Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen: Review of Filippo Lo Vetere’s Il movimento agricolo Siciliano (1905)

Schullern’s short German review of Lo Vetere’s 1903 book presents Sicilian agrarian distress as evidence of the gap between legal emancipation and material change. Opening with the seemingly unbelievable misery reported beyond Italy, he credits the book with explaining how apparently progressive reforms could preserve or intensify older relations of domination:

Das vorliegende Buch klärt uns auf, es ist bestrebt, uns darüber zu belehren, daß barbarische Einrichtungen der Vergangenheit formalrechtlich verschwinden können, ohne aber deshalb auch in den Tatsachen ihren Fortbestand zu verlieren.

English translation: The present book enlightens us; it endeavours to instruct us that barbaric institutions of the past can disappear in point of formal law without thereby losing their continued existence in the facts.

The decisive distinction is between abolishing institutions in law and ending their effects in practice. In Schullern’s account, the abolition of feudalism helped produce modern latifundia: aristocratic power, once constrained by customary rights, gave way to unrestricted aristocratic and plutocratic rule. Dissolving religious corporations and liquidating church property likewise worsened conditions. He praises Lo Vetere’s willingness to challenge popular reform slogans, while explicitly limiting his own review to selected arguments.

The review then turns from institutional critique to agricultural recovery. Agriculture is not merely one sector requiring assistance; in Lo Vetere’s diagnosis it is the basis of Sicily’s renewal:

Für ihn ist Sicilien ein Land des Ackerbaues, aus ihm muß die Insel ihre Kraft und ihre Genesung holen, ihm muß geholfen werden.

English translation: For him Sicily is a land of agriculture; from it the island must draw its strength and its recovery; it is agriculture that must be helped.

Schullern identifies the founding of the Consorzio agrario siciliano in 1899, associated with Ignazio Florio, as Lo Vetere’s turning point toward organized self-help. Its central task is to repair the island’s disastrous credit arrangements. Local cooperatives supply the foundational institutional form, linked to the Consorzio through a model statute devised by Raimondi and subsequently tested.

The concluding survey registers agricultural education, technical improvement, comparisons with foreign regions, and produce marketing, but emphasizes credit as the book’s recurring concern. Voluntary agricultural occupational associations, potentially building on the existing Leghe di miglioramento, extend this cooperative programme. Schullern ends by noting the closing chapter, “Sursum corda,” and calling the book interesting. The review’s significance lies in its conjunction of skepticism toward formal liberalizing reforms with an affirmative account of locally grounded agricultural organization: recovery requires practical institutions of credit and cooperation, not the legal dismantling of inherited structures alone.