big estates and distribution of the land. They had considerable success in securing improved contracts between peasants and landowners in 1893. In 1893 94, under the impact of the economic crisis of that year, the peasantry rose throughout the island, and was repressed with great brutality by Crispi. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1903

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• XREF: This peasant league formation/repression sequence parallels later Islamophobia readings about how submerged classes organize and get crushed by state power — and explicitly connects forward to Gramsci’s own analysis of the ‘Southern Question’ and the passive revolution.

Related

• Sicilian peasant leagues demanded land redistribution and were brutally crushed (similarity 0.96)