Located between Europe and Africa, Sicily has long been a crossroads for empire and trade. Shown here is an early twentieth-century market scene in Palermo, the chief city on the island. (Library of Congress)
An island situated in the Mediterranean Sea just south of the “boot” of the Italian mainland.
Sicily is bounded on the west and south by the Mediterranean Sea, on the east by the Ionian Sea, and on the north by the Tyrrhenian Sea. The narrow Strait of Messina separates Sicily from the boot of the Italian mainland. The capital of Sicily is Palermo.
The island has a distinctive triangular shape and contains several different geographic regions. Besides the hills and mountains, including Mount Etna on the eastern side of the island, Sicily has a wide fertile plain in the east and smaller strips of fertile land near Palermo. The temperature is moderate, and the growing seasons are long, making Sicily an ideal environment for the production of agricultural goods.
Like its geography, the people and culture of the island are also diverse. Successive conquests by the Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Arabs, Normans, and others have created a distinct Sicilian culture. The original inhabitants of the island were Elymi, Sicani, and Siculi. Phoenicians were the first foreigners to settle, mainly on the eastern coast of the island near Palermo. During the eighth to sixth centuries B.C.E., the Greeks established many towns on the island, including Syracuse, Cantania, Zancle (modern Messina), Gela, and Selinus. The Phoenicians reasserted their influence briefly over a portion of the island just before the Carthaginians invaded and captured half of the land around 400 B.C.E. Subsequently, Sicily became involved in a struggle between the Greeks and the Carthaginians for control of the entire island. With the decline of the Greek city-states, Rome emerged as the new power in the region.
During the Punic Wars (264–241 B.C.E.), the Romans defeated the Carthaginians and Sicily fell under complete Roman rule. Rome relied on Sicily to provide food and timber for the vast Roman navy. The policy of using all the resources for the benefit of Rome resulted in a depletion of the land, forests, and crops, and the economy started to rapidly decline. When the Western Roman empire fell in 476 C.E., barbarian invaders (the Goths and Vandals) conquered the island and held it until the eastern portion of the empire (the Byzantine empire) forced them out in 535. After the rise of Islam in the seventh century, Arab invaders attacked the island for the next two centuries until 1069, when the Normans arrived. During the period of Arab rule, the economy of Sicily rebounded as the conquerors promoted agriculture, trade, and the arts. Citrus groves of oranges and lemons were introduced, and the products were sold abroad. The complex irrigation system built by the Arabs helped to bring more land under cultivation. The Norman Roger I conquered the island, and Roger II became the king in 1130. Through this Norman kingdom, the information and culture of the Arabs was transmitted to western Europe. During the reign of Roger II, Sicily was the most prosperous region in Europe. Roger II’s heir, the Holy Roman emperor Frederick II (r. 1197–1250), preferred Sicily over the rest of his domains.
The demise of the Hohenstaufen rulers resulted in Pope Clement IV crowning Charles I (Charles of Anjou) as the king of Naples and Sicily but as a papal vassal instead of as an emperor. Charles I was unpopular among the Sicilians, who rose up against him in the 1282 Sicilian Vespers revolt. The people chose Peter III of Aragon as their ruler, but when the Spanish throne passed to the Hapsburgs, the island of Sicily was once again used for the benefit of the rulers and a few noblemen. The economy languished. During the eighteenth century, the island fell under the rule of Savoy, the Bourbon line in Spain, and finally the British in 1811–1814. In 1816, Ferdinand I pronounced himself king of the Two Sicilies, but after several revolts Giuseppe Garibaldi conquered the island and incorporated it into the kingdom of Sardinia. Since Italian reunification, the island belongs to Italy but exercises some local autonomy.
Located between Europe and Africa, Sicily has long been a crossroads for empire and trade. Shown here is an early twentieth-century market scene in Palermo, the chief city on the island. (Library of Congress)
The primary products exported from Sicily are agricultural. Wheat, barley, corn, olives, almonds, wine, grapes and other fruits, and cotton are the main agricultural exports. A wide variety of animals are raised, including cattle, sheep, mules, and donkeys. The diversity of the marine life around the island encourages the exportation of fish. Modern exports also include leather goods, textiles, fertilizers, chemicals, and ships.
Cynthia Clark Northrup
See also: Crusades; Greek City-States; Roman Empire.
Barbera, Henry. Medieval Sicily: The First Absolute State. New York: Legas, 1994.
Fischer-Hansen, Tobias. Ancient Sicily. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 1995.
Sammartino, Peter. Sicily: An Informal History. New York: Cornwall, 1992.
Wolf, Kenneth Baxter. Making History: The Normans and Their Historians in Eleventh Century Italy. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995.