Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen · 1905
Schullern’s short German review presents Giglioli’s 1903 book as a comparative account of Italian agriculture, written by a member of Italy’s jury at the Paris World Exhibition of 1900. It moves from the report’s patriotic and socially integrative aims, through its author’s scientific credentials, to the European implications of agricultural reform. Schullern’s purpose is to commend the work to readers concerned with economic policy, especially amid trade-treaty negotiations.
The diagnosis he singles out links agricultural underperformance to the population’s cultural conditions rather than to a scarcity of natural resources:
Die Erkenntnis, daß der Aufschwung im Bodenbau in Italien nicht gleichen Schritt hält mit der gleichzeitigen Entwicklung im übrigen Europa, wird vom Verfasser an die Spitze gestellt und als Ursache dieser Erscheinung die Rückständigkeit der Bevölkerung auf kulturellem Gebiete, insbesondere in gewissen Teilen des Reiches bezeichnet.
English translation: The recognition that the upswing in soil cultivation in Italy is not keeping pace with the simultaneous development in the rest of Europe is placed at the head by the author, and as the cause of this phenomenon he designates the backwardness of the population in the cultural field, particularly in certain parts of the kingdom.
Schullern accepts this diagnosis while emphasizing Italy’s natural wealth, popular energies, and intense patriotism. His central interpretive move is to treat acknowledgment of backwardness as a possible stimulus to renewal. If the agricultural advances already evident in northern Italy became general, Italy could acquire substantially greater weight in European economic affairs. The review thus turns a domestic assessment of agrarian distress into a question of international competition, with particular relevance to Austria-Hungary, Germany, and France.
Its endorsement rests both on Giglioli’s professional authority—as director of Rome’s royal agricultural station and a former professor of agricultural chemistry—and on the combination of national commitment with what Schullern regards as objective inquiry. Yet he expressly limits his coverage:
Es sei hiermit auf das Werk Gigliolis aufmerksam gemacht, auf dessen überaus reichen Inhalt hier einzugehen, selbstverständlich unmöglich wäre.
English translation: Attention is hereby drawn to Giglioli's work, whose exceedingly rich content it would of course be impossible to enter into here.
The review’s significance lies in this selective act of mediation: it brings an Italian agricultural report to a German-speaking policy audience and frames agrarian improvement as a potential transformation of Europe’s economic balance. It offers an urgent recommendation grounded in one broad diagnosis, without attempting to reproduce the book’s detailed evidence.
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