The Land and Sharecropping in the Work of Gianbattista Masciotta

Gianbattista Masciotta (1864-1933), the author of the monumental work entitled Il Molise dalle origini ai nostri giorni, who is considered the greatest historiographer of Molise, had always had, among his main interests, also the study of agriculture in his region and the search for the causes of the failed modernization of Molise. Masciotta, who was interested in the survival of the community linked to landuse, as well as in the preservation of social order, believed that sharecropping was the most adequate instrument to make agriculture in Molise more profitable. In his view, sharecropping was the only form of "profit-sharing work" - "an agreement solidly and honestly entered into, where neither of the contractual parties should assume for itself leonine conditions in the profit sharing", and could have represented the way out not only for the country people (who would have done their best to make land more productive for the "individualistic purpose - he argued - of spending his own life in more comfortable conditions"), but also to check the rise of those small and medium landowners of the new middle class who had taken possession of the land, after the fall of the agrarian aristocracy, through certainly questionable methods

Keywords: Gianbattista Masciotta, Land, Sharecropping

Sergio Bucci, La terra e la mezzadria nell’opera di Gianbattista Masciotta in "AGRICOLTURA ISTITUZIONI MERCATI " 2/2011, pp 108-113, DOI: 10.3280/AIM2011-002008