Sicily’s political oppression under Bourbon rule

Sicily’s political oppression under Bourbon rule is not presented only as an abstract constitutional grievance: it reaches into who governs the island, who controls its trade, and who bears the costs of royal power. The Florios encounter it through restrictions on commerce and demands on their ships and money; Giulia and her brother Giovanni discuss its effects on ordinary Sicilians; and the rebellion of 1848 turns those grievances into a demand for a different political future. Even after unification, Vincenzo fears that Sicily has exchanged one external master for another.

Loss of self-government

The political change becomes concrete after the Bourbons return to Naples. Since December 1816, state offices and customs have been administered by Neapolitans, and Neapolitans also serve as military commanders. Palermo, in consequence, has lost its power and independence. Heavier taxes, restrictions, and new constraints on trade compound that loss, bringing an already struggling economy to a halt. Political subordination is thus measured not only in appointments and authority but in the damage done to the city’s ability to conduct business.

The novel sets this later centralization against a wider history of political instability. In 1830, the accession of the twenty-year-old Ferdinand II is accompanied by a program of economic and social revival: infrastructure is expanded, engineering and railways are promoted, metal-hulled military ships are built, and the account notes Italy’s first pension system and an early network of electric street lighting. Yet modernization does not remove the underlying struggle over power and resources. Efforts to improve sulfur exploitation provoke conflict with British and French buyers determined to purchase the commodity below market prices. Reform, foreign commercial pressure, and royal authority coexist rather than resolving Sicily’s political vulnerability.

Grievances beneath the 1848 uprising

By January 1848, the political tension is visible in the notices urging revolt posted around Palermo. Giulia hears gunshots and remembers those proclamations, which Neapolitan soldiers had torn down. Giovanni explains the anger beneath them: after the 1837 cholera-year rebellion, its leaders were deported or sentenced to death, and Ferdinand ordered that city administrators be Neapolitans. He also points to abuses by Neapolitan soldiers and double taxation on grain. In his account, the Bourbon government has made ordinary life more precarious while closing off peaceful avenues of redress.

Giulia initially doubts that Palermo has the organized political circles she associates with Milan. She sees a nobility unwilling to question its privileges or surrender land, and a population divided by poverty, with no one to awaken peasants and factory workers to their position. Giovanni counters that Palermo does have intellectuals among both the nobility and the middle classes who hope to lead the people toward control of their own destiny, though he stresses that they are few. The disagreement exposes a central problem of resistance: the island’s grievances are broad, but the people able to organize a political alternative are scarce.

The notices, royal threats, and public defiance make rebellion seem increasingly unavoidable. Giovanni describes soldiers tearing down proclamations and boasting that insurgents would face rifle fire or the gallows; at the same time, people have begun to defy soldiers openly. On January 12, 1848, the king’s official birthday, Giulia recognizes that the moment for revolt has arrived. Her immediate response is to shut the windows and prepare the children to leave, showing how a political crisis enters domestic life as fear and urgent practical decisions.

Revolution and the case for Sicilian freedom

When Vincenzo later meets Giuseppe La Masa, the revolutionary cause is framed as a response to a whole system of domination. La Masa cites Neapolitan officials who command in Sicily, take its wealth, and impose taxes. He also describes the island as treated like a conquered territory rather than a community of subjects. The grievance is explicitly collective: the rising is not confined to Palermo but extends across Sicily. Its aims therefore exceed a change of administrators; the insurgents seek a political order in which Sicilians can determine their own future.

Giulia’s understanding of the movement develops through reading and discussion. She tells Vincenzo that La Masa’s book helped her understand why he, Rosolino Pilo, Ruggero Settimo, and others are attempting to establish an independent Sicilian state. She does not assume that their project will succeed, but she recognizes the commitment behind it and insists that being a woman does not make her incapable of political judgment. Her response challenges Vincenzo’s dismissal of politics as unsuitable for her and links the question of Sicily’s autonomy to women’s exclusion from political conversation within the household.

Vincenzo’s own involvement is compromised by the conflict between his political choices and the material costs to his business. He tells Giulia that he has bought a large shipment of rifles in England for the revolutionary committee. The revolutionaries proclaim a Kingdom of Sicily and seek to revive the 1812 constitution, but have not found a king willing to accept the crown; he also says the British oppose Sicily’s separation from the Bourbons. Meanwhile, ships have been requisitioned, and he has effectively been forced to make a loan. Trade has fallen by half since the revolt began, and the revolutionary government has taken the company’s Palermo vessel to transport troops. Vincenzo can see the revolution’s political purpose while resenting the way its costs are being charged to the commercial world he built.

From Bourbon rule to the fear of annexation

The account’s political critique does not end with the Bourbons. After Italian unification, Vincenzo argues that the Piedmontese are turning Sicily into a colony. He objects that the Bourbon Crown treasury has been seized and moved to Piedmont to fund the annexation campaign, which he calls a deception staged by Naples and Turin. His protest echoes the earlier complaint that outside authorities rule the island and extract its resources, now directed at the new national state rather than the Bourbon government.

Vincenzo’s position is not simply a rejection of national unity: he acknowledges that Sicily might not prosper alone and has previously considered a British protectorate. His anger is directed at being ruled and having his world disturbed by authorities beyond the island. In this way, the narrative distinguishes the ideal of unity from the actual terms on which power is transferred. The repeated pattern—external administration, taxation, requisition, and control of local wealth—makes political change appear incomplete when Sicilians remain unable to decide how their resources and institutions will be used.