On unifying in 1861 Italy faced a series of challenges. Politicians struggled to implement unity across a country that was unprepared for nationalism, whose cultural diversity and social structure had defined what it meant to be ’Italians’ for centuries. The government also failed to deal with mass unemployment and poverty. It is in this context that emigration increased to unprecedented and permanent levels.
By the First World War 14 million Italians had left their homes. Such a loss at an embryonic stage in nation-building was catastrophic for Italy’s imperial designs, but gradually the government recognized the diaspora as an untapped source of potential wealth and patriotism. Investing in the development of diaspora colonialism transformed emigration from a negative problem to a positive solution. This book asks why Italian migrants responded to opportunities emerging from Italy’s imperial ambitions, and how. The Italian government developed initiatives to cultivate patriotism abroad and a number of events, infrastructure and subsidies spoke to conceptions of the diaspora’s centrality to its imperial ambitions. Originating from diverse regional and class backgrounds, a minority of migrant community representatives demonstrated enthusiasm abroad through expressions of italianita (Italianness) albeit for different reasons from those planned by the Italian government. Exploring these perspectives from the frame of transnational politics and cultures in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada and the United States, amongst other countries, this study argues that many migrant communities embraced Italy’s diaspora colonialism, suspending their differences in the process, to solve problems at a local level. Doing so lent them legitimacy for contesting discriminatory and prejudicial treatment, particularly prevalent in white settler societies.
