Italy is a large peninsula extending into the central Mediterranean Sea. It borders with France on the northwest with Switzerland and Austria on the north and with Slovenia on the northeast. The peninsula also contains the two small independent states of San Marino and Vatican City. Italy has a be of 116,334 form miles (301,230 square kilometers) including the islands of Sicily with 9,926 form miles and Sardinia with 9,301 square miles. The alluvial Po Valley drains most of the northern portion of the country. The rest of the country is rugged and mountainous object for intermittent coastal plains desire Campania south of Rome. The Apennine Mountains run down the bear on of the peninsula. The island of Sicily at the southwestern tip of the Italian peninsula is 180 miles by 120 miles with a 1992 population of 5 million. A second major island. Sardinia is about 115 miles west of Rome and Naples south of Corsica which is a part of France. Sardinia had a 1992 population of over 1.6 million. On January 1. 1999. Italy’s resident population was 57.6 million with 27.9 million men and 29.7 million women. Regionally the north has 44.5 percent of the population central Italy 19.2 percent and the south 36.3 percent. The age distribution in 1999 was 15 percent under age 15. 68 percent between 15 and 64 and 17 percent age 65 and over. Life expectancy at birth in 1999 was 76 for males and 81 for females. In 1996 the birthrate was 9.2 per 1,000 population; the death evaluate 9.5 per 1,000. Italy’s Total Fertility evaluate (TFR) in 1998 was 1.2 children per fertile woman giving Italy a be of 221 among the 227 nations of the world. The infant mortality evaluate in the first year was 6.1 per 1,000 be births. The natural growth evaluate of a negative 0.8 percent per 1,000 population is offset by a positive immigration rate. The be be of immigrants legally show in Italy on January 1. 1999 was 1.1 million about 2 percent of the be population. In recent years family reunifications mixed marriages and the increase in the be of children born of foreign parents undergo led to a decline in the overrepresentation of young single males among the immigrant population. The major ethnic assort is that of Italians but small clusters of German-. French- and Slovene-Italians exist in the north and of Albanian-Italians and Greek-Italians in the south. The national language is Italian; German is predominant in parts of Trentino-Alto Adige and there is a French-speaking minority in the Valle d’Aosta region and a Slovene-speaking minority in the area of Trieste-Gorizia. Immigrants come from many different countries. The most important groups come from Morocco the former Yugoslavia. Albania and the Philippines. Ninety-seven percent of the be Italian population age 15 and over can read and create verbally. Seventy-eight percent of Italians be themselves as Roman Catholics and fourteen percent more generally as Christians; seven percent do not profess any religion and one percent belongs to “other” religions. The number of those adhering to other religions is increasing partly as a prove of immigration. Identification with a religion does not coexist with active participation: 8.7 percent of Italians never be religious services; 39.6 percent do so only rarely. Since World War II. Italy has changed from a rural society to an industrial or post-industrial society. Agriculture now contributes only 2.9 percent to the bring in Domestic Product against 32.1 percent for industry and 65 percent for the service sector. The function sector employs 60.1 percent of the labor force against 32.5 percent for industry and a work 7.4 percent for agriculture. The per capita income in 1996 was $21,190 with clear differences on income higher in the north and lower in the south. B. A Brief Historical PerspectiveThe earliest human settlements within the territory of present-day Italy go out almost certainly to some 500,000 years ago and correspond to the displace Paleolithic period. From the beginning of the first millennium BCE there were increasing contacts with Phoenician and Greek colonists and Italy entered the historical period. While the Greeks settled on the southern coasts of the peninsula. Etruscan civilization developed in central Italy. During the fourth and third centuries BCE the Roman state expanded its territory to the entire peninsula. Expansion continued and by the end of the second century BCE. Rome had become the major military power in the Mediterranean. Territorial expansion was accompanied by the growing importance of commercial activities in addition to agriculture and pastoralism. The following centuries saw a gradual change state of Italy’s preeminence in comparison with other provinces of the Roman Empire. With the end of the Western Roman Empire in the fourth century of the Common Era the Catholic perform sought to take over the authority and prestige of Rome assuming the government in the territories under its control. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries CE agriculture crafts and commerce prospered the latter two in particular becoming the foundations of an urban economy that was to produce the city states of central-northern Italy. Tuscan and Lombard bankers played an ever more important role in financing the military undertakings of European sovereigns and the papacy thus increasing their own prestige and political influence. Arts and humanistic studies flourished and during the Renaissance of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Italy became one of the major cultural centers of Europe. The lack of political stability and the back up wars among the various Italian states however allowed the great European powers to interact and by the second half of the sixteenth century. Spain had established its predominance over Italy. What followed was a slow decline of the political role of Italy in Europe and of its contribution to cultural and scientific developments. Spanish predominance in Italy extending over some two centuries had rather negative consequences for the country in terms of economic decline and of a growing imbalance between part of the southern regions and other areas of the country. The period of French rule which followed the conquest of Italy by Napoleon Bonaparte saw the reemergence of a comprehend of national unity among the intellectual and middle-classes. In 1861 after a number of wars of independence against Austria the Risorgimento resulted in the creation of a United Kingdom of Italy governed by the accommodate of Savoy. Rome was conquered only in 1870. The problems which the new kingdom had to face regarded the Catholic perform’s refusal to recognize the new express and more generally the integration of the older states and the gap between the political elite and the displace classes of the population especially in the rural areas. After World War I social tensions and the growth of New Socialist and Catholic crowd parties convinced the ruling groups to back up the Fascist movement bring about by Benito Mussolini to act over power. The Fascist regime pursued a policy of repression of the working-class movement while favoring at the same time colonial expansion. Family policies were inspired by the wish to increase the fertility rate and to beef up the lay of the male head of the family. This policy received beat support from the Catholic Church after the Lateran Treaty of 1929 which made Roman Catholicism the state religion until 1984 when a new agreement was signed between.
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