For reasons of security and health, residents typically clustered in hill towns situated away from farm land. The bulk of the population consisted of artisans ( artigiani ), petty landowners or sharecroppers ( contadini ), and farm laborers ( giornalieri ), all of whom eked out meager existences. Southern Italy ( Mezzogiorno ), the source of more than 75 percent of immigration to the United States, was an impoverished region possessing a highly stratified, virtually feudal society. Although local cultural variations remained notable, the most significant internal distinctions have been those stemming from the contrast between a relatively prosperous, cosmopolitan, urban North and a socially backward, economically depressed, agricultural South. Over the centuries, therefore, powerful regional loyalties emerged, and persisted well after unification. Some of these regions had a history of autonomous rule, while others came under the periodic control of foreign powers as a result of recurrent wars and shifting political alliances. Prior to this, the peninsula consisted of often mutually antagonistic kingdoms, duchies, city-states, and principalities. Italy is a relatively young nation state, achieving full unification only during the Risorgimento of 1860-1870. Italy was, in the view of many Europeans, a "mere geographic expression." With its political integration shattered, the country remained fragmented until the late nineteenth century. presaged the more complete disintegration of the empire in the later fifth and sixth centuries. The sack of Rome by the Visigoths in 410 A.D. The Pax Romana began to crumble, however, by the end of the first century A.D.
At its peak, the Roman empire extended from the British Isles to theĮuphrates River. By 172 B.C., Rome controlled all of the Italian peninsula and began moving outward into the Mediterranean basin. More historically verified is the fact that the Romans engaged in territorial expansion and conquest of neighboring lands, devising effective colonization policies that ultimately sustained a widespread realm.
Italy's modern state traces its mythological roots to the founding of the city of Rome in 753 B.C. The obstacles created by the highlands, valleys, and gorges found in the mountain regions fostered strong cultural and linguistic differences. With the exception of the broad north Italian Plain at the foot of the Alps, the peninsula is crosscut through much of its length by the Apennine mountain chain. Italy's population in 1991 stood at 57.6 million. The nation's land mass, which includes the two major islands of Sicily and Sardinia and numerous smaller ones, measures 116,324 square miles (301,200 square kilometers) -almost exactly double the size of the state of Florida. Along its European frontier, Italy shares borders with France, Switzerland, Austria, and Slovenia. Moored by Alpine mountains in the north, the boot-shaped Italian peninsula juts into the central Mediterranean Sea.
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