Abstract
This article deals with the impact that Italian migrants, both individually and as a community, had on the rural and urban environment of Kerch, in Eastern Crimea (Russian Empire), during the1820s and 1920s. Occupying a strategic position in the Black Sea for Russia's geopolitics and for the whole European commercial system, this territory's transformation was activated by Russia's imperial re-visioning of the Crimea and by spontaneous foreign immigration. Within this context, the Italian community's contribution to the transformation of the local environment had an important economic impact, relevant also on a wider scale. Some of these changes would have a long-lasting effect but none of them would ever be officially recognised. The aim of this article is to shed light on these processes.
Highlights
This article deals with the impact that Italian migrants, both individually and as a community, had on the rural and urban environment of Kerch, in Eastern Crimea (Russian Empire), during the1820s and 1920s
The thesis presented by the German historian August Ludwig von Schlözer, later professor at the St Petersburg Academy of Science, became so influential that it would determine the populationist political course adopted by Russia’s empress, Catherine the Great (1729–96)
The Italian migration to the northern Black Sea region is embedded within this context
Summary
Tommasini and Bianchi belonged to a migration flow of merchants, all single men and mainly from Genoa, that was linked to grain trade and adventurism: Donna Gabaccia (2003) identifies these as the carriers of civiltà italiana abroad Their stories allow exploration into the ‘individual part’ of the Italian interaction with Eastern Crimea’s environment, along with the stories of many more migrants who, as autonomous men of culture, populated the shores of the Russian Black Sea since the early nineteenth century (Varvartsev 1994) without shaping an Italian national diaspora (Clementi 2002). The Italians in Eastern Crimea contributed to the development of activities including horticulture, dock works, the fish industry, and the management and exploitation of natural resources Just as they had an impact on the hosting environment, socio-economic and environmental factors had had an impact on them and on their decision to migrate.
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