In this engaging work, John S. Galante incorporates new material and analysis into the existing literature to provide a social history of Italian institutions and communities in South America and the transnational networks in which they were situated during and after the First World War (1914–18). Focusing on the metropolitan areas of São Paulo, Montevideo, and Buenos Aires, Galante explores the lives and institutions of Italian emigrants at the “mesocentric” or intermediate-scale level to analyze their responses to Italy's role in the war and the effects the war had on them and their American communities. As the author points out, the study is somewhere between the macrohistorical and microhistorical levels, which provides the reader with both depth and breadth and insights from the personal and familial.
Galante sets a logical organizational approach for his study. The first chapter, approached from the Italian perspective, explores the emigrants and how their diaspora could especially benefit the mother country. With over five million Italians living in the Americas at the outbreak of the First World War, the Italian government undertook efforts to mobilize them in the war effort, through military enlistment, financial contributions, and propaganda distribution. Given their numbers, this perceived benefit could be substantial.
Chapters 2 and 3 look at the pro-war efforts of the Italians living in Buenos Aires, Montevideo, and Rio de Janeiro. The focus shifts in Chapter 4 to look at the anti-war efforts in the same areas. Highlighted in these three chapters is the reality that, like European immigrants in other nations across the Americas, for example, the German immigrants in Venezuela, the Italian population in Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina witnessed fractures within their communities in regard to support or opposition to the Italian war effort and actions on the home front. Chapter 5 examines the postwar years and the solidification of what is termed the Italo-Atlantic world; that is, the hyphenated world of hybrid identities and cultures, such as the Italo-Argentines.
Building on various approaches and interpretations, Galante masterfully explores the Italian Atlantic World in the period around the First World War. He does an excellent job of presenting his study, not only in the larger context of the Atlantic World, but also in the scheme of global history. Its themes could serve as models for similar migrations and the difficulties immigrants, especially first-generation immigrants, often face in their new countries of residence. Where do they fit? Where do their loyalties lie? Where should their loyalties lie? How do we (for example, Italians in Brazil) mend fences of those in our home country (for example, Italians in Italy) with whom we have gone to war? These are among the vital questions that On the Other Shore attempts to answer.
