Dentro le statistiche. Fonti, dati e questioni di storia della marina mercantile del Mezzogiorno preunitario

This paper questions the statistical sources on the merchant marine of the pre-unification Italian Mezzogiorno. The analysis of the data construction pro-cesses makes it possible to define the nature of certain aggregates (total number and tonnage of ships) already partially used by historiography, to resolve the discrepancies between the most recent historical series, to propose a new series for the years from 1817 to 1825, and to show the significant lack of homo-geneity of the data for the 1830s. Moreover, the analysis points out that the data for the 1830s are of particular interest when attention is shifted from the aggregates to the statistical survey from which they emerged: a detailed survey by ship activity, the preparatory material for which is still almost unexplored.