Decline of The Corso Breed
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This is part of a summary on Cane Corso
Italiano: the integration in socio-economic context into the masserie of the
Meridione, and the decline, recovery and recognition of the Corso breed. It
must be qualified that this summary on Cane Corso is compiled from articles,
books, and the Cane Corso Pages web site. The main source being “IL Cane
Corso: Origini e Prospettiv del molosso italico” by Prof. F. Casolino and
Dott. S. Gandolfi, published 1996 by Mursia.
Any mistake and misrepresentation in this
compilation is mine and mine alone. The copy right of this compilation remains
with Hu Song and the Cane Corso Pages. Permission in writing is required for
reproduction of the whole or part of this compilation.
Hu Song Thursday, May 15, 2000, revised
December 01, 2001 and May 2003.
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The Cane Corso Italiano is obedient and
adaptable to whatever use, the aide of his owner without substitute for
whatever needs. He lives the same life as his owner, enjoys the splendours of
his riches, follows his activities usefully, helps him in his troubles, and
shares his poverty and his misery. His very name, as put forth by Prof.
Fernando Casolino, expresses his qualities for the people of the Italian South:
cors, sturdy, athletic, with a solid and
tenacious character.
The Cane Corso Italiano is “a gift from the
gods of the forests to the shepherd, a gift that arrived in the morning fog”
- told to Prof. Casolino in a story by Zi’ (uncle) Saverio, an old shepherd of
the masseria of Pian del Vescovo, story-teller and poet, nurtured for
almost a hundred years only with solitude and silence. Zi’Saverio always spoke
of the Corsi with admiration and nostalgia; for all that they had done for him,
for his defence and for their vigilance over buildings and animals.
This hard-working and faithful Cane Corso
Italiano is so connected to the people of the Meridione that he shares the
changes of their circumstances and fortune. The splendours and decadence of the
breed are in close contact with and mark the alternating social and economic
events of a population.
The cultivation of cereals in the country and
the vast zone of pasture both favoured the economics of raising cattle like
horses and buffalos. In almost all the Italian South, herds of horses were kept
in a wild or semi wild state in pastures around the masseria, together with
buffalo herds near the marshes. There was an equally well-developed swine
economy: group in colonies, made up of morri (herds) of a hundred or
more heads, they gazed in the oak, turkey oak, and chestnut woods and under the
olive trees. Sheep and goats were in about ten million heads (although at the
end of 1950’s it was reduced to five million and a half sheep and a million and
a half goats). This patrimony was articulated around the meat, hides, milk,
wool, and anything else that could be used, for yearly revenue of Lire 8000 per
head then.
The Cane Corso Italiano took its place in this
picture with specific tasks of patrolling the habitations, following the
animals and their keepers, guarding the property, preventing the rustling,
accompanying butchers and carters and leading, together with the Abruzzo sheep
dogs, the transumanze.
In addition to these exacting responsibilities,
there was the hunt: wild boar, badger and porcupine. The Corso became a
necessary aide in that the most risky and dangerous role was assigned to him.
Actually, the part taken by the hunter himself was reduced to finishing off the
prey that the dog had caught and held for him.
The 19th century is considered as
the golden age of the Cane Corso Italiano where art and literature demonstrated
the doings and consequent uses of the breed until 1915. During the years of World War I (1915-1918) farmers and peasants were
called to arms. Agricultural and pastoral activities were being heavily
curtailed in the Italian South and together a lack of interest in cattle
raisings. Thus the need for Cane Corso Italiano in the various phases of these
activities was very much reduced.
From 1920 to 1940 things returned to normal and
even improved in Southern Italy. There were fervent activities in the 1930’s. Instead of risking such changes to deforest the hills and to transform
the large areas of pasture into fields growing uneconomic cereal resource in
the future, improvements were made to construct water channels for irrigation
and reclaim the land. Together with that, there were new and quality seeds,
modernized mode of harvest and transport, improved ways in utilization of the
land. These renewed the interests in agriculture and the cattle raisings grew.
The Corsi returned anew to fill those roles that the circumstances had
temporarily denied him.
During this period in Southern Italy, there was
an increase in number of small farmers and peasants who worked the land and
kept flocks and herds in a family structure in addition to the large
reservations and private farmers in rural villages and towns. The Corso was
once again a common sight around the town and the rural villages.
The Corsi were numerous then, and their
breeders had much genetic material to use in forming dogs even more adapted and
adaptable to their needs. The better subjects were exchanged, puppies
ceded to other breeders or interested friends, to other shepherds, to hunters,
to landowners, to the gentry as guardians for their villas and palaces, to the
monks for their monasteries, to the rural policemen who watched the camps and
the harvests of the entire community. Selling them was neither a custom nor
a concept.
The next five years of World War II (1940-1945)
left only women, children and the elderly on the fields and the masserie in
Southern Italy to conduct agricultural affairs and do the work of the adult
males who went to war. Herds and flocks became
fewer and smaller. The Corso was neglected. Exodus of population en mass from
cities seeking escapes from bombs and food rationing created lucrative black
market more important to those in the South Italian rural villages and towns
than their hungry dogs. The Corso was almost forgotten.
The war, the armistice and the civil war
brought more and more disorder and suffering to the Southern Italy’s rural
economy of which the Corso was an integral part. But return to peace did not
stop the crisis for agricultural and pastoral affairs in the rural villages and
towns of the South, and hence the crisis for Cane Corso Italiano. The
attractions of industrial growth and of development from the North increased
the needs of large numbers of workers. This together with the consequences of
natural disasters like landslide, floods and earthquakes in the South both
worsen the deterioration and the subsequent disappearance of the masserie.
Rural employment in many areas of the South during that decade of 1951-1961
dropped from 75% to 57%. Many masserie closed down completely. The land of
the large estates redeployed and transformed. Properties of small farmers and
peasants were abandoned in preference of new jobs or adventures elsewhere.
The disappearance of breeding cattle in wild
and semi-wild state, the modernization of agricultural and pastoral activities,
the vanishing of wild games further changes the traditional use of Cane Corso
Italiano in Southern Italy and consequentially its number. The population of Cane Corso Italiano was drastically reduced,
leading it down the path to extinction.
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