Modern ItalyPub Date : 2024-10-09DOI: 10.1017/mit.2024.19
Alfonso Pacitti
{"title":"Arandora Star: analysis and ‘Embarkation Listing’ of Italians","authors":"Alfonso Pacitti","doi":"10.1017/mit.2024.19","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/mit.2024.19","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper critically reviews and examines the available data concerning Italians embarked on the SS <span>Arandora Star</span> on 30 June 1940. It encompasses their fate on 2 July when the ship was sunk, their subsequent journeys and the sources used to verify the conclusions. The principal aim is to establish, as far as is possible, the precise number, correct names and other details of those who were embarked on the ship. A fully validated ‘Embarkation Listing’ is published here for the first time.</p>","PeriodicalId":18688,"journal":{"name":"Modern Italy","volume":"6 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142386316","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Modern ItalyPub Date : 2024-10-09DOI: 10.1017/mit.2024.28
Robert Rumble
{"title":"Hunters and hunted: the sinking of SS Arandora Star within the wider context of the Battle of the Atlantic 1939–1940","authors":"Robert Rumble","doi":"10.1017/mit.2024.28","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/mit.2024.28","url":null,"abstract":"<p>On 2 July 1940, the ocean liner SS <span>Arandora Star</span> was torpedoed and sunk by German submarine <span>U-47</span>, with the loss of around 805 lives; over half of these were British-Italian civilian internees. This article approaches the event from the arena of Second World War military history, contextualising the sinking within the early Battle of the Atlantic. In so doing, it shifts the customary focus away from government internment policy and discussions of cultural legacy towards examining British and German naval strategies and realities. Tactical and logistical considerations of the conflict are investigated, the explication of which allows more detailed discussion of the sinking controversies and enables delivery of ‘answers’ to the persistent ‘questions’ of why <span>Arandora Star</span> was sailing unescorted and without Red Cross insignia. The broad perspective offered engages with transgression and culpability, and overall the article seeks to advance <span>Arandora Star</span> scholarship with its distinctive maritime focus.</p>","PeriodicalId":18688,"journal":{"name":"Modern Italy","volume":"2 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142386262","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Modern ItalyPub Date : 2024-10-09DOI: 10.1017/mit.2024.22
Simona Palladino
{"title":"Oral histories of Italians in the North-East of England: the sinking of the Arandora Star","authors":"Simona Palladino","doi":"10.1017/mit.2024.22","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/mit.2024.22","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Within British-Italian history of the Second World War, there are several questions surrounding the sinking of the SS <span>Arandora Star</span>, on 2 July 1940, which still remain problematic. Nevertheless, this tragedy continues to play a prominent role in the heritage and memories of the Anglo-Italian communities in the UK. This article focuses on the experiences and memories of the <span>Arandora Star</span> from the perspective of members of the Italian community in the North-East of England. Oral histories of Italian civilian internees who were embarked onto the ocean liner were collected via qualitative interviews with descendants of victims and survivors. This article contributes to raising awareness of <span>Arandora</span> scholarship by articulating how memories were interpreted retrospectively and transmitted down generations. Informing the debate on the purpose of misremembering in oral history, this article sheds light on the events and their imaginary reconstruction.</p>","PeriodicalId":18688,"journal":{"name":"Modern Italy","volume":"41 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142386265","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Modern ItalyPub Date : 2024-10-09DOI: 10.1017/mit.2024.23
Rachel Pistol
{"title":"Enemy Aliens: internment and deportation policy in Great Britain, September 1939–June 1940","authors":"Rachel Pistol","doi":"10.1017/mit.2024.23","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/mit.2024.23","url":null,"abstract":"<p>During the Second World War, Germans, Austrians and Italians living in Great Britain were designated as ‘enemy aliens’ and consequently interned. The worsening situation on the continent in May and June 1940 stirred up hysteria that spies and saboteurs could be amongst the Germans and Austrians. Mass arrests started in May 1940, and Italians were soon caught up in the detentions when Mussolini declared war on 10 June, thus filling internment camps to capacity. Canada and Australia agreed to take some of the ‘most dangerous characters’, facilitating the most controversial aspect of internment – deportation – which led to the ultimate tragedy when the SS <span>Arandora Star</span> was torpedoed and sunk on 2 July 1940. Building on previous scholarship that focuses on either German <span>or</span> Italian internment, this article examines both government policy towards and the internee experience of these two groups on an equal footing, thus furthering integration of the Italian narrative within internment historiography.</p>","PeriodicalId":18688,"journal":{"name":"Modern Italy","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142386261","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Modern ItalyPub Date : 2024-10-09DOI: 10.1017/mit.2024.21
Terri Colpi
{"title":"Deathscape, materiality and memorialisation: Arandora Star remembrance in Scotland","authors":"Terri Colpi","doi":"10.1017/mit.2024.21","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/mit.2024.21","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article progresses Second World War historiography of ‘enemy alien’ internment, especially of the SS <span>Arandora Star</span>, sunk in 1940 with a high loss of Italian civilian lives. Employing a new paradigm, that of the deathscape, defined as a topography of death and the practices that surround it, this investigation recontextualises <span>Arandora Star</span> remembrance in Scotland. Ambiguous loss, complicated grieving, disenfranchisements in mourning and absences in multiple layers of the deathscape form overarching themes that are explored in parallel to emotional-affective memory. The previously neglected study of individual memorialisation, both private and ‘official’, provides an important primary source in the fragmented materiality of the deathscape, allowing fresh insight on both cultural manifestations and political context. As the material and cultural apex of the deathscape, the Italian Cloister Garden and Arandora Star Memorial in Glasgow, created by Archbishop Mario Conti in 2011, are evaluated through the lenses of leadership, identity and heritage activism.</p>","PeriodicalId":18688,"journal":{"name":"Modern Italy","volume":"6 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142386263","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Modern ItalyPub Date : 2024-10-09DOI: 10.1017/mit.2024.31
Terri Colpi
{"title":"Raising the Arandora Star: history and afterlife of the Second World War sinking","authors":"Terri Colpi","doi":"10.1017/mit.2024.31","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/mit.2024.31","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Since the sinking of SS <span>Arandora Star</span> 84 years ago, the memory of this tragic wartime incident has been strongly held and developed within the British Italian community, moving through several phases, from oblivion to recognition and commemoration to a more recent growing awareness in a wider mnemonic community of interest. The aim of this special issue is threefold: to raise further the profile of the <span>Arandora Star</span>; to consolidate and secure the uncertain historical foundations of the event; and to advance the historiography by introducing new facts and perspectives and uncovering previously hidden or unknown aspects both of the past and the continuing afterlife. The six articles presented move logically through the history and stages of memory evolution and its manifestation – internment and deportation, the sinking itself, material, cultural and political aspects of the deathscape, oral histories, the multimedia ‘archive’, with finally, an embarkation listing to plug a serious knowledge gap.</p>","PeriodicalId":18688,"journal":{"name":"Modern Italy","volume":"122 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142386260","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Modern ItalyPub Date : 2024-09-20DOI: 10.1017/mit.2024.18
Margaret Renata Neil, Federica M. Cerruti
{"title":"South(s) of the South(s): race, caporalato, and the ‘Southern Question’ renewed in contemporary Italian border-making","authors":"Margaret Renata Neil, Federica M. Cerruti","doi":"10.1017/mit.2024.18","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/mit.2024.18","url":null,"abstract":"In contemporary Italy, media and public actors frame the exploitation of migrant agricultural labourers as the outcome of <jats:italic>caporalato.</jats:italic> This concept – translated as labour brokerage or gang mastery – connotes the violent treatment of workers and their exploitation by powerful individuals, who are today increasingly racialised and understood as being Black and immigrants. However, our fieldwork in Apulia and Sicily uncovered a more complicated picture. This article considers a variety of sources to explore how <jats:italic>caporalato</jats:italic> is constructed and to what effect. Our argument is that, though rooted in real dynamics, <jats:italic>caporalato</jats:italic> is also a reductive, sensationalised, and racialising framing device that transposes historic tenets of Italy's ‘Southern Question’ onto ‘othered’ migrant workers. It affects policy by creating categories of people who are made ‘illegal’ and ‘deportable’. In also reinforcing derogatory stereotypes about the Italian South, it makes visible further South(s) of the Italian South(s) – offering insight into how and where borders are created and what their effects are.","PeriodicalId":18688,"journal":{"name":"Modern Italy","volume":"21 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142306314","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Modern ItalyPub Date : 2024-09-19DOI: 10.1017/mit.2024.29
Goffredo Adinolfi
{"title":"Italy between liberalism and democracy: universal suffrage and the 1913 elections","authors":"Goffredo Adinolfi","doi":"10.1017/mit.2024.29","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/mit.2024.29","url":null,"abstract":"In 1912, the Italian parliament approved the extension of male suffrage, making it ‘almost’ universal. This process of revising representation transformed the very idea of the relationship between citizens and the state and shaped a profoundly different Italy. The aim of this article is to trace both the process leading to the approval of universal suffrage and its impact on the party system. With a compilation and analysis of data developed from scratch for the elections of 1909 and 1913, it was possible to analyse the main dimensions of the two rounds in a disaggregated manner. Three aspects make 1913 a year of transition. First, the degree of competition in the electoral process, especially in the South, increased considerably. Second, the decline of liberal formations was not transformed into defeat, thanks only to the Catholic vote. Third, the birth of the Popular Party and the failure to create a mass party of conservatives were causes of the imbalance in the party structure.","PeriodicalId":18688,"journal":{"name":"Modern Italy","volume":"193 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-09-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142245527","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Modern ItalyPub Date : 2024-09-19DOI: 10.1017/mit.2024.33
Monica Jansen, Stefania Basilisco
{"title":"Narrating COVID and captivity in Italy: ‘no prison’ writings and the restorative potential of the penitentiary","authors":"Monica Jansen, Stefania Basilisco","doi":"10.1017/mit.2024.33","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/mit.2024.33","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Italy's prison overcrowding became world news in early March 2020, when the COVID-19 outbreak sparked riots in prisons across the country, causing the death of 13 inmates. As a crisis narrative, the COVID-19 pandemic made visible the deep, ongoing crisis of Italy's prison system and disclosed new conditions for critical thought on the restorative potential of the penitentiary system. This article first describes the impact of COVID-19 on Adriano Sofri's ‘no prison’ writings, starting from his column in <span>Il Foglio</span> on the prison uprisings in March that followed the announcement of the anti-COVID measures; it subsequently analyses the Italian response to the pandemic from an internal, practitioner-led perspective. By offering both a dialectic and an immanent perspective, it aims to develop new ways of understanding the detention system and enhance the social credibility of the penitentiary system in Italy beyond the constraints of COVID and the emergency logic.</p>","PeriodicalId":18688,"journal":{"name":"Modern Italy","volume":"34 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-09-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142245487","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Modern ItalyPub Date : 2024-09-19DOI: 10.1017/mit.2024.34
Sebastian De Pretto
{"title":"From Cadarese to Morasco: the creation of a Fascist hydroscape in alpine space after 1928","authors":"Sebastian De Pretto","doi":"10.1017/mit.2024.34","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/mit.2024.34","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article explores the socio-ecological impacts of Fascist hydropower extraction in the Alpine valleys of Italy, focusing on the Toce river basin during the interwar period. It investigates the conflicts between local communities and hydropower initiatives by private energy companies under Fascism, thereby revealing the regime's communication strategies rooted in its political ecology. By analysing newspaper articles, propaganda outlets and communal archival documents, the study uncovers statal and local perspectives on infrastructure development and its enduring consequences. How the political ecology of Fascism in a high-altitude hydropower construction site became an expression of Fascist modernity will thereby be shown. Despite objections from valley inhabitants, Fascist hydropower projects persisted, perpetuating socio-ecological inequalities after 1945. Even postwar efforts for compensation failed to address the long-lasting impacts on mountain communities. This research reveals the intersection of political ecology and modernist infrastructure development in Mussolini's Italy, and thus also highlights the legacies of Fascist resource extraction policies on the country's peripheral Alpine regions.</p>","PeriodicalId":18688,"journal":{"name":"Modern Italy","volume":"4 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-09-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142245489","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}