Francesca Biancani
This research project analyses the social history of the Italian community in Egypt from 1864 to 1937 using a distinctive microhistorical and subalternist approach attentive to the articulation of local and supra-local dynamics. The project aims to question the connection between migrations, ethnicity and nation-building in the specific context of the Mediterranean region. It focuses on transnational identity of migrants, to understand how their perceptions of belonging and performance of identity have evolved and redefined themselves over time in response to local, national, and international historical-political phases. Adopting a micro-historical perspective to situate transnationalism, this study will examine the processes through which migrants negotiated their multiple identities within the local context and appropriated their nationality as a positional resource under the Capitulations. The research will be premised on the retrieval and proposed enhancement of a very specific set of sources which are not easily accessible to researchers at present, the civil and penal cases of the Italian Consular Courts of Cairo and Alexandria held by the Archivio Storico Diplomatico of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Rome. The broader objectives of the project are twofold: to engage in a rich theoretical conversation on the meaning and changing practices of "vernacular cosmopolitanism" by exploring a historically situated case study (Egyptian colonial cosmopolitanism under capitular jurisdiction), and to write a subaltern history of the Italian Community of Egypt from a transnational perspective. The specific archival and technological objectives of the project will be the preparation of an inventory, a catalogue and a digital platform of the documents, to make the collection accessible to research and to spread knowledge of its historical relevance far beyond the research community. The project is part of PRIN 2022 in which Costantino Paonessa (Unibo), Lorenzo Bertucelli (UniMORE) and Costanza Lisi (UniMORE ) are also participating.