Cosmopolitan Italy in the Age of Nations: Transnational Visions from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Century

269 Pages·2022·11.316 MB·English

by  Edoardo Tortarolo

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Ideas beyond Borders
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T COSMOPOLITAN ITALY IN
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S
THE AGE OF NATIONS
TRANSNATIONAL VISIONS FROM
THE EIGHTEENTH TO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Edited by Edoardo Tortarolo
Cosmopolitan Italy in the
Age of Nations
Modern Italian historiography has undergone a substantial revision in the
last quarter of a century. From an almost exclusive focus on the process of
nation-building, the attention of historians has shifted. The most innova-
tive research is now devoted to assessing to what extent the cosmopolitan
attitude that was evident in the late eighteenth century morphed, but did
not disappear, in the ensuing two centuries.
The chapters in this volume make the case that the age of nations had a
profound impact on Italian history and contributed to the creation of an
Italian identity within the framework of well-functioning imperial and global
networks. They also acknowledge that the process of national individualiza-
tion carried with it a variety of aspects that reconnected Italian history to the
foreign cultures that were undergoing constant self-fashioning.
Cosmopolitan Italy in the Age of Nations: Transnational Visions from
the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Century will be of interest to scholars
throughout the world and intellectual and transnational historians.
Edoardo Tortarolo is Professor of Early Modern History at the University of
Eastern Piedmont, Italy. He received his PhD in history from the University
of Turin in 1987. He is a permanent fellow of the Academy of the Sciences
in Turin. He has co-edited the Oxford History of Historical Writing (2012).
Ideas beyond Borders
Studies in Transnational Intellectual History
Series Editors: Jan Vermeiren and Matthew D’Auria,
University of East Anglia
In 1944, the Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce called his fellow schol-
ars to de-nationalise the study of the past, overcoming the cast in which
history had been shaped from the nineteenth century onwards and that
had contributed to make the nation a seemingly natural and everlasting
phenomenon. Indeed, the scholarly community has had to wait more than
half a century for the so-called transnational turn, which has led to many
new insights but focused primarily on political and social developments.
Considering the renewed interest in intellectual and conceptual history, the
aim of ‘Ideas beyond Borders’ is to contribute to a new understanding of
the ways in which ideas, discourses, images, and representations have been
shaped transnationally, going beyond national, regional, or civilisational
borders. The series focuses on transnational concepts and notions, such as
Europe, civilisation, pan-region, etc. The timespan ranges, roughly, from
the sixteenth century to the present day.
The Political Thought of Thomas Spence
Beyond Poverty and Empire
Matilde Cazzola
Mediterranean Europe(s)
Rethinking Europe from its Southern Shores
Edited by Matthew D’Auria and Fernanda Gallo
The Comintern and the Global South
Global Designs/Local Encounters
Edited by Anne Garland Mahler and Paolo Capuzzo
Cosmopolitan Italy in the Age of Nations
Transnational Visions from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Century
Edited by Edoardo Tortarolo
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.
com/Ideas-beyond-Borders/book-series/IDEASBEYOND
Cosmopolitan Italy in
the Age of Nations
Transnational Visions
from the Eighteenth
to the Twentieth Century
Edited by
Edoardo Tortarolo
First published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group,
an informa business
© 2023 selection and editorial matter, Edoardo Tortarolo; individual
chapters, the contributors
The right of Edoardo Tortarolo to be identified as the author of the
editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters,
has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
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retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Tortarolo, Edoardo, 1956- editor. Title: Cosmopolitan Italy
in the age of nations: transnational visions from the eighteenth to the
twentieth century/edited by Edoardo Tortarolo.
Description: New York, NY: Routledge, 2023. | Series: Ideas beyond
borders | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022035384 | ISBN 9780367565244 (hardback)
| ISBN 9780367565268 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003098195 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Italy–History–1849-1870. | Italy–History–1849-1870–
Historiography. | Italy–Civilization. | National characteristics,
Italian. | Cosmopolitanism–Italy–History. Classification: LCC DG552.
C67 2023 | DDC 945/.083–dc23/eng/20220722
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022035384
ISBN: 978-0-367-56524-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-56526-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-09819-5 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003098195
Typeset in Sabon
by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.
Contents
Contributors vii
Introduction 1
EDOARDO TORTAROLO
SECTION 1
Italy and the Mediterranean 7
1 Reflections from the East: Experiences in the Levant
of two eighteenth-century travellers (1760–1792) 9
RENATO PASTA
2 Crossing sights: Women and nation between Italy and Egypt 36
CATIA PAPA
3 Emerging Egypt looks to Italy: Relations and interactions
in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century Arabic sources 54
CRISTIANA BALDAZZI
SECTION 2
Visions of Italy 79
4 Charles Lever’s Italy in the Risorgimento: An Anglo-Irish
perspective 81
ROBERTA GEFTER WONDRICH
5 Through the mists of Albion: The couple Ball-Parolini 102
IRENE GADDO AND DANIELA PIEMONTINO
vi Contents
6 Beyond aesthetic consumption: Italy in Henry James’s
early travel literature 120
LEONARDO BUONOMO
SECTION 3
Italy in the Far East 139
7 Acquiring advanced Italian technologies: The Japanese
Silk and Silkworm Committee in Italy in 1873 141
CLAUDIO ZANIER
8 Italian explorations in Southeast Asia 161
ALESSANDRO DI MEO
9 Italian artistic culture in the Far East: Galileo Chini
at the Siamese court in the early twentieth century 175
MASSIMO DE GRASSI
SECTION 4
Transatlantic Italy 195
10 Exporting Italy across the Atlantic: The “Romanization”
of the North American dioceses and assistance to Italian
emigrants 197
MATTEO SANFILIPPO
11 Circulation of knowledge, competing therapies and exotic
drugs: The case of sarsaparilla and China root in early
modern Italian medicine 212
IRENE FATTACCIU
SECTION 5
A Florentine View 227
12 The cradle of the Renaissance? Foreign travellers in
Florence from the past to present times (1755–2020) 229
IGOR MELANI
Index 249
Contributors
Cristiana Baldazzi is Associate Professor of Arabic Language and
Literature at the Department of Humanities, University of Trieste. She is
member of the scientific board of Globhis Network for Global History.
Her research interests include autobiographical literature (memoirs
and diaries) in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Syria, Palestine and
Egypt, with special reference to political and social history; intercultural
relations; travel literature, specifically focused on identities, woman
question and the process of modernization. Among her publications:
Il ruolo degli intellettuali arabi tra Impero Ottomano e Mandato: il
caso della famiglia Zu’aytir 1872–1939 (Naples: Istituto Universitario
Orientale di Napoli, 2005); Lo sguardo arabo: immagini e immaginari
dell’Occidente (Trieste: EUT, 2018).
Leonardo Buonomo is Professor of American Literature at the University
of Trieste. He studied at the University of Venice and the University of
California at San Diego. In 2019 he served as president of the Henry
James Society. He has written widely on nineteenth-century American
literature (in particular, the literary representation of Italy), Italian-
American literature and American popular culture. Among his latest
publications: Immigration, Ethnicity, and Class in American Writing,
1830–1860: Reading the Stranger (Madison-Teaneck: Fairleigh
Dickinson University Press, 2014) and essays in the volumes Nathaniel
Hawthorne in Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018)
and Republics and Empires: Italian and American Art in Transnational
Perspective, 1840–1970 (Manchester: Manchester University Press,
2021), as well as in the journals Nathaniel Hawthorne Review, Henry
James Review, Ácoma, Italian Americana, and Humanities; he has edited
the volume The Sound of James: The Aural Dimension in Henry James’s
Work (2021).
Massimo De Grassi holds a degree in Conservation of Cultural Heritage
from the University of Udine and a degree in Humanities with a
focus on art from the University of Trieste; he received a PhD in Art
History from Ca’ Foscari University in Venice. Since 2005, he has been
viii Contributors
Associate Professor of Contemporary Art History at the Department of
Humanities, University of Trieste. At the beginning of his career, he was
mainly interested in Venetian sculpture of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, also delving into its relationship with ancient art. He then dealt
with issues related to plastic-pictorial decoration and scenes of wooden
carving of the Baroque period in the Veneto-Friuli area between the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In recent years, his interests have
then extended to monumental sculpture of the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries in Italy and the Far East, whose relations with architecture and
pictorial decoration he has deepened with a focus on themes of global
history and interdisciplinary contamination.
Alessandro Di Meo has been Early Career Member at the Royal Historical
Society in London (UK) and in 2019 obtained his PhD in Historical
Sciences and Cultural Heritage at the University of Tuscia in Viterbo. He
is actually member of scientific and academic institutions, such as Società
Geografica Italiana and Ismeo (Istituto per il Mediterraneo e l’Oriente).
His research interests are mainly focused on the history of Italian colonial
expansion, missionary activity in Africa and Asia, nineteenth-century
global history and world history. Among his publications are Nelle terre
incognite. Esploratori, avventurieri, missionari e ammiragli italiani nel
Sud-Est asiatico (1865–1885) (Rome: Ginevra Bentivoglio EditoriA,
2021); L’Antischiavismo. Storia della Società Antischiavista Italiana
e delle sue pubblicazioni (1888–1937) (Rome: Ginevra Bentivoglio
EditoriA, 2017) and Tientsin, la Concessione Italiana. Storia delle
relazioni tra il Regno d’Italia e la Cina (1866–1947) (Rome: Ginevra
Bentivoglio EditoriA, 2015). He has published several essays in journals
such as Römische Historische Mitteilungen, Bollettino della Società
Geografica, Aionos. Miscellanea di Studi Storici.
Irene Fattacciu earned a PhD in History and Civilization at the European
University Institute in 2011 and worked as a post-doctoral Fellow at
the EUI (“Vasco da Gama Fellow”), at the University of Turin and at
the University of Tuscia in Viterbo. Her research interests focus on
race and inequality, as well as on the global circulation of goods. Since
2017, she was Adjunct Professor of Global History at the University
of Florence (Master in International Relations), then of Colonial and
Postcolonial History at the University of Turin (Master in Global Studies
for International Cooperation). Currently she teaches Food Cultures of
Latin America at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo
(Italy). In 2019, she earned a PhD in Sociology from the University of
Turin and started new collaborations as an independent consultant
(research, project application manager, data analysis, training). Since
2021, she joined the Inclusive Development Unit at the research centre
ARCO (Action Research for COdevelopment), working on participatory
methods, disability, vulnerability and resilience and gender gap.
Contributors ix
Irene Gaddo is Researcher of Early Modern History at the Department
for Sustainable Development and Ecological Transition (DiSSTE),
University of Eastern Piedmont Amedeo Avogadro, Vercelli (Italy),
where she teaches History of Tourism in a Global Context and History
of Civilizations. She has been post-doctoral Research Fellow at the
Einaudi Foundation, Turin. Her research interests include history of
travels and overseas missions, history of utopian thought, and history
of historiography. Among her latest publications: In Barbaras Gentilium
Terras. Epistolario del gesuita Carlo Giovanni Turcotti (1643–1706)
(Vercelli: Gallo edizioni, 2018), Vocazione e identità gesuitica in
Giovanni Antonio Valtrino (1556–1601) (Padua: University of Padua
Press, 2019); Utopia e religione. Figure, temi, percorsi (ed. with Guido
Mongini) (Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2021).
Roberta Gefter Wondrich is Associate Professor of English Literature at
the University of Trieste. She has specialized in the field of contemporary
Irish fiction. Her field of interests includes the contemporary English
and Irish novel, neo-Victorianism, biofiction, James Joyce, J. M.
Coetzee, thing theory and sea narratives. Among her recent publications
are book chapters in Sea Narratives: Cultural Responses to the Sea,
1600-Present,  edited by Charlotte Mathiessen (London: Palgrave,
2016), Neo-Victorian Biofiction, edited by Marie-Luise Kholke and
Christian Gutleben (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill Rodopi, 2020), two
articles on neo-Victorian fiction in The European Journal of English
Studies (2021) and Between (2022). She is co-editing a volume on
peripheral modernisms (with K. Pizzi, Palgrave, 2023) and writing a
monograph on the cultural object in contemporary fiction in English.
Igor Melani is Professor of Early Modern History and History of the
Renaissance at the University of Florence. He studied at the University
of Florence, the University of Stanford (USA) and the University of
Turin. He has been Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the École des
Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris. His main research
interests are: society and cultures in the long-Renaissance, cultural
representations of alterity and cultural imageries of political struggle
in Renaissance Europe. He has written on different topics concerning
early-modern European cultures. Among his publications are the
volumes Il Tribunale della Storia: Leggere la Methodus di Jean Bodin
(Firenze: L.S. Olschki, 2006), “Di qua” e “di là da’ monti”: sguardi
italiani sulla Francia e sui francesi tra XV e XVI secolo (Florence:
Firenze University Press, 2011), La luce e le tenebre. Ordine del tempo,
usi della storia, conflitti e mediazioni tra culture nell’Artis historicae
penus: Lucca-Basilea e ritorno, 1576–1579 (Lucca: Istituto storico
lucchese, 2011), Rinascimento in Mostra (Rome: Edizioni di storia e
letteratura, 2019); papers in Italian and international journals and
miscellaneous volumes; he also edited miscellaneous volumes, such as