Italian Subalterns in Egypt between Emigration and Colonialism (1861-1937)

Book excerpt: Over the last years, we have witnessed a renewal in the studies on the Italian community which formed in Egypt in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Contrary to the historiographical paradigm that remained dominant for over a century, a novel approach – essentially based on a less ideological interpretation of archival sources – tends to provide a much more complex, less apologetic, and more horizontal reading of the dynamics within and among foreign/migrant communities. This work belongs to this "new" research wave. By rediscovering the originally Gramscian concept of “subaltern classes”, it aims at re-centring the context in which the “subalterns” of Italian origin lived and acted as the focus of our interest. At once, it aims at both making such context relevant and disclosing its complexity. It privileges an approach that takes into account different and overlapping categories and social identities, with particular attention to the relationships with the many different local communities.