Italian Settlers Research Articles

‘Natural’ disasters, ignorance, and the mirage of Italian settler colonialism in late nineteenth-century Africa

ABSTRACT This article places the origins of Italian settler colonialism and its defeat in the battle of Adwa (1896) in the global perspective of the environmental history of European imperialism. It argues that the Italian project to turn the highlands of the Horn of Africa into a settler colony was an “imperial mirage”: the perception that the momentarily depopulated landscape of Ethiopia, produced by “natural” disasters that were in fact the social products of colonial warfare, would be available to Italian settlers in the future. This mirage was based on a domino effect of environmental catastrophes connecting climate history, animal disease, and the politics of European imperialism. Italians’ introduction of rinderpest in Eritrea in the wake of an El Niño-related drought triggered “the Great African Rinderpest Panzootic” and the “Great Ethiopian Famine”. The mixture of willful ignorance and wishful self-deception that fueled Italian projects explains Italy’s defeat in the battle of Adwa. Building on the methodology of environmental historians and scholars in Science and Technology Studies, this article shifts focus from the power of the state to the techno-politics of colonialism in its impact on natural environments and African communities through the lens of the cultural production of ignorance.

“Some Typically African Risks”: Safeguarding the Health of Italian Settlers During the Fascist Empire (1935–1941)

“Some Typically African Risks”: Safeguarding the Health of Italian Settlers During the Fascist Empire (1935–1941)

The Regulation of ‘Mixed’ Marriages in Colonial Libya: At the Crossroads of Nationalism, Religion, and Race

ABSTRACT This article analyzes how civil and religious authorities regulated ‘mixed’ marriages between Italian settlers and Libyans during the Italian colonization of Libya (1911-1942). As an institution situated at the core of discursive and regulatory frameworks regarding property, heritage, and religion, marriage had been a contentious jurisdictional issue between Italian governments and the Vatican since the birth of the nation-state in 1861. This article traces the conflicts and convergences that characterized the institution's history in colonial Libya, detailing how it intersected with political projects regarding the racial and religious characterization of the Italian national identity. The study of the institutional clashes between the Italian state and the Vatican, Italian nationalism and Catholicism, frame this article's qualitative analysis of ‘mixed’ couples’ experiences regarding marriage in the colony. Through this multi-layered analysis, this article shows the crucial importance of the regulation of mixture in the Italian empire, where even small numbers of ‘mixed’ marriages could impact the development of racial categories and national and religious belonging.

Killing Fields: Environment, Agency, and the Fascist Conquest of Colonial Libya

The article seeks to reflect on the question of "nature’s agency" in histories of violence. It thus revisits the choices and outcomes of Fascist policy in Libya by foregrounding the colony’s ecology. The determination to win a war on inhospitable terrain led to the regime’s decision to set up concentration camps for Bedouin tribes and their herds in the desert-like and semiarid areas of Cyrenaica, which in turn had a murderous effect on humans and animals. From there, the article moves on to the second phase of Italian conquest, when the defeat of the anticolonial resistance turned into a "conquest of nature", with the agricultural reclamation of the highlands of Cyrenaica for Italian settlers. These agricultural centers and their people, which might at first sight seem bucolic and benign, were just as injurious to the Bedouin ecology predating the Italian occupation as were the concentration camps. The conclusion ponders the moral imperatives in writing histories of Fascist violence and the openings for environmental history.

An intergenerational conceptualisation of Italian-Australian ethnic identity through Bourdieu and Heidegger

ABSTRACTThis paper provides a phenomenological reconceptualisation of ethnic identity. Drawing upon a case study of a family originating in Calabria, Italy, and living in Adelaide, South Australia, I consider the way in which the three generations perceive their ‘being ethnic’ across time and space. The first-generation participants were born in Italy and migrated to Australia during the 1950s; the second generation are their children; and the third generation are the children of the second generation. The findings show a widespread intergenerational identification of ethnicity as ‘being Italian’, which, however, has different meanings across the three generations. This depends on the participants’ phenomenological perceptions of being thrown into the world [Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and time. (J. Macquarie & E. Robinson, Trans.). New York, NY: Harper]. Some 40 years after Huber’s [(1977). From pasta to Pavlova: A comparative study of Italian settlers in Sydney and Griffith. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press] study about the assimilation of Italian-Australians published in her book From Pasta to Pavlova, the present paper shows a movement from pavlova to pasta, especially by the third-generation participants, who experience a sense of ethnic revival. Essential in such a shift of ethnic identity is what I refer to as institutional positionality; that is, one’s perceptions of the position of one’s ‘ethnic being in the world’. This is investigated by combining with the sociology of migration, including the Bourdieusian conceptual apparatus of capital [Bourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of capital. In J. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of theory and research in the sociology of education (pp. 241–258). New York, NY: Greenwood Press], a Heideggerian existential theory [Heidegger, 1962]. Such a juxtaposition provides further reflexivity through a reconceptualisation that considers the role of ontology in the sociology of migration.

De Brez, Trento al mineral de Sierra Mojada, Coahuila, México. Redes transnacionales de mineros italianos

This paper examines the migration flow of a community of farmers from Brez, Trentino – at the time part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire – that headed to Sierra Mojada in Coahuila to work as miners. It describes the political and cultural characteristics of the receiving country, the Italian settlers, and the transnational geographic spaces they had to cross. Numerically the miners are only a small fraction of the total emigration from northern Italy to Mexico, yet the microhistorical Italian perspective makes it possible to frame them within international migratory movements. The study found consistent connections between migrants’ city of origin and adopted city, and identified the importance of networks of family members and friends for support for subsequent migration flows. Those who returned as a result of World War I – as subjects of the Kingdom of Italy – continued to work as miners in different locations, making them difficult to trace.

The Suppression of the Music of Ionian Islands by the Modern Greek State: Culture that did not Fit the Political Agenda

Music plays an important role in social integration, often providing the vehicle for how one culture reinterprets itself in another. However, as in the case of the Ionian Islands, a peoples’ ability to incorporate outside influences and produce local culture may find itself at odds with the more nationalistic purposes of the state. The Ionian Islands came to be part of the Greek state without enduring the yoke of occupation by the Ottoman Empire or suffering in the wars that preceded the Greek free state. Therefore, the Ionian culture, in particular its popular music, has been made obscure by political elites who defined Greece as the benevolent opposite of its enemies, as the center of civilization and therefore without cultural influences – a definition that Ionian music, influenced by Italian settlers, did not meet.

Colonial Twilight: Italian Settlers and the Long Decolonization of Libya

Italian decolonization has often been described as precocious, given Italy's loss of effective control over its colonies as a result of military defeat in the Second World War. In Libya, however, the projects of agrarian ‘demographic colonization’ that became a showpiece of fascist colonialism continued until 1960 and created persistent tensions between Italy and the independent Libyan state. This article examines a key aspect of Italy's protracted disengagement from Libya: the extended colonial twilight in which Italian farmers continued to work land under the aegis of the parastatal Italian National Social Security Institute. The analysis demonstrates that the fascist colonial project in Libya aimed to sedentarize not only rebellious Libyan pastoralists but also the restless Italian agrarians who formed the backbone of Italian mass emigration overseas. In placing families in planned rural settlements in Libya, the Institute and Italian state officials struggled to circumscribe the mobilities of these colonists. Even after 1945 and fascism's end, settlers possessed little freedom of movement, as demonstrated by the frequent obstacles to repatriation to Italy. Examining settlers' experiences reveals the complexity of the ‘long decolonization’ of Italian Libya, as well as how mobility became a key site of contest under fascism and beyond.

Colonising Italians: Italian Imperialism and Agricultural ‘Colonies’ in Australia, 1881–1914

ABSTRACTThe historiography of Australian imperialism before the First World War has often neglected a context wider than the relationship with Great Britain. Yet this era also implicated non-British governments and their emigrants. Despite their small numbers, Italian settlers are significant for highlighting Italy's empire-building and Australia's struggles for national and imperial unity. Italy's foreign policies after 1901 opened commercial opportunities across its diasporic networks, which included subsidising agricultural ‘colonies’ in Australia. The contemporary discourses of sectarianism and racism voiced before Federation articulated political and popular resistance against Italian immigrants. The rhetoric shifted after Federation as state governments examined the issue of land tenure for closer settlements (small agricultural farms), appealing to an argument about serving unemployed Australians before approving foreign settler schemes. The history leading up to two Italian projects in Western Australia and Queensland in 1907 allows reflections on Italy's diaspora colonisation and Australian responses to foreign imperialism.

European Migration, National Origin and Long-term Economic Development in the United States

abstract Have Irish, German, or Italian settlers arriving in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century left a trace that determines differences in economic development to this day? Does the national origin of migrants matter for long-term development? This article explores whether the distinct geographic settlement patterns of European migrants according to national origin affected economic development across U.S. counties. It uses microdata from the 1880 and 1910 censuses in order to identify where migrants from different nationalities settled and then regresses current levels of economic development on settlement patterns according to national origin, using both ordinary least squares and instrumental variable approaches. The analysis controls for a number of factors that would have determined the attractiveness of different U.S. counties at the time of migration as well as current levels of development. The results indicate that while there is a strong and positive impact associated with overall migration, differences in the quality of the institutions of the countries of origin of the migrant are not necessarily a good predictor for current levels of economic development of U.S. counties.

Escrever, publicar e memorar: a literatura produzida por descendentes de imigrantes italianos no Rio Grande do Sul

This article aims to examine how writing has been used as a reflective instrument of resistance and cultural identitary expression among descendants of Italian settlers in Rio Grande do Sul State (Brazil). This practice had its beginnings in the last decades of the last century and proliferated quantitatively and qualitatively following their economic, social and political rise. Through ethnographic and documental research among these descendants, we can get to know and analyze the dimensions of this process that grows both among individuals from rural and urban areas as well as among different genders and social classes. In this article in particular I will focus on the written production process and its reflexivity as well as on the belonging present in the narrative processes.Keywords: literature descendants, Italians, memories, reflexivity, ethnic identity, cultural resistance.

The Color of Love: <em>Madamismo</em> and Interracial Relationships in the Italian Colonies

This article focuses on madamas , colonized women who provided comforts of home to male Italian settlers in East Africa. While the madamas represented only a small fraction of colonized women in the Horn of Africa, they emerged as a key feature of the Italo-African encounter and dominated colonial discourses on and representations of native women. Native women were stereotypically represented as Black Venuses, voyeuristically gazed at and petrified in atemporal settings without any sociocultural specificity and dismissed as victims of Italian colonialism, or as dangerous and mysterious objects. Even early colonial narratives that expressed some sympathy for the violated indigenous people were unanimous in portraying the madamas who consorted with Italian men as sorceresses, femmes fatales, spies, witches, or manipulators. The madamas were often blamed for Italian military incompetence and for turning many Italian men into insabbiati, literally covered with sand and figuratively gone native. Historians, ethnographers, and writers have inevitably tended to concentrate on the colonizers rather than on the colonized, and on the sexuality of white males in nineteenth- and twentieth-century colonialism. Based on emerging studies on the historical nature of madamismo in Eritrea, and its cultural implications, this article attempts to bring a gender corrective to the dominant discourses surrounding madamismo and to account for the experiences, legacies, and voices on the color of love in colonial times from the colonized perspective.

Colonies and processes of integration in the Roman Republic

This article aims to examine the evidence for the various roles that Latin and Roman colonies played in the integration of Italian allies into the Roman state. It discusses the evidence for the legal status of Italian settlers in colonies and argues that Italian allies were not normally admitted as official settlers, but often lived in nearby colonies or moved into them after the foundation. This happened especially in colonies which developed into important commercial centres. Thus there were various possibilities for contact between colonists and Italians, e.g. trade, marriage, religious festivals, and political participation. This has important consequences for our image of the process of the ‘Romanization’ of Italy. Whereas the traditional model, emphasizing spatial separation between colonists and Italians, is inadequate to explain cultural and linguistic change in Italy, a model which supposes more widespread contacts between Romans and Italians would be better suitable to explain in which contexts these two groups came into contact with each other.

Gondar

Gondar, Ethiopia, expanded dramatically in the late 1930s as a colonial administrative center for Italian East Africa. David Rifkind shows how urban design and architecture functioned in Gondar between 1936 and 1941 as key tools of Italian colonial policy. Italian urbanism throughout the fascist era illustrates the disquieting compatibility of progressive planning and authoritarian politics, and in Gondar modern urban design was used to define imperial identity for both Italian settlers and African colonial subjects. Gondar: Architecture and Urbanism for Italy's Fascist Empire documents the striking sensitivity to topography and historical preservation that Italian designers brought to their colonial mission as well as the skill with which they adapted to the material and political challenges of working in Italy's overseas dominions.

Inscription dedicated to Neptune from the territory of ancient Doclea

A new votive inscription from the territory of Doclea has recently been published. The reading of the text needs revision, and consequently, reinterpretation. The inscription should be read as follows: Neptuno ? sacrum p?ericuloru?m Absolu?tori Petro?5nius Aspe?r v(otum) s(olvit) ? l(ibens) a(nimo). Neptune?s attribute periculorum Absolutor appears here for the first time. The noun ?Absolutor?, i.e. ?he who absolves, liberator ?, attested late in the narrative sources e.g. Cassiod. Var . XI, praef. 3, should be close to the Jupiter?s epithets Liberator or Servator. The dedication could be connected with a successful ending of a journey, possibly after being exposed to maritime perils: the dedicator may well be a person engaged in trade and businesses that involve transmarine voyage. His name - Petronius Asper - implies the connection with the large group of Italian settlers in Dalmatia, whose presence is attested in the province all through the Principate. Such relations are illustrated in the light of other Dalmatian examples.

The Italian Encounter with Tudor England: A Cultural Politics of Translation by Michael Wyatt

8i8 Reviews The Italian Encounter with Tudor England: A Cultural Politics of Translation. By MICHAELWYATT. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversityPress. 2005. XiV+37I pp. ?50; $90. ISBN 978-o-52 I-84896-I. This book studies the sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century encounter between England and Italy as a complex process of 'translation'.Wyatt acknowledges thepivo tal relevance of language in the encounter between the two nations, but he also deftly and very successfully extends the scope of his analysis by including a broad range of 'figural' instances of translation, non-linguistic intercultural forms of exchange involving politics, religion, and the sense of nationhood. The book's construction in twodifferentparts,with the second illustrating the first, isbold, but it works. Part i concentrates on theway inwhich, via encounters with me diating Italians (many ofwhom have remained obscure), English culture reinvented itselfduring the long sixteenth century.Wyatt constructs the Italian image of Eng land and sketches the contacts via the accounts of ambassadors, humanists, artists, and church officials, including Andrea Trevisan (absent from thebook's index), Enea Silvio Piccolomini, Titus Livius, Pietro Carmeliano, Baldassare Castiglione, Polidoro Virgilio, Guido Mazzoni, Pietro Torrigiano, Pietro Griffi, and Andrea della Rena. Wyatt furthertraces how these livelyearly contacts came under pressure during the 1530S asHenry VIII broke with Rome. He shows how theReformation gave rise to satirical portraits of theEnglish and their rulers by the Italians, but he is rightalso to stressmore serious formsof exchange involving, among others, Pietro Aretino. This neatly prepares the reader for thediscussion of the Italians inEngland who shared the Tudor reformation strategy,and for the case of theFlorios and other Italian settlers (though never inhuge numbers), particularly after the accession ofElizabeth I.Here the section on the status of the 'stranger' is especially useful, although the narrative does not lead tonew conclusions about theposition of the Italian aliens in the country, or the representatives of other nations for that matter, who found themselves in a cleft stick between popular xenophobia and aristocratic or humanist interest. The second part of the book concentrates on John Florio, with an emphasis on the language-lesson manuals of the period (towhich Florio added his own) and his dictionary projects.Wyatt shows how Florio's language manuals placed the dialogue in a recognizable social setting, and creatively engaged with current cultural debates and issues involving the transfer of Italian culture into England (the threatre, the issue of poetry and fictionality,the courtesy ideal, the publication of Italian books in England). Along similar lines,Wyatt reads Florio's dictionary projects, which may look primarily linguistic in focus, asmodes of cultural transmission in considerably broader terms.Florio's lexicography can be seen as ameans of defining the vernacu lar and ofwriting thenation in the course of a cross-national dialogue with Italy, its language, its literature. This is awell-researched and heavily annotated study,uncovering many new ma terials frommany different fields.The text is larded with often original examples and, notably, these are presented in an attractive cultural historical frameworkwhose humanist roots invite us to reflecton our own cultures and their (non-)interaction today.Wyatt reconstructs a complex and fascinating encounter, but if any critical note is due, itwould be that he fails sufficiently to engage with colleagues in the field and their views. Still, this study is a rare achievement, also in interlinguistic and interdisciplinary terms,bridging practical gaps thatmight have daunted many another researcher into passivity.Wyatt's is a significant contribution to the fieldof Anglo-Italian relations, and will be essential for thediscussion in thedecades to come. UTRECHT UNIVERSITY TON HOENSELAARS ...

DONNE E BUOI DAI PAESI TUOI (CHOOSE WOMEN AND OXEN FROM YOUR HOME VILLAGE): ITALIAN PROXY MARRIAGES IN POST‐WAR AUSTRALIA

In the nineteen fifties and sixties, many single male Italian immigrants to Australia entered into marriages by proxy with Italian women. Such marriages were performed in Italy when the physical absence of either the bride or groom made it necessary for a stand in or ‘proxy’ to register consent to the marriage on behalf of the missing partner. This paper explores the reasons why Italian nationals and halo‐Australian immigrants contracted such unions and argues that proxy marriages reflected and perpetuated parochial loyalty or ‘campanilismo’ amongst Italian settlers in post‐war Australia. By granting proxy marriages tacit approval, the Federal Government (and the Catholic Church) in effect helped facilitate and strengthen home‐town allegiances within Italian communities, despite official assimilationist rhetoric which discouraged the formation of tight knit ethnic groups. These marriages were condoned in order to help contain the alleged ‘rampant sexual proclivities’ of single Italian bachelors and to promote stable, family oriented Italian immigrant communities in Australia which would contribute to the goal of population building.

The Vicia sativa L. aggregate (Fabaceae) in Southern Brazil

V. sativa L. sensu strictu was introduced in Rio Grande do Sul (Southern Brazil) by Italian settlers and is nowadays cultivated for forage in backyards and fields. V. angustifolia L. is a widespread highly polymorphic naturalized ruderal. Both taxa grow sympatrically and morphologically transitional types are often found. We analyzed 37 accessions of V. sativa, V. angustifolia, intermediate types, and V. cordata Wulf. ex. Hoppe from Rio Grande do Sul, for karyotypes, corolla and legume color, seed color pattern, pod constrictions and phenological development. Karyotypes allowed a clear distinction between the taxa: V. sativa (2n=12) had a metacentric marker chromosome, V. angustifolia and intermediate types (2n=12) only acrocentric chromosomes and V. cordata presented 2n=10. Flowering and fruiting periods were shorter for V. sativa than for V. angustifolia, which was separated into early and late flowering groups. Qualitative characters separated the taxa by Jaccard coefficients into three groups: V. sativa at 0.5 similarity level, V. angustifolia and intermediate types at 0.6 and V. cordata joined V. sativa at 0.12. Our results show that karyotypes and a range of qualitative characters are diagnostic for the aggregate represented in Southern Brazil.

Reviews

Jill Barnard, Jenny Keating, Plus Ca Change. The Sad History of The ‘People's Playground’, Albert Park. Chandos, Burwood, 1996, pp. 222, $25. Peter Read, Returning to Nothing: the Meaning of Lost Places, Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. xiv + 240, $29.95. John Dargavel, Fashioning Australia's Forests, Oxford University Press, 1996, pp. xvi + 312, $39.95. Steve Mullins, Torres Strait: A History of Colonial Occupation and Culture Contact 1864–1897, Central Queensland University Press, Rockhampton, 1995, pp. viii + 240, $19.95. Lynnette Peel (ed), The Henty Journals. A Record of Farming, Whaling and Shipping in Portland Bay, 1834–1839, The Miegunyah Press, Melbourne, in association with The State Library of Victoria, 1996, pp. xi + 297, hardcover, $49.95. Graham Seal, The Outlaw Legend: A Cultural Tradition in Britain, America and Australia, Cambridge University ress, Oakleigh, 1996, pp. xvi + 246, $90, hardback. $29.95, paperback. Ken Stewart, (ed). The 1890s: Australian Literature and Literary Culture, University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia, 1996, xii + 379 pages, $26.95. Lachlan Strahan, Australia's China: Changing Perceptions From The 1930s to the 1991s, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996, pp. 376, $34.95. Jan Gothard (ed), Asian Orientations: Studies in Western Australian History, Centre for Western Australian History, University of Western Australia, No.16, 1995, pp. viii + 183, $15. Sang Ye, The Year the Dragon Came, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1996, pp. x + 204, $18.95. D. O'Connor, No need to be afraid: Italian settlers in South Australia between 1839 and the Second World War, Wakefield Press, Kent Town (SA), 1996, pp. 283, $24.95. Alan Powell, War by Stealth: Australians and the Allied Intelligence Bureau 1942–1945, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1996, pp. xix + 403. $59.95. Geoffrey Serle, Robin Boyd: A Life, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1996, pp. 352, $29.95. Shirley Fitzgerald and Garry Wotherspoon (eds), Minorities: Cultural Diversity in Sydney, State Library of New South Wales Press/Sydney History Group, Sydney, 1995, pp. 216, $24.95. Neil Boyack, Simon Colvey, See Through, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1996, pp. 250, $16.95.

Dal giornalismo alla narrativa fantastica: Le isole del paradiso di Stanislao Nievo

O romance narra a luta dos colonos italianos numa pequena ilha da Melanésia, no fim do século passado. Descreve os interessantes ritos e crenças dos nativos, selvagens antropófagos. A linguagem expressa os eventos com ritmos e tons adequados.