>>1806969>>1806986There two large currents, I would say. One goes back many centuries, the other one is more recent.
In the middle ages, there were plenty of small states with very rich economies and some even with a thalassocratic projection all across the Mediterranean. They were centres of culture and of intellectual development. Stuff like banking technique, double entry bookkeeping, the use of vulgar as a language of culture and administration instead of Latin, perspective in painting and art, advanced navigation techniques, the first western translation of the most advanced Arabic and Indian works on mathematics, a revived interest in Greek classics fostered by Byzantine learned men escaping Ottoman conquests, even the first documented use of gunpowder in battle in Europe and I don't know how many other shit that some silly Anglo brags about as
muh western civilisation was first seen here back then. In general, as another anon has said, various circumstances made this process relatively more successful in the north, even though the south at this point wasn't as relatively backwards as it would become later, and indeed one of the thalassocratic republics was based in the south, plus some southern kings developed a reputation as protectors of culture and the arts, with schools of poetry and medicine developing there. Also, exchanges with the Arab world were facilitated by a residual linguistic knowledge after the Arabic domination of Sicily had ended, which btw was seen as a high point in terms of prosperity and civilisation.
Long story short, tho, is that all this diversity proved fatal and large unitary states - France, England, Aragon and Castille - and the Holy "Roman" Empire could wield an ever increasing influence in domestic political struggles, plus the fourteenth century brought about a decline in the prestige of the papacy after the move from Rome to Avignon - before that, even the Emperor could shit himself for fear of being excommunicated and his authority rendered void in the eyes of other Catholic rulers, meaning everyone in Western and Central Europe back then. Also, the age of discovery shifted the importance of many trade routes away from the Mediterranean and, while the north was still close to Central Europe and its continued growth, the south was now more and more an isolated backwater that fell behind in the following centuries. Now the colonies and their trades - spices, gold, silver, slaves, whatever - brought an accumulation of capital never seen before in other countries, but not so much here.
More recently, in the 1800s, when capitalism as we intend it was already a thing, there were still many different states, mainly in the north, while Rome and central Italy was under Papal rule and the south under a large but very backward kingdom, originally called the Kingdom of Naples and after the Congress of Vienna the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. In the early modern age Spain held sway, but after its decline, Austria started to have a heavy influence in many states, in part because ruling families were all related to one another and they just shifted their centre of gravity. Long story short, Savoy (an independent French speaking dynasty full of freaks and cunts controlling first Turin, then Genoa and later Sardinia) and the Lombard-Venetian Kingdom (a part of the Austrian empire with a relative degree of autonomy and an importance as the Austrian outlet to the sea) were the ones with modern capitalism, relatively modern and efficient administration, modern laws, the first railways and even more advanced agricultural economies (the Austrians pushed modern agricultural handbooks to local farmers with the help of the clergy because they wanted to increase productivity and therefore tax revenues). Meanwhile, other petty states were relatively meh, the Popes in Rome timidly started some industrial activity very late in their rule, while the south was basically serfdom all around with barely some elementary industrialisation in just a handful of places and a very small trading middle classes, all under a cartoonishly backward monarchy and aristocracy, basically a cross between Dixie and Tsarist Russia, just with better climate and food.
In a few decades, and courtesy of some astute international intrigues, the Savoy freaks managed to take Austrian Milan and Venice, the other petty states in the North and Centre - biggest prize Tuscany, plus they chipped away almost all of the Papal States - then the entire South in 1860, they proclaimed the Kingdom of Italy in 1861 and finally they took Rome and put an end to Papal rule in 1870 - just because France was btfo'd by Bismark and they were acting as big daddy for the Pope until Napoleon III was in power. Now they had completed a work no one could do in the previous fifteen centuries, but they basically left all the structures of local power in place - especially the most vicious ones in the South - and they were happy with this unfinished business even tho they formally extended official Savoy laws and institutions to the whole kingdom.
And it's not even the whole story… But I'll stop here for now.