Italian Intellectuals And International Politics 1945 1992

Italian intellectuals played an important role in the shaping of international politics during the Cold War. The visions of the world that they promulgated, their influence on public opinion and their ability to shape collective speech, whether in agreement with or in opposition to those in power, have been underestimated and understudied. This volume marks one of the first serious attempts to assess how Italian intellectuals understood and influenced Italy’s place in the post–World War II world. The protagonists represent the three key post-war political cultures: Catholic, Marxist and Liberal Democratic. Together, these essays uncover the role of such intellectuals in institutional networks, their impact on the national and transnational circulation of ideas and the relationships they established with a variety of international associations and movements.

Italian intellectuals played an important role in the shaping of international politics during the Cold War. The visions of the world that they promulgated, their influence on public opinion and their ability to shape collective speech, whether in agreement with or in opposition to those in power, have been underestimated and understudied. This volume marks one of the first serious attempts to assess how Italian intellectuals understood and influenced Italy's place in the post-World War II world. The protagonists represent the three key post-war political cultures: Catholic, Marxist and Liberal Democratic. Together, these essays uncover the role of such intellectuals in institutional networks, their impact on the national and transnational circulation of ideas and the relationships they established with a variety of international associations and movements.

This book examines how left-wing political and cultural movements in Western Europe have considered Jews in the last two hundred years. The chapters seek to answer the following question: has there been a specific way in which the Left has considered Jewish minorities? The subject has taken various shapes in the different geographical contexts, influenced by national specificities. In tandem, this volume demonstrates the extent to which left-wing movements share common trends drawn from a collective repertoire of representations and meanings. Highlighting the different aspects of the subject matter, the chapters in this book are divided in three parts, each dedicated to a major theme: the contribution of the theorists of Socialism to the Jewish Question; Antisemitism and its representations in left-wing culture; and the perception of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Taken together, these three themes allow for a multidisciplinary analysis of the relationship between the Left and Jews from the second half of the nineteenth century to recent times.

This book offers a critical analysis of global mobilities across China and Italy in history. In three periods in the twentieth century, new patterns of physical mobilities and cultural contact were established between the two countries which were either novel at the time of their emergence or impactful on subsequent periods. The first two chapters provide overviews of writings by Italians in China and by Chinese in Italy in the twentieth century. The remaining chapters cover: Republican China’s relationships with Italy and Italian Fascist colonialism in China during the 1920s–1930s; Italian travelers to China during the Cold War from the 1950s to the 1970s; migrations between China and Italy during the 2000s–2010s. In analyzing these cultural mobilities, this book opens a new line of inquiry in Chinese-Italian Cultural Studies, which has been dominated by historical study, and contributes a significant case study to the scholarship on global cultural mobilities.

Conceived in the 1850s and opened to navigation in 1869, the Suez Canal’s construction coincided with Italy’s path to unification and its first foray into nineteenth-century globalization. Since then, the history of Italy and the Canal have intertwined in many ways, throughout in peace and war. This edited collection explores the fundamental technical, diplomatic and financial contributions that Italy made to the production of the Canal and to its subsequent development, from the mid-nineteenth century to the Cold War. Drawing from unpublished public and private archival sources, this book is the first comprehensive account of this long and multifaceted relationship, providing innovative perspectives on Italy’s diplomatic, economic, social, colonial and cultural history. An insightful read for those studying maritime, diplomatic or Italian history, this book contributes to a growing body of research on the Canal, which has largely emerged from international business, labour and social history, and offers new insights into the Euro-Mediterranean region.

This book aims to provide an overview of Italian foreign policy from the moment of unification to the establishment of the European Union. Three turning points are crucial in order to clarify Italy’s foreign policy: 1861, the proclamation of the Italian Kingdom; 1943, when Italy surrendered in World War II; 1992, the signing of the Maastricht Treaty. The international position of Italy continues to be an enigma for many observers and this fuels misinterpretations and prejudices. This book argues that Italy is different but not divergent from other European countries. Italian elites have traditionally seen foreign policy as an instrument to secure the state and import models for development. Italy can still contribute to international security and the strengthening of the EU. At the same time, Italy is not a pure adaptive country and has always maintained a critical attitude towards the international system in which it is incorporated.

This book explores the long-term origins of populist Euroscepticism. Taking a historical perspective to move beyond explaining present-day expressions of opposition to the European Union in isolation, this book reveals the historical sedimentation of the several ways and forms taken over decades by opposition towards European integration. As such, this approach – with contributions from across disciplines - explains not just the past of Euroscepticism, but also its current nature and future prospects. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of European History, European Politics and Studies and more broadly to Political Science, International Relations, the Humanities and Social Sciences.

This volume represents one of the first extensive studies that investigates the persistence of questions of race and racism in Italy from the liberal age to the present, through colonialism, Fascism and post-war Italy. It adopts an interdisciplinary perspective to investigate the intertwining of the cultural, social, legislative and political dynamics of discrimination in Italy’s past and present. Drawing upon the expertise of historians, political scientists, sociologists, scholars of literature and experts in cultural studies, the original essays collected in this volume show a remarkable continuity and the persistence of racism in the Italian cultural and political discourse, in society and in the representation of Others. They also speak of the shifting of practices of Othering from one group to another in different historical contexts.