Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T07:58:44.941Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

From immigrants to emigrants: Salesian education and the failed integration of Italians in Egypt, 1937-1960

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 August 2017

Annalaura Turiano  and
Joseph John Viscomi
Annalaura Turiano*
Affiliation:
Aix-Marseille University, Aix-en-Provence, France
Joseph John Viscomi*
Affiliation:
Center for European and Mediterranean Studies, New York University, USA
*
* Emails: annalauraturiano@gmail.com; viscomi@nyu.edu
* Emails: annalauraturiano@gmail.com; viscomi@nyu.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

With Italy’s entry into the Second World War, Anglo-Egyptian authorities repatriated Italian diplomats from Egypt, arrested around 5,000 Italians, and sequestered both personal and business accounts. Italian institutions were indefinitely closed, including the Italian state schools. Hope for a future in Egypt among the roughly 60,000 Italian residents faded. The Salesian missionary schools, whose goal since the late nineteenth century had been to inculcate nationalist-religious sentiment in Italy’s emigrants, remained the only active Italian educational institution by claiming Vatican protection. As such, the missionary schools assumed a central role in the lives of many young Italians. After the war, these same young Italians began to depart Egypt en masse, in part driven by the possibilities opened up by their vocational training. Building on diplomatic, institutional and private archives, this article demonstrates how the Salesian missionary schools attempted and failed to integrate Italian immigrants into the Egyptian labour force through vocational training. This failure combined with socio-economic and geopolitical changes to propel Italian departures from Egypt, making emigrants out of immigrants.

Italian summary

In seguito all’entrata dell’Italia nella seconda guerra mondiale, le autorità anglo-egiziane rimpatriarono i diplomatici italiani dall’Egitto, arrestarono circa 5.000 italiani e sequestrarono i conti personali e quelli aziendali. Le istituzioni italiane furono chiuse a tempo indeterminato, incluse le scuole statali italiane. La speranza di un futuro in Egitto per i circa 60.000 residenti italiani cominciava a svanire. Le scuole missionarie salesiane, il cui obiettivo fin dal diciannovesimo secolo fu quello di inculcare valori nazionali e religiosi agli emigrati italiani, rimasero le uniche istituzioni educative italiane attive, che si avvalsero della protezione vaticana. Gli istituti salesiani assunsero di conseguenza un ruolo centrale nella vita di molti giovani italiani. Dopo la guerra, questi stessi giovani cominciarono a partire dall’Egitto, in parte spinti dalle opportunità lavorative offerte dalla loro formazione professionale. Basandosi su documenti diplomatici e fonti d’archivio d’istituzioni pubbliche e private, il presente articolo analizza i tentativi delle scuole missionarie salesiane d’integrare gli italiani nella forza lavoro egiziana attraverso la formazione professionale e il loro definitivo fallimento. Oltre ai cambiamenti socioeconomici e geo-politici, questo fallimento favorì le partenze degli italiani d’Egitto, trasformandoli da immigrati in emigranti.

Keywords

Mediterraneanemigrationeducational reformSalesian missionary schoolstransnational Italy
Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Italy , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , February 2018 , pp. 1 - 17
Copyright
© 2017 Association for the Study of Modern Italy 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abecassis, F. 2000. ‘L’enseignement étranger et les élites locales (1920–1960): Francophonie et identités nationales’. PhD diss., Aix-Marseille University.Google Scholar
Aciman, A. 2007. Out of Egypt: a Memoir. New York: Picador.Google Scholar
Alleaume, G. 1997. “La production d’une économie “nationale”: remarques sur l’histoire des sociétés anonymes par action en Egypte de 1856 à 1956.” Annales Islamologiques 31:1–16.Google Scholar
Amicucci, D. 2000. “La comunità italiana in Egitto attraverso i censimenti dal 1882 al 1947.” In Tradizione e modernizzazione in Egitto 1798–1998 , edited by P. Branca, 81–94. Pavia: Franco Angeli.Google Scholar
Bardinet, M.A. 2013. ‘Être ou devenir italien au Caire de 1861 à la Première Guerre mondiale: vecteurs et formes d’une construction communautaire entre mythes et réalités’. PhD diss., Paris-Sorbonne University.Google Scholar
Canepa, G. 2016. “Rifare gli italiani: profughi e progetti per il welfare (1944–1947).” Meridiana XXIX (2):57–78.Google Scholar
Canepa, G. forthcoming‘L’amministrazione come pedagogia: il Ministero per l’assistenza post-bellica e la costruzione della democrazia’.Google Scholar
Dalachanis, A. 2011. ‘Leaving Egypt: Greeks and their Strategies, 1937–1967. Unpublished PhD thesis, European University Institute, Florence.Google Scholar
Dalachanis, A. 2017. The Greek Exodus from Egypt: Diaspora Politics and Emigration, 1937–1962. Oxford: Berghahn.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deeb, M. 1978. “The Socioeconomic Role of Local Foreign Minorities in Modern Egypt, 1805–1961.” International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 9 (1): 11–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Delburgo, C. 2008. Come ladri nella note: La cacciata dell’Egitto. Bologna: CLUEB.Google Scholar
Dogan, M.A., and Sharkey, H.J., eds. 2011. American Missionaries and the Middle East. Foundational Encounters. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.Google Scholar
Elie, J. 2010. “The Historical Roots of Cooperation between the UN High Commission for Refugees and the International Organization for Migration.” Global Governance 16:345–360.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fahmy, K. 2004. “For Cavafy, with Love and Squalor: Some Critical Notes on the History and Historiography of Modern Alexandria.” In Alexandria, Real and Imagined , edited by A. Hirst, and M. Silk, 263–280. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Fahmy, K. 2012. ‘The Essence of Alexandria’. Manifest Journal 14 & 16.Google Scholar
Fishman, D. 2006. Il chilometro d’oro: il mondo perduto degli italiani d’Egitto. Milan: Guerini e Associati.Google Scholar
Gabaccia, D. R. 2000. Italy’s Many Diasporas. Seattle: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Gorman, A. 2010. “Diverse in Race, Religion and Nationality … but United in Aspirations of Civil Progress. Anarchism in Egypt before the First World War.” In Anarchism and Syndicalism in the Colonial and Postcolonial World, 1870–1940: The Praxis of National Liberation, Internationalism and Social Revolution, edited by S. Hirsch, and L. Van der Walt, 3–31. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Grange, D.J. 1994. L’Italie et la Méditerranée (1896–1911): Les fondements d’une politique étrangère. Rome: Ecole française de Rome.Google Scholar
Guastamacchi, F. 2012. Il profugo italiano: la storia di un italiano d’Egitto, dalla nascita fino alla costituzione del comitato di quartiere. Milan: Guastamacchi.Google Scholar
Hanley, W. 2008. “Grieving Cosmopolitanism in Middle East Studies.” History Compass 6 (5): 1346–1367.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Karanasou, F. 1992. ‘Egyptianisation: the 1947 Company Law and the Foreign Communities in Egypt’. PhD diss., St Anthony’s College, Oxford.Google Scholar
Khuri-Makdisi, I. 2010. The Eastern Mediterranean and the Making of Global Radicalism, 1860–1914. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Killearn, M.L. 1972. The Killearn Diaries (1934–1946). London: Sedgwick & Jackson.Google Scholar
Lagnado, L. 2008. The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit: a Jewish Family’s Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World. New York: Harper Perennial.Google Scholar
Longuenesse, E. 2003. “Diplômes industriels et service de l’État: les fantassins de la modernisation de l’Égypte. Remarques sur l’histoire de l’Association des diplômés de l’école industrielle (1943–1974).” Revue des Mondes Musulmans et de la Méditerranée 101–102:175–197.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mabro, R. 2002. “Nostalgic Literature on Alexandria.” In Historians in Cairo: Essays in Honor of George Scanlan, edited by J. Edwards, 237–265. Cairo: AUC Press.Google Scholar
Meyer, G. 1928. “Enseignement technique et orientation professionnelle.” L’Egypte contemporaine 19 (110): 589–598.Google Scholar
Mayeur, J.M., Pietri, L., Vauchez, A., and Venard, M. 1995. Histoire du Christianisme: Tome 11, Libéralisme, industrialisation, expansion européenne (1830–1914). Paris: Desclée.Google Scholar
Michel, E. 1958. Esuli Italiani in Egitto 1815–1861. Pisa: Domus Mazziniana.Google Scholar
Petricioli, M. 1997. “Italian Schools in Egypt.” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 24 (2): 179–191.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Petricioli, M. 2007. Oltre il Mito: l’Egitto degli italiani. Milan: Mondadori.Google Scholar
Pizzigallo, M. 2008. La diplomazia italiana e i paesi arabi dell’oriente mediterraneo (1946–1952). Milan: Franco Angeli.Google Scholar
Rainero, R.H. 2015. Le navi bianche: Profughi e rimpatriati dall’estero e dalle colonie dopo la seconda guerra mondiale: una storia italiana dimenticata (1939–1991). Milan: Diego Dejaco Editore.Google Scholar
Rosoli, G. 1996. Insieme oltre le frontiere: momenti e figure dell’azione della chiesa tra gli emigrati italiani nei secoli 19 e 20. Caltanissetta: Casa Editrice Sciascia.Google Scholar
Rossi, G.S. 2005. Mussolini e il diplomatico: La vita e i diari di Serafino Mazzolini, un monarchico a Salò. Soveria Mannelli (CZ): Rubbettino.Google Scholar
Sanfilippo, M. 1997. “Masse briache di livore anticlericale: la documentazione vaticana sul 20 settembre (1870–1922).” Mélanges de l’Ecole française de Rome. Italie et Méditerranée 109 (1): 139–158.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schewe, E. 2014. ‘State of Siege: the Development of the Security State in Egypt during the Second World War.’ PhD diss., University of Michigan.Google Scholar
Tignor, R.L. 1987. “Decolonization and Business: the Case of Egypt.” The Journal of Modern History 59 (3): 479–505.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turiano, A. 2016a. ‘De la pastorale migratoire à la coopération technique. Missionnaires italiens en Egypte: les salésiens et l’enseignement professionnel (1890–1970)’. PhD diss., Aix-Marseille University.Google Scholar
Turiano, A. 2016b. Le consul, le missionnaire et le migrant. Contrôler et encadrer la main d’œuvre italienne à Alexandrie à la fin du XIX siècle.” In Etudier en liberté les mondes méditerranéens. Mélanges offerts à Robert Ilbert, edited by L. Dakhli, and V. Lemire, 337–349. Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne.Google Scholar
Viscomi, J. 2016. ‘Out of Time: History, Presence, and the Departure of the Italians of Egypt, 1933–present’. PhD diss., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.Google Scholar
Vogliano, A. 1939. “l’Egitto e Noi.” La lettura: rivista mensile del Corriere della Sera 40 (10): 750–757.Google Scholar
Wian, G. 1957. “Le scuole italiane del Cairo, centro d’Italianità.” Italiani nel mondo. 24.Google Scholar