On the Other Shore: The Atlantic Worlds of Italians in South America during the Great War by John Starosta Galante (review)

Reviewed by: On the Other Shore: The Atlantic Worlds of Italians in South America during the Great War by John Starosta Galante Abril Liberatori Galante, John Starosta – On the Other Shore: The Atlantic Worlds of Italians in South America during the Great War. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2022. 264 p. On the Other Shore marks historian John Starosta Galante's first monograph, a point of intersection for his expertise in Latin American, Atlantic, global war, and Italian immigration histories. A social history of Italian communities in South America, it is an ambitious effort. The monograph paints a picture of the multiple transnational relationships between Italy and three Italian immigrant settlements (Sao Paulo, Brazil; Montevideo, Uruguay; and Buenos Aires, Argentina) during and immediately after the First World War. It explores the ways in which the global conflict affected the lives of Italians and their descendants in South America and how those communities "balanced and blended relationships" with Italy and with their countries of settlement. The book (1) explores how Italians and their institutions in South America reacted to the war; (2) examines the transnational reach of concepts like nationalism; and (3) End Page 186 explores how Italian South Americans understood their place within American, transatlantic, and Italian Atlantic networks. Importantly, it explores how these big themes play out in the context and immediate aftermath of the First World War. For Galante, the global conflict's effect on these communities is a central component of the development of an Italo-Atlantic identity. Galante uses the framing device of the Atlantic world to understand the actors and actions he brings to life (here he borrows from Diego Galeano's conception of a "South American Atlantic"). He argues that the First World War and its aftermath impacted the ways South American Italians understood themselves and identified with the spaces they inhabited. He ultimately concludes that the conflict ushered in a shift from an Italian Atlantic to an Italo-Atlantic, a concept marked by a greater emphasis on hyphenated notions of identity rooted deeply in Italian origins, but situated within Atlantic South America, not in Italy or Italian nationalism (one of Donna Gabaccia's "many diasporas," Galante notes pp. 125, 156). The first chapter explores how officials and intellectuals in Italy managed and wrote about emigrant affairs. Here and throughout, there is valuable information about the important but underfunded and under-supported role of the Emigration Commission in putting into practice the promises made by the Italian government to its global emigrants. This chapter is especially relevant to scholars of the global Italian diaspora. Galante's next chapters move his analysis to Buenos Aires and Montevideo (Chapter 2) and Sao Paulo (Chapter 3). Here he delves into the (mostly written) worlds of pro-war organizers in those regions (primarily community elites, businessmen, and diplomats). Chapter 4 shifts gears to examine how anti-war activists (often equated, rightfully, with organized labour) responded to the ongoing conflict across South America, and how both ethnicity but also social class impacted their organization and response to the war effort. Here, Galante's discussion about familial guilt as a strategy for dissuading Italian family members from supporting the war effort helps ground the chapter and serves as just one example of how Galante gives his subjects agency in a world that can so often be read through the lens of institutions and nation-states. Finally, Chapter 5 focuses on the post-war period (1919–1921), unpacking the forces that led to a new emphasis on what Galante calls "alternative notions of belonging that embraced migrant dualities" (p. 25). Here, Galante's assertive voice and tight prose come to a head; the book's central thesis comes to light and makes these last two chapters the monograph's strongest. On the Other Shore is a study in the Herculean task of transnational historical research, buttressed by archival sources from over 32 archival institutions in five different countries. Galante's use of secondary literature similarly spans a multitude of disciplines and geographic areas, and he displays this command well. Analysis often rests heavily on the ethnic presses and other newspaper publications in South America, but Galante couples this with private...