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Italianità Under Influence: Filippo Manetta, a Mazzinian Exile in America, a Confederate Agent in Italy

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Italianness and Migration from the Risorgimento to the 1960s

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Migration History ((PSMH))

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Abstract

A Risorgimento exile, Filippo Manetta fled from Turin in 1848 to seek refuge in New York City where he served the cause of a united Italy. US democracy was a model after which he hoped Italy could be shaped, and he believed italianità and pro-American feelings were but the two sides of the same coin. In 1855, he moved to the South where he taught Italian to the local elite for six years, studied cotton growing, and became an advocate of slavery. His return to Turin coincided with both the advent of Italian Unification and the outbreak of the Civil War. This paper will show how he defended the confederate interest in Italy in the name of the states’ rights to their own sovereignties and how he envisioned campaigning for the cultivation of cotton in the Peninsula as an act of Italian patriotism.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See Francesco Durante, Italoamericana, vol.1, Storia e letteratura degli italiani negli Stati Uniti 1776–1880 (Milan: Mondadori, 2001), 77. For more details on Italian exiles, see Patrizia Audenino and Antonio Bechelloni, L’esilio politico fra Otto e Novecento, in Storia d’Italia. Annali 24, Migrazioni, eds Paola Corti and Matteo Sanfilippo (Turin: Giulio Einaudi Editore, 2009), 343–69.

  2. 2.

    “New York Passenger Lists, 1820–1891,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:27PP-V6N: 15 April 2015), Phillip Manetta, 1851; citing NARA microfilm publication M237 (Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.); FHL microfilm.

  3. 3.

    On June 6, 1841, they formed the “congrega centrale della Giovine Italia” of North America, which aimed at spreading Mazzini’s ideals in the United States. This American branch of Young Italy was presided over by Felice Eleuterio Foresti, and headed by Giovanni Albinola (1809–1883), Alessandro Bargnani (1798–1852), and another Risorgimento hero who had arrived earlier in America, Giuseppe Avezzana (1797–1879).

  4. 4.

    Letter from Louis Mossi to the minister of foreign affairs, n.6, NY September 18, 1851, Lettere Ministri, Stati Uniti, vol.1, Archivio di Stato di Torino.

  5. 5.

    See, for example, “Il sogno d’un nipote,” L’Eco d’Italia, (August 24, 1850): 119.

  6. 6.

    For more details, see: Bénédicte Deschamps. “Dal fiele al miele: la stampa esule italiana di New York e il Regno di Sardegna (1849–1861),” Annali della Fondazione Luigi Einaudi 42 (2008): 81–98.

  7. 7.

    “To Our American Readers,” Il Proscritto, (August 7, 1851): 1.

  8. 8.

    “Summary,” The Congressionalist, (November 14, 1851): 179.

  9. 9.

    Giorgio Spini, Risorgimento e protestanti (Milan: Il saggiatore, 1989); Howard R. Marraro, Relazioni fra l’Italia e gli Stati Uniti, (Rome: Edizioni dell’Ateneo, 1954); See also Gli Stati Uniti e l’unità d’Italia, eds Daniele Fiorentino and Matteo Sanfilippo (Rome: Gangemi, 2004).

  10. 10.

    “Foreign Newspapers and periodicals published in New York,” The New York Herald, (August 31, 1851): 2.

  11. 11.

    F.M., “La Morte del 51,” Il Proscritto, (December 25, 1851): 1.

  12. 12.

    Filippo Manetta, “Alla Repubblica degli Stati Uniti,” L’Eco d’Italia, (May 11, 1850): 58.

  13. 13.

    Luigi Arditi, My Reminiscences (New York: Dodd, Mead and Cy, 1896), 29–30.

  14. 14.

    See “Arditi’s New Opera - La Spia,” Evening Mirror, March 24, 1856, p.2 and Vera Brodsky Lawrence, Strong on Music: The New York Music Scene in the Days of George Templeton Strong, Vol.2 Reverberations, 1850–1856 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 682–83.

  15. 15.

    Filippo Manetta, “To the People of the United States,” in Filippo Manetta and Luigi Arditi, La Spia. The Spy (New York: John Darcie, 1853).

  16. 16.

    Filippo Manetta, Guida per la coltivazione pratica del cotone in Italia secondo il metodo americano (Turin: Tipografia Derossi e Dusso, 1862), 5.

  17. 17.

    Filippo Manetta, La razza negra nel suo stato selvaggio in Africa e nella sua duplice condizione di emancipata e di schiava in America (Turin: Tipografia del Commercio, 1864), 139.

  18. 18.

    Manetta, La razza, 129.

  19. 19.

    Manetta, La razza, 130, 137.

  20. 20.

    Manetta, La razza, 132.

  21. 21.

    Manetta, La razza, 140.

  22. 22.

    See: Filippo Manetta, Il re cotone, ossia i distretti cotoniferi del globo considerati in relazione al loro clima (Torino: Tip. Derossi e Dusso, 1863).

  23. 23.

    F.M., “Nuova York,” Il Mondo Illustrato, Vol.4, n.51, (December 21, 1861): 390.

  24. 24.

    On Hotze, see Lonnie A. Burnett, Henry Hotze, Confederate Propagandist Selected Writings on Revolution, Recognition, and Race, (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2008), and Joseph V. Traha, III, “Henry Hotze: propaganda voice of the Confederacy,” in Knights of the Quill: Confederate Correspondents and their Civil War Reporting, eds Patricia G. McNeely, Debra Reddin van Tuyll, and Henry H. Schulte, (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2010), 216–37.

  25. 25.

    Letter from H. Hotze to J.P. Benjamin, London, 27 August 1863, in Edward Denby, Harry Kidder White Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, Series 2, vol.3, (Washington: Government printing Office, 1922), 878.

  26. 26.

    H. Hotze, “Letter of Instruction to Turin Correspondent,” August 17, 1863, in Denby- Kidder White, Official Records, 864.

  27. 27.

    Letter from H. Hotze to J.P. Benjamin, Secretary of State, Richmond, London, 13 February, 1864, in Kidder White, Official Records, 1025.

  28. 28.

    Efram Sera-Shriar, The Making of British Anthropology, 1813–1871 (London: Routledge, 2016), 109–12.

  29. 29.

    James Hunt, Introductory Address on the Study of Anthropology delivered at the Anthropological Society of London, (London: Trubner and Co, Pater Noster Row 1863), 4.

  30. 30.

    Robert E. Bonner, “Slavery, Confederate Diplomacy and the Racialist Mission of Henry Hotze,” Civil War History 3 (2005): 300–01.

  31. 31.

    Manetta, La razza.

  32. 32.

    Journal of the Anthropological Society of London, Vol.3, (London: Trubner and Co., Pater Noster Row, 1865), ccxlvii.

  33. 33.

    Frederick H. Jackson, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin in Italy,” Symposium 7.2, 1953; 7: 323–32.

  34. 34.

    “Situazione finanziaria e commerciale agli Stati Uniti,” Commercio Italiano, (July 15, 1865): 1.

  35. 35.

    “Stati Uniti,” Il Commercio Italiano, (August 12, 1865): 1.

  36. 36.

    Joseph Mazzini, His Life, Writings, and Political Principles (New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1872), xvi. On the links between Risorgimento patriots and abolitionists, see Paola Gemme, Domesticating Foreign Struggles: The Italian Risorgimento and Antebellum American Identity (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2005).

  37. 37.

    “Guerra d’America,” La Discussione, (July 14, 1863): 1.

  38. 38.

    “Le due Repubbliche americane,” La Discussione, (June 3, 1863): 1. (most of the articles written by Manetta were unsigned).

  39. 39.

    “La quistione (sic) costituzionale agli Stati Uniti I,” La Discussione, (August 6, 1863): 1.

  40. 40.

    “La quistione (sic) costituzionale agli Stati Uniti II,” La Discussione, (August 10, 1863): 1.

  41. 41.

    Manetta, Guida.

  42. 42.

    See, for example: Giuseppe Devincenzi, Della coltivazione del cotone in Italia (London: W. Trounce, 1862).

  43. 43.

    Letter from Filippo Manetta to M. Manna, Minister of Agriculture, March 9, 1863, Archivi degli Organi Di Governo E Amministrativi Dello Stato, Ministero dell’Agricoltura industria e commercio, busta 119, Fasc 0391, “Scritti del professore Filippo Manetta sulla coltivazione del cotone in Italia, 1862,” Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Rome.

  44. 44.

    Manetta, Guida, 8.

  45. 45.

    Filippo Manetta, Lettura sulla coltivazione del cotone in Italia e sui vantaggi che ne possono derivare alla nostra penisola (Busto Arsizio: Tipografia Sociale, 1862), 1, 6.

  46. 46.

    Filippo Manetta, “Coltivazione del cotone in Italia,” Espero, (April 4, 1862): 1.

  47. 47.

    Filippo Manetta, “Seconda lettera sulla coltivazione del cotone in Italia,” Espero, (April 18, 1862): 3.

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  1. Université de Paris, Paris, France

    Bénédicte Deschamps

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  1. Aix-Marseille University, Aix-en-Provence, France

    Stéphane Mourlane

  2. Aix-Marseille University, Aix-en-Provence, France

    Céline Regnard

  3. LARHRA, Lumière University, Lyon, France

    Manuela Martini

  4. CRHEC, Paris-Est Créteil University, Créteil, Paris, France

    Catherine Brice

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Deschamps, B. (2022). Italianità Under Influence: Filippo Manetta, a Mazzinian Exile in America, a Confederate Agent in Italy. In: Mourlane, S., Regnard, C., Martini, M., Brice, C. (eds) Italianness and Migration from the Risorgimento to the 1960s. Palgrave Studies in Migration History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88964-7_12

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