164 Bresc
returns for the work invested therein. However, these local industries rarely
opened onto broader Sicilian markets, owing to the lack of roads.
All three islands were handicapped by a lack of passable roads, with the
exception of the plains of Palermo, Catania, and the Campidano of Cagliari,
which consisted only of donkey paths. This was to the detriment of any cohe-
sion at the state level. The commercial economy was entirely divided into zones
of trade for exports of grains, cheeses, and salt, and imports of woven fabrics
and other industrial products, with each zone centered on a port (in Sardinia,
Torres, Alghero, Bosa, Palmas de Sulcis, and in Sicily, Palermo, Trapani, Mazara,
Girgenti, Licata) or a small caricatore. On the other hand, paradoxically lan-
guage was a unifying element, as it immediately served to identify a Sardinian
as a foreigner to the sphere of Italian, with its own nuances between the logu-
dorese in the North, the campidanese in the South, and the Sicilian, as well as
the Corsican.
In the end, the distended relations between the three islands, their differ-
ent political and economic systems, along with the differences between their
societies and material cultures did not prevent the circulation of models and
experiments. Under Martin the Younger, the reorganization of Sardinia in
1409 introduced the same principles set in place in Sicily by the parliament
of Syracuse, after the conquest eleven years earlier.67 It established an equi-
librium between newer and older forms of feudalism, between the feudal es-
tament and the urban jurisdictions that would soften the blow and promote
political consensus. The lessons of Sicilian political experiences helped in the
unification and pacification of Sardinia. The questions of nationhood, until
then posed in terms of the irreconcilable differences between the nació cata-
lana and the nació sarda found the seed of a solution in a program inspired
by the achievements of Frederick III in the other great land of experiment,
in a tradition inspired by the long-term state practices of the Hauteville and
Frederick II.
Translated by Christian Hubert
67 Anatra, “Dall’unificazione aragonese ai Savoia,” p. 330.