Italians: The invention of an identity in Imperial Rio de Janeiro (1840-1860)

Between the 1840s and 1860s, before the Great Italian Immigration and in the context of the Risorgimento, men and women from different regions of the Italian Peninsula were already circulating through the streets of the Brazilian imperial court. Venetians, Lombards, Ligurians, Calabrians, and Friulians arrived in Rio de Janeiro bringing with them languages, customs, memories, and conflicts that would profoundly affect their experiences of exile and belonging.

Based on previously unpublished documentation found in Brazilian archives, Alexandre Belmonte investigates how these Italians, far from Europe, constructed a common Italian identity even before the unification of Italy. Through newspapers, police records, correspondence, and patriotic associations, a city emerges marked by encounters, tensions, and cultural reinventions.

More than just studying population displacements, the work seeks to understand the human experience of uprooting, memory, longing, and the multiple forms of belonging.