Italianness and Migration from the Risorgimento to the 1960s (Palgrave Studies in Migration History) 3030889637, 9783030889630

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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN MIGRATION HISTORY

Edited by Stéphane Mourlane · Céline Regnard · Manuela Martini · Catherine Brice

Palgrave Studies in Migration History

Series Editors Philippe Rygiel, Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, Saint-Germain-du-Puy, France Per-Olof Grönberg, Luleå University of Technology, Luleå, Sweden David Feldman, Birkbeck College—University of London, London, UK Marlou Schrover, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands

This series explores the history of migration, from antiquity to the present day and across a wide geographical scope. Taking a broad definition of migration, the editors welcome books that consider all forms of mobility, including cross-border mobility, internal migration and forced migration. These books investigate the causes and consequences of migration, whether for economic, religious, humanitarian or political reasons, and the policies and organizations that facilitate or challenge mobility. Considering responses to migration, the series looks to migrants’ experiences, the communities left behind and the societies in which they settled. The editors welcome proposals for monographs, edited collections and Palgrave Pivots.

More information about this series at https://link.springer.com/bookseries/15185

Stéphane Mourlane · Céline Regnard · Manuela Martini · Catherine Brice Editors

Italianness and Migration from the Risorgimento to the 1960s

Editors Stéphane Mourlane Aix-Marseille University Aix-en-Provence, France

Céline Regnard Aix-Marseille University Aix-en-Provence, France

Manuela Martini LARHRA Lumière University Lyon, France

Catherine Brice CRHEC Paris-Est Créteil University Créteil, Paris, France

Palgrave Studies in Migration History ISBN 978-3-030-88963-0 ISBN 978-3-030-88964-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88964-7 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © Bettina Strenske/Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgments

This book is based on a selection of some papers presented at an international conference held in Paris at the National Museum of the History of Immigration and at the Italian Cultural Institute (16–17 June 2017) on the occasion of the exhibition “Ciao Italia. A Century of Italian Migration and Culture in France, 1860–1960). This conference has been benefited from the support of different research centers: the Centre d’histoire de Sciences Po (Paris), the Centre de Recherche en Histoire européenne comparée (CRHEC) (Université Paris-Est Créteil), the LARHRA (Université Lumière Lyon 2- Université Jean Moulin-Lyon 3—Université Grenoble-Alpes-ENS de Lyon-CNRS), the Mediterrapolis LIA (Aix-Marseille Université-CNRS-École française de Rome- Sapienza Università du Roma- Università degli Studi Roma Tre) and TELEMMe (Aix-Marseille Université-CNRS). The conference and the book have been funded by the Institut Universitaire de France. The editors warmly thank Marianne Amar (Musée national de l’histoire de l’immigration), Loretta Baldassar (University of Western Australia), João Fabio Bertonha (State University of Maringá), Michele Colucci (ISSM-CNR), Donna Gabaccia (University of Toronto), Fabrice Jesné (École française de Rome), Marc Lazar (CHSP, Sciences Po Paris), Matteo Sanfilippo (Università della Tuscia—Fondazione CSER), Camille Schmoll (Écoles des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales), Joseph Sciorra

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

(Queens College, City of New York University), Benjamin Stora (Musée national de l’histoire de l’immigration), Donatella Strangio (Università degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza) who took part in the conference scientific committee.

Contents

So Many Italies in so Many Suitcases Stéphane Mourlane, Céline Regnard, Manuela Martini, and Catherine Brice

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Italians Through Their Travels The Risorgimento Italians’ Journeys and Exile Narratives Flight, Expedition, or Peregrination? Delphine Diaz

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From Italy to the Levant: Mediterranean Itineraries of the Venetian Émigrés in 1849 Giacomo Girardi

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“He Is All American Now”: Italian–Americans in the Italian Campaign of World War II Manoela Patti

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Italianness, Flexible Citizenship and Belonging: Unraveling Paths of Emigrants’ Descendants’ “Return” in Northeastern Italy Melissa Blanchard

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CONTENTS

Italian Institutions Italianness in Colonial Tunisia Through the Dante Alighieri Society (1893–1920) Gabriele Montalbano

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The Promotion of Italianness in Argentina During the Interwar Period Laura Fotia

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The Ventottisti, or the Generation of 1928: Italian Consuls, the Spread of Fascism and the Question of Italian Imperialism João Fábio Bertonha The Italianization of the Italian–American and Fascism’s Entrance into American Ethnic Politics, 1930–1935 Jessica H. Lee Emigration for Adoption: The National Catholic Welfare Conference and the Adoption of Italian Children in the United States Silvia Cassamagnaghi

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Italian Words Italian Language in Exile in France in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century Laura Fournier-Finocchiaro

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Italianità Under Influence: Filippo Manetta, a Mazzinian Exile in America, a Confederate Agent in Italy Bénédicte Deschamps

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The Writing and Pidgin of Occasional Miners Native to Emilia Working in Pennsylvania and Illinois (1898–1914) Marco Fincardi From the Local Identity of Basilicata Nel Mondo to the National Community of Italiani Pel Mondo: Italian Press and Emigration (1924–1930) Gaetano Morese

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Manifestations of Italianness Crisscross Italianities—Circulations, Identifications, and Sociability in Nineteenth-Century Istanbul Marie Bossaert

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A Paper Trail: Italian Migrants in Marseille and Buenos Aires (1860–1914) Thibault Bechini

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“Bread Denied by the Nation” the Italians Abroad Exhibitions Between the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Anna Pellegrino When the Italians Came on the Scene: Immigration and Negotiation of Identities in the Popular Theater of São Paulo in the Early Twentieth Century Virginia de Almeida Bessa Index

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Notes on Contributors

Virginia de Almeida Bessa is collaborating professor in the Institute of Brazilian Studies at the University of São Paulo and in the Music PostGraduate Program at the University of Campinas. Her research focuses on popular music history and the transnational circulation of musical theater. She is the author of the book A escuta singular de Pixinguinha (Alameda Editorial, 2010) awarded by the Funarte Prize of Critical Studies in Music and translated to french in 2019 (Pixinguinha ou la singularité d’une écoute, Presses Universitaires du Midi). Thibault Bechini holds a doctorate from Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University, with a thesis on the contribution of Italian migrants to the urbanization of Marseille and Buenos Aires (1860–1914). He is a fellow of the Convergences Migrations Institute; his research now focuses on the estates of Italians who died abroad at the end of the nineteenth century. João Fábio Bertonha has a Ph.D. in history from the University of Campinas, the Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches (accreditation to supervise research) from the University of São Paulo, and further postdoctoral qualifications from the University of Rome, the University of São Paulo, and the European University Institute. He has also been a specialist in strategic studies and defense at the National Defense University of the United States, a researcher at the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), and a visiting researcher in many countries. He is currently a professor at the State University of

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Maringá and has written dozens of books and articles in his research fields. http://joaofabiobertonha.com Melissa Blanchard is a senior research fellow at Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), working at Centre Norbert Elias, Marseille. She received a joint Ph.D. in Anthropology at Aix-Marseille Université I and Università degli Studi di Modena. Her research interests include migration, mobilities, and gender. She has published a monograph on Senegalese migrant women in Marseille and has edited a book on religious mobility. Her latest research analyzes “return migration” from Chile and Argentina toward Italy and other European countries. She has published extensively on this theme in both English and French. Marie Bossaert is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Naples Federico II (Scuola Superiore Meridionale) and a fellow at the Institut Convergence Migrations. She obtained a Ph.D. in history in 2016 at the École Pratique des Hautes Etudes and the Istituto Italiano di Scienze Umane, with a dissertation entitled Connaître les Turcs et l’Empire ottoman en Italie. Constructions et usages des savoirs sur l’Orient de l’Unité à la guerre italo-turque. Her research focuses on the history of scholarly Orientalism, especially in Italy, in the Ottoman empire and Algeria, and on the social, political, and cultural history of the Mediterranean (nineteenth-first twentieth c.). A former fellow at the École française de Rome, she dedicated several studies to the circulations between Italy and the Ottoman empire and co-edited the special issues Transturkology (European Journal of Turkish Studies, 2017) and “La fabrique transnationale de la ‘science nationale’ en Italie” (Mélanges de l’École française de Rome, 2018). Catherine Brice is professor in modern history at Université Paris-Est Créteil, CRHEC, and member of the Institut Universitaire de France (2013–2018). Her research has addressed different topics. She first worked on politics and architecture in Liberal Italy and published Monumentalité publique et politique à Rome: le Vittoriano (1870–1943),Rome, 1998, an exhaustive enquiry on the Monument to Victor-Emmanuel II located in the center of Rome. She then switched from the monument to the monarchy itself, questioning the part played by the Savoia dynasty in the construction of Italian identity at the end of the nineteenth century

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(La monarchie et la construction de l’identité nationale italienne (1861– 1900),Paris, EHESS, 2010). A funded project on Fraternity, conducted between 2008 and 2012, saw her research interests expand beyond Italy and into political anthropology (with Gilles Bertrand and Gilles Montègre (co-ed.), Fraternité. Pour une histoire du concept, Grenoble, 2012; Catherine Brice (ed.), La fraternité en actions: Frères de sang, frères d’armes, frères ennemis en Italie (1824–1924), Rome, 2017). She met Italian exiles while carrying out this research (with Sylvie Aprile (ed.), Exil et fraternité au XIXème siècle, Bordeaux, 2013), and she designed a project on exile and innovation, specifically the circulation of political “technologies” (Delphine Diaz and Catherine Brice (ed.), Mobilités, savoir-faire et innovation au XIX e siècle, Revue d’histoire du 19 ème siècle, 2017-1; Catherine Brice (ed.), Mobilités créatrices, Diasporas. Circulations, migrations, histoire, 2017-2). The discovery of vast, unexploited archives on the confiscations of exiles’ properties led her to create a new project in which she questions the modernizing effects on states of confiscating policies. This new project deals with the comparative history of administration, material sovereignty, and policies (Catherine Brice (ed.), Séquestres et confiscations des biens des exilés dans l’Italie du 19 ème siècle, MEFRIM, 2017-2. She published an edited volume Exile and the circulation of political practices in the nineteenth century, Cambridge Scholars, 2020 Silvia Cassamagnaghi is a researcher and lecturer in contemporary history at the Università degli Studi, Milan, Italy. She also participates as a columnist in history programs for Italian national television. Her main topics include Italian-American cultural relationships, media studies, gender studies, and the history of emigration and she has published several articles about these subjects. Her most recent book, Operazione Spose di guerra. Storie di amore e di emigrazione (Feltrinelli, 2014), is focused on the experience of young Italian girls who married American soldiers during World War II and emigrated to the United States. Bénédicte Deschamps is associate professor in American studies at the Université de Paris, where she teaches US history. She has published numerous articles on Italian-American history and has co-edited several books, including Les Petites Italies dans le monde, Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2007 and Racial, Ethnic, and Homophobic Violence: Killing in the Name of Otherness,London: Routledge Cavendish, 2007.

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In 2020, she published a history of the Italian-American press from the Risorgimento to WWI (Histoire de la presse italo-américaine du Risorgimento à la Grande guerre, Paris: L’Harmattan, 2020) and in 2021 she co-edited (with Pantaleone Sergi) a volume on the Italian immigrant journalism in the world (Voci d’Italia fuori d’Italia : Giornalismo e stampa dell’emigrazione, en collaboration avec Pantaleone Sergi, Cosenza, Pellegrini editore, 2021). Delphine Diaz is associate professor in nineteenth-century history at the University of Reims, France, and a member of the Institut universitaire de France (IUF). Former student of the École Normale Supérieure, she obtained a Ph.D. in history in 2012 at the University of Paris Panthéon-Sorbonne. In 2014, she published a book entitled Un asile pour tous les peuples? Exilés et réfugiés étrangers dans la France du premier xix e siècle (Augustin Thierry prize from the History Committee of Paris). Her research focuses on political exiles and asylum policies in France and Europe in the nineteenth century. Between 2016 and 2020, she coordinated a research program funded by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (AsileuropeXIX, “Towards a European history of exile and asylum during the 19th century”). She is the author of a forthcoming book on the history of refugees in Europe (En exil. Les réfugiés en Europe de la fin du XVIII e siècle à nos jours, Paris, Gallimard, « Folio », 2021). Marco Fincardi conducts research on social history and popular culture and teaches contemporary history at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. He is a member of the scientific committee for the journal “Memoria e ricerca” and for the Gramsci Emilia-Romagna Foundation. He has published: La terra disincantata (Unicopli, 2001); Emigranti a passo romano. Emigranti dell’Alto Veneto e Friuli nella Germania hitleriana (Cierre, 2002); and Campagne emiliane in transizione (Clueb, 2008). Laura Fotia has a Ph.D. in European and International Studies and the Abilitazione Scientifica Nazionale as Associate Professor in American History and Institutions. She is Adjunct Professor of Contemporary History of Latin America and History and Institutions of Latin America at the Department of Political Sciences of the University of Roma Tre. She was Adjunct Professor, Research Fellow, and Visiting Fellow at university departments and research institutes in several European and American countries. Her research interests include cultural and political relations

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between Argentina, United States, and Italy; transitional justice, human rights violations, and “hate politics” in Latin America. Laura Fournier-Finocchiaro is associate professor in Italian studies at Paris 8 University. Her research focuses on the construction of Italian national identity (nineteenth–twentieth centuries). Her latests works are on political exiles from the countries of Southern Europe during the nineteenth century (Les exilés politiques espagnols, italiens et portugais en France au 19e: questions et perspectives, ed. L. Fournier-Finocchiaro & C. Climaco, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2017), and on intellectual exchanges and networks in the nineteenth century between France and Italy (Entre France et Italie: échanges et réseaux intellectuels au XIX e siècle, ed. M. Colin, L. Fournier-Finocchiaro & S. Tatti, Transalpina,21, 2018, online https://journals.openedition.org/transalpina/285). Giacomo Girardi obtained his Ph.D. in History from the University of Milan and Université Paris-Est Créteil. He is post-doc Fellow at the Archivio del Moderno, Università della Svizzera Italiana (Switzerland) and a member of the Swiss National Science Foundation project “Milan and Ticino (1796–1848). Shaping the Spatiality of a European Capital”. His research focuses on nineteenth-century political history. He published articles in Italian and international journals and books, and he edited a volume on the antiquity of Sicily (Lionardo Vigo, Protostasi sicula, Roma, 2017). He is a member of the editorial board of the journal “Il Risorgimento. Rivista di storia del Risorgimento e di storia contemporanea” and member of the Scientific Committee of the Center for European Studies (Università di Verona). Jessica H. Lee is the executive director of Freedom & Citizenship, an educational program for low-income New York City high school students run through Columbia University’s Center for American Studies. Jessica received her Ph.D. in history from Columbia in 2016 with a dissertation titled “To the Seventh Generation: Italians and the Creation of an American Political Identity, 1921–1948”. Her research interests center on questions of citizenship, political identity, and mass migration. Her forthcoming manuscript examines Italy’s successful politicization of its migrants in America before and during World War II. Manuela Martini is professor in modern history at the Université Lumière Lyon 2 (France) and a member of the Institut Universitaire

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de France. She belongs to numerous scientific organizations and advisory boards and is a member of the editorial committee of the journal Gender & History. Her research lies at the intersection between the history of the family and gender, labor history, and migration studies. She has published extensively in French, Italian, Spanish, German, and English and has authored or edited twenty-five books and journals’ special issues on European economic history, gender history, and international labor migrations. Her publications include the authored book Bâtiment en famille. Migrations et petite entreprise en banlieue parisienne au XXe siècle, CNRS Éditions, 2016 and the collective book What is work? Gender ant the Crossroads of Home, Family and Business from the Early Modern Era to the Present (edited with Raffaella Sarta and Anna Bellavitis), Oxford-New York, Berghhan, 2018 (paperback 2020). For further details, see: http:// larhra.ish-lyon.cnrs.fr/membre/506. Gabriele Montalbano obtained his Ph.D. in Late modern history at EPHE of Paris with a joint supervision with the University of Florence (2018). His Ph.D. thesis focuses on the Italian nation-building in the French Protectorate of Tunisia. He is currently adjunct professor of history of colonial and postcolonial spaces at University of Bologna, and post-doc researcher at SciencesPo of Paris on slavery in late Ottoman and colonial Libya. Alumnus of “Collegio Superiore dell’Alma Mater Studiorum”—University of Bologna and of “École Normale Supérieure” of Paris, he was visiting scholar at the “Institut de Recherche sur le Maghreb Contemporain” of Tunis and at Remarque Institute of New York University. His main research interests concern the social, cultural, and political history of the Mediterranean area in the age of Imperialism. Gaetano Morese, Ph.D. in history, many times adjunct professor, he carried out research for various public and private cultural institutions and foundations. Actually, he is studying youth participation in the European integration between the ’70s and ’90s. Member of the scientific committee for the journal “Rassegna Storica Lucana”, his main interests are the ruling classes’ history and the social, economic, cultural, and landscape dynamics. He attended many national and international seminars and conferences, including The migration conference (Bari, 2019) and The Transatlantic Studies Association 18th annual conference (Lancaster UK, 2019) with a paper on “A country built on the paper «Italiani per mondo»”. Among his recent works, there are essays on the Italian referendum of 1946 ( 2020), on the identification and discrimination process

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(2020), and a monograph on the Home Front during the First World War (2018). Stéphane Mourlane is associate professor in modern history at AixMarseille University (France) and researcher at TELEMMe-Maison Méditerranéenne des Sciences de l’Homme in Aix-en-Provence. He is a former member of the École Française de Rome and has been a visiting scholar at New York University (2015) and North Carolina State University (2017). His research interests focus on Italian migration, especially in the south of France, and Italian culture around the Mediterranean space. He has published (with C. Regnard) Empreintes italiennes. Marseille et sa région(2014), (with A. Delpirou) Atlas de l’Italie contemporaine. En quête d’unité (2011), and (with Y. Gastaut and R. Schor) Nice cosmopolite1860–1980(2010). He is editor (with V. Baby-Collin, S. Bouffier) of Atlas des migrations en Méditerranée de l’Antiquité à nos jours (2021), (with J. Boutier) Marseille l’Italienne. Histoires d’une passion séculaire (2021), (with D. Païni) Ciao Italia. Un siècle d’immigration et de culture italiennes en France(2017), (with Baby-Collin, S. Mazzella, C. Regnard, and P. Sintès) of Migrations et temporalités en Méditerranée. Les migrations à l’épreuve du temps XIXe-XXIe siècles (2017), (with E. Canepari and B. Mesini) of Mobil hom(m)es. Formes d’habitats et modes d’habiter la mobilité XVI e -XXI e siècles (2016), (with L. Anteby-Yemini, V. BabyCollin, S. Mazzella, C. Parizot, C. Regnard, and P. Sintès) of Borders, Mobilities and Migrations. Perspectives from the Mediterranean, nineteenth and twenty-first Century (2014), and (with C. Regnard) of Les batailles de Marseille. Immigration, violences et conflits XIX e -XX e siècles (2012). He has also been editor of the following special issues: “L’Europe en mouvement”, Homme & Migrations (2017) and “L’immigration italienne dans le Sud-Est de la France. Nouvelles perspectives”, Archivio Storico dell’Emigrazione Italiana(2015). He was a scientific advisor of the “Ciao Italia!” exhibition at the National Museum of Immigration History in Paris (2017). He is a member of the editorial committee of the journal Studi Emigrazione. http://telemme.mmsh.univ-aix.fr/membres/St%C3%A9phane_Mour lane Manoela Patti is assistant professor in contemporary history at the University of Palermo, Department of Political Sciences and International Relations. Her research interests mainly focus on World War II, the history of the Mafia and its transnational networks, fascism, migration,

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and Republican Italy. Her current project deals with the history of radical psychiatry movement in Italy, where she is focusing on the Southern Italy and Psichiatria Democratica. Her publications include: Un ponte ancora aperto? Alcune note sull’emigrazione siciliana verso gli Stati Uniti durante il fascismo, in Migrazioni e Fascismo, «Meridiana. Rivista di storia e scienze sociali», n. 92, 2018, which she co-edited with G. D’Amico; Il rinnovamento psichiatrico in Sicilia prima della Legge 180 (1968–1978), in G. Mamone, F. Milazzo (eds), Storia e psichiatria. Problemi, ricerche, fonti, Biblion, Milan 2019; and the monographs La mafia alla sbarra. I processi fascisti a Palermo, Istituto Poligrafico Europeo, Palermo 2014; La Sicilia e gli alleati. Tra occupazione e Liberazione, Donzelli, Rome 2013. Anna Pellegrino is associate professor in contemporary history at Bologna University. She is also an associate researcher at the Laboratoire ICT/Paris Diderot 7 and at the CNAM (Paris). Her research interests have focused on the history of work culture in industrial societies and the great World Fairs of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Her publications include “Les Fées machines”. Les ouvriers italiens aux Expositions universelles (1851–1911),Paris, Classiques Garnier, 2017; Lacittà più artigiana d’Italia. Firenze 1861–1929, Milano, FrancoAngeli, 2012; Italian workers and the universal exhibitions of the nineteenth century: imaginaries and representations of technology and science,Quaderns d’Història de l’Enginyeria, vol. 13 (2012), pp. 97–114; and Entre clasicismo e industria: imágenes del país del arte en las Exposiciones Universales del siglo XIX, en Sofía Diéguez Patao (ed.), Los lugares del arte: Identidad y representación, Barcelona, Laertes, 2014. Céline Regnard is associate professor in modern history at AixMarseille University, France. As a researcher, she is a part of the research unit TELEMMe(Temps, Espaces, Langages, Europe MédirionaleMéditerranée) in the Maison Méditerranéenne des Sciences de l’Homme in Aix-en-Provence, institution of which she is deputy director. She is also a former member of the Ecole Normale Supérieure, a former junior fellow of the Institut Universitaire de France and a former visiting scholar to the Moïse A. Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora(North Carolina State University), USA. She obtained a Ph.D. in history in 2006. Her research explores migration history, with a focus on Marseille as a transit place for Italian and other migrants before Word War I. Recently, her main focus has been on

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Syrian migration. She has published several books and papers on migration history. Recent among them are En Transit. Les Syriens à Beyrouth, Marseille, Le Havre, New York (1880–1914), Anamosa, 2021; « The Transit Stage as a Migratory Experience. The Syrians in Marseille (1880– 1920) », in Christina Reimann, Martin Öhman (eds.), Migrants and the Making of the Urban-Maritime World, New York/ London, Routledge, 2021; “Stopgap Territories: Inns, Hotels and Boarding Houses in Marseille at the beginning of the 1870s”, Quaderni storici, 2016; “Urban growth and police reform in Marseille (1855–1908)”, Urban History, 2016; Migrations et temporalités en Méditerranée. Les migrations à l’épreuve du temps (XIX e -XX e siècle), (as an editor) 2017; Borders, Mobilities and Migrations: Perspectives from the Mediterranean, nineteenth-twenty-first Century, (as an editor) 2014; and Empreintes italiennes. Marseille et sa région, (with S. Mourlane), 2013. http://telemme. mmsh.univ-aix.fr/membres/C%C3%A9line_Regnard.

List of Figures

The Risorgimento Italians’ Journeys and Exile Narratives Flight, Expedition, or Peregrination? Fig. 1

Fig. 2

Map of Angelo Frignani’s itinerary between 1829 and 1831 (Source AsileuropeXIX: https://asileurope. huma-num.fr [map designed by Hugo Vermeren]) Map of Cristina di Belgiojoso’s itinerary between 1848 and 1850 (Source AsileuropeXIX: https://asileurope. huma-num.fr [map designed by Hugo Vermeren])

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The Italianization of the Italian–American and Fascism’s Entrance into American Ethnic Politics, 1930–1935 Fig. 1

Chart of foreign language students in New York City, 1932–1936 (Source Dr. Alberto C. Bonaschi, “The Teaching of Modern Foreign Languages: Italian,” (New York: Board of Education, March 30, 1936), MSS 40 Leonard Covello Papers, Box 97 F. 2, Balch Institute, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia)

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From the Local Identity of Basilicata Nel Mondo to the National Community of Italiani Pel Mondo: Italian Press and Emigration (1924–1930) Fig. 1

La Basilicata nel mondo, n. 2, 1924 (Source Biblioteca Nazionale, Potenza)

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LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 2

Italiani pel Mondo, n. 1, 1928 (Source Biblioteca Communale, Varese)

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“Bread Denied by the Nation” the Italians Abroad Exhibitions Between the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Chart 1

Fig. 1 Fig. 2 Fig. 3 Fig. 4

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Departures of Italian emigrants during the first 50 years after national unification The Italians Abroad Exhibitions Pavillion in Milan 1906. Cartolina ufficiale dell’esposizione 1906 Cover, L’Italia al Perù, rassegna della vita e dell’opera italiana nel Perù, Lima, 1906 Cover, Gli Italiani nella repubblica argentina, Buenos Aires, 1906 Cover, Gl’Italiani in Isvizzera, compilata per cura del giornale La Nazione italiana (Vevey, Tip. del giornale, 1906) Italian businessman in his vineyard called “Gambellara”, in Stabilimento viti-vinicolo di Domenico Tomba in Belgrano di Mendoza, Repubblica Argentina (Album fotografico), 1906 Still section and moving presses, in Stabilimento viti-vinicolo di Domenico Tomba in Belgrano di Mendoza, Repubblica Argentina (Album fotografico), 1906 Società Italiana di Mutuo Soccorso Anziana, in Gl’Italiani in Isvizzera, compilata per cura del giornale La Nazione italiana (Vevey, Tip. del giornale, 1906) Nel Padiglione degli italiani all’estero. La Mostra della Dante Alighieri di Buenos Aires in Milano e l’esposizione Internazionale del Sempione 1906, n. 18, 270 Mostra degli italiani all’estero. Colonia Eritrea (fot. Varischi, Artico e c., Milano), in Milano e l’esposizione Internazionale del Sempione 1906, n. 17, 243

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When the Italians Came on the Scene: Immigration and Negotiation of Identities in the Popular Theater of São Paulo in the Early Twentieth Century Fig. 1

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Fig. 3

Map 1–Italian migration to Brazil (1878–1902) Source Angelo Trento Do outro lado do Atlântico: Um século de imigração italiana no Brasil (São Paulo: Nobel, 1988), 39 Map 2–Italian migration to Brazil (1903–1920) (Source Angelo Trento Do outro lado do Atlântico: Um século de imigração italiana no Brasil (São Paulo: Nobel, 1988), 60) Excerpt from the column of Juó Banère (Source O Pirralho, October 21, 1911, p. 10)

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So Many Italies in so Many Suitcases Stéphane Mourlane, Céline Regnard, Manuela Martini, and Catherine Brice

There is a paradox in the history of modern Italy. Italian unification, a long process that began in the nineteenth century, was taking place just as millions of people were leaving their native lands to live in the United States or elsewhere in Europe. This concurrence impacted on the way in

S. Mourlane (B) · C. Regnard Aix-Marseille University, CNRS, TELEMME, Aix en Provence, France e-mail: [email protected] C. Regnard e-mail: [email protected] M. Martini LARHRA, Lumière University Lyon 2, Lyon, France e-mail: [email protected] C. Brice CRHEC, Paris-Est Créteil University, Créteil, Paris, France e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. Mourlane et al. (eds.), Italianness and Migration from the Risorgimento to the 1960s, Palgrave Studies in Migration History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88964-7_1

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which the Italian nation was defined and on the Italian people’s sense of belonging.1 The construction of the Italian state was largely based on the development of the notion of “Italianness” (Italianità). This word, whose use has been attested since the middle of the nineteenth century,2 originally referred to the quality of being Italian, especially with regard to language, geography, people, artistic works, and heritage.3 Reading like an inventory of the nature and qualities of Italy, it encompassed what Italy represented in these nationalist times in the same way that the words “Greekness” and “Romanness” are used to refer to the worlds of the two great ancient civilizations and their artistic output. In the second half of the century, the “engineers of Italianness”4 began to manipulate the concept for political purposes. For some historians, Italianness sustained a national discourse that was based on a now almost biological connection with the mother country.5 It had to be maintained, preserved, and passed on in order to ensure the regeneration that was necessary for the development of a “Great Italy.”6 Moreover, the well-known saying “Fatta l’Italia, bisogna fare gli Italiani” (Italy has been made, now we have to make Italians), which has virtually become a proverb, made this all the more pressing. In the middle of the nineteenth century, national unity was a new development, and regional allegiances, dialects, and cultures still dominated. Moreover, the departure of millions of nationals across the Alps and the Atlantic raised questions about the strength of the Italian unitarian project.

1 Manuela Martini, “Migrazioni: communità e nazione,” Memoria e Ricerca 8 (1996): 8; Matteo Sanfilippo, Problemi di storiografia dell’emigrazione italiana (Viterbo: Sette Città, 2002), 213; Emilio Franzina, “La patria degli italiani all’estero,” Il Mulino 4 (July– August 2011): 611. 2 Daniel Grange, “La société ‘Dante Alighieri’ et la défense de l’ ‘Italianità’,” Mélanges

de l’École française de Rome. Italie et Méditerranée 117, no. 1 (2005): 261. 3 Silvana Patriarca, Italianità. La costruzione del carattere nazionale (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2010). 4 Giulio Bollati, “L’Italiano,” in Storia d’Italia, vol. 1, I caratteri originali (Turin: Einaudi, 1979), 949–1022. 5 Alberto Mario Banti, Sublime madre nostra: la nazione italiana dal Risorgimento al fascismo (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2011), VII. 6 Emilio Gentile, La Grande Italia. Il mito della nazione nel XX secolo (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2011), 36.

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However, as some studies have shown,7 migration and exile did not weaken national sentiment but rather contributed to strengthening and perhaps even embodying it.8 Italian emigrants were generally poorly received abroad.9 As a result, those who did not feel very Italian when they left would go on to discover, feel, and affirm their connection with the mother country through a multiplicity of experiences that varied according to the contexts of their arrival.10 The way in which migration phenomena are studied strongly influences the level of attention historians give to identity. Since the 1980s, researchers have been gradually abandoning both the state-centered approaches, and the macroeconomic prism of push-and-pull explanations (and also consequently studies of immigration or emigration, those linear trajectories from a departure point to an arrival point) to concentrate instead on the individuals concerned. The focus is now on the migrants’ complex movements and on migratory flows within a sometimes vast sphere whose common denominator is the migrants.11 In the case of the Italian migrants, studies have highlighted the extent of temporary migrations, of travels back and forth between their adopted and homelands, and

7 For a global historiographical approach, see in particular: Donna Gabaccia, “Italian History and Gli italiani nel mondo, Part I,” Journal of Modern Italian Studies 2, no. 1 (1997): 45–66; Donna Gabaccia, “Italian history and Gli italiani nel mondo, Part II,” Journal of Modern Italian Studies 3, no. 1 (1998): 73–97; Sanfilippo, Problemi di storiografia. 8 Jean-Charles Vegliante, “L’émigration comme facteur d’italianisation au tournant du siècle,” in Vert, blanc, rouge. L’identité nationale italienne. Actes du colloque des 24 et 25 avril 1998 (Rennes: LURPI, 1999), 223–43; Ludovico Incisa Di Camerana, Il grande esodo: storia delle migrazioni italiane nel mondo (Milano: Corbaccio, 2003), 77– 90; Mark I. Choate, Emigrant Nation: The Making of Italy Abroad (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008); Paola Corti, “Le dinamiche dell’italianità nella storia delle migrazioni nazionali,” Passato e Presente 89 (2011): 89; Sanfilippo, Problemi di storiografia, 213; Franzina, “La patria degli italiani,” 612. 9 Matteo Sanfilippo, Faccia da Italiano (Rome: Salerno Editrice, 2011). 10 Martini, “Migrazioni,” 7; Corti, “Le dinamiche dell’italianità,” 89; Donna Gabaccia,

“L’Italia fuori d’Italia,” in Storia d’Italia, Annali 24: Migrazioni, eds Paola Corti and Matteo Sanfilippo (Turin: Einaudi, 2009), 227. 11 Loretta Baldassar, “Ritorni e viste in Patria: la circolarità dello spazio migratorio,” in Storia d’Italia, eds Corti and Sanfilippo, 469; Paola Corti, Temi e problemi di storia delle migrazioni italiane (Viterbo: Sette Città, 2013), 18.

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even of permanent returns,12 which accounted for around half of those who had departed. This renewed theoretical approach has quite naturally been accompanied by a semantic shift whereby the vocabulary now used comes from the domain of migration and the migrants. The emergence of the concepts of flow and migration has also led to a rethink of the notion of integration. Contributions from the field of ethnic studies since the 1960s have played a significant role in this regard.13 Postulating that ethnic and cultural identities did not disappear in host societies but rather coexisted alongside new allegiances14 in a form of transculturation,15 proponents of the ethnic approach switched to analyzing the migrant’s “adjustment process,” as understood from a comparative perspective.16 This meant no longer just examining possible “double loyalties”17 but also reflecting on the modalities of forming “mixed identities,”18 which resulted not just from links between the community of departure and the host country but also from substantial contact with other migrant populations present in the same place at the same time. All Italians

12 George R. Gilkey, “The United States and Italy: Migration and Repatriation,” Journal of Developing Areas 2 (1967): 23–35; Betty Boyd Caroli, Italian Repatriation from the United States, 1900–1914 (Staten Island, NY: Center for Migration Studies, 1973); Francesco Paolo Cerase, L’emigrazione di ritorno: innovazione o reazione? L’esperienza dell’emigrazione di ritorno dagli Stati Uniti d’America (Rome: Istituto Gini, 1971); Dino Cinel, The National Integration of Italian Return Migration, 1870–1929 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Loretta Baldassar, Visits Home. Migration Experience between Italy and Australia (Carlton South, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 2001); Francesco Paolo Cerase, “L’onda di ritorno,” in Storia dell’emigrazione italiana. Partenze, eds Pietro Bevilacqua, Andreina De Clementi and Emilio Franzina (Rome: Donzelli, 2001), 113–25. 13 Dino Cinel, “Ethnicity: A Neglected Dimension of American History,” The International Migration Review 3 (1969): 58–63. 14 George E. Pozzetta, “Immigrants and Ethnics: The State of Italian-American Historiography,” Journal of American Ethnic History 1 (1989): 67–95. 15 Marie-Christine Michaud, “The Italians in America: From Transculturation to Identity Renegotiation,” Diasporas 19 (2012): 41–51. 16 Samuel L. Baily, “The Adjustment of Italian Immigrants in Buenos Aires and New

York, 1870–1914,” The American Historical Review 2 (1983): 281–305. 17 Mona Harrington, “Loyalties: Dual and Divided,” in Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups, eds Stephan Thernstrom, Anna Orlov, Oscar Handlin (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980), 676–86. 18 Maurizio Ambrosini, “La costruzione di identità trasversali: relazioni e appartenenze sociali attraverso i confini,” in Storia d’Italia, eds Corti and Sanfilippo, 674.

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were contributing, in accordance with their location, to an ever-changing definition of Italianness. In the field of social sciences, Italianness is, therefore, by its very nature, a concept that requires a multi-site, comparative study.19 Due to the influence of anthropology since the 1990s,20 the prefix “trans” has been added to the root “migrant” to refer to an individual who develops and maintains diverse relationships—familial, economic, social, religious, and political—between their host country and their country of departure through practices that are now called “transnational.”21 Although migration historians have debated the novelty of this phenomenon,22 transnationalism has been imposed on them as an analytical framework. In the 1990s, in an extension of Cohen’s analyses,23 some historians (particularly Anglo–American historians) saw the diasporic approach as a means of better understanding the ways in which transnational identities are structured.24 During the last decades, the diasporic approach has been expanded upon and discussed.25 It was noted 19 Maddalena Tirabassi, “Transnazionalismo, diaspora, generazioni e migrazioni italiane,” in Itinera. Parigmi nelle migrazioni italiane, ed. Maddalena Tirabassi (Turin: Edizioni Fondazione Giovanni Agnelli, 2005), 10. 20 Linda Basch, Nina Glick-Schiller, and Cristina Szanton Blanc, Nations Unbound:

Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments and Deterritorialized Nation-States (London: Routledge, 1994). 21 Nina Glick Schiller, Linda Basch, and Cristina Blanc-Szanton, “Transnationalism: A New Analytic Framework for Understanding Migration,” in Towards a Transnational Perspective on Migration: Race, Class, Ethnicity, and Nationalism Reconsidered, eds Nina Glick Schiller, Linda Basch, and Cristina Blanc-Szanton (New York: New York Academy of Science, 1992). 22 Roger Waldinger and David Fitzgerald, “Transnationalism in Question,” American Journal of Sociology 109, no. 5 (2004): 1177–95. 23 Robin Cohen, Global Diasporas: An Introduction (London: UCL Press, 1997). 24 George E. Pozzetta and Bruno Ramirez, The Italian Diaspora: Migration Across the

Globe (Toronto: Multicultural History Society of Ontario, 1992); Rudolph J. Vecoli, “The Italian Diaspora 1876–1976,” in The Cambridge Survey of World Migration, ed. Robin Cohen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 114–22; Lydio F. Tomasi, Piero Gastaldo, and Thomas Row, The Columbus People: Perspectives in Italian Immigration to the Americas and Australia (New York: Center for Migration Studies, 1994); Fondazione Giovanni Agnelli, 1994; Donna Gabaccia, Italy’s Many Diasporas (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000). 25 In 2005, Donna Gabaccia wrote: “se dovessi scegliere un titolo per Italy’s Many Diasporas, oggi, preferirei intitolarlo Tutto il mondo è paese. (Nondimeno, sono anche certa che qualunque editore anglofono al quale mi rivolgessi con un titolo simile lo

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that the migrants had never defined themselves as a diaspora26 and that there had never been either one single “Italy outside of Italy” or an Italy that had accurately reproduced the real Italy inside another national border.27 The expression “hyphenated Italians”28 refers to an Italianness that was common to all Italians in the Peninsula and to the construction of a specific model.29 This Italianness was not necessarily a central component of the migrants’ identity, however, because, as Gabaccia pointed out, “their attachment to Italy was familial, personal and sometimes cultural, but [it] existed independently of a sincere sense of identity and national loyalty in their relationship with the new country.”30 It seems very difficult or futile even to measure the degree of Italianness contained within this identity.31 Understood in the sense of migratory flows, migration, therefore, appears to be a prerequisite for the elaboration, maintenance, and evolution of Italianness, which is taken here to mean a continuous process of invention, encounters, exchanges, and negotiation that results in the development of individual and collective cultural identities that vary

rifiuterebbe.) Con tale titolo, spererei di richiamare l’attenzione su tematiche di differenza di classe e sui linguaggi di etnicità, nazionalismo o de-territorializzazione che i migranti lavoratori stessi elaborarono dalle loro esperienze. Spererei, al contempo, di evidenziare quanto cruciale fu l’influenza della classe nel processo di costruzione della nazione tra i migranti. Un motivo per cui mi sono trovata a disagio a parlare di una diaspora italiana è che così poche tra le persone immigrate che ho studiato – con un’eccezione tra alcuni intellettuali anglofoni (me inclusa) – abbiano loro stessi utilizzato questa terminologia o metafora.” Donna Gabaccia, “Diaspore, discipline e migrazioni di massa dall’Italia,” in Itinera, ed. Tirabassi, 162–63. 26 Gabaccia, “Diaspore, discipline e migrazioni di massa dall’Italia,” 141–72. 27 Donna Gabaccia, “L’Italia fuori d’Italia,” in Storia d’Italia, eds Corti and Sanfilippo,

226. 28 Enzo Cafarelli, “Italiani col trattino,” in Dizionario Enciclopedico delle Migrazioni Italiane nel Mondo, eds Tiziana Grassi, Enzo Caffarelli, Mina Cappussi, Delfina Licata, and Gian Carlo Perego (Rome: SER, 2014), 391. 29 Corti, “Le dinamiche dell’italianità,” 89. 30 Gabaccia, “L’Italia fuori d’Italia,” 247. Unless otherwise indicated, this and all

subsequent quotations from Italian sources have been translated into English via French. 31 Emilio Franzina, “Una patria espatriata. Lealtà nazionale e caratteri regionali nell’emigrazione italiana all’estero (secoli XIX e XX),” Archivio Storico dell’Emigrazione Italiana, Quaderni 2 (2016): 7.

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through space and time.32 The Italianness that we seek to define in this book is not a reality set in stone but rather a process whose temporal and spatial modalities continuously evolve. Italianness in the second half of the nineteenth century was largely a political project with an internal mission that was linked to the national unification context. During the Risorgimento and right up until the end of the nineteenth century, the populations that the state needed to win over through a sense of national belonging were mainly the peasant masses, for whom the monarchy played a unifying role.33 Although the “Great Emigration” was the subject of much debate in political and economic circles,34 the young liberal state showed little concern until the beginning of the twentieth century.35 Beyond the autonomous process of identification and unification that takes place within groups of foreigners perceived negatively in their host countries36 and beyond the forms of sociability linked to the “Little Italies”37 pattern of settlement, national sentiment was spreading among these Italian emigrants, especially those attached to their local and regional “little homelands.” The driving force behind this was the actions of the migrant elites (who were either Risorgimental exiles or business professionals), regardless of their political divisions or any

32 Martini, “Migrazioni,” 7; Corti, Temi e problemi, 95; Amalia Signorelli, “Dall’emigrazione agli italiani nel mondo,” in Storia d’Italia, eds Corti and Sanfilippo, 487–503. 33 Catherine Brice, La monarchie et la construction de l’identité nationale italienne

(1861–1900) (Paris: EHESS, 2010). 34 Ercole Sori, “Il dibatto politico sull’emigrazione italiana dall’Unità alla crisi dello stato liberale,” in Gli Italiani fuori d’Italia, ed. Bruno Bezza (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1983), 19–43. 35 Caroline Douki, “The Liberal Italian State and Mass Emigration, 1860–1914,” in Citizenship and Those Who Leave: The Politics of Emigration and Expatriation, eds Nancy L. Green and François Weil (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007), 91–113; Choate, Emigrant Nation. 36 Corti, “Le dinamiche dell’Italianità,” 91. 37 Maria Susanna Garroni, “Little Italies,” in Storia dell’Emigrazione italiana. Arrivi,

eds Pietro Bevilacqua, Andreina De Clementi and Emilio Franzina (Rome: Donzelli, 2002), 207–33; Donna Gabaccia, “Global Geography of ‘Little Italy’: Italian Neighbourhood in Comparative Perspectives,” Modern Italy 1 (2006): 9–24; Marie-Claude Blanc-Chaléard et al., Les Petites Italies dans le monde (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2007).

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tensions linked to competition at the economic level.38 Some elemental “ethnic emblems”39 had thus begun to appear in references to local and national origins, such as in company insignias and shop signs and in the names of mutual aid societies and leisure associations.40 Remittances,41 fundraising for natural disasters in Italy,42 and participation in the funding of national monuments43 were also symbolic markers. While little is known about the reception of these symbolic actions among the vast majority of illiterate or semi-literate Italian migrants, we do know that, in Rome, there was a growing awareness of emigration’s value and benefits in terms of economics and foreign policy. The Luzzati Act of 1901 marked the first turning point in the state’s approach to migration. Italy’s general commission for emigration was responsible for its coordination,44 while the diplomatic and consular network was entrusted with the task of structuring the Italian “colonies” abroad.45 Both bodies lacked resources, however, and the “defense of Italianness” was most

38 Fernando J. Devoto, “La primera elite política italiana de Buenos Ayres (1852– 1880),” Studi Emigrazione 94 (1989): 168–93; Angelo Trento, “Italianità in Brazil: A Disputed Object of Desire,” in The Columbus People, eds Tomasi, Gastaldo, and Row, 264. 39 Werner Sollors, Alchimie d’America. Identità etnica e cultura nazionale (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1990), 299. 40 Emilio Franzina, L’immaginario degli emigranti. Miti e raffigurazioni dell’esperienza italiana fra due secoli (Treviso: Paese Pagus Edizioni, 1992). 41 Luigi Mittone, “Le rimesse degli emigrati sino al 1914,” Affari Sociali Internazionali 4 (1984): 125–60; Ercole. Sori, “Mercati e rimesse: il ruolo dell’emigrazione nell’economia italiana,” in Storia d’Italia, eds Corti and Sanfilippo, 249–83. 42 Franzina, “La patria degli Italiani,” 611. 43 Catherine Brice, Monumentalité publique et politique à Rome Le Vittoriano (Rome:

École française de Rome, 1998). 44 Francesco Grispo, “La struttura e il funziamento degli organi preposti all’ emigrazione (1901–1919),” in La formazione della diplomazia italiana 1861–1915, ed. Laura Pilotti (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1988), 709–30; Fabio Del Giudice, “Il commissario generale dell’emigrazione nel suo sviluppo storico (1901–1928). Personale, uffici, competenze,” in La formazione, ed. Pilotti, 748–73; Maria Rosaria Ostuni, “Momenti della ‘constrasta vita’ del commissariato generale dell’emigrazione (1901–1927),” in Gli Italiani, ed. Bezza, 101–18. 45 Ludovico Incisa di Camerana, “Diplomazia,” in Storia dell’Emigrazione italiana. Arrivi, eds Bevilacqua, De Clementi, and Franzina, 457–79; Consoli e consolati italiani dagli stati preunitari al fascismo (1802–1945), eds Marcella Aglietti, Mathieu Grenet, and Fabrice Jesné, (Rome: École française de Rome, 2020).

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often delegated to institutions like the Dante Alighieri Society,46 the Italian chambers of commerce,47 and the Church.48 Schools, both public and private, secular and religious, were the subject of particular attention because they taught the language, which was seen as central in the affirmation of Italianness.49 This seems to have been confirmed by the substantial mobilization of Italian–Americans during World War I.50 Moreover, Italianness continued to be developed during the Fascist period. All Italians, even those outside the Peninsula, were included in a national, totalitarian project.51 Piero Parini, who was head of the general directorate of Italians abroad, wrote that “according to Mussolini, the Italian abroad is a citizen. Living a long way from the “mother country” as a result of his own self-sacrifice and not, as he would wish, on Italy’s divine soil, he is an Italian who, through the love he still has for his country despite his long absence, deserves to be specially compensated with our care and affection.”52 The fasci all’estero, whose membership was growing, was the cornerstone of the propaganda machine, which aimed to

46 Beatrice Pisa, Nazione e politica nella Società “Dante Alighieri” (Rome: Bonacci Editore, 1995); Patrizia Salvetti, Immagine nazionale ed emigrazione nella Società “Dante Alghieri” (Rome: Bonacci Editore, 1995); Stéphane Mourlane, “Emigrazione e italianità: il comitato nizzardo della Società Dante Alighieri (dal 1900 agli anni Trenta),” Archivio Storico dell’Emigrazione Italiana 11 (2015): 48–56. 47 On the main Italian chambers of commerce globally, see Giulio Sapelli, Tra identità culturale e sviluppo di reti. Storia delle Camere di commercio italiane all’estero (Soveria Mannelli: Rubettino, 2000) and Giovanni Luigi Fontana and Emilio Franzina, Profili di camere di commercio italiane all’estero (Soveria Mannelli: Rubettino, 2001). 48 Carlo Bellò, “Scalabrini, Bonomelli e l’emigrazione italiana,” Studi Emigrazione 37 (1975): 3–44; Gianfausto Rosoli, Insieme oltre le frontiere. Momenti e figure dell’azione della Chiesa tra gli emigrati italiani nei secoli XIX e XX (Caltanissetta-Rome: Salvatore Sciascia Editore, 1996); Matteo Sanfilippo, “Chiesa, ordini religiosi ed emigrazione,” in Storia dell’emigrazione italiana. Partenze, eds Bevilacqua, De Clementi, and Franzina, 127–42; Matteo Sanfilippo, “La Chiesa catttolica,” in Storia dell’Emigrazione italiana. Arrivi, eds Bevilacqua, De Clementi, and Franzina, 481–88. 49 Patrizia Salvetti, “Le scuole italiane all’estero,” in Storia dell’Emigrazione italiana. Arrivi, Bevilacqua, De Clementi, and Franzina, 535–49. 50 Sanfilippo, Problemi di storiografia, 207. 51 For a historiographical and bibliographical approach, see Mario Pretelli, “Il fascismo e

gli italiani all’estero. Una rassegna storiografica,” Archivio Storico dell’Emigrazione Italiana 8 (2009): 161–72; João Fábio Bertonha, Fascismo, antifascismo e gli italiani all’estero. Bibliografia orientativa (1922–2015) (Viterbo: Edizioni Sette Città, 2015). 52 Piero Parini, Gli Italiani nel Mondo (Milan: Mondadori, 1935), 34.

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keep migrants in the national fold and ensure the regime’s international influence.53 Every Italian had to be loyal to the mother country since this loyalty would build the foundations of and the conditions for inclusion in an ideologized Italianness. Only Fascists were recognized as having full Italianness.54 Although party membership remained low, the regime’s social and cultural policies, which were aimed particularly at young people (who would gather in the case d’Italia under the supervision of the consuls),55 undoubtedly led to the wider diffusion of a Fascist Italianness that was based on a discourse of historical continuity and glorification of the national genius. This unabashed national assertion allowed exiled Italians to claim an unembarrassed dual allegiance. The Italian–Americans were the most successful example of this.56 Nevertheless, claims of Italianness were not the prerogative of Fascism, and the regime’s exiled opponents, even those with internationalist ideologies, did not escape the question of national belonging.57 The Italianness of migrants continued to be a political issue. The postwar period brought a return to calm, however. As dissension between the Christian Democrats and the Communists continued, Italianness took a less political, more cultural turn. As a result of regional government policies within the Peninsula, which most notably 53 Emilio Gentile, “La politica estera del partito fascista. Ideologia e organizzazione dei Fasci italiani all’estero (1920–1930),” Storia contemporanea 6 (1995): 897–956; Emilio Franzina and Matteo Sanfilippo, Il fascismo e gli emigrati. La parabola dei Fasci italiani all’estero (1920–1943) (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2003); Mario Pretelli, Il fascismo e gli Italiani all’estero (Bologna: CLUEB, 2010); Marie-Anne Matard-Bonucci, “Enjeux de la diplomatie culturelle fasciste. De l’Italien à l’étranger à l’Italien nouveau,” Mélanges de l’École française de Rome. Italie et Méditerranée 1 (2002): 163–78; Francesca Cavarocchi, Avanguardie dello spirito. Il fascismo e la propaganda culturale all’estero (Rome: Carocci, 2010). 54 Gentile, La Grande Italia, 160. 55 Daria Frezza Bicocchi, “Propaganda fascista e comunità’ italiane in USA: La Casa

Italiana della Columbia University,” Studi Storici 4 (1970): 661–97; Caroline Pane, “Le Case d’Italia in Francia. Organizzazione, attività e rappresentazione del fascismo all’estero,” Memoria e Ricerca 41 (2012): 160–73. 56 Philip V. Cannistraro, “Fascim and Italian Americans,” in Perspectives in Italian Immigration and Ethnicity, ed. Lydio F. Tomasi (New York: Center for Migrations Studies, 1977), 51–66; João Fábio Bertonha, “Fascism and Italian Communities in Brazil and the United States,” Italian Americana 19, no. 2 (2001): 146–57. 57 Eric Vial, L’Union Populaire Italienne 1937–1940. Une organisation de masse du parti communiste italien en exil (Rome: École française de Rome, 2007).

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supported associative activity abroad, it combined with renewed references to regional origins.58 Italianness thus remained a vague sense of belonging based on cultural traditions that were maintained to a greater or lesser extent by successive generations. In the last decades of the twentieth century, what had once been considered a stigma was now worn as a badge of honor, a “label” that connected the individual with a renewed interest in Italian culture and its internationally popular “made in Italy” products.59 As the mass migratory flows dwindled, Italianness prevailed.60 It was even revitalized by a strong memory dynamic61 that was expressed in a variety of forms in everyday life,62 in associative activity, and in cultural output (literature, film, music, newspapers, television) through commemorative events63 and heritage and museum projects.64 At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Italianness even found itself being

58 Giovanna Campani, Maurizio Catani, and Salvatore Palidda, “Italian immigrant associations in France,” in Immigrant Associations in Europe, eds John Rex, Daniele Joly, and Czarina Wilpert (Aldershot: Gower, 1987), 166–200; Pasquale Verdicchio, Bound by Distance: Rethinking Nationalism through the Italian Diaspora (London: Cranbury, 1997). 59 Corti, “Le dinamiche dell’Italianitàn” 96; Aurélien Delpirou and Stéphane Mourlane, Atlas de l’Italie contemporaine (Paris: Autrement, 2019): 88–89. 60 Franzina, “La patria degli Italiani,” 614; Gabaccia, “Italian History and Gli italiani nel mondo, part I,” 53. 61 Michele Colucci, “Storia o memoria? L’emigrazione italiana tra ricerca storica, uso pubblico e valorizzazione culturale,” Studi Emigrazione 167 (2007): 721–28; Stéphane Mourlane and Céline Regnard, “Invisibility and Memory: Italian Immigration in France During the Second Half of the 20th Century,” in Borders, Mobilities and Migrations: Perspectives from the Mediterranean, eds Lisa Anteby-Yemini et al. (Brussels: Peter Lang, 2014), 267–87; Stéphane Mourlane and Matteo Sanfilippo, “Mémoires de migrations entre France et Italie,” Hommes & Migrations n°1317–1318 (2017): 25–36. 62 Joseph Sciorra, Italian Folk: Vernacular Culture in Italian-American Lives (New York: Fordham University Press, 2018). 63 Marie-Christine Michaud, Columbus Day et les Italiens de New York (Paris: Presses Universitaires Paris-Sorbonne, 2011). 64 Loretta Baldassar, “Migration Monuments in Italy and Australia: Contesting Histories

and Transforming Identities,” Modern Italy 11, no. 1 (2006): 43–62; Lorenzo Principe, “I Musei delle migrazioni,” Studi Emigrazione 167 (2007); Maddalena Tirabassi, “I Luoghi della memoria delle migrazioni,” in Storia d’Italia, eds Corti and Sanfilippo, 709–24; Laura E. Ruberto and Joseph Sciorra, “Migrating Objects: Italian American Museums and the Creation of Collective Identity,” Altreitalie (January–June 2018): 131–54.

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reinvented with a boom in the number of new Italian emigrants, who were more skilled than their predecessors.65 While it is clear then that this link between migration and Italianness varied in time and space, it needs to be embodied, situated, for us to fully grasp its malleable contours.

*** Our book addresses this question by redoubling the vantage points in terms of both the different perspectives brought by researchers of various nationalities and the fields of analysis, which cover Italian emigration across North America, South America, Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. Part I examines the impact of the flows, journeys, migrations, and exiles on Italianness. All the authors in this section highlight the flexible, polysemic, and sometimes instrumental nature of this notion. Italianness seems, in the migration context, to be an invention in the sense of Hobsbawm and Ranger’s “invention of tradition.”66 However, just because it has been invented does not mean it does not exist. Quite the contrary in fact. Its many facets make it a widely used resource by both actors and institutions. The Italianness that Delphine Diaz talks about was still an idea, a dream, a plan that had been formulated by the exiles from different states in the Peninsula who were involved in the Risorgimento process. Italy was, at the time, first and foremost a political notion. It was not a univocal one though. There were immense differences both between Mazzini’s supporters and the defenders of a state that was to be built under the aegis of the Piedmont–Sardinia monarchy and between those who believed in Pius IX as the herald of unity and those who dreamed of a federal state. What they all had in common, however, was that they had fought for their idea of a future Italy and had then had to leave their country of origin and go into exile. Delphine Diaz focuses on the different types of 65 Matteo Sanfilippo, “La nuova emigrazione italiana (2000–2017): il quadro storico e storiografico,” Studi Emigrazione 207 (2017): 359–78; Hadrien Dubucs et al., “Je suis un Italien de Paris. Italian Migrant’s Incorporation in a European Capital City,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 43 (2017): 578–95. 66 Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).

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Italianness that these exiles carried with them in their luggage as well as the material aspects of the various types of migrations they made, such as their itineraries, how they perceived the migration (Frignani saw it as flight, Belgiojoso as a kind of “tourism,” etc.), and their lifestyles abroad. For all these exiles, there was never just one migration from point A to point B but rather a series of forced migrations, and the idea of returning to the mother country was never far from their minds.67 The accounts that Frignani, Ruffini, Belgiojoso, and many other migrants gave of their exile—or “journey,” to borrow Nancy Green’s term68 —contributed to creating a political narrative that helped shape an image of the Risorgimento. This image increased the popularity throughout Europe of the “Italian cause,” which was now subject to public opinion.69 Their accounts, which cover different periods (1821 for Frignani, 1830s for Ruffini, after 1848 for the Princess of Belgiojoso), construct the figure of the “poor exile”—and therefore, implicitly, act as a condemnation of the Italian states, which were still obscurantist and reactionary—and a memory of the mother country, which was detached from political considerations and linked instead to emotions, flavors, and colors. The nineteenth-century exiles’ Italianness was cultural, literary, and, above all, international, and it circulated in Europe through these autobiographical accounts, which are a rich source for historians.70 This notion of a transnational Italianness also runs through Melissa Blanchard and Manoela Patti’s articles.71 As Italian migrants returned home to Trentino and as the Italian–American soldiers stepped back onto home soil with the 1943 Sicily landings, their negotiated Italianness came 67 For a more instrumental interpretation of national identity among exiles, see Yossi Shain, The Frontier of Loyalty: Political Exiles in the Age of the Nation-State (1989; 2nd edition Michigan University Press, 2005) and Catherine Brice, “Les élites italiennes en exil: déclassement, déplacement et rattrapage (1821–1870),” Migrations d’élites, eds Nancy L. Green and Marianne Amar, (forthcoming). 68 Nancy L. Green, “Trans-frontières: pour une analyse des lieux de passage,” SocioAnthropologie 6 (1999): 38–48. 69 Elena Bacchin, Italofilia. Opinione pubblica britannica e Risorgimento italiano (1847–

1864) (Rome: Carocci 2014). 70 Matteo Sanfilippo, “Le autobiografie di migranti italiani,” Studi Emigrazione 182 (2011): 321–32. 71 Aihwa Ong, Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999); Jonathan Fox, “Unpacking Transnational Citizenship,” Annual Review of Political Science 8 (2005).

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face to face with a more essentialist Italianness that had been constructed by the authorities. The Trentino emigrants and their descendants were given the right to reclaim their original nationality in the name of an Italianness that was recognized by the Italian authorities. Melissa Blanchard shows us that this was a resource seized upon by these actors, who thought of themselves as Argentinian or South American first and Italian second. The reasons for this are not clear, although the language and, as in the case of the United States immigrants, culinary habits were mentioned.72 This was an especially paradoxical situation because, on the one hand, the Italianness of the Trentino returners was, first and foremost, one of regional identity, namely “Trentinness,” and, on the other, the first migrants who were owed this right of return were sometimes Austrian subjects. The return migrations in these cases were therefore primarily departure migrations. The Italian–Americans conscripted into the American army for the Sicilian landings had to constantly negotiate between being Italian, American, and Italian–American, depending on their past, the conditions of war, and government policies. Often Mussolini supporters, these conscripts had been imprisoned in 1942 in the United States as “enemy aliens” (just like the Germans and the Japanese). They owed their ability to commit to the cause to their status as Americans—and therefore as freedom fighters and supporters of democracy—and to the evolution in the theater of war. Their Italianness thus became Italian–American Italianness as it integrated with the vision of a plural American identity that was made up of a patchwork of immigrant populations, each bringing their own specific contribution. The soldiers’ Italianness was also beginning to be seen as an asset by the American Government because it could help troops move more effectively in operations. However, the reality, as Manoela Patti points out, was a far cry from this vision of a possible cultural link between the invading troops and the local populations, first, 72 Davide Paolini, Tullio Seppilli, and Alberto Sorbini, Migrazioni e culture alimentari (Foligno: Editoriale Ulbra, 2002); Patrizia La Trecchia, “Identity in the Kitchen: Creation of Taste and Culinary Memories of an Italian-American Identity,” Italian American 1 (2012): 44–56; Hasia R. Diner, Hungering for America: Italian, Irish, and Jewish Foodways in the Age of Migration (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013); Simone Cinotto, The Italian American Table: Food, Family, and Community in New York City (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2013); Simone Cinotto, “La cucina diasporica: il cibo come segno di identità culturale,” in Storia d’Italia, eds Corti and Sanfilippo, 653–72.

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because this was a war situation and, second, perhaps because the notion of Italianness had changed considerably after twenty years of Fascist rule. Giacomo Girardi focuses on the Venetian exiles of the post-1849 period—after the fall of the Republic of Venice—who left for the Levant (Corfu, Albania), which had been a traditional sphere of influence for the Serenissima over the centuries. The Italianness that these exiles took with them was culturally Venetian and politically Italian. Stressing the broad social diversity of this group of Venetian exiles after the revolutions of 1848, Giacomo Girardi also notes how familiar these places of refuge—which had been navigated for centuries by composite populations of fishermen, traders, and travelers, including Venetians—were for the immigrants. The Italian language was widely used in Corfu. In this context, it was the political Italianness that these exiles brought with them that was novel. Indeed, it had as much impact as the politics contributed by the Greek diaspora, because “a circle of diasporic Italians contributed to the Ionian national reunification,” which took place in 1864. While Italianness could be political, it could also be integrated into technological and scientific exchanges, as was the case in Albania. Pietro Marubi, a Garibaldian exile and the first to photograph Scutari (which was situated in Albania at the time), gave rise to a dynasty of photographers and a magnificent collection.73 However, as Girardi tells us, the exchanges were not just technological. Marubi, through his choice of subjects and categories (religious, professional, traditional, etc.), also contributed to documenting Albania and to creating an Albanian identity. The contributions grouped together in Part II, “Institutions,” reveal that the many facets of Italianness were all linked to a fight against the integration of Italian emigrants abroad and to a form of resistance on the part of the migrants to the dilution of their cultural background in their South American, North American, or colonial host societies.74 The local institutions that had emanated from the Italian immigrant populations and those linked to consular institutions and diplomatic

73 Loïc Chauvin and Christian Raby, Marubi. A Dynasty of Albanian Photographers (Paris: Écrits de Lumière, 2011). 74 On these questions, see the classic publication on the sociology of immigration by Jérémy Boissevain, Les Italiens de Montréal: l’adaptation dans une société pluraliste (Ottawa: Société Historique du Canada, 1971), plus the more recent publication by Choate, Emigrant Nation.

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representatives75 struggled to shield and sometimes even rescue Italian nationals living abroad from an integration that they considered to be too fast and dangerous. This was a constant in the history of unified Italy. Although they varied in intensity depending on the political regime in question, these struggles undeniably produced broadly similar forms of allegiance. The institutions transmitted the state’s vision of Italianness as it was at the time. They put forward a version of the fragmented discourse, which historiography has clearly identified through the salient features of the patriotic vision (popularized through various means) that was expounded in the national rhetoric of the Risorgimento.76 On the one hand, these visions of Italianness represented different aspects of a national narrative that was intrinsically linked to the mass migratory exodus. Since unification, this exodus had marked the history of an Italian people who did not behave like a unified nation. The young Italian state’s desire to maintain a connection with its nationals abroad was reflected in the Civil Code of 1865 and in the right to nationality by descent that was maintained in the Nationality Act of 1912.77 On the other hand, the conceptions of Italianness discussed in the articles in this section also reveal features that were specific to the migrants’ contexts of arrival. Moreover, there was a significant plurality of conceptions, exhibiting certain commonalities and continuities in regard to the vision that was coming out of Italy (which, while it was certainly undergoing change, nevertheless conferred a certain uniformity on these representations of Italianness). These conceptions were all linked to the specific construction of Italianness that developed according to the exchanges and encounters taking place within the host societies. On a cultural level, the promotion of Italianness by the Dante Alighieri Society in the French protectorate of Tunisia studied by Gabriele Montalbano illustrates this construction process as it unfolded at the turn of the twentieth century. Its most distinctive feature was its association with an imperial civilizing mission, which had very similar undertones to those 75 Incisa di Camerana, “Diplomazia.” 76 Banti, Sublime madre nostra; Brice, La monarchie. 77 Guido Tintori, “Cittadinanza e politiche di emigrazione nell’Italia liberale e fascista.

Un approfondimento storico,” in Familismo legale. Come (non) diventare italiani, ed. Giovanna Zincone (Bari-Rome: Laterza, 2006), 107–38; Roberta Clerici, “Il modello di cittadinanza in Italia: storia e prospettive,” in Modelli di cittadinanza in Europa, ed. Manuela Martini (Bologna: CLUEB, 2003), 17–30.

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resonating from the contemporary discourses surrounding attempts at Italian colonial expansion (which met with varying degrees of success).78 However, the empire in this case was that of another nation, and the main question—an eminently diplomatic question but also one that was perceptible in the field of cultural practices—was how to preserve the community’s Italianness without it becoming a threat because of its demographic importance. As historiography has shown, the turning point, or “la svolta,” came as a result of the policies of the institutions that supported the Mussolini regime abroad (the Fasci italiani all’estero) and the extensive Fascistization of Italian state institutions in the host countries in the mid-1930s.79 This development was formalized most notably through the systematic replacement of consular staff80 and the imposition of the Italian language in all institutional activities from 1937 onward. Laura Fotia highlights an aspect of this phase that has so far received little attention. In Argentina, the different institutions promoted not a homogenous Italianness but rather non-homogeneous and even divergent visions of Italianness under the Fascist regime. In some cases, there was a real competition not just between public and private institutions but also between individual private institutions and, less obviously, different public institutions. As a result of mistrust regarding the effectiveness of the Dante Alighieri Society, the Centro di Studi Italiani (the future Istituto Italiano di Cultura) was founded in 1937 in Buenos Aires. This was ultimately more successful than the Istituto Argentino di Cultura Italica (IACI), which had been founded in 1924 as a specifically Italian–Argentinian institution. According to Jessica Lee, however, these heterogeneous sets of institutions managed to come together by mitigating the most indigestible aspects of the philo-Fascist discourse and win over some communities in the United States with the rosy picture they painted of how great their mother country was. Instrumentally speaking, this discourse proved easy 78 Nicolà Labanca, Oltremare. Storia dell’expansione coloniale italiana (Bologna: Il

Mulino, 2002). 79 Gentile, “La politica estera del partito fascista”; Franzina and Sanfilippo, Il fascismo e gli emigrati; Matard-Bonucci, “Enjeux de la diplomatie culturelle fasciste”; Cavarocchi, Avanguardie. 80 Carlo Tensone Nianza, “Le funzioni consolari nella riforma emigratoria fascista,” Italia e il mondo 4 (1927): 9–12.

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to mobilize in the 1930s, especially in New York and especially at the time of the proclamation of the empire, although it suddenly dissipated a few years later. While the institutions had an autonomous existence beyond the injunctions that were coming out of Italy, they could experience fairly rapid changes in their policy directions. The policies of these institutions (including the most prominent) were produced by the men who ran them. João Fabio Bertonha deftly demonstrates how the social history of institutions can reveal new information when analyzing diplomatic policies in the field. The biographies of the prominent political figures of the Ventottisti, who were integrated into Italy’s ministry of foreign affairs, illustrate the ability of these men to interpret what Italianness ought to have become in their minds. Hence, there was the Fascist Empire with its strong men on the one side and the communities in all their diversity across the world on the other. There is no need to contrast European and South American models to know that local institutions heavily underscored the different varieties of Fascistization and features of Italianness that were specific to them. After World War II, the institutional landscape changed dramatically. However, some idiosyncratic forms of the Italianness that had been administered abroad remained. Silvia Cassamagnaghi shows how Catholic institutions that specialized in providing services in the emotive domain of abortion for Italian–American communities in the United States would, in some cases, play on the common origin of the adoptive family and their adopted child by forging some kind of ethnicized version of adoption. There is no doubt these practices reflected a desire to draw on forms of identity that were rooted in an ethnocentric conception—albeit a highly fabricated one—of adoption. Part III, entitled “Italian Words,” focuses on the language, which is considered here both as a lexical medium and as a vector for the diffusion of an Italianness that was constantly being reworked by circular migrations and influenced by social and political contexts. As Laura Fournier-Finocchiaro points out in one of the contributions in this section, it is by no means insignificant that the most important Italian dictionary of the nineteenth century was the work of a linguist and writer who was exiled from the Risorgimento, Niccolò Tommaseo. He was one of the first to put forward, in collaboration with Bernardo

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Bellini in 1861, a definition of Italianness.81 As already mentioned, these exiles (discussed by Delphine Diaz in Part I) played a connective role in the process of developing Italianness abroad, most notably, according to Laura Fournier-Finocchiaro, through what they “carried with them in their suitcases, their words and their culture.” The words referred to here were those found in Italian literature, which some believed to be the epitome of pure language. These words were also used in the teachers’ didactic resources. Many of the exiles were in fact teachers (temporarily at least), like Filippo Manetta, whose migrant history is traced by Bénédicte Deschamps. Manetta was the man behind many of the immigration newspapers published up until the twentieth century, including those with a political agenda. As Bénédicte Deschamps has pointed out in previous works, “the part the Italian ethnic media has played across the centuries cannot be reduced to just the defense of italianità.”82 The press was a powerful vector both in maintaining links with the country of origin and in establishing a sense of community belonging,83 which was incidentally not always nationally based. In the 1920s,84 La Basilicata nel Mondo, discussed by Gaetano Morese, raised the question once again of how identities should be linked at different levels in the development of Italianness in the migration context. While this periodical presented a regionalist point of view (aiming in particular to counter stereotypes about southerners), it did not put this forward in opposition to a national, or even nationalist, perspective, acknowledging its complacence toward the Fascist 81 Niccolò Tommaseo and Bernardo Bellini, Dizionario de la lingua italiana, Torino, Società Unione Tipografico Editrice, 1861, http://www.tommaseobellini.it and http:// www.dizionario.org/d/index.php?pageurl=italianita). 82 Bénédicte Deschamps, “The Italian Ethnic Press in a Global Perspectice,” in The Cultures of Italian Migration: Diverse Trajectories and Discrete perspectives, eds Parati Graziella and Tamburri Anthony Julian (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2011), 76. See also Bénédicte Deschamps, “Echi d’Italia. La Stampa dell’emigrazione,” in Storia dell’Emigrazione italiana. Arrivi, eds Bevilacqua, De Clementi, and Franzina, 313–34; Histoire de la presse italo-américaine du Risorgimento à la Grande Guerre (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2020). 83 See in particular the following special issues: “La stampa italiana all’estero,” Altreitalie 35 (2007); “La stampa di emigrazione italiana,” Studi Emigrazione 175 (2009); “La stampa italiana nel secondo dopoguerra,” Archivio Storico dell’Emigrazione Italiana 1 (2005). 84 Emilio Fanzina, “Identità regionale, identità nazionale ed emigrazione all’estero,” in L’identità italiana: emigrazione, immigrazione, conflitti etnici, eds Enzo Bartocci and Vittorio Cotesta (Rome: Edizioni Lavoro, 1999), 29–46.

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regime. Italianness even seemed to dominate when the periodical became Italiani pel Mondo in 1928. This press was made for the elite by the elite. The vast majority of migrants were illiterate, rural people whose vernacular language was not Italian but one of the countless dialects spoken in the Peninsula. However, Laura Fournier-Finocchiaro points out that Bruni’s work nuances this picture by highlighting the fact that a common second language existed long before 1861, which was already being used by both internal and external movement populations.85 No doubt in light of this observation, writers had been aiming, in the tradition of Manzoni and contemporary journalists, to reduce the gap between the written and spoken forms of Italian since the first half of the nineteenth century. The transition from oral to written expression is central to Marco Fincardi’s article on a Po Valley miner’s account of an incident at a Pennsylvania mine at the beginning of the twentieth century. The account reads like some kind of palimpsest of the diversity of workers’ dialects, which were seen as “linguistic baggage.” These dialects mixed with the languages of other European migrants and the English of the host society. This “language hybridization,” which was far removed from any academic consideration, ensured the cohesion of a socioprofessional group and, in this sense, formed the basis of a non-exclusive Italianness. This was true of many other Italian diaspora cases in the United States and elsewhere.86 Part IV, entitled “manifestations of Italianness,” compares different kinds of expressions of Italianness in several contexts. Anna Pellegrino’s article on the “Italians abroad” collections shown at international Italian exhibitions in the 1900s focuses on the aims of these events. For the men in power, who were liberals both economically and politically, the objective was twofold. They wanted to demonstrate the benefits of Italian emigration for the country and encourage a

85 Francesco Bruni, L’italiano fuori d’Italia (Florence: Franco Cesati, 2013). 86 See in particular: Nancy C. Carnevale, A New Language, A New World: Italian

Immigrants in the United States, 1890–1945 (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2009); Jean-Charles Vegliante, “La langue des Italiens en France,” in Les Italiens en France de 1914 à 1940, ed. Pierre Milza, Collection École française de Rome 94 (Paris: Broccard, 1986); Françoise Avenas, “The Role of Ethnic Identity in Language Maintenance and Language Change: The Case of the Italian Community in France,” Altreitalie 18 (1998).

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sense of national belonging by showing works by Italian emigrants.87 Implementing these “Italians abroad” events also required the participation of expatriates, who would contribute many documents, including photographs. This gave them the means to feel and demonstrate their attachment to the mother country. In her study of the dramatic works staged in São Paulo, Argentina, Virginia de Almeida Bessa thus shows the role that popular shows played in the construction and evolution of Italianness. At the beginning of the twentieth century, when the migrants stood out as conspicuously Italian in Argentina, they were initially represented as caricatured figures, which transmitted stereotypes. Their Italianness quickly found expression in the host country, however. It became unified and then evolved in the 1930s to embody a brand-new local identity with Italian and Argentine roots. As Marie Bossaert shows on the subject of the Italian proletariat emigrating to the Ottoman Empire from the 1860s onward, Italianness could represent more of an abstract concept than a real sense of belonging since few immigrants frequented the Italian institutions. However, the Levantines of Constantinople, whose ancestors had been periodically leaving the mother country ever since the fifteenth century, demonstrated their Italianness by practicing the language or attending the Italian mutual aid society, which was founded in 1863. Finally, in her examination of the non-Italian communities in the Ottoman Empire (for example, the Armenians or Albanians) who professed a real attachment to Italy and its language, culture, and political model, which was a legacy of their stays in Italy and education in Italian institutions, Marie Bossaert shows that Italianness extended beyond national identities to bring people together. The Italian state cultivated this attachment. The Italian consular authorities in the Ottoman Empire, for example, recruited their officials from both the Italian and local communities. Nationality and Italianness were two separate identities; they were not inter-reducible. Italianness, which is similar here to the controversial and no doubt too-static notion of Italicity88

87 Patrizia Audenino, “La mostra degli italiani all’estero: prove di nazionalismo,” Storia in Lombardia 29, no. 1 (2008): 111–24 and “Il lavoro degli italiani all’estero nell’Esposizione internazionale di Torino del 1911,” Archivio Storico dell’Emigrazione Italiana 7 (2011): 11–17. 88 Giovanni Bechelloni, “Italicity as a cosmopolitan resource,” Matrizes 1 (October 2007), 99–116. Bechelloni extended this concept that was developed by Piero Bassetti in Globali e locali! Timori e speranze della seconda modernità (Lugano: Casagrande, 2001)

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(the cultural link that brings together Italians, descendants of Italians, and those who express an attachment to Italy), lies more in the demonstration of an attachment, which can vary in time and space, to Italy and its culture than in any biological or national belonging. Thibault Bechini’s reflection on the official papers that Italians took with them on their travels or which they were obliged to produce in Buenos Aires and Marseille (his two fields of study) also shows the malleability of the notion of Italianness. The careful preservation of a passport evidences a feeling of being Italian and a desire to appear as such. Conversely, applications for affidavits to the justice of the peace in Marseille indicate a break with the country of origin, where ties have become so weak that no certificate of any kind (birth, marriage, property ownership, etc.) can be produced. Between these two extremes, the various papers preserved or requested by Italian migrants depict the many nuances of an Italianness that was claimed for a very specific purpose, namely to assert the emigrants’ rights. This implicitly poses the question of whether Italianness can be reduced to its paper evidence. Is it not more about emotions than about administrative evidence? In short, all the contributions collected in this book provide an opportunity to compare and contrast different historical and geographical contexts, giving us a better understanding of this highly abstract notion of Italianness through points of similarity as well as through nuances and differences. The book shows that Italianness, when it manifested in relation to emigration, remained highly politicized by the ruling elites. However, its meaning varied according to the interests of the state, which in turn differed from one context to the next. During the periods of unification and then of liberal Italy, the main aim was to make emigrants aware of the fact they all belonged to the same national community. Although this continued to be a consideration, the emergence of the Mussolini regime after World War I brought a more ideological dimension to Italianness in the migrant context because it combined with an adherence to Fascism and manifested as a component of the imperial expansion project. In the republican era, the state discourse on the Italianness of migrants and their descendants became less restrictive and aggressive as it retained

and Italic Identity in Pluralistic Contexts, eds Piero Bassetti and Paolo Janni (Washington: The Council in Values and Philosophy, CUA, 2004). For a synthesis, see Barbara Bechelloni, “Italicità.”

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from previous periods only foreign policy goals linked to cultural influence and the development of foreign trade. Regardless of the period in question, however, the political meaning of Italianness was based on the valorization of a common culture. Italianness, as an ethnocultural identity, should nevertheless not be conceived just as some kind of top-down doctrine, because it was also the product of immigrant civil society action and was lived day to day by “ordinary” emigrants. The various case studies presented in this book show variations according to social group, generation, region of origin, and even host country. It is not easy to establish a stable typology because the determinants intersect, but it is possible to identify a few key elements. From the point of view of social categories, for example, the elites endeavored in particular to maintain Italianness through the promotion and use of the Italian language, while the main manifestations of Italianness among the working-class majority were religious and gastronomic practices. It is also clear that for the first generation of emigrants, Italianness was rooted in regionalized cultures and expressed very distinctly and for the generations that followed, it shifted between dilution and reinvention. Of course, the national context of the host societies interfered with the ways in which Italianness was expressed. While we must be careful here, too, of categorizations that are overly rigid or indeed artificial based on the level of assimilationist pressure exerted on immigrant populations, this book confirms that there were differences between countries with an ancient national tradition (such as France) and those with a more recent tradition (notably in North and South America) and that colonial situations should be given a separate category. In fact, most of the contributions in the book testify to the fact that the emigrants’ Italianness was a patchwork of political, cultural, and social belongings that even the hegemonic propaganda of the Fascist regime could not manage to unify. In this sense, Italianness appeared in migration as a mode of coexistence.

Italians Through Their Travels

The Risorgimento Italians’ Journeys and Exile Narratives Flight, Expedition, or Peregrination? Delphine Diaz

Exile—a form of migration imposed or simply influenced by political circumstances—befell many Italian patriots in post-Vienna Congress Europe: Neapolitans and Piedmontese in 1821, exiles from the pontifical states ten years later, and Romans and Venetians in 1848 and 1849. The exile of Risorgimento Italians has fed into a vast body of research: as early as 1954, Alessandro Galante Garrone called for a thorough reassessment of “the action applied by Italy on Europe and by Europe on Italy, through the diaspora formed by exiles.”1 It should be stressed that his wish has since largely come true, in particular through recent works, such as those by Maurizio Isabella on the “Liberal International” in which Risorgimento exiles played a major part, whether it was in Europe, or in the colonial 1 Alessandro Galante Garrone, “L’emigrazione politica italiana del Risorgimento,” Rassegna Storica del Risorgimento 41 (1954): 224.

D. Diaz (B) Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne, Reims, France e-mail: [email protected] Institut Universitaire de France (IUF), Paris, France

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. Mourlane et al. (eds.), Italianness and Migration from the Risorgimento to the 1960s, Palgrave Studies in Migration History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88964-7_2

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world or the Americas.2 Adopting the perspective of a social history of politics, Agostino Bistarelli has applied himself to piecing back together cohorts of Italian exiles, with special attention to the 1821 Neapolitan exiles, whom, with the help of quantitative tools, he followed through their peregrinations between the Italian and the Iberian peninsula, where many of them found asylum.3 The Italian liberal diaspora deployed itself in two asylum countries which are less well known than Britain, Belgium, and France4 : the Spain of the Trienio liberal (1820–1823) but also Portugal, studied from this point of view by Grégoire Bron.5 Despite all that has been learned from these works, it should be underlined that a crucial dimension of the exilic experience has remained a blind spot, or nearly so: exile travel, grasped in its materiality, its practical modalities, but also paired with the representations of this important time which have been created. While going into exile was the moment when the break from the Italian land took place, paradoxically, it has remained overlooked, because the state and administrative sources which historians rely on to write the history of early nineteenth-century migrations and exile remained terse regarding the question of travel. However, as Nancy L. Green has written, any migration must first and foremost be understood as a form of travel; the modes and rhythms of the displacement are revealing of the very nature of the migration.6 2 Maurizio Isabella, Risorgimento in Exile. Italian Émigrés and the Liberal International in the Post-Napoleonic Era (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). 3 Agostino Bistarelli, “La tela e il quadro. Per una biografia collettiva degli esuli italiani del 1821,” Cercles. Revista d’història cultural 10 (2007): 201–20; Id., Gli esuli del Risorgimento (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2011). 4 Regarding these three countries which welcomed Italian exiles, see works by Mario Battistini, Esuli italiani in Belgio, 1815–1861 (Firenze, Brunetti, 1968) and Ferdinand Boyer, “La France et l’émigration politique italienne de 1815 à 1861,” Information historique (1964): 146–50; more recent works might also be cited, such as: Maurizio Isabella, Risorgimento; Caroline Shaw, Britannia’s Embrace. Modern Humanitarism and the Imperial Origins of Refugee Relief (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), as well as Delphine Diaz, Un asile pour tous les peuples? Exilés et réfugiés étrangers dans la France du premier XIX e siècle (Paris: Armand Colin, 2014). 5 Grégoire Bron, “Révolution et nation entre le Portugal et l’Italie: les relations politiques luso-italiennes des Lumières à l’Internationale libérale de 1830,” PhD diss. (Paris: École pratique des hautes études, 2013). 6 Nancy L. Green, “Trans-frontières: pour une analyse des lieux de passage,” SocioAnthropologie 6, (1999): 38–48.

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Using the exilic itineraries from Risorgimento Italy which have been mapped out, this contribution aims to bring to light the practical organization of these forced travels, without ignoring the extent to which they triggered the imagination of the exiles in their literary outputs. Through the cartography of exile itineraries, it will be shown that they were certainly not departures without returns, and that they did not imply straightforward journeys from one country of departure to one host country. I aim to convey the complexity of this process, by questioning the contrasted perception of exile travel by its very protagonists, who might describe it as a flight, as an expedition, or as a peregrination. By relying on the analysis of articles, memoirs, and autobiographical novels written in various languages by Italian exiles who found refuge in Spain, France, Britain, or even in the Ottoman Empire in the first half of the nineteenth century, I will endeavor to convey the tortuous nature of these exile travels. Texts left by exiles—Angelo Frignani’s autobiographical novel La mia pazzia nelle carceri (1839), Giovanni Ruffini’s novel Lorenzo Benoni, or passages in the life of an Italian (1853), and Cristina di Belgiojoso’s article collection Souvenirs dans l’exil (1850)—will be studied alongside administrative and diplomatic sources. However, this article places the emphasis on exile travel and the recounting of the boat crossing, since many exiles sailed across the Mediterranean Sea to more auspicious places, even if some also traveled by land. This article has three main sections, based on the analysis of itineraries which correspond to the key moments of the Italian exile: in the 1820s, with the case of Angelo Frignani, an exile from the Papal States; the early 1830s, with the example of the Mazzinist of Genovese origin, Giovanni Ruffini; and lastly, the time of repression following the 1848–1849 revolutions, brought to light thanks to the last exile of the Lombardian princess, Cristina di Belgiojoso.

Angelo Frignani, from Asylum to Exile in the Late 1820s The first itinerary which I propose to follow is that of Angelo Frignani, born in 1802, from Ravenna, in the Papal States. In the 1820s, he studied law in Bologna. Arrested and jailed in 1825 because of his pro-Carbonari sympathies, Frignani feigned madness and was admitted to a lunatic asylum. During his convalescence, and while waiting for his trial in 1829, he eventually left the asylum clandestinely and set off for

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France. Two years later, as an exile, he started writing up an autobiographical work of fiction. His book, La mia pazzia nelle carceri, was published by Truchy in Italian in 1839, and translated into French the following year. While it was not a bestseller like Silvio Pellico’s Les mie prigioni (1832)—even though the latter’s title had provided an inspiration—, Frignani’s autobiographical novel ends with the account of the hero’s travel to Provence; this is the section of the text on which I will focus here (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1 Map of Angelo Frignani’s itinerary between 1829 and 1831 (Source AsileuropeXIX: https://asileurope.huma-num.fr [map designed by Hugo Vermeren])

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While he has not been sentenced to death or banished yet, the narrator of Frignani’s novel, whose itinerary is in many ways similar to the author’s own, conceives of his exile in 1829 as a way of fleeing: “Chiamai in disparte moi padre, e gli annunziai la fuga imminente”7 —a term he repeats on several occasions.8 However this raises the question of the preparations for the departure: from Ravenna, the fugitive made his way to Forli, Castrocaro, then on to the mountain of San Benedetto (known today as San Benedetto in Alpe) on the back of a mule. He managed to pass himself off as the servant of a man of Corsican origin, while the latter himself was pretending to be an important public figure. At first, Frignani was certain that he was “the regent of Bastia University,” and managed to get himself registered on his passport. Indeed, wives, children, as well as servants could be added to the passport of a traveler, and this was an ideal way of falsifying an identity and traveling without being investigated. As he traveled with such a character—who, at times and quite rightly, reminded him more of an adventurer than a professor—the narrator continued his expedition from the Papal States to Tuscany, crossing Florence, and then Livorno. He slept in the seediest inns, while his fellow traveler of Corsican origins stayed in far better accommodation. When the latter extended an invitation to join him, the fugitive replied that he “love[d] freedom too much” (“amo la mia libertà,” in the Italian original),9 whereas the French translation from 1840 put these words in the hero’s mouth: “I thank you for being so courteous, but beg you to think that being a poor exile, I have no choice but to calculate my spending: you would be too badly off with me”—words which feature the syntagm “poor exile,” which had been chanted and publicized by PierreJean de Béranger in his song “L’exilé” (1817) and later on by Félicité de Lamennais in Paroles d’un croyant (1834). A few months after reaching Corsica, the narrator of Ma folie dans les prisons traveled to Provence on a small boat.10 Upon reaching the

7 Angelo Frignani, La mia pazzia nelle carceri. Memorie di Angelo Frignani (Paris: Truchy, 1839), 267. 8 Frignani, La mia pazzia, 271: “Me fecero buona accoglienza; e avendo lor detto, ch’io ero in fuga, e che avevo necessità di fidata guida, a quale mi conducesse sino di là de’ monti, me la procurarono tosto.” 9 Frignani, La mia pazzia, 299. 10 Frignani, La mia pazzia, 301: “La barca era piccola e vecchia.”

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northern tip of the island, he came upon a terrible storm—a recurring theme in contemporary exile narratives.11 Having reached Marseille, more than six months after leaving Ravenna, he then went on to Aix after the revolution of July 1830. The narrative ends after the revolution had started in central Italy: events in Romagna allow the exile not only to see his native land again, but also allow him to resume his correspondence with his parents. The autobiographical narrative left by Frignani makes it possible to follow the sinuous trajectory of an exile who presents his journey as a form of “flight.” This was also a way of emphasizing the political repression to which he fell victim, as well as the forced character of his expatriation. As pointed out by Giuditta Isotti Rosowsky in reference to Italian autobiographical writing in the nineteenth century, this text shows to what extent “turning one’s life into the topic of a narrative appears as […] a privileged means of information, political struggle and individual defence against repression.”12

Lorenzo Benoni, Alias Giovanni Ruffini, a Mazzinian Hero on the Run The second itinerary which I propose to follow, fusing reality and fiction, is that of Giovanni Ruffini, in the early 1830s. An early follower of Mazzini based in Genoa, Ruffini was accused of conspiring against the Piedmontese government and sentenced to death in absentia. After a first period in exile, he rallied the Piedmontese monarchy and settled in England where he lived for a long time and wrote novels. One of them is akin to an autobiographical novel: it is a narrative entitled Lorenzo Benoni, or passages in the life of an Italian, which was published in English in 1853 and translated into French with the title Mémoires d’un conspirateur (Life of a conspirator) in 1855.13 The novel describes the itinerary 11 Angelo Frignani, Ma folie dans les prisons (Paris: Truchy, 1840), 301: “When we approached the northernmost tip of Corsica, the wind rose; it was so fierce, that it forced us to backtrack and sail back to Bastia.” 12 Giuditta Isotti Rosowsky, “Avant-propos. Écritures autobiographiques,” Les Cahiers de Paris VIII/Recherches (1997): 1. 13 Giovanni Ruffini, Lorenzo Benoni, or Passages in the Life of an Italian. Edited by a Friend (Edinburgh: Thomas Constable and Company, 1853). First French version: Mémoires d’un conspirateur (Paris: Librairie nouvelle, 1855), transl. by Jules Gourmez

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of a young carbonaro, Benoni, a proxy for the author. Just as in Frignani’s La mia pazzia nelle carceri, Ruffini’s novel ends with the retelling of its main protagonist’s journey into exile. The last four chapters—from the chapter entitled “The Fugitive” to the final chapter—,14 follow this painful mobility: the exile journey is a downfall; it opens up a possible new horizon for the hero, but it is certainly not the very heart of the book. Just like Frignani’s narrator in 1829, Ruffini’s hero decides to go into exile in order to escape a sentence which he considers imminent. Just as in Frignani’s book, the stages of this exile journey are carefully documented. Lorenzo Benoni wants to reach the French coast. His first attempt ends in failure, forcing him to go back to Genoa, but on the second attempt he reaches Menton and then Monaco, “a Lilliputian independent state, set, as it is, like a jewel in the Sardinian dominions,”15 before he can reach the Var area, after crossing the eponymous border river where he nearly loses his life. Despite being mistaken for a smuggler and then for a deserter, Lorenzo Benoni manages to stay in France and reach Marseille, the refuge-city which is the stage in the itinerary where both Benoni’s exile narrative and the novel itself conclude. Just as in Frignani’s narrative, Provence is the last host space highlighted in Ruffini’s autobiographical novel. And yet, in both cases, exile does not finish in Provence. Frignani joins the Italian refugee depot (dépôt ) in Mâcon, where he can be found in the nominal registers held at the Saône-et-Loire departmental archives.16 As to Benoni, alias Ruffini, he eventually returns from exile thanks to an amnesty law in Sardinia. He later returns to France, no longer as an exile, but as an ambassador of the Kingdom of Piedmont–Sardinia— proof that the Sardinian monarchy deftly put to good use the skills gained by exiles during their forced expatriation.

with the collaboration of Amédée Pichot. A later French translation was called Mémoires d’un réfugié italien (Memories of an Italian Refugee), transl. by Octave Sachot (Paris: Magnin, Blanchard and Company, 1859). 14 Giovanni Ruffini, Mémoires, see the section of narrative from chapter XXXV, “Le Fugitif” to chapter XXXIX, “Fin de voyage et du récit.” 15 Giovanni Ruffini, Mémoires, 376. 16 Archives départementales de Saône-et-Loire, M 1782, registre nominatif des réfugiés

italiens: Angelo Frignani is introduced as a student from Ravenna, “without any wealth,” of sound mores, who arrived at Mâcon’s depot for Italian refugees in June 1831.

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Cristina di Belgiojoso’s Last Exile: Political Peregrination? In order to illustrate the period of the Quarantotto’s revolutions, another exilic itinerary which was turned into a narrative can be examined: the peregrinations of Lombardian princess, Cristina di Belgiojoso between 1849 and 1850. She fled from Rome to the Ottoman Empire while Rome was under siege. Belgiojoso herself described the various stages of her final itinerary in a series of articles published in the French daily Le National in 1850, which appeared that same year in a small book.17 Belgiojoso’s serial about this final exile, which she traces through letters written to a French friend, Caroline Jaubert, shows the richness and complexity of the representations attached to forced travel. The fact that this serial was published also suggests how beneficial it was for the exiles to publicize their tribulations, as evidenced, too, by Caroline Shaw’s studies on “refugee narratives”18 published in Britain in the nineteenth century. Considering Belgiojoso’s itinerary makes it possible to stress that men were not alone in dealing with the phenomenon of exile in the Italian peninsula; it also affected women, either as mere followers, or as the direct victims of forced displacement.19 In September 1831, in French statistics about the Italian refugees helped by Louis-Philippe’s monarchy, out of 1,525 refugees who had received help, there were 149 women and children—although it is impossible to know the exact share of each of these groups at that point.20 It was actually at the end of 1830 that Belgiojoso experienced her first exile from the Italian peninsula toward France, via Switzerland and Nice. However, it is not this first journey, followed by a

17 Cristina di Belgiojoso, Souvenirs dans l’exil (Paris: de Prost, 1850). 18 Caroline Shaw, Britannia’s Embrace. Modern Humanitarianism and the Imperial

Origins of Refugee Relief (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). Caroline Shaw speaks of the “refugee narrative” as a “newly robust narrative genre that helped British audiences identify persecuted foreigners and sympathize with their plight.” 19 Christiane Veauvy, Laura Pisano, eds Paroles oubliées. Les femmes et la construction de l’État-nation en France et en Italie, 1789–1860 (Paris: Armand Colin, 1997); on women in exile during the nineteenth century, see Sylvie Aprile, “De l’exilé à l’exilée: une histoire sexuée de la proscription politique outre-Manche et outre-Atlantique sous le Second Empire,” Le Mouvement social 225–24 (2008): 27–38. 20 Archives nationales de France (Pierrefitte-sur-Seine), C 749, note dated September 1831.

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long stay in the Paris of the July Monarchy, to which I direct my attention here, but Belgiojoso’s last exile, mapped out in Fig. 2. After leaving Paris for Naples and then Milan in the spring of 1848, Belgiojoso had to return to France in August, at which point she started writing articles on the failure of the Italian revolution for the Revue des Deux Mondes. In February 1849, however, she returned to the Italian peninsula, where, at the time, the experience of the Roman republic was rekindling the patriots’ hopes. She took part in defending the city and assisted the wounded, and then had to leave the city which was under siege and defeated. Upon departing from Rome, Belgiojoso published a series of articles based on her correspondence with her French friend, Caroline Jaubert, where she explained the circumstances in which she left Rome, while frequently digressing about her first exile in France during the reign of Louis-Philippe. These Souvenirs dans l’exil (Memories in exile) were serialized between September 5, and October 12, 1850 in the French daily Le National: memories in exile, not memories of exile, since Belgiojoso, at the time of publication, was still experiencing life as an exile. In her letters, the Lombardian princess described the forced journey as a genuine escape which she had undertaken in July 1849, from Civitavecchia toward Malta and Aegina, where she was placed in quarantine for a long time, then Athens and, finally, Constantinople. She explained that she had left Rome, where she had fought with the Republicans, after receiving a note from a priest friend urging her to leave the town as soon as possible.21 However, turning to the term “escape,” Caroline Jaubert—Belgiojoso’s addressee in her Souvenirs dans l’exil —opposed that of “peregrinations”: “A departure is not a simple and easy thing for me. To this claim, you will oppose my many peregrinations.” These words are indicative of the wide range of perceptions connected with exile travel. The terminology used by Belgiojoso to discuss her departure highlights the porous frontier between exile and travel. Souvenirs dans l’exil were actually followed by the publication of many articles about her itinerary as a traveler in the Revue des Deux Mondes between 1852 and 1855, subsequently reprinted with the title Asie mineure et Syrie, souvenirs de voyages (Asia Minor and Syria, travel memories). In these articles, the author alternated passages where she described herself as a traveler, and

21 Cristina di Belgiojoso, Souvenirs dans l’exil (Paris: de Prost, 1850), 1.

Fig. 2 Map of Cristina di Belgiojoso’s itinerary between 1848 and 1850 (Source AsileuropeXIX: https://asileurope. huma-num.fr [map designed by Hugo Vermeren])

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even a “European tourist”22 (using the masculine grammatical form in French), and others where she presented herself as a genuine “exile in a foreign land” (using the feminine), for whom there was no sadder thing than “what reminded her of the absent motherland.”23 In summary, several shared characteristics emerge from these case studies which symbolize three important moments in the Italian exile at the time of the Risorgimento—the 1820s, the early 1830s, and then the Italian revolutions of the Quarantotto and ensuing repression. The journeys discussed here were both at once rushed and prepared—rushed because the aim was often for the fugitives to escape imminent sentencing, and prepared because in the little time which these patriots had before leaving the territory where they were at risk, everything was mobilized in order to make the best possible choice of smugglers and intermediaries who would facilitate their departure; Belgiojoso even recalled that time as “test[ing] the Italians’ genius for invention.”24 These journeys were not without danger, as shown by the itinerary of the hero Lorenzo Benoni. Nonetheless, the social status of the affluent exiles could make their departure safer and more comfortable—as attested by the example of Belgiojoso, who left Rome with her daughter and her governess, Mrs Parker. Moreover, these “peregrinations”—and the use of this term is telling— were far from straightforward: for these exiles, there was no single host country, but rather temporary shelters and stopovers, pauses, and waiting times, and while Corsica was assuredly a French island, for the many Italian exiles who stopped or settled there, it appeared as a territory which was clearly distinct from Provence, which two of the refugees discussed here—Frignani and Benoni, alias Ruffini—endeavored to reach.25 At the time these insular spaces already played a particularly decisive role in

22 Cristina di Belgiojoso, Asie mineure et Syrie: souvenirs de voyages (Paris: Michel Lévy frères, 1855), title of part III, “Le touriste européen dans l’Orient arabe,” 123. 23 Di Belgiojoso, Asie mineure et Syrie, 161. 24 Di Belgiojoso, Souvenirs dans l’exil, 1. 25 Regarding Corsica as a shelter or a stopover for Italian Risorgimento exiles, see Ersilio

Michel, Esuli e cospiratori italiani in Corsica (1815–1830) (Milano: Istituto editoriale scientifico, 1927); followed by Esuli e cospiratori italiani in Corsica (1850–1861) (Milano: Istituto editoriale scientifico, 1929); more recently, Andrea Bocchi and Marco Cini, eds Gli esuli italiani in Corsica (1815–1860). Storia, letteratura, linguistica (Pisa: Domus Mazziniana, 2000).

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exile trajectories, as attested by the mention of Belgiojoso’s stops on the island of Malta and then in Aegina in her Souvenirs dans l’exil. Lastly, the exile journey was often heroized: the narration of the exile’s tribulations fed into the construction of the figure of the “poor exile,” now brave, now pathetic—the individual so frequently described as a pariah, on a frail boat, always exposed to shipwrecks and death. It really is this figure which appears in the exclamations recorded by Belgiojoso from her ship, revealing the obsessive fear of being engulfed by the waters, but also to see her exile story sink into final oblivion: Land, land! Everyone is shouting, the port is in sight, farewell dear friend, I seal my letter by sending you my love. Speak of me to those who have not forgotten me, for being forgotten positively hurts me.26 Translated from French by Constance Bantman.

26 Di Belgiojoso, Souvenirs dans l’exil, 2.

From Italy to the Levant: Mediterranean Itineraries of the Venetian Émigrés in 1849 Giacomo Girardi

The Italian Exiles of the Risorgimento The figure of the exile has traditionally played a pivotal role in the construction and the evolution of the Italian Risorgimento. Far away from their country, the exile was not solely the principal connection between the struggle for Italian unification and foreign powers; an exile also made themselves the interpreter of political and cultural issues fundamental for building the nation, and often for their country of exile as well. From the parliamentary system to innovative agricultural techniques, infrastructure investment to fundamental liberties, exiles who returned home were among Italy’s main promoters of modernization, bringing the young country in league with other great powers such as France

G. Girardi (B) Università Della Svizzera Italiana, Lugano, Switzerland e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. Mourlane et al. (eds.), Italianness and Migration from the Risorgimento to the 1960s, Palgrave Studies in Migration History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88964-7_3

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and Great Britain.1 Exiled Italian patriots also influenced the cultural and economic life of their adopted countries, and sometimes this extended beyond unification. Italian exiles’ importance is exemplified by two accounts: one set in Napoleon III’s Paris, and the other in Victorian London. In Paris, a Lombard and fervent Republican, Enrico Cernuschi, made his fortune and collected major works of art, which now form parts of Parisian museums.2 Across the Channel, in London, the Emilian, Antonio Panizzi, and the Pugliese, Giacomo Lacaita, later known as Sir Anthony and Sir James, advanced their careers and became “more English than the English.” Panizzi was the British Museum’s principal librarian, and Lacaita lectured at Queen’s College and was private secretary to William Ewart Gladstone.3

1 On the importance of the exile in the evolution of Risorgimento, see: Alessandro Galante Garrone, “L’emigrazione politica italiana del Risorgimento,” Rassegna storica del Risorgimento 41 (1954): 223–42; Agostino Bistarelli, Gli esuli del Risorgimento (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2011); Maurizio Isabella, Risorgimento in exile. Italian émigrés and the liberal international in the post-Napoleonic era (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Catherine Brice and Sylvie Aprile, eds Exil et fraternité en Europe au XIX e siècle (Paris: Bière, 2013); Emilio Franzina and Matteo Sanfilippo, eds Risorgimento ed emigrazione (Viterbo: Sette Città, 2013); Catherine Brice and Delphine Diaz, “Introduction,” Revue d’histoire du XIX e siècle 53 (2016): 9–18; Konstantina Zanou, Transnational Patriotism in the Mediterranean 1800–1850. Stammering the Nation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018); Catherine Brice, ed. Exile and the Circulation of Political Practices (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars, 2020). 2 Giuseppe Bognetti and Angelo Mioli, eds Enrico Cernuschi (1821–1896). Milanese e cosmopolita. Politica, economia e collezionismo in un protagonista del Risorgimento. Atti della Giornata di studi (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2004); Nino Del Bianco, Enrico Cernuschi. Uno straordinario protagonista del nostro Risorgimento (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2006). Cernuschi’s art collection is currently the heart of the Musée Cernuschi – Musée des Arts de l’Asie de la Ville de Paris. 3 Paul Ginsborg, “L’altro e l’altrove: esilio politico, Romanticismo e Risorgimento,” in Fuori d’Italia: Manin e l’esilio, ed. Michele Gottardi (Venezia: Ateneo Veneto, 2009): 25–26. On the Italian exile in London, see Lucio Sponza, Italian Immigrants in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Realities and Images (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1988) and now Elena Bacchin, Italofilia. Opinione pubblica britannica e Risorgimento italiano 1847–1864 (Roma-Torino: Carocci-Comitato di Torino dell’Istituto per la storia del Risorgimento italiano, 2014), 153–80. On Panizzi and Lacaita see: Edward Miller, Prince of Librarians. The Life and Time of Antonio Panizzi of the British Museum (London: The British Library, 1988), and Charles Lacaita, An Italian Englishman. Sir James Lacaita, K. C. M. G., 1813–1895 Senator of the Kingdom of Italy (London: Richards, 1933).

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After the Republic of San Marco’s fall in 1849 and the return of the Austrians, Venetian exiles chose destinations further afield. Venice’s geographical position and its long-standing tradition of economic exchange with the Eastern Mediterranean led many a Venetian exile, more than any other group of Italians, to look beyond Northern Europe’s capital cities. A painter from Belluno, in northern Veneto, Ippolito Caffi, was a prime example. He was among the protagonists of the Venetian Revolution of 1848–1849.4 Caffi’s paintings are extraordinary testimony to his arrival in Eastern Mediterranean ports: Alexandria, Athens, and Istanbul, or tiny ports on the Balkan coast, between Durres and Ragusa, the Ionian Islands, and Turkey, Syria, Armenia, and Palestine. Venetian exiles experienced, therefore, a real Mediterranean Diaspora.5 The routes of the 1849 Venetian exiles fleeing from Austrian Lombardy and Venetia are for many reasons, significant and worth close study.

1849: From Venice to Corfu On August 22, 1849, Venice surrendered to the Austrian General Gorzkowsky. Following exhausting bombardment and a cholera epidemic, which decimated Venice’s population and necessitated rationing, the last stronghold of the Italian independence was forced to surrender.6 On August 18, Field Marshal Radetzky issued a proclamation that, on the occasion of Emperor Franz Joseph I’s birthday, forgave those political refugees who had left the territories of Lombardy and Venetia and had been accused of “high treason, rebellion, insurrection”: they could return home without fear of persecution or retaliation. According to the lists of absentees compiled by the Austrian administration as it regained control over the Lombardy–Venetia cities, political émigrés

4 See the catalog of the Venetian exhibition: Annalisa Scarpa, ed. Ippolito Caffi. Tra Venezia e l’Oriente 1809–1866 (Venezia: Marsilio, 2016), and specially the essay “Ippolito Caffi, una vita in viaggio tra arte e passione politica,” 13–59. 5 Maurizio Isabella and Konstantina Zanou, eds Mediterranean Diasporas. Politics and Ideas in the Long 19th Century (London: Bloomsbury, 2015). 6 On the Venetian revolution of 1848, classic and exhaustive examples are: George Macaulay Trevelyan, Manin and the Venetian revolution of 1848 (London: Longmans, Green, 1923) and Paul Ginsborg, Daniele Manin and the Venetian Revolution of 1848–49 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1979).

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numbered around two thousand.7 Yet the imperial pardon excluded numerous irreducible supporters of the revolution, most of whom were the officers and forty members of the revolutionary government until 1849. These “Forty” and the officers, along with anyone else wishing to leave, could legally leave the city on August 14, on the French ship Pluton. In 1849 hundreds of men left Venice for exile. Compared to the Italian émigrés of the previous decades—especially those who were part of the so-called “Liberal International” who had left their homes in the 1820s8 —the Venetian exiles of 1849 could not count on an extended social network nor were they of wealthy or high class. Venetian exiles were from all social classes and this brought about a new way of living in exile. Thanks to the Libro Cassa del Comitato dell’emigrazione di Torino, a register of all exiles from Lombardy and Venetia, written by Turin’s Committee of Emigration, it is easy to summarize each exile’s origins and their professions.9 They were lawyers and engineers, landowners and aristocrats, but also craftsmen, sailors, servants, shoemakers, carpenters, waiters, innkeepers, photographers, hairdressers, milkmen, tailors, coachmen, dyers, and porters. They were, for the most part, men without disposable income nor liquid assets, who suffered more than others during life in exile.10 According to the Habsburg government’s proclamations, the Ionian island of Corfu was to be the first point of exile. Those including the revolutionary government’s former president, Daniele Manin, and its former foreign minister, Niccolò Tommaseo, could then decide to stay in Corfu or go further to Patras, Constantinople, or Alexandria. For centuries, along with the other Ionian islands,11 Corfu had played the 7 Pietro Giovanni Trincanato, “‘Umiliare il ricco refrattario, proteggere il cittadino fedele.’ I sequestri austriaci a Venezia tra leggenda nera e prassi burocratica,” Mélanges de l’École française de Rome - Italie et Méditerranée modernes et contemporaines 129/2 (2017): 339–40. 8 The Liberal International and the Italian exile during the nineteenth century are the main subject of Maurizio Isabella’s Risorgimento in exile. 9 The committee was established to provide for the exiles who arrived in Turin after

1848. A useful description in Ester De Fort, “Esuli in Piemonte nel Risorgimento. Riflessioni su una fonte,” Rivista storica italiana CXV (2003): 648–88. 10 A copy of the register is kept in Venice, Biblioteca Museo Correr di Venezia, Manin, aggiunte, b. XXXII. 11 The seven Ionian Islands are Corfu, Cephalonia, Zakynthos, Ithaca, Lefkada, Kythira,

Paxi.

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role of outpost of the Republic of Venice at the gates of the Adriatic Sea. While other Greek islands, like Cyprus or Crete, had been torn between the Doges and Ottoman sultans for centuries, Corfu remained firmly Venetian until 1797 when, after the fall of the Serenissima, the island had passed to revolutionary France.12 After various vicissitudes, which saw Corfu contended between the French, Russians, Ottomans, and the British, King George III’s British army occupied Corfu.13 From 1814 to 1815 the Ionian islands were the protectorate of Britain and called the “United States of the Ionian Islands.” Since the early nineteenth century, Corfu had been loaded with an important symbolic character and the isle had become the natural destination of Venetian emigration: it is important to remember, for example, two patriots, known as the Bandiera brothers, who had organized the ambitious plan of invasion of the Calabrian territory, which had ended in the well-known tragedy. In contrast to previous decades, in 1849 Corfu was no longer a place of free choice but an obligatory destination. The Venetian exiles arrived in Corfu during a crucial period of its cultural and political evolution, which saw the beginning of its “Hellenization” after centuries of Venetian domination. Indeed, the Venetians had transformed “this insular extension of the Greek peninsula into a culturally Italian land.”14 The peasants and the Orthodox Church spoke Greek, but Italian was still used in theater, poetry, literature, and also in law and medicine, since lawyers and doctors had all studied in Italian universities. Even the merchants, who gravitated toward the Eastern Mediterranean, and aristocratic landowners, spoke Italian. Corfu’s proximity to the Pugliese coast allowed a direct and almost daily exchange with

12 Napoleon wrote about Corfu and the other Ionian Islands: “ […] les îles de Corfou, de Zante et de Céphalonie sont plus intéressantes pour nous que toute l’Italie ensemble… L’empire ottoman s’écroule tous les jours, la possession de ces îles nous mettra à même de la soutenir autant que cela sera possible, ou d’en prendre notre part,” in Gaetano Cozzi, La società veneta e il suo diritto. Saggi su questioni matrimoniali, giustizia penale, politica del diritto, sopravvivenza del diritto veneto nell’Ottocento (Venezia: Marsilio, 2000), 360. 13 On this subject see the latest book by Rosa Maria Delli Quadri, Il Mediterraneo delle Costituzioni. Dalla Repubblica delle Sette Isole Unite agli Stati Uniti delle Isole Ionie 1800–1817 (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2017), along with Norman E. Saul, Russia and the Mediterranean 1797–1807 (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1970). 14 Konstantina Zanou, “Imperial Nationalism and Orthodox Enlightenment: A Diasporic Story Between the Ionian Islands, Russia and Greece, ca. 1800–30” in Isabella and Zanou, Mediterranean Diasporas, 120.

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fishermen, travelers, and merchants, but also with agents and informers coming from the Italian peninsula, who often passed through Corfu to reach the Balkans or Greece. Corfu, the largest Ionian island, was a place without significant economic potential. It lacked resources but was saturated with manpower: Venetian patriots quickly realized this, along with Corfu’s other problems, when they were locked up in the Lazzaretto for a quarantine period. In a letter, kept in the Library of Venice’s Correr Museum, Teresa, the daughter of the former President Daniele Manin, describes the island as a “sad and dirty place”; in comparison, the thought of her beloved Venice, then distant, was even more painful.15 Precisely for these reasons most exiles left again in disparate directions. They could count on, wherever they went, there being numerous Italian communities in the Mediterranean.16 In what follows it will be possible to observe the itinerary of some patriots toward the Balkans and then come back to Corfu, and examine the lives of those who remained on the Greek island.

“Other Destinations”: The Exiles in Albania It is perhaps interesting, here, to briefly shift attention to other destinations, unrelated to the great capitals of the continent. In the nations of Western Europe, the Italian exile saw opportunities to confront and measure a world more modern and advanced in political, industrial, technical, and economic terms. Exile in more peripheral areas constituted instead, for many Italians coming mainly from the most developed areas of the Peninsula—such as the Kingdoms of Sardinia, or Lombardy, and Venetia—the opportunity to export knowledge, competences, and professional skills acquired in the country of origins and still unknown in the exile’s destinations. A significant example is Albania, where the expertise of two exiles is indicative of the Italianness, in these cases cultural and scientific, which they were able to bring in their suitcases. Mid-nineteenth-century 15 The letter was then published in Mario Brunetti and others, Daniele Manin intimo. Lettere, diari e altri documenti inediti (Roma: Vittoriano, 1936) 258–59. See also Maria Laura Lepscky Mueller, La famiglia di Daniele Manin (Venezia: Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 2005). 16 Ersilio Michel’s work on the Italian exile during the nineteenth century represents still today a rich and well-documented source of inspiration for the studies on this subject; especially, for this essay, see Ersilio Michel, “Esuli italiani nelle isole Ionie (1849),” Rassegna storica del Risorgimento 37/1–4 (1950): 324–52.

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Albania, still under Ottoman rule, was a poor country without large cities or a developed infrastructure. Some Italians managed to establish good lives and to integrate perfectly into the society of cities like Scutari (today Shkodër), the largest Albanian cultural center, an important commercial hub, lively and cosmopolitan, inhabited by Russians, French, English, Greeks, and also, by a prolific Italian community. Here Pietro Marubi, a patriot with Garibaldian leanings, who had escaped from Piacenza following the murder of the city’s mayor, opened the Balkan’s first photographic studio, importing photography into Albania. Marubi then left the management of the activity to a partner, who carried on in the name of his mentor for a large part of the twentieth century, until the whole family archive was transformed into a museum. At the time, Marubi’s photographs represented a novelty, while today, these photographs are unavoidable testaments to understanding the everyday life and customs of nineteenth-century Albania.17 Gennaro Simini, a zealous follower of Mazzini, led a life of similar fate but was less of a celebrity than Marubi. Simini was exiled for dissenting to the Bourbon government and thanks to the help of another émigré, he managed to reach Corfu. While there, he joined an Italian community, which had taken refuge on the island and helped him to arrive at the Albanian coast, from where he would reach Scutari. He arrived along with Vittoli and De Donno, with whom he successfully entered Albania’s middle-class society. Simini never returned to Italy and even his aged father came to Scutari. He quickly became the most popular doctor in the city, squabbled over by Christians and Muslims alike. Vittoli devoted himself to teaching Italian to the scions of the richest Catholic families, while De Donno continued to practice law.18 It is perhaps correct to assert that Italian émigrés’ culture of Positivism during the years of the Risorgimento played a central role in nourishing the value of an exchange of knowledge which enriched their experiences in exile.

17 See, for example, Loïc Chauvin, and Christian Raby, eds Marubi. A dynasty of Albanian photographers (Paris: Écrits de lumière, 2011). 18 See Giacinto Simini, Un patriota leccese nell’Albania ottomana, ed. Mirella Galletti (Lecce: Argo, 2011).

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Corfu as a Destination Those exiles who remained in Corfu did so mainly to stay close to Italy and take opportunities to return, to organize political projects, or to receive subsidies from home quickly and safely. This was the case of Niccolò Tommaseo, who stayed for five years in Corfu, where he wrote successful literary works and assumed an important role in Corfu’s community before continuing his exile elsewhere.19 Like Tommaseo, other exiles lived easily on the island, and without the need for external economic aid; they spent time on the island studying languages, local history, island traditions, and especially going to the reading room, not by chance founded by Italians, which soon became a meeting place for the patriots, enough to arouse the suspicions of the British and most conservative groups. For a few years, the little Ionian island of Corfu was a melting pot of conspirators, spies, traitors, patriots, soldiers on leave, and animated by figures about which the archives hold few but significant records, for example, the case of Count Livio Zambeccari, arrested on suspicion of supporting the subversive activities of a group of rebels affiliated with Freemasonry.20 A great many Venetian exiles were military men. They were the first hit by Austria’s reprisals in Venice, which were unforgiving of the bureaucrats and soldiers’ high treason alike. Some exiles were true patriots determined to continue, even from abroad, their battle for Italian unification, like the Neapolitan General Guglielmo Pepe. Others, including Admiral Leone Graziani, born a Venetian subject on the Ionian Corfu, or Captain Giovanni Lassovich from Cattaro, whose sole ambition was to return to Venice. For this reason, they mobilized their families with the means of getting an official pardon, or urged the chancelleries with compelling

19 On Tommaseo’s experience in Corfu see the essays by Fabrizio Danelon and Tzortzis Ikonomou in Niccolò Tommaseo, Il supplizio di un italiano in Corfù (Venezia: Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 2008). 20 See Adolfo Bernardello, “Vite spezzate e contrasti ideali. Esuli veneziani negli Stati italiani ed europei (1849–1859),” Società e Storia 120 (2008): 253–70, now republished in Venezia nel regno Lombardo-Veneto. Un caso atipico 1815–1866 (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2017), 433–60. See also Giacomo Girardi, “Zambeccari, Livio,” Dizionario biografico degli italiani 100 (2020): 400–03.

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requests to grant clemency.21 This conduct, so widespread among the military men, aroused other patriots’ suspicions. The traditional image of “the exile”: the hero willing to sacrifice himself for a greater cause namely, Italy’s national struggle—must be juxtaposed here with the controversial reality that the communities in exile did not all aspire to heroism. However, most of the requests for forgiveness ended with the Austrians only reaffirming the sentences passed. Anticipating the arrival of hundreds of Venetian exiles, in fact, the Austrians had planted a large group of spies in Corfu—not all of whom were exiles—to monitor the daily life of the Italian community and directly inform Vienna about the community’s attitudes and habits. Venetian exiles were received by the British authorities and by Corfu’s most conservative fringes with deep suspicion. In contrast, the island’s most liberal and progressive peoples welcomed the Venetians warmly. The Republic of Venice’s ancient glory lived on in Corfu’s popular memory, so numerous were the inhabitants who brought the exiles material aid— something to eat, a house, a mattress, even simple demonstrations of respect and admiration. The Serenissima’s myth and legacy were thus quickly transformed into a feeling of closeness to, if not sharing, then the extraordinary effort that the patriots made during the process of Italian unification. As a result of being in contact with a certain category of political exiles, such as the Paduan lawyer, Andrea Meneghini, tireless organizer of aid companies to the exiles, or Leone Pincherle, a leading member of Assicurazioni Generali, the Greek islanders experienced new freedoms. The continuous flow of Venetian—and more generally Italian—patriots throughout the Ionian Islands encouraged Greek nationalism, hostility toward the British protectorate, and the sense of a potential wider political project which would result in a more liberal future for those oppressed countries. The exiled patriots from Venetia, therefore, almost all passed Corfu: famous names, such as, not only the Bandiera brothers, Tommaseo, and Manin, but also thousands of other more “minor” profiles, who also had an extraordinary impact on the island. Their Italianism that they brought to the Greeks of the Ionian Islands consisted of a collective 21 On the official forgiveness in Lombardy and Venetia during the Austrian domination until 1848 see Francesca Brunet, “Per atto di grazia.” Pena di morte e perdono sovrano nel Regno Lombardo-Veneto (1816–1848) (Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2016).

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feeling rich with patriotism and romanticism. Konstantina Zanou wrote that there was a circle of diasporic Greek intellectuals, dispersed elements of the national core, who, because of their experiences, were able to help support Greek independence.22 In addition, there was also a circle of diasporic Italians who contributed to Ionian national reunification. From the Venetians, the Ionians did not learn medical or agricultural techniques, political systems, or technological innovations, but assimilated the incentive toward the completion of national unity, that natural reunification with Greece, sovereign and independent, which was to take place only in 1864, a few years after the achievement of the Italian unification, and a few years before the definitive independence of Veneto from Austrian rule in 1866.

22 Konstantina Zanou, “Imperial Nationalism and Orthodox Enlightenment: A Diasporic Story Between the Ionian Islands, Russia and Greece, ca. 1800–30” in Isabella and Zanou, Mediterranean Diasporas, 118.

“He Is All American Now”: Italian–Americans in the Italian Campaign of World War II Manoela Patti

The Allied invasion of Europe began in the summer of 1943 with the landing of the Anglo–Americans in Sicily, the so-called Operation Husky. In view of the invasion of Italy, the United States asked Italian– Americans to fight against their ancestor country. Moreover, they were encouraged to exploit their idealized roots and their “ethnical” competence to facilitate a “good occupation.” In that context, ambivalence and ambiguity marked Roosevelt’s wartime policy toward Italian–Americans, on one side, and the self-perception of Italianness and Americanness,

“Mapping and Engineering the War,” in Indiana University, Journalism, Ernie Pyle [cited June 13, 2018], available from http://mediaschool.indiana.edu/ern iepyle/wartime-columns/. M. Patti (B) Department of Political Sciences and International Relations, University of Palermo, Palermo, Italy e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. Mourlane et al. (eds.), Italianness and Migration from the Risorgimento to the 1960s, Palgrave Studies in Migration History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88964-7_4

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on the other. How, therefore, did the ethnical sense of belonging and Americanization interplay during World War II? This article aims to analyze the case of the Italian–American’s war experience, focusing on it as a conjunctural phase in the process of constructing multifaceted transnational identities, and highlighting how Italianness became a resource at that time.

The Ethnic “Strategy” An essential line of research has focused on the Allied campaign in Italy—and on the Sicilian case in particular—, with important outcomes. Historians looked both at the structure of Allied military administration and at the complex involvement and interaction between soldiers and local people.1 The Allied occupation in the summer of 1943 was a passage full of contradictions: did the Allies come as friends to free the country (and Europe) or as enemies to occupy it? First, we should bear in mind that when the United States entered World War II, at the end of 1941, they had to deal with the complex ethnic mosaic that composed the nation. There were millions of Italian– Americans, first and second generation, who lived in the United States. Moreover, the Italian–American community had supported Mussolini and Fascism in the 1930s.2 After Pearl Harbor, the majority of them 1 There is substantial literature on this topic. See, e.g., Maurice F. Neufeld, “The Failure of Allied Military Government in Italy,” Public Administration Review (April 1946): 137– 47; David W. Ellwood, L’alleato nemico. La politica dell’occupazione anglo-americana in Italia, 1943–1946 (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1977); Lamberto Mercuri, 1943–1945. Gli Alleati e l’Italia (Naples: Esi, 1975); Rosario Mangiameli, “La regione in guerra (1943–1950),” in Storia d’Italia. Le regioni dall’Unità ad oggi, V, La Sicilia, eds. Maurice Aymard and Giuseppe Giarrizzo (Turin: Einaudi, 1987): 486–600; Rosario Mangiameli, Introduzione to Id., ed. Foreign Office, Sicily Zone Handbook 1943. Il manuale britannico per le forze d’occupazione in Sicilia (Caltanissetta-Rome: Salvatore Sciascia Editore, 1994); Manoela Patti, La Sicilia e gli alleati. Tra occupazione e Liberazione (Rome: Donzelli, 2013); Isobel Williams, Allies and Italians Under Occupation. Sicily and Southern Italy, 1943–45 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); Andrew Buchanan, American Grand Strategy in the Mediterranean During World War II (London: Cambridge University Press, 2014). 2 John P. Diggins, Mussolini and Fascism. The View from America (Princeton: Princeton

University Press, 1972); Phillip V. Cannistraro, Blackshirts in Little Italy. Italian Americans and Fascism, 1921–1929 (West Lafayette: Bordighera Press, 1999); Matteo Pretelli, Il fascismo e gli Italiani all’estero (Bologna: CLUEB, 2010); Stefano Luconi and Guido Tintori, L’ ombra lunga del fascio: canali di propaganda fascista per gli italiani d’America (Milan: M&B, 2004); Stanislao G. Pugliese, “Fascism and Anti-Fascism in

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supported the war efforts, but at the onset of the war, Italian nationals, as well as German–Americans and Japanese–Americans, were classified as enemy aliens and subjected to restrictions of personal freedom. In 1942, the Relocation Order was issued and almost 10,000 Italian–Americans, especially West Coast Italians, were forced to leave their homes.3 “Some 250 of them” […] were confined at Fort Missoula Camp “and Ellis Island without any counsel or trial, […].”4 However, some months later, on Columbus Day, 1942, the US Government established that “Italian nationals in the US would no longer be classified as enemies.”5 As claimed by Paula Branca-Santos, “President Roosevelt knew that he needed the support of the Italian-Americans, the nation’s largest ethnic group, in its fight against the Axis powers”6 and, at the beginning of 1943, in view of Italy’s military invasion, Italianness became a resource for the country. Italian–Americans went from being enemy aliens to becoming American citizens, useful in supporting the US war effort. After the Casablanca Conference in January 1943, President Roosevelt clearly looked at “the friendly feeling toward America entertained by a great number of the citizens of the United States who are of Italian descent.”7 The latter, declaring their loyalty to America, could demonstrate their total Americanization. Hence, as mentioned, Italian– Americans were encouraged to exploit their ethnical “competence” to understand the Italian soul and psychology and to facilitate a “good occupation” of Italy in the American “good war” against Fascism and Mussolini. We can trace out the model of the friendly invasion narrative in the American propaganda, elaborated above all by the president, and the Italian America,” in The Routledge History of Italian Americans, eds. William J. Connell and Stanislao G. Pugliese (New York: Routledge, 2017), 349–69. 3 Stephen Fox, The Unknown Internment. An Oral History of the Relocation of Italian Americans During World War II (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1990); Lawrence DiStasi, ed., Una Storia Segreta. The Secret History of Italian American Evacuation and Internment During World War II (Berkeley: Heyday, 2001). 4 Paula Branca-Santos, “Injustice Ignored: The Internment of Italian-Americans During World War II,” Pace International Law Review 13, 1 (2001): 169, available from http:// digitalcommons.pace.edu/pilr/vol13/iss1/5. 5 Branca-Santos, “Injustice Ignored.” 6 Branca-Stantos, 170. 7 Msg, Roosevelt to Churchill, 14 April 1943, OPD files, 014.1, Security (1–38), in Harry L. Coles and Albert K. Weinberg, Civil Affairs. Soldiers Become Governors (Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Military History, 1964), 167.

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American Government agencies between 1942 and 1943. Before the military invasion of Sicily, the propaganda leaflets launched on Italy’s soil by American planes showed the American army made up of Italian–American soldiers. An example is a leaflet reporting that Italian soldiers captured during the African military campaign had met “relatives and friends […] that had immigrated to America,” and even that some soldiers, such as the Sicilian, Carmelo Monaco had been taken “by his brother.”8 The purpose of Roosevelt’s political strategy was to gain the role of the senior partner in the Allied military government, and he tried building his aspirations on cultural aspects too. For Roosevelt, the “Great Italian Migration” had built a solid bridge connecting Italians and Americans. This deep bond, which was embodied in the Italian–American soldiers, was a crucial issue in justifying the US claim to the leadership in the alliance. However, in 1943, the British line and the indirect rule policy prevailed. Nonetheless, Roosevelt’s policy was seen as being forward thinking, and strengthening the “special relationship” paradigm, and was first elaborated in the frame of this political strategy, based on Roosevelt’s exploitation of: the strong pro-American feeling in Sicily and Southern Italy – as the Department of State wrote in the spring of 1943 - […] because of the several million American citizens of Italian origin, and the close contact, in normal times, of these with their families in Italy.9

Later, after landing in Sicily and during the hard battle to conquer the island, the American press published reports that highlighted the Sicilian people’s solidarity, especially due to the American army’s Italianness. An article published by the American magazine TIME read: A US mechanic […] shouted to the others in his unit: “If you see any natives, just say ‘Come State?’ and they’ll say ‘Bene, Bene’.” His name was

8 Allied leaflet, in National Archives and Records Administration, College Park (Nara), Record Group (Rg) 226, box 4, Entry 97, folder 61. 9 Memo, Department of State as revised by Roosevelt, 9 April 1943, CAD files, HUSKY, in Harry L. Coles and Albert K. Weinberg, Civil Affairs. Soldiers Become Governors, 166.

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Italian, his parents, in America, were Italian, and he added: “I’ve got a grandmother somewhere around here.”10

In effect, the Allied forces appointed some military governors—the Civil Affairs Officers (CAOs)—of Italian origin in the Sicilian occupied villages, and in liberated Italian regions later on. The Italian–American Charles Poletti, the former vice-governor of New York State, was the regional CAO in Sicily, continuing to hold senior positions in the Allied administration in Italy, besides becoming military governor of Rome in 1944. It was, in particular, a 1944 John Hersey novel, A Bell for Adano, which popularized the “enemy–friends” invasion model. Through the character of the Italian–American CAO Major Victor Joppolo, Hersey, in 1943 a war correspondent from Sicily for The New York Times, developed the American “good occupation” paradigm. Hersey found inspiration in Major Frank Toscani, who ran Licata (Adano in the fiction), a Sicilian village, in July 1943.11 Joppolo’s rhetoric was successful. This is proven, for example, by the fact that an American military specialist published in 2003 in the magazine The Atlantic Monthly, an article which referred to Joppolo as a crucial model for the American occupation of Iraq.12 However, in recent years research has demonstrated that the facts had been more complex. The “enemy–friends” narrative, in fact, intersects representation and reality (like for the long-lasting false myth of the mafia’s involvement in the Allied landing), cultural, and political elements, which we should understand by analyzing them in a transnational perspective, through the transatlantic bonds that had connected Italy and America even many decades before the war. As mentioned earlier, it was above all the novel by Hersey, which popularized Roosevelt’s strategy. The strategy was also widespread through the documentary series, commissioned by the army and the government, Why We Fight, directed by Frank Capra, “10—90 Italian–American,” as once he described himself. Hersey, in the foreword 10 “Battle of Sicily. The Enemy Friendly Isle,” TIME, July 26, 1943. 11 John Hersey, A Bell for Adano (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969 [1944]). 12 Robert Kaplan, “Supremacy by Stealth,” The Atlantic Monthly, 69 (2003). See also

Susan L. Carruthers, “Produce More Joppolos”: John Hersey’s A Bell for Adano and the Making of the “Good Occupation,” Journal of American History 100, 4 (2014): 1086–113.

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to A Bell for Adano, likewise Capra’s series, presenting the US democratic mission in the war, emphasizes Joppolo’s (and America’s) role in Italy and in Europe: America is the international country – writes Hersey. Major Joppolo was an Italian-American going to work in Italy. […] No other country has such a fund of men who speak the languages of the lands we must invade, who understand the ways and have listened to their parents sing the folk songs and have tasted the wine of the land on the palate of their memories. […] We are very lucky to have our Joppolos. […] America is on its way into Europe. […] Just as truly as Europe once invaded us, with wave after wave of immigrants, now we are invading Europe, with wave after wave of sons of immigrants.13

In the first page of the first chapter, Joppolo, after the landing, confides to another soldier: “This is like coming home, how often I have dreamed this.”14 From an Italian angle, in the Leonardo Sciascia’s novel E come il cielo avrebbe potuto non essere, we can find a comparable narration of the Italian–Americans landing in Sicily: “They created a division called Texas, exclusively made up of those Sicilian offspring. It was like a homecoming, a reunion among relatives. They spoke Sicilian.” Among the soldiers who landed on the island, continues the Sicilian writer, there were “the third generation of those who had built the New York-Brownsville railway line that were now setting foot for the first time on their forefather’s land.”15

“He Is All American Now” In September 1943, American newspapers published a series of reportages on the Italian surrender. The Philadelphia Inquirer issued an interview with an Italian–American soldier. When asked about his feelings about fighting against Italians, the soldier replied: “Well, I’m an

13 Hersey, Adano, forewords. 14 Hersey, Adano, 3. 15 Leonardo Sciascia, E come il cielo avrebbe potuto non essere…, in Id., Fatti diversi di

storia letteraria e civile (Palermo: Sellerio, 1989), 125–26.

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American Italian, so I got to do what I got to do.”16 The soldier Joseph Compagnone, one of the hundreds of thousands who landed in Sicily in 1943, had the same answer as war correspondent Ernie Pyle. Compagnone was born near Naples and arrived in America at the age of 16; he was hoping to meet his mother and sisters, during the Italian campaign, whereas his brother, an Italian soldier, has been captured by the British in Egypt. Pyle asked Compagnone if he was disturbed about fighting against his own people; in responding, the soldier stressed he must do it: “He is all American now.”17 Compagnone’s story is paradigmatic of the Italian–Americans’ experience in the Italian warfront and provides some enlightenment with regard to some crucial issues about migration and identity. It can show the process of construction of complex and fluid transnational identities, a result of the continuous interaction of cultural, political, social, and symbolic forces. Moreover, the matter of “ethnicity at war” is emblematic of the issue of ethnicity as “a relationship,” to quote Werner Sollors; a “Xness” which is a sociopolitical construction.18 In this context, the Italian–Americans in World War II are the symbol of the tangible consequence of these processes which exalt the ethnicity,

16 “Italy’s Surrender,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, September 8, 1943, quoted in Gary R. Mormino, “Little Italy Goes to War: Italian Americans and World War II,” in Italy and America 1943–44. Italian, American and Italian American Experiences of the Liberation of the Italian Mezzogiorno, ed. John Davis (Naples: La Città del Sole, 1997), 353–72. For Compagnone, see “Mapping and Engineering the War.” 17 “Mapping and Engineering the War.” 18 About the “ethnicity at war,” see among others, the fundamental studies of Sollors,

Cannistraro, Mormino, Pozzetta, Alba, Vecoli, Mangiameli, De Clementi, Luconi, Pretelli. See, e.g., Peter L. Belmonte, Italian Americans in World War II (Chicago: Arcadia, 2001); Gary R. Mormino, ed., The Impact of World War II on Italian Americans, 1935– Present (Staten Island, NY: American Italian Historical Association, 2007); Stefano Luconi, “Contested Loyalties: World War II and Italian-Americans’ Ethnic Identity,” Italian Americana 30, 2 (2012), 151–67; Dominic Candeloro, “World War II Changed Everything,” in The Routledge History of Italian Americans, eds William J. Connell and Stanislao G. Pugliese, 370–84. See also the virtual exhibition: Matteo Pretelli and Francesco Fusi, L’etnicità in guerra. Soldati di origine italiana negli eserciti alleati [cited June 13, 2018], available from https://artsandculture.google.com/exhibit/l-etnicit%C3%A0-in-guerra/pgJ imskv1fTeLA?hl=it. Moreover, on the “ethnicity”: Werner Sollors, Beyond ethnicity: consent and descent in American culture (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986); Kathleen N. Conzen et al., “The Invention of Ethnicity: una lettura americana,” Altreitalie, 3 (1990), 1–36; Rudolph J. Vecoli, “The Search for an Italian American Identity,” RSA, 3 (1984–85): 29–65.

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once it has been overcome. During the war, the GI Bill turned Italian soldiers into American citizens. As a consequence, after the war, many Italian–Americans left their communities in the Little Italies and went to live somewhere else. Through the army, a classical nation-building place, Italian origins, linguistic and cultural heritage were rediscovered as a piece of the American mosaic.19 The OSS (Office of Strategic Service) Italian Section led by Max Corvo is a typical and well-known case.20 Between 1942 and 1943 Corvo, son of the Italian immigrant, Cesare, a socialist worker from Sicily, helped by the young lawyer, Vincent Scamporino, built up a secret service unit made up of second-generation Italian–Americans, to fight against Fascism in Italy and to help the American war effort for European democracy.21 Nevertheless, some narratives refute these oleographic images, giving us a picture, which reflects the great contradictions entailed in the relationship between Americans, Italian–Americans, and Italians. Meanwhile, we could refer to a meaningful first episode of Paisà, the Rossellini film (1946) that narrates the war drama in Italy, following, from the Allied landing in Sicily, the Allied military campaign.22 In the first scene, set in a Sicilian village after the American troops’ arrival, the Italian director shows us the encounter between Italians and Americans not as a festa, but rather, like a drama. Among the liberators and the liberated there is a distance with no means to dispel it. Even though an Italian–American soldier speaks Italian, Italians and Americans are mutually suspicious, judging each other as enemies. The epilog is tragic: at the end, Carmela, the young Sicilian woman who has offered her help to the Americans, is killed because of a linguistic misunderstanding.

19 But the prejudice and discrimination against Italians did not end with World War II: see Anti-Italianism. Essays on a Prejudice, eds. William J. Connell and Fred Gardaphé (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); in particular, Salvatore J. La Gumina, “Prejudice and Discrimination. The Italian American Experience Yesterday and Today,” 107–15. 20 See Max Corvo, The O.S.S. in Italy, 1942–1945. A Personal Memoir (New York: Praeger, 1990). 21 For the role played by Italians in the OSS, see J.E. Miller, “La politica dei “prominenti” italo-americani nei rapporti dell’Oss,” Italia contemporanea, 139 (1980): 51–70; Salvatore J. LaGumina, The Office of Strategic Services and Italian Americans. The Untold History (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). 22 Gian Piero Brunetta, Il cinema neorealista italiano. Da Roma città aperta a I soliti ignoti (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2009), 33–37.

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Moreover, Roosevelt’s Italian–American strategy, although politically powerful, was less successful from a military perspective. In September 1943, after the occupation of Sicily, in a military report from the island, it was pointed out to chief commands that: some of the men, selected for their knowledge of the Sicilian dialect, were of little value in translating Italian into English, or viceversa on paper. […] That they should receive more training concerning their attitude and behaviour towards the inhabitants.23

And in 1944, an American official, during some inspections, complained about Italian–Americans in OSS: There is a greater need for Anglo-Saxon Americans — he wrote — than for Italian Americans. A top notch guy by the name of Smith is much more valuable than a mediocre officer who can speak the native language.24

The literature can also show us voices that are not in compliance with the official ethnical brotherhood narrative. I would like to quote the emblematic character of the Italian–American soldier, Stuki, a sort of anti-Joppolo, conceived by American writer John Horne Burns. In The Gallery, published in 1947, Burns, who had taken part in African and Italian campaigns, explores the moral decline of soldiers and civilians that has occurred because of the war, totally rejecting the Italian–American brotherhood as well as the “good war” rhetoric.25 Thus, when Stuki landed in Naples, in contrast to Joppolo, he saw the homecoming as an opportunity for revenge; a way to liberate himself from his ancestral country – the country that had expelled his father. Stuki scorns the Ginsos (a pejorative term for Italian–American), he despises Italians; he feels himself to be an alien invader not an “enemy–friend.” Yet, there are

23 Many organizational lessons have been learned from the assault phase Memo, C.M. Spofford, September 22, 1943, in Harry L. Coles and Albert K. Weinberg, Civil Affairs. Soldiers Become Governors, 198–99. 24 OSS advanced base at Caserta, Italy, Green to Scribner, February, 18 1944, p. 3, in Nara, Rg 226, box 17, Entry 136, folder 159. 25 John H. Burns, The Gallery (New York and London: Harper and Brothers, 1947).

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many examples which illustrate this complexity. One is the Russian–Italian Jew journalist, Ugo Stille, born Mikhail Misha Kamenetzky, in 1919 in Russia. Stille was dispatched to Italy after the Bolshevik Revolution and escaped to America in the 1930s because of the racial laws. In 1943, he landed in Sicily as a soldier, a member of the Psychological Warfare Branch, where he was put in charge of Radio Palermo, the first free radio station on the European mainland.26 In his experience, his Italianness was a resource for the US, however, his transnational identity was much more complex. Transnational identity also represents an unresolved issue for an Italian–American who had been interned during the war as an enemy alien, and who the Italian–American writer, Jerre Mangione, met during his journey to Sicily in 1946. On this occasion the man narrated his story, published by Mangione in his book entitled Reunion in Sicily (1950). In particular, a passage of this short account illustrates the negotiation process, sometimes painful, which defines ethnicity and identities: My crime was – the man told Mangione – that I followed the advice of an American Senator. This Senator was against the war. I […] heard him say that if we wanted to keep the United States out of war, we should all write the President at the White House. […] I sat down and wrote the President. I told him that the United States was my father and Italy was my mother and that it would disturb me to see them fighting one another. I said many other things – it was the longest letter I have ever written anyone. Instead of answering me, as any gentleman would have, the President sent the letter to the FBI. Two months later, when the war was declared, they pulled me out of bed in the middle of the night and locked me up. […] “Why didn’t you get your son to help you?” an old man asked. “My son was busy in the American army” he replied shortly. “While I was caged behind a fence, my son was in a plane dropping bombs on his own flesh and blood, the very thing I predicted he would be doing when I wrote the President…. The only thing I didn’t predict was his death” […] They told me the Germans did it. I hope that is the truth. I should hate to think it was someone of his own blood. Two of his comrades wrote to me and swore it was the Germans who did it. […] Ever since then I’ve been

26 See Alexander Stille, The Force of Things. A Marriage in War and Peace (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012).

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waiting for permission to visit my son’s grave. He is buried in Sicily, near Licata, in the same province where his mother was born.27

The same province which was governed by Toscani in July 1943. That’s Joppolo’s Adano.

27 Jerre Mangione, Reunion in Sicily (New York: Columbia University Press 1989 [1950]).

Italianness, Flexible Citizenship and Belonging: Unraveling Paths of Emigrants’ Descendants’ “Return” in Northeastern Italy Melissa Blanchard

Building on ethnographic research carried out with emigrants’ children and descendants “coming back” to the Trentino from Argentina at the present time, this chapter explores the complex links between “return” and Italianness in Northeastern Italy. Italy has one of the most generous legislations on nationality preservation and nationality acquisition for emigrants and their descendants1 : Italian nationality can be transmitted through generations thanks to the principle of jus sanguinis, without conditions of residence or limits of time. One just has to prove that they descend from an emigrant who 1 Christian Joppke, Selecting by Origin: Ethnic Migration in the Liberal State (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005).

M. Blanchard (B) CNRS, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Marseille, France e-mail: [email protected] Centre Norbert Elias, Marseille, France

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. Mourlane et al. (eds.), Italianness and Migration from the Risorgimento to the 1960s, Palgrave Studies in Migration History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88964-7_5

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left the Peninsula after the unification of Italy (1861). As a consequence, Italian nationality can only be lost through a voluntary act. Moreover, emigrants’ descendants who were born and have always resided outside of Italy can easily acquire Italian nationality. Both government policies and the legal system have thus been extremely favorable toward emigrants and their descendants.2 The mass Italian emigration of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (1850–1970 approximately), especially the transoceanic emigration, played a crucial role in orienting the legal choices made in the major general reforms of the Italian nationality laws (1912 and 1992). The urgency to foster a sense of Italianness through an adequate nationality law was clearly expressed in the first parliamentary debates in 1912. Retaining a sense of Italianness (mantenere il sentimento di italianità) was a crucial goal for the political class, in order not to “lose” the masses of Italians leaving for South America,3 considered as a source of revenue through remittances and as a fact of international relevance for the young Italian nation. The second (and latest) reform, that of 1992, answers to requests of the emigrant community to maintain a juridical, cultural, and sentimental tie with Italy through nationality.4 Introducing the principle of dual citizenship, this law bolsters the persisting quality of Italian nationality and extends the range of opportunities to acquire it for emigrants’ descendants. Italian nationality law is therefore based on the premise of a shared Italianness, defined as a way of feeling Italian, a sense of belonging to a community based on what is considered to be Italian culture and Italian history, among emigrants, emigrants’ children, and emigrants’ descendants. It builds on what one may call the legal myth of ethnicity,5 in the sense that it supposes that Italianness—a sense of national belonging

2 Ferruccio Pastore, “A Community out of Balance: Nationality Law and Migration Politics in the History of Post-Unification Italy,” Journal of Modern Italian Studies 1 (2004): 27–48. 3 Atti parlamentari, Camera dei deputati, XXIII Legislatura, I sessione, Discussioni, 1st

round of June 4, 1912, 20, 322, cited by Ferruccio Pastore, La comunità sbilanciata. Diritto alla cittadinanza e politiche migratorie nell’Italia post-unitaria (Roma, CeSPI, 2002), 9. 4 Pastore, La comunità sbilanciata, 9. 5 Rogers Brubaker, “Migrations of Ethnic Unmixing in the ‘New Europe,’” Interna-

tional Migration Review 32 (1998): 1047–65.

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rooted in a shared cultural identity—justifies those emigrants’ descendants’ claims to Italian nationality, regardless of their generation and of their possible lack of direct ties to Italy. But while the laws consider Italianness as the premise and the driving force of return and nationality acquisition, what really happens in the field? Do migrants’ descendants refer to the notion of Italianness as one of the elements explaining their own migration? And, on the other hand, do the street-level bureaucrats that deal with “return migrations” use the notion of Italianness or do they use other notions to explain these migrations? Before tackling the ways in which the concept of Italianness is handled both by migrants and by institution representatives, I shall discuss some distinctive features of emigration in the Trentino and of the local laws framing “return migration.”

Emigration from Trentino and the Role of Institutions Between 2010 and 2013, I conducted ethnographic fieldwork on migrants “coming back” to the Trentino from Argentina: I collected the life stories of ten emigrants’ children, grandchildren, and greatgrandchildren born in Latin America. It quickly became apparent that the term “return migration” was not appropriate to define the migrations I was investigating. An examination of the existing literature in social sciences reveals that the concept of “return migration” is not univocally defined and appears intrinsically ambiguous.6 The major problem stems from the fact that this concept is used interchangeably to refer both to migrants’ and to migrants’ descendants’ experience. Whereas the former really go back to their place of origin, emigrants’ descendants actually leave the country where they were born and raised to migrate to their ancestors’ original country, which they often do not know. The experiences considered as emigrants’ and emigrants’ descendants’ “return” thus imply a totally different relationship with Italian nationality and belonging.7 Nonetheless, I shall continue 6 Erik Olsson and Russell King, “Introduction: Diasporic Return,” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 17 (2008): 255–61; Véronique Petit, ed., Migrations Internationales De Retour Et Pays D’origine (Paris: Collections du CEPED, 2007). 7 Olsson and King, “Introduction: Diasporic Return,” 1047–65.

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to use the notion of return, in quotation marks, to refer to the term used in the language of the institutions that frame such migrations. Inhabitants of the Trentino practiced circular short-range migration from the dawn of the modern era onward, as did their counterparts in other Alpine areas.8 Between 1850 and 1975, however, the scale of emigration was massive. As well as bordering European countries, Trentino emigrants’ most popular destinations were Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, and Chile. Emigration to Latin America often took place through recruitment programs organized by employers and by the governments of the receiving states. The last great waves of collective departures left the Trentino for Chile in the 1950s, in colonizing expeditions organized by the Trentino-Alto Adige Region and the Chilean Government and supported by funds from the Marshall Plan. The outcome of the last expedition, in 1952, was disastrous9 : emigrants, who sold everything against the promise of a house and arable land in Chile, were housed in barracks on land impossible to cultivate and lived in extreme poverty. Many of them had to be repatriated urgently by the consular authorities. In response to such tragic events, in 1957, several Christian organizations (including the Christian workers unions, Associazioni Cristiane Lavoratori Italiani ACLI) founded an association, called Trentini nel Mondo (Trentiners throughout the world), the aim of which was to engage in solidarity and support for those Trentino emigrants living abroad.10 The association immediately won the support of the newly formed Trentino-Alto Adige regional authorities. It is important to remember that the Trentino is one province of the autonomous region of Trentino-Alto Adige, the autonomy of which was decreed in 1946 due to its diverse population and unique history. In effect, this region, which had longed formed part of the historical Tyrol, was under Habsburg domination before being annexed to Italy in 1919. It is still inhabited by a

8 Laurence Fontaine, Histoire Du Colportage En Europe, XV e –XIX e Siècle (Paris:

Albin Michel, 1993); Pier Paolo Viazzo, Upland Communities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). 9 Renzo Maria Groselli, Un Urlo Da San Ramon: La Colonizzazione Trentina in Cile, 1949–1974 (Trento: Fondazione Museo Storico Trentino, 2011). 10 Ferruccio Pisoni, Un Solco Lungo 50 Anni. L’associazione Trentini Nel Mondo Dal 1957 Al 2007 (Trento: Associazione Trentini nel Mondo, 2007).

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large German-speaking population and by three ethno-linguistic minorities,11 alongside the Italian population. In 1972 a revised version of the region’s special statute transferred the main competencies to the two provinces that make it up: the Trentino and the South Tyrol. The two self-governing provinces, therefore, hold considerable political, legislative, administrative, and fiscal powers. Trentini nel Mondo is still hard at work, thanks to more than two hundred clubs (circoli) around the world and in Trentino. Today its aim is to promote, through the action of volunteers, “The culture and the identity of our territory […]. To bring Trentiners together, to revivify and promote the sense of belonging, the roots, the trentine memory.”12 The other local institution that deals with emigrants is the Ufficio emigrazione (Bureau of emigration) of the Province of Trento. Its aim is to inform Trentino “emigrants” (i.e. all people of Trentine origin) residing abroad, to help them in the acquisition of Italian nationality, and to finance actions for the recovery and maintenance of Trentine traditions and the Italian language among emigrants. It also finances the trips of emigrants willing to rimpatriare (literally return to their country of origin) temporarily or definitively and gives financial assistance to returnees in need.13 “Return migration,” which has always characterized the Trentino’s migrations, has increased dramatically since the early 1980s. The upheavals following the installation of dictatorships in several Latin American countries in the 1970s and the repeated economic crises they underwent explain why, today as in the 1980s, “returnees” come mostly from Latin America.

11 E Steineke, “Potential for Conflicts in Areas of Ethno-Linguistic Minorities of the Eastern Alps,” Annales 11 (2001): 259–66. 12 “Associazione Trentini nel Mondo.” Accessed January 27, 2019, http://www.trenti ninelmondo.it/lassociazione/chi-siamo.html. 13 “Provincia autonoma di Trent.” Accessed January 27, 2019, http://www.strutture. provincia.tn.it/Dettaglio_Strutture.aspx?cod_s=U321.

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Different Types of “Return” and Belonging The interviews I conducted resulted in my detecting three main types of “return,” which I classified on the basis of the motives of “return migration.”14 The first type is that of emigrants’ families coming back after the retirement of the father (the family member who actually emigrated) for nostalgic and/or economic reasons. The second type is that of emigrants’ children or descendants who were born in Argentina and whose parents remain in South America, who move to the Trentino in search of better living conditions. The third type is that of emigrants’ children or descendants moving to the Trentino to flee political persecution at the time of dictatorships in their origin country. Their primary emotional and political belonging remains in their country of birth. Far from considering Italy a place to which they “come back,” as the legislative system supposes, Argentina appears in these migrants’ interviews to be the country to which they might one day go back. As Rosa explains: I am Argentinian, from Buenos Aires. I came in 1982, because of history. […] Someone told me that the police were coming after me, because of the part I took in the students’ movement. ...When I arrived in the Trentino I did not think I’d stay. In addition to my studies, I left my life there, my feelings and everything. After two years, I realized that I would never go back [to Argentina]. It was very hard.

Migrants who came for economic reasons show a more ambiguous feeling of belonging. Ana states: I’m Argentinian; my mother is Italian, she’s Trentine from the Valli Giudicarie. My father is Argentinian and they still live in Buenos Aires. In 1999 I was working as an editor for the magazine of the Circolo Trentini Buenos Aires. I came to Italy after the 2001 crisis. I was a member of the youth group of our association, so we were aware of every new initiative. After the crash, the Province made a project for return (rientro), for the children, for the families of Trentino origin living abroad. So, with my boyfriend, whose parents were from Avio, since there was no work there we said

14 Melissa Blanchard and Francesca Sirna, “Migrations de retour dans les Alpes italiennes: mobilités, ‘cittadinanza’ et sentiment d’appartenance,” Revue européenne de migrations internationales 33 (2017): 301–22.

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“oh well, let’s go”. […] In Buenos Aires, my grandparents never spoke Spanish and my mom used to watch the RAI from morning till night; that’s why I knew the language. My mother did speak Spanish, but my grandparents were struggling… .Anyway, it is difficult to say how I felt. As long as you’re there it is difficult to realize which habits are Italian, but compared to my friends’ families, which were more Spanish, we had some distinct habits: polenta, grandparents who speak a different dialect, these Italian things (cose di Italiani).

Carlo explains: My father is Argentinian, but his grandparents are European. You can say we are pure blood Argentinians. I lived there until I was twelve; at that moment I did not understand what it would mean to come; I thought about it later. Because we were not convinced to stay here, it was a job opportunity but we didn’t consider it as a definitive thing. Then, it became definitive. You come and you stay: you make new friends, you change your life… .My family came to the Trentino because we had some Trentino descent, so we came here. And it was easy to get the Italian nationality. We never asked for the financial aid of the Province: we never asked anyone for anything! We started everything (a family firm) with very little. It was a nice project to move, challenging, but we Argentinians are like that, we are crazy. It’s a deep change, but it helps you a lot. What is unforeseen does not scare us. We are much more flexible. I am very tied to my land, Argentina, I am Argentinian, my parents too. We are very close to our country, but we do not have that fixity anymore, we don’t have the need to be here with fixed roots. We can be here, there, but we always have our identity.

When it comes to describing their feeling of belonging, or where home is, emigrants’ children and descendants define themselves as Argentinians, more than as Italian or Trentine. Italianness seems to be something some families transmit through language, habits, and food, while other families lose it. Even if Ana, a second-generation Argentinian, referring to her family’s identity speaks of Italian things, in reality families transmit mostly a regional identity, as the Trentine dialect or the Trentine recipes for polenta. From the interviews I gathered it appears that Italianness does not motivate the backward mobility these migrants engage in, the reasons for which are primarily economic. A Trentine ancestry is reactivated in a utilitarian perspective, in order to reacquire the Italian nationality or to benefit from interesting return policies. If the Trentino was the point of

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departure of these new migrants’ ancestors, it is not conceived as the land where their roots become established, or a fixed point of reference for family and individual belonging. On the contrary, individuals seem to attach more value to their South American belonging, an identity the family gathered in the New World that is in itself composite. Carlo defines this South American family identity as something people carry with them, something that does not need a form of fixity, compared to the “old world” identities. Trentine or Italian parentage is thus more of a benefit, providing families access to citizenship rights and, therefore, easy mobility to and through the Schengen space. But they do not speak of it as a “return,” whereas the institutional actors do (through their policies for rientro).

Institutions at Work: The Construction of a Regional Belonging Provincial legislation has supported emigrants’ returns to the Trentino since 1986. Emigrants (a term by which the legislation designates both those who actually left the Trentino in their lifetime and their descendants) are granted financial aid for their and their family members’ journey back, allowances for the repatriation of their belongings, and financial aid in the first months following their “reinstallation” in the Trentino if they are in need. During the first twenty years this law was in force, there was no generation limit to consider when determining whether an individual was an emigrant from the Trentino. As one could expect, this policy attracted crowds of candidates to “return,” among whom were not only former emigrants but also numerous emigrants’ descendants, who sometimes only had a distant ancestor who had come from the Trentino. It transpired that the financial weight the province had to sustain was too much. Thus, in 2007 the Province of Trento introduced a generation and a date limit. In order to benefit from such allowances in the 2020s, one must be an emigrant, the child, or the grandchild of an emigrant who left Trentino before December 31, 1970. With what may seem to be an excess of discretion, the law considers that from 1971 onward, economic conditions in the Trentino were not conducive to cause mass emigration. Coupled with the laws on nationality acquisitions of 1992, this policy encourages the formation of new flows of immigration toward the Trentino. The case of the Trentino is paradigmatic of the paradoxes raised in a relatively young unitary state

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by such policies, which may also be considered as policies of selected immigration,15 or positive discrimination,16 based on an ethnic preference principle. Indeed, some of the ancestors of those who today return to Trentino as Italians left the region with an Austro–Hungarian passport and, until 1919, did not have Italian nationality. This may also explain why, as the interviews show, families of emigrant descent transmit regional belonging (Trentinness) through the generations, more than national belonging (Italianness). The notions of return and belonging used by the Ufficio Emigrazione and by Trentini nel Mondo, both publicly funded, reflect imprecisely the mobilities they deal with. The difference in discourse between their representatives reveals the ideological orientation of the institution they work for. The manager of the return program of the Ufficio Emigrazione, who administers the provincial allowances, has a realistic vision of the windfall that these policies represent for emigrants’ descendants having no direct link with Italy. However, she refers to the concept of Trentinness (trentinità), in the sense of a local belonging—to which many “returning migrants” are accused of having no links—as an essentialized, though not clearly defined, entity: Years ago we registered a great return (rientro) from South America in particular. The volume of returns vary from year to year depending on the economic crisis striking the countries where Trentino emigrants live. Before 2007 there was no generation limit to consider that one was the descendant of a Trentine emigrant. But, politically they had to take up the law again because there had been an abuse: there had been a lot of returns and we realized that there was very little Trentinness in this process.

The president of the Trentini nel Mondo, an association whose existence is linked to the promotion of Trentinness abroad, considers the feeling of belonging the primary reason for returns, which explains why emigrants are coming back from some countries more than from others:

15 Yann Scioldo-Zürcher, “Editorial. Migrations de retour et de rapatriement,” Revue européenne des migrations internationales 29 (2013): 7–10. 16 Joppke, Selecting.

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One of our areas of intervention is to understand what Trentinness means to people. If some time ago, the Trentine identity coincided with a physical place, a sense of territorial rooting, now we conceive it in a more generic sense, as a community of shared values. These values are solidarity, intellectual honesty, ethics, morality, religion for some people. We have got Trentines of 5th, 6th generation. They participate in the association because of a sense of belonging to a territory, because of the possibility to reconnect a tie, of rediscovering their origins, and being part of … In Brazil and in Argentina, the sense of belonging is very strong: there are villages where they still speak Trentino dialect. In North America, on the contrary, this feeling is weaker. They forgot their origins and since they are better off, there is no need of our presence, so perhaps no one has reminded them of their origins. I wouldn’t say that there is a material interest in rediscovering one’s origins. People come back more from South America because of an opportunity, just because the presence of Trentini nel Mondo went in those countries in which emigrants were in need, so they knew their origins and they knew about these opportunities.

For emigrants’ descendants, the feeling of belonging to a national– cultural entity does not necessarily overlap with a passport: even if they have Italian nationality, they continue to consider themselves as Argentinian. Feeling Argentinian, however, entails an inclusive quality: interviewees consider that all Argentinians are of mixed European descent. The identity narrative of an immigration country (Argentina) whose nationality law is based on jus soli, comes to clash with the identity narrative of an emigration country (Italy) whose nationality is based on jus sanguinis. The fact that Argentinian identity stems from migration, in migrants’ discourses, paradoxically allows them to maintain this national belonging through migration. Belonging is not a question of roots, as it would be in the Old World, but a question of self-identification, tying individuals to the national context in which they have been socialized. Nationhood, as the feeling of belonging to an imagined community,17 is thus disconnected from the civil rights emigrants’ descendants may benefit from by reacquisition of Italian citizenship. When migrants speak about their European belonging, regional belonging seems to prevail over national belonging.

17 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Random House, 1983).

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Emigrants’ descendants’ migration to the Trentino does not necessarily reflect a feeling of belonging, but a strategic use of Italian nationality, in order to (re)emigrate to Europe and to circulate in the Schengen space. This social phenomenon has been observed in other national contexts. Through the concepts of flexible citizenship,18 and transnational citizenship,19 recent studies examine how individuals’ actions adjust to a flexible and mobility-bound work market thanks to an opportunistic use of their citizenship rights. They stress the material motives that may underlie their decisions about nationality and mobility.20 These considerations contrast with the representations that Italian law and institutions seem to attach to nationality, referring to sentimental ties with the place of origin and with the genealogic community, linking the individual to a shared history and to a shared culture: referring to Italianness. Regional institutions, though, do not mention the concept of Italianness. The aim of these institutions is to protect people who originate from the Trentino and to promote Trentino identity. Thus, Trentinness is a central and essentialized concept in their work and it is presented as the main reason that motivates or should motivate emigrants’ descendants’ “returns.” This concept is vital as it is the keystone of the political construction that these institutions represent. If it ceased to be fostered, the political entity (the Autonomous Province) and the very institutions that represent it, would lose their raison d’être. This is why, in spite of the national rhetoric about nationals living abroad, they never refer to Italianness.

18 Aihwa Ong, Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality (Durham:

Duke University Press, 1999). 19 Jonathan Fox, “Unpacking Transnational Citizenship,” Annual Review of Political Science 8 (2005): 171–201. 20 Rainer Bauböck, “Cold Constellations and Hot Identities: Political Theory Questions About Transnationalism and Diaspora,” in Diaspora and Transnationalism, eds. Rainer Bauböck and Thomas Faist (Amsterdam: Amsterdam Universtity Press, 2010), 295–322.

Italian Institutions

Italianness in Colonial Tunisia Through the Dante Alighieri Society (1893–1920) Gabriele Montalbano

This paper analyzes the building of Italianness in a migrant community living in the colonial context of Tunisia. Like other constructions of national character, Italianness is a system of values, traditions, representations, and stereotypes.1 The aim of this article is to consider Italian nation-building in the French protectorate of Tunisia not as a given but as a social and cultural project within Italian-speaking collectivities.2 This analysis will focus on the Tunisian chapter of the Dante Alighieri Society. The primary purpose of this society was to educate and spread patriotic

1 Silvana Patriarca, Italian Vices: Nation and Character from The Risorgimento to the Republic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014); Anne-Marie Thiesse, La création des identités nationales (Paris: Seuil, 2001). 2 Alessandro Triulzi, “Italian-Speaking Communities in Early Nineteenth Century Tunis,” Revue de l’Occident musulman et de la Méditerranée 9, 1 (1971): 153–84.

G. Montalbano (B) University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. Mourlane et al. (eds.), Italianness and Migration from the Risorgimento to the 1960s, Palgrave Studies in Migration History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88964-7_6

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values among Italian migrants.3 The society found a flourishing environment for its activities in colonial Tunisia, thanks to the involvement of some members of that community. Since its creation in Tunis in 1893 until the 1920s when the Fascist regime rallied under its rule, the Tunisian chapter of the society was an expression of the power of local elites.4 In order to understand the context in which the society operated, the social and historical framework of the Italian emigration in Tunisia in this period must be addressed. The Italian-speaking presence in the Tunisian Regency had deep historical roots which began far before the French invasion in 1881. Italian-speaking communities existed in the Tunisian Regency from the early modern period, and were composed mainly of merchants from Genoa or Livorno, or slaves captured by the Tunisian corsairs.5 During the nineteenth century, the Beylik of Tunis hosted a significant number of migrants, social outcasts, and political refugees.6 It was during this period, and thanks to the initiative of some of those refugees, that the very first Italian schools were created in Tunis.7 With the unification of Italy in 1861, the need for Italian Government schools in the Tunisian Regency became apparent, due to the large number of its nationals. In

3 Beatrice Pisa, Nazione e politica nella Società “Dante Alighieri” (Rome: Bonacci, 1995); Patrizia Salvetti, Immagine nazionale ed emigrazione nella Società “Dante Alighieri” (Rome: Bonacci, 1995). 4 Mark I. Choate, “Identity Politics and Political Perception in the European Settlement of Tunisia: The French Colony versus the Italian Colony,” French Colonial History 8 (2007): 97–109. 5 Fiorenzo Toso, “Tabarchini e tabarchino in Tunisia dopo la diaspora,” Bollettino di Studi Sardi, III–3 (12/2010); Leila El Houssi, “The Qr¯ana Italian Jewish Community of Tunisia Between XVIII–XIX Century: An Example of Transnational Dimension,” Studi Emigrazione, 186 (4/2012): 361–69. 6 Julia Ann Clancy-Smith, Mediterraneans: North Africa and Europe in an Age of Migration, C. 1800–1900 (Oakland: University of California Press, 2011) and “Marginality and Migration: Europe’s Social Outcasts in Pre-Colonial Tunisia, 1830–81,” Outside In: Marginality in the Modern Middle East, ed. Eugene Rogan (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2002): 149–83. 7 Corrado Masi, Gente nostra nel Mediterraneo occidentale (Bologna: L. Cappelli, 1938): 91; Augusto Gallico, Tunisi, i berberi e L’Italia nei secoli, (Ancona: La Lucerna, 1928): 231; Gaston Loth, Le peuplement italien en Tunisie & en Algérie (Paris: A. Colin, 1905): 376; Michele Brodino, La stampa italiana in Tunisia: storia e società: 1838–1956 (Milan: Editoriale Jaca Book, 1998): 23.

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fact, over the course of the nineteenth century, and especially beginning from the time of the French protectorate, the number of Italians living in Tunisia increased.8 The huge migration from Sicily, Sardinia, and southern Italy at the end of the nineteenth century changed the social composition of the Italian community. Attracted by projects sponsored by the French colonial regime, these migrants became an important element of the European working class in the colonial system.9 Through migration and natural demographic growth, Italians outnumbered French people in Tunisia until 1931. If during the first half of the nineteenth century, migrants from Italy were mainly part of the upper class, in the second, the majority were working class, poor, and illiterate. Scholars often view nation-building in migrant contexts as a top-down process from motherland to migrant communities.10 The interest here is to analyze Italian nation-building as an original product of the collectivity.11 A focus on local institutions can help identify the nation-building dynamics that formed an Italian community from a collectivity of different migrants.12 The society in Tunisia is a fitting case to explore how the process of collective identity is constructed inside a migrant collectivity.

Social Dynamics in the Dante Alighieri Tunisian Chapter In 1892, three years after the creation of the society in Italy by the poet, Giosuè Carducci, the society was founded in Tunis under the name “Society for the encouragement and diffusion of Italian instruction in Tunis.” This society managed a library on behalf of the government, and soon took the initial steps to become a local chapter of the Dante Alighieri Society. The following year, Cesare Fabbri, a member of Tunisian society 8 Jean Ganiage “Les Européens en Tunisie au milieu du XIXe siècle (1840–1870),” Les Cahiers de Tunisie. Revue de Sciences Humaines, 11 (1955): 388–422. 9 Mark I. Choate “The Tunisia Paradox: Italy’s Strategic Aims, French Imperial Rule, and Migration in the Mediterranean Basin,” California Italian Studies 1, “Italy in the Mediterranean” (1/2010): 1–20. 10 Mark I. Choate, Emigrant Nation: The Making of Italy Abroad (New York: Harvard University Press, 2008). 11 Luciano Gallino, La sociologia: concetti fondamentali (Turin: UTET Università, 1989): 56. 12 Donna R. Gabaccia, Italy’s Many Diasporas (London: Routledge, 2013): 120–28.

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and journalist at the local Italian newspaper L’Unione was sent to Rome to negotiate the admission of the society into the Dante Alighieri Society network. Attilio Molco, president of the “Society for Italian instruction” and future president of the society’s local chapter, drafted some negotiation guidelines to Fabbri: they should not think of us as an organization that collects funds, but, on the contrary, as an organization that distributes locally the funds that the Society would like to allocate to Tunisia, which needs them very much.13

From the very beginning, funding from central institutions played a crucial role in this local society. The admission into the society’s web allowed this society to ask for external funding and political support from the mother country. In 1894, the society was recognized as the local chapter of the society in Tunis. Despite successful negotiations and financial support, it suffered greatly from a lack of economic resources to address the needs of the community. According to members in Tunis, the funds of the central committee were not adequate. The government, on the other hand, held that the local board was excessively large and should be minimized while also increasing the enrollment of regular members. The president of the Tunis chapter refused to reduce the size of the board. The councils of Italian associations played an important representative role locally in relations with the consulate and the central authorities. Keeping a large number of council members was necessary for the political needs of the community, which did not have any other representative structures: The colony does not have official representation […] It gathers in spontaneous groups such as the various associations, and their executive councils constitute precisely that representation; and they allow the Colony to participate in its own administration since the consular authority maintains a sympathetic and continuous relationship with them. And therefore it could always avoid any cause of discord and maintain unity and cohesion in front of foreigners.14

13 Archivio storico della società Dante Alighieri (from now on ASDA), Serie Comitati Esteri, b. 434, f. 613 “Tunisi,” Tunis, November 10, 1893. 14 ASDA, Serie Comitati Esteri, b. 434, f. 613 “Tunisi,” Tunis, October 8, 1895.

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The society of Tunis wanted to keep its council as large as possible, which would allow council members to play a significant role in the politics of the community. Most of the group’s resources came precisely from the local fundraising. However, due to the social inequality in the community, the members were too few to face the needs of a largely working-class community alone. For this reason, Molco asked for further economic aid from Rome, underlining the social gap among the Italians in Tunis: By now everyone knows that Tunis is, especially today, a colony of workers in which the wealthy are the minority, while they also constitute the substratum of all the associations, which are not few in the Regency.15

The activities of the society were focused on the instruction and schooling of the emigrated working class. Soon, the society’s chapters became associations that represented the wealthy Italian middle class, especially the liberal professions. From 1905 to the 1920s, for instance, the president of the Tunis society chapter was Pietro Brignone, a Sicilian doctor, and the secretary was Luigi D’Alessandro from Puglia, headmaster of the Italian College of Tunis “Giovanni Meli.” Patriotic values were the backbone of all of the society’s activities. From the outset, the local chapter of the society in Tunis regarded itself as an elite group while its social mission was geared toward lower-class Italian migrants. Italianness in Tunisia was articulated through a system of relations between the social classes of the Italian collectivity.

Conflicts and Negotiations In the following years, the society of Tunis rose in importance due to the political contingencies of Italian–French relations in the protectorate. In 1896, a new treaty between Italy and Tunisia was ratified and Rome officially recognized French protection over Tunisia.16 In exchange, Rome enjoyed some limited benefits: the existing Italian schools and associations in Tunisia could continue their activities, and children born of Italian

15 ASDA, Serie Comitati Esteri, b. 434, f. 613 “Tunisi,” Tunis, September 2, 1895. 16 Mary Dewhurt Lewis, “Geographies of Power: The Tunisian Civic Order, Jurisdic-

tional Politics, and Imperial Rivalry in the Mediterranean, 1881–1935,” The Journal of Modern History 80, 4 (December 2008): 791–830.

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parents in the French protectorate could maintain their national citizenship. Although these conventions protected existing Italian governmental schools, they also limited its number. But the staggering increase of Italian migrants arriving in Tunisia at the turn of the century meant that the 1896 governmental scholar system was insufficient. At the same time, the society was recognized by the 1896 Conventions, and received regular funds from Rome (although never enough, according to its presidents). This political framework permitted the society to become the only way to improve Italian private schools. In 1897, the society of Tunis had 81 regular members and 10 council members. In 1915, regular members numbered 316 while council members were 15.17 In 1898, a women’s section was formed within the society. The Patronato Scolastico mainly organized free school canteens for poor Italian children.18 In this way, Italian schools could compete with well-equipped French ones. Moreover, the Tunis chapter expanded its network of subchapters to Bizerte, Mahdia, and El Kef. In 1900, a society subchapter was founded in Sousse and became autonomous in 1904.19 From 1906/1907, Italian communities of Sfax and Monastir had their respective society chapters.20 The leading role of Tunis in the local society network was often contested, as shown by the emancipation of Sousse in 1904 and frequent conflicts with the Bizerte chapter which wanted to be free from the Tunis chapter’s rules. In 1904 and 1915, the Bizerte subchapter struggled for its autonomy from Tunis.21 The main issue of the Bizerte–Tunis conflict was the management of the Italian school in Bizerte. The school was almost entirely funded by the Tunis chapter, which did not want to relinquish its economic and social hegemony. On the contrary, the Bizerte chapter wanted to manage the local school on its own. Thanks to political connections with Rome and after the Bizerte protest in 1915, the Tunis chapter obtained the right to nominate one of its own members as headmaster of the school. His name was Carlo Bonanomi, a young teacher and nephew

17 Camera di Commercio Italiana di Tunisi, Elenco delle ditte commerciali italiane e dei professionisti stabiliti in Tunisia (Tunis: Tip. Vittorio Finzi, 1915): 12. 18 ASDA, Serie Comitati Esteri, b. 434, f. 613 “Tunisi,” Tunis, December 13, 1899. 19 ASDA, Serie Comitati Esteri, b. 407, f. 576 “Susa 1901–1924.” 20 Camera di Commercio Italiana di Tunisi, Elenco delle ditte commerciali italiane e dei

professionisti stabiliti in Tunisia, 13. 21 ASDA, Serie Comitati Esteri, b. 434, f. 613, Tunis, April 2, 1915.

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of Virginio Cortesi, a teacher at the Italian high school Vittorio Emanuele II of Tunis and one of the most powerful council members of the Tunis chapter.22

Italianness “in Secret”: Supporting Illegal Schools The society became the main supporter of all Italian educational activities in Tunisia. Although there were often conflicts between the ministry of foreign affairs, the society’s central committee, and the Tunis chapter about the amount of economic aid, Rome trusted the local society. Starting in 1901, the ministry assigned the administration of all Italian primary government schools of Tunis to the local society. The committee therefore received more than seven thousand francs every year from the ministry of foreign affairs to finance primary schools.23 Moreover, as a large part of its members were headmasters, school directors, and teachers, the Tunisian society chapters were all very involved, through its members, in the school commissions (Deputazioni Scolastiche). These councils administered the Italian governmental education system in Tunis, Bizerte, Sfax, and Sousse. The private society was strongly connected to Italian state institutions. If the number of Italian governmental schools was limited in Tunisia due to the 1896 Conventions, the society was the only association that could expand Italian education through private courses and schools. Although it was possible to establish private schools given the authorization of the Tunisian Government, in practice the colonial authorities favored French schools and refused the opening of new Italian ones until 1910. However, for some migrants, the importance of educating their children in Italian was stronger than the rebuffs. In late 1901, in Bou Ficha a small town in the countryside of Enfida almost entirely inhabited by Sicilian peasants,24 an illegal Italian school was set up by Giuseppe Farina, who served as a teacher. Some 16 children attended this school, funded by monthly contributions from parents. In order to avoid the French police, the classes were held in the evening in the home

22 ASDA, Serie Comitati Esteri, b. 434, f. 613, Tunis, September 9, 1915. 23 ASDA, Serie Comitati Esteri, b. 434, f. 613, Tunis, June 30, 1905. 24 Daniela Melfa, Migrando a sud. Coloni italiani in Tunisia (Rome: Aracne, 2008):

174.

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of Farina’s brother.25 Farina wrote to the secretary of the Tunis society chapter, D’Alessandro, to inform him of this private and spontaneous initiative, underlining that, “All this is to teach our children and not lose the love of our fatherland.”26 In his letter, Farina did not ask for money or aid. This could reveal a sort of political hegemony of the society in the teaching of Italian in Tunisia: although not related to the society network of institutions, the teacher of the illegal Bou Ficha school wanted to inform the chapter about this initiative. The illegal school revealed the desire of Sicilian peasants to keep the Italian national language and culture alive for the new generations. The construction of Italianness could arise from the self-management of the migrant working class, too. The silence of the sources suggests that Farina’s illegal school ended shortly after, but does not mention the desire to set up an Italian school. After a while, the Tunis chapter applied for the authorization to establish a school in Bou Ficha but the French rulers did not grant permission. D’Alessandro and Brignone tried to compromise. There were many ways to teach Italian to children, and school was not the only way to spread the language, culture, and values. In 1907, the society chapter of Tunis set up an authorized theater class in Bou Ficha, directed by Ruggero Bellini, and under the pretext of individual preparation, he will teach young people and adults reading, writing and arithmetic in the evenings […] in my opinion, this is the best way to prudently satisfy and I would say almost secretly, the ardent need of our rural populations who […] want at all costs to remain Italian.27

Brignone obtained some economic aid to fund the theater class from the ministry, also supported by the Sousse society chapter. In the same year, another illegal and self-managed Italian school was discovered by French police in Kelibia, a little town in the Cape Bon inhabited by Sicilian winemakers. The teacher, Francesco Di Malta, was forced to stop

25 ASDA, Serie Comitati Esteri, b. 434, f. 613 “Tunisi,” Bou Ficha, December 15,

1901. 26 “Tutto ciò è per far imparare a nostri ragazzi e non far perdere l’amore della nostra patria…” ASDA, Serie Comitati Esteri, b. 434, f. 613 “Tunisi,” Bou Ficha, December 15, 1901. 27 ASDA, Serie Comitati Esteri, b. 434, f. 613 “Tunisi,” Bou Ficha,Tunis, December 16, 1907.

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the activity under the threat of arrest.28 Di Malta’s class also secretly received help from the Tunis chapter. The repression against illegal Italian schools was fierce and some months after the Kelibia case, the theater class of Bou Ficha was also disbanded. A French police officer searched the location for proof of an illegal class. Even though he did not find any evidence, the testimony of a spy in the Bellini class was enough to accuse him of teaching without permission. The Bou Ficha Italian class was stopped, again, and the society Tunis chapter paid the fine that the French police had given Bellini.29

Italianness as Social Power The society chapters in Tunisia, as well as the Italian schools, were involved in the education of migrant compatriots. The preservation of the Italian language was essential in maintaining the link between the migrants and the homeland. However, who taught them the language was also important. In 1910, the Resident General Gabriel Alapetite, in order to oppose the opening of Italian private schools, proposed the introduction of optional Italian language classes in French schools. Alapetite knew very well that this issue was a national one and not just a cultural or linguistic one: It is much less a question of giving young Italians the means of learning in their mother tongue than bringing them together, under the tutelage of their consul and accustoming them to recognize in him the head of an autonomous nationality avoiding as much as possible relations with representatives of the French Protectorate.30

The possibility of learning Italian in French schools could erase the need for and the legitimacy of the entire Italian schooling system in Tunisia. As a matter of fact, the society Tunisian chapters were against this proposition. Brignone wrote to the president of the society central

28 ASDA, Serie Comitati Esteri, b. 434, f. 613 “Tunisi,” Bou Ficha, Tunis, August 7, 1908. 29 ASDA, Serie Comitati Esteri, b. 434, f. 613 “Tunisi,” Bou Ficha, Tunis, November 10, 1908. 30 Archives du Ministère des Affaires étrangères, Série Tunisie 1885–1916, art. 437 “Écoles italiennes,” folio 167–74, Tunis, June 13, 1910.

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committee in Rome that: “On the other hand, we are not pleased that it is taken seriously; because the day it would really be possible to learn Italian in French schools we fear that our friends would tell us that Italian schools are useless. And in Rome, they would be able to give up without opposition ….”31 The “friends” in Rome are the political contacts with the ministry of foreign affairs. It is worth noting that the defense of the Italian school system via the society, was, at the same time, the defense of the interests of its members, who were teachers. Therefore, Italianness in Tunisia was never just a cultural issue but also, and overall, a national and social one. Italian education, the construction of Italianness among the migrants had to be managed by a distinct social group. The building of an Italian national identity in the French colonial context revealed the will of the Italian expatriated middle class to manage the community and in so doing, to become its political representatives. Italianness was also a matter of social power.

31 ASDA, Serie Comitati Esteri, b. 434, f. 613 “Comitato di Tunisi,” Tunis, March 6, 1910.

The Promotion of Italianness in Argentina During the Interwar Period Laura Fotia

Fascist’s Idea of Italianness and Foreign Cultural Policy After the Marcia su Roma Since the beginning of its mandate, Mussolini’s government remained committed to its attempt to promote a positive image of the “new Italy” that emerged from the recent Marcia su Roma and as represented by its own cultural propaganda. Its intention was for Italy to be presented as a modern and productive country, clearly determined to free itself from its subordination to foreign powers. This decision aimed, on the one hand, to improve political and economic relations with other countries and, on the other, to strengthen relationships with Italian communities abroad. In essence, Mussolini’s goal was to transform these expatriate communities into pressure groups that could be utilized to support Italian interests within their countries of residence. During the liberal period, the promotion of Italian culture abroad was pursued notably through the activities of the Dante Alighieri Society

L. Fotia (B) Department of Political Sciences, Roma Tre University, Rome, Italy e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. Mourlane et al. (eds.), Italianness and Migration from the Risorgimento to the 1960s, Palgrave Studies in Migration History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88964-7_7

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and through Italian schools operating abroad. Both institutions aimed at preserving a sense of national solidarity among the expatriates, and were committed to the dissemination of the Italian language and other forms of cultural output. During the Fascist period, all methods considered potentially effective were used to further these goals. These methods included the efforts of Fascist organizations, official visits, conferences with key personalities, art exhibits, and the distribution of brochures, photographs, and other propaganda material to diplomatic representatives and the foreign press. Also included in these efforts were attempts to take over Italian-language press abroad, radio broadcasts, projections of films, and propaganda documentaries.1 Through its efforts abroad, the regime was acting both as an expression of a normal, sovereign state while simultaneously acting as the representative of an ideologically grounded political system. The Italian Government’s initiatives abroad assumed a dual role: first, the active promotion of Fascist propaganda; second, the more commonplace activities typical of international relations, aimed at protecting the interests of the Italian state. Directly linked to this dual role was the expansion of the Italian presence abroad and, therefore, also of the agents involved in propaganda activities: official diplomacy and official institutions on the one hand, and the so-called paradiplomazia (i.e., Fascist organizations active abroad), on the other.2 When addressing the problem of how the regime was to be represented abroad, it is essential to make constant reference to the concepts of “Italianness,” “Mother country,” and “Latinity”—whose use across borders presented new complications and would gradually evolve during the Fascist period. Indeed, the demand that Fascism is identified with the Italian nation itself, in an exclusive and definitive way, was evident from its inception. It was integral to the very essence of Fascism to declare itself as a revolutionary movement while also claiming a monopoly over Italian patriotic sentiment. Nonetheless, the national Fascist myth that

1 Matteo Pretelli, “Il fascismo e l’immagine dell’Italia all’estero,” Contemporanea XI, no. 2 (2008): 221–41; Matteo Pretelli, Il fascismo e gli italiani all’estero (Bologna: Clueb, 2010); Laura Fotia, La crociera della nave “Italia” e le origini della diplomazia culturale del fascismo in America Latina (Roma: Aracne editrice, 2017), 21–72. 2 Benedetta Garzarelli, Parleremo al mondo intero: la propaganda del fascismo all’estero (Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2004); Francesca Cavarocchi, Avanguardie dello spirito. Il fascismo e la politica culturale all’estero (Roma: Carocci, 2010).

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was conveyed through propaganda was anything but static and uniform, reflecting transformations in both internal and international dynamics and, as a consequence, assumed different shapes during the rise and fall of the regime.3 However, among the constants of this national myth were the delegitimization of political opponents and the declared fight against all “anti-national” forces. These “forces” included not only the Socialists, Communists, and professed anti-Fascists, but also “all those who, though not anti-fascists, appeared lukewarm or simply indifferent to the regime”—as well as Jews.4 This opposition between Italians and anti-Italians was likewise stressed in an equally aggressive manner in propaganda speeches given abroad. As highlighted by Emilio Gentile, already at this stage, both on the part of Nationalism and Fascism, the term “Italianness” was adopted to indicate: not only the belonging, by citizenship, to the Italian state but, with a meaning that was intended politically more demanding, [this term] was used to indicate the feeling and the conscience of belonging to the Italian nation, and to exalt the will, in Italians out of Italy, to keep and preserve, in the succession of generations, the bonds of language, culture, interests and affections with the country of origin.5

Ultimately, therefore, Fascism adopted from Nationalism the idea that it was necessary to strengthen ties with the Mother country so that emigrants could be utilized as instruments for the regime’s foreign policy goals. Furthermore, an ideological element previously absent was introduced, namely, the explicit identification of the Mother country with the Fascist regime, and, therefore, of Italianness itself with Fascism.6 The foreign policy of the regime began to echo what had already occurred in the domestic policy; that is, that the separation between 3 Emilio Gentile, Il culto del littorio. La sacralizzazione della politica nell’Italia fascista (Roma and Bari: Laterza, 1993). 4 Loreto Di Nucci, “Lo Stato fascista e gli italiani ‘antinazionali,’” in Due nazioni.

Legittimazione e delegittimazione nella storia dell’Italia contemporanea, eds Loreto Di Nucci and Ernesto Galli della Loggia (Bologna: il Mulino, 2003), 127–62. 5 Emilio Gentile, “L’emigrazione italiana in Argentina nella politica di espansione del nazionalismo e del fascismo. 1900–1930,” Storia contemporanea XVII, no. 3 (1986): 355. 6 João F. Bertonha, “Emigrazione e politica estera, la diplomazia sovversiva di Mussolini e la questione degli italiani all’estero. (1922–1945),” Altreitalie 23 (2001): 39–61.

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culture and politics progressively began to end. The result of the regime’s “commitment” to suppressing political pluralism and presenting itself as the sole, legitimate interpreter of Italianness, was a “more direct and conspicuous ideologization of the proposed messages, as well as a more markedly aggressive attitude, witnessed by the tendency to accompany the channels of cultural diplomacy to methods of political penetration characterized by a strong militant and competitive energy.”7 At the propaganda level, while in the 1920s the regime was mostly interested in legitimizing the new Italian direction on an international level, during the 1930s the regime instead aimed more at supporting the newly aggressive foreign policy, and the creation of a new Latin imperial civilization. This new transnational civilization was intended to be founded on those corporative and authoritarian principles that had originated within the Italian model. A leading role in this civilization should have been recognized for Fascist Italy. The notion of “Latinity” had been used since the 1920s as a mobilizing and justificatory myth of a soughtafter rapprochement between Latin America and Italy, though in reality it was understood as a subordination of the former to the latter.

Turning Italian–Argentinians into Fascists Since the liberal period, Argentina had been the subject of pronounced interest in Italy, constituting part of the more general debate regarding the nation’s foreign policy. At that stage, the Republic had been considered by many observers to be an ideal country for implementing a strategy of non-territorial colonialism. Additionally, Argentina constituted the main target of the Nationalist dispute surrounding emigration. Around the mid-nineteenth century, the Italians had become the largest European group in Argentina, penetrating all the social classes of the Argentine Republic. At the end of the great migratory wave of 1881– 1914, which had seen about two million Italians move to Argentina, Italians accounted for 12 percent of the total Argentine population.8

7 Francesca Cavarocchi, Avanguardie dello spirito. Il fascismo e la politica culturale all’estero, 13. 8 Fernando Jorge Devoto, “In Argentina,” in Storia dell’emigrazione italiana, eds Piero Bevilacqua, Andreina De Clementi, and Emilio Franzina, Vol. II (Roma: Donzelli 2002), 26–27.

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In the 1920s, a number of Italian politicians and intellectuals considered Argentina a perfect example of a “Latin” nation: a growing and developing society, but nonetheless forging its own national identity and enjoying a special consideration in the Latin American context. The Fascist government had begun to show a particular interest in Latin America since the early 1920s. This interest was due, on the one hand, to purely economic and commercial requirements, linked to the protectionist shift in the postwar European markets, which imposed a new assessment of the commercial strategies in the European region. The other motivation for the regime’s emphasis on Latin America was the greater attention paid toward migratory policy in comparison with the liberal period, although under Fascism a change in governmental attitude did occur. Initially, in fact, the regime was in favor of emigration, which it deemed necessary as a solution to existing social tensions. However, from 1927 onward, it aimed at the reduction of migratory flows, interpreting it as a loss of national forces for the benefit of other states, thereby weakening the nation.9 Preserving the Italianness of the emigrants and thus hampering the process of their “denationalization” (understood as the acquisition of the new nationality and consequent cultural assimilation in the host countries) was an essential requirement in the ability to use Italian communities abroad as instruments of pressure in support of the regime’s foreign policy. To solidify relations with the motherland, a novel concept of extraterritorial Italian identity was conceived and promoted among the communities, which adopted a broad interpretation of Italian citizenship. This new notion of identity and citizenship was based on the principle of jus sanguinis, and on the superiority of the bond between emigrants and their nation of origin compared to that of their country of residence. Italians abroad were required to contribute toward the national effort of building a Fascist civilization and to play an active role in the defense of Italy. As has been previously highlighted, from its inception Fascist ideology had asserted a monopoly over Italian patriotism. In doing so, it introduced an ideological element which entailed the identification of the motherland with the Fascist regime itself, and therefore of “Italianness” with Fascism. To be a true Italian abroad, it was necessary to adhere to the 9 For references to primary sources, see Laura Fotia, La politica culturale del fascismo in Argentina (1923–1940) (PhD diss., Dipartimento di Scienze Politiche, Università degli Studi “Roma Tre,” 2015); Fotia, La crociera.

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ideals of Fascism and fully embrace Fascist values. In adherence to such an identification between Italianness and Fascism, the activity of anti-Fascists was presented as fundamentally anti-Italian.10 The official channels of propaganda within Argentina—i.e., the embassy and consulate—never seemed to be reticent in putting together cultural propaganda (in the strict sense of the word) that could be characterized as having Fascist undertones. Control of the Italian–Argentine press was a priority for the regime and was pursued either by attempting to silence anti-Fascist and non-Fascist newspapers, or by creating new ones directly controlled by Rome. By the end of the 1930s, schools had become one of the most important instruments of Fascist cultural and political propaganda; their activities included hosting working men’s clubs and youth organizations, and the handing out of brochures to pupils to later distribute them to their parents and other members of the community.11 Despite the significant expansion of the Dante Alighieri Society’s foreign committees during the Fascist period, and their alignment with the Fascist government’s directives, the society’s activities were hampered by strong contrasts and conflicts with the Fascist institutions abroad. This predominately stemmed from the attitude of the director of the Direzione Generale degli Italiani all’Estero (DGIE), Piero Parini, and the minister for foreign affairs, Galeazzo Ciano, who were firmly convinced of the insubstantiality of the propaganda and cultural activity of the society and the superiority of the role of the Culture Institutes in the defense of Italianness. The problem of redefining the relationship between cultural institutes and committees of the society was resolved by deciding to keep it alive, but with a new division of tasks. The new Centro di Studi Italiani (future Istituto Italiano di Cultura), created in 1937, was entrusted with the function of coordinating the activities of the various institutions and bodies operating within this field. The creation of the Centro di Studi Italiani resulted in the progressive isolation of the IACI, an Italian– Argentine institution founded in 1924 with the aim of promoting the “expansion” of Italian culture within the Republic, and the exchanges between the two countries. During the 1930s, the IACI reduced its

10 Emilio Gentile, “L’emigrazione italiana,” 371–77. 11 Fotia, La crociera, 211–28.

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cultural output, eventually closing down completely during World War II. Until its closure, the IACI continued to work as an intermediary between Italy and the Universidad de Buenos Aires , continuing as a venue for intellectual conferences (even for Argentinians), particularly during commemorations and anniversaries. However, it was precisely its declared and, indeed, respected independence that caused, in just a few years, the isolation of the institute, and Fascist authorities to distance themselves from it. The creation of the Centro di Studi Italiani in Buenos Aires responded to the need for ensuring greater control and coordination with Fascist directives on cultural propaganda in Argentina, contributing, moreover, to generating new confusion in the management of Italian cultural promotion in that country. The “Fascistization” process of the Dante Alighieri Society in Argentina was slow and problematic. Declaredly apolitical since its origins, the society aimed at fulfilling a “national” function, free from both local and specific needs. In opposition to such an explicit politicization process, in 1934 several members of the society abandoned it and created the “New Company Dante Alighieri,” which soon took on a leading role within the anti-Fascist organizations of the Italian community.12 The strong contradictions and ambiguities of the regime’s approach toward the problematic relationship between “Italianness” and the declared equality between “Latin nations” were never overcome. Ultimately, the direct relationship between the expansion of Italy and the prosperity of Argentina was taken for granted in Fascist rhetoric, and was constantly reiterated within Argentina. Yet, this was pursued without explaining in detail the dynamics that would guarantee that efforts by Italian–Argentines for the benefit of the motherland would always translate into direct benefits for their host country. The most significant problem in preserving Italianness in Argentina, according to Parini, was the activities of schools, the primary tools for transmitting language knowledge to new generations of Italians. The approach to the question of how the children of Italian emigrants should be educated constituted the greatest contradiction of the general Fascist approach to Argentina. In the opinion of Parini, it was “unhistorical” and unnatural to restrict the actions of young generations in the Republic, where they were called to give their contribution to local development; equally unnatural and

12 Fotia, La politica, 315–23; 383–403.

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unhistorical, however, was that a generation of Italian children deliberately forgot about Italy and lacked pride in their origins. Parini addressed the Italian community with a request to act as an “intelligent intermediary” between traditional Italian spirituality and the “young, fresh and promising” spirituality of the Argentine nation, to facilitate and intensify their mutual knowledge and to let “Italy” have the “right place” in Argentina.13 How Argentina could benefit from the presence of such a large ethnic group, so closely linked to the regime and—through the intentions of Parini and other Fascist agents—under its control, was never completely clarified by the Fascist agents active there.

The Response of the Italian–Argentine Community Historians have almost unanimously considered the attempt to organize the Italian–Argentine community and use it as a tool to spread Fascism in Argentina as a failure. The reasons for such a failure were not located in erroneous decisions made by the regime, but in the particular nature of the relationship that Italian–Argentine people had with the place in which they resided. Indeed, this facet made the aspirations of the Fascists unrealistic, regardless of any specific strategies they adopted. The will to integrate into Argentine society ultimately kept pace with the Argentinian Government’s pressure to nationalize immigrants.14 It should also be noted that both the institutions and leading personalities of the Italian–Argentine community who were closer to Fascism gave diversified answers to the regime’s proposal. In general, the prevailing attitude was a tendency to insist on the affinities existing between the two countries. Ultimately, although loyalty to the country of origin and the desire to defend Italian identity and culture were not denied, there was a clear attempt to make the regime understand that the future of Italian emigrants and their children was more closely linked to that of the Argentine society. For these reasons also, the Fascist regime had to resort to a change of strategy, consisting in the transition from the project to make 13 Piero Parini, Parole chiare agli italiani del Sud America: discorsi raccolti a cura della Delegazione dei Fasci italiani in Argentina (Buenos Aires: “Optimus” E. Cantiello y Cia, 1932), 35–38. 14 Loris Zanatta, “I Fasci in Argentina negli anni Trenta,” in Il fascismo e gli emigrati. La parabola dei Fasci italiani all’estero (1920–1930), eds Emilio Franzina and Matteo Sanfilippo (Roma and Bari: Laterza, 2003), 140–51.

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Italians a tool of Fascist policies in Argentina to assigning the community a new intermediary role between the two countries, with a definitive acceptance of the Italian–Argentine integration. The reality of the Italian community in Argentina was minimally compatible with this idea of the expansion of the Italian nation. In fact, during those years the process of cultural assimilation was accelerating due to the nationalization policy pursued by the Argentinian Government.15 Of course, the strongest criticisms of Fascist directives came from anti-Fascist circles, a category that included both the recently emigrated “exiles,” and the long-term members of the anti-Fascist community within Italy. Their goal was to reclaim Italian symbols and myths in order to undermine the Fascist rhetoric and challenge the Fascist monopoly on national identity. According to this approach, the distinguishing features of Italianness were neither found in the authoritarianism of the Roman Empire, nor in the new man born in World War I. Instead, they argued, it was to be found in the universal humanism of the Renaissance and in the democratic ideals of Mazzini; being a true Italian abroad meant, as a result, opposing the Nationalist–Fascist model. An unexpected reaction, however, came from some of the most influential members of the Italian community who affirmed their adherence to Fascism. Rather than passively accepting the regime’s ideology, in fact, they responded with a partial and selective acceptance of the contents of the propaganda, proposing original reworkings of the notion of Italianness in line with the democratic values prevalent in Argentine society, at least until the advent of Perón.16 In that complex political, social, and cultural Argentine context, freedom of thought and expression were considered indispensable and entirely compatible with Italianness.

15 See also David Aliano, Mussolini’s National Project in Argentina (Madison and Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2012). 16 Aliano, Mussolini’s National Project; Fotia, La politica.

The Ventottisti, or the Generation of 1928: Italian Consuls, the Spread of Fascism and the Question of Italian Imperialism João Fábio Bertonha

One of the most traditional discussions among the studies of Fascism is the relation between the Italian state and the Fascist Party. Was the Partito Nazionale Fascista (PNF) able to penetrate the bureaucracy, the armed forces, and the Italian state in general, or was the state able to metabolize the Fascist influence and keep its autonomy and independence? After 1945, the various branches of the armed forces and the civil bureaucracy tried—in memoirs, depositions, and declarations—to dissociate themselves from Fascism and the party. The Ministero degli Affari Esteri (MAE) and the various diplomats in action between the 1920s and 1940s were especially active in this effort. Their thesis is that they would have continued to be simple servants of the state, in defense of the Italian national interests. Fascist ideology would have been kept outside the ministry, or at most would have had a minor influence, moderated by traditional diplomacy.

J. F. Bertonha (B) State University of Maringá, Maringá, Brazil

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Historical research has shown that the picture is much more complex than that presented by diplomatic memory. The MAE broadly maintained its independence as an institution and career diplomats were often able to exert a moderating influence on the regime. Even so, most diplomats adhered to Fascism, with the usual exceptions. Over time, although the diplomatic corps did not become a mere appendage to the PNF, the influence of the regime and its ideological perspectives became increasingly clear within Italian diplomacy. One of the key instruments for increasing the Fascist influence in Italian foreign affairs was the forced incorporation of people into the diplomatic corps. This sometimes happened at the upper echelons, as when high-ranking Fascists were appointed ambassadors or began to command the ministry. In the lower echelons of the consular network, as in the case of vice consuls or honorary consular agents, the ideological influence also increased, as not only were the number of these posts substantially increased, but the ideological criterion became fundamental in the selection of people to fulfill them. The most effective method, however, to increase the Fascist influence in the diplomatic machine was the expansion of the consular network and the entry of Fascists into diplomatic service at the consul’s post. This had begun to happen sporadically since 1922, but it was in 1928 that the process was more intense, with the entry of about 120 Fascists into the diplomatic service, selected by political criteria. This was the socalled “generation of 1928” (the ventottisti), whose influence on Italy’s international relations during Fascism needs to be properly studied. In part, this lack of studies is due to the transnational way of life of these men. They were permanently in motion, between countries and continents, but each national historiography is able to record just fragments of their lives, within a delimited space and time, without making a complete reconstitution of their trajectories. My original intention was to follow the lives of at least some of these men in their incessant circulation around the world. I even prepared sketches of “life stories” from some of them, in a prosopographic approach. It soon became evident, however, that space and time would not allow it, since the number of individuals to deal with is too great.

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Prosopographic work would be very welcome—and a study in this direction is in progress, with indications of being promising1 —but it is not possible now. I therefore changed my plans and decided to focus on themes, not people. What objectives did ventottisti pursue in their positions throughout the world? Did they have a kind of “checklist” to follow? Is it possible to set up common patterns of acting and thinking? And what do these common patterns mean in terms of the history of Italian diplomacy and Fascism itself? The selection of the diplomats to study was subjective, based on some basic texts2 and on my research in international historiography. The present article, therefore, is only a first exercise, possible only thanks to the abundance of international studies regarding Fascism abroad. This abundance also leads to the problem of references. The proper reference of each data becomes difficult, because, as already explained, the action of the consuls was captured only in photographic form by historiography. In some cases, the reconstruction of a consul’s individual trajectory requires the consultation of dozens of texts produced in several countries. To avoid so many citations, I will make only the minimum references necessary, suggesting the reading of the guide I have recently published for a more complete bibliographical background.3

The Generation of 1928 and Its Consular Activities Benito Mussolini and Dino Grandi had the obvious project of controlling the Italian diplomatic structure. A crucial change implemented by Grandi in this sense was the law of June 2, 1927, which allowed, in 1 Marta Giusti, “Un lungo servizio: strutture, uomini e voci al ministero degli Esteri dentro e fuori il fascismo (1922–1945),” in Storie in Corso XIII Workshop Nazionale Dottorandi Sissco 2018 (Milan: Università degli Studi di Milano, 2018). 2 Fabio Grassi Orsini, “La diplomazia,” in Il Regime fascista. Storia e storiografia, ed. Angelo Del Boca (Roma and Bari: Laterza, 1995), 277–328 and “Diplomazia e regime,” in Ammistrazione centrale e diplomazia italiana (1919–1943): Fonti e problemi, ed. Vincenzo Pellegrini (Roma: Istituto Poligrafico dello Stato, 1998), 63–87. 3 João Fábio Bertonha, Fascismo, antifascismo e gli italiani all´estero. Bibliografia orientativa (1922–2015) (Viterbo: Sette Città, 2015) or Fascismo, antifascismo e as comunidades italianas no exterior: guia bibliográfico (1922–2015) (Porto Alegre: Editora da PUCRS, 2017). The rubric related to these diplomats includes 71 direct references and many other indirect ones.

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the following year, 120 men to be incorporated, at the discretion of the minister, into the diplomatic structure. Of these, five were appointed firstclass general consuls (Orazio Pedrazzi, Carlo Barduzzi, Attilio Tamaro, Serafino Mazzolini and Guido Romanelli); five as second-class general consuls (Carlo Bossi, Guido Solazzo, Piero Parini, Renzo Ferrara and Giuseppe Biondelli) and four as second-class consuls (Quinto Mazzolini, Giuseppe Castruccio, Luigi Negrone and Enrico Liberati). The exceptions were Giuseppe Bastianini and Alessandro Bodrero, who entered the service already as first-class ministers.4 Most of them did not reach the status of ambassador or arrive at command posts in the ministry, which would indicate that traditional diplomats were able to control the newcomers.5 I will return to this topic shortly, but an examination of the activities abroad of some of them reveals they were much more important in the diplomatic network than it seems at first glance. The first and probably most important axis of activities of these diplomats was the Italians living outside Italy. All of them, with no exceptions, were extremely active in spreading Fascist ideology among Italian emigrants and in the aim to control the associations and the press created by Italians abroad. The results they achieved depended, of course, on each local context, but the efforts were continuous, with little change from individual to individual or place to place. In close relation to this effort, they were also very active in creating networks of surveillance and repression against Italian anti-Fascists. This happened both in places where anti-Fascists were very active—like Paris, Marseille, Nice, New York, Buenos Aires, or, to a lesser extent, São Paulo— and in cities where anti-Fascism was less important, such as in Sydney, London, or Chicago. Propaganda was also a key activity for these consuls, and they devoted much of their time to spreading the message of Fascism among local Italians and foreigners as well. The diffusion of Italian culture was especially useful, for it allowed the use of something apparently neutral, in political terms, to promote Fascism abroad. They were also important in the contacts with Fascist movements abroad. They had contacts with, for example, the Brazilian Integralists,

4 Fabio Grassi Orsini, “La diplomazia,” 293–94. 5 Orsini, “La diplomazia,” 294–95.

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the Spanish Falange, the Oswald Mosley’s British Union Fascists (BUF), the Patriotic People’s Movement in Finland, the nationalist movements in Argentina and France, and many others. In almost all countries in the world, the Fascist consuls sought to intensify contacts and create networks to favor the international diffusion of Fascism. They acted in tandem with the fasci all’estero, the Comitati d’Azione per l’Universalità di Roma (CAUR) representatives and other branches of the Italian state and the Fascist Party, but they were the coordinators of the process, following the general instructions from Rome. In the same way, the consuls were instrumental in contacts with proindependence or nationalist groups whose claims could be useful for Italian geopolitical goals in the world. They had contact, for example, with French–Canadian groups in Montreal and with the Boer movement in South Africa. Their focus, however, was on Arab nationalist groups and on Croatian, Macedonian, and other movements that wanted to split up Yugoslavia. Several consuls also participated in the Italian effort to support Franco’s insurrection in Spain and in the contacts with Italianspeaking irredentist groups in the Swiss canton of Ticino, on the island of Malta, or in the border regions between Italy and France. The consuls, of course, had to consider which instrument or instruments would be best suited to Italian interests in each country or region of the world. Besides, the Italian geopolitical objectives were obviously not the same in the Rio de la Plata region or in Iraq, for example. Even so, the ease with which the consuls adapted to each context indicates how at least some general orientations were present. The individual trajectories of some of these consuls can prove this. Orazio Pedrazzi (1889–1962), for example, began his career as a consul in Jerusalem, where he invested in a relationship with the Jewish population to challenge British rule in the region. In 1928, he moved to Tunis—where he committed himself to strengthen the bonds of Italian émigrés with Fascism—and then to Prague, where he was an Italian culture promoter. In 1932, he was nominated ambassador in Santiago de Chile, where he stayed for three years and repeated his efforts to approach the Italian community and spread Italian culture and Fascist propaganda. In 1935, he was appointed Italian ambassador to Spain. In his years in Madrid, he invested in cultural propaganda, made contacts with the Falangist leader, Jose António Primo di Rivera, and later worked, too, with Franco. In 1939, he was the Italian general commissar for the

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Universal Exposition of New York, when once more he defended the importance of Italians abroad for the Fascist foreign policy. Carlo Barduzzi (1889–1971) was consul in Marseille (1927–1928), in Tunis (1929), in Cologne (1930–1932), and Odessa (1932–1935). He was very active in building the Fascist consensus in Marseille and Tunis, two key cities for the Fascist geopolitical thinking. In Marseille, especially, his activity was incessant. He reorganized the local fascio (placing it under the control of the consulate), reinforced social services to reach the poor Italian population and maintained strict vigilance on anti-Fascists. He also expanded propaganda activities, especially through the press and cultural associations, and created a Casa d’Italia to coordinate them.6 In Odessa, in turn, Barduzzi led a spy and surveillance network on Italian communist refugees in the USSR, and shortly before taking up this post, he published a book advocating the creation of a Eurasian transport network centered in Italy. Other individual examples, of course, could be included in this list, such as Attilio Tamaro (consul in Hamburg, Bern, and Helsinki and later delegate of the fasci all’estero in Austria), Giuseppe Castruccio (active in Chicago, Pittsburgh, São Paulo, and Salonica), Carlo Bossi (in London and Barcelona), and many others. The general pattern of activities among them, however, was very similar, indicating a common agenda. These consuls participated in the traditional activities of diplomacy, had contacts with local authorities and took other initiatives to strengthen economic, military, or political ties with Italy. Higher-level diplomats, like the ambassadors, were also, of course, key players in all the abovementioned activities. The consuls—especially those of the 1928 generation—however, were especially important within Mussolini’s so-called “parallel diplomacy,” that is, an indirect effort to increase Italian influence in the world and for the creation of a Fascist empire.

Italian Imperialism in the Fascist Era---From Tradition to a “Parallel Diplomacy” It is necessary to recall, initially, how Fascism never renounced the use of military power to build its empire, in a classical way. The Mussolini regime 6 Caroline Pane, “Emigrazione e assistenza a Marsiglia. Dalla Società italiana di beneficenza alla Casa d’Italia (1864–1945),” Archivio storico dell’emigrazione italiana, 11 (2015): 38–47.

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did not hesitate to use military force when it could and did so in no less than five wars: the reconquest of Libya, Ethiopia, Spain, the invasion of Albania, and World War II. Traditional military and diplomatic initiatives continued to be an essential part of Italian international policy during Fascism. The Fascist regime, however, supplemented this more traditional imperialism by a subtler kind of imperialism, a “parallel diplomacy,” with a subversive and ideological basis. This “parallel diplomacy” was thought in some cases to be supplementary to Italy’s traditional imperialism, and in others as a substitute for the economic and military means that Italy lacked to achieve its objectives in the global arena.7 The mobilization and control of the Italian emigrant groups scattered throughout the world, the connection with Fascist movements abroad and foreign governments through ideological solidarity, the creation of a propaganda network that stressed Italian culture and Fascist ideology and the subversion of the internal order of other countries were the central elements of this “parallel diplomacy,” in which the ventottisti were key players, as seen above. Besides, the actions of the consuls of the generation of 1928 prove the existence of these various types of imperialism and how the passage from one to another was natural, since both were part of the Italian imperial mentality of the period. It is no wonder that those who have spent years discussing the diffusion of Italian culture abroad or the advantages of the mobilization of the emigrants have ended up acting as governors in occupied regions of Greece, Dalmatia, and elsewhere. Quinto Mazzolini (1888–?), for example, served in several posts in the Balkans, including the direction of the Croatian office, which ran the contacts with the Croatian secessionists. In Jerusalem between 1936 and 1940, he made extensive contacts with the Arab nationalists in an antiBritish sense. In Nice (1941), he was a delegate of the Italian occupation forces, working with Italian emigrants that lived in the Alpes-Maritimes

7 João Fábio Bertonha, “Emigrazione e politica estera: La “diplomazia sovversiva” di Mussolini e la questione degli italiani all’estero, 1922–1945,” AltreItalie – Rivista internazionale di studi sulle popolazioni di origine italiana nel mondo, 23 (2001): 39–62; “La “diplomacia paralela” de Mussolini en Brasil: vínculos culturales, emigratorios y políticos en un proyecto de poder (1922–1943),” Pasado y Memoria. Revista de Historia Contemporánea, 11 (2012): 71–92. These texts are available in Fascismo e antifascismo italianos : ensaios (Caxias do Sul: Editora da Universidade de Caxias do Sul, 2017).

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region and the Italian military command to prepare a possible annexation of the region to Italy. His younger brother, Serafino Mazzolini (1890–1945), had an even more emblematic trajectory. He was appointed consul in São Paulo in 1928 and was transferred as a minister to Montevideo in 1932, where he remained until 1937. In these two cities he performed impressively, expanding Fascist activities and bringing the local Italian communities closer to Rome, although with more success in Brazil than in Uruguay. At the same time, he expanded Fascist control over the Italian press and associations and strengthened vigilance against the anti-Fascists. He also strengthened ties with leading Brazilian and Uruguayan political circles (being close to the Uruguayan President Terra) and with the far-right forces in both countries. In 1938, he was sent to Egypt, where he acted to diminish British prestige and established ties with Arab nationalists. He also worked to make the Italian community an instrument in the struggle against the British and was supposed to be governor of occupied Egypt if the Axis had conquered it in 1941 or 1942. In 1940 he returned to Italy and became, the following year, governor of occupied Montenegro, where he worked to mediate Italian, Montenegrin, and Kosovar interests and create a satellite state of Italy. Finally, in 1943, faithful to Mussolini, he was undersecretary of the MAE of the Repubblica Sociale Italiana (RSI). Also emblematic is the trajectory of Piero Parini (1894–1993). In 1928 he was appointed director of the Segretaria Generale dei fasci all’estero and, in the following years, worked in the construction of summer colonies in Italy for the children of the Italians abroad. Parini was also an operator of the Italian cultural system of the period, encouraging cultural activities in countries that were part of the Italian geopolitical map, such as the island of Malta, Corsica, Tunisia, France, Germany, Portugal, and others. During the Ethiopian War (1935–1936), Parini commanded a legion of Italians from abroad in combat, and in 1939, after the Italian invasion of Albania, took on an important role in that country. In 1941, with the occupation of Greece, he was appointed civil commissary for the Ionian Islands, where he stayed until 1943. With the fall of Fascism, Parini returned to Italy and joined the RSI. Another good example is Amedeo Mammalella, consul in Curitiba and then in Sydney, cities where he acted decisively to bring together local Italians around Fascism and who ended his career as consul in Dubrovnik,

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occupied Croatia, in 1941. Another one is Giuseppe Bastianini, one of the directors of the fasci all’estero and who later became governor of Dalmatia, where he implemented a policy of forced Italianization of its inhabitants. We could mention also Manfredo Chiostri (consul in Porto Alegre, Brazil), Bruno Gemelli, consul in Rosario, La Paz, and Caracas and head of the Dopolavoro in Zurich and many other consuls. For men such as these, and many others, the fusion of the various ways of being imperial manifested in flesh and blood, and the transition between them was almost natural, depending on the circumstances. This was a general policy of Fascism, encompassing not only the MAE, but also other instances of the party and the state. In its practical realization, however, the role of the consuls of the generation of 1928 was fundamental, a role that still deserves further studies and exploration.8 The traditional perspective—as evidenced by the works of Di Camerana and Grassi Orsini, cited, and in more recent works such as that of Aristotle Kallis9 —is that the ventottisti were not able to control Italian foreign policy. According to this interpretation, traditional diplomats—such as Lojacono, Guariglia, Suvich, and others—would have been able to maintain control of the main embassies and administrative posts, keeping the ventottisti in a secondary position. To use the terms of Ambassador Ludovico Incisa di Camerana,10 career diplomats preferred to control the prestigious “diplomazia maggiore” (great diplomacy), with a focus on the main European countries, leaving the “diplomazia minore” (minor diplomacy), especially that related to Italians outside Italy, under the control of the party representatives, such as the ventottisti. Such an interpretation is correct in general terms, since most of the consuls of the 1928 generation did not actually reach command posts, such as the embassies. In addition, they worked especially in peripheral regions for Italian diplomacy, such as Latin America, the Middle East, and North Africa. It was in these areas that “parallel diplomacy”—for which

8 It is worth mentioning on this effort Consoli e consolati italiani dagli Stati preunitari

al fascismo (1802–1945), eds. Marcella Aglietti, Mathieu Grenet, and Fabrice Jesné (Rome, École française de Rome, 2020). 9 Aristotle Kallis, Fascist Ideology: Territory and Expansionism in Italy and Germany, 1922–1945 (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), 70–71. 10 Ludovico Incisa Di Camerana, “La diplomazia,” in Storia dell’emigrazione italiana, eds. Emilio Franzina et al. (Roma: Donzelli, 2002), 457–79, mainly 478.

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the consuls were specially trained—was more likely to succeed. Nevertheless, this “reserve” indicates how the career diplomats were able to keep the command posts and the more traditional ones, as the embassies in Washington, Paris, Berlin, London, etc., for themselves. Even so, such an interpretation can be relativized. The consuls of the 1928 generation represented the new “parallel diplomacy” that was the Fascist differential with respect to liberal Italy’s foreign policy and its power within the structure of the ministry grew over time. The first evidence in this sense is the control they exercised over the DGIE, which concentrated the activities related to Italians abroad and the fasci all’estero. This sector had been under the control of the party since the 1920s, and with the appointment of Parini to its command, this control became stronger. Parini worked for the predominance of the diplomats over the party representatives, but he also ensured that the DGIE remained outside the control of the old diplomatic guard and close to the Fascist Party and its ideology.11 As this section brought together no fewer than 150 officials, the largest number within the MAE’s structure, it is clear how the ventottisti had achieved an important niche of power within the ministry itself. In addition, several of the consuls admitted in 1928—such as Bastianini, Mazzolini, Parini, Pedrazzi, and others—reached the position of ambassador or other more senior positions. And, more importantly, they reached an unprecedented degree of power during the RSI. Indeed, while only two ambassadors stayed with the new regime (one of them a newly appointed Fascist, Filippo Anfuso), almost all the old ventottisti joined the new MAE, forming a substantial part of the ministers and senior officials.12 At that moment, around 1944, the new MAE was formed mainly by people already mentioned, such as Amedeo Mammalella, Manfredo Chiostri, and Bruno Gemelli. This fact and the appointment of Serafino Mazzolini to the command of the ministry in 1944 indicate the change of guard, with the generation of 1928— and other Fascists—finally taking power within the Italian diplomatic structure.

11 Fabio Grassi Orsini, “La diplomazia,” in Il Regime fascista. Storia e storiografia, ed. Angelo Del Boca (Roma and Bari: Laterza, 1995), 322. 12 Marino Viganó, Il Ministero degli affari esteri e le relazioni internazionali della Repubblica sociale italiana, 1943–1945 (Milan: Jaca Book, 1991), 463.

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Broadly speaking, the state won the battle against the party for most of the Fascist period, which represented a blow to the totalitarian pretensions of the regime.13 The Fascist Party only recovered its protagonism after the constitution of the RSI and this was replicated within the diplomatic structure. Perhaps without the events of 1943, the new Fascist generation would not have gained this space, and state representatives would have continued to control the diplomatic machine, though increasingly within the ideals of Fascism. Even so, the importance of the 1928 generation should not be underestimated. Their work around the world represented a great differential in Italian foreign policy and much of the social and political history of Italian communities spread across five continents can only be explained through them. Without understanding the ventottisti, much of the history of Italy and of the Italians who lived outside the Peninsula would be incomplete, so that the reconstruction of the life and work of these men becomes a priority task in the years to follow. Within their limits, the transnational and global approaches are renewing the history of the Italian migrations in the world. The Fascist consuls were the living incarnation of this movement, a reason why they deserve more attention from historians.

13 Paul Corner, Italia fascista. Politica e opinione popolare sotto la dittatura (Roma: Carocci, 2012).

The Italianization of the Italian–American and Fascism’s Entrance into American Ethnic Politics, 1930–1935 Jessica H. Lee

During its first eight years in power, Benito Mussolini’s Fascist government thought poorly of Italian–Americans, their leadership, and their community’s disjointed efforts to support the mother country. In letters to the ministry of foreign affairs, Italian diplomats in America belittled the prominenti, or ethnic elite, by questioning their ideological purity and basic political value. While the prominenti confidently asserted their ability to support the Fascist cause from abroad, Mussolini remained entirely unconvinced. When Italy’s minister of finance came to the United States to negotiate his country’s World War I debt in November 1925, Italian– American organizations seized the opportunity to demonstrate their worth. Italian-language newspapers encouraged letter-writing campaigns among readers and ethnic associations lobbied Congress on behalf of their

J. H. Lee (B) Columbia University, New York, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected]

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members.1 After negotiations ended in Italy’s favor, Italian ambassador, Giacomo de Martino, wrote to Mussolini about the surprising lessons learned: Americans of Italian descent could be a great political asset, but only if they retained their connection to Italy while organizing politically as American citizens.2 Mussolini first attempted to organize Americans from Italy by creating a Fascist central council and later the Fascist League of North America. Both operations failed to retain broad Italian–American sympathy for Italy, and the latter organization attracted the scrutiny of the United States Senate. As a result, Mussolini ended his government’s overt political operations in America in 1929, begrudgingly ceding control to the local elites he continued to disparage. Italy found willing partners in the prominenti who had their own reasons for organizing Italian–Americans and connecting them to their mother country. America’s Immigration Act of 1924 had restricted the country’s flow of immigrants, drastically reshaping ethnic communities of Southern and Eastern European origin. Ethnic leaders understood that national quotas jeopardized the stability of their associations and businesses by denying them new members, subscribers, and customers from abroad.3 Forced to look internally for clientele, the prominenti began reckoning with the problem of a second generation that felt little pride in their community or connection to their mother country and tongue. Not surprisingly then, it was the country’s largest Italian-language paper, Il Progresso Italo-Americano, and its largest Italian association, the Order of the Sons of Italy in America (OSIA), who were Italy’s most vocal partners in the effort to teach Italian language and racial pride to the second generation. They called this effort the “Italianization of the Italian American.”4

1 Stefano Luconi, La “Diplomazia Parellela”: Il Regime Fascista e La Mobilitazione Politica Degli Italo-Americani (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2000). 2 Giacomo de Martino to Benito Mussolini and Dino Grandi, “Cittadinanza,” May 21, 1926, Affari Politici 1919–1930, B. 1602, Archivio Storico del Ministero degli Affari Esteri, Rome. 3 Lizabeth Cohen, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919–1939 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 4 Giovanni di Silvestro, “Supremi Delegati,” 1931, Box 1 FF 14, The Di Silvestro, Giovanni M., 1879–1958. Papers, Italian American Collection, Immigration History Research Center, Minneapolis.

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Between 1930 and 1935 an informal coalition of Italianization formed between the Italian Government and Italian–American business leaders, association heads, and community organizers. The joint campaign enjoyed reasonable success in its mission to spread Italian language and ethnic pride among immigrants and their children. More importantly though, the campaign laid the groundwork for the coalition’s future political efforts by teaching its members significant lessons about working with each other and organizing immigrant masses in America. While the 1925 debt negotiations demonstrated the possibility of Italian–American political power, the 1930–1935 Italianization campaign taught the ethnic leadership how to reach their community’s full political potential. Among the lessons learned, three stand out as especially pertinent for their future political activity in America. First, they slowly discovered methods in organizing otherwise apolitical migrants by actually teaching—rather than preaching—civic engagement. Second, they located the line between becoming too American or too foreign. Too American and their efforts would be counterproductive. Too foreign and they risked xenophobic attacks. Finally, they learned how to bring outsiders and even anti-Fascists into their movement by making their pro-Fascist message synonymous with Italian ethnic pride. Events and actions that had clear political agendas seemed cultural and innocuous to the American politicians who participated in them and gave them cover. These three lessons would prove invaluable when Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935 and Italian–Americans sprang to political action in support of their homeland.

Lessons in Political Organizing Through the Italianization Campaign To teach Italian to America’s 2.7 million second-generation Italians, coalition leaders originally turned to their adopted country’s public school system. Schools taught modern foreign languages to two million students annually, and had the obvious advantage of being free. However, the schools presented challenges as well. In 1930, fewer than 9,000 students enrolled in Italian-language classes nationwide. That number already indicated improvement; in 1924 fewer than 2,000 American high school

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students studied Italian.5 New York City, the cultural center of Italian– American life and home to a quarter of the nation’s Italians, did not fare much better. In the whole city just 100 students took Italian at the end of World War I. Xenophobic and institutional barriers prevented the language from spreading further at first. When high school teacher Leonard Covello initiated an Italian class in 1920, he received public criticism about “keeping the boys ‘foreigners’,” even though his students had to take other “primary” foreign languages first before enrolling in Italian.6 In 1922, he and fellow educator Mario Consenza successfully petitioned the Board of Education to designate Italian as a primary language, giving it parity with other modern languages.7 This important change required all New York City high schools to institute a new Italian class whenever a minimum of 60 students asked for it. The task of organizing parents and students to request Italian classes in high schools provided the Italianization coalition with their first lesson in political organization. From the beginning, the Italian diplomats and prominenti could agree on one thing: the average Italian migrant was politically apathetic, unorganized, and uneducated. Getting 60 immigrants to unite for any single purpose seemed impossible, and the ethnic leaders revealed their growing frustration in their speeches, radio addresses, and newspaper columns. In 1931, OSIA’s Grand Venerable Giovanni Di Silvestro called on his members to pull their heads out of the sand and recognize the problem of their children’s Americanization.8 By 1934, the newly formed Casa Italiana Education Bureau was imploring other organizations to join its cause: “The battle is already engaged; the work is not so difficult anymore. It only takes some force of will. Wake

5 Leonard Covello, “The Study of Italian” (Italo-American Educational Bureau, June 10, 1932), MSS 40 Leonard Covello Papers, Box 82 F. 13, Balch Institute, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. 6 Leonard Covello, The Heart Is the Teacher (New York: McGraw Hill, 1958), 129.

For more on Covello’s work, see Nadia Venturini, “Leonard Covello and Intercultural Education at Benjamin Franklin High School in the 1930s,” The Italian American Review 9 no. 1 (Spring–Summer 2002): 73–110. 7 Nancy C. Carnevale, A New Language, a New World: Italian Immigrants in the United States, 1890–1945 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 138. 8 Di Silvestro, “Supremi Delegati.”

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yourselves up—even you—Unite!”9 When Generoso Pope, owner of Il Progresso Italo-Americano, learned how easily parents could initiate Italian classes, he beseeched his 100,000 readers to register their students.10 Over several months in 1935, Il Progresso Italo-Americano ran a series of articles on its Italianization campaign that increasingly betrayed Pope’s total exasperation. In one column he asked plainly, “is it the apathy or thoughtlessness of parents that allows such a desertion of the children? Parents wake up! …It is time to open your eyes and look reality in the face.”11 The prominenti had much to learn about organizing migrants politically, and for that they turned back to Leonard Covello. In spreading Italian classes beyond his school Covello had also used newspaper editorials and radio addresses, but as only one step among many. His exhaustive approach to instituting Italian lessons in one New Jersey town consisted of no fewer than 14 individual steps. Those steps included meetings with local educators, churches, and the rotary club; organizing Italian-themed parties for high school students; orchestrating direct mailing campaigns with pre-filled petition cards; addressing parents and children in radio programs; and door-to-door canvassing.12 In his autobiography, Covello remembered the exhilaration of going door to door convincing illiterate parents to sign a single X on his petitions. At the time, 25% of Italian immigrants in the United States were illiterate, compared to 10% of the country’s foreign-born and 4% of its native-born population.13 In addition, Covello found migrants to be as politically inexperienced as the prominenti and Italian officials had feared. Italy only introduced universal male suffrage in 1912 after the 9 Leonard Covello, “Free Italian Language Schools” (New York: WOV, May 19, 1934), MSS 40 Leonard Covello Papers, Box 9 F. 10, Balch Institute, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. 10 Circulation numbers vary. See Philip V. Cannistraro, “Generoso Pope and the Rise of Italian American Politics, 1925–1936,” in Italian Americans: New Perspectives in Italian Immigration and Ethnicity, ed. Lydio F. Tomasi (New York: Center for Migration Studies, 1985), 264–88; Luconi, La “Diplomazia Parellela”. 11 Generoso Pope, “Due high schools assicurano G. Pope che insegneranno l’italiano se gli alunni ne faranno regolare richiesta,” Il Progresso Italo-Americano, May 3, 1935. 12 Leonard Covello to Giuseppe Prezzolini, July 1933, MSS 40 Leonard Covello Papers, Box 82, F. 13, Balch Institute, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. 13 US Bureau of the Census, “Fifteenth Census of the United States 1930, Population Volume II” (Washington, DC, 1933), 1315.

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bulk of its migrants had already left, and Italian women would not get the vote until 1946.14 The parents Covello met were amazed to learn they had the power to influence their local school board, causing Covello to describe his efforts as “lessons in democracy, trying to make the immigrant understand his rights and privileges.”15 Through his correspondence, Covello was also teaching his pro-Fascist collaborators effective methods of increasing immigrants’ political activity. Though Covello held no explicit affinity for Fascism, he worked and communicated with leaders and organizations that did. Their connections to Italy ranged from independent migrant associations that outwardly supported Fascism, like the OSIA, Il Progresso Italo-Americano, and Columbia University’s Casa Italiana, to state-run organizations such as the Dante Alighieri Society. Covello’s efforts paid off, and by 1936, 18 of the city’s 43 high schools taught Italian to 7,700 students, or 6% of the total. Italian peaked in 1940 with 10,000 students or 9% of the city’s total foreign language instruction. As demonstrated in Fig. 1, though numbers of Italian students in 1936 paled compared to students of French (71,400), Spanish (38,700), and German (17,900), enrollments for other modern languages either barely increased over the previous four years or, with the case of German, slightly decreased.16 Covello, meanwhile, had more than doubled the number of students enrolled in Italian classes. After working on the problem of Italian language in New York’s public schools for more than a decade, Covello wrote to Italy’s ambassador, Giacomo de Martino, in 1932, “There has been progress, but slow; too slow when compared to the possibilities for development.”17 The coalition might have persisted in making slow progress in America’s public schools had they not learned a second political lesson: not to let their movement become too American or too foreign. As more

14 Stefano Luconi, “Bringing Out the Italian-American Vote in Philadelphia,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 117, no. 4 (1993): 256; Stefano Luconi, “Italian Americans and the New Deal Coalition,” Transatlantica. Revue d’études américaines. American Studies Journal, no. 1 (April 5, 2006): 2. 15 Covello, The Heart Is the Teacher, 136. 16 Dr Alberto C. Bonaschi, “The Teaching of Modern Foreign Languages: Italian”

(New York: Board of Education, March 30, 1936), MSS 40 Leonard Covello Papers, Box 97 F. 2, Balch Institute, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. 17 Covello, “The Study of Italian.”

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80,000

NUMBER OF STUDENTS

70,000 60,000

1932

50,000

1933

40,000

1934

30,000

1935

20,000

1936

10,000 0 French

Spanish

German

Italian

Fig. 1 Chart of foreign language students in New York City, 1932–1936 (Source Dr. Alberto C. Bonaschi, “The Teaching of Modern Foreign Languages: Italian,” (New York: Board of Education, March 30, 1936), MSS 40 Leonard Covello Papers, Box 97 F. 2, Balch Institute, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia)

public schools taught Italian, the coalition learned that by relinquishing responsibility for Italian instruction, they also gave up control of its content. American teachers could not be trusted to properly instill Italian racial pride, and they definitely could not be relied upon to teach Fascist ideology. When American language teachers found that their standard Italian grammar book included a chapter on the “Rebirth of Italy” that portrayed Fascism in a positive light, for example, they convinced the publishers to produce substitute material rather than teach the chapter.18 To deliver the prominenti’s message of ethnic pride alongside the Italian Government’s pro-Fascist propaganda, the coalition would also need to organize internally. By strengthening their partnerships and increasing their interdependence, they developed thriving doposcuole, or after-school clubs, off the Fascist model. Any community with some 18 “The Italian Text Book ‘Andiamo in Italia’,” Lincoln Guild News, March 1938, MSS 40 Leonard Covello Papers, Box 97, F. 9, Balch Institute, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

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organizational willpower could institute a doposcuola without American oversight, and soon church basements, settlement houses, and mutual aid lodges all hosted doposcuole. The schools could be as simple as a single parent volunteer or as robust as the Italian Bronx Community House, which opened on Columbus Day of 1934. The house provides an excellent example of the partnerships which were developing between prominenti and the Fascist state. The Italian Bronx Community House taught everything from embroidery to drama for a twenty-five-cent monthly tuition fee, but the focus was on Italian instruction. The Dante Alighieri Society provided the Italian teacher at no cost, and the Italian Consul sent free “teaching materials,” or textbooks.19 The textbooks’ propaganda was not subtle, as one excerpt from the chapter “Soldiers of the Homeland” in a 1933 textbook demonstrates: “When I am big, when I will finally become a soldier, I too, like grandpa, will fight for the Homeland and I will win; I will snatch up flags and prisoners and who knows how many medals of valor I will earn! This is the dream of all Italian children, this is your dream, child.”20 Such obvious examples of pro-Fascist militarism and Italian Nationalism filled nearly every page of the textbooks distributed to Italian–Americans from levels one through four. Importantly, the Italian Bronx Community House was not solely a Fascist school. Its founder, Maria Inquisitore, took advantage of a New York City fund to hire a free English and American citizenship teacher for parents, thereby ensuring the school some level of political cover. Inquisitore managed to describe her school as “non-partisan, non-political,” while also having her students perform pro-Fascist pieces titled “Salute to Authority” and “Long Live Italy.”21 By focusing on a message of ethnic pride over politics, she also brought together Italian–American supporters with diverse political affiliations. Her sustainers included Leonard Covello and Generoso Pope, as well as two pro-Fascist Tammany judges, the

19 Italian Bronx Community House, Inc., “Program,” April 13, 1935, MSS 40 Leonard Covello Papers, Box 86 F. 28, Balch Institute, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. 20 Clementina Bagagli, Letture, Classe Terza (Roma: Scuole Italiane all’Estero, 1933). 21 Italian Bronx Community House, Inc., “Program,” April 13, 1935, Leonard

Covello Papers, MSS 40, Box 86 F. 28, Balch Institute, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; “L’Inaugurazione dell’Italian Bronx Community House,” Il Progresso Italo-Americano, January 8, 1935.

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Republican Party captain of East Harlem, an anti-Fascist political exile of Italy, and even Communist Congressman, Vito Marcantonio. Generoso Pope similarly brought Fascism, American politics, and Italian culture together when he decided to raise the profile of his Italianization campaign by celebrating recent graduates. His first Italian– American graduates’ banquet in 1935 drew more than 3,000 people to one of New York City’s largest banquet halls. The well-populated table of honor seated Italian ambassador, Augosto Rosso, among 34 American politicians and educators. The band played the Fascist hymn as the graduates entered, and both American and Italian orators lauded Mussolini and asked the graduates to remember their country of origin.22 While banquets like Pope’s could not Italianize the Italian–Americans on their own, they set an important precedent for Italian political organization. Through the graduates’ banquets, the Italianization coalition learned it could distribute a Fascist message to massive audiences even with American politicians in attendance, as long as they billed their events as cultural and apolitical.

Implementing Lessons Learned During the Ethiopian War When Italy invaded Ethiopia in the fall of 1935, the prominenti and Italian Government relied on lessons from the Italianization campaign to organize America’s Italians for the war. First, they employed a wide variety of tactics that rivaled even Leonard Covello in thoroughness. Fundraisers could be found in church basements, barbershops, street corners, and at every doorstep. In this manner Il Progresso Italo-Americano collected $750,000, and the OSIA committed to sending 4,000 bales of cotton.23 After President Roosevelt urged Congress to match the strict sanctions placed by the League of Nations on Italy, Italian radio programs and newspapers instructed Americans to mail pre-written letters from their

22 “I discorsi pronunziati al banchetto al commodore hotel,” Il Progresso ItaloAmericano, March 30, 1935. 23 “Continuano le offerte per le opere assistenziali,” Il Progresso Italo-Americano, September 13, 1936; “L’Ordine Figli d’Italia vota il boicottaggio alle merci che hanno provenienza Inglese,” Il Progresso Italo-Americano, October 19, 1935.

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local drugstores to their congressman. Individuals and ethnic associations flooded Washington with letters that winter, killing the neutrality bill before it could reach a vote.24 Second, they promoted messages of humanitarianism and limited the Italian representatives’ political involvement to avoid seeming too Fascist or too foreign. Suddenly prominenti found an abundance of anniversaries and holidays with which to celebrate Italian culture. Whether they hosted a recital, play, or picnic, at some point they would find themselves presenting bags of gold or large checks to an Italian Government representative. The mask of culture was so strong for the Italian Bronx Community House that students could raise funds for the Ethiopian War in 1935 and hand them directly to Italy’s Consul General of New York without jeopardizing the school’s broad political support. Finally, the prominenti protected themselves and their cause by bringing in outsiders. Nine months after his graduates’ banquet, Generoso Pope hosted a rally in support of the Ethiopian War in Madison Square Garden. Drawing a sold-out crowd of 22,000 and raising an additional $55,000 at the door, Pope presented Consul General Vecchiotti with a check for $100,000.25 OSIA Supreme Venerable, Stefano Miele, promoted the event by stating: “held tight in a single pact, animated by a single faith, we will ask the God of war for the victory of Italy’s soldiers, for the honor of Rome, and for the greater prestige of our people in America.”26 Years later, after America’s entrance into World War II, anti-Fascists attempted to use Pope’s rally as proof of his Fascism. In response, Congressman Samuel Dickstein, former vice-chair of the House Un-American Activities Committee, came to Pope’s defense on the House floor.27 Dickstein pointed to the attendance of American politicians including Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, Congressman William Sirovich, and New York supreme court justices, Salvatore Cotillo and Ferdinand Pecora. Their participation in the rally was proof for him that it could not be pro-Fascist or un-American. Pope was saved because he 24 Cannistraro, “Generoso Pope and the Rise of Italian American Politics, 1925–1936,” 285; Luconi, La “Diplomazia Parellela,” 94. 25 “Vibrante Celebrazione d’Italianità al Madison Sq. Garden,” Il Progresso ItaloAmericano, December 15, 1935. 26 Stefano Miele, “Nobile apello alla radio del Ca. Avv. Stefano Miele,” Il Progresso Italo-Americano, November 29, 1935. 27 87 Cong. Rec. 5280 (June 17, 1941).

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had brought Americans and anti-Fascists into his cause, something he practiced first with the Italian-language campaign. The campaign to Italianize the Italian–Americans did not solve the problem of Americanization or make up for the loss of ethnic vitality the community suffered after the Immigration Act of 1924. It did turn a disconnected group of inexperienced political leaders into collaborators and provide them with a blueprint for future political action.

Emigration for Adoption: The National Catholic Welfare Conference and the Adoption of Italian Children in the United States Silvia Cassamagnaghi

From the end of World War II, until the beginning of the 1970s, Italy “exported” its own children: the country was often considered to be a sort of “reserve of children,” matching the demand of prospecting adoptive parents, especially in the United States.1 Immigration to the United States, since the 1920s, was regulated by restrictive laws; however, such legislation was temporarily questioned by the events of the Second World War and by the dramatic European situation at the end of the conflict when there were eight to ten million

1 Silvia Cassamagnaghi, “L’adozione di bambini italiani negli Stati Uniti. L’operato del Catholic Relief Service e del Catholic Committee for Refugee. 1951–1965,” Italia Contemporanea, 284 (2017): 67–93.

S. Cassamagnaghi (B) Università Degli Studi, Milan, Italy e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. Mourlane et al. (eds.), Italianness and Migration from the Risorgimento to the 1960s, Palgrave Studies in Migration History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88964-7_10

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displaced persons.2 In these circumstances, public and private agencies and organizations mobilized to give practical assistance, also calling for legislative action to alleviate the difficult situation of refugees, especially orphans, giving them the opportunity to emigrate to the United States.3 These agencies acted as mediators between the prospecting parents and those who exercised the parental authority over a child eligible for adoption. The reasons for choosing intercountry adoption for Italian children were based upon good intentions: to give a better chance to those who had very few opportunities in what was still a poor country, dramatically undeveloped from an economic and social point of view. We must not disregard also the historical period considered—the Cold War age—in which abandoned children became one of the many propaganda tools4 ; Catholic institutions were sensitive to preventing these little ones to be “captivated” by Communism to which poverty would have exposed them.5 Being sure that life in America was the best possible fate for abandoned children increased the migration of Italian children to the United States significantly.

The National Catholic Welfare Conference---Catholic Committee for Refugees and the Catholic Relief Service Immediately after the end of World War II, the US Committee for the Care of European Children was one of the institutions able to really act in such a context. Shortly after the war, it was decided that responsibilities 2 Tara Zahra, The Lost Children. Reconstructing Europe’s Families after World War II

(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011). 3 Daniel J. States,” Yale Winslow, The (Philadelphia:

Steinbock, “The Admission of Unaccompanied Children into the United Law & Policy Review, Vol. 7, Iss. 1, Article 5 (1989); Rachel Rains Best Possible Immigrants. International Adoption and the American Family University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017).

4 Marilyn Irvin Holt, Cold War Kids. Politics and Childhood in Postwar America (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2014); Margaret Peacock, Innocent Weapons. The Soviet and American Politics of Childhood in the Cold War (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2014). 5 Eileen Egan, Catholic Relief Services. The Beginning Years (New York: Catholic Relief Services, 1988); Rachel M. McCleary, Global Compassion. Private Voluntary Organizations and US Foreign Policy Since 1939 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).

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would have to be shared between various organizations, including religious ones. The management of Catholic refugees, including children,6 became a priority of the Catholic Committee for Refugees (CCR), an agency established in 1936 under the auspices of the National Catholic Welfare Conference (NCWC).7 Since the founding of the committee, it started to work in a completely new and “unexplored” branch of Catholic American charity institutions: for refugees’ admission to the United States and for their rehabilitation and integration with a new focus. From May 1946, it was also in charge of displaced children and orphans, after the Truman Directive was issued.8 In the early years of CCR’s work in Europe, Italy did not seem to be involved in the migratory flows of children entering the United States: over 800 orphans, between May 1946 and October 1950, found shelter in America, but just four of them were Italians.9 The situation of Italy and of its children was probably less dramatic if compared to those of Germany, Austria, and many Eastern European countries, but only in a relative way. A quick glance to Italy in the postwar period,10 to neo-realist cinema,11 to the images of malnourished children in rags12 helps us to realize that even in Italy, childhood had also been violated and was in need of help. In the fall of 1950, when the most dramatic humanitarian emergency was over, the CCR officials declared their distress by the latest information

6 Entrance of European Children to United States, September 6, 1945, in United Nation Archives, New York (UNA), United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), 1943–1946, US Committee for the Care of European Children, S-1267– 0000-0357. 7 Douglas J. Slawson, The Foundation and First Decade of the National Catholic Welfare

Council (Washington: DC, Catholic University of America Press, 1992). 8 National Catholic Welfare Conference. 25th Annual Report, October 1, 1960–September 30, 1961, Center for Migration Studies, New York (CMS), Rg. 023b, Box 149, 4. 9 National Catholic Welfare Conference. 14th Annual Report, October 1, 1949–September 30, 1950, CMS, Rg. 023b, Box 148, 43. 10 Maria Bacchi, “Traumi, resistenze, vie di fuga. Oblio, memoria e racconto d’infanzia tra guerra e dopoguerra,” in Guerra resistenza politica. Storie di donne, ed. Dianella Gagliani (Reggio Emilia: Aliberti, 2006), 125–31. 11 Sciuscià, prod. Paolo William Tamburella, directed Vittorio De Sica, 93 min., 1946. 12 Italy – Children, in UNA, UNRRA, 1943–1946, S-0800–0002-0015.

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coming from Italy: at least 500 displaced orphans were eligible for intercountry adoption.13 From May 9, 1951, the Catholic Committee was authorized by the Displaced Persons Commission to exert total control over the selection and emigration of orphaned and abandoned Catholic children to America. It was not the only agency involved, but it managed the majority of cases. The massive adoption campaign, which had been carried out in that period among the Italian–American Catholic community, created a huge demand for children; this happened, for example, in the Chicago diocese in 1951, when Italian descendants were invited to adopt Italian “war orphans”: “Time is short. Act at once. Have a heart. Give these unfortunate children a home and a future.”14 The responsibility for screening and collecting information on eligible minors in Italy was taken over by the staff of the Catholic Relief Service (CRS). This agency—born during the Second World War as War Relief Service—was created by the NCWC in the summer of 1943, to collect funds to help people affected by the war, coordinating the distribution of essential goods and the displacement of these persons within the United States. Representatives of the CRS—since their arrival in Italy, in 1944— immediately made contact with Monsignor Ferdinando Baldelli, director of the Pontificia Commissione di assistenza ai profughi (Pontifical Relief Service Commission, POA).15 Baldelli shared with them his own experience and the cooperation with Monsignor Andrew Landi (CRS’s director in Italy, until 1967) would have been fundamental for the “orphan program.”

The Laws In June 1948, the United States Congress passed the Public Law 774, the Displaced Persons Act, which authorized the admission of refugees to the United States and established that any “eligible displaced orphan” was to be considered any minor under the age of 16, orphan of both

13 National Catholic Welfare Conference. 14th Annual Report, 23. 14 CMS, Rg. 023b, Box 152-Donanzan. 15 Primo Mazzolari, La carità del Papa. Pio XII e la ricostruzione dell’Italia. 1943–1953 (Milan: Edizioni Paoline, 1991).

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parents, who was in Italy or in the areas controlled by the Allies in Europe. This law was then amended and, in 1950, it was decided that it would be possible to admit 5,000 orphans to the United States from 18 nations, including Italy. Italy proved to be very collaborative from then on, unlike other countries who were not particularly willing to let their younger citizens emigrate to the United States for “humanitarian” reasons. A preliminary study by CRS revealed that: “The area of concentration for the most part in relation to these orphans eligible under the bill will be Italy. We feel that many Catholic children will be able to come to the United States to take their place in good Catholic families.”16 Thus, thousands of Italian orphans were admitted to the United States in excess of the immigration quota, provided that future adoption and legal protection for them were guaranteed and that the adoptive parents were Catholics and had enough means to support a child to adulthood. Those who desired to take with them a little Italian could, in their applications, specify the sex and the age of the child. Reading the petition to CCR, it is clear that the majority was also of Italian descent: very detailed requests were quite common, that the child came from a certain area or town, for example, establishing a sort of “fictitious migratory chain” with respect to the places of origin of prospecting parents.17 It is clear that it would have been easier for Italian–American couples to manage such a situation. Sharing a similar background; even if the value of ethnic identity was often based on a subjective, deliberative, and symbolic orientation toward their own origins, was nevertheless a persuasive factor.18 During the 1950s, American legislation pertaining to the admission of foreign orphans varied several times, by virtue of temporary measures. Section 5 of the Refugee Relief Act (Public Law 203) of 1953, for example, established that, until December 31, 1956, 4000 special offquota immigration visas could be issued to foreign orphans under the age of ten arriving for adoption in the United States. On September 11, 1957, Congress approved the Public Law 85–316 (valid until June 30, 1959, when it was amended by Pl 86–253 which prolonged it effectively until June 1960 and then again—with Pl 86–648—until June 30, 1961),

16 National Catholic Welfare Conference. 14th Annual Report, 24. 17 Cfr. Application Questionaire, CMS, Rg. 023b, Boxes from 119 to 132. 18 Matteo Pretelli and Anna Ferro, Gli italiani negli Stati Uniti del XX secolo (Roma:

Centro Studi Emigrazione, 2005).

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according to which an unlimited number of visas could be granted to minors to be adopted in the United States.19 Italian minors eligible for intercountry adoption were mostly orphaned, illegitimate, or abandoned children for whom no solution had been found in Italy.20 “Orphans” could be defined as not only those whose parents were either dead or had disappeared; those who had been left alone or abandoned by just one parent when the other parent was unable to provide the necessary care, but also illegitimate children, recognized or not. Those children orphaned by one or both parents, who were the object of a “nominal adoption,” having been asked by their relatives living in the United States, were also eligible for intercountry adoption.21 There was a great prevalence for adoption within Italy itself in favor of girls who were considered less problematic and more “useful” as housekeepers. As a result, international adoption favored boys. During the period from 1954 to 1962, males placed in the United States totaled 1012, compared to 695 females.22 For older children, it was always advisable to find a family who spoke at least a little Italian to make the placement less distressing, while for difficult ones (those children who had been institutionalized for a long period or traumatized), intercountry adoption was not recommended because of the frequency of failures and the difficulty of returning the children to an institution, or even to their birth country. Undoubtedly, there were a number of concerns with regard to international adoptions: first of all, the adoption had to be recognized in both the countries involved and problems of a legal nature were not to be underestimated.23 In order to be sure that an adoption abroad was also valid in Italy, it was necessary that the adoptive parents were citizens of the country where the legal procedure was being accomplished (United States), according to local laws.24 In addition, in order to

19 Adozioni Minori Stati Uniti, s.d., Archivio centrale dello Stato, Roma (ACS), fondo Croce rossa italiana (CRI), Servizio madrinato, busta 88, f. Adozioni. 20 Vincenzo Menichella, Abbandono e adozione (Torino: Borla, 1966), 113–16. 21 Adozioni Minori Stati Uniti, s.d., ACS, CRI. 22 Menichella, Abbandono e adozione, 134–36. 23 Menichella, Abbandono e adozione, 113–14. 24 Menichella, Abbandono e adozione, 114.

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complete an adoption in Italy, the adoptive parents’ presence was necessary throughout the entire bureaucratic process,25 which caused great concern for American couples. The adoptive parents were required to stay in Italy throughout the process, resulting in travel and maintenance costs. Moreover, they had to meet all the requirements imposed by Italian law. In that period, only the Adozione ordinaria was possible in Italy: to give an heir to those who did not have one. Adoptive parents had to be at least 50 years old (or 40 if infertility had been confirmed): and thus the paradox existed whereby a baby could be adopted by an 80-year-old, but not by someone who was 30 years old. In the United States, there was a tendency to adopt children as young as possible because field experience had shown that younger children found it easier to adjust to the new family. The “age criteria” was thus flexible or established on a case-by-case basis.26 There was also the Piccola adozione or Affiliazione, but this did not help to secure any family bond since it could be extinguished by the birth parents and the child had no hereditary rights. Only in 1967 was the Adozione speciale approved by the Italian Parliament. This gave rights and duties to abandoned children under the age of 8 ensuring them real family status.27 In order to complete an adoption in the United States, a child had to be resident in the country for at least six months. After a trial period of six months to one year, legal adoption could be processed.28 American citizenship was not acquired automatically: children had to obtain it in accordance with American law. It could be requested two years after the legal adoption by the adoptive parents or the child could apply for it as an adult (when they could choose between Italian or American citizenship).

25 Rosetta Stasi a Elma Baccanelli Laurenzi, febbraio 14, 1948 [letter], ACS, CRI, Servizio madrinato, busta 44, fascicolo Foster Parents Plan. 26 Martha R. Norris, Adoption of Children from Overseas: A Study of the Process Involved in the Intercountry Adoption Placement of 145 Children Conducted under the Auspices of the Catholic Committee for Refugees-National Catholic Welfare Conference, 1961–1964 (Washington, DC: Dissertation. Faculty of the National Catholic School of Social Service of the Catholic University of America, 1967), 158. 27 Silvia Inaudi, “Enfants sans foyer: le débat sur l’adoption en Italie dans les années 1960 et 1970,” in Rives méditerranéennes, 60 (2020): 91–108. 28 Rosetta Stasi a Elma Baccanelli Laurenzi, febbraio 14, 1948 [letter], ACS, CRI.

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Finding Children, Completing the Adoption One of the main points of the international adoption program was, of course, to find “eligible orphans” and the CRS looked for them in Italy. In December 1952, in orphanages and institutions for poor and abandoned children in Italy, there were 164,943 children.29 It was not necessary that children had to be from an institution in order for them to be selected for adoption. CRS received recommendations from different sources: parents, relatives, social workers, governmental, or semigovernmental agencies, provincial homes for children, private institutes run by religious or lay personnel.30 CRS workers visited the children and used to follow a well-defined procedure to ensure legality and reliability to the “emigration for adoption” rules into the United States.31 The CRS explored the situation of each child in order to plan their future, obtain relevant information about them, and explain to parents—if known—the meaning of an intercountry adoption.32 Every report from Italy was carefully taken into consideration and when a dossier was complete, with all the information about the case, the CCR with the support of Catholic charities and a network of local agencies in the United States, started the procedure for seeking a suitable family. If a local agency had a family for the child, they were immediately informed and the prospective parents were requested to provide all the necessary documentation, in accordance with Italian and US laws.33 CRS in Italy prepared all the papers required for each child: the Narrative Case History34 provided complete, detailed information about the child’s weight and height, health status, and daily routine, cognitive development, character, education, legal status, and also a description of the

29 Istituto centrale di Statistica, Annuario statistico dell’assistenza e della previdenza sociale 1952–1953 (Roma: Azienda Beneventana Tipografica Editoriale, 1954), 23. 30 Norris, Adoption of Children from Overseas, 124–25. 31 Child Welfare League of America, Standards for Adoption Service (New York: Child

Welfare League of America, 1960), 60–61. 32 Adozioni Minori Stati Uniti, s.d., ACS, CRI Servizio madrinato, busta 88, f. Adozioni. 33 Consenso all’emigrazione e adozione negli Stati Uniti, s.d., ACS, CRI, Servizio madrinato, busta 88, f. Adozioni. 34 Narrative Case History, National Catholic Welfare Conference, Form C-5.

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home or institute in which they had grown up, as well as information on their birth family. CRS cooperated with the Immigration and Naturalization Service to establish the suitability of the subjects and maintained contact with children until they left for the United States, assuming responsibility for organizing the journey. They also provided financial assistance and requested passports from the Italian police and visas from the United States Consulate.35 In addition, the prospective adoptive parents had to produce their papers: they were asked for, in particular, the C-3 Form (Preliminary Information on Sponsors)36 and a detailed home study; the prospective parents had to support the costs for the procedures abroad, in order that adoption could be completed. A CCR representative had to be present at the arrival of the children in New York to identify, escort, and assist them during medical inspection, passport, visa, and baggage check, although most of the children did not have proper luggage, but rather, just a change of underwear and a toy. The CCR representative introduced children to adoptive parents if they welcomed them at New York airport, or accompanied them to a hotel, while they waited to be transported to their long-term residence. The children generally felt lost in a totally unknown environment and a lot of work had to be done to help them to feel comfortable in their new families. Local Catholic charities or lay agencies were responsible for supervising the situation, waiting to finalize legal adoption, and they sent periodic reports about children’s progress to CCR.37 If there were any problems, the CCR—which however maintained legal custody until final adoption—sought to find a new shelter for the orphan. Only after the necessary “trial period,” and after the recommendation of the local agencies, would the CCR give consent allowing legal adoption,38 and only then was the file officially closed.

35 National Catholic Welfare Conference, 23rd Annual Report, October 1, 1958– September 30, 1959, CMS, Rg. 023b, Box 149. 36 Provision and Domestic Procedures on Orphan under Refugee Relief Act of 1953, March 25, 1954, CMS, Rg. 023, Box 76, Folder: Public Law 203: Children 1953–1955. 37 Provision and Domestic Procedures on Orphan under Refugee Relief Act of 1953, March 25, 1954, CMS, Rg. 023, Box 76, Folder: Public Law 203: Children 1953–1955. 38 Norris, Adoption of Children Overseas, 144–45.

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One more aspect of intercountry adoption from Italy to the United States should be pointed out: the permission to be adopted and to emigrate had to be signed by the birth parents. The parent—or the legal guardian—had to declare that they consented to the emigration of the child to the United States and to their subsequent adoption by “suitably chosen parents.” Signing this act “voluntarily” and with an “informed and responsible decision,” the child was entrusted to the care and protection of the responsible institution until its legal adoption in the United States. The parent also declared they had realized “without any reservation” that, after the legal adoption, the adoptive parents would have assumed all rights and duties toward the child and that “any personal contact with the child” would cease.39 However, the parental waiver was not always very clear. Frequently, the child’s natural parents were poorly educated, deferred to the “authorities” (generally priests or well-educated people) or the birth mother was a very young unmarried girl, worried about her future and reputation. It was possible that documents were sometimes signed without their real meaning being fully understood.40 In general, a social worker visited the families and explained how their children, who were living in a state of extreme poverty in Italy, could be put into foster care in the United States, where a new family would raise them with love and where they would receive a proper education. It was well known that it would have been a “closed adoption”: yet many Italian parents who took this painful decision were nevertheless sure they would receive news from their children in the United States. Perhaps it was a simple, albeit tragic, misunderstanding, but even so, it must be acknowledged that hypocrisy was rife despite the agencies acting in the so-called best interests of the children. It seemed to be commonly accepted—especially in the first period of the program—during the early 1950s—that the adoption procedure was somewhat unclear. But in 1959, a big scandal—the so-called “Giambalvo’s case”41 —obliged the Italian Government to make stricter 39 Consenso all’emigrazione e adozione negli Stati Uniti, s.d., ACS, CRI, Servizio

madrinato, busta 88, f. Adozioni. 40 La Storia di Pia. Mio fratello, mia sorella, venduti per poche lire, prod. and directed Basile Sallustio, 90 min., 1998. 41 A real “trade of children” was discovered in 1959, when Italian police stopped at Rome airport a group of children under the responsibility of Peter Giambalvo, lawyer and esteemed figure of the Italian–American community in Brooklyn. Giambalvo suffered, in

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rules for child adoption and emigration and to supervise the child’s application. The Italian Government had to rethink its policy about international adoption and, to ensure no recurrences after the Giambalvo Case, only the NCWC and the International Social Service-Italian Red Cross were allowed to manage the practices of children to be adopted abroad. Considering the work of the NCWC and the bureaucratic implications of intercountry adoptions is just a starting point for further investigation. Many more aspects of the “emigration for adoption” process, including the work of other agencies, other documentation, the Italian and US press, as well as first-hand testimonies need to be explored, too, as a part of the overarching historiographical debate.

1961, a trial for facilitation of illegal immigration (from which he was acquitted). “Due bimbi adottati da americani ridati alla madre che non se ne vuole separare,” Il progresso Italo-Americano, July 14, 1959.

Italian Words

Italian Language in Exile in France in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century Laura Fournier-Finocchiaro

From the end of the eighteenth century to the middle of the nineteenth, Italian political exiles of the Risorgimento played a fundamental role not only in the history of the Italian state and the Italian national construction,1 but also in the dissemination of Italian language and literature

1 Patrizia Audenino and Antonio Bechelloni, “L’esilio politico fra Otto e Novecento,” Storia d’Italia: Annali 24: Migrazioni, eds Paola Corti and Matteo Sanfilippo (Turin: Einaudi, 2009), 343–69; Maurizio Isabella, Risorgimento in Exile. Italians Émigrés and the Liberal International in the post-Napoleonic Era (Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press, 2009); Agostino Bistarelli, Gli esuli del Risorgimento (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2011); Antonio Bechelloni, “L’exil dans l’histoire italienne (XIXe -XXe siècles),” Les exilés politiques espagnols, italiens et portugais en France au XIX e siècle: questions et perspectives, eds Laura Fournier-Finocchiaro and Cristina Climaco (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2017), 37–52.

L. Fournier-Finocchiaro (B) Grenoble Alpes University, Grenoble, France e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. Mourlane et al. (eds.), Italianness and Migration from the Risorgimento to the 1960s, Palgrave Studies in Migration History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88964-7_11

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abroad.2 The first half of the nineteenth century was marked by the question of Italian independence and national unification; it was also a time of political exile for many intellectuals and patriots who settled abroad, essentially in Belgium, Switzerland, England, and France. Before 1849, several waves of Italian political emigrants flocked to France: Jacobin revolutionary exiles after the fall of the Parthenopean Republic of Naples in 1799; Carbonari exiles from Naples and the Kingdom of Sardinia after defeat in the 1820–1821 uprisings; and exiles from the Papal States and Modena after the failure of the 1831 uprisings. After the defeat in the First Italian War of Independence of 1848–1849, the road to exile changed: many patriots chose to join the Piedmont, governed by the liberal monarchy of the House of Savoy. From one generation to the next, the cultural policy of those in exiles evolved. This can be observed in their skills and networks, as well as in their programs and their political goals.3 Those Italian intellectuals and patriots who settled abroad carried their words and culture with them, and once they were established, many of them were engaged in the transmission and valorization of Italian language and literature through their educational, journalistic, or editorial activity. Many turned to these activities because of economic difficulties, yet education, journalism, and editorial work kept alive an Italian cultural memory and helped to build a sense of an Italian national identity through the language and literary history of the Peninsula during the Risorgimento. In order to identify and better understand some of the strategies put in place by political exiles seeking to maintain and spread the Italian language (italofonia), I propose to study autobiographical memoirs, journals, and Italian editions published in France, along with didactic material to learn Italian, all of which contributed in their way to the exiles’ discourse on identity.

2 Laura Fournier-Finocchiaro, “Les exilés politiques italiens, vecteurs et médiateurs de la langue et de la littérature italienne en France au XIXe siècle,” Les exilés politiques espagnols, italiens et portugais en France, 121–44. 3 Mariasilvia Tatti, “Esuli e letterati: per una storia culturale dell’esilio risorgimentale,”

L’officina letteraria e culturale dell’età mazziniana (1815–1870), eds Stefano Verdino et al., (Novi Ligure: Città del Silenzio, 2013), 89–100; Simon Levis Sullam, “Conflitti dell’esilio e immaginazione della nazione alle origini del Risorgimento,” Gli italiani in guerra: Conflitti, identità, memorie dal Risorgimento ai nostri giorni, vol. I (Torino: UTET, 2008), 104–14.

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The Language Situation We must begin by defining “the language of the Italians” at the beginning of the nineteenth century, in the context of a country where disputes about the “Language Question” (Questione della lingua) endured for centuries, and cultural and linguistic differences were significant well into the twentieth century.4 Italy, even before the birth of the state in 1861, already had “its” language. The oldest linguistic academy in the world, the Accademia della Crusca was founded in Florence in 1583, and it identified Italian with the Tuscan literary tradition, rooted in Tuscany’s vernacular literature of the fourteenth century, which includes such masterpieces as Dante’s Divine Comedy, Petrarch’s Canzoniere, and Boccaccio’s Decameron. However, eminent linguists such as Tullio De Mauro and Bruno Migliorini argued that from the fourteenth century to the twentieth, Italian was only the written language of the intellectual elite.5 In 1861, 90–98 percent of the Peninsula’s population was classified as illiterate. Having little or no access to the Italian language, most Italians spoke a vernacular, a dialect, or a language other than Italian; the dialects of Italy were so diverse as to be reciprocally incomprehensible, and the process of “Italianization” of the entire nation was achieved only with television, which came in 1954. But today, other points of view are defended: for example, Francesco Bruni reminds us of a common language based on the Florentine dialect that was used throughout the Peninsula as a second language, largely by Italian emigrants long before the diasporas that developed after 1861.6 He points to the great mobility of Italians within the Peninsula and abroad, and underlines the role of schools, the Church, chancelleries, and the justice system in the construction of a “simplified” or “basic Italian” that also became the language of tradespeople, and as a means of communication of people from different parts of Italy. He has also demonstrated the existence of several pre-unitarian Italian languages that were used around the Mediterranean.

4 Claudio Marazzini, Breve storia della lingua italiana (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2004); Robert Anderson Hall, The Italian Questione Della Lingua: An Interpretative Essay (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1942). 5 Tullio De Mauro, Storia linguistica dell’Italia unita (Bari: Laterza, 1963); Bruno Migliorini, Storia della lingua italiana (Milan: Bompiani, 1960). 6 Francesco Bruni, L’italiano fuori d’Italia (Firenze: Franco Cesati, 2013).

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On the other hand, the Italian literary language underwent linguistic standardization, in large part due to the compilation of dictionaries and grammars. Before the domination of French in the nineteenth century, Italian had long been one of the most prestigious European languages, spoken by the international elite until the eighteenth century. Above all, in France there was a continuing craze for Italian-language teachers (and also for Italian dance and music teachers). Yet, by the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Italian fell into decline7 and many writers and poets started to think that the written Italian taught by pedagogues was “a dead language.” Italian was threatened even in its written use: by the mid-nineteenth century, from Turin to Naples, from Milan to Venice, the urban upper classes and the old aristocracy chose French over Italian as the language of culture. However, as the nineteenth century progressed, the connection between language and nationality was strongly affirmed.8 As the famous poet, Alessandro Manzoni, declared in his ode Marzo 1821, Italian people would be “conjoined in arms, language, religion, history, blood and feelings” (Una d’arme, di lingua, d’altare,/Di memorie, di sangue e di cor). These words seek more than a simple rhetorical effect. Implicit in Manzoni’s verse are important conceptual elements, such as the function of linguistic unity in the constitution of a human community and the definition of linguistic nationalism.9 These would guide important political measures in the Kingdom of Italy after 1861. In this context, what words, which language, did Italian exiles, forced or voluntary, carry with them when they settled beyond the borders of the Peninsula at the beginning of the nineteenth century?

7 Françoise Waquet, Le modèle français et l’Italie savante. Conscience de soi et perception de l’autre dans la République des Lettres (1660–1750) (Rome: École française de Rome, 1989). 8 Daniel Baggioni, Langues et nations en Europe (Paris: Payot, 1997); Giuliano Procacci, “Nazionalismi e questione della lingua,” Studi storici 48/3–4 (2007): 589–634. 9 According to nationalistic claims, language is seen as a proof of the “historical existence” of a nation. See Pierre Bourdieu, Langage et pouvoir symbolique (Paris: Seuil, 2001); Francesca Zantedeschi, “Lingua e nazione in Europa,” Passato e pres ente 79 (2010): 155–67.

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The Limits of Linguistic Purism A great number of exiles from the first wave of emigration (after 1799) were representatives of linguistic purism. During the eighteenth century, the literary community was involved in a dispute between purists, who defended “classical Italian” institutionalized through the Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca, and those encouraging an opening of literary Italian to foreign and technical scientific terms, such as the Milanese intellectuals (Cesare Beccaria and the Verri brothers, Pietro and Alessandro) who used their journal Il Caffè to systematically attack the Accademia’s archaisms as pedantic. But we can notice that “purist exiles” quickly came up against their linguistic limits in France. To illustrate this we can take the example of a group of exiles from the Cisalpine Republic, which includes the journalist, Giuseppe Poggi La Cecilia, and the man of letters, Antonio Buttura, who founded a Sunday newspaper in Paris, La Domenica, which was published between 1803 and 1804 entirely in Italian.10 These exiled literati sought to preserve the means of expression in their language in order to advertise the products of the Peninsula abroad, above all to dispel the prejudices of the French regarding Italy and encourage sympathy for its emancipation. Unfortunately, their enterprise was short-lived because, outside Italy, they did not find a readership able to read Italian and willing to buy their paper. They had no choice but to collaborate with the French “world of letters” by writing in French. This caused some suffering among the purists even if they all knew French perfectly well. Moreover, they knew political suffering, too, as they had to submit to French cultural domination. Much the same applies to the Calabrian writer and librettist, Francesco Saverio Salfi, who settled in Naples in 1787, then escaped to France in 1799, and established himself there definitively in 1815. Salfi published his principal works on Italian literature in French. He rose to fame among French scholars through his addition to Italian literary history (Histoire littéraire d’Italie) by Pierre-Louis Ginguené, and his summary of the history of Italian literature (Résumé de l’histoire de la littérature italienne). The only freedom that Salfi granted himself in his writing was

10 Arianna Arisi-Rota, “La Domenica: Un giornale italiano nella Parigi tardo consolare,” Rassegna storica del Risorgimento 83/1 (1996): 17–28; Paolo Conte, “Un periodico italiano nella Parigi napoleonica: il caso de La Domenica, fra classicismo letterario e rinnovamento politico,” Rivista storica italiana, 130 (2018): 409–36.

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to not Frenchify Italian proper names, in order to respect “historical accuracy.”11 This also became the method of the Piedmontese historian, Carlo Botta, who settled definitively in Paris in 1802, when he composed directly in French his History of the peoples of Italy (Histoire des peuples d’Italie), published in 1825. After nearly a quarter-century spent in France, and even though he became a French citizen, fearing persecution at home, Botta still suffered from his forced abandonment of the Italian language, and he spent a lot of energy convincing French editors to also publish his works in Italian. With financial help from his exiled companions, in particular, Giuseppe Poggi, he managed to publish in Italian his history of Italy from 1789 to 1814 in four volumes (Storia d’Italia dal 1789 al 1814), on which his fame principally rests. Then in 1832, his continuation of Guicciardini’s History (Storia d’Italia in continuazione di quella del Guicciardini) was published in Italian by the editor, Louis Claude Baudry. Though a resident of Paris, Botta was an ardent critic of everything French and of French cultural influences throughout Europe. His histories were immediately translated into French, but he excluded all and any Gallicism from his works in Italian, as a reaction against French influence. He carefully nurtured his style, which was frequently impassioned and eloquent, involved and ornate.12

The Development of Didactic and Literary Works This first generation of purist exiles opened the publishing market to didactic works for learning Italian, and to Italian series, at a time when French Romantics such as Chateaubriand, Lamartine, Musset, and Madame de Staël were fascinated by Italy. At a time when French editors were proposing more accessible travel guides, exiles were offering manuals for learning the language. Take, as an example, the case of the Ligurian Jacobin, Niccolò Giosafatte Biagioli, who went into exile in France in 1799. Earning his living as a teacher of Italian language and literature, he published an Italian grammar, Grammaire italienne élémentaire et raisonnée (1805),

11 Francesco Saverio Salfi, Résumé de l’histoire de la littérature italienne (Paris: Chez Louis Janet, 1826), xv. 12 Carlo Dionisotti, Vita di Carlo Botta (Torino: Bocca, 1867).

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which was reissued many times during the century. In his preface, he expressed his disappointment with the current state of the Italian language in France, proposing a clear path to improvement: in order to create a market for Italian literature, it was necessary to create a didactic work for teaching Italian literary language to French literati. He himself defended the theories of purists regarding the Italian language, and he published an edition of the Divine Comedy in 1818–1819. There is no denying the important role played by French Romantics in creating a taste for Italian literature in translation and Italian aesthetic models, yet we must also consider the prominent role played by “editor exiles” who proposed books in Italian for a new public of Italian exiles and for the French upper class. The Jacobin priest, Antonio Buttura, exiled from the Republic of Venice in 1797, was first appointed a teacher of Italian at the Prytanée militaire of Saint-Cyr, and in 1802 at the ministry of foreign affairs of Italy in Paris. He was a central figure of the Italian community in Paris: he collaborated with several publishing houses and convinced the editor, Jean-Jacques Lefevre, to publish a poetry collection in Italian (Bibliothèque de poésies italiennes ). It appeared in 30 volumes between 1820 and 1822. Buttura’s choices were determined by his anti-Romantic sensitivity, and the selection of authors was relatively traditional and included all the classics, from Dante to Alfieri. In 1825, Buttura persuaded the editor, Martin Bossange, a pioneer in the international book trade, to publish a prose collection (Bibliothèque des proses italiennes ) in ten volumes. Salfi, Botta, Biagioli, and Buttura constituted the core of the Jacobin generation engaged in the defense of the Italian classical tradition. They compensated their political disengagement through the construction of national identity in letters. The following waves of exiles, in 1821 and 1831, brought a radical change to this taste for Italian classicism. From the 1820s onwards, Italian Romantic culture competed with this vision of Italy largely turned toward the past, and the linguistic baggage of the exiles changed as well.

Toward a New Italian Language After the defeat of the 1821 uprisings, Italian patriots turned to the cause of reducing the gap between written and spoken forms of the Italian language. They also sought to reconcile Italy’s historical and cultural heritage with the promotion of spoken language and modern literature.

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The writer, Alessandro Manzoni, occupied a key place in discussions about the Questione della lingua in Italy, with his ideal of “cleansing communication” and his ambition to give a means of unified expression to all inhabitants of the Peninsula. Though several writers disagreed with Manzoni’s linguistic politics, he had become famous thanks to his bestselling novel, The Betrothed (I Promessi Sposi). Italian patriots read this book as an indictment against the Austrian occupiers; they also participated in Manzonian theory as this novel founded the modern Italian language. These new ideas, together with the expansion of the Italianspeaking public abroad, led to a change in the exiles’ strategies for the dissemination of the Italian language and literature. A new generation of “activist critics” included Carbonari whose names were proscribed in the Papal States, Mazzinians, liberal exiles such as the Lombard princess, Cristina di Belgiojoso, and the Roman, Terenzio Mamiani Della Rovere. These people aimed to build a unitary nation through Italian language and culture13 and through a strategy of disseminating their political message using the Italian language in the periodical press. The first important bilingual review, L’Esule/L’Éxilé: journal de littérature italienne ancienne et moderne, was published between 1832 and 1834 by three exiles from the Papal States: Federico Pescantini, Giuseppe Andrea Cannonieri, and Angelo Frignani.14 All articles were written in Italian but with a side-by-side educational French translation. L’Éxilé served as a bridge between classical Italian and the newest Italian productions: the newspaper presented literary history lessons covering the broad evolution of Italian culture. Dante formed the spearhead of the editors: he was more than the “father of Italian language”; his life and example became an allegory of Italian exiles of the Risorgimento. In addition, there were sections dedicated to other topics such as reviews of contemporary Italian and French literature, reflections on the language, defenses of Italian character against French prejudice, and so on. 13 Mariasilvia Tatti, “Bohème letteraria italiana a Parigi all’inizio dell’Ottocento,” Italia e Italie. Immagini tra rivoluzione e Restaurazione, ed. Mariasilvia Tatti (Roma: Bulzoni, 1999), 139–60. 14 Maria Luisa Belleli, Voci italiane da Parigi. “L’esule-L’exilé” (1832–1834), ed. Cristina Trinchero (Torino: Tirrenia Stampatori, 2002); Antonietta A. Zucconi, “Un giornale dall’esilio. L’esule-L’exilé. Giornale di letteratura italiana antica e moderna,” Viaggiatori [Online], I/1 (2017); available from http://www.viaggiatorijournal.com/cms/cms_files/ [email protected].

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The second review, L’Italiano, was published in 1836 by a Roman exile, Michele Accursi, with the collaboration of Giuseppe Mazzini and Niccolò Tommaseo.15 The editors took a more decided stance to promote contemporary Italian literary production. Mazzini’s hoped the review would become a cultural guide not only for Italians exiled in Europe but also for those living in Italy: he sought to form the tastes and ideas of young patriots, guiding them in which tendencies to follow, which to avoid, promoting national literature attentive to the needs of the present. This generation of exiles was sensitive to the development of a new modern vocabulary of the Italian language, and it is no coincidence that the most important dictionary of Italian produced during the Risorgimento, the Dizionario della lingua italiana by Tommaseo-Bellini (1861), was the work of an exile.16 L’Italiano, as well as the editor, Louis Claude Baudry, with his Bookshop for Exiles (Librairie des exilés ), introduced to France not only the most significant works of the Risorgimento: Manzoni’s Betrothed, and Silvio Pellico’s memoirs, My Prisons (which remain the most translated works in France), but also historical novels and works impossible to publish in Italy because of censorship. This includes the novel La Battaglia di Benevento by Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi. The Italian press and Italian publishing contributed to renew the image of Italian literature and introduce the modern Italian language abroad: examples include the Collection des meilleurs auteurs anciens et modernes, the continuation of Buttura’s Bibliothèque poétique italienne by the exile, Antonio Ronna, and new bilingual dictionaries such as the Dictionnaire français-italien et italien-français by Ronna in 1836. Ten years later, Princess Cristina di Belgiojoso founded another important Italian review, L’Ausonio (1846–1849), fully rooted in contemporary Italy and its politics.17 With the breakdown brought about by the revolution in 1848, the princess abandoned the Italian language for French; she

15 Ilaria Gabbani, “Exil et presse italienne à Paris dans les années 1830: le cas de L’Italiano,” Les exilés politiques espagnols, italiens et portugais en France, 145–61. 16 Claudio Marazzini, L’ordine delle parole. Storia di vocabolari italiani (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2009). 17 Karoline Rörig, “Cooperare al progresso de’ veri principii di libertà, di indipendenza e di nazionalità. Il giornalismo di Cristina Trivulzio di Belgiojoso,” Cristina di Belgiojoso. Politica e cultura nell’Europa dell’Ottocento, eds Ginevra Conti Odorisio et al., (Napoli: Loffredo, 2010), 319–45.

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considered it vital that the French public be able to follow and understand events taking place in Italy.18 To sum up, the linguistic strategies adopted by Italian exiles during the Risorgimento, we have seen that the first generation, mostly composed of purists and “editor exiles,” contributed to revealing classical Italian literature to the French public by developing Italian publishing and grammars inspired by the Vocabolario della Crusca. The next generation, that of the “activist critics,” spread the new Italian literature in militant newspapers and bookshops and promoted a new language of communication inspired by the Manzonian written model, particularly evident in the dictionaries of the Dalmatian exile, Niccolò Tommaseo. They contributed significantly to the enthusiasm of the cultured public for the literature and arts of the Peninsula, stimulating “the desire of Italy” of the generation of Romantics. The Italian language and literature disseminated abroad by exiles can therefore be placed among “some of the positive consequences of exile, the silver lining of the dark cloud.”19 They in fact helped to articulate Italophilia and italofonia in France, making the nineteenth century “a large laboratory of Italianism.”20

18 Laura Fournier-Finocchiaro, “La stampa italiana in Francia nella prima metà dell’Ot-

tocento,” Voci d’Italia fuori dall’Italia, eds Bénédicte Deschamps and Pantaleone Sergi‚ (Cosenza: Pellegrini Editore, 2021), 287–307. 19 Peter Burke, Exiles and Expatriates in the History of Knowledge (1500–2000) (Waltham: Brandeis University Press, 2017), 8. 20 Giovanni Dotoli, Les traductions de l’italien en français au XIX e siècle (Fasano-Paris: Schena-Presses de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 2004), 86.

Italianità Under Influence: Filippo Manetta, a Mazzinian Exile in America, a Confederate Agent in Italy Bénédicte Deschamps

At a time when Italy was still divided into various duchies, republics, and kingdoms, Filippo Manetta nursed the hopes of the men and women who called for the unification of the Peninsula, contested Austrian domination and defied their local governments.1 Born in Piedmont, he adhered to Giuseppe Mazzini’s vision of an independent Italy and supported the Giovine Italia patriotic movement. After the revolutionary turmoil of 1848, like other political dissenters, he fled from Turin to seek refuge in the Americas. He reached New York City from Cuba aboard the Bark

1 See Francesco Durante, Italoamericana, vol.1, Storia e letteratura degli italiani negli Stati Uniti 1776–1880 (Milan: Mondadori, 2001), 77. For more details on Italian exiles, see Patrizia Audenino and Antonio Bechelloni, L’esilio politico fra Otto e Novecento, in Storia d’Italia. Annali 24, Migrazioni, eds Paola Corti and Matteo Sanfilippo (Turin: Giulio Einaudi Editore, 2009), 343–69.

B. Deschamps (B) Université de Paris, Paris, France e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. Mourlane et al. (eds.), Italianness and Migration from the Risorgimento to the 1960s, Palgrave Studies in Migration History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88964-7_12

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Express in June 18512 and immediately joined a small group of Italians consisting of opera singers and fellow Risorgimento exiles led by Felice Eleuterio Foresti3 who, as the Sardinian chargé d’affaires in New York, Luigi Mossi, explained, “somewhat formed Mazzini’s Party in the United States.”4 Manetta had a talent for writing and used his pen as a sword to serve the cause of a free, united, and Republican Italy, hoping to defend his ideals from abroad. His vitriolic poetry could be read in L’Eco d’Italia, the only Italian-language paper then published in New York City.5 Because of dissensions between the head of that publication— a pro-Mazzini exile from Piacenza called Giovanni Francesco Secchi de Casali—and some Risorgimento refugees, Foresti decided to raise funds to launch an alternative paper that was meant to become the official Mazzinian organ in America.6 He soon chose Manetta and Alberto Maggi, a former lieutenant in the Sardinian army, to undertake the difficult task of editing a sheet that could compete with L’Eco d’Italia. The shortlived weekly was entitled Il Proscritto, aimed “to encourage the spirit of liberty among their countrymen” and had as a “chief object of attack”: the “papal power.”7 This program was hailed by the congressionalist press, which warmly welcomed the birth of the new bilingual paper and rejoiced that “Jesuitism” had “no opponents so terrible as those Roman prescripts.”8 As historians Giorgio Spini and Howard Marraro 2 “New York Passenger Lists, 1820–1891,” database with images, FamilySearch

(https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:27PP-V6N: 15 April 2015), Phillip Manetta, 1851; citing NARA microfilm publication M237 (Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.); FHL microfilm. 3 On June 6, 1841, they formed the “congrega centrale della Giovine Italia” of North America, which aimed at spreading Mazzini’s ideals in the United States. This American branch of Young Italy was presided over by Felice Eleuterio Foresti, and headed by Giovanni Albinola (1809–1883), Alessandro Bargnani (1798–1852), and another Risorgimento hero who had arrived earlier in America, Giuseppe Avezzana (1797–1879). 4 Letter from Louis Mossi to the minister of foreign affairs, n.6, NY September 18, 1851, Lettere Ministri, Stati Uniti, vol.1, Archivio di Stato di Torino. 5 See, for example, “Il sogno d’un nipote,” L’Eco d’Italia, (August 24, 1850): 119. 6 For more details, see: Bénédicte Deschamps. “Dal fiele al miele: la stampa esule

italiana di New York e il Regno di Sardegna (1849–1861),” Annali della Fondazione Luigi Einaudi 42 (2008): 81–98. 7 “To Our American Readers,” Il Proscritto, (August 7, 1851): 1. 8 “Summary,” The Congressionalist, (November 14, 1851): 179.

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have shown, Risorgimento revolutionaries developed close links with the East Coast intelligentsia, especially within Protestant circles, which were famous for backing European insurgents.9 Against this background, it is not surprising that Manetta took advantage of his position as a journalist and a language professor to spread Mazzini’s principles in the refined New York salons, recommending the use of his paper for learning Italian. Even the New York Herald regarded Il Proscritto as a “well-conducted” and “useful journal” that would “probably be received with great favor.”10 The Sardinian consular authorities could hardly be of the same opinion, as the weekly continually vilified the king for allegedly aiding Austrians to maintain their hold on the Peninsula. In fact, following the path of other foreign rebels, Manetta saw the first amendment as an opportunity to voice opinions that were censored in his own land and he conceived Il Proscritto as a real political platform where he advocated not only the end of the Austrian dominion in Italy but also the end of monarchy tout court. The House of Savoy was his favorite target and he did not hesitate to challenge its role in the unification movement. His views were exposed with staunch and uncompromising words: “We will not have as a guide in our future revolution a King of Savoy, nor any other individual anointed by the pope’s hands. The House of Carignano is forever dead to us.”11 In his reports to the Sardinian ministry of foreign affairs, Luigi Mossi expressed a well-founded concern that such statements, which were translated and republished in the US mainstream newspapers, would influence the state department in its policy toward the kingdom. Yet little could he do to silence Manetta and his Mazzinian friends, whose arguments gained momentum in America. During his years of exile, Manetta never departed from this rebellious spirit, finding a renewed source of inspiration in the myth of the American revolution. “I worship you as one worships God,” he had written in an ode to the “Republic of the United States” as early as 1850, so grateful he then was that the “American eagle” had resisted the pressures 9 Giorgio Spini, Risorgimento e protestanti (Milan: Il saggiatore, 1989); Howard R.

Marraro, Relazioni fra l’Italia e gli Stati Uniti, (Rome: Edizioni dell’Ateneo, 1954); See also Gli Stati Uniti e l’unità d’Italia, eds Daniele Fiorentino and Matteo Sanfilippo (Rome: Gangemi, 2004). 10 “Foreign Newspapers and periodicals published in New York,” The New York Herald, (August 31, 1851): 2. 11 F.M., “La Morte del 51,” Il Proscritto, (December 25, 1851): 1.

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of crowns and miters to protect the “exiled Hungarian and the wandering Italian” under its “outstretched provident wings.”12 After the demise of Il Proscritto, in 1852, his devotion to democracy kept vibrant and guided his pen when he sang the praise of the institutions that had rescued him from the persecutions of despotism. In 1856, he found a new pretext to express his faith in American values when the New York Academy of Music produced La Spia, an opera written by him and composed by Luigi Arditi.13 The libretto was an adaptation from Fenimore Cooper’s famous novel The Spy.14 It recounted the story of an American hero during the War of Independence in a highly nationalistic key, developing themes that were dear to Risorgimento refugees, who identified with the patriots. No wonder Manetta dedicated it “to the people of the United States.” He celebrated a country where “no fetters [were] placed on individual exertions, and where each member of a democratic nation of sovereigns [was] impressed with the conviction of his own strength and equality.”15 The American political system was a model after which he thought Italy should be shaped and much of his appreciation for the former was connected to the dreams he entertained for the latter’s future. In his mind, italianità and pro-American feelings were but two sides of the same coin. However, a few months before La Spia successfully debuted in New York, Manetta received a proposal that was to have a great impact on both his life and his understanding of American democracy. General Winfield Scott, commander in chief of the federal army, offered him a position as a private tutor of Italian and mathematics in a rich Virginian family.16 As part of the contract, Manetta had to reside for two years on his employers’ estates in Virginia and Louisiana, a condition he accepted, not without a tinge of apprehension as to what awaited him there. He later confessed

12 Filippo Manetta, “Alla Repubblica degli Stati Uniti,” L’Eco d’Italia, (May 11, 1850):

58. 13 Luigi Arditi, My Reminiscences (New York: Dodd, Mead and Cy, 1896), 29–30. 14 See “Arditi’s New Opera - La Spia,” Evening Mirror, March 24, 1856, p.2 and

Vera Brodsky Lawrence, Strong on Music: The New York Music Scene in the Days of George Templeton Strong, Vol.2 Reverberations, 1850–1856 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 682–83. 15 Filippo Manetta, “To the People of the United States,” in Filippo Manetta and Luigi Arditi, La Spia. The Spy (New York: John Darcie, 1853). 16 Filippo Manetta, Guida per la coltivazione pratica del cotone in Italia secondo il metodo americano (Turin: Tipografia Derossi e Dusso, 1862), 5.

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that it was “with a heavy heart” that he had left the North, “fearing that it would be impossible” for him “to conform to the habits of people who, as [he] had heard and read, cruelly tyrannized the poor sons of Ham.”17 Yet, as soon as he reached the plantations, whatever his New York friends had told him regarding southern racist customs was dismissed as the “weirdest blunders the human brain could fantasize.”18 The world he discovered considerably differed from what he had experienced in New York City, but he embraced it full-heartedly. He was so enraptured by it that when his term ended, he decided to remain there four more years, first in the parish of St Martin, Louisiana, then in Mississippi and Tennessee. Living, in his own words, “the planter’s life,” he came to consider the South as a second home and anti-slavery books as “ridiculous humbugs.”19 He depicted landlords as real gentlemen “whose hospitality filled [his] soul with emotion,” and overseers as “modest, frank, loyal” and “intelligent” individuals “who wouldn’t hurt a fly.”20 When he first reached the plantation run by James Edward Macfarland (General Scott’s great-nephew), Manetta was pleasantly surprised to note that “between landowners and Negroes there seemed to exist a relation of fondness on the one hand and of respectful attachment on the other.” He even claimed “Whites and Negroes” seemed “to love each other.”21 It took him less than a few weeks to drop all his preconceptions on slavery, espouse his new acquaintances’ racist stands, and bow before “cotton King.”22 Although he still corresponded with Foresti, he gradually alienated himself from what had been his political credo, and dedicated all the time he spent in the southern states to study the cultivation of cotton, which he believed could be grown successfully in Italy. Unlike other exiles who acquired US citizenship and settled permanently in the United States, Manetta returned to Italy in 1861, a year that coincided with both the advent of Italian unification and the outbreak 17 Filippo Manetta, La razza negra nel suo stato selvaggio in Africa e nella sua duplice condizione di emancipata e di schiava in America (Turin: Tipografia del Commercio, 1864), 139. 18 Manetta, La razza, 129. 19 Manetta, La razza, 130, 137. 20 Manetta, La razza, 132. 21 Manetta, La razza, 140. 22 See: Filippo Manetta, Il re cotone, ossia i distretti cotoniferi del globo considerati in

relazione al loro clima (Torino: Tip. Derossi e Dusso, 1863).

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of the American Civil War. In the same way, as he had used American newspapers to publicize overseas his interpretation of the Risorgimento movement, he promptly turned to the Italian press to present his vision of the United States, based on what he had learned in the South. Whereas the newly born Kingdom of Italy maintained what could be labeled as a pro-Union neutrality toward Secession, Manetta went against the trend and drew a controversial portrait of American reality in which the North was never triumphant. In December 1861, when commissioned to write an article on the history and monuments of New York, he seized the opportunity to insist on the nefarious consequences of the war. He explained that before his departure from this “jewel” city, “the deadly breath of Mars had not yet exhausted many of the sources of blooming prosperity that proliferated there.” Yet since then, “the bloody oriflamme of war had paralyzed its florid commerce, spread grief and desolation in the homes and left the famous bay deserted.”23 No doubt in his mind that Abraham Lincoln bore the responsibility of such a disaster. Manetta had chosen the side of Jefferson Davies and had kept active contacts with his old benefactors some of whom were soon promoted to key diplomatic positions. It was the case of James E. Macfarland, who became secretary to the Confederate legation in London in 1862, and who recommended his former employee to Henry Hotze, chief organizer of the southern states’ propaganda in Europe.24 The latter was looking for a dependable agent that could help him serve the Confederate cause in the Peninsula, a job that seemed tailored for Manetta. Although Hotze’s sphere of action was initially circumscribed to England and France, the Italian campaign was seen as a side “experiment” worth the “trifling” expense invested in it. Manetta accepted the assignment and became a correspondent for The Index, the London-based southern propaganda organ launched by Hotze. However, instead of contributing articles to this publication, he

23 F.M., “Nuova York,” Il Mondo Illustrato, Vol.4, n.51, (December 21, 1861): 390. 24 On Hotze, see Lonnie A. Burnett, Henry Hotze, Confederate Propagandist Selected

Writings on Revolution, Recognition, and Race, (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2008), and Joseph V. Traha, III, “Henry Hotze: propaganda voice of the Confederacy,” in Knights of the Quill: Confederate Correspondents and their Civil War Reporting, eds Patricia G. McNeely, Debra Reddin van Tuyll, and Henry H. Schulte, (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2010), 216–37.

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was required “to devote the equivalent of the labor upon the Turin press.”25 Employed as a temporary English teacher at the Monviso technical institute, Manetta was well acquainted with the major Piedmont newspapers. He activated his network and used Hotze’s money to buy 20 yearly subscriptions of La Dicussione and Il Commercio italiano, for the respective amounts of 400 and 200 francs, in exchange for publishing space in their columns.26 The technique worked perfectly. Between 1861 and 1865, with “zeal and tact, industry and discretion,” Manetta disseminated dozens of disparaging articles about the union, despite the reluctance of some Turin editors. Hotze was delighted that the Italian “experiment” had “succeeded so surprisingly well” and was even “tempted by this success to extend the plan gradually to other portions of the continent.”27 Yet no other European agent was as efficient as Manetta, whose racial convictions made him an ideal collaborator. In 1863, when the Anthropological Society of London (ASL), was formed in opposition to the existing Ethnological Society, new perspectives opened up for pro-South propagandists.28 Although its first president, James Hunt, professed that the new institution should “never be prostituted to such an object as the support of the slave-trade,” he also made clear that its members should expose their conclusions regarding “the real place in nature, or in society, of the African or any other race.”29 Hunt immediately sought the support of the Confederates, and persuaded Hotze to join the ASL council, provide a modest financial aid for the society and divulge the fellows’ findings in The Index.30 This partnership probably influenced 25 Letter from H. Hotze to J.P. Benjamin, London, 27 August 1863, in Edward Denby, Harry Kidder White Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, Series 2, vol.3, (Washington: Government printing Office, 1922), 878. 26 H. Hotze, “Letter of Instruction to Turin Correspondent,” August 17, 1863, in Denby- Kidder White, Official Records, 864. 27 Letter from H. Hotze to J.P. Benjamin, Secretary of State, Richmond, London, 13 February, 1864, in Kidder White, Official Records, 1025. 28 Efram Sera-Shriar, The Making of British Anthropology, 1813–1871 (London: Rout-

ledge, 2016), 109–12. 29 James Hunt, Introductory Address on the Study of Anthropology delivered at the Anthropological Society of London, (London: Trubner and Co, Pater Noster Row 1863), 4. 30 Robert E. Bonner, “Slavery, Confederate Diplomacy and the Racialist Mission of Henry Hotze,” Civil War History 3 (2005): 300–01.

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Hotze’s decision to ask Manetta to prepare an essay on the Black race, to be later presented at the ASL. The former exile eagerly accepted the new mission, since he claimed his study of cotton-growing in the South had led him to scientifically analyze the African slaves’ condition. Boasting he had become an expert in the field, he published La Razza negra nel suo stato selvaggio in Africa e nella sua duplice condizione di emancipata e di schiava in America in 1864.31 Printed by Il Commercio italiano, the volume was a strange artifact mixing Manetta’s memories of the blissful moments he had lived in the southern states with both empirical observations on the so-called inferiority of African slaves in America and a selection of contemporary anthropological texts confirming his assumptions. Although written in Italian, the book received a large worldwide coverage and became a classic of racist literature regularly quoted in England and in the United States until the mid-twentieth century. Quite logically, Manetta was rewarded for his efforts with a position as the ASL local secretary for Turin.32 For the duration of the Civil War, Il Commercio italiano and La Discussione became propaganda vehicles where Filippo Manetta artfully distilled southern rhetoric on war, the Constitution, and Secession. Still, the journalist never clearly mentioned in his articles his drastic views on the question of slavery, which most Turin readers would have deemed unacceptable. It would have been counterproductive to attack frontally the abolitionist feeling fostered in Italy by the translation of books like Uncle Tom’s Cabin and other testimonies unveiling the brutality of slave owners.33 Since Manetta could not use the argument of racial inferiority to justify the Confederates’ defense of their peculiar institution, he circumvented the obstacle by depicting slaves as a lazy lot incapable of understanding the duties of responsible free men. As late as 1865, when it would have been wiser for him to conform to Turin general opinion, he blamed the lack of food in the South on the “disorganization” of “negroes” who refused to beat the rice, “did not want to work the way

31 Manetta, La razza. 32 Journal of the Anthropological Society of London, Vol.3, (London: Trubner and Co.,

Pater Noster Row, 1865), ccxlvii. 33 Frederick H. Jackson, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin in Italy,” Symposium 7.2, 1953; 7: 323–

32.

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they should” and whose great majority “did not want to work at all.”34 The problem, he asserted, was that freed slaves thought “their freedom consisted in the right to do nothing” and did not realize that without “masters forcing them to work, they had no master providing for their needs either.”35 Similar comments abounded in the Confederate newspapers where Manetta found much of his inspiration, as if he had forever expunged the political leanings of his youth. Indeed, before sojourning in Virginia, he used to frequent the anti-slavery milieu in New York and was the disciple of Mazzini, a man who was known for assiduously corresponding with such abolitionists as William Lloyd Garrison. At the time, he endorsed Mazzini’s belief that Italians and African–American slaves were “fighting the same sacred battle,” the former to gain independence from the Austrian yoke and the latter to gain freedom from the southern planters’ oppression.36 Manetta had obviously revised his positions on the subject since then, while maintaining his faith in the Italian Risorgimento. He was now drawing a new parallel between the Confederates’ right to break away from the imposed domination of the union and the Italians’ fight for unification. In other words, he upheld that the federal government was to southerners what Austria was to Italian patriots. Confuting Mazzini’s idea that Italians and African–Americans shared common aspirations, he emptied the term “emancipation” of its original meaning and chose to use it exclusively in reference to the struggle led by “the poor South, the hungry South, which no earthly power [would] recognize yet.”37 He hammered this idea into La Discussione, article after article: the North was “not fighting for the principle of justice or equality,” its “vaunted philanthropy towards Negroes was but a hypocritical war ploy meant to attract European sympathy,” and the “real aim of the war” was “the conquest of the Golden Fleece.” According to him, Lincoln wanted to appropriate “the agricultural opulence of the semi-tropical south” on 34 “Situazione finanziaria e commerciale agli Stati Uniti,” Commercio Italiano, (July 15, 1865): 1. 35 “Stati Uniti,” Il Commercio Italiano, (August 12, 1865): 1. 36 Joseph Mazzini, His Life, Writings, and Political Principles (New York: Hurd and

Houghton, 1872), xvi. On the links between Risorgimento patriots and abolitionists, see Paola Gemme, Domesticating Foreign Struggles: The Italian Risorgimento and Antebellum American Identity (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2005). 37 “Guerra d’America,” La Discussione, (July 14, 1863): 1.

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which the United States had built its economic power. Following Hotze’s instructions as to how to refer to the delicate question of slavery in the Italian press, Manetta claimed it was “unfair” to despise the South because of its slave-based system, since the latter was not a choice but “a legacy from England.” He explained that southern political leaders were “too nobly educated and too much inspired by generous sentiments” not to “know that this English heritage had to be replaced by other institutions.” Yet they felt they were “the only ones to have the right to fix their social infirmities.”38 All they needed was time and peace. Manetta’s propaganda tactic was simple. He wanted to persuade Italians that southern states were cruelly persecuted by the North because they demanded the same thing as Risorgimento heroes: their own sovereignty. He held that Secession was “clearly a constitutional right,” which was abusively denied to the South although it was the will of its people.39 The Declaration of Independence specified that a legitimate government should derive its powers from the consent of the governed, and guaranty life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Manetta who had stood up for those values when opposing Austria, now questioned the behavior of the Union on the basis of those very principles. “It has never happened that the strong invade the weak to impose freedom on them,” he denounced ironically. Whoever sympathized with the “federal violence” or approved “the armed invasion of a free people” might justify them in the name of “law, agreements, greatness, commerce, or profit,” Manetta reckoned, but not “in the name of liberty.”40 His line of thought was not original and was partly suggested by his London Confederate contacts, but his art consisted in equating southerners’ separatist spirit with Italians’ quest for liberty, as if Secession and the Risorgimento were sister movements, and as if—for that reason—his compatriots should have a natural inclination for the South. From America, Manetta had come back with more than a southern approach to Secession. His luggage was filled with cottonseeds and his head with ambitions. In fact, he saw in the Civil War and the subsequent cotton crisis that struck Europe in the 1860s an opportunity to 38 “Le due Repubbliche americane,” La Discussione, (June 3, 1863): 1. (most of the articles written by Manetta were unsigned). 39 “La quistione (sic) costituzionale agli Stati Uniti I,” La Discussione, (August 6, 1863): 1. 40 “La quistione (sic) costituzionale agli Stati Uniti II,” La Discussione, (August 10, 1863): 1.

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use the skills he had acquired in the Virginian fields. He thus campaigned to develop the cultivation of cotton in the Kingdom of Italy, to make the newly born nation economically free from foreign ties. “From the first moment I set foot on a cotton plantation, I thought of Italy,” explained Manetta in the volume he published on the art of cotton-growing in 1862.41 When he was in the South, the local climate reminded him of his homeland where he hoped he would return one day, to spur a new lucrative industry. His agricultural project was based on his analysis of the various phases of crop development, on the importation of innovative American techniques (such as the cotton gin), and on the implementation of the most profitable production strategies he had observed in the South. His Guide for the cultivation of cotton in Italy according to the American method was released at a key moment, when other politicians recommended to revive in the Peninsula and in Sicily a crop which had been introduced there centuries before.42 The ministry of agriculture ordered 500 copies of the book and sent them to all the southern provinces including Naples, Sardinia, and Sicily to inspire local proprietors. Some 3,000 more copies were distributed to associations and private producers in the whole territory. Moreover, Manetta held numerous conferences to entice potential planters and to sell them specimens of the “Sea Island” strain, the best cotton variety he had imported from the Confederation.43 His motivation was twofold. First, he aspired to become an intermediary between the kingdom and America, should the commerce of cotton flourish in Italy. Then, he regretted that his past as an exile had prevented him from “fighting all the battles for independence” and he thus looked on his gift of kernels and technological knowledge as a way to contribute “to the construction of the solid edifice of national prosperity.”44 Quite unsettling, however, was the offhanded dismissal of slave work in his survey of “the American method.” In his public lectures, Manetta admitted that American cotton was cultivated “with the sweat of 41 Manetta, Guida. 42 See, for example: Giuseppe Devincenzi, Della coltivazione del cotone in Italia

(London: W. Trounce, 1862). 43 Letter from Filippo Manetta to M. Manna, Minister of Agriculture, March 9, 1863, Archivi degli Organi Di Governo E Amministrativi Dello Stato, Ministero dell’Agricoltura industria e commercio, busta 119, Fasc 0391, “Scritti del professore Filippo Manetta sulla coltivazione del cotone in Italia, 1862,” Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Rome. 44 Manetta, Guida, 8.

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almost three million slaves” who were “Negroes imported from Africa” “for the exclusive service of the white race.” Nonetheless, he immediately waved away the ethical implications of such a practice, refusing “to delve into considerations about how usurping the white race’s behavior might be” and preferring “to get into concrete facts.”His demonstration suggested that slaves were not the most determinant criterion in American achievements, and that Italians could succeed without unfree labor because “one of [their] robust peasants could do the work of two Negroes.”45 In this manner, while implicitly inferring the racial inferiority of Africans, he avoided addressing directly a question that could have generated a violent opposition in the audience and weakened his exposé on the benefits of plantations. He focused his argumentation on the fact that cotton production would boost Italian industry, and provide jobs to underpaid peasants and textile workers. To him, sharing his knowledge was as an act of patriotism, which he vested with a symbolic meaning by donating Italy’s national hero, Giuseppe Garibaldi, “a pack of cottonseeds, [he] had brought back from America, with ad hoc instructions.”46 Having also disavowed his antimonarchic convictions upon returning to his homeland, Manetta now exhorted his compatriots to help the “liberal government” to consolidate the economy and enrich the kingdom by exploiting local resources. There stood the future of his beloved land, and there he firmly believed his experience as an exile could make a difference, at last. During the decade he spent in the United States, Manetta deeply evolved in his appreciation of the concepts of Italianness and Americanness. The ideal Italy he was fighting for in his youth was associated in his mind with the words “unity,” “liberty,” “democracy,” and “emancipation,” all being terms that the American intellectual elite equally applied to the United States, notwithstanding the obvious limitations in their implementation in the country’s daily life. When Manetta arrived in New York, he looked up to the United States as a model and as the embodiment of his Republican dream. Six years later, his encounter with the southern culture and his fraternization with planters forever transformed

45 Filippo Manetta, Lettura sulla coltivazione del cotone in Italia e sui vantaggi che ne possono derivare alla nostra penisola (Busto Arsizio: Tipografia Sociale, 1862), 1, 6. 46 Filippo Manetta, “Coltivazione del cotone in Italia,” Espero, (April 4, 1862): 1.

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his apprehension of that vocabulary. His devotion to a contentious interpretation of the “sacred will of the people,” made him merge “secession,” “liberty,” and “democracy” in the same semantical field. The federal state he had once worshiped for its capacity to respect the sovereignty of its population, to guaranty the protection of the Republic, and to provide equal rights for its citizens, he now rejected as a ruthless oppressor, on a par with the Austrian emperor. As to the term “emancipation,” he disconnected it entirely from the fate of African slaves. In a twisted volte-face, he did not apply it to the whole of humanity any longer, but to the sole southern states that wanted their own liberty to maintain slavery. Ironically, he now accused of despotism the American Republic he had once revered, and now bowed to the “gentleman king” and the monarchy he had once loathed.47 The only vocabulary he kept unchanged was that of technology. Economic progress was still American in his mind, and he felt it was his duty to import it and make it Italian, as an offering on the altar of his country’s independence.

47 Filippo Manetta, “Seconda lettera sulla coltivazione del cotone in Italia,” Espero, (April 18, 1862): 3.

The Writing and Pidgin of Occasional Miners Native to Emilia Working in Pennsylvania and Illinois (1898–1914) Marco Fincardi

From the Apennines to the Appalachians I was inspired to write this reflection on the language of Po Valley migrants in the United States by my interview with Umberto Verzellesi, born on October 23, 1903, at Bridgeville, Pennsylvania, in the Appalachians, to parents from Gualtieri, who lived mainly “a Primrose, dove mio padre aveva lo storo,” [in Primrose, where my father had the storo]—in his mangled Italian “storo” meant a “store” or “un emporio dove c’era di tutto da vendere: là era così.” [an emporium where there was everything to sell: there it was]. Umberto told me: L’italiano, noi figli non lo sapevamo, l’abbiamo dovuto imparare quando siamo ritornati in Italia, nel 1920. In casa parlavamo il dialetto di Gualtieri, e fuori l’inglese. Fino a 17 anni io con l’altra gente parlavo ancora in inglese, dell’Italia sapevo solo il dialetto dei miei. [We did not know Italian, we children had to learn it when we returned to Italy in 1920. At home

M. Fincardi (B) Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Venice, Italy e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. Mourlane et al. (eds.), Italianness and Migration from the Risorgimento to the 1960s, Palgrave Studies in Migration History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88964-7_13

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we spoke Gualtieri’s dialect, and outside English. Up to 17 years, I spoke to the other people in English, I knew only the dialect of my parents for Italian].1

Before opening the store, his father had worked as a miner, like many of the other Italians who emigrated to Pennsylvania from Gualtieri and from its neighboring towns and villages. I was aware that the contemporary migrant support network drew mainly on links between families and people from the same village or local area, and only secondarily—and not necessarily always—on connections between compatriots or workmates, and my conversation with Umberto led me to focus on the differentiated languages that these migrants would have been required to master to some extent, building up a linguistic baggage comprising complex amalgamations and occasionally confused overlappings of different parlances to be used in the different contexts in which they found themselves. The most valuable text documenting the language skills of these Emilian workers is a booklet that was published to denounce one of America’s worst work disasters caused by an irresponsible mining company which had failed to ensure safe working conditions in its mine in Cherry, not far from Chicago. It was written by Antenore Quartaroli, a 23-yearold migrant miner from Boretto, a village near Gualtieri.2 In his written condemnation of social ills, the young Antenore suggests that the mining disaster was caused by the ruthless speculation of the mining company and by the “colpa di qualche cuore di tigre” [guilt of some tiger heart]3 but does not go any further in his social criticism. His booklet, published by the Spring Valley Gazette, a newspaper sensitive to union-related issues raised by the miners, makes no reference to a miners’ union although it does not seem likely that there would not have been any union organizations around 1909 in a coal town not far from Chicago, like Cherry. He describes how on the day of the disaster the miners were sent down into the mine even though the electrical lighting system in the shafts had

1 Umberto Verzellesi, in discussion with the author, December 24, 1993, in Gualtieri. 2 On the places of origin of these migrants, see Marco Fincardi, La terra disincantata.

Trasformazioni dell’ambiente rurale e secolarizzazione nella bassa padana (Milan: Unicopli, 2001). 3 Grande Disastro della Mina di Cherry, Ills. 13 Novembre, 1909. Scritto da Quartaroli Antenore Uno dei Superstiti, Otto Giorni Sepolto vivo nella Mina, (n.p. Cherry: Spring Valley Gazette, Ill. USA, 1910), 1.

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failed. Although the fire caused by the kerosene torches took a while to spread, hours went by before the miners in the galleries were warned. In the early twentieth century, the rules on safety at work were rarely adequately enforced and matters did not improve when the workers in question were recent European immigrants rather than Americans or permanent residents. Although the families of the 259 miners who lost their lives in the disaster struggled to get compensation, a year later the Illinois legislature passed laws on safety in mines. The author begins by explaining that he has no literary pretensions, merely a moral intent: “Il lettore scuserà il compositore di questo libro se trova qualche errore perché io sono che un semplice operaio e non un romanziere però assicuro che ho scritto solo la verità.”4 He may have been advised to include this justifying comment by someone who had read his handwritten account, deliberately leaving the grammatical errors so as to maintain its authentic feel. The verse included at the end of his account is full of mistakes and the printer merely worsened matters: “Con questo lasio / Il mio scritto / Scuserete degli cuori [for ‘errori’ or mistakes] / Quartaroli Antenore e il mio nome [sic].” Antenore realizes that his written Italian is rather poor and that his English was not much better. In fact, when addressing a supervisor, possibly the only local in the group, he admits that he has only a shaky grasp of the language, a “rotto inglese” (literally, “broken English”).5 His text is an evident mixture of written and spoken language that has long been of interest to historians studying migratory phenomena.6 This kind of hybridization combines Italian, his original dialect, and the various foreign languages to which he was exposed on overlapping migratory routes. The author, who came from the Po Valley, spoke a dialect that was quite unlike the dialects spoken by the majority of his workmates from the same region—mountain folk from the High Modena Apennines (Frignano) and Bolognese from the Upper Valley of the Reno. It was easier for these Emilian migrant workers to understand each other by speaking a mixture of Italian and professional anglicisms than by using their respective dialects.

4 Grande Disastro, 7. 5 Grande Disastro, 4. 6 Emilio Franzina, Merica! Merica! Emigrazione e colonizzazione nelle lettere dei

contadini veneti e friulani in America latina 1876–1902 (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1979).

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The Multiethnic Mine On November 13, 1909, Quartaroli and many of his companions remained trapped for eight days with practically no means of survival in the galleries that were gradually filling up with a mixture of poisonous gases and at risk of imminent collapse. My interest in Quartaroli’s writing does not concern the disaster but involves an analysis of the peculiarities of the vocabulary used to describe the mining environment. His Italian is also inaccurate because he either omits the accents or places them in words that do not require them. His use of language is particularly interesting because the mining terminology drew upon Italianized Anglo-Saxon terms that could easily be understood by Italians from other regions or even by immigrants of other nationalities. Despite his frequent use of distinctly dialectal expressions, Quartaroli wishes to use a language that will be understood by other Italian immigrants to the United States. He therefore uses English for a number of common mining terms, adapting the words by adding a final vowel according to the system used by Emilian children to translate the Celtic–Latin expressions used by their families and communities when they started going to school. This became a habitual linguistic practice among his Italian colleagues when they lived in francophone or anglophone environments. Quartaroli, for example, often writes “timbro” when describing the wooden props used to support the galleries or wooden beams used in construction, and “rocco” to refer to rock; both are clearly adaptations of timber and rock. He basically creates neologisms, caring little that these words already existed in Italian with completely different meanings. Similarly, from the title onwards, he refers to the mine as “mina” even though mina has a different meaning in Italian, linked to mining activities and military uses. Nor does he always describe the miners using the correct Italian term, on one occasion describing them as “i mini compagni più forti di mè.”7 He uses several other words transposed from English with a different meaning in Italian. He refers, for example, to both the point where galleries meet and the coal face where the miners cut the coal from the seam as “piazza,” from place! On one occasion he reveals its links to workplace, writing “passare tutte le piazze di lavoro.”8

7 Grande Disastro, 13. 8 Grande Disastro, 7.

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He refers to the descending cage as “Cag per discendere” as well as “elevatore.”9 The entrances are “entra.” It is not clear where he gets the term “cambio,” which he uses to describe the sites where the tubs were loaded and unloaded, and where the teams wait to receive supplies. In any case, a simplified language was not only required for the workers of varying nationalities but would also have been required for the organization of work in the mines because of what has been described as “the changing ethnic composition of the American working population.”10 Describing the miners’ personal equipment, he uses the expression “lampa,” from the English “lamp,” referring both to lanterns and the lights worn in their caps, whether carbide or oil-wick lamps. His term “picco” may come from the English “pickax” or “pick”; in this case, there were similarities between the dialect word and the English term, because in Emilia this was a tool used by bricklayers and known as pikk or pékk. Quartaroli often mentions the “baracchino” that every miner took down into the pit, sometimes hanging on their arms, using it to hold drinking water; it also had a lid that could be used in an emergency to collect dirty water so as not to die of thirst. This object was a mess kit, a lightweight metal tin with a lid that could be used as a dish, plate, and cup, that was widely used in the army during the nineteenth century for soldiers’ rations. By the twentieth century, it was commonly used by workers to consume frugal meals during breaks between shifts, in the inhospitable environment of the mines where laborers never left the galleries to eat during their breaks and had to live alongside mules and rats. At the beginning of the twentieth century, it was called gamèla in Emilian dialect, or, as here, barachìn da suldâ (literally, soldier’s mess tin).11 Mess tins were first used in Italy by the soldiers of the Kingdom of Sardinia and were known by the Piedmontese dialect term barachìn later adopted by workers in Turin and becoming diffused in the dialects of the Po Plain. Quartaroli calls the lunch pails used by the laborers “bocchetta,”

9 Grande Disastro, 4, 30. 10 Herbert G. Gutman, “Work, Culture, and Society in Industrializing America, 1815–

1919,” The American Historical Review, Vol. 78, No. 3 (June, 1973): 531–88 Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1847655 (Herbert G. Gutman, Lavoro, cultura e società in America nel secolo dell’industrializzazione 1815–1919 [Bari: De Donato, 1979], 29). 11 Angelo Guastalla, Dal dialetto guastallese alla lingua nazionale (Guastalla: Torelli, 1929), 32, 106.

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from bucket. Referring to the action of changing the direction of the fan ventilating the galleries, he writes “hanno cambiato revoluzione al ventilatoio,”12 virtually copying a specific mechanical term used in English (“revolution”) while slightly distorting the name “ventilator,” a device that he would never have encountered in Italy and whose Italian name would have been unknown to him. Nevertheless, when he transcribes the message left by a French companion killed by asphyxiation, he writes the word “ventilatore”13 correctly, because it resembles the original French word ventilateur. The result is a slightly confused hybridization of the languages that these miners had learned while working in different places around the world; hardly surprising among immigrant workers. Although he uses the correct English term when first mentioning the greatest danger threatening them—“Black Damp,”14 a mixture of gases making the air impossible to breathe—he follows it with an incorrect translation in brackets (“aria ossigenata”), going on to use this term in the rest of the book.

Gestures and Words of a Composite Worker Group This text gives us a glimpse of the communication and behavioral codes adopted by workers who required a pragmatic linguistic base facilitating the activities of inhomogeneous ethnic groups within industrial organizations. Quartaroli frequently draws upon Anglo-Saxon terms when describing situations encountered by the group of miners. When recalling how his team remained trapped in the smoke-filled galleries, he uses the word “imprigionamento,” from “imprisonment.” Describing the group, he writes “eravamo agli estremi” and writing of himself, “ero agli estremi,”15 to indicate the extreme situation. And when he feels dizzy just before fainting, he uses anomalous Italian expressions comparing this sensation to an electric shock: “mi parve che qualche d’uno mi avesse dato un colpo di elettricità.”16 Describing the moment when they seem to have found a way to safety he says “noi tutti gioiosi”—apparently transposing 12 Grande Disastro, 4. 13 Grande Disastro, 32. 14 Grande Disastro, 5. 15 Grande Disastro, 6, 16. 16 Grande Disastro, 6.

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“all glad”; another expression intended to transmit similar emotions was “si [ci] venne un raggio di contentezza,”17 which apparently expresses the concept of “beaming” in Italian. He describes how they gather together to work out a strategy to save themselves, using the words “ammucchiati tutti in un cerchio”18 from “to crowd around.” When referring to the foreman or ganger in charge of the team, he uses the expression “caporale,” which was a military term used in the peonage system or in factories. Elsewhere, there are echoes of the disciplined hierarchical linguistic register occasionally used in the American workplace, where a person does not simply reply no, but “rispondeva negativamente,” from answer in the negative or reply in the negative; when informing someone he writes “lo notificai di questo” from to notify.19 When he finally returns to the light of day, he is helped by numerous people who are careful not to give him nutritious foods after his eight-day fast. Adopting an almost joking tone with regard to American customs, he describes how someone brings him a coffeepot of unsweetened coffee, which he refers to as “un secchio di caffè.”20 When reflecting on the tragedy, he merely refers to his fears that he will never see his wife and son again. He expresses no nostalgia for Boretto, maybe because such sentiments are not pertinent to the civic aims of his booklet, nor does he mention any memories of his past in Italy or as a worker elsewhere in America or in some “Little Italy.” Reading between the lines, we get a picture of the growth of a great industrial nation yet there is no reference to competitiveness between workers from the European continent seeking to assert their national cultures. He does not emphasize or even touch upon expressions of patriotism by Italian workers or even by workers of other nationalities, because this is not relevant to his text. Religious language and human compassion for people who are suffering seem to be the only exceptions to his strictly professional register. Quartaroli takes pride in appearing as a well-integrated Italian–American worker, a new citizen of this country; a failure to do so might make his writing seem less convincing to the American public

17 Grande Disastro, 3, 5. 18 Grande Disastro, 5, 11. 19 Grande Disastro, 17. 20 Grande Disastro, 31.

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that he is addressing. His account leaves no room for imprecations or criticisms of American society. Quartaroli provides the spatial and temporal references concerning the mine according to the precise approach of the Anglo-Saxon system. He generally measures distances in meters but then pities his group trapped “nel profondo degli abissi a 315 piedi sotto terra.”21 He quantifies the little kerosene remaining for their lamps as just one gallon.22 He always mentions whether the hour of the day is antemeridian or postmeridian, according to the Anglo-Saxon custom. And when they need to know the time, they ask the only man with an “orologio che camminava,”23 which he translates as watch to run. Describing how the trapped men desperately wandered around in circles, he often mentions the depth levels and the numerical coordinates linked to the points of the compass serving as references in the labyrinth of mine shafts and galleries that were of vital importance to the miners underground and that would have been indicated on signs marking each intersection or turn in the galleries. Yet he misspells some of the cardinal directions, writing “suot” or “sut” or even “sout” instead of south and “vest” for west. Moreover, Quartaroli never uses the letter “w,” showing that he was entirely schooled in Italy and not in the United States. He misspells the names of a Scottish and an English workmate, writing “Valter” and “Villiam,” according to a consolidated practice in Emilia (still in use today) where newborns were increasingly christened with foreign names from the late nineteenth century onwards.24 On a couple of occasions, he refers to his friend Francesco Zanarini as “Franck”; it is unclear whether this “k” was already present in the manuscript or only in the printed version instead of the more common Italian spelling “Franco” that may have been misinterpreted by the American printer. He also refers to an English workmate as “Frenck.” He calls some workmates by Italian names, referring to a Scot as “Giorgio” and to a Frenchman as “Paolo,” while referring to two other Frenchmen by the surname “Howard,” probably derived from “Huard” and which they themselves may have adapted in order to get American

21 Grande Disastro, 8. 22 Grande Disastro, 4. 23 Grande Disastro, 14, 17. 24 See Stefano Pivato, Il nome e la storia. Onomastica e religioni politiche nell’Italia

contemporanea (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1999).

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citizenship or which may have been anglicized by Quartaroli himself. Quartaroli does, however, reveal some basic knowledge of French: sometimes he uses “sortire” instead of the appropriate Italian verb uscire, a Frenchism that does not exist in his dialect or in English. It seems likely that he—or even his father—had previously emigrated to francophone areas such as Switzerland, France, Belgium, or Quebec. In Quartaroli’s writing, we can also find traces of dialects of the Po Valley. In both the Emilian dialect and regional Italian, the sounds “s” and “sc” are pronounced in the same way and Quartaroli repeatedly writes “usita” instead of uscita (exit), “fasiare” instead of fasciare (to wrap), “sintille” instead of scintille (sparks). Other dialectal influences emerge when he writes, “la lampa sempre accesa l’aveva messa attacco a un timbro,”25 instead of attaccata a (attached to) or “Infreschiamo”26 instead of rinfreschiamo (we cool down). He repeatedly writes “l’aria era così pesa” instead of pesante (heavy) or “l’aria era più forte del solito” or even “l’aria era un po’ meglio.”27 Describing the fainting spell of a companion from Modena, he transposes the dialect expression “gli era venuto male.”28 When describing his own recovery from poisonous gas, he writes “rammucchiai tutte le mie forze,”29 Italianizing the dialect word mucier to express the Italian raccogliere (to gather [my strength]); however, later, when describing a similar situation he writes “ramacchiai [sic] tutte le mie forze,”30 a clear Frenchism from ramasser. He also writes “ora di desinare,”31 which is the dialect expression for lunchtime; however, in English, the expression is “dinner” and in French, the expression is also similar. Quartaroli occasionally uses expressions that may seem rather formal or even obsolete in 1910, given that popular semi-dialect writings may contain expressions of literary origins,32 deriving from songs or theater in particular. However, most of his expressions are directly transposed from contemporary dialect when they are not anglicisms or 25 Grande Disastro, 2. 26 Grande Disastro, 31–32. 27 Grande Disastro, 3. 28 Grande Disastro, 28. 29 Grande Disastro, 6. 30 Grande Disastro, 19. 31 Grande Disastro, 1,7. 32 Franzina, Merica! Merica!, 38.

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Frenchisms. He compensated for his inadequate Italian language skills by integrating and mixing his Italian with the languages acquired during repeated migrations. When he puts speeches in the mouths of workers with the aim of stimulating a unified reaction in their multiethnic group, words like fratelli (brothers) or compagni (companions) are emphasized so as to underline their shared fate. In that piece of America trapped in a mine, the speeches written by Quartaroli or attributed to one of his companions seem to assume tones of religious rituality. If he were in a village in Emilia, this type of emphasis would not have been necessary to arouse a shared emotion in a team of day laborers: at most, they would have referred to the others as ragazzi in order to build a team spirit. The group leader, an English Presbyterian, sometimes addressed the others using religious incitements, calling them compagni or occasionally fratelli and receiving very respectful responses from them, as on the Sunday when “incomincio [incominciò] una preghiera in Americano che tutti noi l’accompagnammo.”33 The author attaches great importance to describing the existence of a kind of evangelical brotherhood with his companions. In fact, he deliberately evokes this evangelical work ethic in order to show that he is entirely in agreement with the American culture, demanding equal compensation for the families of the victims and safety for all miners. The Protestant revivalism running through popular cultures in North America34 was not that distant from the tendencies and sensibilities present in the Po Valley day laborers and farmworkers movements.35 What emerges strongly from Quartaroli’s account of the desperate situation of the miners who survived the disaster is the strong sense of solidarity that existed in a group of men where only one or two were born in the United States and all the rest were foreign: Italian, French, English, Slavs, Germans (referred to as “germani” by the author who again transposes the English) as well as a Scot and an Austrian. His compassionate account of an elderly asthmatic miner whom he describes

33 Grande Disastro, 12. 34 See Herbert G. Gutman, Lavoro,cultura e società in America (Bari, De Donato,

1979), 89–120. 35 See Marco Fincardi, “De la crise du conformisme religieux au XIXe siècle. Les conversions au protestantisme dans une zone de la plaine du Pô,” Archives de sciences sociales des religions 102 (1998): 5–27.

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as “slavis”36 is an ambiguous deformation of the English slavic while slavish is the negative American expression attributing a servile character to those populations according to the common European use. However, no ethnic prejudices emerge from Quartaroli’s account. He numbers some of the Modenese mountain folk among his close friends but is also proud to consider the Scotsman as “un mio amico”; he has marked feelings of empathy toward the companions struggling the most: he helps the French and the Slavs while the Anglo-Saxons come to his help on a couple of occasions when he is about to collapse from gas intoxication. The improvised collective that comes together as a close-knit team in adversity exemplifies the image of a melting pot, which always ends up by revealing a typically working-class community spirit. No contrasting groups emerge in the mine. The mixture of established or recent immigrants who all come from different countries but are joined by shared interests reduces ethnic competition to a minimum. The only person who seems out of place among these Europeans who have come to Pennsylvania in search of their fortune is George Eddy, the American “caporale di notte” (night pit boss). Quartaroli’s booklet leaves no room for nationalist claims that would divide the group: these miners of various nationalities are presented like a choir that is tragic yet supportive, a quality that will ensure their survival.

36 Grande Disastro, 15.

From the Local Identity of Basilicata Nel Mondo to the National Community of Italiani Pel Mondo: Italian Press and Emigration (1924–1930) Gaetano Morese

The Birth of a Periodical in Italian in the United States Factors which differentiate permanent Italian emigration from temporary emigration include stable employment or business activity, while difficult integrations favored the formation of regional communities that constituted associations, cultivated sociability, traditions, rites, culture, and also broadcast the news in Italian. Subversive, Socialist, or vindictive Italian press was promoted by political and trade union groups, while the patriotic and integrational press was financed by advertising and successful emigrants. World War I produced a dual patriotism among Italians who emigrated overseas that identified them as Italian–Americans, while US

G. Morese (B) Associazione per la Storia Sociale del Mezzogiorno e dell’Area Mediterranea (ASSMAM), Potenza, Italy e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. Mourlane et al. (eds.), Italianness and Migration from the Risorgimento to the 1960s, Palgrave Studies in Migration History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88964-7_14

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postwar policies limited flows, favoring the putting down of roots and integration with positive economic and social effects. The second generation of Italian–Americans built an identity, oscillating between the local dimension of Italianness and complete integration, whose peasant roots often conditioned Italian ethnicity between external representation and internal perception.1 Moreover, Italian– Americans deprived of foreign citizenship were considered difficult to integrate and were excluded from political and civil spheres. In contrast, in communities, their identity was structured between resistance, bourgeois integrative models, and regional components.2 Italian-language press tended to be in the vernacular bringing communities together, while for Fascism, it was a fundamental penetration tool in emigrant communities and of propaganda in the world. Fascism, however, had guaranteed rights to emigrants, defended them from discrimination, valued Italianness in the world, and so it organized a program to manipulate and condition by means of its adherents, the emigrant press, and their communities.3 As with all Italian communities abroad, that of poor Basilicata, a southern Italian region, depopulated by transoceanic emigration, was quantitatively and qualitatively selected based on literacy and skill by the restrictive US policies of the early twentieth century. The Lucanian politician, Francesco Saverio Nitti, positively regarded emigration for production, social balance, and capitalization and defined it as the main “southern industry” due to the population choosing between emigration

1 Storia dell’emigrazione italiana, eds Piero Bevilacqua, Andreina De Clementi and Emilio Franzina (Roma: Donzelli, 2002), vol. II; Roberto Divine, American immigration policy 1924–1952 (New Haven: Yale University press, 1957); David Cook-Martin, The scramble for citizens: Dual nationality and State competition for immigrants (Stanford: University Press, 2013). 2 Emilio Fanzina, “Identità regionale, identità nazionale ed emigrazione all’estero,” in L’identità italiana: emigrazione, immigrazione, conflitti etnici, eds Enzo Bartocci and Vittorio Cotesta (Roma: Edizioni Lavoro, 1999), 29–46; Id., Una patria espatriata. Lealtà nazionale e caratteri regionali nell’immaginazione italiana all’estero (secoli XIX e XX) (Viterbo: Sette Città, 2006); Donna R. Gabaccia, Italy’s many diasporas. Elites, exiles and workers of the world (Seattle: University Press, 1999). 3 Grazia Dore, “L’avvento del fascismo attraverso la stampa italiana negli Stati Uniti,” in La democrazia italiana e l’emigrazione in America, (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1964), 311–78.

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or brigandage.4 During World War I, Nitti visited the United States in search of capital to fund the Italian recovery. He met financiers, businessmen, and politicians, including many Italian–Americans whose success demonstrated the positive of emigration. In 1924, the assassination of Matteotti favored the formation of an anti-Fascist movement and in the same year in Naples, the Italianlanguage periodical Basilicata nel mondo was launched by Giovanni Riviello, a Lucanian, and Nitti’s supporter, exiled after inciting Fascist violence.5 The periodical, distributed in Italy and in the organized community network of Lucanian emigrants, adopted an analytical approach, especially toward the economic, social, and demographic articles published from 1924 to 1925, reflecting Nitti’s meridionalism which was a combination of the liberal and radical ruling classes. In the early years, the periodical devoted much attention to Nitti, his government, and his writings on Europe and peace, but the political rise of Francesco D’Alessio transformed it into a more nationalist mouthpiece, characterized by a liberal meridionalism close to Fascism but a Fascism that did not adhere to the classic model. The periodical’s contributors initially were not all Fascists, but rather Conservative and Nationalist who accepted Nitti’s proposals to set up various local roles, avoid class conflicts, encourage peace and progress. D’Alessio, engaged in organizing the party with the Lucanian bourgeoisie, had accepted Nitti’s idea on the centrality of financial relations between the United States and Basilicata, while using Nationalism and patriotic rhetoric for propaganda. With the achievement in Basilicata of Catalani’s Fascist family in 1927, Basilicata nel mondo, continued Nitti’s basic approach, and accentuated the Nationalist and Fascist ideology, on local and national regime exponents and using transoceanic networks to spread and legitimize Fascism abroad (Fig. 1).

4 Francesco Saverio Nitti, Scritti sulla questione meridionale, (Bari: Laterza, 1968), I, 364. 5 Michele Strazza, “Una rivista per gli emigrati negli anni Venti: La Basilicata nel mondo,” International journal of migration studies. Studi Emigrazione 180 (2010): 93244.

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Fig. 1 La Basilicata nel mondo, n. 2, 1924 (Source Biblioteca Nazionale, Potenza)

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Regionalism and Politics An ambitious illustrated periodical, Basilicata nel mondo dedicated articles to successful Lucanian emigrants and also published essays on their associations abroad, their lifestyle, history, artistic and monumental heritage, and the rituals and traditions of Basilicata. By consolidating identity via the sharing of religious roots, Basilicata nel mondo presented a different image of Basilicata, emancipated from its supposed inferior culture and its ambiguous anthropological representation as retarded society built by parliamentary inquiries. Through associations with Lucanians abroad, social and economic relationships between the mother country and emigrant communities were consolidated. Such relationships were beneficial for Italy in terms of the capital injected and the sharing of knowledge and resources by the host country with the mother country. The periodical exalted Lucanian qualities; the glorious past and shining destiny of its people. It made civil, economic, and social demands to redeem proud Basilicata, impoverished by deforestation and malaria, abandoned by Italian governments, whose wealth was the working people, now scattered throughout the world, reviving and enriching other lands. A new Lucanian identity was founded based on war, a unified nation, a shared history and local culture, promoted by the periodical that, without political influences or electoral programs, confronted the problems of both Basilicata and Lucania. Successful Lucanian emigration was the fruit of its people’s intelligence, tenacity, perseverance, and thriftiness, all of which had proved unproductive in their mother country, contradicting the supposed ethnic inferiority of a patient and silent land, whose voice was finally strong and virile via the new periodical. Director Riviello, also attacked by Fascists, represented Italian emigration in the form of a pyramid with scientists, professionals, artists, writers, and educators at the top, followed by industrialists, bankers, traders, farmers, and laborers, all of whom were capable of success because of Italian culture and genius. Their success opposed the Italian mafia and challenged the “shoeshine” stereotypes liberating Basilicata from poverty. War had strengthened national sentiment, while in contrast, Lucanian emigrants were associated with Jews for their tendency to nomadism, change, and their pioneering spirit. In 1927, Basilicata nel mondo defended Fascism and blamed the Italian oppressor for the political repression and confinement in Basilicata, which it upheld as a region disadvantaged and which, as a result, was underdeveloped and poor.

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Many Lucanian emigrants from New York defended Italianness and Fascism, and contributed to its programs, favoring identification between the periodical and the Fascist regime. In this sense, in 1927 the establishment in New York of the Italian Culture House at Columbia University was promoted and supported by Italian–American businessmen of Lucanian origin, Antonio Campagna and the Paterno’s brothers: Giuseppe, Michele, and Canio. The free voice of the periodical allowed it, however, to covertly develop Fascism presenting St Francis of Paola as an angry and violent saint with a stick in his hand, reminiscent of the regime’s squadristi (armed squads) and camicie nere (black shirts) images, making him an “honorary fascist.”6 The periodical’s ability to engage and mobilize rich Italian–Americans contrasted with Fascist hegemony, which perceived in the historical, social, and anthropological Basilicata’s awareness, an autonomy and alternative cultural openness. The publication, which aimed to overcome divisions by favoring harmony, was neither openly Fascist or anti-Fascist, but it brought a section of the moderate liberal classes closer to Nitti. The periodical was a bridge between two worlds with common roots. It was the bearer of Lucanian air; its smells, sensations, idiosyncrasies, and its daily conversations. Basilicata nel mondo was like a great family journal. It sold 10,000 copies each month, and contributed to the collective history of a region that had itself contributed considerable human resources to the rest of the world.7 The Fascist national and patriotic projects of raising Italian emigrants’ awareness to strengthen ties with Italy and spread the Fascist culture and spirit abroad, exploited existing Italian–American bourgeoisie networks. Such networks included those Lucanian associations identified in the 6 Basilicata nel mondo, 1, no. 3–4: 182; no. 7 (1924): 345–49; 2, no. 1 (1925): 3–7, 46; no. 2: 112–19; no. 3: 196–98; 3, no. 2 (1926): 90–94, 137–49, 167–68; no. 4: 217–20; no. 6: 367–68; 4, no. 3 (1927): 158; no. 4: 227–81; Mark Choate, Emigrant Nation: The making of Italy abroad (Harvard: University Press, 2008); Daria Frezza Bicocchi, “Propaganda fascista e comunità italiane in USA: la Casa Italiana della Columbia University,” Studi Storici 11–4 (1970): 661–97; Ead. “A proposito di Casa Italiana alla Columbia University e di fascismo,” Studi Storici 12–2 (1971): 396–418; Giuseppe Prezzolini, The case of the Casa Italiana (New York: American Institute of Italian Studies, 1976); Renato Cantore, The castle on the Hudson. Charles Paterno and the American Dream (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2017). 7 Gabriele De Rosa, “Introduzione,” in La Basilicata nel mondo (Matera: BMG, 1983, I): VII–XX; Nino Calice, “Il fascismo e l’emigrazione lucana negli Usa,” Studi storici 23–24 (1982): 881–96.

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periodical who, despite their own sentiments, fell prey to Fascist plots which, nevertheless, continued to respect Basilicata’s autonomy and openness, albeit underground, maintaining an underground autonomy and openness. The periodical was successful in terms of Italian–American consolidation, and in unifying a community. It became an example for the entire national collective abroad, progressing from a regional status to a global one. The notion of emigration for the periodical was closest to Nitti’s financial and business liberalism: an Italian–American bourgeoisie culturally integrated, far from Risorgimento ideologies; successfully exploiting the migratory flows. From such bourgeoisie emerged the first Italian– American politicians who, among other things, contributed to elect the Democrat President F.D. Roosevelt, around whom the regime sought to organize Fascist foreign lobby.8 The war had strengthened local and national cohesion and Fascism was seen as an evolution of Nationalism, an Italian–American elite tool of continued affirmation and community control. Mussolini tried to enhance emigration by replacing the Commissariato generale del’ emigrazione (Emigration Commissariat) with the DGIE in 1927 to protect Italians abroad: those Italians who were no longer designated “emigrated” status, but who were, rather, indistinct between two nationalities.9 After the moderate Nationalists’ adherence to the regime and the controversial activities of foreign Fasci, a different strategy of Fascist propaganda and penetration abroad was determined through a parallel diplomacy in which the press was fundamental.10 Riviello, a political intermediary between Italy and emigrants, a promoter of the sense and sentiment of Italianness, the protagonist of a complex Italian–American network, was contacted by Arnaldo Mussolini, brother of Benito, Il Duce, who had understood the value of the periodical and of its director.

8 Lidio Bertelli, “Cultura di élite e cultura di massa nell’emigrazione italiana negli Stati Uniti,” in Gli italiani negli Stati Uniti (Firenze: Università degli studi di Firenze, 1972), 41–110. 9 Emanuela Primiceri, Il Consiglio Superiore dell’Emigrazione. Dalla Grande Guerra al regime fascista (1915–1927) (Lecce: Pensa Multimedia, 2010). 10 João Fabio Berthona, “Emigrazione e politica estera: La ‘diplomazia sovversiva’ di Mussolini e la questione degli italiani all’estero, 1922–1945,” Altreitalie 23 (2001): 39–62; Stefano Luconi, La “Diplomazia Parallela”- Il regime fascista e la mobilitazione politica degli italoamericani (Milan: F. Angeli, 2000).

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Fascism, Italian Greatness, and Italian–American Identity In 1927, Basilicata nel mondo ceased publication and in January 1928 Italiani pel mondo was launched, founded in Naples, again by Riviello, a magazine “daughter of a passion and an idea,” born from the sacrifice of its elder sister Basilicata nel mondo who had paved the way to speak to all Italians.11 The Fascist paper was managed by Nicola Sansanelli, director of the Neapolitan Mattino, and lawyer, university professor, head of the Fasci di Combattimento in Naples, and supporter of the Fascist transformation from movement to party. General secretary of PNF, member of the Grand Council of Mussolini, parliamentarian, and president of the Naples soccer team, Sansanelli managed the “Fascistization” of the Neapolitan press. Sansanelli was a Lucanian, a freemason, and a monarchist with democratic and liberal tendencies. He was criticized for supporting Nitti, and considered unsuitable to manage conflicts between the national Fascist leadership and local situations, but he oversaw relations with Nationalists and war veterans. He moderately applied racial laws against Jewish lawyers of the Naples court during his political leadership, expelling the first Jewish lawyer in 1942.12 Retaining the Basilicata nel mondo image, the new illustrated periodical spread the soul of the Peninsula to all Italians abroad. It revealed a new national greatness and the virtues of its people. It broadcast news and rekindled memories and recounted the successes of the renewed Italian race declaring that, with dedication, willpower, discipline, and tenacity, Italianness was not only reshaping the mother country, but the entire world. Fascism exploited the periodical to showcase the mother country to those proud Nationalist Italians abroad, mobilizing them as legionaries and ambassadors of Italianness. Italiani pel mondo was successful (5,000 subscribers alone in New York) and was praised by the Parisian publication Le Figaro which, stressing peaceful Italian expansion abroad despite the great number of Italian workers, the quality of the emigration and the influence of the political regime, celebrated the first-class publication which valued the increasing role of Italy in the world.13 The

11 Italiani pel mondo (IPM ) 1. no. 2 (1928): 128. 12 Renzo De Felice, Mussolini e il fascismo, (Milan: Mondadori, 2006, voll. I–III). 13 IPM, 1, no. 1 (1928): 3–4; no. 3: 260.

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journal’s political articles, endorsed by Francesco Paoloni (co-founder with Mussolini of the Popolo d’Italia and director with Sansanelli of the Mattino) discussed “the Roman question,” foreign and colonial Fascist politics, Fascist achievements, as well as showcased the biographies of leading and illustrious Fascists. The new periodical, dedicated to Italians and their emigrated middle class, promoted Italian tourism, Italy’s landscape and its monuments, hotels and housing industries. It advertised various Italian initiatives abroad, and included articles on Italian foreign trade and sport. It extensively promoted Italian poetry, literature, theater, painting, and music, also publicized art exhibitions of Italian emigrants in Neapolitan rooms, dedicated to meetings between returning or traveling emigrants. Among the authors were the eclectic Neapolitan artist, Elisabetta Majo D’Aloisio, printer of Tagore and Sturzo’s portraits; the poet, Mattia Limocelli, future president of the Fine Arts Academy in Naples; Nicola Vernieri, poet, and playwright; the writer, Maria Luisa Fiumi; Fausto Martini, poet and theatrical critic; the actress, Vera Vergani, Matilde Serao, writer and journalist, and Grazia Deledda, Nobel-winning writer for literature in 1926. Other contributors were Mirko Ardemagni, diplomat, press, entertainment, and tourism undersecretary in 1938; the Fascist philosopher Lorenzo Giusso; the Nationalist journalist, Concetto Valente; Pompeo Fracassi, promoter of the voluntary militia for national security among Italian Fascists abroad; Guido Arcamone, a state official for academies and libraries; and Lionello Fiumi, promoter of Italian culture in France. There were numerous female contributors to the artistic, literary, and fashion columns, including Anna Dinella from Basilicata as well as Giuseppe Bronzini, Luigi Nicola Di Giura, correspondent from China, and the literary author, Ferdinando Santoro. Bilingual articles promoted Italian–American cultural and commercial relations, and columns were also dedicated to diplomatic news and the activities of Italian embassies and consulates, including, for example, the Argentine Consul of Naples, Arturo Lagorio, and the first Italian and Vatican diplomats after the treaty of Conciliation of 1929, also known as the Lateran Pacts, together with numerous officials around the world, all representatives of Italianness and Fascism (Fig. 2). Just as Basilicata nel mondo was independent, so was Italiani pel mondo a sui generis periodical, often including contributors opposed to Fascism, such as the Lucanian correspondent, Giuseppe Chiummiento,

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Fig. 2 Italiani pel Mondo, n. 1, 1928 (Source Biblioteca Communale, Varese)

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exiled to Argentina for having attacked Fascism and Mussolini.14 Another writer for the periodical was the Lucanian journalist, Giuseppe Antonio Andriulli, initially close to the regime but who later became his opponent. The Italiani pel mondo’s principal director was the Neapolitan lawyer, Edmondo Cione, a Socialist and a disciple of Croce, and Floriano Del Secolo, a liberal anti-Fascist confined in Basilicata who withdrew from the left anti-Fascist group, considering it too similar to Fascism for its purposes. Another sui generis contributor was Massimo Bontempelli, journalist and writer, founder of the political Fascist Futurist group, suspected of anti-Fascism. He was expelled and exiled and subsequently joined the Communist opposition. One author for the periodical was Mario Puccini, publisher and novelist, whose Roman house in 1942 was an active and frequented Communist hub, for which he was arrested with his sons in 1944, then freed by the Allies. The Roman critic Armando Simonetti, close to Communist and anarchist movements, who was the promoter of the Imaginist movement, a left-trend of Futurism, wrote for Italiani pel mondo with the pseudonym of Dino Terra. Another sui generis contributor was the philosopher, Adriano Tilgher, signatory of the anti-Fascist intellectuals’ manifesto and an opponent of the Fascist regime. In addition to these discordant voices that were broadcast in the periodical, great emphasis was given to Sansanelli’s US trip as president of the Inter-allied Federation of Former Combatants, witness to the Italian renaissance through Mussolini, and ambassador of Italianness. Sansanelli visited a number of cities, met with various associations accompanied by the writer and journalist, Enrico Carlo Sartorio, and was welcomed by the Washington Congress and President Coolidge. He stressed the need to redefine international balance to prevent armed responses and over 1,200 Italians participated at a New York banquet held in his honor. This policy of approaching Italian–Americans was favored by the periodical and highlighted Antonio Campagna’s role in the US commission for voluntary industry arbitration as a promoter of Fascist programs, while other articles incited the Italian–American reaction to negative US protectionist policies. The journal gave prominent roles to a variety of eminent personalities, from Italian–American banker, Amedeo Pietro Giannini, and the Democrat judge, Francis Macaluso, president of the movement of

14 Pantaleone Sergi, “Giuseppe Chiummiento esule in Argentina tra antifascismo e sostegno all’Italia combattente,” Bollettino Storico della Basilicata 28 (2012): 15–40.

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Italian-born voters in the US presidential elections, to Michele Goglia, Philadelphia municipal administrator. In building a common Italian–American identity, Italiani pel mondo dedicated articles to Generoso Pope of Il Progresso Italian-Americano; the Italian historical society; Lucanian futurist artist, Giuseppe Stella; and to Giuseppe Previtali, Fascist League of North America vice president and president of the US Federation of National Association of Combatants. Writing about the Italian Culture House in New York, US interest in Italianness was noted, aroused by Fascism, just as Mussolini’s focus on the mother country and Italy’s emigrants were being recognized.15 Riviello returned to the United States in 1929. Just two years before, he had recognized he needed to introduce a wider audience to Italy’s culture and art while always maintaining independent voice in his publication, devoid of government contributions. He endorsed a prolific amount of propaganda around Italianness in the United States in favor of the Fascist regime and Mussolini, and also gained wide personal consensus for his ability to build relationships. When Sansanelli was elected deputy in 1929 and Riviello died suddenly, Italiani pel mondo suffered a severe blow. The periodical history was marked out by two beginning years of irregular publication, because of lack of funds, and in 1929 Riviello’s death also produced poor organization and leadership, despite all in the last year it had regular publication. Pietro Fedele, Italian minister of education and a liberal Fascist, praised Riviello’s intense love for his Basilicata along with his commitment to raising its profile and regenerating it. Riviello had made his impoverished mother country an example of righteousness, moral energy, and virtue for all Italians. His ambition to empower his region had miraculously not only obtained worldwide recognition for Basilicata but had also elevated it to flagship status.16 Italiani pel mondo finally ceased formal publication in 1930 as a result of its leaders’ disappearance.

15 IPM, 1, no. 1 (1928): 62; no. 3: 256; no. 4: 384, 399; no. 5: 516; no. 6: 645–46, 655–58, 801–11; 2, no. 5 (1929): 397–404; no. 6: 518–20; Philip Cannistraro and Elena Aga Rossi, “La politica etnica e il dilemma dell’antifascismo italiano negli Stati Uniti: il caso di Generoso Pope,” Storia Contemporanea, 17, n. 2 (1986): 217–43. 16 IPM 3, no. 1 (1930): 22.

Manifestations of Italianness

Crisscross Italianities—Circulations, Identifications, and Sociability in Nineteenth-Century Istanbul Marie Bossaert

Galata, Bellini and Mehmet, Orhan Pamuk’s verdict on Costantinopoli 1 : much has been written, and fantasized, about the Italian presence in Istanbul.2 It must be said that the case of Istanbul is particularly interesting: a multi-secular presence of “Italians” (Genoese, Venetians…), commonly named “Levantines,” who gave the capital some of its distinctive features—the Galata tower—profoundly renewed during the nineteenth century by the arrival of thousands of people from the Italian

1 In his autobiography the Turkish novelist states that Edmondo De Amicis’ book on Istanbul, Costantinopoli (1877), is the best description ever of the city: Orhan Pamuk, Istanbul: souvenirs d’une ville (Paris: Gallimard, 2007), 272. 2 “Istanbul” and “Constantinople” will be used indifferently in this article. In the same way, I will use “italianity” and “italianness” interchangeably.

M. Bossaert (B) University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. Mourlane et al. (eds.), Italianness and Migration from the Risorgimento to the 1960s, Palgrave Studies in Migration History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88964-7_15

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peninsula. The latter have often been neglected in the general history of Italian emigration.3 The major part of the works focused on the Italian “community”4 (or “colony”) or on its main figures, artists, or musicians at court (five centuries after Bellini’s portrait, the official painter of Abdülhamid II, Fausto Zonaro, was Italian), private advisors of the sultan, military reformers.5 Additional research has looked at Levantines.6 There was a great temptation to put the one and the others together— national narratives enjoy remote origins, and continuity. But equally great was the difficulty to single them out: not all Levantines were Italians and not all Italians felt such. And when exactly did one turn into a Levantine? Deciding who was Italian and who was not, delivering certificates of Italianity from present time, is extremely delicate. What did feeling Italian, living as an Italian in Istanbul mean? How does one characterize Italianness in the capital? Above all, both approaches—inspired in this by the turn-of-the-century studies, which produced the first descriptions of the Italians in Constantinople and contributed to freeze it7 —tend to postulate the preexistence of a community, when the outlines of the groups

3 Francesco Surdich, “Nel Levante,” in Storia dell’emigrazione italiana: Arrivi, vol. 2, eds. Piero Bevilacqua, Andreina De Clementi and Emilio Franzina (Rome: Donzelli, 2009), 181–191. 4 Attilio De Gasperis, Roberta Ferrazza, ed., Gli Italiani di Istanbul: Figure, comunità e istituzioni dalle riforme alla repubblica, 1839–1923 (Turin: Fondazione Giovanni Agnelli, 2007); Alessandro Pannuti, Les Italiens d’Istanbul au XX e siècle: Entre préservation identitaire et effacement (Istanbul: Isis, 2008); Luca Zuccolo, “Gli italiani all’estero: il caso ottomano,” Diacronie. Studi di Storia Contemporanea 5 (2011), http://www.studistorici. com/2011/01/29/zuccolo_numero_5/. 5 For instance: Erol Makzume, Osman Önde¸s, Fausto Zonaro: Ottoman Court Painter (Istanbul: Yapı Kredi, 2003). 6 Oliver-Jens Schmitt, Les Levantins : Cadres de vie et identités d’un groupe ethnoconfessionnel de l’empire ottoman au “long” 19 e siècle (Istanbul: Isis, 2007), Arus Yumul and Fahri Dikkaya (eds.), Avrupalı mı Levanten mi? (Istanbul: Ba˘glam, 2006). Not all Levantine were of Italian origin. Schmitt defines the group, composed of successive strata, as “a supranational group”, “not defined by nationality, yet by religion, Roman Rite Catholicism” (p. 15). The topic is currently experiencing a renewed interest from historians and amateurs’ part, as evidenced by the Levantine Heritage Foundation’s activities: http://www.levantineheritage.com/. 7 Especially: Angiolo Mori, Gli italiani a Costantinopoli: Monografia coloniale (Modena: Antica Tipografia Soliani, 1906).

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melt away as soon as one takes a closer look and takes into account the point of view of those concerned. My proposal here is to approach the issue of the Italian presence in Istanbul by addressing it in terms of identifications (probably the most difficult to grasp), loyalties, and sociabilities—in other words, to challenge the community approach.8 I do not intend to deny the existence of community structures, but we should take them for what they are: the attempt to organize a group which eluded it. To what extent did the arrival of Italian migrants upset the ways of feeling Italian and gathering between Italians? How did it affect the relationship with Italy? Italianities owed a lot to circulations, old and new—this is the hypothesis—of Italians between the Peninsula and the Ottoman Empire. The aim here is thus to analyze the transformations induced by these arrivals, as discussed in Part I of this article. To do so, my approach consists of Italianizing and Ottomanizing this history. Italianizing, that is to say, putting this presence in perspective with what happened in Italy in order to evaluate the effects of the Italian unification (Risorgimento, new nation-state) on the ways of living as an Italian in the Ottoman capital. This implies considering Italianity as a construction, not a given, and to examine its limits as well (Part II). Ottomanizing is reintroducing a lacking although critical Ottoman dimension and relocating these groups in their Ottoman context, against an off-ground approach, possibly examining the part of Ottomanness of these individuals. It also takes into account the part of the Ottomans, including and especially non-Europeans: if nations tended to be exclusive, Italianity was not just the matter for Italians. This aspect has attracted little attention until now. I will thus examine circulations in the other direction—namely, from the empire to the Peninsula—and their effect on the sense of belonging to Italy (Part III): crisscross Italianities. The study is set in Istanbul—in its European side in particular. Yet it will not refrain from extending to the rest of the Ottoman Empire, especially the Balkans, when necessary. In the next pages, we will meet a series of figures: the Levantine, the immigrant, their children, the worker,

8 Recent inspiring studies in urban and spatial are contributing to challenge deeply this approach, such as Zeynep Cebeci Suvari’s work on Italian properties and Gabriel Doyle’s PhD dissertation on relief in late Ottoman Istanbul. « De l’exception à l’insertion : les établissements charitables dans la fabrique urbaine d’Istanbul (1860–1914) ».

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the diplomat, his dragoman and … others. In Istanbul, on Ottoman land, the most Italian—Italianized—is not always the one envisaged.

Gli Italiani a Istanbul 9 : A Panorama First type: the Levantine. These people had left the Peninsula, or the islands, but not only, to settle a long time ago, sometimes as early as the fifteenth century, in Constantinople in the European neighborhood of Galata (Pera, now Beyo˘glu, would develop later). For centuries the staff of European consulates, especially dragomans, were recruited from such families. Although they never set foot in Italy, some of them (those to which we have access) considered themselves as Italians. Being Italian meant, above all, having more or less remote Italian origins, according to the typical model of diasporas: having a great ancestor from a mythicized original place, whose memory was passed down from generation to generation; possibly bearing an Italian-sounding name and speaking some Italian. It also meant neighboring in life and death: living together in the European neighborhoods, being buried in the same cemetery, in Galata, later in Taksim in the Petit-Champs des Morts and from the middle of the nineteenth century, in Pancaldi. The religious dimension was an important component too: many of them were Latin Catholics. The churches (SS Peter and Paul, St Mary Draperis, St Anthony, in particular) were thus important places of gathering. This has often oriented the research conducted by their descendants, who considered this to be a decisive parameter, even if the group also counted Protestants and Jews among it.10 Levantines were a necessary component of nineteenth-century narratives about Istanbul and its Italians: for the observers, writers, and agents, these Levantines were Italians—they were even the proof of the Eastern Mediterranean’s Italian character—and yet not Italian enough. Those authors described them to better insist on their lack of Italianity.

9 To reword the title of Angiolo Mori’s book. 10 Rinaldo Marmara, La communauté levantine de Constantinople: De l’Empire byzantin à la République turque (Istanbul: Isis, 2012); Id., Pancaldi: Quartier Levantin du XIX e

siècle (Istanbul: Isis, 2004).

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The nineteenth century was characterized by several waves of Italian emigration to the Ottoman Empire that deeply renewed this old “European” presence in the empire. Several reasons led Italian subjects to leave the Peninsula for the eEmpire and its capital. The first ones were political: this Italian emigration was largely composed of exiles of the Risorgimento, more or less involved in the uprisings that broke out in the Italian states during the first half of the nineteenth century.11 Several waves of departures followed after the failure of these movements and harsh repression: after 1821; in the early 1830s, and after the revolutionary events of 1848– 49, so that in the 1850s Constantinople had become a lair of conspirators and revolutionaries. The critical role played by the experience of political asylum for the elaboration of the ideas of Italy and Italianity is now wellknown,12 especially in the case of France, Great Britain, Spain, and the Americas, but the Ottoman Empire was also a destination which offered great prospects. At the time it was a land of refuge, since the reform policy (Tanzimat ) conducted during the nineteenth century brought about a period of opening and plenty of professional opportunities. There was thus a convergence between supply and demand, the latter being important, due to the tough economic conditions and unemployment in the new kingdom of Italy, especially at the end of the century. In addition to these political and economic reasons, a third kind of motive, let’s say “existential,” prompted people to leave—the opportunity to reinvent a new life in a new place, indistinguishable here from the ambient fascination for the Orient. All these motives were actually intertwined, and they still are. In the 1860s, after Italian unification, some migrants returned to Italy—for the same patriotic motives that had taken them to the other side of the Mediterranean. This was especially true for the main figures of the movement, such as Adriano Lemmi and Vincenzo Giordano Orsini. What their conception of Italianness, nation-state, and politics owed to this Ottoman and cosmopolitan experience still requires further research. But others stayed. They stayed, and settled indefinitely because they had 11 Carmelo Trasselli, “Esuli italiani in Turchia nel dodicennio 1849–1860,” La Sicilia nel Risorgimento italiano III, 1 (1933), 3–9; Enrico De Leone, “L’apport des patriotes italiens dans la formation de la Turquie moderne,” Turcica 3 (1971), 181–192. 12 Agostino Bistarelli, Gli esuli del Risorgimento (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2011); Isabella

Maurizio, Risorgimento in Exile: Italian Émigrés and the Liberal International in the Post-Napoleonic Era (Oxford: OUP, 2009).

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made a successful business or were able to pursue a career; or they had met someone, married and started a family over there. Michele Selvelli and his brewery, or Perini with his heating systems would illustrate these various configurations that often were not mutually exclusive.13 Quantifying this variegated Italian presence, old and new, is an arduous task. The consular registers of the period do not really help. In his monograph about the Italian colony—one of the first descriptions of the Italian presence in the capital—Angiolo Mori wrote that almost 9,000 people were registered at the beginning of the century, but that the real figures were probably between 12,500 and 14,000.14 Indeed not everybody registered at the consulate. In addition, not all those who registered were of Italian origin—some were Ottomans benefiting from the special status of protégés, for instance, or who changed their nationality to retain their advantages.

Italianizing a “Colonia [Dove] non [C’è] Spirito Nazionale” If patriots bore an idea of national Italianness, it was an idea that did not reach everyone—just as in Italy itself. Their Italianization and the efforts required to build a national identity relied on a series of channels to bring it about.15 The first was the Italian Workers Society of Constantinople (Società Operaia Italiana di Mutuo Soccorso, SOI), an association of mutual assistance, part of a wider network that developed in Italy and abroad from the middle of the century.16 The Istanbul section was founded in 1863, 13 Pannuti, Les Italiens d’Istanbul au XX e siècle, 572. 14 Mori, Gli italiani a Costantinopoli, 210. A consular investigation dated 1864 gave

3,500 Italians registered at the consulate and 3,000 not registered (quoted in Sergio La Salvia, “La comunità italiana di Costantinopoli tra politica e società,” in Gli Italiani di Istanbul, eds. De Gasperis and Ferrazza , 15–44, 30. 15 On Italy’s foreign policy of promotion of “Italianità” in the Eastern Mediterranean see Daniel Grange, L’Italie et la Méditerranée, 1896–1911: Les fondements d’une politique étrangère (Rome: École française de Rome, 1994), 617–702. 16 Adriano Marinovich, La Società Operaia Italiana di Mutuo Soccorso in Costantinopoli (Istanbul: Istituto Italiano di Cultura, 1995); Roberta Ferrazza, “La Società Operaia Italiana di Mutuo Soccorso di Costantinopoli,” in Gli Italiani di Istanbul, eds. De Gasperis and Ferrazza, 119–143; Francesco Pongiluppi, “The Foundation of the Italian Worker Mutual Aid Society in Constantinople: Exile and transnational mutualism,” in Exile and

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by Italian patriots. Gradually the SOI became the hub of the community. One of its main aims was to maintain and even strengthen the links of the Italian people and the like with the madre patria—from the very beginning, patriotic and solidarity goals had been closely related. Its fellows were proud of having Mazzini and Garibaldi as founding members and honorary presidents; until recently, the letter signed by them is one of the first items that Angelo Teresi, heart and soul of the society and keeper of its treasures, would proudly exhibit to the visitor who ventures to the first floor of Perukar Sokak, 2. The promotion of the new nation-state and the associated collective identity was realized through various means, including through commemorations. Rome’s annexation to the Italian kingdom, for instance, was celebrated every year by the society. These activities targeted all the Italians present in the capital, beyond the actual members of the society. The latter were both recent immigrants and representatives of old Levantine families; gradually the proportion of Istanbul-born people increased. They were the main target of the diffusion of a new and delineated idea of Italianness. Another way of cultivating Italianity was through education—the crucial role of schooling in nation-building is now established. Italy launched an ambitious schooling policy abroad at the beginning of the 1890s, an initiative of Premier Francesco Crispi. It was part of an ambitious foreign policy, aimed at restoring Italy’s place on the international stage and responding to the movement of massive emigration that had been affecting Italy. Its premise was that emigration was not a weakness but an asset; in order to reap the greatest benefit from it, it was necessary to preserve and reinforce the attachment to the homeland in the new and old colonies. It postulated a transnational building of national identity, not limited to state borders. The project had a worldwide target but the Mediterranean, and thus the Ottoman empire, was at the core of the program.17 The region was

the Circulation of Political Practices, ed. Catherine Brice (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2020), 151–169. 17 Stefania De Nardis, “La patria insegnata in Oriente. Politiche ed istituzioni scolastiche italiane oltreadriatico 1880–1945,” in Adriatico contemporaneo. Rotte e percezioni del mare comune tra Ottocento e Novecento, eds. Francesco Caccamo and Stefano Trinchese (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2008), 165–188; Grange, L’Italie et la Méditerranée, 643–659.

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the scope of Italian imperialist ambitions—of European powers’ imperialist ambitions, whose gluttony Italian elites wanted to share—and education was a major field in this confrontation. In order to be seen as equal, several government schools were created, or nationalized or funded, throughout the empire. In Istanbul, elementary schools and a Scuola Tecnico–Commerciale were founded in the European neighborhoods of Pera, Galata, and Pancaldi. One of the main goals—of the main obsessions—of these schools was to promote the Italian language and through that an Italian mindset. The question of the Italian language was critical. For centuries, Italian had occupied a prominent place in the Ottoman Empire. Not only was it used by people of Italian origin, but it was also one of the main— if not the main—tool of communication between Europeans and more generally among the European neighborhoods of the capital (as well as in large cities, such as Smyrna). A learned Ottoman would have mastered it as well. During the nineteenth century though, Italian was progressively replaced by French, henceforth the language of culture, diplomacy, and daily life. This was the result of a voluntary investment from the French State. Not long after unification, the issue was already a concern for Italian authorities. An observer sent to Istanbul and Thrace in the aftermath of the Congress of Berlin wrote about the wife of an important doctor of the colony, doctor Gabuzzi: “La sua moglie è figlia di suddito Italiano ma non sa l’italiano, perché ha dovuto andare a scuola dalle suore francesi.”18 The doctor in question complained about the “conditions of the colony,” “deprived of national spirit.”19 With schools and other channels such as the Dante Alighieri Society, whose goal was to promote the Italian language, the state authorities and notables of the colony intended to reassert Italian’s place in the Eastern Mediterranean, and above all, to make Italians speak Italian.20 On the eve of the First World War, however, this objective was far from being achieved. It is important to distinguish planned projects and 18 Istituto per l’Oriente, Rome, Fondo Rossi, Turchia. Appunti, manuscript notebook,

22. 19 Istituto per l’Oriente, Fondo Rossi, Turchia Appunti. 20 The association was created in 1889. See Stefania De Nardis, “La Società Dante

Alighieri da Costantinopoli a Istanbul. 1895–1922: diffusione della lingua e pedagogia nazionale,” Diacronie. Studi di Storia Contemporanea 20 (2014), http://www.studistor ici.com/2014/09/29/de-nardis_numero_20/.

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programs from what was actually implemented and to value the variety of identifications among Italian immigrants. This is first achieved by paying attention to a major bias, the institutional one. Not every Italian joined the unquestionably patriotic, highly Italian institutions like the SOI, in spite of its claim to subsume Italianity. Focusing on these institutions can thus be misleading. In 1905, for instance, the society counted around 500 fellows—far from the 9,000 (or perhaps even 14,000) reported by Angiolo Mori. The spectacular growth in members—which had multiplied six times during the first twenty years21 — was disproportionate to the number of Italian immigrants. This was especially true for the workers, who came in numbers from the diverse regions of the peninsula and the islands to work in coal mines or railway construction, often temporarily. Studying these transient and illiterate populations, their sociability and systems of representations, is fairly difficult, as they were poorly represented. In the meantime the Società had become less and less operaia. This rapid gentrification went hand in hand with the growing importance given to its patriotic (and then nationalistic) mission. The social homogenization was also a familial one. In his study of the Levantine community, Oliver-Jens Schmitt explains that the matrimonial strategies of bourgeois immigrants consisted in marrying members of the great Levantine families, preferred over direct compatriots with scarcer resources: social endogamy predominated over national endogamy.22 This sociological parameter has been barely taken into account, in spite of its critical importance. The national sense of belonging under construction could collide or overlap with other affiliations, including regional ones, for example, exporting the tensions at play in Italy to Ottoman territory. There are some evidence of such local affiliations, that would deserve further enquiry: the entrances at the SOI, for example, tended to follow regional networks. Conversely at a supra-national level, fidelity to religion remained strong, whether among newcomers or locals, to whom being 21 The society comprised a total of 48 members in 1866–67 and 310 in 1885–86: Archivio della Società Operaia di Mutuo Soccorso, Istanbul, Registro Soci, n. 1 (1866–67) and n. 19 (1885–86). 22 Oliver-Jens Schmitt, “Sur la voie d’une bourgeoisie d’affaires? L’élite sociale levantine à Galata-Péra et à Smyrne au XIXe siècle,” in Merchants in the Ottoman Empire, eds. Suraiya Faroqhi and Gilles Veinstein (Paris, Louvain, Dudley: Peeters, 2008), 215–230.

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Italian meant being Catholic—an allegiance reinforced by the social, legal, and urban configuration of the Ottoman system. They were populations for whom celebrating universal Rome as the secular capital of a national state built against the Pope was not obvious. The schooling policy was not sufficient to change such deep-rooted affiliations and networks. Its limits at the same time reveal and explain this partial failure, also due to lack of investment and to the continuous changes in political orientation by the Italian state. The audience of the government schools turned out to be not mainly Italian, but rather, Ottoman children—Greek, Armenian, Jewish, and Muslim. Conversely Italians sent their own children to French (or Francophone) schools. The prestige of French institutions—of France in general—was very influential in such decision-making. For affluent families, sending their children to French schools was a social indicator. It was a strategic choice as well; French being more useful than Italian to secure status in the empire. The greater importance paid to local languages (here Ottoman Turkish, Greek) in the Italian schools—an Italian specificity—may have made it easier for Ottoman children to study at them. The power of acculturation to Italy through the education given in these schools for Italian-born children should not be overemphasized. The same situation was also reflected in the private sphere. This internal mélange was very often accused of fostering the “loss” of Italianity—a topos. This was the diagnosis of Giuseppe Zaccagnini, a central figure of the Italian community,23 who greatly contributed to the development of Italianness, especially as president of the local committee of the Dante Alighieri Society: This colony, with Genoese and Venetian background, progressively increased until recently […]. During the years, the crossings with indigenous families have been frequent; and doing so, not only the race, but also the character and the feelings of our compatriots changed, up to the point where in a very large number of families (I would say: the majority), Italian is no longer spoken nor understood. It is not rare to find a family composed in this way: Italian grandfather and Armenian grandmother, Italian father and Greek mother, Ottoman uncle and Russian aunt,

23 He was the head of the Technico-Commercial School and president of the local comity of the Dante Alighieri Society.

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an Austrian son and a French one. I let the readers imagine the vocabulary used in domestic conversations and the flags that fly in the patriotic commemorations.24

Let us see then how the grandmother and the uncle of this depiction would have perceived their Italian origins and contemporary Italian matters.

“Un Pays Que J’aime Comme Ma Seconde Patrie”: Italianity by Ottomans Italianity was not just the preserve of Italians, and it would be inaccurate to search for it exclusively among people who could claim Italian origins, real or not. How should one consider, for instance, what Artaky Oundjian, an Ottoman–Armenian, wrote about Italy in this application letter: “un Pays que j’aime comme ma seconde patrie en raison du fait que c’est à ce Pays illustre que je dois toute mon instruction et tout mon développement moral et intellectuel”?25 Oundjian had received his education in Venice, at the Collegio Moorat-Raphael. This Armenian college, administered by the Mekhitarist Congregation, aimed to train young Armenians from the Ottoman Empire and beyond, in an Armenian culture they usually lacked and a general knowledge in which languages figured prominently. Admittedly, Oundjian’s declaration could be considered as pure rhetoric—after all, he was looking for a work. Or it might be regarded as the whim of a single individual, pleasing, but not really significant. And yet, it illustrates a larger, more structural relationship to Italy, that can be observed among Armenians (Catholics and not) as well as other ethno-national groups of the empire, such as Albanians or Aromanians (Vlachs). It was a form of patriotism, not a mere cultural affinity (which was also a dimension of Italianness Italianity, as discussed later): it assumes a relationship to the homeland (“la patrie,” in Oundjian’s words) and to the nation-state. 24 Giuseppe Zaccagnini, La vita a Costantinopoli (Turin: Fratelli Bocca, 1909 [1907]),

99. 25 Archivio Storico Diplomatico del Ministero degli Affari Esteri, Rome (now ASDMAE), Ambasciata italiana in Turchia (AIT), b. 81, fasc. 1, A. Oundjian to the Italian ambassador G. Imperiali, March 17, 1905, Constantinople.

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These aspects have usually been considered separately, within the studies of the various national movements. The challenge, here, is to put them altogether insofar as they constitute the same phenomenon. Of course this phenomenon should not be overestimated; it regarded only limited sections of these groups within the Ottoman population. The Italianization of young Ottomans was achieved by means of sojourns in Italy. Armenians were not the only ones to send their children to Italy. Catholic Albanians, for instance, would send their sons to San Demetrio Corone, Calabria, where an arberësh college, Sant’Adriano, had been founded at the end of the previous century (1794). This practice, and more generally the circulations between the two areas, were an early modern legacy, from when Italian states had hosted foreigners organized in “nations,” but these colleges were a typical nineteenth-century phenomenon, as catalysts of national movements. Like Moorat-Raphael, Sant’Adriano is considered to have been an important place for the building of an Albanian national conscience. The process of nationalization of such populations was therefore achieved, in part, abroad26 —as for Italy (cf. Parts I and II). The mechanism was the same, with national variations and mutual influences. This evidences how much the rigid identification systems such as national ones owed to crisscrossed circulations. For Artaky Oundjian and several generations of his fellow citizens, Italy was thus the stage of youth and education, of formative years, of the awakening of political awareness. They did return from these long sojourns with Italy in their suitcases. They had learned a country, a culture, a language, a geography, all the more so as Italian language and culture were taught in these institutions. They returned to Istanbul probably much more Italian than the doctor’s wife mentioned earlier, for whom Italy was an echo, a distant memory, a grandmother’s tale. Some of them had received earlier instruction in the institutions run by the orders in the Ottoman Empire (the Mekhitarists had schools in Istanbul and throughout the Empire; Jesuit schools set up in Albanianspeaking regions) before going to Italy. One might wonder if an early familiarization may have been initiated in these schools, and what it entailed—in other words, if acculturation to Italy used to go through 26 On the Albanian case see Nathalie Clayer, Aux origines du nationalisme albanais: La naissance d’une nation majoritairement musulmane en Europe (Paris: Karthala, 2018 [2007]).

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religious institutions, that did not necessarily favor the new kingdom. But acculturation happened outside of in the classrooms anyway: in Istanbul, one could breathe Italian air. Italianity could primarily be a taste, a penchant for the Italian language or culture, the assimilation of which was more or less intimate (more in Artaky Oundjian’s case). The presence of Italian culture (music, theater, painting as well) and artists from the Peninsula in the Ottoman capital fostered this tendency. One would go to the opera to see “les Italiens.” However, this association of visual or performing arts with Italy should not be interpreted in terms of pure cultural importation. Architecture offers a significant example in this regard. What was considered the “Italian style,” which gave Pera (Beyo˘glu) its physiognomy, was actually a reinterpretation all’ottomana of Italian architecture—a mélange of local indigenous elements and imagined Italian motifs.27 In other terms, the presumed quintessence of the Italian way was a reappropriation, a bit like spaghetti with meatballs. Engagement with Italy could also take the shape of the service of the state (which was not necessarily distinct of cultural attachment, as Oundjian’s application to the embassy suggests). This required loyalty toward the Italian state, a loyalty that sometimes went against the interests of the Ottoman state or other authorities. This can be observed especially in the diplomatic and consular milieu, for interpreters. Contrary to other European countries that strove to recruit nationals for their personnel, Italy continued to recruit locally, from Italian, but also Ottoman, families. This practice, often considered a relic of the Ancien Régime, was enabled instead by the very existence on site of a pool of trustworthy and skilled employees.28 The consulate and the embassy in Istanbul were monopolized by Levantine families. The renowned Guracucchi family, Albanian patriots, whose children were trained in San Demetrio, served (or one might assume, reigned over) the Scutari consulate for decades. They also

27 Paolo Girardelli, “Sheltering Diversity. Levantine Architecture in Late Ottoman Istanbul,” in Multicultural Spaces and Urban Fabrics in the South and Eastern Mediterranean, eds. Maurice Cerasi et al . (Istanbul: DMG, 2007). 28 Marie Bossaert, “Poste in translation. Les drogmans des consulats italiens dans l’Empire (1861–1911),” in Consoli e consolati italiani dalla Repubblica italiana al fascismo (1802–1945), ed. Marcella Aglietti et al. (Rome: École française de Rome, 2020), 209–237.

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relayed Italian interests in the region, using the post strategically to their advantage. Among consuls, dragomans and service staff, the office was often passed down from father to son. The familial tradition was a guarantee for Italian authorities, in so far as it ensured a socialization to both Italian administration and local society, even if there had not been any direct experience in the Peninsula. The dragoman Oscarre Missir, while looking for a position in Constantinople, recalled the good service provided by his ancestors: la mia famiglia conta circa un secolo di servizio effettivo sotto la Sardegna prima e l’Italia poi, contati i 50 anni di servizio senza interruzione di mio padre come interprete di carriera a Smirne.29

Serving Italy—bureaucratic Italianity, so to speak—exceeded Unified Italy. It meant serving the contextual state incarnation of Italy: for the Smyrniot Missirs, for a Barone or a Vernoni in Constantinople,30 the Kingdom of Sardinia; for others, Venice or the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Such choices could of course present a strategic dimension—the same that led these employees to change or combine services if convenient or necessary in a context of fluctuating loyalties. Lastly, Italy could be a political choice—a gamble, a wager. Some Ottomans banked on Italy to gain support or protection. The matter of papers and statuses—consular protection (traditionally granted to the diplomatic personnel), citizenship—often mentioned, still deserves an exhaustive enquiry for the long nineteenth century.31 It was a bureaucratic issue, that did not necessarily imply a total adherence to Italy. Yet

29 ASDMAE, Archivio del Personale (now AP), serie IX, b. 5, fasc. 23 “Missir, Oscarre,” letter from O. Missir, Tripoli, January 22, 1895. 30 Antonio Pompeo Barone (1834–1898) worked as a dragoman from 1851 to 1896 and finished his career as a consul in Constantinople. Alessandro Vernoni was a dragoman for the Piemontese and then Italian Legation from 1843 to 1888. See ASDMAE, AP, serie I, b. 7, fasc. 15 “Barone Antonio” and ASDMAE, AP, serie IX, b. 8, fasc. 39 “Vernoni Alessandro”. 31 For a first insight see Marie Bossaert, “La politica italiana di nazionalizzazione e di protezione nell’Impero ottomano all’indomani della Grande Guerra”, in Citizenship under pressure: An institutional narrative about nationality and naturalization in changing boundaries (1880–1923), ed. Marcella Aglietti (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2021), 35–54.

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there was another political dimension: the support and solidarity with national movements that developed in the Empire from the nineteenth century and philhellenism onward. Risorgimento movements first, Italian state later on, assisted or spurred on by expansionist organizations, established relationships of solidarity with several of such groups, sometimes rival, especially in Istanbul and the Balkan area.32 Such relationships were driven by liberal or emancipatory ideals, or by political and economic interest. They were often anti-Turks, until the Young Turk revolution of 1908 and the proclamation of the new Ottoman constitution, interpreted in Italy as a “Quarantotto turco,” produced an alleged distinction between Turkish nation and Ottoman Empire, with the idea that Turks were also oppressed by their sultan.33 The arrival of Risorgimento political exiles, in Istanbul and in Anatolia, especially in the 1820s and after 1848–1849, and the circulations of Ottomans between the Peninsula and the Empire fostered the circulation of political ideas and practices. The carbonaro organization with its secret sociability largely inspired for instance the Ottoman freemasonry.34 More generally, Italian nineteenth-century history made Italy a reference, conferring it both a field experience and a moral legitimacy. The political friendships, well studied for the Italian side, had their Ottoman counterparts.35 Italy may also have appeared to be a less imperialist protection compared to other powers. And if one had to choose an imperialism, he or she would serve themselves better by opting for the less daunting one. This would prove to be decisive later, in the context of the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire, on which Italy took part. During World War I Albanian intellectuals, of various denominations, considered that their 32 Fabrice Jesné, La face cachée de l’Empire. L’Italie et les Balkans, 1861–1915 (Rome: École française de Rome, 2021). 33 Marie Bossaert, Connaître les Turcs et l’Empire ottoman en Italie. Constructions et usages des savoirs sur l’Orient de l’Unité à la guerre italo-turque, (PhD diss. École Pratique des Hautes Études – Istituto italiano di Scienze umane SUM, 2016) chap. 4, 117–154; chap. 13, 573–580. 34 Angelo Iacovella, Il triangolo e la mezzaluna: I giovani turchi e la massoneria italiana (Istanbul: Istituto Italiano di Cultura, 1997), Thierry Zarcone, “Franc-maçonnerie,” Dictionnaire de l’Empire ottoman (Paris: Fayard, 2015), 474–474. 35 Gilles Pécout, « Pour une lecture transnationale et méditerranéenne du Risorgimento,» Revue d’Histoire du XIX e siècle. L’Italie du Risorgimento. Relectures 44 (2012/1), 29–47.

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new country would not be able to reach self-sufficiency: in the perspective of a future collapse, they considered the protection of Italy would be the best option.36 Old Levantines convinced they were more Italian than Italy itself; second-generation immigrants who forgot they were Italian at all; their patriotic fathers; “concittadini senza patria”37 ; Ottomans who looked upon Italy as a homeland: these multiple configurations, products of crisscrossed circulations in the Mediterranean, invite us to uncouple nation and origin, identity papers and one’s sense of belonging, confined identities and experience. Let us finish this particular journey by acknowledging that identifications and affiliations are not exclusive.

36 My thanks to Nathalie Clayer for indicating this phenomenon to me. 37 Edmondo De Amicis, Costantinopoli, ed. Luca Scarlini (Turin: Einaudi, 2015), 77.

A Paper Trail: Italian Migrants in Marseille and Buenos Aires (1860–1914) Thibault Bechini

The question of “papers” is constantly present in the lives of immigrants, and increasingly, as the bureaucracy becomes bureaucratic. All the institutions he is dealing with ask him to show his evidences.1 This is how Gérard Noiriel describes the migrants’ plight with regard to “papers” in Le Creuset Français, a founding work that has contributed to our understanding of the multiple aspects of migrant trajectories. He does not hold back on the issue of the “clash of ‘papers’” to characterize the migrants’ first contact with the administration process of their new host country. Noiriel emphasizes how important it was and yet, at the same time, how difficult, for migrants to be able to produce the required papers that they did not always necessarily have. Many circumstances may have required Italian migrants to produce documentation which had been issued in their country of origin, for the

1 Gérard Noiriel, Le Creuset français (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2006), 164–65.

T. Bechini (B) Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University, Paris, France e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. Mourlane et al. (eds.), Italianness and Migration from the Risorgimento to the 1960s, Palgrave Studies in Migration History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88964-7_16

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authorities of the country to which they had emigrated. Such documentation might accompany the journey during the initial migration process. It might also have been reclaimed by the Italian authorities, most often through the consular services, when circumstances deemed it necessary to do so. The variety of documentation—extracts of civil status, judicial documents, passports—could sometimes constitute a wad of paper, the retention of which was essential to enable individuals to be legally recognized and, for example, bring court cases or get married in their new country. Depending on their nature, such papers can attest to either the maintenance of a strong link with the Italian Peninsula or, conversely, reveal a break with the family that remained in Italy. Two cities are selected for study here: Buenos Aires and Marseille. In fact, the two ports appear, throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, as host cities particularly favored by Italian migrants who had chosen to reside in them temporarily or settled in them permanently. The two Italian communities are numerically comparable in the decade following unity: There were a little in excess of 44,000 Italians residing in Buenos Aires in 1869.2 In Marseille, there were around 50,000 in 1876.3 During the last 30 years of the nineteenth century, the two cities saw their socio-economic structure disrupted by the growth of their respective Italian communities4 : Argentina was the second largest outlet for Italian emigration just after France.5 I will focus here on the way in which Italians, during their sojourn outside the Peninsula, made use of their “papers” in various civil proceedings. I will also show that, given a certain number of Italians found it impossible to produce the required documents—namely civil status records, parents’ consent for marriage, authorization of a husband to

2 Comisión directiva del censo, Censo general de población (Buenos Aires: Compañia Sud-Americana de billetes de banco, 1889), 2, 11. The census figures of 1887 are compared to those of the 1869 census. 3 Pierre Milza, Français et Italiens à la fin du XIX e siècle (Rome: Publications de

l’École française de Rome, 1981), 217. 4 Renée Lopez, and Émile Temime, Migrance. Histoire des migrations à Marseille. L’expansion marseillaise et l’ “invasion italienne.” 1830–1918 (Aix-en-Provence: Édisud, 1990); Fernando Devoto and Gianfausto Rosoli, La inmigración italiana en la Argentina (Buenos Aires: Biblos, 1985). 5 Milza, Français et Italiens, 216.

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proceed with the purchase or sale of property—they were often forced to declare that family ties no longer connected them to the Peninsula.

A Paper Trail A study of the archives of the Buenos Aires Court of First Instance, from the 1860s to the First World War, provides a rich overview of the papers produced by Italian migrants before the Argentine courts. Attached to the case files, these documents are most often accompanied by a certified translation. These procedural files juxtapose documents written in several languages and issued by the authorities of different countries. They physically combine the written traces left in Italy with those produced in Argentina, and become, in a way, a metaphor for migration itself. The study of these files indicates that Italian migrants were regularly required to produce documents that linked them to their mother country. A paper trail is formed which continues to link migrants to Italy; a link which reminds us that “fare l’America,” whatever the distance, did not necessarily mean a break with Italy. The first section of this article focuses on Buenos Aires, although I will also use extracts from Le Petit Marseillais, a popular newspaper published in Marseille from 1868, when apposite, to illustrate my reasoning. Taken away during the initial migration, the passport was a paper link that strongly connected Italian migrants to the Peninsula.6 It was certainly a closely guarded document, even if it had expired. Thus, even though her passport had expired some five years previously, Virginia Piaggi, wife of Tommaso Angelini did not hesitate to show it during a lawsuit against her sister, Filomena, in 1883. It had been issued to her on March 26, 1877 by the sub-prefect of La Spezia and it testified that she had traveled to Buenos Aires with her two daughters of 7 and 4 years of age, Emilia and Eugenia.7 The loss of a passport, as well as the loss of professional booklets essential to mobile workers such as sailors, was likely to cause the greatest damage to people and why people advertised in the local press whenever such identity papers were lost. This was the case of Fortunato Siena who, on October 27, 1883, published the following announcement 6 On obtaining passports in Italy, see Caroline Douki, “ Les maires de l’Italie libérale à l’épreuve de l’émigration: le cas des campagnes lucquoises,” in Mélanges de l’École française de Rome, 106, 1 (1994): 333–64. 7 Archivo General de la Nación, Court of First Instance of Buenos Aires. A-248 (1883).

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in Le Petit Marseillais: “LOST Tuesday, from the place of Aubagne to the Italian Consulate a sailor’s booklet in the name of Fortunato Siena. Please report it for reward, rue Bonneterie, 6.”8 Extracts of civil status drawn up in Italy were not always passed to the migrants before their departure, especially at the time when there was no civil registration per se and where the baptism and religious marriage records were used for this purpose. Some procedures, however, required those acts to be produced, particularly when it came to establishing filiation, for the purpose of succession or guardianship. When the deceased Giovanni Ferrari’s case for succession was opened in 1889 by the Buenos Aires Court of First Instance, his children declared that the deceased’s marriage certificate, drawn up in Noli (Liguria) in 1833, as well as the baptismal documents of those who were born in Italy, were required to produce them and were told they “must arrive from one moment to the next.”9 When a copy of the civil status records had the migrants, they took great care with them, as attested by a news item reported by Le Petit Marseillais in 1879: a drowned man found in the port of Marseille carried on his person “an extract of Italian marriage.”10 Some procedures, such as those for inheritance, were an opportunity to go back and forth between Argentina and the Italian peninsula. In addition to civil status records, certain judicial attestations were sometimes necessary to establish the identity of the heirs and their respective rights. Thus, in the dispute over their parents’ succession, settled in Italy, Antonio and Giuseppina Ambroggio submitted a judicial certificate to the judge of Buenos Aires Court of First Instance containing the statements of several witnesses made in the District Court of Fossano (Piedmont) on July 23, 1874, bearing the visa of the Italian ministry of foreign affairs on July 30, 1874, legalized the following day by the Argentine Consulate in Rome.11 The use of the consular services was often indispensable for Italians in Buenos Aires. On this point, the Bolletino consolare, in a note of 1874 concerning Buenos Aires, was very clear: “the Italians are numerous 8 Le Petit Marseillais, October 27, 1883. 9 Archivo General de la Nación, Court of First Instance of Buenos Aires Estates, 5820

(1889). 10 Le Petit Marseillais, March 16, 1879. 11 Archivo General de la Nación, Court of First Instance of Buenos Aires, A-163

(1873).

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to present themselves at the Consulate for notarial acts and inheritances.”12 There was also a real market linked to the many formalities that Italian subjects had to perform at the consul’s office to obtain the documents they needed; formalities which they often preferred to discharge by entrusting them to a third party, thereby limiting contact with the consular institution. Intermediaries offered their services for a fee: this was the case of Antonio Gallo who, in 1903, claimed fees against Vicente Lionetti for work undertaken at the Consulate of Italy in Buenos Aires to arrange the succession of an aunt who had died in Italy.13 Letters exchanged between migrants and their families were among the documents carefully preserved14 and sometimes produced by those who wished to assert their legitimate rights by relying on the written word from their opposing party: evidence of private lives was collected appropriated to aid judicial decisions. These documents are a reflection of the intense letter-writing as a result of Italian emigration in the second half of the nineteenth century. This “literary activity”15 is often part of the migratory movement itself, facilitating the mobility of people via information contained in letters. Thus, in the succession dispute with her brother, Antonio, Giuseppina Ambroggio gave the judge a letter sent by her brother from Buenos Aires in 1869, inviting her to join him, at the bottom of which were several lines of recommendation addressed to Emanuel Carbone, captain of the steamboat Clementina, in order to facilitate her trip. This document is annexed to the proceedings with the translation made in 1874 by Pablo Frugoni, a public translator in Buenos Aires.16 The paper trail shown by the procedures handled by the Buenos Aires Court of First Instance was an expression of the link that Italian migrants

12 Ministero degli Affari Esteri, Bollettino consolare (Rome: Tipografia Sinimberghi, 1874), 115. 13 Archivo General de la Nación, Court of First Instance of Buenos Aires, G-53 (1903). 14 Samuel L. Baily and Franco Ramella, One Family, Two Worlds: An Italian Family’s

Correspondence across the Atlantic, 1901–1922 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1988). 15 Emilio Franzina, Dall’Arcadia in America: attività letteraria ed emigrazione transoceanica in Italia, 1850–1940 (Turin: Fondazione Giovanni Agnelli, 1996). 16 Archivo General de la Nación, Court of First Instance of Buenos Aires. A-163 (1873).

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maintained with their native land, particularly through property ownership. In 1892, Emanuele Guido sought to recover a sum of 5,000 Italian lire that he had loaned to Giovanni Alberti which was to be repaid within 18 months with interest of 5% per annum. He passed the loan agreement to the trial judge which showed it had been received on April 10, 1890, by the Italian vice-consul in Buenos Aires, and detailed that Giovanni Alberti had mortgaged a farmland, a forest, and a farmer’s house with outbuildings located in the municipality of Romagnese (Lombardy). In order for the deed to have been valid, the contract had to have been legalized in Rome on November 9, 1890 by the ministry of foreign affairs, before being transcribed at the registration office of Ronco Scrivia. The mortgage registration then took place on November 12, 1891, at the end of the 18 month reimbursement period.17 Such a “jurisdictional chain”18 highlights the many interactions that constituted the paper trail that united Italian migrants to the Peninsula. to this paper link could add another link: the land link which migration has failed to eliminate.

Papers to Signify that Links Have Been Broken with the Mother Country With the passing of the years, however, the links that united the migrants to the Peninsula could be weakened. Judicial canton archives in Marseille, studied from the 1860s to World War I, bear witness to this.19 Among their many responsibilities, justices of the peace were empowered to issue acts of notoriety if, in the event of marriage, the married couple were unable to produce parental consent because the parents lived in Italy and if their children no longer had any relationship with them, to the point that they did not even know if they were still alive. The act issued by the justice of the peace served to formalize the break between the migrant and the family who had remained in Italy.

17 Archivo General de la Nación, Court of First Instance of Buenos Aires. G-13 (1892). 18 Arnaud Bartolomei, “Introduction,” in De l’utilité commerciale des consuls. L’institution consulaire et les marchands dans le monde méditerranéen (XVII e –XX e siècle), eds

Arnaud Bartolomei et al., (Rome—Madrid: École française de Rome—Casa de Velázquez, 2017). 19 It was the 6th canton of the justice of the peace, which became the 8th canton of the justice of the peace of Marseille in 1886.

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This was the case, for instance, of Antoine Bianculli, a glass worker, who carried a Certificate of Indigency (low income) that was given to him by the police commissioner of the 19th arrondissement of Marseille. On November 24, 1883, Antoine Bianculli appeared before the magistrate of the 6th canton of Marseille and declared that he was born in Tramutola, province of Basilicata, on October 19, 1855. It stated that he was the son from the marriage of Joseph Bianculli and Françoise Aulicino, farmers, and that “having come to France just seven years old, he has had no longer any relation with his father and mother who have left Tramutola for a long time without the appearing party being able to know what they had become.”20 Similarly, in 1910, Giuseppa Carini, born in Città di Castello (Umbria) in 1894 and about to be married, asked the justice of the peace to note that she had had no news of her father, Nazzareno Carini, since the summer of 1902.21 The archives of the Buenos Aires Court of First Instance make it possible to document quite similar situations. The Court of First Instance was empowered to issue “venias supletorias” to those wishing to marry in Argentina but were unable to produce the consent of their parents who had remained in Italy. “Venias” were also granted to married women who wished to sell or mortgage their property without the consent of their husband, who had returned to Italy and with whom they no longer maintained any connection. In 1913, for instance, Blanca Giachero de Tarelli sought permission to sell real estate in Buenos Aires without the consent of her husband, who had returned to Italy and from whom she never received any news. However, this request was contested by the intervention of the applicant’s son, Francisco Tarelli, who appeared before the judge with a power of attorney given by his father before a notary in Italy to administer his property in Argentina.22 The transnational trajectories that many Italian migrants followed were often accompanied by the documents that concerned them. Some procedures could be complicated. Justices of the peace were regularly required to draw up notoriety documents which sought to establish that, for 20 Archives départementales des Bouches-du-Rhône, Justice of the peace, 4 U 20 29, Act no. 106 (1883). 21 Archives départementales des Bouches-du-Rhône, Justice of the peace, 4 U 20 50, Act no. 151 (1910). 22 Archivo General de la Nación, Court of First Instance of Buenos Aires. G-119 (1913).

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example, an individual, born in South America to Italian parents and wishing to get married in France, was unable to produce his birth certificate. The notoriety act served as a substitute for the birth certificate. In March 1912, the justice of the peace of the 8th canton of Marseille wrote two acts of this kind. The first concerned Anna Carpentieri, born in São Paulo on January 29, 1887, daughter of Michele Carpentieri and Giuseppa Caramica, “Italian subjects.” When she was about to get married, she found herself unable to obtain her birth certificate “on the ground that it would not have been entered in the registers of the Civil Registry of the Municipality of San Paolo.”23 The second act was made at the request of Herminie Meyer, widow Beltrando, whose husband, Jean Beltrando, “Italian subject,” died in Santiago de Chile three years beforehand and whose son, Jacinto Beltrando, was born in Porto Alegre in Brazil in 1895. The widow Beltrando wishing to apply for French nationality for her son, found herself unable to obtain his birth certificate, “on the ground that it was not entered in the registers of the Civil Status of the Municipality of Porto Allegre.”24 In both cases, one may wonder to what extent these acts of notoriety were not acts of kindness, in order to avoid further proceedings for the young woman and the widow. The need to produce papers to the institutions of the host country led Italian migrants to maintain more or less continuous administrative contact with the Peninsula, sometimes over several generations, especially when it came to inheritance formalities. In such circumstances, the use of Italian consular services may have served as an opportunity to acknowledge their connection to the Italian nation; but the use of intermediaries to carry out administrative procedures instead of undertaking them personally, perhaps indicates that was not the case. In many instances, the “clash of papers” showed less of a link with the Peninsula than an aspiration to blend into the host society, including obtaining a new civil status that would facilitate any future procedures.

23 Archives départementales des Bouches-du-Rhône, Justice of the peace, 4 U 20 54, Acte no. 53 (1912). 24 Archives départementales des Bouches-du-Rhône. Justice of the peace, 4 U 20 54, Acte no. 65 (1912).

“Bread Denied by the Nation” the Italians Abroad Exhibitions Between the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Anna Pellegrino

Great universal exhibitions are, as has been noted, one of the places where hierarchies among the great European nations are constructed and developed, on the basis of not only economic and industrial, but also social and cultural progress, putting the less developed nations and the colonies in subordinate positions. It is in the course of these events that in Italy, at the end of the nineteenth century, the first, experimental “Italians abroad exhibitions” were established. These were very committed political and cultural events, which involved a series of diverse actors: governments, public and private institutions, both at home and among emigrants abroad, which then converged in exhibition pavilions ensuring maximum visibility among the greater public. These exhibitions had a dual objective: in the first place to underline the presence and dissemination of Italian identity and culture abroad through the phenomenon of migration; secondly to reinforce a feeling of Italianness in the motherland.

A. Pellegrino (B) Bologna University, Bologna, Italy e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. Mourlane et al. (eds.), Italianness and Migration from the Risorgimento to the 1960s, Palgrave Studies in Migration History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88964-7_17

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The phenomenon coincides almost exactly with the culmination of the wave of migration that Italy experienced at the turn of the twentieth century, reaching its peak in 1906, the year of the Milan Exhibition. There had been manifestations previously: the Columbus Exhibition in Genoa in 1892, when the Exhibition of Discovery filled an entire section (this was an Italian-American Exposition dedicated to the achievements of Italians who followed in the footsteps of the great navigator); and the Turin Exposition in 1898 when a group of young economists (among who were Geisser, Jannaccone, Sella, Cabiati, Prato, Bachi, and Graziadei) had set up a small exhibition, accompanied by a conference on “Italians Abroad. Emigration – Commerce – Colonies”, the convenor of which was Luigi Einaudi. They were attempts, although still embryonic, which looked ahead to the type of cultural operations that were to be put into effect later. In fact, in 1898 an impressive volume “destined to be epochmaking” had been published by the Italian Chamber of Commerce in Buenos Aires, in which the success of Italian emigration to Argentina was celebrated, with an intense interaction between “inside Italy” and “outside Italy”.1 The volume was organised according to a scheme, which not only examined the phenomenon in its economic details, but also envisaged collaboration among Italian communities abroad, represented by the Chambers of Commerce and particularly by Societies of Mutual Assistance (institutions fundamental for social cohesion and the maintenance of national identity, little studied up till now).2 This model, which thus envisaged not only exhibitions of catalogue publications, of data and statistics, but also the life histories, and direct documentation, also photographic, of the life of Italians abroad, would be taken up and elaborated in the exposition of 1906, when it would be even more permeated by a powerful liberal, labourist, and progressive ideological connotation, and thus become a prototype for all subsequent exhibitions on the same theme.

1 Camera italiana di commercio ed arti, Gli italiani nella Repubblica Argentina (Buenos Aires: Compania Sud-Americana de Billetes de Banco, 1898). 2 Emilio Franzina, “La tentazione del Museo: piccola storia di mostre ed esposizioni

sull’emigrazione italiana negli ultimi cent’anni (1892–2002)”, Archivio Storico dell’emigrazione italiana, 1(2005): 167–168. See also Patrizia Audenino, “La Mostra degli italiani all’estero: prove di nazionalismo”, in Milano e l’Esposizione internazionale del 1906. La rappresentazione della modernità, eds. Patrizia Audenino et al. (Milano: FrancoAngeli, 2008).

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The Sempione Exhibition Between April and November 1906 the first Italian International Exhibition was held in Milan, organised officially to celebrate the inauguration of the Simplon Tunnel completed some months previously, in February 1905. Among the numerous pavilions designed and constructed for the event there was also an “Exposition of Italians Abroad”. The concept of Italianness was central to the exhibition and revolved entirely around praising the contribution of Italians not only to development and progress in industry, but also in the sciences, in culture, and in the arts. In this paper I will focus on three points: firstly on the meaning of an exhibition of Italians abroad, that is, the economic and political context into which this type of cultural operation was introduced; secondly, on the ways in which the exhibitions and their communications were constructed: or rather on the genesis and character of the exhibition message—the way in which the organisers put across the message through the documentation produced by the public and private institutions of the countries involved; finally, the perception and reception of the exhibition on the part of the public. To analyse the reception on the part of the public we have taken into consideration the way in which some spectators, who we can consider representative of the lower but also more extensive echelons of the public at the time, received this message; that is, we analysed the writings of workers invited to the expo, who, at the end of their trip, had to produce a report on their visit, outlining the aspects that interested them most (Fig. 1).

The Economic And Political Context At the time, more so than today, the 1906 exhibition was a response not only to a demand of a simply cultural character, in the sense of displaying knowledge and documentation. There was also a very strong correspondence with a phenomenon crucial both on account of its economic aspects, but also aspects of culture and identity, namely massive Italian emigration. The 1906 Exhibition was in fact particularly important because it took place at a crucial moment during the phenomenon of Italian migration. In the second half of the nineteenth century the number of emigrants

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Fig. 1 The Italians Abroad Exhibitions Pavillion in Milan 1906. Cartolina ufficiale dell’esposizione 1906

was confirmed to be around 100 000 persons annually, considered inconsequential to the Italian economy. From the beginning of the twentieth century the number of emigrants increased dramatically and unexpectedly to reach an average of 310 000 (of which 162 000 went overseas) in the four years 1896–1900, reaching its peak in the three years 1905–1907 with 739 000 emigrants (458 000 overseas)3 (Chart 1). It was a phenomenon of crucial importance for the Italian economy and society of the time (at that time the total population was just over 30 million) and it was evidently associated with the choices in economic policy that the liberal ruling class had made after Unification. Italy, unlike Germany, but also in a more marked manner than France and England, had made an absolutely liberalist choice, which initially caused a crisis in certain industrial and manufacturing sectors, but which

3 Data from the databases of Istat archive, Tavola 2.9—Espatriati e rimpatriati per destinazione e provenienza europea o extraeuropea—Anni 1869–2014, in http://series toriche.istat.it/.

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Chart 1 Departures of Italian emigrants during the first 50 years after national unification

in the first decade of the twentieth century was producing substantial industrial development. The sense of this exhibition is contained within this liberalist choice. In particular, Liberal milieux, which had had and continued to have substantial influence on public opinion and government choices, looked favourably on the migratory “valve” as a “physiological” element sustaining the equilibrium of the labour market in the international economy. For these reasons, the entire concept of the Exhibition of 1906 was aimed at representing Italian emigration abroad as a highly positive factor on the economic level. On the one hand, it underlined the fact that individually many emigrants had been able to improve their own social conditions to an extraordinary degree; on the other, the fact that the emigrants’ success also reverberated in economic relations between Italy and the countries of destination. Emigrants in fact tended to import Italian products and disseminate their consumption abroad, also favouring increased commerce from abroad with Italy. These exhibitions thus constituted a “test of nationalism”,4 but not only that. They were also intended to justify the economic policies of the liberal governments in the eyes of public opinion.5 4 See Audenino, “La Mostra degli italiani”, 111–124. 5 On the Italian liberal economists in their relations with the public opinion of the

time, see now Economia e opinione pubblica nell’Italia liberale. Gli economisti e la stampa

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It was not an easy undertaking since emigration was also a phenomenon of poverty, of misery, and of difficulty in adaptation to the countries of destination. The polemics of emigration were extremely fierce inside the country. Already distinguishing himself in Liberal circles was the young Luigi Einaudi, author of fundamental essays on the subject but also leader of an intense and continuing journalistic campaign. In those circles, the need was felt to divulge to the greater public the positive aspects of the migratory phenomenon. For this reason, I will focus my attention on the content and tone of the Exhibition in an attempt to highlight the dysfunctions and evident contradictions between the representations of labour, of the successes and the results of emigrants abroad, and the real conditions of Italian emigration.

The Construction and Communication of the Message of the 1906 Exhibition The 1906 exhibition was not a simple show, but the endpoint of a vast cultural operation, which involved the main communities of Italians abroad on a continual basis. A series of publications and preparatory initiatives had been produced, which mobilised not only the Organising Committee of the Milan exhibition, but especially an extremely wide range of committees, organisations, and associations in the various countries which had welcomed Italian emigration, thus a massive involvement of communities and institutions abroad (Figs. 2, 3, and 4). This network of interlocutors representing the voice of Italian communities, still almost entirely first generation, with very strong links with the culture of the motherland, had collected materials and testimonies, and had produced a series of initiatives: photographic exhibitions, conferences, and especially printed works, which then constituted and constitute today most of the documentation. Among the most significant were the volumes about Peru, Argentina, and a series of monographs on Switzerland6 The data and statistics quotidiana. Gli economisti, Vol. 1, eds. Massimo M. Augello et al. (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2016). 6 Comitato di Lima per la Mostra degli italiani all’estero nell’esposizione di Milano del 1906, L’Italia al Perù, rassegna della vita e dell’opera italiana nel Perù (Lima: Litografia

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Fig. 2 Cover, L’Italia al Perù, rassegna della vita e dell’opera italiana nel Perù, Lima, 1906

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Fig. 3 Cover, Gli Italiani nella repubblica argentina, Buenos Aires, 1906

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Fig. 4 Cover, Gl’Italiani in Isvizzera, compilata per cura del giornale La Nazione italiana (Vevey, Tip. del giornale, 1906)

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Fig. 5 Italian businessman in his vineyard called “Gambellara”, in Stabilimento viti-vinicolo di Domenico Tomba in Belgrano di Mendoza, Repubblica Argentina (Album fotografico), 1906

were illustrated graphically, but the most striking was the photographic documentation. This was mostly organised along the lines of industrial photographic documentation which was popular at that time also in Italy, so with frontal and axial views that highlighted how imposing factories and constructions—the products of Italian emigrant labour—were; also shown were perspectival series of products, containers, vats, or cellar casks7 (Figs. 5 and 6).

e tipografia Fabbri, 1905–1906); Comitato della Camera italiana di commercio ed arti Buenos Aires, Gli Italiani nella repubblica argentina (Compania general de Fosforos, 1906); Gl’Italiani in Isvizzera, compilata per cura del giornale La Nazione italiana (Vevey, Tip. del giornale, 1906). 7 See on the subject Cesare Colombo ed., La fabbrica di immagini. L’industria italiana nelle fotografie d’autore (Firenze: Alinari, 1988); Giorgio Bigatti and Carlo Vinti, Comunicare l’impresa. Cultura e strategie dell’immagine nell’industria italiana (1945–1970), Sesto (San Giovanni: Fondazione ISEC, 2010).

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Fig. 6 Still section and moving presses, in Stabilimento viti-vinicolo di Domenico Tomba in Belgrano di Mendoza, Repubblica Argentina (Album fotografico), 1906

The photographic documentation of the protagonists of this epic migration testified to the upward social mobility of successful emigrant entrepreneurs. In this context, to the traditional single portraits, were added the classic collections of photographic medallions, often the work of mutual assistance societies, which presented the faces of “notable” personages of Italian emigrants in various countries; or photographs of ceremonies and festivities in which these same notables were captured, sometimes on the occasion of the visit of an important person from the motherland (Fig. 7). Artistic production was also celebrated as an attestation of Italianness; to tell the truth in a rather debatable manner, given that the “artistic-historical” section of the exhibition did not display works by contemporary artists who had emigrated, but basically a catalogue of the

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Fig. 7 Società Italiana di Mutuo Soccorso Anziana, in Gl’Italiani in Isvizzera, compilata per cura del giornale La Nazione italiana (Vevey, Tip. del giornale, 1906)

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works of Italian artists in other countries, especially in Europe, from the fifteenth century onwards.8 Inside the exhibitions these materials were displayed with a logic that conjoined the values of work with those of the nation; at the beginning, in fact, a triptych by the painter Alciati, dedicated to Industry, Agriculture and Art, followed by a reproduction of the monument to Dante in Trento “the advance guard of Italianness against brazen invasive Germanism”, noted the periodical “The Illustrated Exposition of Milan in 1906”9 (Fig. 8). In an important place were also the Catholic missionaries in various parts of the world, adopted with a certain nonchalance as vehicles of Italianness aside from religion. A somewhat pronounced attention was still given to the work of Valdesian and Protestant missions, obviously considerably less weighted than that of the Catholics.10 On the more secular side of this activity of disseminating Italian culture connected with humanitarian aid, considerable space was dedicated to the Italian Societies of Mutual Assistance abroad, and to some individual enterprises such as the Italian Hospital in London. Finally, noteworthy too was the section dedicated to the Italian press abroad, with more than 500 titles counted, but also the section on schools. Interest in the language and culture was intense. It is evident that the message conveyed tended to value the migration phenomenon as an expression of Italianness, but at the same time, and perhaps more emphatically, it tended to use it to reinforce a feeling of Italianness inside the country. ..there is much to be proud of in the effort and ingenuity with which legions of our brothers hold high our traditions abroad11 :

Or 8 “Catalogo descrittivo della mostra storico-artistica” Esposizione internazionale di Milano 1906. Mostra gli italiani all’estero, (Milano: Tip. La Prealpina, 1907). 9 “Il Padiglione degli italiani all’estero”, L’Esposizione Illustrata di Milano del 1906, Giornale ufficiale del comitato esecutivo giugno 1906, 18, 138. 10 Gaetano Conte, Le missioni protestanti ed i nostri emigrati, Esposizione di Milano 1906, Mostra gli italiani all’estero (Venezia: Tip. Istituto Industriale, 1906). 11 A.M. Annoni, “Gli Italiani all’estero”, L’Esposizione Illustrata di Milano del 1906, 11, aprile 1906, 82.

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Fig. 8 Nel Padiglione degli italiani all’estero. La Mostra della Dante Alighieri di Buenos Aires in Milano e l’esposizione Internazionale del Sempione 1906, n. 18, 270 …we see here that the Italian abroad is no longer synonymous with the shoe-shiner, guitar strummer, tramp and drunkard, but is now the hard working and ingenious worker, the skilled craftsman [...] at the centre of community life and of productive labour.12

Public Perception Sources for the study of the effective reception of the message of the exhibition are scarce, however indirect testimony may come from comments at the time, on the one hand from the press and intellectuals who wrote

12 “Il Padiglione degli italiani all’estero”, L’Esposizione illustrata di Milano del 1906, 22, luglio 1906, 170.

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about the event, and on the other more directly from the visitors to the exhibition themselves. It has been observed that the exhibition did not find much favour with the public. Einaudi wrote in 1906, in the columns of the pro-government newspaper “Corriere della sera”, that the Exhibition was not “appreciated to the extent that it deserved” by the public. Undoubtedly Einaudi was referring to the general public visiting the Exposition, and complained of the fact that spectators did not appreciate to best effect the importance of a representation perfectly consistent with its liberal political and cultural setting, preferring the more captivating and spectacular pavilions. In reality it was difficult to escape from the phantasmagoric logic of the Exposition and Einaudi himself could not help remarking on the pavilion of the Colony of Eritrea inside the exhibition, which he described in a dream-like fashion: … many would believe they were dreaming on seeing all the goodness of God that the colony produces and could produce in greater quantities [...] Those who at the Turin Exposition in 1898 were sceptical about the pieces of quartz displayed in a glass bell should now think again when seeing the full size models and the cross section of the workings of the gold-bearing quartz mines of Medrizien and Simmagallé13

The journalist Innocenzo Cappa, came out against the section as being among the “antithetical protagonists” of the exhibition as well as “something imposed by the will of government”, even if he himself in the end declared a fascination for the colonial dream (Fig. 9): Alas! There is a goldmine that winks at me and I too dream again of the ancient Africa of Imperial Rome, looking at Eritrea14

Einaudi’s judgement was undoubtedly conditioned only in small part by the fascination of the moment, and he was responding rather to a clearly defined political orientation. Italian colonial adventures, which stirred feelings of identity and “national” affirmation, had in the eyes of

13 Luigi Einaudi, “La mostra degli italiani all’estero”, Corriere della sera, 18, settembre 1906, 4, 255. 14 Innocenzo Cappa, “Vagabondo nelle sale degli Italiani all’estero”, Milano e l’esposizione Internazionale del Sempione 1906, 32, 486.

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Fig. 9 Mostra degli italiani all’estero. Colonia Eritrea (fot. Varischi, Artico e c., Milano), in Milano e l’esposizione Internazionale del Sempione 1906, n. 17, 243

the liberal economist an extremely problematic significance; they were supported by political forces such as nationalists and Catholics, as well as the right wing and the protectionist component of the Liberal party; even a part of the socialist workers movement, although without having a jingoistic orientation as in England, who looked with sympathy on an African colonisation that could absorb some of the surplus workforce of the motherland. In the face of this powerful front of political parties and public opinion, which saw its expectations satisfied a few years later with the conquest of Libya, liberals like Einaudi instead saw especially in emigration and the Italian communities abroad the physiological solution to the problem of overpopulation at home. But in reality, even if they constituted very different solutions to the problem of overpopulation at home, the colonial solution and that of

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emigration could well have both been appreciated in public communication and the principal media of the time, as well as in the spaces of the Exhibition itself. For example, in the case of the illustrated exposition of Milan 1906 Sonzogno dealt with it well in advance in two editorials in February and March 1906, defining the Pavilion as one of the highlights of the exposition15 ; and later, during the exhibition, as a place which the visitor leaves unwillingly, then on returning, enamoured, the Italian lingers, always finding new reasons for patriotic gratification and pride.16 At the same time, his direct competitor in Milan at the time, Treves attributed great importance to the event in his Milano e l’Esposizione Internazionale del Sempione 1906 dedicating images, full page photographs and articles to the exhibition: One of the most arresting attractions in the Piazza D’Armi Exposition is the Italians Abroad Pavilion, where the surprising evidence of the activities of our co-nationals in distant foreign lands can be admired.17

Particular mention was made of Italians in Argentina, Catholic missionaries and the works that “our valiant sons accomplished in distant Egypt, honouring their country”.18 Naturally Treves’s newspaper also gave prominence to the Eritrean display especially on account of intense recent interest in ethnography.19 Apart from these semi-official judgements, I try to make a comparison with the reception on the part of the public, looking at the perception of the Simplon exhibition by the workers sent to the expositions to perfect their professional expertise. These workers were required to produce a report, after their trip, often very extensive and in-depth, on the aspects of their visit that captured their interest: unusual and very interesting documentation, as writings

15 “Gli italiani all’estero”, L’esposizione illustrata di Milano, 8 and 10, febbraio 1906 and marzo 1906. 16 “Il Padiglione degli Italiani all’estero” in L’Esposizione Illustrata di Milano del 1906, 22, 1906, 170. 17 “Gl’Italiani dell’Argentina all’Esposizione”, Milano e l’Esposizione Internazionale del Sempione 1906, 270. 18 “Mostra degli Italiani all’estero. Le grandi costruzioni italiane in Egitto”, ibid. 483. 19 See in particular the article of Eduardo Ximenes “La Mostra Eritrea”, 17, 242–243.

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and commentary from the lower classes are rarely available sources, for the time. The workers were struck by the positive message and successes of their co-nationals abroad, but a series of critical observations also emerged. As is evident from this worker’s testimony: A doubt went through my mind that under the veil of a patriotic and philanthropic enterprise was hidden dishonest exploitation of our brothers even in those lands far from their homeland.20

Openly critical comments were not lacking. Some workers drew attention to the fact that: we still have to see leaving every year, half-starved, thousands of young people, in the prime of their strength, going far away, perhaps never to return, supplying the work of their brains or their muscles in exchange for the bread their nation denies them.21

An awareness of the critical aspects of emigration was often accompanied by a strong fascination in relation to the message of Italianness that emerged from the exhibition. In some this message was filtered through references to their trade, to professional skills; for example, commenting on photographs concerning Bosnia, one worker wrote: the Italians resident there built Italian type houses and for this we can be proud that the style of our Nation has not been forgotten by our brothers who were forced to forsake their home soil to find work.22

Often the appreciation took on explicitly patriotic tones, as in, for example, the comment of Raffaello Massetani, who does not hesitate to express his own “lively sense of gratification”: Our country has strongly affirmed the vigour of a young people and its faith in renewed nationhood, since in all the major centres of commercial life abroad it holds a respectable place even compared with the 20 ASCFi, Cerimonie, Festeggiamenti, Esposizioni, Esposizione di Milano 1906, Relazioni degli operai inviati, cart. 3, n. 5050, “Relazione dell’operaio Gino Calvetti”. 21 Ibid. 22 ASCFi, cit., “Relazione dell’operaio Arturo Berni”.

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grandeur of other powers. The current exhibition of Italians abroad is proof of the achievements and above all of great portent for our co-national emigrants.23

It is also necessary to note the numerous positive references to the activity of disseminating the Italian language and culture undertaken “with constant progress” by the Dante Alighieri Society, defined as “profoundly humanitarian work”. Finally, there was no lack of appreciation for missionary activity, which resulted in considerations that demonstrate how widespread among workers was a culture not only impregnated with “national” and patriotic values, but also with concepts inspired by a vision sometimes with racist overtones, when they examined the work of Italian missionaries: Great and sacrosanct is the work of the missionary fathers! How much effort, how many sacrifices. The way is not always easy but most often rough and treacherous. They are barbarian people, superstitious, who see in every foreigner an enemy, a usurper.24

What seems to get lost in their passage through the testimony of workers, or at least lose significance, are the life stories, the stand out, obvious success of individual entrepreneurs. There are not many references to the cases of individual entrepreneurial success that we saw highlighted in the preceding paragraph, as characteristic of the message of the exhibition. Generally, though, the message is more ambivalent. The workers are sensitive and they identify with their emigrant colleagues who have been successful, also appreciating the message of “Italianness” that emerges out of the Exhibition. In some cases, when Italian colonies are talked of, there are suggestions that recall English jingoism. In any case, the workers always show great interest and involvement. Nevertheless, the exhibition had a great impact on the more popular elements of the public. From the writings of the workers there is almost always reference to the “Pavilion of Italians Abroad”, but also to a participation, an involvement and a “sentiment” that at times brought “tears to the eyes”. The workers were anything but indifferent to the call to 23 ASCFi, cit., “Relazione dell’operaio Raffaello Massetani”. 24 ASCFi, cit., “Relazione dell’operaio Ugo Orlandini”.

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a shared “Italianness” that emerged from the exhibition; however, they perceived it in a somewhat more complex and controversial manner than the way it was presented by the ruling classes who had organised that great enterprise of national propaganda.

When the Italians Came on the Scene: Immigration and Negotiation of Identities in the Popular Theater of São Paulo in the Early Twentieth Century Virginia de Almeida Bessa

On Tuesday, April 10, 1917, the magazine O Eccho published a review of a music hall performance at the Apollo Theater in São Paulo. Located downtown, two blocks from the Teatro Municipal (São Paulo’s opera house frequented by an elitist and wealthy audience), the Apollo was one of the city’s main stages. The curious thing is that the article focused not on the spectacle, but rather on the public’s reaction, which was led by a small group hired to applaud:

This paper is supported by the grant 2016/05184-0, São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP). V. de Almeida Bessa (B) University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] University of Campinas, Campinas, Brazil

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. Mourlane et al. (eds.), Italianness and Migration from the Risorgimento to the 1960s, Palgrave Studies in Migration History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88964-7_18

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The injustice committed every night by the unbridled claque of the Apollo Theater is very remarkable. These clappers reserve their scandalous and noisy manifestations only for artists carrying an Italian name. If they get free tickets in exchange for applauding, it’s their strict duty to elevate any artist to the summit of triumph. […] But scorning artists because instead of Di Franco, destiny gave them the name Pirette, Fryana, Sylvette or any other, is an injustice […]. This came to mind one recent night, when I watched this claque be effusive towards the artists named Fiori or Pepinella, but remain as cold as a subscriber of the Teatro Municipal when faced with the charming Fragonette, a graceful French divette.

In describing—and censoring—the claque’s attitude, the reviewer gives us a glimpse into one of the main features of São Paulo’s theatrical scene in the first decades of the twentieth century: the strong Italian presence, not only on stage, but also in the audience. He also reveals that the identity ties between public and artists caused uneasiness in those who, like him, were not part of the Italian community. Added to this the fact that the Apollo Theater was managed by the Italian impresario, Pascoal Segreto,1 and we get a more complete picture of the issue this paper seeks to analyze: the role played by theater—especially in its popular form—in the construction and negotiation of Italian identity in São Paulo. To understand this question, we must go back to the last decades of the nineteenth century, when São Paulo started to experience a dizzying growth, caused in great part by immigration. Its population jumped from nearly 23,000 inhabitants in 1872 to about 400,000 in 1914 and over a million in 1934.2 In 1920, almost two-thirds of its residents were foreigners or descendants of foreigners, and more than half of male adults were Italians.3 The latter not only contributed to forming the working class and the Anarchist and Socialist movements, but also profoundly modified daily life in the city.

1 Paschoal Segreto (1868–1920) and his brother, Alfonso (1875–1920), were born in the region of Salerno, in Italy, and migrated to Brazil in 1883. There they soon introduced innovations in various areas of popular entertainment. Elizabeth Azevedo, “Pascoal em São Paulo,” Anais do IV Congresso de Pesquisa e Pós-Graduação em Artes Cênicas, ed. Maria de Lourdes Rabetti, (Rio de Janeiro: 7Letras, 2006), 218. 2 Angelo Trento, Do outro lado do Atlântico. Um século de imigração italiana no Brasil (São Paulo: Nobel, 1988), 123. 3 Trento, Do outro lado, 124.

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In fact, between the end of nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries, the strong immigrant presence in São Paulo gave its visitors the impression they were in Italy, since everything in the city seemed to come from there: the food, the style of the houses, the language. When visiting São Paulo in 1908, the Lombard doctor and writer, Gina Lombroso, was surprised by the Italian omnipresence in the city: One can hear more Italian spoken in San Paolo than in Turin, Milan, Naples, because while we speak the dialect, in San Paolo all the dialects come together under the influence of the Venetians and the Tuscans, who are in the majority, and the natives adopt Italian as the official language.4

Starting in the 1910s, however, the predominance of northern Italians was gradually replaced by that of southern ones, and the language spoken by the immigrants and their descendants became an Italian–Brazilian pidgin, merging words from various Italian dialects with Portuguese.5 At the same time, the proportion of Italians in São Paulo’s population started to decline. This happened not only because the migratory flows from Italy to Brazil decreased, but also because their main starting points changed from Veneto and Friuli to Campania and Calabria. The maps shown in Figs. 1 and 2 illustrate the number of Italians migrating to Brazil before and after 1902 according to their regional origin. Some 70 percent of them are known to have gone to São Paulo state, and although there is no exact data on the arrival of each group in the capital city of São Paulo, we can assume that the city received similar regional migratory flows. Once they arrived in the capital, the Italians flooded the city, making the expression “big Little Italy,” already used for Buenos Aires, equally valid for São Paulo.6 The vast majority, however, gathered in the workingclass neighborhoods, where important but non-exclusive regional concentrations could be identified: Calabrians in the Bixiga quarter, Neapolitans

4 Gina Lombroso, Nell’America Meridionale (Milan: Fratelli Treves, 1908), 34. 5 Angelo Trento, Os italianos no Brasil (São Paulo: Instituto Italiano de Cultura, 2000),

108–10. 6 Luigi Biondi, “‘Le quartier que j’admire le plus, c’est Bom Retiro’: l’archipel tropical urbain des Petites Italies de São Paolo (1880–1940),” in Les Petites Italies dans le monde, eds. Marie-Claude Blanc-Chaléard et al. (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2007), 105–19.

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Fig. 1 Map 1–Italian migration to Brazil (1878–1902) Source Angelo Trento Do outro lado do Atlântico: Um século de imigração italiana no Brasil (São Paulo: Nobel, 1988), 39

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Fig. 2 Map 2–Italian migration to Brazil (1903–1920) (Source Angelo Trento Do outro lado do Atlântico: Um século de imigração italiana no Brasil (São Paulo: Nobel, 1988), 60)

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in Brás, Venetians in Bom Retiro.7 There they kept their language and many of their habits, customs, beliefs, and popular festivities. Arriving from a newly unified Italy, marked by sharp regional differences, these groups were initially not unified by national feelings. According to Oswaldo Truzzi, rather than looking for a supposed Italian identity brought by the immigrants, it would be more appropriate “to investigate the process that led to the construction of an italianitá all’estero.”8 Many factors, both internal and external to the Italian community, contributed to the construction of italianità in São Paulo. The external factors included the fact that the Italians were perceived by local public opinion not only as “the Other” in regard to the Paulistas (São Paulo state inhabitants), but also as coming from a homogeneous Italy. Among the internal factors, we can mention different kinds of associations (musical, professional, sporting, political, charitable, of mutual aid, etc.) created by the immigrants in order to preserve their cultural and social ties. Although open to other nationalities, these associations were composed almost exclusively of Italians, and they were responsible for cultivating a national identity reinforced by São Paulo’s prolific Italian press. The theater played a dual role in the process of building italianità. Within the immigrant community, the filodrammatici (amateur theater groups) brought together Italians from different parts of the Peninsula to stage plays in Italian, especially those from authors connected with the Risorgimento. According to Miroel Silveira, at one point 70 such associations were active at the same time every weekend, promoting comforting patriotic soirées: “Here [in São Paulo] the Young Italy dreamed by Mazzini could be born, for in these soirées everything was done to proclaim and recognize the greatness of the distant homeland, the beauty of its language, the glory of its poets and playwrights, the vibration of its inimitable musicians.”9

7 Mario Carelli, Carcamanos e comendadores: os italianos em São Paulo (São Paulo: Ática, 1985), 34. 8 Oswaldo Truzzi, Italianidade no interior paulista (São Paulo: Editora Unesp, 2016),

36. 9 Miroel Silveira, “A presença italiana no teatro brasileiro,” in A presença italiana no Brasil, ed. Luis de Boni (Porto Alegre, EST, 1987), 441.

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Outside the immigrant community, theater contributed to spread stereotypical images of Italians, who became a stock character distinguished by its macaronic speech and expansive personality.10 The main vehicle for these images was the revue, a very popular theatrical genre characterized by the satire of customs, news, and contemporary issues. Structurally, the revue was formed by a succession of sketches and singing or dancing numbers disconnected from each other, but linked by a duo or trio of characters (the compères ) who functioned as a guiding thread throughout the play, devoid of plot or narrative development. Other conventions of this genre were the caricatures of public figures (politicians, artists, celebrities) and the allegorical characters (personification of events, fashions, institutions, feelings, and abstractions in general, such as The Crisis, The Jazz, The Marriage, The Love, etc.). In the revues set in São Paulo, which began to be staged in the last decade of the nineteenth century, it was almost mandatory that one of the compères was personified by the stock character of the Caipira (peasant or hick), an inhabitant from the state’s hinterland who left the countryside to visit the capital. At a time when the accelerating urbanization and the intense migratory flow disfigured the old colonial village, which would soon be transformed into a metropolis, the Caipira represented the authentic Paulista, still uncorrupted by foreign influences and the guardian of the fading rural traditions. Although less prominent, at least initially, the stock character of the Italian was also present in these revues. Unfortunately, no period images portraying actors characterized as Italians have been preserved. An idea of this appearance can be formed through the caricatures published in the press of the time, however. One of the most famous of these caricatures was Juó Bananère (John, the banana peddler), a character created by the writer and engineer, Alexandre Ribeiro Marcondes, who had also written revues. For four years, Bananère wrote a weekly fictional column in the magazine O pirralho (The Brat ), in which he commented on political and everyday events in a macaronic language. The column was illustrated with

10 A similar process occurred at Buenos Aires, where Italian Argentines created the Cocoliche, a stock character with a hilarious Italian–Argentine speech that merged gaucho and immigrant characteristics. Ana Cara-Walker, “Cocoliche: The Art of Assimilation and Dissimulation among Italians and Argentines,” Latin American Research Review, 3 (1987): 37–67. Thanks to Joseph Sciorra for this reference.

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Fig. 3 Excerpt from the column of Juó Banère (Source O Pirralho, October 21, 1911, p. 10)

caricatures by Voltolino, the pseudonym of Lemmo Lemmi, an Italian descendant (Fig. 3).

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Until the mid-1910s, most plays performed in São Paulo’s theaters, including revues, were staged by touring companies from Rio or abroad, since there were almost no local casts. However, after the outbreak of World War I, which blocked transatlantic shipping, the arrival of foreign companies in the city decreased significantly. This stimulated the emergence of local troupes. At the same time, foreign artists who were working in the city could not return to their countries, and many, especially Portuguese and Italians, ended up staying in the city, where they joined local companies or founded Italian–Brazilian ones. In addition, most musicians who played in the city’s theaters and cinemas were part of the Centro Musical de São Paulo, a class association founded in 1911 by Italians and Italian–Brazilian musicians, who practically monopolized the orchestra positions in the city, not only as players, but also as composers and conductors. In this context, the stages became a privileged place for identity negotiation, where the Paulistanidade (that is, the quality or state of being Paulista) and the italianità initially opposed each other, but ended up building a very particular local identity together. Four moments in this process will be highlighted next. In 1898, a touring company from Rio de Janeiro staged the revue “of São Paulo customs” O Boato (The Rumor) in São Paulo, written by the Paulista playwright, Arlindo Leal. It is one of the first plays in this genre set in São Paulo. In it, the stock character of the Italian appears timidly, in the form of street vendors in isolated scenes. One of them sells lottery tickets, a widespread activity among Italian immigrants. Another trades bananas, and a third vends lambari, a very popular kind of freshwater fish, which he advertises as lamparina (lamp), replacing the “b” with the “p.”11 This phonetic interchange, very common among Italian–Brazilians led to a misunderstanding involving the Caipira, one of the compères of the revue. This is one of the first representations of the contact between the two, revealing more confusion than opposition. Thirteen years later, in 1911, a Portuguese touring company stages the revue of “Portuguese–Brazilian customs” Fado e Maxixe in São Paulo, written by the Brazilian, João Phoca, and the Portuguese writer, André Brun. The play deals with the proximity between Portugal and Brazil, each one symbolized by its most representative musical genre, the Fado and the Maxixe, respectively. These allegorical characters also act as the 11 Miroel Silveira, A contribuição italiana ao teatro brasileiro (São Paulo: Quíron, 1976), 117.

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compères of the revue. In one sketch, all Brazilian states take part in a parade. Each one stops in front of the compères and presents itself. When it is the turn of São Paulo, represented by the stock character of the Caipira, the compères ask him to sing a cateretê, a rural musical genre typical of the state’s hinterland. His answer is reticent: “Since I started to receive immigrants, my specialty is the Italian romanza. I’m afraid to make a mess. …” However, at the insistence of the compères, he dares to sing a few verses. The result is a miscellany in which traditional São Paulo folk stanzas are fused with Italian opera arias (“La donna è mobile,” from Rigolletto by Verdi, and “O dolci baci, O languide carezze,” from Tosca by Puccini). After this failed presentation, the Maxixe comments: “This poor man is lost with such Italian romanza!”12 While in the late nineteenth century the Italian immigrant was portrayed as a picturesque character who animated the streets of São Paulo, by the early 1910s, he has become a strange element threatening to misrepresent local culture and memory. In 1914, two months before the outbreak of World War I, the revue São Paulo futuro was staged in São Paulo. For the first time, the Italian figures as one of the compères of the revue, along with the Caipira and the Soldier. As a complainer, he keeps repeating the buzzwords “Ma questo é una porcheria,” alluding to the Paulista habits. The linguistic misunderstandings between him and the Caipira continue to be explored. When he says “Dove I live, viccino lives Carolina,” the Caipira repeats it interrogatively: “Next to where you live there is creolina?” After a series of similar absurdities, the Italian shouts: “Gesù Cristo, butta why you create il Caipira?” To which the latter responds: “Jesus Christ created the Caipira to get in the way of the Italian.”13 Here there is a clear opposition between both characters, whose identities are reinforced by the differences between each other. S. Paulo futuro was also responsible for setting the three stock characters (the Caipira, the Italian, and the Soldier) as representative types of São Paulo. Throughout the 1910s and 1920s, this trio acted as compères of dozens of revues set in São Paulo, with the Soldier sometimes being replaced by the Portuguese character. The last example is from the 1930s. In 1930, a coup d’état led by Getúlio Vargas puts an end to the Paulista dominance in the federal government and ushers in a dictatorship that would last 15 years. In 1932,

12 Silveira, A contribuição italiana, 127. 13 Danton Vampré, S. Paulo futuro (typewritten original, n.d.), 23.

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a group of Paulista civilians rebelled against the Vargas government and demanded the immediate drafting of a constitution to replace the one the dictator had revoked. In this context, a Paulista theatrical troupe stages the revue Civil e Paulista (Civilian and Paulista), whose compères are the Caipira, the Italian (Caetano, the only one with a forename), and the Portuguese character. In the fight against Vargas, they overcome national differences in the name of a local identity. This alliance is clear in the final scene of the first act, which explains the play’s title. It begins with the Caipira refusing to say something to the other compères. At the insistence of Caetano, the Caipira becomes exasperated: CAIPIRA—Come on, Caetano! What’s the use of knowing this? You are neither civilian nor Paulista. CAETANO (exaggerating)—Portogaise, did you ear what e said? PORTUGUESE—He did the same with me. He has this craze now! CAETANO (to the Caipira)—So I emma notta chivile? CAIPIRA—Civilian? Yes, you are. CAETANO—But I emma notta Paulista? CAIPIRA (laughing)—Ahaha! (aside) I can’t believe it! CAETANO (furious)—I emma Paulista si signore! PORTUGUESE—He’s a civilian and Paulista as much as I! CAETANO—Ma che! I emma Paulista and chivile much more den you! PORTUGUESE—Hold on! São Paulo is in Brazil, and who discovered Brazil? The Portuguese Pedro Alvares Cabral! CAETANO—Ma il Brasile is in America, and who discovered-a America? Cristoforo Colombo! CAIPIRA—Calm down, people! CAETANO—Ma che calma! I don’t let anyone-a sé in ma face-a I emma notta Paulista! (explaining, always angry) Who have due house near the chiesa di San Paolo, it’s notta me? Who sell-a the lottery ticketta, it’s notta me? Who supporta il Palestra14 againsta il San Paolo? It’s notta me? PORTUGUESE—Who sells the Port Wine made in São Paulo, it’s notta me? 14 The Palestra was the soccer team of the Italian community, here ironically presented as a symbol of Paulistanidade in opposition to the team of the local elite (the São Paulo soccer team).

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CAIPIRA (laughing)—Ahahaha! (aside) All I can do is laugh! CAETANO (even more angry)—Der is nofing to laugh about. I emma chivile and Paulista, Madonna del Carmine! PORTUGUESE (to the Caipira)—Know that two Paulista civilians are standing before you. CAETANO (holding the Caipira by the jacket)—Sé right now: Viva San Paolo! CAIPIRA (in a timid voice, scared)—Viva! PORTUGUESE—(also holding the Caipira by his jacket)—Say it again, Viva São Paulo! CAIPIRA (still scared)—Viva! (aside) I see I am the only foreigner here. CAETANO—Der is anoder chivile and Paulista I waz-a forgetting. PORTUGUESE—Who would he be? Al Capone ? CAETANO—No, I refer to dat great-a soldier, who married Anita from Brazil. At this moment, an allegorical character symbolizing the italianità enters the scene. The character has no gender, wears a white tunic with a laurel wreath, and carries a scepter. SYMBOL (to Caetano)—Did you mean Giuseppe Garibaldi? CAETANO—Dats right-a! SYMBOL (in a declamatory tone)—Giuseppe Garibaldi! The most legitimate Glory in the unification of the Italian Fatherland. An incomparable warrior, who expelled the Austrian enemy troops from Piedmont. Invincible hero in the struggles of Good against Evil, of the oppressed against the oppressors. Who crossed the Atlantic and came to give his name and blood to the civilizing conquests of Brazil.15 The symbol delivers a long speech, after which an apotheotic scene follows as an homage to Garibaldi, with choir singers dressed as bersaglieri and the flags of Italy, Brazil, and São Paulo state in the background. After emancipating their mother country, the Italians of São Paulo, as true Paulistas, are called to liberate Brazil from its tyrant. 15 João do Sul. Civil e Paulista (typewritten original, n.d.), 7–9.

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These four moments in the history of São Paulo’s popular theater, with their different representations of the Italians, reveal how the italianità was built first in opposition, and then in association with the paulistanidade, which also underwent profound change as a result of contact with the immigrants. The high point of this process would occur in the 1940s, outside the theater, with the emergence of the Italian–Caipira type created by the radio actor, composer, and singer, Adoniran Barbosa, the pseudonym of the Italian descendant, João Rubinato (1910–1982). This type, present in the lyrics of his songs as well as in his radio programs, merged the two main stock characters of São Paulo’s revues into what is considered to be the best representation of the Paulista, which is still present in the local collective imaginary.

Index

A Accursi, Michele, 141 Adriatic Sea, 43 Aegina, 35, 38 Africa, 154, 221 Aix-en-Provence, 32 Alapetite, Gabriel, 83 Albania, 15, 44, 45, 101, 102 Alciati, 219 Alexandria, 41, 42 Alfieri, 139 Alighieri, Dante, 135, 139, 140 Alpes-Maritimes, 101 Alps, 2 America. See USA Americas, 28, 143, 187 Anfuso, Filippo, 104 Apennines, 159 Appalachians, 157 Arditi, Luigi, 146 Argentina, 17, 21, 61, 63, 64, 66, 67, 70, 88, 89, 91–93, 99, 179, 200–202, 208, 212, 217, 223

Armenia, 41 Athens, 35, 41 Atlantic, 2, 238 Austria, 100, 121, 151, 152 Avio, 66

B Bachi, 208 Baldelli, Ferdinando, 122 Balkans, 44, 101 Bandiera, 47 Barbosa, Adoniran, 239 Barcelona, 100 Barduzzi, Carlo, 98, 100 Bastianini, Giuseppe, 98, 103, 104 Baudry, Louis Claude, 138, 141 Beccaria, Cesare, 137 Belgiojoso, Cristina di, 13, 29, 34, 35, 37, 38, 140, 141 Belgium, 28, 134, 165 Bellini, Bernardo, 19 Bellini, Ruggero, 82, 83, 141, 183

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 S. Mourlane et al. (eds.), Italianness and Migration from the Risorgimento to the 1960s, Palgrave Studies in Migration History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88964-7

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INDEX

Belluno, 41 Benoni, Lorenzo, 37 Béranger, Pierre-Jean de, 31 Berlin, 104 Bern, 100 Biagioli, Niccolò Giosafatte, 138, 139 Biondelli, Giuseppe, 98 Bixiga, 229 Bizerte, 80, 81 Boccaccio, Giovanni, 135 Bodrero, Alessandro, 98 Bologna, 29 Bom Retiro, 232 Bonanomi, Carlo, 80 Boretto, 158, 163 Bossange, Martin, 139 Bossi, Carlo, 98, 100 Botta, Carlo, 138, 139 Bou Ficha, 81–83 Brás, 232 Brazil, 64, 70, 102, 103, 206, 229, 235, 237, 238 Bridgeville, 157 Brignone, Pietro, 79, 82, 83 Britain. See Great Britain Bronx, 114, 116 Brownsville, 54 Brun, André, 235 Buenos Aires, 17, 22, 66, 67, 91, 98, 200–204, 208, 214, 229 Burns, John Horne, 57 Buttura, Antonio, 137, 139, 141

C Cabiati, 208 Cabral, Pedro Alvares, 237 Caffi, Ippolito, 41 Calabria, 229 Campania, 229 Cannonieri, Giuseppe Andrea, 140 Cape Bon, 82

Capone, Al, 238 Cappa, Innocenzo, 221 Capra, Frank, 53 Caracas, 103 Carducci, Giosuè, 77 Castrocaro, 31 Castruccio, Giuseppe, 98, 100 Cattaro, 46 Cernuschi, Enrico, 40 Cesare, 56 Channel, 40 Chateaubriand, 138 Cherry, 158 Chicago, 98, 100, 122, 158 Chile, 64 Chiostri, Manfredo, 103, 104 Ciano, Galeazzo, 90 Civitavecchia, 35 Colombo, Cristoforo, 237 Compagnone, Joseph, 55 Consenza, Mario, 110 Constantinople, 21, 35, 42, 184, 186, 187, 196 Cooper, Fenimore, 146 Corfu, 15, 42–47 Corsica, 31, 37, 102 Cortesi, Virginio, 81 Corvo, Max, 56 Cotillo, Salvatore, 116 Covello, Leonard, 110–112, 114, 115 Crete, 43 Croatia, 103 Cuba, 143 Curitiba, 102 Cyprus, 43

D D’Alessio, 171 D’Alessandro, Luigi, 79, 82 Dalmatia, 101, 103 Davies, Jefferson, 148

INDEX

De Donno, 45 de Martino, Giacomo, 108, 112 de Staël, Madame, 138 Dickstein, Samuel, 116 Di Malta, Francesco, 82, 83 Di Silvestro, Giovanni, 110 Dubrovnik, 102 Durres, 41 E Eastern Mediterranean, 43, 186, 190 East Harlem, 115 Egypt, 55, 102, 223 Einaudi, Luigi, 208, 212, 221, 222 El Kef, 80 Ellis Island, 51 Emilia, 161, 164, 166 Enfida, 81 England, 32, 134, 148, 150, 210, 222 Eritrea, 221 Ethiopia, 101, 109, 115 Europe, 1, 12, 13, 27, 49, 50, 54, 71, 121, 123, 138, 141, 148, 152, 219 F Fabbri, Cesare, 77, 78 Farina, 81, 82 Ferrara, Renzo, 98 Florence, 31 Foresti, Felice Eleuterio, 144, 147 Forli, 31 Fort Missoula Camp, 51 France, 23, 28–30, 33–35, 39, 99, 102, 134, 136–139, 141, 148, 165, 177, 187, 210 Franco, 99 Frignani, Angelo, 13, 29, 31–33, 37, 140 Frignano, 159

243

Friuli, 229

G Garibaldi, Giuseppe, 154, 189, 238 Garrison, William Lloyd, 151 Geisser, 208 Gemelli, Bruno, 103, 104 Genoa, 32, 33, 76, 208 Germany, 100, 102, 121, 210 Giambalvo, 128 Ginguené, Pierre-Louis, 137 Gladstone, William Ewart, 40 Gorzkowsky, 41 Grandi, Dino, 97 Graziadei, 208 Graziani, Leone, 46 Great Britain, 29, 34, 40, 43, 187 Greece, 43, 44, 101, 102 Gualtieri, 157, 158 Guariglia, 103 Guerrazzi, Francesco, 141 Guicciardini, 138

H Habsburg, 42, 64 Hamburg, 100 Helsinki, 100 Hersey, John, 53 Hotze, Henry, 148, 149, 152 Hunt, James, 149

I Incisa di Camerana, Ludovico, 103 Inquisitore, Maria, 114 Ionian Islands, 41–43, 102 Iraq, 99 Istanbul, 41, 183, 185, 188, 194 Italian peninsula. See Italy Italy, 1, 6, 8, 10, 12, 16, 18, 20, 28, 29, 32, 35, 44–46, 49, 50, 53,

244

INDEX

54, 58, 61, 62, 66, 69, 70, 77, 79, 85, 88, 89, 91, 93, 98–100, 102, 105, 108, 112, 119, 121–126, 128, 134–138, 140–143, 145–148, 150, 153, 154, 157, 161–164, 186, 188, 189, 194–196, 198, 201–203, 207, 208, 210, 211, 216, 229, 232, 238

J Jannaccone, 208 Jaubert, Caroline, 34, 35 Jerusalem, 99, 101 Joppolo, Victor, 59 Joseph I, Franz, 41

K Kamenetzky, Mikhail Misha, 58 Kelibia, 82, 83

L Lacaita, Giacomo, 40 LaGuardia, Mayor Fiorello, 116 Lamartine, 138 Lamennais, 31 Landi, Andrew, 122 La Paz, 103 Lassovich, Giovanni, 46 Latin America. See South America Leal, 235 Lefevre, Jean-Jacques, 139 Levant. See Middle East Liberati, Enrico, 98 Libya, 101, 222 Licata, 53 Lincoln, Abraham, 148, 151 Livorno, 31, 76 Lojacono, 103 Lombardy, 41, 42, 44

Lombroso, Gina, 229 London, 40, 98, 100, 104, 148, 149, 219 Louisiana, 146, 147 Louis-Philippe, 34, 35 Luzzati, 8

M Macfarland, James E., 147, 148 Mâcon, 33 Madison Square Garden, 116 Madrid, 99 Maggi, Alberto, 144 Mahdia, 80 Malta, 35, 38, 99, 102 Mamiani Della Rovere, Terenzio, 140 Mammalella, Amedeo, 102, 104 Manetta, Filippo, 19, 143–154 Mangione, Jerre, 58 Manin, Daniele, 42, 44 Manzoni, Alessandro, 20, 136, 140, 141 Marcantonio, Vito, 115 Marseille, 22, 32, 33, 98, 100, 200, 202 Marubi, Pietro, 15, 45 Mazzini, Giuseppe, 12, 32, 45, 93, 141, 143–145, 151, 189, 232 Mazzolini, Quinto, 98, 101 Mazzolini, Serafino, 98, 102, 104 Mediterranean, 29, 135, 187, 189, 198 Medrizien, 221 Meneghini, Andrea, 47 Menton, 33 Middle East, 12, 103 Miele, Stefano, 116 Milan, 35, 136, 208, 209, 212, 223, 229 Mississippi, 147 Modena, 134, 165

INDEX

Molco, Attilio, 78, 79 Monaco, 33 Monaco, Carmelo, 52 Monastir, 80 Montenegro, 102 Montevideo, 102 Montreal, 99 Monviso, 149 Mossi, Luigi, 145 Musset, 138 Mussolini, Benito, 9, 14, 17, 22, 50, 51, 85, 97, 100, 102, 107, 108, 115, 175, 179, 180

N Naples, 35, 55, 134, 136, 137, 153, 229 Negrone, Luigi, 98 New Jersey, 111 New York, 18, 54, 98, 100, 110, 114, 115, 127, 143–147, 151, 154, 174, 180 New York State, 53 Nice, 34, 98, 101 North Africa, 12, 103 North America, 12, 23, 70, 166 North-Eastern Italy, 61

O Odessa, 100 Ottoman Empire, 21, 29, 34, 185, 187, 189, 190, 194, 197

P Palestine, 41 Panizzi, Antonio, 40 Papal States, 29, 31, 134, 140 Parini, Piero, 9, 90–92, 98, 102, 104 Paris, 35, 98, 104, 137–139 Patras, 42

Pearl Harbour, 50 Pecora, Ferdinand, 116 Pedrazzi, Orazio, 98, 99, 104 Pellico, Silvio, 30, 141 Peninsula. See Italy Pennsylvania, 20, 157, 158, 167 Pepe, Guglielmo, 46 Perón, 93 Peru, 212 Pescantini, Federico, 140 Petrarch, Francesco, 135 Phoca, João, 235 Piacenza, 45, 144 Piedmont, 134, 143, 149, 238 Piedmont-Sardinia, 12, 33 Pincherle, Leone, 47 Pittsburgh, 100 Pius IX, 12 Poggi, Giuseppe, 137, 138 Poletti, Charles, 53 Pope, Generoso, 111, 114–116 Po Plain. See Po Valley Porto Alegre, 103 Portugal, 28, 102, 235 Po Valley, 20, 157, 159, 165, 166 Prague, 99 Prato, 208 Primo di Rivera, Jose António, 99 Primrose, 157 Provence, 30, 31, 33, 37 Province of Trento, 68 Puccini, Mario, 236 Puglia, 79 Pugliese coast. See Puglia Pyle, Ernie, 55

Q Quartaroli, Antenore, 158 Quebec, 165

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INDEX

R Radetzky, Marshal, 41 Ragusa, 41 Ravenna, 29, 31, 32 Ribeiro Marcondes, Alexandre, 233 Rio. See Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro, 235 Rio de la Plata, 99 Romagna, 32 Romanelli, Guido, 98 Rome, 8, 34, 35, 37, 53, 78, 84, 189, 204, 221 Ronna, Antonio, 141 Roosevelt, F.D., 49, 51–53, 57, 115, 175 Rosario, 103 Rosso, Augosto, 115 Rubinato, João, 239 Ruffini, Giovanni, 13, 29, 32, 33, 37 Russia, 58

S Salfi, Francesco Saverio, 137, 139 Salonica, 100 San Benedetto, 31 Santiago de Chile, 99 São Paulo, 21, 98, 100, 102, 227–229, 232, 233, 235–237 São Paulo State, 229, 238 Sardinia, 33, 44, 77, 134, 153, 161 Scamporino, Vincent, 56 Schengen space, 68, 71 Scott, Winfield, 146, 147 Scutari, 15 Secchi de Casali, Giovanni Francesco, 144 Segreto, Pascoal, 228 Sella, 208 Sfax, 80, 81 Shkodër, 45 Sicily, 13, 49, 52–54, 56–58, 77, 153

Simini, Gennaro, 45 Simmagallé, 221 Simplon Tunnel, 209 Sirovich, William, 116 Solazzo, Guido, 98 Sousse, 80–82 South Africa, 99 South America, 12, 23, 62, 64–66, 69, 70, 88, 89, 103 Southern Italy, 52, 77 South Tyrol, 65 Spain, 28, 29, 99, 101, 187 Stille, Ugo, 58 St Martin, 147 Stuki, 57 Suvich, 103 Switzerland, 34, 134, 165, 212 Sydney, 98, 102 Syria, 41 T Tamaro, Attilio, 98, 100 Tennessee, 147 Terra, Gabriel, 102 Ticino, 99 Tommaseo, Niccolò, 18, 42, 46, 141, 142 Toscani, Frank, 53, 59 Trentino, 13, 14, 61, 63–68, 71 Trentino-Alto Adige, 64 Trento, 219 Tunis, 76, 78–81, 83, 99 Tunisia, 16, 75–81, 83, 84, 102 Turin, 136, 143, 149, 150, 161, 221, 229 Turkey, 41 Tuscany, 31 Tyrol, 64 U United States (US). See USA

INDEX

United States of the Ionian Islands, 43 Uruguay, 64, 102 USA, 14, 17, 18, 20, 50–55, 58, 108, 109, 111, 119–128, 144, 145, 147, 150, 152–154, 157, 160, 163, 164, 166, 171, 237 USSR, 100 V Valley of the Reno, 159 Valli Giudicarie, 66 Var, 33 Vargas, 236, 237 Vecchiotti, Consul General, 116 Venetia, 41, 42, 44, 47 Veneto, 229 Venice, 15, 41, 42, 136, 139, 193, 196

Verdi, Giuseppe, 236 Verri, 137 Verzellesi, Umberto, 157 Vienna, 47 Virginia, 146, 151 Vittoli, 45 Voltolino, Lemmo Lemmi, 234

W Washington, 104, 116

Y Yugoslavia, 99

Z Zambeccari, Count Livio, 46 Zurich, 103

247