Sea-shaped Identities. Italians and Others in Late Nineteenth-century Italian Navy Travel Literature: a Case Study

During the second half of the 19th century, shortly after the reunification of Italy, began a period of Italian presence on the international seas. During these voyages Italian naval officers had the chance to come into contact directly and for the first time with the most diverse populations. Their travel notes and diaries can be considered as travel narratives influenced by the new Italian navalism, which was focused on building a strong and powerful image of the Navy on the seas and of Italy as a civilised nation. The paper, focusing on a re-reading of the travel notes on the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego, analyses how Italian Navy officers used to picture ‘Others’ as a means of building a positive self-image of a nation at the top scale of the civilisation.