Southern Italy’s union with the North was framed as a revocable contract

Evidence

The Mattino on two occasions defended the following thesis: that the Mezzogiorno joined the Italian State on a contractual basis, the Albertine Statute, 67 but that (implicitly) it continues to preserve a real, concrete personality of its own, and has the right to cast off the bonds of the unitary State if the contractual basis is in any way prejudiced, i.e. if the 1848 constitution is modified. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 451

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the ‘contractual basis’ thesis of Italian unification — Southern regions joined the state conditionally and retained a separate personality. A useful conceptual frame for how subaltern regions theorize their own incorporation.
• XREF: Connects to how colonial or internally-colonized regions articulate secessionist-contractual arguments against the metropole — parallels themes in postcolonial theory the Islamophobia toolkit draws on.