This book summarizes some decades of research on the economic history of Italy between Unification and the Great War. It is equally concerned with what happened then, and with how we gradually came to understand it as we now do: it is at once social science, and history of that science.

This twin concern reflects the author's sense of his discipline. Economic history invites rigorous logic, parsimonious explanations, and a confrontation with evidence that is naturally quantitative: it is, or at least can be, science in its style. Substance is another matter. Economics, history, the social “sciences” are not the cumulation of objective knowledge, but the contemporary form of the stories our distant forefathers would tell when they gathered around the campfire. Our theories, our facts – our stories, like their stories – are constructs that define and project an image of ourselves; they are shaped by fears and aspirations so deep we do not admit them to our conscious minds, by prejudices so strong we do not recognize them.

So too, specifically, economic history. The process and context that generate an interpretation, and can signal the alternatives that were never allowed a hearing, are as central to its proper evaluation as the more conventional evidence it invokes: we would have a better sense of what there is to be seen if our predecessors had told us not only what they saw, but who they were, where they stood, and how they got there.