1866 and assessed at 46,000 tons. In 1860 the whole Italian merchant navy was the fourth largest in Europe at about 607,000 tons. The Southern merchant navy was made up of sailing vessels mainly for fishing and coastal shipping in the Mediterranean Sea and it had very few steamships, even if one of the first steamers was built and fitted out in Naples in 1818. Both merchant and military navy were insufficient compared to the great coastal extent of Southern Italy defined by the Italian historian Raffaele De Cesare: "… a great pier towards the South". In the article "This is Not Italy! Ruling and Representing the South", it is clear how the Northern elites considered the South. The Piedmontese North felt the need to invade the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and establish a new form of governance based on the Northern system, since they viewed the South as under-developed and lacking in social capital. These views of the South can largely be attributed to the letters of correspondents in southern Italy who sent biased letters to leaders of the North, specifically Camillo Benso, urging the invasion and reformation of the South. Although these views of the South were condescending, they also came with a genuine belief that in order to create a unified Italy, help from the North was necessary. Viewing southern Italy as barbaric served as a sort of justification to allow the "civilized, Piedmontese north" (167) to intervene. Another view however was marked by disdain for Southern Italy. According to the article, "such manifestations of the south's difference threaten the glowing and gloating sense of northern superiority" (167). These viewpoints clearly indicate the divide between Northern and Southern Italy in the 1860s. In an attempt to explain the striking difference between the annexed territory of the former Two Sicilies and the economic and political powerhouse centred in the North, racist theories were postulated, suggesting that such a divide had its roots in the coexistence of two mostly incompatible races. Denis Mack Smith, British historian, describes the radical difference between Northern and the newly annexed Southern Italy in 1860, for these two halves were on quite different levels of civilization, pointing out that the Bourbon in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies were staunch supporters of a feudal system and that they had feared the traffic of ideas and had tried to keep their subjects insulated from