> The Neapolitans did not reject modern analysis simply because they considered it French.

And yet after reading the article, it sounds like that is exactly what happened. They took some minor philosophical dispute in math and blew it up for cultural reasons to stick it to the invader. It doesn't sound like it ever really was about the math for most people in that context.

I think it depends on what one regards as a minor dispute. The Newton/Leibniz calculus dispute a generation or so earlier was pretty major, with Newton defending his deductive geometrical method of fluxions against Leibniz's more algebraic concepts. Leibniz was also much into his universal calculus. I was wondering what this Fergola would have thought about Newton and his geometrical method (fluxions)!

The Naples state at that time was around 5 million people. You had the landowners (I imagine) looking around at the 'enclosures' of common land in Britain and other parts of Europe and thinking about rents. You had the engineers and Jacobins thinking about new roads and canals and all. The ones who lost out appear to have been the peasants as they lost the feudal protections and access to common lands. And so it goes.