The Difficult Imitation Economic Societies, Development Projects and Human Capital in the Kingdom Of Naples during the First Half of the Nineteenth Century
Angelina Marcelli

Abstract
The economic Societies were born in the Kingdom of Naples after Napoleon Bonaparte imperial strategy, who at the end of the nineteenth Century, intended to modernize the agriculture of the conquered territories to adapt to England’s economic growth. The Kingdom of Naples lacked almost completely the requirements needed for modernization so the state instituted Economic Societies, who had the dual objective of analyzing the particular economic vocations of the owned territory and to propose and implement development projects. So far, the historiographical debate has specifically emphasized the inability of Southern Economic Societies to implement a true structural transformation of local realities, relegating this historical experience in the category of success or failure. Considering that development may not in any way depend only and exclusively on the intervention of the State and its institutions, this article analyzes the role of human capital in Economic Societies and the consistency of elaborated development projects. From this angle, emerges the image of a circle of people who were well aware of their institutional goals. The members felt they were partakers of a civilizing mission and contributed to it by dedicating studies, knowledge and in certain cases invested their own capital.

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