CfP: Italy and the Post-Colonial World: Cooperation and Mobility between Decolonization and the Cold-War (1960-1989)

This past year has witnessed the resurgence of global protest, aimed at tackling both material and cultural traces of the colonial period. In particular, protestors highlighted the problematic and partially unacknowledged presence of those colonial legacies in Western societies. In Italy, these protests of 2020 coincided with some significant anniversaries. First, in July 1960, the ten-year Italian trusteeship of Somalia (AFIS) ending, concluding Italy’s formal presence in the now-former colony. Second, another anniversary includes 1970, when the last remaining Italian settlers were forcibly expelled from Gaddafi’s Libya. Those events happened when the history of Italian colonialism seemed to be largely forgotten, whereas the interest of political and economic forces turned towards a new interest in the former colonial world. Law n. 1222 (1971) provided the first legal framework concerning the projects of developmental cooperation managed by Italian Foreign Office. That same year, the launch of the Istituto per le relazioni tra l’Italia e i Paesi dell’Africa, America Latina e Medio Oriente is further evidence of certain political actions, which aimed to establish new political, economic, and cultural relationships with newly independent countries. These political practices and relationships developed against the backdrop of significant processes, such as the Cold War, the European integration, and increasing influxes of migrants coming from the former colonial world. Historiography has already focussed on specific events and processes related to migratory flows, the new projection of post-war Italy in the former colonial war, with specific focus on the establishment of bilateral and multilateral development cooperation policies (against the backdrop of the constant tension and distrust between the Atlantic and Soviet blocs), on the beginning of new economic relations (e. g. the case of ENI, in Africa and Asia), and of political and cultural agreements with recently independent states. Our goal, however, is to explore these different processes within a single methodological framework. More specifically, Seminar 1 aims to shed light on the possible interconnections between Italy and the post-colonial world in terms of political and economic relationships, mobility processes and cultural relations. The chronological span ranges from 1960 – the “year of Africa” but also the one in which the formal relationship between Italy and Somalia ended – and 1989, which marked the end of the polarized system that characterized the Cold War. In so doing, we foster multidisciplinary and transnational dialogues around the theme of the new relationships Italy established with the formerly colonized world and with people migrating from those countries. We seek contributions dealing with political negotiations, themes, and processes concerning the implementation of aid and development cooperation programs (food, energy, infrastructural and military fields); migratory flows of people with different expertise to and from recently independent countries (such as the circulation of students or personnel with technical expertise such as architects and engineers as part of political-diplomatic strategies); the establishment of Italian schools abroad and, more generally, education paths between newly independent countries and Italy. In analysing such topics, we seek to foster a reflection on the extent to which the missing critique of Italy’s colonial past may influence the new political, economic, and cultural projection of Italy in the former colonial countries as well as the perception of incoming migrant fluxes, which have increased since the 1970s.