From immigrants to colonialists? Italians in Egypt and ""the others"": fragments of subaltern agency in a Colonial sea (1861 - 1911).

What was the shared experience of global cities in the southern and eastern Mediterranean during the second half of the 19th century? How did the subaltern classes experience the processes of modernization and colonialism?

The aim of SubColonialMed is to offer new insights into socio-historical questions regarding the link between migrations and colonialism in the late 19th, early 20th centuries.

The project is based on the Italian migration to Egypt but seeks to broaden its analysis to encompass the entire Mediterranean Italian diaspora.

It examines the hypothesis that Italian ""colonies"" in the Mediterranean region were pivotal to the foreign and colonial policy of the Kingdom of Italy, contributing significantly to the shaping of national identity.

I argue that, even before the occupation of Lybia, the communities in territories subject to the Capitulations legal system served as laboratories for the construction of Italians as national and white political subjects. However, it is a mistake to perceive a direct correlation between metropolitan colonial politics and mass migrations.

Operating under the assumption that social transformations arise from global and local processes, this research regards migration as a social-historical phenomenon involving specific and autonomous dynamics of appropriation, hybridization, and rejection.

Methodologically, it strives to break new ground by proposing a interdisciplinary study with three components: consular archives, judicial documents, and qualitative biographical data, all used to explore these connections.

Combining the micro historical approach with post-colonial theories and intersectional method the project want to test how Italian subalterns in Egypt appropriated nationality becoming colonial actors.

The goal is to arrive to fundamental new insights about the interethnic relations of ordinary people in the cosmopolitan cities of Egypt and in the rest of the region.