By Jackie Jauregui
There is a direct connection from slavery to colonialism to contemporary Italian culture and politics, says Stephanie Malia Hom, an associate professor of Transnational Italian Studies at UC Santa Barbara.
Far from the forefront of the public’s impressions of Italy, there remain traces of the country’s history of slavery in present day culture. The Italian word “ciao,” for instance, comes from the Venetian dialect greeting “schiavo” meaning “I am your slave,” she said.
Hom recently sat down with Humanities and Fine Arts for an interview to discuss her forthcoming research and books about the histories of racism and slavery in Italy. For the 2023-24 year, Hom was awarded two external fellowships: the Bogliasco Foundation Fellowship and an Ad Hoc Barbieri Grant in Modern Italian History.
She said her current research interests emerged while writing her 2019 book, “Empire’s Mobius Strip: Historical Echoes of Migration and Detention.”
During her research, Hom noticed that restrictions on mobility in today’s Italian migration crisis echo the control exhibited while slavery was still legal in Italian city-states, and then in the colonial period following. The Möbius Strip metaphor in her book title embodies this pattern.
“[History] keeps folding back on itself,” she said. “There’s actually some historical overlap between the ends of slavery and the beginning of European colonization.”
Colonialism under the newly unified Italy began at the end of the 19th century. In the span of a few decades, Italy gained control over African and Eurasian nations such as Tunisia and Albania — under the guise of bringing civilization to them and, in turn, salvation. Because Italy’s colonial past isn’t widely discussed, says Hom, a myth persists that Italians were less brutal to the enslaved people brought to the peninsula before, and to the indigenous populations of their colonies later.
“It is something to the effect of colonialism lite,” Hom said. “It is often covered up with this myth of Italians as good colonizers, benevolent colonizers.”
This theme of control was intensified during the 1920s as fascist dictator Benito Mussolini pursued the creation and expansion of the Italian Empire, which included the annexation of Eritrea, Somalia, and Libya. Restricting the movement of people, drawing clear lines between who could be considered an Italian citizen and who couldn’t, and restricting people’s rights accordingly were essential to fascist control.
“Mobility is key,” she said. “The control of movement is the control of power over people.”
These trends continue via current Italian prime minister Girogia Meloni’s racist and xenophobic rhetoric and policy decisions, Hom said.
“You can trace that direct graphic genealogy between Mussolini’s party, the MSI [Italian Social Movement], the Alleanzea Nacionale [National Alliance], and the Brothers of Italy,” she said. “Meloni is a direct political descendent of them.”
Restriction and control over movement links the former empire to the present, and Hom seeks to understand this greater historical panorama.
“With Italian slavery, I’m excavating the layer I see beneath Italian colonialism and imperialism,” she said. “If we can think of [enslaved people] as those who were moved by force, that is absolutely the inherent dynamic.”
Jackie Jauregui is a third-year student majoring in Linguistics and Spanish, and minoring in German. She conducted this interview and wrote the text as a Social Media and Web Intern at the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts.
Ryan Monasch is a third-year student majoring in Film and Media Studies. She produced this video as a Social Media and Web Intern at the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts.