Italy and Latin America: intellectual, scientific, and artistic relations (19th, 20th, and 21st centuries)

Introduction to the dossier

Abstract

When, in 1861, with the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy, the Italian nation was born, the vast majority of Latin American nations had already achieved independence, some four decades earlier. Before that date, as we know, the territory that today corresponds to Italy had been subject to political, military, and diplomatic processes that fragmented it into numerous and variable institutional arrangements. In this context – also as a result of complex and peculiar ideological, cultural, and social processes – an idea of "Italy" and "Italianness" was being affirmed that gave different meanings to the adjective Italian itself, which could be used, also in diverse dictions and perspectives, since the mid-thirteenth century, implying, however, almost always, the affirmation of an awareness of a deeper "ethnic unity" detached from the political-territorial reality. In this text we present the dossier: Italy and Latin America: intellectual, scientific, and artistic relations (19th, 20th, and 21st centuries).