Emigrant Nation: The Making of Italy Abroad

340 Pages·2008·31.409 MB·English

by  Mark I. Choate

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