While historians regard a few centuries of the Middle Ages as the high point of Sicilian history, the last five hundred years are the key to understanding the complexities of the Sicily we see today The Renaissance and the Baroque certainly influenced the island to some degree, but to the rest of Europe it was a colony, a kind of strategic province that the Great Powers could trade as a bargaining chip at key negotiations.
The Inquisition , with all its horrors, was the strongest social force. It prompted the closing of the few remaining synagogues and the coercive conversion of the last Jews in Sicily.
Sicily as a 'Colony' With the discovery of the New World, Sicily's importance rapidly diminished, though it was still one of the wealthiest parts of Italy despite an aristocracy intent on exploiting its resources and returning nothing. Rule from Madrid meant that Sicily, though nominally a kingdom, was effectively a province. While northern-Italian cities like Venice, Milan and Genoa thrived as what were effectively independent states, southern Italy, with its government centralised in 'capital' cities like Naples and Palermo and dynastic rule from abroad languished by comparison.
A popular historical theory suggests this as the principal cause for the differences in mentality between Italy's northerners and southerners, and hence the very different economies of the two regions.
In short, the northerners came to view themselves as citizens who believed they could determine their own collective destiny, while the southerners thought of themselves as the neglected subjects that they were. Sadly, this problem has not been relegated to the realm of history.
