On Emigrant Nation

Emigrant Nation is, in a word, foundational. This should be the starting point for all studies of Italian emigration (and immigration). Rather than look at social histories of specific Italian immigrant communities, which is a common area of study in the United States, Choate looks at the view from Rome during the Liberal period (~1871 to 1922) and argues that it is not enough to see Italy as a nation-state or Italians as a diasporic people, the two are inextricably linked. Moreover, emigration and colonial expansion were fundamentally intertwined and were overseen by the same body (the Ministry for Foreign Affairs).

During the Liberal period, the Italian government sought to encourage and instrumentalize emigration (which was opposed by Nationalists) in order to better shape Italian fortunes. In doing so, they encouraged the development of italianità, a sense of Italian-ness based on Italian culture and history. Economic expansion in Italy often occurred as a result of remittances, and Italian consuls took an active role in conscripting Italian immigrants (and their sons!) into the Italian military, even when they were in places as far as Australia, Argentina, or the United States. Moreover, any Italian would re-gain Italian citizenship upon re-entering the country, even if they had renounced it to gain a foreign country’s citizenship. Choate does an excellent job here tying together colonialism, economics, language, religion, historical legacies, and more to fully transform our vision of the Liberal Italian state.

Because Choate makes the active choice to exclude the Fascist period, I can’t penalize him in my rating for neglecting it—the Fascist period isn’t the subject of the book. However, I do have questions about the Fascist period, as my great-great grandfather and his son, my great-grandfather, arrived in the United States in 1921, and I’m curious about how the Ministry of Foreign Affairs shifted regarding emigration during the age of Mussolini. To my knowledge, neither of my ancestors were conscripted to fight in the Italo-Ethiopian War, whereas they may have been conscripted if they came before the First World War. What changed here, and why? I’d love to see some sort of sequel here that covers the Fascist period, but I understand that it may not be quite so useful given the decline in Italian emigration (at least to the Americas) after 1920.