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A DIFFERENT GAZE. ARTHUR YOUNG IN PIEDMONT

P. Gerbaldo

Abstract

The agronomist Arthur Young wasn’t a traditional Grand Tourtraveler. The report of his journey in France and Italy is published inTravels during the years 1787, 1788 and 1789. Undertaken more particularly with a View of ascertaining the cultivation, wealth, resources, and national prosperity of the Kingdom of France. The pages written by Young about the Piedmont are very interesting. His approach to the region was different.Infact, the great Italian cities, their buildings and famous antiquities, seem relegated to second place, nevertheless he is a critical observer. His gaze is more attentive to agriculture and local economic development.Arthur Young tookcontacts with farmers and agriculture experts. He lookedto the local conditions of cultivationin Southern Piedmont, around Turin and betweenTurin and Milan. The basis of his travels was the direct knowledge of the area. But as a political Arithmetic Young also did not ignore the statistical data of the yields of the fields. Fifteen years after Young’s journey, Napoleonic statisticians wereimpressed from the high level of Arthur’s observations around the Piedmont and NorthernItaly. The historian Carlo Denina(1731-1813), for example, wrote about the importance of Arthur's economics observations made during his trip toItaly. The pages of the Piedmont written by Arthur Young are a reference point for the new regional analysis around Southern Piedmont that contributed to the beginning ofthe Napoleonic statisticsas, for example, Domique Destombes for the Annuaire statistique du département de la Stura pour l’an 1809 fesant suite à celui de 1806.

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DOI resolver: doi.org/10.5593/SGEMSOCIAL2017/HB21/S05.005

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