Bourbon Regime

The Bourbon Regime is the ruling power against which Sicily’s political autonomy and the Florio family’s commercial independence are repeatedly measured. Its history in the novel is not merely a succession of rulers: it is made tangible through taxation, customs, military command, shipping requisitions, and the suspension of constitutional government. As these demands accumulate, the regime’s restoration of order becomes a source of instability, helping to prepare the ground for revolt while leaving merchants like Vincenzo Florio exposed to the costs of every change in authority.

Restoration and centralization

The Bourbon monarchy’s hold on Sicily is reinforced by the upheavals around it. In 1799, the Neapolitan Republic forces Ferdinand IV and Maria Carolina of Austria to take refuge in Palermo; the republican experiment ends in repression, and the royal couple return to Naples in 1802. After Napoleon’s victory at Austerlitz and the French move to place Joseph Bonaparte on the Neapolitan throne, Ferdinand again flees to Palermo under British protection, while continuing to reign over Sicily. These episodes make the island a refuge and a strategic possession in a wider contest, rather than an independent political center.

That arrangement is overturned in 1816. Following the return of Ferdinand IV and the appointment of his son Francesco as lieutenant-general in Palermo, the king unites the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily under a single banner and takes the name Ferdinand I, King of the Two Sicilies. He annuls the constitution promulgated in 1812, which had curtailed royal power, abolished fiefdoms, and proposed reforms to government. Sicily is thereafter treated as a colony and subjected to a severe tax regime. The shift is both constitutional and material: the island loses its distinct political status while facing heavier fiscal demands.

The effects are visible in Palermo’s administration and commerce. From December 1816, Neapolitans administer state offices and customs, and Neapolitans hold military command. Palermo has lost its power and independence; heavier taxes, restrictions, and new constraints on trade compound an already weak economy until commercial activity comes to a halt. For Casa Florio, the larger political settlement enters the accounts book as a financial emergency: income falls short of outgoings while letters of credit approach expiry.

Authority through commerce and infrastructure

The regime’s reach is also conveyed through its control of the systems that make trade possible. Customs can delay or stop goods, while administrative decisions determine whether ships may leave port. During a later political crisis, a provisional government is being formed and outgoing ships are blocked; at the Customs House, merchants and seamen gather before soldiers who threaten to fire. The episode shows how a change of government can turn routine commercial movement into a matter of immediate uncertainty. The Florios’ business depends on transport and official cooperation, so political disorder reaches them before any new settlement is secure.

The Bourbon state’s economic policy is not presented as uniformly hostile to modernization. When Ferdinand II becomes king in 1830, his government promotes economic and social revival through a political and tax overview and substantial investment in infrastructure. Engineering, railways, metal-hulled military ships, a pension system, and electrical street lighting are among the developments associated with his reign. The government also seeks to improve the exploitation of sulfur deposits, bringing it into open conflict with British and French interests that want to buy sulfur below market prices. The contrast matters: technological development proceeds alongside a centralizing state whose policy can both expand productive capacity and sharpen disputes over who controls Sicily’s resources and trade.

That same tension appears in Vincenzo’s experience during the 1848 revolution. He tells Giulia that he bought a large consignment of rifles in England on behalf of the revolutionary committee, while the committee proclaims a Kingdom of Sicily but cannot find a king willing to accept its crown. The British oppose separation from the Bourbons, and the revived 1812 constitution lacks a stable political reference point. Meanwhile, the revolutionary government requisitions ships and, in Vincenzo’s account, effectively forces him to lend it money. His merchant fleet and capital make him useful to competing authorities, but that usefulness does not give him control over their demands.

Revolution and the regime’s weakening legitimacy

After the uprisings of 1848, Ferdinand II attempts to restore unity to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies by imposing a heavy national debt and suspending the constitution promulgated by the Sicilian Parliament in March 1848. The people and local administrations, exhausted by prolonged instability, accept the taxes; the aristocracy withdraws from rebellion, though isolated uprisings continue, chiefly in the countryside. Pressure from the British government to reduce taxation and repression has little effect. The Bourbon reign is described as an archetype of reactionary power, marked by unease at home and in its international relations.

The political consequences persist under Francesco II, who succeeds his father in 1859. He is surrounded by an aristocracy protective of its privileges and remains unable to break with his father’s political tendencies; the result is a failure to advance the south’s economic and social progress. At the same time, the patriotic force of the 1848 exiles survives in their writing and political interventions, including those of Giuseppe La Masa, Ruggero Settimo, and Francesco Crispi. The regime’s authority therefore faces not only episodic revolt but a continuing challenge to the political story it tells about unity and obedience.

By early April 1860, Bourbon policies have inflamed public feeling through abuse of power, heavy taxes, arbitrary arrests, and show trials. Revolt at Boccadifalco is followed two days later by the Gancia revolt in Palermo. Rebels take sanctuary at the Franciscan monastery, but a friar informs on them; soldiers surround the site, thirteen rebels are arrested, and more than twenty are killed. The bells that were intended to summon the city to uprising become a signal of the danger faced by the rebels. The narrative makes the episode part of a longer accumulation of resistance rather than an isolated outbreak, and states plainly that the population can no longer bear Bourbon rule.

From Bourbon rule to contested unification

Francesco Crispi’s proposal to Giuseppe Garibaldi connects the Sicilian revolt to the wider project of Italian unity. Crispi tells Garibaldi that an uprising has already begun in Palermo, helping persuade him to lead the Expedition of the Thousand. Garibaldi’s volunteers land at Marsala, enter Salemi, and proceed to Palermo, where they are welcomed as liberators. The Bourbon Regime’s crisis thus becomes the opening for an intervention intended to free Sicily from Bourbon subjection and unite Italy.

The end of Bourbon rule does not resolve the island’s political and economic subordination. After unification, officials of the Kingdom of Sardinia extend their legislative, fiscal, economic, and trading systems to Sicily and southern Italy without adapting them or offering compromise. Vincenzo objects that the Piedmontese are turning Sicily into a colony, and argues that the Bourbon Crown treasury has been seized and taken to Piedmont to meet the costs of annexation. His judgment is expressed from the position of a merchant who has repeatedly watched governments claim ships, money, and commercial cooperation. The transition replaces one ruling authority with another, but the underlying conflict over who controls Sicily’s resources remains.

That continuity is also personal. During Garibaldi’s occupation, Bourbon authorities requisition three of Casa Florio’s five steamers to transport troops and sink another vessel. A year later, they contest the interruption of mail distribution and seek to fine Vincenzo for missed services, although the interruption was tied to the requisition of his ships. In a later dispute, Vincenzo invokes the harm his firm has suffered under the new regime and condemns the annexation as a farce. The episodes distinguish political sovereignty from practical autonomy: a change of flag does not protect the Florios from state claims on their fleet, finances, or services. The Bourbon Regime’s lasting significance lies in the way its centralized rule helps produce resistance, while the commercial vulnerability exposed under its government continues beyond its fall.