L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, MARCH 5, 2026 www.italoamericano.org 24 L'Italo-Americano HERITAGE MEMORIA IDENTITÀ STORIA RADICI F or many readers today, the idea of " A m e r i c a n i n f l u e n c e " i n Italy belongs to a f a m i l i a r t i m e l i n e , w h i c h begins after the Second World W a r , w i t h s o l d i e r s , f i l m s , chewing gum, jeans, and the Marshall Plan. Yet a recently published study invites us to move the clock back several decades. Long before Hollywood, jazz, or Coca-Cola became s h o r t h a n d f o r c u l t u r a l e x c h a n g e , I t a l i a n s w e r e already debating, welcoming, mistrusting, and imitating w h a t t h e y u n d e r s t o o d a s "America." T h e b o o k i n q u e s t i o n i s The Rise of Americanism in Italy, 1888–1919, by Luca Cottini (University of T o r o n t o P r e s s , T o r o n t o , 2025). Cottini, a professor at Villanova University and cre- ator of the "Italian Innova- tors" public history project, reconstructs a period in which the United States entered Ital- ian conversations as a social and political presence, in a real cultural exchange carried by migrants, newspapers, reli- gious institutions, and public spectacle. The story begins along the routes that connected Italy to the Americas in the late nine- teenth century, when migra- tion reached unprecedented levels. Millions left the penin- sula, but some not permanent- ly, because seasonal travel and return migration meant that letters, savings, stories, and habits crossed the Atlantic as regularly as passengers did. V i l l a g e s k n e w A m e r i c a through relatives who came home with money to buy land or open businesses, and the United States learned about I t a l y t h r o u g h i m m i g r a n t neighborhoods forming in cities such as New York and New Orleans. T h e I t a l i a n s t a t e , t h e Catholic Church, and the press did not ignore what was happening across the Atlantic. They followed it carefully, sometimes anxiously. In 1888, Pope Leo XIII addressed the condition of emigrants in the l e t t e r Q u a m A e r u m n o s a , acknowledging the hardships many I tal ians wer e facing abroad and calling for greater pastoral care. Migration, in his view, was not just an econom- ic escape valve but a moral question, a social upheaval that could reshape lives in ways no one fully controlled. America, from this angle, did not look like a simple land of opportunity, but also very powerful and unpredictable. That sense of uncertainty sharpened only a few years later when, in 1891, eleven Italian immigrants were lynched in New Orleans following a criminal trial. The event triggered a diplomatic crisis between Italy and the United States and was widely reported in Italian newspa- pers. For many readers, the image of America changed almost overnight, moving from what had often been described as a promised land into something more nefari- ous. Debates about protec- tion, citizenship, and national dignity filled the press and, a l m o s t i n s t i n c t i v e l y , Christopher Columbus was brought forward as a symbolic mediator between the two countries. In Italy, he was claimed as proof of his- torical contribution; in the United States, he was cele- brated as a foundational pio- neer. Basically, the past was being used to steady a present that felt unstable. Yet not every encounter took place in the language of politics. By the end of the cen- tury, America arrived in Italy in a much different form, one that was theatrical, noisy, and strangely attractive. When Buffalo Bill's Wild West show toured the peninsula in 1890 and again in 1906, it d r e w e n o r m o u s c r o w d s , charmed by the boisterous courage of American cow- boys. It was a show, certainly, but it also conveyed some- thing about American self- presentation and, perhaps more deeply, about the very essence of America to Euro- pean eyes, an essence made of energy, movement, expan- s i o n , a n d y e s : f r e e d o m . Artists were charmed and inspired: Giacomo Puccini attended a performance and then, years later, he set his own La fanciulla del West on the American frontier, bring- ing it even closer to Italy's collective imagination. Sud- denly, America was no longer only a place where Italians went but had also become a setting that Italian culture could reinterpret on its own terms, with something quin- tessentially Italian like opera. Only three years after Buf- falo Bill's last appearance in t h e B e l p a e s e , i n 1 9 0 9 , W i l b u r W r i g h t d e m o n - strated his airplane in Italy. American technology took o v e r t h e c o u n t r y ' s f r o n t pages, with newspapers fol- lowing the flights in detail, a n d c r o w d s g a t h e r i n g t o watch what, only a handful of years before, seemed impossi- ble. The airplane was the ulti- mate technological artefact, but also a tool that embodied speed, audacity, and a future where distance might shrink and migrating, perhaps, be l e s s p a i n f u l . C r u c i a l l y , Wright's work sedimented the idea that America was innovative, futuristic and, because of this, positively weighing onto the world's panorama. It is also worth noting the popularity some Italian emi- grants achieved back home, n o t a b l y A m e d e o P i e t r o Giannini, founder of the Bank of Italy in 1904, later Bank of America. After the 1906 earthquake, he extended credit to small shopkeepers, many of whom were immi- grants without formal guar- antees but rich in community trust. News of his initiative reached Italy, shaping a dual image of America: a land of opportunity for hardworking Italians and a financial sys- tem more flexible and prag- matic than at home. Then, the First World War began, and the Bel- paese's relationship with the US took on a different tone. The United States entered the conflict in 1917, and American aid workers, soldiers, and vol- unteers arrived in Italy. Fig- ures such as Fiorello La Guardia were involved in relief efforts, and the great Ernest Hemingway spent t i m e n e a r t h e f r o n t a s a n a m b u l a n c e d r i v e r , j u s t t o mention two notable exam- ples. But what's perhaps even more important is that Ital- ians started seeing Americans as "friends." And then, Presi- dent Woodrow Wilson's language of national self- determination was received with enthusiasm in wartime propaganda: let's not forget h o w y o u n g I t a l y w a s a s a n a t i o n , a n d h o w l o n g t h e struggle to become one had lasted. That moment of connec- tion and gratitude, however, did not last. At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, Wilson opposed several Ital- ian territorial claims in the Adriatic, which led to deep disappointment. Newspapers t h a t h a d r e c e n t l y p r a i s e d American leadership adopted a m o r e c r i t i c a l t o n e a n d , while the earlier fascination did not disappear, it became more complex. By then, however, some- thing irreversible had hap- pened. "Americanism" in I t a l y a l r e a d y m e a n t m o r e than one thing: it could mean technological daring, popular e n t e r t a i n m e n t , f i n a n c i a l mobility, even diplomatic ten- sion. None of this depended o n H o l l y w o o d o r p o s t w a r consumer culture. Everything had grown gradually through encounters: migrants sending l e t t e r s h o m e , p e r f o r m e r s crossing oceans, engineers, bankers, journalists. By the time films, music, and consumer goods spread widely after 1945, the conver- sation was already decades old. It had begun in sermons, in newspaper columns, in cir- cus tents, in flight demonstra- tions, in the credit extended across a shop counter after an earthquake. Long before tele- vision, America had entered the Italian imagination, not as a single story, but as a series of encounters that left their mark on both sides of the Atlantic. GIULIA FRANCESCHINI Amedeo Pietro Giannini: his financial support for Italian Americans after the 1906 San Francisco quake made a huge impression on Italian people back in Europe (Image created with DALL-E 2) Before the Marshall Plan: America's early influence in Italy

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