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This paper is linked to are search project that takes into account the Southern Italian landowning class from the eighteenth to the twentieth century and the process of development of the Italian Mezzogiorno, with particular reference to the influence of institutional and economic change on liberal Italy. We focus on the analysis of the life and the career of a southern Italian banker, Quinto Quintieri, whose family’s background and fortunes were entirely rooted in the latifundia who, in November 1944, was sent to Washington on an important diplomatic mission. This demonstrate how the effects of the governmental economic policies,which profoundly marked the progress of the economic system in Southern Italy, affected the economy of the agrarian classes that reacted flexibly to institutional and economic change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]