VERNACOSM Vernacular Cosmopolitanism: History and Archives of Subalterns in Colonial Egypt (1864-1937)

Principal Investigator: Prof. Francesca Biancani

The project analyses the social history of the Italian community in Egypt from 1864 to 1937 by deploying  a distinctive microhistorical and subalternist approach attentive to the articulation of local and supra-local dynamics. It aims at studying the connection between migrations, ethnicity and nation-building in the specific context of the Mediterranean region. It focuses on transnational identity of migrants, to understand how their perceptions of belonging and performance of identity have evolved and redefined themselves over time in response to local, national, and international historical-political phases. Adopting a micro-historical perspective to situate transnationalism, this study will examine the processes through which migrants negotiated their multiple identities within the local context and appropriated their nationality as a positional resource under the Capitulations. The research will be premised on the retrieval and proposed enhancement of a very specific set of currently quite neglected sources, the civil and penal cases of the Italian Consular Courts of Cairo and Alexandria held by the Archivio Storico Diplomatico of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Rome. The broader objectives of the project are twofold: to engage in a rich theoretical conversation on the meaning and changing practices of "vernacular cosmopolitanism" by exploring a historically situated case study (Egyptian colonial cosmopolitanism under capitular jurisdiction), and to write a subaltern history of the Italian Community of Egypt from a transnational perspective. The specific archival and technological objectives of the project consists of the preparation of an inventory, a catalogue integrated on a digital platform, to make the collection widely accessible to both the academic community and the general public . 

Website: https://site.unibo.it/vernacosm 

Members of the Department

Prof. Francesca Biancani

Dott. Costantino Paonessa

Other members

Publications:

Biancani, Francesca, Grazia e le altre: lavoratrici del sesso italiane, colonialismo e cosmopolitismo vernacolare al Cairo (fine XIX secolo-inizio XX secolo), «AFRICHE E ORIENTI», 2024, 28, pp. 12 - 31  

Paonessa, Costantino, “Tracce per una storia della presenza femminile italiana nel movimento della sinistra radicale in Egitto (1860-1930), «AFRICHE E ORIENTI», 2024, 28, pp.139-159  

(forthcoming) Biancani, Francesca and Costanza Lisi, “The ‘Vernacosm’ project: the valorisation of the Egyptian consular fonds in Cairo and Alexandria held by the Historical Diplomatic Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs”, under contract with HDiffusion Publishers, France. 

Conferences, lectures and talks

“Rethinking Mediterranean Periodizatio through Migration, Conflicting Temporalities and Political Membership in the History of the Italians of Egypt (1937-1963), 7th November 2024, Aula Grande, Piazza San Giovanni in Monte 2, Bologna.  

(forthcoming) “Beyond Nostalgia: History and Archives of Vernacular Cosmopolitanism in Colonial Egypt”, 16th and 17th of July 2025, Palazzo Hercolani, Strada Maggiore 45, Bologna.