Italy’s Writing on the Wall
It is often said that Italy’s divergence from the rest of Europe, in terms of per capita income, started either with the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty in 1993 or with the adoption of the euro in 1999. But this chronology masks a more profound transformation in modern Italy.
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PRINCETON – As the home of both the Roman Empire and the Renaissance, Italy has long been at the forefront of cultural developments in Europe and Western Eurasia. But it has also long served as an example of political decline. Edward Gibbon’s classic The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, after all, was meant as a warning to the author’s empire-building contemporaries.