Busto Arsizio - History

History

Despite repeated claims by Lega Nord and her local allies about a Celtic heritage, recent studies seem to show that the "bustocchi"'s ancestors were Ligurians, called ‘wild’ by Pliny, ‘marauders and robbers’ by Livy and ‘unshaven and hairy’ by Pompeius Tragus. They were good at working iron and much sought after as mercenary soldiers. A very remote Ligurian influence is perceptible in the local dialect, Bustocco, slightly different from other Western Lombard varieties, according to local expert Luigi Giavini, author of a vocabulary.

Traditionally these first inhabitants used to set fire to woods made of old and young oaks and black hornbeams, which at that time, covered the whole Padan Plain. This slash-and-burn practice, known as "debbio" in Italian, aimed to create fields where grapevines or cereals such as foxtail, millet and rye were grown, or just to create open spaces where stone huts with thatched roofs were built. By doing this they created a bustum (burnt, in Latin), that is a new settlement which, in order to be distinguished from the other nearby settlements, was assigned a name: arsicium (again "burnt", or better "arid") for Busto Arsizio, whose name is actually a tautology; carulfì for nearby Busto Garolfo, cava for Busto Cava, later Buscate.

The slow increase in population was helped without doubt by the Insubres, a Gaulish tribe who had arrived in successive waves by crossing the Alps about 500 years BCE. It is said that they defeated the Etruscans, who by then controlled the area, leaving some geographical names behind (Arno creek -not to be confused with Florence's river - Castronno, Caronno, Biandronno, etc.)

Busto Arsizio's site was not chosen randomly: in fact, the settlement was created on an area on the route from Milan to Lake Maggiore (called "Milan’s road", an alternative route to the existent Sempione), part of which, before the creation of the Naviglio Grande, made use of the navigational water of the Ticino river.

However, nothing is sure about Busto Arsizio's past till the 10th century, when the town is first hinted at in documents, already with its present name: loco Busti qui dicitur Arsizio. A part of the powerful Contado of the Seprio, in 1176 its citizens are likely to have taken part (on both sides) to the famous Battle of Legnano, actually fought between Busto's frazione of Borsano and nearby Villa Cortese, when Frederick Barbarossa was defeated by the Communal militia of the Lombard League. From the 13th century the town became renowned for its production of textiles. Even its feudalization in later centuries under several lords, vassals of the masters of Milan, did not stop its slow but constant growth; nor did the plague, which hit hard in 1630, traditionally being stopped by the Virgin Mary after the bustocchi, always a pious Catholic flock, prayed for respite from the deadly epidemic.

By the half of the 19th century modern industry began to take over strongly: in a few decades Busto Arsizio became the so-called "Manchester of Italy. In 1864, while the "bustocco" Eugenio Tosi was the Archbishop of Milan, it was granted city privileges by king Victor Emmanuel II of Italy. The city kept on growing for more than a century, absorbing the nearby Comuni of Borsano and Sacconago in 1927 on a major administrative reform implemented by the Fascist regime, and was only marginally damaged even by World War II (a single Allied airdropped bomb is said to have hit the train station). This respite was given, actually, by the fact that the town hosted the important Allied liaison mission with the partisans, the Chrysler mission, led by Lt. Aldo Icardi, later famous for his involvement in the Holohan Murder Case. During the conflict Busto Arsizio was a major industrial center of war production, and the occupying Germans moved there the Italian national radio. The Italian resistance movement resorted preferably to strikes and sabotage than to overt guerrilla, since those willing to fight mostly took to the Ossola mountains, but strengthened in time, suffering grievous losses to arrests, tortures and deportation to the Nazi lager system. The names of Mauthausen-Gusen and Flossenburg concentration and extermination camps are sadly known to the bustocchi, as dozens of their fellow citizens died there. When, on 25 April 1945, the partisans took over, Busto Arsizio thus gave voice to the first free radio channel in northern Italy since the advent of Fascism.

After the war, the city turned in time increasingly on the right of the political spectrum, as its bigger industries in the Sixties and Seventies decayed, to be replaced by many familiar small enterprises and a new service-based economy. Today the town represents a major stronghold for both Forza Italia and Lega Nord right-wing political parties.