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This paper aims to link the issue of left-behind places with spatial inequalities and demonstrate how, in these places, different territorial identities have contributed to responding to external shocks. By applying principal component and cluster analyses to a set of Italian mountain municipalities, we identified different typologies of these left-behind places as of the early 1950s and examined how they reacted to external shocks in two subsequent periods (1951–1981 and 1981–2011). The results suggest the changing importance of the cognitive, cultural and relational domains in coping with the different phases of Italian economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an estimate of the Italian agricultural production in 1929 and in 1936-1937 by province and crop groups. The assessment, conducted, in the late 1930s by a fairly well-known geographer and agricultural statistician, Luchino Franciosa, was originally unpublished and had to be partially reconstructed since the original typescript has come down to us without the appendix containing the detailed calculations. This two-year estimate, built on a homogeneous methodology, is here used to evaluate the trend of the Italian provinces in terms of the value of agricultural production during the recession of the 1930s, highlighting winners and losers among the many «rural Italies» and their different crops. Moreover, Franciosa's data are also a useful basis for a first insight into the determinants of the Great Crisis, from individual product specialisations to more general causes, such as international market trends and the economic policies of the fascist regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]