* 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
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 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 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
Mark I. Choate is Associate Professor of History, Brigham Young University.
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*
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*
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*
Mark Choate's lively, well-written and impressively researched
study examines how the liberal state responded to the loss of so
many of its young men in the peak years of emigration in the late
19th and early 20th centuries.
*Times Higher Education Supplement*
Choate has written an informative book on the impact of Italian
emigration, asserting that each community of Italian immigrants in
foreign lands formed an island where the Italian government,
through its consuls and other less formal channels, sought to
promote Italian nationalism, culture, and language...Whether noting
the flow of voluntary contributions sent by immigrants in Argentina
to fund the building of monuments in Rome or underscoring the
importance of the flood of immigrant remittances in helping fuel
Italian industrialization, Choate makes clear that the
technological revolution that allowed people to travel and
communicate over great distances transformed political, cultural,
and financial boundaries...This work is an important contribution
to migration studies and to the history of Italy and its
people.
*Choice*
What makes Emigrant Nation so original is precisely its totalizing
grasp, its consideration of economics, politics and culture and its
insistence that Italian emigrant colonies in cities like New York
and Buenos Aires and Italian colonialism in Africa were 'two sides
of the same coin'. . . . All these developments testify to the
remarkable success of Italy's emigrant vision: beyond geography and
beyond boundaries, the nation was constructed as a transnational
network of loyalty, support and shared culture. If widely perceived
as a failure at home, the identity of Italy was made by its
'faraway children' overseas.
*Times Literary Supplement*
One chapter explores how the Catholic Church, which was hostile to
the Italian state, actively sought to preserve Italian identity
among emigrants. Another one traces how emigration contributed to a
new nationalism and renewed colonial efforts in Libya. The chapter
before the unexpectedly present-minded conclusion discusses events
ranging from an earthquake in Messina to outbreaks of cholera in
Argentina and Uruguay and the paid return of more than 300,000 men
to fight in the army that Italy fielded when World War I began.
Overall, the book treats matters of economy, religion, politics,
language theory, and more—all within a traditional historical
narrative framework.
*The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Summer 2009*
[A] splendid book...Emigrant Nation reflects the shift in the last
several decades to a more pluralistic perspective--one that
considers the sending nation as well as the receiving one, and no
longer assumes that assimilation is always the goal. Choate traces
the ideology of Italian emigration and the institutions that
facilitated and shaped it as millions of Italy's citizens,
especially from the depressed South, departed for North and South
America.
*Books & Culture*
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