Between national model and regional characteristics : the cooperation of military and civil authorities during the Sicilian miners' strike of 1896-1897

During the liberal age, the policing of social conflicts in Italy was entrusted to the collaboration between various institutions, led and coordinated by the prefectures of the different provinces. The Carabinieri Reali, militarized force subordinated to military and civil authorities, and the Funzionari (officials) of public security (p.s.), under the authority of the Ministry of the Interior and assisted by the Guardie of p.s., collaborated continuously in prevention, in repression and in attempts to mediate in social conflicts. Moreover, at least until the First World War, the use of troops in public security duties, under the guidance of p.s. officials, was a common, If not daily, practice. Consequently, the territory control and the policing of social conflicts strictly depended on the accordance between civil and military authorities. In general, and considering the absence of long period studies about this subject, it seems that the control of Italian country areas, during the second part of the 19th century, was assigned principally to the Carabinieri Reali. Their stations, in fact, were vastly widespread in rural villages. Few of the most populated little towns had public security officials. They were called Delegati Mandamentali (Delegates of the district) and a small group of Guardie assisted them only in a few cases. They had to keep always in contact with prefectures and they had to collaborate on a daily basis with the Carabinieri and the commanders of the nearby military divisions. In metropolitan areas most of the time Funzionari and Guardie were more than Carabinieri. In 1896, the Sicilian marquis Antonio Starabba di Rudinì was chosen, for the second time, as Prime Minister. His government decided to institute the Regio Commissariato Civile per la Sicilia. This institution was the first form of decentralisation adopted in Italy. The law created specifically for the Regio Commissariato stated that all Sicilian prefectures were to be subject to a Regio Commissario, a sort of lieutenant of the Crown. Lasting only one year, from 1896 to 1897, the Commissariato Civile had, among others, a clear duty: the maintenance of public order. Senator Giovanni Codronchi Argeli, native of Emilia Romagna and universally recognized, during those years, as a public security expert, was nominated Regio Commissario. A few months after his arrival in Sicily, Codronchi had to face the greatest wave of strikes in sulphur mines that Sicily had ever seen. In the first part of the speech, I would like to analyse the stationing on the Italian territory of Funzionari di pubblica sicurezza, from 1862 to 1915. In doing so, I would like to focus the attention on two typical elements of the Italian model: the regional differences, sometimes marked, and the concentration of Funzionari in metropolitan areas. In the second part, firstly I would like to reconstruct, thanks to a variety of documents, the stationing on the Sicilian territory not only of public security officials, but also of Carabinieri and military divisions between 1896 and 1897. Then, I would like to analyse the control of the miners’ strikes as a concrete example of collaboration between civil and military authorities. In my view, what emerges is a valid model, in part, for the entire territory of Italy during the last part of the 19th century. At that time, the cooperation in Italy between police forces and soldiers in public order duties was highly dependent on their collocation on territory and an often-delicate daily practice.