Letters to the Editor: the 'awkward truths' in Australia's Italian migration history, 1900-1915

Most scholars of Italian migration history assume that the majority of Italy's emigrants between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries expressed no interest in the Italian nation or identity, or national culture. Many left their homelands because of unemployment and poverty, largely caused by the government's unification processes and imperial designs. As such, the dominant narrative has tended to tell a story of 'heroes and villains', to use Peter Burke's words. This chapter investigates epistolary evidence from Italian migrant workers in Australia during Italy's efforts to assert an imperial influence across the diaspora, 1900-1915. Italian migrant letters are rare for the era but some are preserved in the Italian migrant press of the day, Uniamoci, L'Italo-Australiano and Oceania. To use another of Burke's phrases, they reveal some 'awkward truths' with Italian migrant perspectives challenging reifying conceptions within the historiography