Between 1880 and 1915, thirteen million Italians left their homeland, launching the largest emigration from any country in recorded world history. As the young Italian state struggled to adapt to the exodus, it pioneered the establishment of a “global nation”—an Italy abroad cemented by ties of culture, religion, ethnicity, and economics.
In this wide-ranging work, Mark Choate examines the relationship between the Italian emigrants, their new communities, and their home country. The state maintained that emigrants were linked to Italy and to one another through a shared culture. Officials established a variety of programs to coordinate Italian communities worldwide. They fostered identity through schools, athletic groups, the Dante Alighieri Society, the Italian Geographic Society, the Catholic Church, Chambers of Commerce, and special banks to handle emigrant remittances. But the projects aimed at binding Italians together also raised intense debates over priorities and the emigrants’ best interests. Did encouraging loyalty to Italy make the emigrants less successful at integrating? Were funds better spent on supporting the home nation rather than sustaining overseas connections?
In its probing discussion of immigrant culture, transnational identities, and international politics, this fascinating book not only narrates the grand story of Italian emigration but also provides important background to immigration debates that continue to this day.
Mark I. Choate is Associate Professor of History at Brigham Young University.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Program of Emigrant Colonialism
1. From Africa to the Americas
2. The Great Ethnographic Empire
3. Migration and Money
4. The Language of Dante
5. For Religion and for the Fatherland
6. Emigration and the New Nationalism
7. Earthquake, Pestilence, and World War
Conclusion: Toward a Global Nation
Appendix: Maps and Figures
Notes
What People are Saying About This
Mark Choate succeeds in making emigration a central rather than peripheral theme of Italy's history, closely linking it to Italy's desire for imperial and cultural influence abroad and nation-building challenges at home. Readers will find especially compelling the implications of Italy's unique history for contemporary emigrant nations such as Mexico and the Philippines.
John Agnew
Why is it that Italians abroad have often seemed more 'Italian' than those at home? In this lively and amply documented study, Choate shows that between 1885 and 1915 Italian governments sponsored an emigrant colonialism among Italians worldwide that they hoped would invigorate the making of a 'global nation' both at home and abroad. This book sheds light on how people leaving home helped reconstitute the identity of those they left behind. --(John Agnew, author of Place and Politics in Modern Italy)
Nancy Foner
Emigrant Nation is a compelling study that will be of great interest to scholars and students of migration in the past as well as the present. Through a fascinating analysis of the impact of emigration on Italy a century ago--and the Italian government's involvement with its emigrants abroad--Mark Choate makes an important contribution to our understanding of the global and transnational processes that are of such concern today. --(Nancy Foner, author of In a New Land: A Comparative View of Immigration)
Donna R. Gabaccia
Mark Choate succeeds in making emigration a central rather than peripheral theme of Italy's history, closely linking it to Italy's desire for imperial and cultural influence abroad and nation-building challenges at home. Readers will find especially compelling the implications of Italy's unique history for contemporary emigrant nations such as Mexico and the Philippines. --(Donna R. Gabaccia, author of We Are What We Eat: Ethnic Food and the Making of Americans)
