Italian diaspora

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The term Italian Diaspora refers to the large-scale migration of Italians away from Italy in the period roughly between the unification of Italy in 1861 and the beginning of World War I in 1914. The term generally refers also to the years directly following WW1. (Since 1930 and especially following World War II, there have been other periods of emigration under different circumstances. This article does not deal with those.)

Contents 1 Numbers 2 Causes of emigration 3 Control of emigration 4 Emigration after WWI 5 See also 6 External links 7 References 8 Notes

[edit] Numbers

The general migration of Europeans to North and South America and Australia between 1870 and 1913 was truly massive. Forty million Europeans emigrated overseas during that period with about two-thirds of that number going to the United States. Before 1890, the emigrants were largely from central and northern Europe; after that date, the majority came from southern Europe. ^[1]

The Italian contribution to the flow of emigration was significant. A few population figures on Italy of that period are helpful in understanding just how large the migratory flow was. Modern Italy came into existence between 1870 and 1914 with the annexation of the southern half of the peninsula (the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies) and then the final annexation of the Papal States. The new nation joined approximately 15+ million northerners with 9+ million southerners (7 from the southern peninsula and 2 from the island of Sicily. Thus, by 1870, Italy had ca. 25 million inhabitants (compared to ca. 40 million in Germany and ca. 30 million in the United Kingdom). ^[2] At the unification of Italy, Naples--former capital of the kingdom of the south--became the largest city in the nation and remained so for a number of years. ^[3] By 1900, the entire nation of Italy had just over 32 million inhabitants.

A preliminary census ^[4] done in 1861 after the annexation of the South claimed that there were a mere 100,000 Italians living abroad. (Early figures such as those are not absolutely reliable and serve only as a general guide.) The General Direction of Statistics did not start compiling official emigration statistics until 1876. ^[5]. Accurate figures on the decades between 1870 and WWI show how emigration increased dramatically during that period:

Italian emigrants per 1,000 population ^[6]

1870-1879 4.29

1880-1889 6.09

1890-1899 8.65

1900-1913 17.97

The high point of Italian emigration was 1913, when 872,598 persons left Italy. ^[7]

Extrapolating from the ca. 25 million inhabitants of Italy at the time of unification, natural birth and death rates—without considering emigration—would have been expected to produce a population of about 65 million by 1970. Instead—because of emigration earlier in the century—there were only 54 million. ^[8]

Most sources distinguish two periods in the "Italian diaspora": the first one runs from the unification of Italy to 1900, during which time 7 million persons migrated. Two-thirds of those were from the north, and, of the total, more than half went to other European countries. This runs contrary to a popular misconception that most Italians who left were from the south and that most of them went overseas. That is, however, a fair description of the second period—between 1900 and World War I—during which time 9 million Italians left, most from the south and most going to either North or South America. ^[9] Additionally, there is also a third period—the decade after WW1—that is often included in reference to the "Italian diaspora."

[edit] Causes of emigration

Historically, there are many reasons why people decide to leave their homes. Among these are political or religious persecution, overcrowding at home, and poverty. The last reason is, no doubt, the one responsible for the great "Italian diaspora." Much of Italy—and especially southern Italy—at the time of unification was rural, and land management practices—again, especially in the south—did not easily convince farmers to stay on the land and work the soil. ^[10]

The unification of Italy broke down the feudal land system that had survived in the south since the Middle Ages, especially where land had been the inalienable property of aristocrats, religious bodies, or the king. The breakdown of feudalism, however, and redistribution of land did not necessarily lead to small farmers in the south winding up with land of their own, land they could work and profit from. Many remained landless, and plots grew smaller and smaller (and, thus, more and more unproductive) as land was subdivided among heirs. ^[11]

Mezzadria –sharefarming—where tenant families got a plot to work from an owner and kept a reasonable share of the profits—was more prevalent in central Italy, which is one of the reasons there was less emigration from that part of Italy. The south lacked entrepreneurs, and absentee landlords were common. Although owning land was the basic yardstick of wealth, farming in the south was socially despised. People invested not in agricultural equipment, but in such things as low-risk state bonds. ^[12] Thus, when one talks about "Italian diaspora," it is best not to view it as a single Italy-wide phenomenon affecting all regions of the nation equally. In the second phase of emigration—1900 to World War I—most emigrants were from the south and most of them were from rural areas, driven off the land by inefficient land management policies. Robert Foerster, in Italian Emigration of our Times (1919) ^[13] says, " [Emigration has been]…well nigh explusion; it has been exodus, in the sense of depopulation; it has been characteristically permanent."

The general rule that "emigration from cities was negligible" ^[14] has an important exception, and that is the city of Naples. The city went from being the capital of its own kingdom in 1860 to being just another large city in Italy. The disrupted bureaucracy and financial situation encouraged unemployment. Also, in the early 1880s, grave epidemics of cholera struck the city, causing many people to leave. The epidemics were then the driving force behind the decision to rebuild entire sections of the city, an undertaking known as the "risanamento" (lit. "making healthy again") and one that lasted until World War I. That process of tearing down and rebuilding also disrupted urban life and became another reason for many to leave the city.

[edit] Control of emigration

For at least the first few years after the unification of Italy, emigration was not particularly controlled by the state. Emigrants were often in the hands of emigration agents, whose job it was to make money for themselves by moving emigrants. Abuses led to the first special migration law in Italy, passed in 1888 to bring the many emigration agencies under state control. ^[15]

Also, on January 31, 1901, the Commissariat of Emigration was created. This authority granted licenses to carriers, fixed ticket costs, kept order at ports of embarkation, provided health inspection for those leaving, set up hostels and care facilities, and entered into agreements with receiving countries to help care for those arriving. In general, the Commissariat tried to take care of emigrants before they left and after they arrived. This included dealing with the labor laws in the US that discriminated against alien workers (the US alien contract labor law of 1885) and even suspending, for a while, emigration to Brazil, where many migrants had wound up as virtual serfs on large coffee plantations. ^[16]

The Commissariat also helped set up the arrangement by which emigrants in the United States, for example, could send back remittances to the "old country", which turned into a constant flow of money into Italy amounting, by some accounts, to about 5% of the Italian national product. ^[17] In 1903 the Commissariat also set the Italian ports of embarkation as Palermo, Naples and Genoa, excluding Venice, which previously had been used. ^[18]

In an article in the New York Times on March 12, 1904, A. Rossi, Inspector of the Royal Emigration Department of Italy, expressed surprise at the perception in the United States that Italy was still encouraging emigration. He insisted, in spite of the 200,000 arrivals in the port of New York the previous year, that the recent Italian laws were, in fact, restrictive. Italy, he said, was trying to keep its workers: "While it is true that the constant increase in the population of Italy renders emigration a necessity, it is nevertheless a fact that in certain provinces [of Italy] the great outflow is becoming a positive harm to us, because, despite the increase in wages, there is a scarcity in the local supply of laborers." Thus, it is fair to say that the Commissariat was effective in decreasing the abuses that emigrants were subject to, but did little to affect the number of emigrants, which increased steadily until the outbreak of World War I.

Interestingly, as the stock of Italian emigrants abroad increased, so did their remittances sent back home, thus encouraging further emigration, even in the face of factors that might logically be thought to decrease the need to leave (such as increased wages at home). This has been termed ^[19] "persistent and path-dependent emigration flow"; that is, friends and relatives who leave first, send back money for tickets, and help relatives as they arrive. This tends to support an emigration flow since even improving conditions in the sending country (Italy) take a while to trickle down to potential emigrants to convince them not to leave. Thus, the sending country is in a game of constant "catch up" with that flow and never quite catches up. The emigrant flow is stemmed only by dramatic events such as, in this case, World War I, which greatly disrupted the flow of people trying to leave Europe, or by restrictions on immigration put in place by receiving countries. Such restrictions were enacted in various places around the world to control the number of immigrants coming in. Examples of such restrictions in the United States were the Quota Act of 1920 and the National Origin Act of 1924. Also important is restrictive legislation to limit emigration from home countries. Such laws were passed in Italy by the Fascist government of the 1920s and 30s. ^[20]

[edit] Emigration after WWI

Although the physical perils involved with transatlantic ship traffic during the First World War obviously disrupted emigration from all parts of Europe, including Italy, the condition of various national economies in the immediate post-war period was so bad that immigration picked up almost immediately. Foreign newspapers ran "scare" stories that, substantially, were not much different than those published 40 years earlier (when, for example, on Dec. 18, 1880, the New York Times ran an editorial, "Undesirable Emigrants," that was full of typical invective of the day against the "promiscuous immigration…[of]…the filthy, wretched, lazy, criminal dregs of the meanest sections of Italy.") Somewhat toned down was a New York Times article of April 17, 1921, which reported under the headline "Italians Coming in Great Numbers" that the "Number of Immigrants Will Be Limited Only By Capacity of Liners" (there was now a limited number of ships available due to recent wartime losses) and that potential emigrants were thronging the quays in the cities of Genoa and Naples. Furthermore:

"…The stranger walking though a city like Naples can easily realize the problem the government has to do with. The side streets…are literally swarming with children, who sprawl in the paved roadway and on the sidewalks. They look dirty and happy…Suburbs of Naples…swarm with children who, for number, can only be compared to those in Delhi, Agra and other cities in the East Indies…"

The extreme economic difficulties of post-war Italy and the severe internal tensions within the nation (which led to the rise of Fascism) "pushed" 614,000 emigrants away in 1920, half of them going to the United States. ("Push" as opposed to the economic "pull" of a foreign nation in need of immigrant labor—the case in earlier decades.) When the Fascists came to power in 1922 there was a general slowdown in the flow of emigrants from Italy—eventually. However, during the first five years of Fascism, one and one-half million people left Italy. ^[21] That is 300,000 persons per year, a number quite comparable to the early years of the 20th century. Even as late as 1930, 300,000 emigrants left Italy in that single year. By that time, the nature of the emigrants had changed; there was, for example, a marked increase in the rise of relatives of non-working age who were moving to be with their families who had gone before.

In general, the Fascist government spun the entire emigration saga to its own benefit. A 1927 study by the Italian government estimated that there were some 9,200,000 living abroad—one fifth of the Italian nation lived abroad. ^[22] Thus, on the one hand, the government could claim that the slowdown in emigration was due to the successful economic policies of the government, and, on the other hand, could view the massive presence of Italians abroad as a powerful potential, a kind of cultural colonialism.

[edit] See also

• Diaspora
• Italian people

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[edit] External links

• Italian Diaspora
• Reassessing what we collect website – Italian London History of Italian London with objects and images

[edit] References

• Abbott, Edith (August, 1920). "Review of: Italian Emigration of our Times by Robert Foerster (1919)". The American Political Science Review 14 (3): 523–524. doi:10.2307/1946285. ISSN 00030554. 
• Cannistraro, Philip V. and Gianfusto Rosoli (Winter, 1979). "Fascist Emigration Policy in the 1930s: an Interpretative Framework". International Migration Review 13 (4): 673–692. doi:10.2307/2545181. ISSN 01979183. 

• Cometti, Elizabeth (December, 1958). "Trends in Italian Emigration". The Western Political Quarterly 11 (4): 820–834. doi:10.2307/443655. ISSN 00434078. 
• Glazier, Ira (February, 1993). "Review of: The National Integration of Italian Return Migration: 1870-1929, by Dino Cinel, New York Cambridge U. Press, 1991". The American Historical Review 98 (1): 198–199. ISSN 00028762. 
• Hatton, Timothy J. and Jeffrey G. Williamson (September, 1994). "What Drove the Mass Migrations from Europe in the Late Nineteenth Century?". Population and Development Review 20 (3): 533–559. doi:10.2307/2137600. ISSN 00987921. 

• McDonald, J.S. (October, 1958). "Some Socio-Economic Emigration Differentials in Rural Italy, 1902-1913". Economic Development and Cultural Change 7 (1): 55–72. doi:10.1086/449779. ISSN 00130079. 
• Monticelli, Giuseppe Lucrezio (Summer, 1967). "Italian Emigration: Basic Characteristic and Trends with Special Reference to the Last Twenty Years.". International Migration Review 1 (3, Special issue, The Italian Experience in Emigration): 10–24. doi:10.2307/3002737. ISSN 01979183. 
• Moretti, Enrico (Autumn, 1999). "Social Networks and Migrations: 1876-1913". International Migration Review 33 (3): 640–657. doi:10.2307/2547529. ISSN: 01979183. 
• Sori, Ercole (1999). Guida all'Italia Contemporanea, vol 4. Comportamenti Sociali e Cultura: "Demografia e Movimenti di Popolazione". Garzanti, 32-38. ISBN. 

• Tomasi, Silvano M. (Autumn, 1965). "Review of: La Democrazia Italiana e l'emigrazione in America, by Grazie Dore, Brescia, Morcelliania, 1964". International Migration Digest 2 (2): 221–223. ISSN 05388716. 

[edit] Notes