Italian Immigrants in Australia, 1900-22

Abstract

In researching the history of Italian emigration during the years 1900-1922, one is immediately struck by the fact that this period is indeed a 'black hole' in the historiography of the Italian community in Aus tralia. Unlike the second part of the nineteenth century, there were no charismatic figures, no Carboni's, Fiaschi's, Cattani's, Baracchi's, and there were no dramatic and colourful instances of Italian colonisation, such as the New Italy episode in the 1880s or the several other group settlements undertaken at the end of the century. Similarly absent was that infrastructure of clubs, political and recreative associations which characterised the following period from 1922 to 1945 and which, to gether with the issue of Fascism and a sharp increase in Italian immi gration to Australia, drew the attention of Australian journalists, social scientists and demographers, as well as historians. This absence of studies on early twentieth century Italian migration is even more remarkable as 10.7 million people emigrated from Italy between 1900 and 1922. The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Tommaso Tittoni, in a report to the Italian Parliament in 1906, admitted that the exodus was 'a phenomenon abnormal in character and proportions'.1 Yet, what is most damnable in the attitude of Italian governments of the time, both of the Sinistra and of the Destra, is not so much their inability to procure employment at home for so many of their subjects, which might have checked this enormous drain of human resources, as their failure to give the emigrants the legislative protection needed to ensure that their treatment during the sea voyage and on their arrival at their destinations was at least equal to that given to migrants of other nationalities. Instead, when the first and by no means satisfactory law on emigration was passed in 1888, over one million migrants had already left Italy for overseas, and another million would migrate before 1901, when a second, more comprehensive Bill was approved and a Commissariat-General for Emigration created.2 Yet, in 1910 and again in 1919 this Act was further amended because of the insufficient legal protection it was affording the migrants. Migrants were often considered to be a burden, best disposed of quietly and without much publicity. For instance, in 1913 the Commissioner-General for Emigration, Giuseppe De Michelis, issued instructions to his staff to suspend departures of migrant ships from Italian ports during the political elections to avoid repercussions adverse