Una riforma zoppa in Sardegna: l’Editto delle chiudende

Ferrai, Cecilia

2019-01-01

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Abstract

A lame reform in Sardinia: The Edict of the Enclosures In the reformist climate of the second European eighteenth century, the Savoy Government encourages studies to improve the economic conditions of Sardinia, starting from the agriculture considered, according to the physiocratic theories of the time, the engine of development. The cause-effect relationship emerges between backwardness and age-old strug- gles involving transhumant pastoralism and agriculture still carried out with tradi- tional methods, with extensive use of fallow and poor crop rotation. The cultivation system is closely linked to the communal use of open lands typ- ical of a feudal system that still persists. The solution is identified in the elimination of the causes, but the reform is im- plemented by trying not to damage the rights of the feudal class, therefore a lame reform that fell from the top in the first decades of the nineteenth century, which, without any significant investment by the state and institutions, provides for the pos- sibility of enclosing the land by subtracting it from pasture-crop alternation and col- lective uses, affirming an imperfect private property as it is still subject to feudal restrictions. The high costs of fences, traditional production schemes, the stagnation that char- acterizes the Sardinian economy, the struggles between farmers and shepherds (to which grazing is subtracted), the absence of an internal market and the high costs of transport inside and outside the island do not make it worthwhile to introduce sig- nificant innovations and this determines the failure of the reform.