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This chapter will examine the economy and population of Locorotondo as it appears from nineteenth-century documents. It will concentrate upon the documentary evidence for movement of peasants into the countryside, describe the extraordinary effort of the town's upper classes to curtail this movement in 1827, and portray, insofar as the evidence allows, aspects of nineteenth-century peasant life in rural Locorotondo. THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY ECONOMY AND POPULATION OF LOCOROTONDO The Catasto Provvisorio and the 1811 Census The catasto provvisorio (provisional cadaster) contains most of what can be learned about the economy of Locorotondo during the early decades of the nineteenth century. The Murattian government issued the official decree for its formation on April 4, 1809, and the cadaster constituted one of the major economic reforms of the Napoleonic period. It was called “provisional” because this descriptive cadaster was to be replaced by a permanent “geometric” one which would actually map fields. But it remained provisional for almost a century. The new cadaster was compiled in a more orderly manner than the old catasto onciario and much reflected the new French order and its enlightenment roots (Dibenedetto, 1976: 106–110). The provvisorio differed in some important ways from the onciario. First, it did not constitute a list of households because the taxable unit was now the individual owner. Since the onciario provides no ways to ascertain which properties in it belong to which members of recorded households, the two cadasters are difficult to compare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evidence shows, then, that by the beginning decades of the nineteenth century a peasant population was well established in Locorotondo's countryside, and migration would continue, so that by mid-century fully two-thirds of the municipality's population dwelled rurally. The peasant removal documents of 1827 show that this was both a highly unusual pattern for the area and that elite townsmen felt alarm about it. It remains in this chapter to explore the “hows and whys” of population transfer into the countryside. The populating of the rural hinterlands of Locorotondo will be portrayed as a peasant adaptive strategy, and, in part, the consequence (unintended, given their alarm in 1827) of adaptive strategies adopted individually by elite landowners. EMPHYTEUSIS BETWEEN THE OLD AND NEW ORDERS A key element in understanding peasant and elite adaptive strategies in Locorotondo at the end of the eighteenth century, and throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, is the institution of emphyteusis, which in Locorotondo, and later in surrounding towns, directly affected the development and expansion of viticulture and of rural settlement. This kind of contract facilitated the development of peasant small proprietorship through the guarantee of secure land tenure in exchange for intensive labor. As noted at the outset, economic thinkers and reformers belonging to the Neapolitan enlightenment, Antonio Genovesi principal among them, proposed emphyteusis as a means to improve and develop the rural economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A good place to begin is with the countryside and country folk of the present and the recent past. Although there is definite continuity to the Locorotondese settlement pattern, and to many institutions belonging to its rural population, much change has taken place over the last several decades. In keeping with the observation that the present equals the cumulation of living experiences, in this description of contemporary rural Locorotondo “recent past” will mean “within the lifetimes of living people,” and therefore roughly pertaining to the period between the First World War and the present, and incorporating both terminal peasant and postpeasant phases of rural life. For the peasant population of Locorotondo, work and associated values form the center of life. Therefore labor is the theme of this chapter. THE PHYSICAL AND CULTURAL SETTING The environment Apulia is a big region which includes the “heel” and the “spur” of Italy and a vast territory to the interior. Coastal plains characterize the Adriatic edge and the lower part of the Salentine Peninsula, and in the interior three plateaus, or murgie, the Northern Murgia, the Murgia dei Trulli, and the Salentine Murgia, descend step-like from northwest to southeast. The Murgia dei Trulli covers the area of juncture between the “heel” and the “boot,” and contains communes belonging to three Provinces: Bari, Brindisi, and Taranto. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]