When we think of Italy as a historical-geographical entity immersed in the destinies of the world, we too often forget that not only are we surrounded by the Mediterranean, but that, for all our history, we overlook this thousand-year historical presence in the Mediterranean and in the Mediterranean that is North Africa: the complex of states that overlooks this sea from the Atlantic to the Red Sea, from Morocco to Egypt, from Libya to Algeria and Tunisia.
In these countries, the Italian presence, not only has existed for thousands of years, but has also historically become more and more evident since the 19th and 20th centuries, with all the great changes that these two centuries have seen in the relations between the Mediterranean, Africa and Europe brought with them. in the colonial developments of an extractive capitalism that fundamentally changed the life horizon of these nations, these peoples and their social and power systems. The presence of African and Middle Eastern migrants moving from Italy to northern Europe today often makes us forget that in Mediterranean Africa, for centuries, European settlements, and therefore Italian settlements in particular, helped found the historical constructs – colonial politicians who still shape all the varied histories of the nations of this region today. Important and significant Italian communities in this part of the African continent that today live, work and make an important contribution to the political and economic life of these nations.
For this reason we would like to highlight the Italian presence in these countries. It is historically reflected in the diversity of destinies that accompany the equally important and significant presence of the communities of those African nations that today arrive and live in Italy thanks to the great transformation caused by the migratory cycles that characterize with unusual force , in the last twenty years the entire Mediterranean history of the Greater Middle East and Europe, Italy. In the years to come, this history will become the present and future not only of Italy with a view to Mediterranean Africa, but increasingly also of all of Europe. Russia’s imperialist and imperial war of aggression against Ukraine is reordering the vectors of the parallelogram of European power. NATO’s southern flank is being weakened in favor of the Scandinavian-Baltic plexus, giving Poland the historic role it played in the central centuries of transition from modern times to the present, and no longer having to suffer the fate that has divided it for too long . All of this gives the UK, and will increasingly do so, a crucial role to belittle Germany from its rise to power through economics and the industrial agreement with Russia and China: The United States cannot accept this rise in global dominance that it is constantly pushing forward.
In the Mediterranean, however, and this is the significance of our reflections, the fate of the world continues to unfold without pause. And with big changes compared to the planetary pace. China and Russia are encircling North and sub-Saharan Africa with their expansions of power in anti-French, anti-Egyptian and (in Libya) anti-Italian ways, and are also promoting pacification between the Shiite and Saudi forces, which, if true, would be the Arab-Palestinian -Reshape Israeli relations irrevocably and profoundly. Furthermore, Assad’s renewed assertion of power in Syria marks a dramatic impotence of the major and medium-sized Western powers. The Abrahamic Pact is a response to this shift in the balance of power in the Mediterranean region.
What interests us, moreover, is the interpretative novelty based on a cognitive circularity “concrete-abstract-concrete”: understanding the changes in history not in a kind of geopolitical bubble, detached from the emergence of companies, cultures, social relationships and communication, but with a density of expression that comes from the sources that give meaning to the history of the present: interviews, research, testimonies not only from scientists, but from all actors in social, universal and national life. We must and we want to understand. And it is all the more true and useful to understand because Italy is Italy even outside Italy and Italy, as in its entire thousand-year history, is the totality of the populations that have settled or are settling within our borders and in European borders in recent years . History is always a story of flows and relationships. And it is a story of settlement and transformation that characterizes the life of the nations and cultures of the universes – worlds in which our lives are immersed.
This arrangement of world history between Europe and Mediterranean Africa is a constant interaction of worlds and not diversity and contrast as we still do and think today. This deprives us of a comprehensive view of world history, of which Italy is such an important part. Italians live and work in these countries and we need to know more about the economic and social structure, cultures, religious and social practices in the broadest sense. Each of these historical presences has its double: many Italians work in Morocco and many Moroccans work in Italy, and the same applies to the mutual presences between Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Egypt. We have the exciting task of bringing to life meaningful, interconnected worlds made up of layers and layers of complex stories and experiences. It is our inspiration: it is our intention of study, careful and well-founded journalistic information, documentation and creativity; a look peculiar to anthropology and inclusive sociology: an analysis based on the investigation and therefore on the word and the search for the signifiers of those “universe worlds” in which and thanks to which communities live and work. It is a communication task that is close to our hearts and that is unique to us.