Emigrant Nation: The Making of Italy Abroad PDF
Preview Emigrant Nation: The Making of Italy Abroad
Emigrant Nation Emigrant Nation The Making of Italy Abroad Mark I. Choate HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England 2008 Copyright © 2008 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Choate, Mark I., 1971– Emigrant nation : the making of Italy abroad / Mark I. Choate. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN: 978-0-674-02784-8 (alk. paper) 1. Italy—Emigration and immigration—History. 2. Italians—Foreign countries—Ethnic identity. I. Title. JV8131.C5 2008 305.85'1—dc22 2007045996 For my mother and father Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction: The Program of Emigrant Colonialism 1 1 From Africa to the Americas 21 2 The Great Ethnographic Empire 57 3 Migration and Money 72 4 The Language of Dante 101 5 For Religion and for the Fatherland 129 6 Emigration and the New Nationalism 147 7 Earthquake, Pestilence, and World War 189 Conclusion: Toward a Global Nation 218 Appendix: Maps and Figures 235 Notes 243 Index 303 Illustrations follow page 100 Acknowledgments I have accumulated countless debts in researching and writing this book, which would not have been possible without the foundational work of giants in the fields of migration studies and colonialism. My footnotes and references convey my thanks to those scholars. Here I wish to thank my friends and advisors at Yale, es- pecially Frank Snowden, Paul Kennedy, Robert Harms, and Paolo Valesio. Other friends and colleagues also commented on the entire manuscript, in particular Donna Gabaccia, Nicola Labanca, Emilio Franzina, Jenny Hale Pulsipher, Ignacio Garcia, and Carolyn Ugolini. I owe much to the advice and criticism of Benedict Anderson, Giulia Barrera, Linda Colley, the late Peter D’Agostino, John Lewis Gaddis, Jay Geller, Akira Iriye, Roger Louis, Timothy Naftali, Wolfgang Schieder, Gaddis Smith, Jonathan Spence, Lydio Tomasi, and Hans-Ulrich Wehler. I thank Mauro Canali, Emilio Gentile, Luigi Goglia, Gian Luca Podestà, Giovanni Mutino, and Andy Sarzanini for their thoughtful assistance in Italy. Carl Ipsen, whom I knew while researching this topic as a graduate student in 1998–1999, is in his own category. I owe the most to my family: my wife, Tova, who contributed brilliantly to every aspect of this work, and our three children, Sophie, Anne, and Jonathan. This book is dedicated to my mother and father, Gretchen and John Choate, who inspired my love of history. A joy of this project has been working in many archives in Europe and the United States. I thank the directors and staff of the Sudan Archive in Durham, Eng- land; the Diplomatic Archive and Library of the Italian Foreign Affairs Ministry; the Italian Army General Staff Archive; the Apostolic Vatican Library and the Secret Vatican Archive in Vatican City; the Italian Central State Archive and Library; the Central Headquarters of the Dante Alighieri Society in Rome; the Italian Overseas Agricultural Institute, Florence; the Historical Archive of the Banco di Napoli; the Archive of the Italian Chamber of Deputies; the Italian Red Cross in Rome; the Sovrintendenza dei Beni Culturali, Comune di Roma; the Institute for the History of the Italian Risorgimento in Rome; the Italian State Archives of Rovigo, Venice, Palermo, and Milan; the Ambrosian Library in Milan; the Center for Migration Studies at Staten Island, New York; and the German Federal Archive at Berlin- Lichterfelde, the Public Record Office in London, the British Library, the National
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