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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 April 2013
This essay reconstructs the career of the 18th-cetnury Neapolitan publicist Giuseppe Maria Galanti, who championed the genre of anthropological geography in the Kingdom of Naples. Although little attention has been paid to Galanti by the English-language historiography, the person and work of the Neapolitan publicist has loomed large in Italian studies on the Enlightenment. In landmark Italian studies, Galanti has been hailed as a clear-sighted reformer committed to the improvement of socioeconomic conditions within the Kingdom. Likewise, the geographical literature he wrote has been read not as such but rather in light of its program of socioeconomic reform. However important that same program was, undue emphasis upon it has conflated his empirical approach to political geography with a connotation of realism that fundamentally has obscured the place of Galanti's project in the history of anthropology and, in particular, the emergence of European ethnography. By reconstructing the career of Galanti, it is my hope to provide a privileged window on what motivated a precocious ethnographer of Europe to undertake the unusual and arduous project of visiting and describing the provinces of his kingdom, on why he chose to conceptualize the terrain of the Kingdom as an object of philosophical study, and on how he understood his vocation in relation to the alternatives available to him as a man of Enlightenment. While bearing in mind the political aims of Galanti's work, this essay will also return it to the context in which it was first conceived and piloted—namely the ethos, epistemology, and professional culture of the human sciences of the Enlightenment city of Naples, which, it can be said, smacked of a Rousseauian contempt for the “civilization” of the capital, for its learned professions, and for the cosmopolitan theories of Europe's most urbane philosophes.
This article is the product of an ongoing research project on the culture of information, the demand for political accountability and the beginnings of statistics in Enlightenment Italy. Thankfully, it has been supported by the generosity of many scholars and institutions on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as the readers and editors of Modern Intellectual History. For their ever-stimulating conversation about the person and projects of Giuseppe Maria Galanti I particularly would like to thank my colleagues in Neapolitan studies: Elvira Chiosi, Ileana Del Bagno, Brigitte Marin, Marisa Pelizzari, and Anna Maria Rao. For their assistance and patience with my persistent search for new evidence about the political career of Galanti, I would like to thank the personnel of the Archivio di Stato in Naples, Italy, particularly Dott. De Mattia. Many of the ideas in this article were presented and refined at Stanford University, the American Academy in Rome, and the Istituto per la Storia del Pensiero Filosofico e Scientifico Moderno in Naples, all three of which I would like to recognize for their hospitality and criticism. Finally, many of the observations contained in this article have been further confirmed by the documentation available in the Galanti (Family) Archive, currently deposited in the Archivio di Stato in Campobasso. For their support of this work and of my ongoing project I heartily thank Rocco Galanti, as well as the director and staff of the Archivio di Stato in Campobasso.
1 Most importantly, this reputation was sealed for Galanti by his inclusion in Illuministi italiani, vol. 5, Riformatori napoletani, ed. Franco Venturi (Naples/Milan, 1962).
2 For the English verbiage of geography, see Sitwell, O. F. G., Four Centuries of Special Geography: An Annotated Guide to Books that Purport to Describe All the Countries in the World Published in English before 1888, with a Critical Introduction (Vancouver, 1993)Google Scholar. It bears mentioning that the genre of “description” was most typical of “chorography,” which in the eighteenth century was often the work of antiquarians.
3 For example, see the work of the eighteenth-century political geographer Anton Friedrich Buesching.
4 For my brief history of the cross-fertilization-cum-rivalry between Geographie and Statistik, I am synthesizing the following literature on the sciences of the state in early modern Europe: Rassem, Mohammed and Stagl, Justin, eds., Statistik und Staatsbeschreibung in der Neuzeit (Paderborn, 1980)Google Scholar; Rassen, and Stagl, , eds., Geschichte der Staatsbeschreibung (Berlin, 1994)Google Scholar; and, more generally, Hacking, Ian, The Taming of Chance (New York, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Porter, Theodore, The Rise of Statistical Thinking, 1820–1900 (Princeton, 1986).Google Scholar
5 In particular see the new emphases in Achenwall, Gottfried, Staatsverfassung der Europäischen Reiche im Grundrisse (Goettingen, 1752)Google Scholar; Schlozer, August Ludwig, Allgemeines Statsrecht und Statsverfassungslehre (Göttingen, 1793)Google Scholar; and Schlozer, , Allgemeine Statistik: Theorie des Statistik: Nebst Ideen ueber das Studium der Politik Ueberhaupt (Göttingen, 1804)Google Scholar.
6 For a fine treatment of this concept in Germany see Tribe, Keith, Governing Economy: The Reformation of German Economic Discourse 1750–1840 (New York, 1988)Google Scholar. Also see Wakefield, Andre, The Disordered Police State: German Cameralism as Science and Practice (Chicago, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and the first chapter of Lindenfeld, David, The Practical Imagination: The German Sciences of State in the Nineteenth Century (Chicago, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
7 On the experience of Italy upon the Grand Tour by transalpine Europeans, and the ways in which this experience affected local cultural strategies, see my article “Cultural Capitals and Cosmopolitanism in Eighteenth-Century Italy: The Historiography and Italy on the Grand Tour”, Journal of Modern Italian Studies 10/2 (2005), 183–99. That article also contains a lengthy bibliography of literature on the Grand Tour in Italy. Here I recall Hornsby, Clare, ed., The Impact of Italy: The Grand Tour and Beyond (London, 2000)Google Scholar; Chard, Chloe, Pleasure and Guilt on the Grand Tour: Travel Writing and Imaginative Geography, 1600–1830 (New York, 1999)Google Scholar; Wilton, Andrew and Bignamini, Ilaria, eds., The Grand Tour: The Lure of Italy in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1996)Google Scholar; and, more specifically, Eglin, John, Venice Transfigured: The Myth of Venice in British Culture, 1660–1797 (New York, 2001)Google Scholar; and Redford, Bruce, Venice and the Grand Tour (New Haven, 1996).Google Scholar More specifically, on the theoretical meaning and practice of travel in the early modern period, see Stagl, Justin, A History of Curiosity: A Theory of Travel, 1550–1800 (New York: Routledge, 1995).Google Scholar
8 For a defintion of the “civilized traveler” see Wolff, Larry, “Travel Literature”, in Charles Kors, Alan, ed., Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment, 4 vols. (New York, 2002, 2005)Google Scholar. I use his term “civilized traveler,” albeit with more of an emphasis upon the comparative method of that agent. However, it bears noting that Wolff's terminology differs from that of the European, and in particular Italian, literature on the same subject. By contrast, Sergio Moravia has rather employed the term “philosophical traveler,” a term of the Enlightenment. See Moravia, Sergio, La scienza dell'uomo nel Settecento, con una appendice di testi (Roma, 1978)Google Scholar, and his treatment of the same in Filosofia e scienze umane nell'età dei lumi (Florence, 1982). The term “philosophical traveler” was famously employed by Rousseau in both his Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inégalité parmi les hommes (Amsterdam, 1755), 236–37 and the section specifically on travel in Emile.
9 For an overview of the European travel literature and its significance for the construction of cultural boundaries see Liebersohn, Harry, “Scientific Ethnography and Travel, 1750–1850,” in Porter, Theodore M. and Ross, Dorothy, eds., The Cambridge History of Science, vol. 7, The Modern Social Sciences (New York, 2003).Google Scholar On the impressions of British travelers on the periphery of Europe, more specifically, see Dolan, Brian, Exploring European Frontiers: British Travellers in the Age of Enlightenment (New York, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the literature of travel to eastern and southeastern Europe, especially see the wonderful study by Wolff, Larry, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment (Stanford, 1994).Google Scholar
10 Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe, as well as Wolff, , Venice and the Slavs: The Discovery of Dalmatia in the Age of Enlightenment (Stanford, 2001)Google Scholar.
11 On the methods of travelers charged with the observation of foreign lands and peoples, especially as concerned the genre and usage of the questionnaire, see Blanckaert, Claude, ed., Le terrain des sciences humaines: Instructions et Enquêtes (XVIIIe–XXe siècle) (Paris, 1996)Google Scholar; Jamin, Jean, Aux origines de l'anthropologie française: Les Mémoires de la Société des observateurs de l'homme en l'an VIII, 2nd revised edn (Paris, 1994)Google Scholar; Moravia, Sergio, “Philosophie et géographie à la fin du XVIIIième siècle”, Studies on Voltaire 57 (1967), 937–1011Google Scholar; and Stocking, George, “French Anthropology around 1800”, Isis 55/2 (1964), 134–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reprinted in Stocking, , Race, Culture and Evolution (New York, 1968)Google Scholar. On Volney see Marie, AnneGodlewska, Claire, Geography Unbound (Chicago, 1999), 193–208Google Scholar; Stagl, Justin, “From the Private to the Sponsored Traveller: Volney's Reform of Travel Instruction and the French Revolution”, in Stagl, A History of Curiosity (Chur, 1995), 269–92Google Scholar; and Broc, Numa, La géographie des philosophes (Paris, 1974), 353–61Google Scholar.
12 On the science de l'homme especially see Williams, Elizabeth, The Physical and the Moral (New York, 1994)Google Scholar, especially 50–62; Vila, Anne C., Enlightenment and Pathology: Sensibility in the Literature and Medicine of Eighteenth-Century France (Baltimore, 1998)Google Scholar; Moravia, Sergio, “From homme machine to homme sensible: Changing Eighteenth-Century Models of Man's Image”, Journal of the History of Ideas 39 (1978), 45–60CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; and Moravia, , “Enlightenment and the Sciences of Man,” History of Science 18 (1980), 247–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the scienza dell'uomo see Naddeo, Barbara Ann, “The Science of Man as the Science of Society: Medical Anthropology in the Kingdom of Naples (1760–1790),” in Annali dell'Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Storici 16 (1999), 287–321Google Scholar.
13 On the usage of the term “anthropologie” in the German-speaking lands see Zammito, John, Kant, Herder and the Birth of Anthropology (Chicago, 2002)Google Scholar, especially chap. 6; and the seminal study by titled, Mareta LindenUntersuchungen zum Anthropologiebegriff des 18.en Jahrhunderts (Bern and Frankfurt, 1976)Google Scholar. According to most studies, the first usage of the term anthropologie per se occurred in 1788, and it explicitly applied to humanity those methods and insights which the science de l'homme had codified for individuals. See Chavannes, Alexandre-César, Anthropologie ou science générale de l'homme (Lausanne, 1788).Google Scholar On Chavannes see Berthoud, Gérard, Vers une anthropologie générale: Modernité et alterité (Geneva and Paris, 1992).CrossRefGoogle Scholar However, the actual use of the words ethnographia and Voelkerkunde (ethnology) were coeval in the German-speaking lands. See Vermeulen, Han F., “The German Invention of Voelkerkunde: Ethnological Discourse in Europe and Asia, 1740–1798”, in Eigne, Sara and Larrimore, Mark, eds., The German Invention of Race (Albany, 2006)Google Scholar 123–45; and Justin Stagl, “August Ludwig Schloezer and the Study of Mankind According to Peoples,” in Stagl, A History of Curiosity, 233–68.
14 The letter was titled “Lettera filosofica, per servire di rischiaramento alla lettera indiritta al lettore nella Scienza del Uomo di Giuseppe Maria Galanti,” and dated Naples, 11 June 1761; the titles of the manifestos and their dates are Della civile filosofia (1761), and the Considerazioni politiche sopra i vantaggi e gli svantaggi del Regno di Napoli (1761). The first has been published in Galanti, Giuseppe Maria, Memorie storiche del mio tempo, ed. Augusto Placanica (Cava de'Tirreni (Salerno), 1996)Google Scholar, which is the edition of Galanti's autobiography I cite, unless otherwise noted. At the time this essay goes to press, an edition of these latter two early writings of Galanti is in the course of preparation by Domenica Falardo and Sebastiano Martelli of the University of Salerno.
15 See Martelli, Sebastiano, “Vico e Genovesi negli scritti editi e inediti di Galanti,” in Mafrici, Mirella and Rosaria Pelizzari, Maria, eds., Tra res e imago: In memoria di Augusto Placanica, 2 vols. (Soveria Mannelli (Cosenza), 2007), 553–74.Google Scholar
16 It is noteworthy that the Scienza del Uomo was the title Galanti had initially chosen for the continuation, or “second volume,” of his tract Della civile filosofia, which he mentions to his father in the Lettera filosofica. Galanti, Lettera filosofica, in Memorie storiche, especially 268.
17 According to Galanti, the first edition of the Elogio was first discussed by an ecclesiastical commission appointed by the Neapolitan diocese, whose members differed among themselves and thus failed to reach a consensus, and thus programmatic decision, regarding Galanti's work. Galanti, Memorie storiche, 61. As the documentation in the ASN suggests, there is certainly more to this story than Galanti recounted in his autobiography, however. From the available documentation of the Segretaria dell'Ecclesiastico, it appears that in June 1773 Galanti requested of the Segreteria that the Reale Camera agree to the review of his book and that the review be undertaken by the Delegato of the Reale Giurisdizione with the (oversight of) the Avvocato of the Crown, both of whom he presumably thought would favor his work. See ASN, Ecclesiastico, Registro Dispacci, 388. Consequently, it would be interesting to know whether or not these royal officials intervened upon the behalf of Galanti with the ecclesiastical commission that reviewed his work post-publication. More importantly, the Elogio was then discussed by the Roman Congregation of the Index on 15 November 1773, when the report of the Consultore for the Index, D. Giovanni Aloisio Mingarelli, the Procuratore Generale of the Regular Canons of S. Salvatore, was heard. That report is currently conserved in the: ACDF, Index, Protocolli, 1771–1773, 361r–369v. This report was first found and published by Raffaele Iovine, in “Elementi di continuità nell'illuminismo napoletano: Mangieri, D.Galiani, tra C.Galanti, e G.M.”, Frontiera d'Europa 1 (2004), 127–67Google Scholar. Also see the interesting discussion of the significance of the Index's report for the revision and publication of a third edition of the Elogio in Chiosi, Elvira and Iovine, Raffaele, “L'Elogio censurato: Genovesi, Galanti e l'Inquisizione,” in Mafrici, Mirella and Pelizzari, Marisa Rosaria, eds., Un illuminista ritrovato: Giuseppe Maria Galanti (Salerno, 2006), 211–18Google Scholar. Yet the precise recommendations and doctrinal objections of the original report await further study. With the Decree of 16 November 1773, the Congregation of the Index proscribed Galanti's work. This proscription seems to have bolstered Galanti's reputation among the luminaries of the Republic of Letters. See the correspondence between Galanti and Voltaire in Venturi, Riformatori napoletani.
18 However, the Secretario di Stato (dell Ecclesiastico), Carlo Demarco, would nominate Galanti for the chair of rhetoric, which Galanti proudly reported having refused. Galanti, Memorie storiche, 62.
19 On the publishing activities of Galanti see Rao, Anna Maria, “Progetti senza sostanze: Commercio librario, editoria e condizione dell'autore nell'esperienza di Giuseppe Maria Galanti,” in Bevilacque, Piero and Tino, Pietro, eds., Natura e società: Studi in memoria di Augusto Placanica (Rome, 2005)Google Scholar; Villani, Pasquale, “Il testamento di Giuseppe Maria Galanti e l'inventario del Gabinetto Letterario,” in Ajello, R., Firpo, M., Guerci, L. and Ricuperati, G., eds., L'età dei lumi: Studi storici sul Settecento europeo in onore di Franco Venturi, 2 vols. (Naples, 1985), 1157–72Google Scholar; and especially Perna, Maria Luisa, “Giuseppe Maria Galanti, editore,” in Miscellanea Walter Maturi (Turin, 1966), 223–58Google Scholar. My own discussion here largely draws upon these three works.
20 For example, Galanti procured copies of the Lausanne edition of the Encyclopédie from the Societé typographique in Neuchatel for sale by the Società.
21 Among the many collectanea of authors, projected and realized, were editions of jurists, the classical authors (with Italian translations), Locke, Millot, Buesching, and d'Arnaud, as well as Marmontel, Diderot, Lambert, and other contemporary literati.
22 Among the thematic compendia of a global imprint numbered Galanti's famously eclectic Collezione di storia filosofica e politica delle nazioni antiche e moderne (Naples, 1780 and following).
23 Published by his own publishing house, then known as the Gabinetto letterario, the first volume of Galanti's magnum opus bore the imprint of 1786 and the second that of 1788, and both were entitled the Nuova descrizione storica e geografica delle Sicilie. With the appearance of the third volume in 1789, however, Galanti changed the title of the work to the Nuova descrizione geografica e politica delle Sicilie, and he would finally adopt the definitive title of the work with publication of the fourth volume in 1790, which he entitled the Della descrizione geografica e politica delle Sicilie. The long-awaited fifth of six projected volumes was sent to the press circa 1794, but was pulled only eighty pages into its publication. As concerns the title of the work, it is noteworthy that the documentation conserved in the ASN regularly refers to Galanti's publication by its final title, despite its many variations. For my citations, I have chosen to use the modern critical edition: Della Descrizione geografica e politica delle Sicilie, ed. F. Assante and D. Demarco, 2 vols. (Naples, 1968). As in the text above, I refer to this work as the Description . . . of the Sicilies.
24 Galanti probably began to draft the Descrizione . . . del Molise during a sojourn in the province in October 1779 and completed it after his composition of an essay on the ancient peoples of Italy for his Italian edition of Millot's works published in 1780. See Galanti, Giuseppe Maria, Descrizione dello stato antico ed attuale del contado di Molise, con un saggio storico sulla costituzione del Regno, 2 vols. (Naples, 1781)Google Scholar, 1: especially (unpaginated) 4 and 12 and (paginated) 110.
25 Galanti, Descrizione . . . di Molise, 1: 22.
26 ASN, Ecclesiastico, Registro Dispacci, 451, dated 1 Sepember 1781, reveals that by this (early) date Galanti had already received the support of the Neapolitan Court for a publication of the financial accounts of the state, especially as they concerned its balance of trade.
27 Galanti, Descrizione . . . delle Sicilie, 1: 4.
28 Among the earlier works of political geography were Scipione Mazzella, Descrittione del Regno di Napoli (Naples, 1601); Beltrano, Ottavio, Breve Descrittione del Regno di Napoli (Naples, 1640)Google Scholar; and Pacichelli, Giovanni Battista, Il Regno di Napoli in Prospettiva (Naples, 1703)Google Scholar.
29 Galanti repeatedly asserted this fact througout his contemporary writings. This particular quotation comes from “Avvertimento degli Editori,” dated 18 January 1782 in Buesching, Johann Friedrich, Geografia, riformata ed accresciuta da M. Berenger, traduzione dal francese, vol. 7 (Naples, 1782)Google Scholar. Also cited in Demarco, Domenico, “Introduzione” to Galanti, Memorie storiche, ed. Demarco, (Naples, 1970), 20–21Google Scholar.
30 Galanti, Memorie storiche, 75.
31 Galanti penned more than one litany regarding the delay with which some bureaucrats, and especially those of the Sommaria, had complied. For example, see ASN, Finanze, 988. As a result, the so-called Segreteria di Azienda—or, later, the Supremo Consiglio di Azienda—repeatedly demanded the constructive response of various organs to Galanti's specific requests.
32 While there is more to uncover about the reasons for Galiani's objections to Galanti's volume, and the opinion of the alternate reviewers, il marchese Salomone and Nicola Vivenzio, here I am very briefly summarizing this incident as it both was told by Galanti himself in the Memorie storiche, 75–78, and is evidenced by the (partial) documentation concerning the review of the first volume of the Descrizione . . . delle Sicilie still conserved in ASN, Esteri 4618, and ASN, Casa Reale, 1220.
33 Galanti's compilation of statistics was the fruit of several years’ labor, not to mention adversity. As Galanti complained about the tenacious secrecy of the royal bureaucracy: “Nella Camera della Sommaria, non vi è uso di formare i bilanci generali, per lo che s'ignora lo stato di ogni provincia, così di tutti i paesi in particolare che delle porzione alienate. Ciascuno di questi oggetti, nel bisogno, ricerca moltissimo studio per venirne in chiaro. Questo è il gusto del foro, l'oscurità e l'incertezza aumentano la massa degli affari e li fanno prosperare. Pel nostro bisogno presente, ci siamo contentati di formare il calcolo de duc. 4.20 a fuoco . . . Si è veduto che per la prestazione de'feudi, siamo stati obbligati attenerci allo stato del 1754, che si è trovato fatto in quell'anno negli archivi del patrimonio reale. Nella Camera della Sommaria s'ignora lo stato attuale, ed è secreto di una particolare officina.” Galanti, Descrizione . . . delle Sicilie, 1: 435.
34 Compare Carlo Broggia, Antonio, Trattato de'tributi, 3 vols. (Naples, 1743)Google Scholar. Schumpeter recognized Broggia's tract as a canonical work on taxation theory. See Alois Schumpeter, Joseph, History of Economic Analysis (New York, 1954), 205Google Scholar; contrast Ajello, Raffaele, “Carlo Antonio Broggia,” in Dal Muratori al Cesarotti, vol. 5, Politici ed economisti del primo settecento, ed. Ajello, R.et al. (Milan and Naples, 1978), 971–1156Google Scholar. Also compare Necker, Jacques, Compte rendu au roi (Paris, 1781)Google Scholar.
35 Although there is no documentary evidence of Galanti's correspondence with the ecclesiastical secretary in the ASN, it is well known that Galanti received the demographics of the Kingdom's localities from their bishops beginning in 1789. Broadly speaking, Galanti's project pre-dates the better-known statistical survey by Presbyterian pastors in Scotland coordinated by John Sinclair. See Sinclair, Sir John, ed., The Statistical Account of Scotland, 21 vols. (Edinburgh, 1791–9)Google Scholar. It bears noting that Galanti's work has been overlooked by the leading historians of demography and statistics—a most significant lacuna in their narratives. For examples, see Jacques and Michel Dupaquier, Histoire de la démographie (Paris, 1985); and Hecht, Jacqueline, “L'ideé de denombrement jusqu'à la Revolution,” in Pour une histoire de la statistique (Paris, 1976), 21–81Google Scholar.
36 Galanti, , Nuova descrizione storica e geografica delle Sicilie, vol. 2 (Naples, 1788), 7–8Google Scholar.
37 Compare the table of contents of the chorographies with those of the reports on the Capitanata and Puglia Peucezia, as respectively documented in Placanica and Galdi, Libri e manoscritti di Giuseppe Maria Galanti, 113, and in Galanti, Descrizione . . . delle Sicilie, 2: 515–71; as well as ASN, Finanze, 804. As this essay goes to press, I can add that this observation has been confirmed by a comparison of the actual manuscript texts of these chorographies with the reports Galanti submitted to the Azienda. Archivio Privato Galanti, deposited in Archivio di Stato Campobasso, 12.1.
38 Compare Placanica, and Galdi, , Libri e manoscritti di Giuseppe Maria Galanti (Lancusi (SA), 1998), 131–2Google Scholar; and Galanti, Descrizione . . . delle Sicilie, 2: 572–82.
39 For evidence of the Azienda's logistical support of Galanti see the catalogued orders to the preside of the Udienza of Salermo dated 21 April 1790 in ASN, Finanze 1481; the commissario di campagna of Terra di Lavoro dated 17 May 1790 in ASN, Finanze, 783; the preside of the Udienza of Montefusco dated 17 September 1790 in ASN, Finanze, 1482; the Udienze of Trani, Lecce, Matera and Montefusco dated 2 March 1791 in ASN, Finanze 1483, but missing; (presumably) the dogana of Foggia dated 14 April 1791 in ASN, Finanze, 1385, but missing; to other unspecified local organs, presumably the Udienze in the Puglia and Abruzzi, dated 19 May 1791 in ASN, Finanze, 1483, but missing; to unspecified organs in the Calabrias, presumably the Udienze, dated 29 March 1792 in ASN, Finanze, 1485, but missing.
40 See the catalogue entry of the order dated 8 March 1791 in ASN, Finanze, 793 (missing).
41 There has long been a fair amount of obscurity concerning the exact nature of Galanti's relationship with the royal government as specifically concerned his “general visits.” The precise year in which Galanti was first engaged as a traveler and the exact status of his duties remain obscured by remarks Galanti himself retrospectively made in his Memorie storiche and his Testamento forense, where he sometimes spoke of his visita generale of the provinces, as if it were an office. For example, in the Testamento forense he claimed: “Per otto anni sono stato impiegato nella visita generale delle provincie.” Galanti, Giuseppe Maria, “Avviso del Testatore,” in Galanti, Testamento forense (Venezia: Antonio Graziosi, 1806)Google Scholar, unpaginated. This representation of Galanti's career arguably influenced the interpretation of Demarco, in his “Introduzione” to Galanti, Memorie storiche, 21. Numerous citations in the Descrizione . . . delle Sicilie rather indicate that the status of Galanti's obligations and role in the administration changed with his trip to Apulia/Abruzzi in 1791, but that his position remained less than an office. See Galanti, Descrizione . . . delle Sicilie, 1: 119 and 248, and 2: 476. This is corroborated by the documentation in the ASN.
42 See the catalogue entry of the document of the payment issued to Galanti in ASN, Finanze, 805 (missing).
43 The best overview of Galanti's reports for the king's Secretaries can be found in Domenico Demarco, “Introduzione” to Galanti, Descrizione . . . delle Sicilie, lxxxii–lxxxiv. For a more complete list of the reports see Placanica and Galdi, Libri e manoscritti di Giuseppe Maria Galanti, 103–10.
44 From my own work in the ASN it is clear that the offical response to the general reports, or relazioni, that Galanti submitted to the Court was to request yet futher information about the nature and remedies of the ills plaguing the Kingdom's local regions. In other words, Galanti's duty to advise the administration on the improvement of the economy and justice system developed from his demonstration of ground knowledge for authorities in the capital. For example, see the complete file dated 16 February 1792 in ASN, Finanze, 804, wherein we get a good idea of the dialectical relationship between Galanti and the Azienda, which in the name of the king herein ordered yet more information in response to the report he has already delivered on the Capitanata, just as it apparently had done for the regions around Bari and Lecce.
45 Galanti, Descrizione . . . delle Sicilie, 1: 1.
46 Ibid., 2: 231.
47 Ibid., 1: 5.
48 Galanti, Descrizione . . . di Molise, 1: 9.
49 Galanti, Descrizione . . . delle Sicilie, 2: 231. Compare Galanti, Descrizione . . . di Molise, 1: 9–10.
50 Galanti, Descrizione . . . delle Sicilie, 2: 234.
51 Galanti, Memorie storiche, 60. A version of the “catechism,” entitled “Quesiti per uso della visita delle provincie ordinata da sua maestà,” conserved in the Galanti Archive has been published in an appendix to first edition of Galanti, , Giornale di viaggio in Calabria, ed. Placanica, Augusto (Naples, 1981), 445–52Google Scholar.
52 For example, see Galanti, Giornale di viaggio in Calabria.
53 One “fatto da verificarsi” was the high infant mortality rate related to him in Casalnuovo. Galanti, Giornale di viaggio in Calabria, 193.
54 In the same Giornale di viaggio in Calabria, for example, Galanti took point with the cartographer Rizzi Zannoni's representation of the Esaro river (105), and with that of Crotone penned by the celebrated antiquarian Barrio (127).
55 For the sorts of question Galanti posed in conjunction with the stato morale see Galanti, Giornale di viaggio in Calabria, 451–2.
56 Comparison of the extant journals with the reports (relazioni) and “chorographies” of the provinces would yield interesting insight into how Galanti worked and the sort of cultural mediation operative between his drafting of the journals and reports and regional descriptions intended for publication.
57 This idea echoes throughout the entire Descrizione . . . delle Sicilie. For a few examples, see Descrizione . . . delle Sicilie, 1: 110; 2: 48, and 122.
58 Ibid., 2: 152.
59 Ibid., 2: 231.
60 Ibid., 1: 4.
61 Compare Mazzella, Descrittione; and Pacichelli, Il Regno di Napoli.
62 Galanti, Descrizione . . . delle Sicilie, 2: 250.
63 Ibid., 2: 249, 250.
64 Ibid., 2: 245.
65 Ibid., 2: 231.
66 Also compare Galanti's mode of analysis to that of the stage theorists of society. See the classic Meek, Ronald, Social Science and the Ignoble Savage (New York, 1976)Google Scholar.
67 As Galanti calculated for the northernmost region of the Apulias, the Capitanata, “According to the enumeration [of people] reported by the archbisophrics in 1790, there are 293,979 people in the Daunia [Capitanata]. Distributed across a surface of 2,839 square miles, composing the Daunia [Capitanata], we have little more than 103 people per square mile. Voilà an enormous underpopulation in one of the principal provinces.” Galanti, Descrizione . . . delle Sicilie, 2: 518. Interestingly enough, Galanti even bothered to calculate the loss in state revenues constituted by this underpopulation of the Capitanata. Ibid., 2: 519.
68 See Marino, John A., Pastoral Economics in the Kingdom of Naples (Baltimore, 1988).Google Scholar
69 Galanti, Descrizione . . . delle Sicilie, 2: 521.
70 Ibid.
71 Ibid., 2: 567.
72 Ibid., 2: 570.
73 With a mere 167 people per square mile, it figured as the most underpopulated province after the Capitanata.
74 Ibid., 2: 576.
75 Ibid., 2: 575.
76 Ibid., 2: 577–8.
77 Ibid., 2: 578. Similarly, Ferguson, Adam also uses “rudeness” to connote savagery in his Essay on the History of Civil Society (Edinburgh, 1767)Google Scholar, Part Two.
78 Galanti, Descrizione . . . delle Sicilie, 2: 577.
79 Ibid., 2: 578.
80 Ibid., 2: 577–8.
81 Ibid., 2: 578.
82 Ibid, 2: 295.
83 As is well known from his Memorie storiche, Galanti's completion of his fieldwork for the Descrizione . . . delle Sicile would be problematized by the authorities, who would eventually censor his publication of the fifth volume of the geography of the Kingdom circa 1794. From the catalogue entry of an order dated 22 April 1793 it seems that Galanti's travels may have already elicited controversy by that date. See ASN, Finanze, 819 (missing).
84 See ASN, Casa reale, 4623 I, 1–6, for indications about Torcia's trip to Japigia, Apulia and Lucania, ; and Torcia, Michele, Saggio itinerario nazionale pel paesi de'Peligni fatto nel 1792 (Naples, 1793)Google Scholar. For a reconstruction of the life, work, and times of Torcia, see Rao, Anna Maria, “Un ‘letterato faticatore’ nell'Europa del Settecento: Michele Torcia (1736–1808),” Rivista storica italiana 107 (1995), 647–726Google Scholar.
85 See Torcia, Saggio . . . de'Peligni, 25–7.
86 Giustiniani, Lorenzo, La biblioteca storica, e topografica del Regno di Napoli (Naples, 1793), 119.Google Scholar
87 Ibid., 28. Giustiniani is referring to Longano, Francesco, Viaggio per lo contado di Molise (Naples, 1786)Google Scholar; and Longano, , Viaggi dell'Ab. Longano per lo Regno di Napoli, vol. 2, Capitanata (Naples, 1790)Google Scholar. The title of the second volume of Longano's works on the provinces is most interesting, as it implies that he wished to write his own comprehensive political geography of the Kingdom.
