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

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.