Drawing on the history of the Bank of Naples, this article sheds new light on the power struggle between the central government and the Southern elites in Risorgimento Italy. Since unification, the Bank has been portrayed as the archetypal victim of a predatory (Northern) Italian government. This article, by deconstructing the myth surrounding the Bank, shows how this characterisation was carefully crafted by its Neapolitan management. Exploiting to the fullest the new political and economic role they had acquired under the aegis of a constitutional government, the Bank's governors appropriated and invested with new meanings Risorgimento ideals to further the Bank's cause as well as their own. Constantly shifting the focus from finance to politics, they posed as champions of those municipal, regional or even national liberties the government was either unable or unwilling to defend. This narrative provided an ideological smokescreen obscuring the economic and partly private nature of the confrontation between the central government and the Bank, and reinforced the view of a South victimised by the new Italian state still in currency today.

中文翻译：

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那不勒斯银行与意大利复兴运动的地区权力斗争

本文借鉴那不勒斯银行的历史，为意大利复兴运动中央政府与南方精英之间的权力斗争提供了新的视角。自统一以来，该银行一直被描绘为掠夺性（北部）意大利政府的原型受害者。本文通过解构围绕银行的神话，展示了这一特征是如何由其那不勒斯管理层精心打造的。为了最大限度地利用他们在宪政政府的支持下获得的新的政治和经济作用，银行的行长挪用并赋予了复兴运动理想的新意义，以推进银行的事业以及他们自己的事业。他们不断将焦点从金融转向政治，他们伪装成那些市政的拥护者，政府无法或不愿捍卫的地区甚至国家自由。这种叙述提供了一个意识形态烟幕，掩盖了中央政府与银行之间对抗的经济和部分私人性质，并强化了南方受害于今天仍在流行的新意大利国家的观点。