Abstract
This chapter is based on the theoretical conceptualisation that the border serves a dual function: on the one hand, it excludes everything that is outside; on the other and simultaneously, it includes what is already inside. We empirically analyse a study of the press and present our theory of the border, according to which: (1) inclusion is achieved by the construction of a cultural homogeneity and (2) a standardisation of the population that is located on the territory delimited by the border itself. In some cases, the border may include “external” populations or parts of territory, through the acquisition of territory, in a more or less regulated manner and for economic or humanitarian reasons, of large flows of immigrants.
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Notes
- 1.
The borders die and rise again, move, erase and reappear unexpectedly. They mark experience, language, the space of living, the body with its health and its illnesses, the psyche with its divisions and its rearrangements, politics with its cartography. Man tends to live within a closed, limited space. He needs to have a barrier around him that delimits the space he has occupied, separates it and protects it from something that at the very moment in which it is traced becomes ‘other’, ‘different’. Claudio Magris, Come i pesci il mare…, in Aa. Vv., Frontiere, supplemento a “Nuovi argomenti”, 1991, n. 38, p. 12.
- 2.
‘The right to enjoy and dispose of things in a full and exclusive way’. Art. 832 of the Italian Civil Code.
- 3.
‘Are there other waters in our country today? Tell me about it. Is there now a thirst for the Italian soul that can be quenched elsewhere? Tell me about it. Are there other living rivers in Italy?’ Gabriele D’Annunzio, 1918.
- 4.
Art. 3, 4 et 5. Cession de la Savoie à la France, Traité du 24 mars 1860. “A joint commission will determine, in a spirit of equity, the borders of the two States, taking into account the configuration of the mountains and the need for defence”.
- 5.
Proclama Pubblicato dalla Gazzetta Ufficiale del Regno il 2 aprile 1860. N. 79. «A treaty concluded on 24 March states that the meeting of Savoy and Nice in France will take place with the adhesion of the populations and the sanction of the Parliament. Finally, I could not forget that the great affinities of race, language and customs make these relations more and more intimate and natural.»
- 6.
Le Figaro, 8 May 1872.
- 7.
‘Another Italian hope had been abruptly cut short, that of Tunisia, which is in front of Sicily, which the Italians had almost colonised, and which seemed to belong to it as a field of activity in Africa and for its own security in the Mediterranean.’ Benedetto Croce, 1962.
- 8.
‘First of all look: Tunisia is there! And there are the French, who have taken it away from us treacherously! Tomorrow we could have them here, in our own house, don’t you understand?’ Luigi Pirandello, I vecchi e i giovani, 1913.
- 9.
‘The spirit of great and generous work is tempered by the memory of the virtues of the ancestors. A people that forgets the glories of patriotism is a people in decline. The past marks the duties of the future’. Francesco Crispi, discourse of 31 March 1882 in Duggan 2000.
- 10.
‘[…] several battalions of hunters, which correspond to our Alpine troops, are spread across the borders, from the Monclapier to the sea, in continuous tactical exercises. For some time noe, on the territory of Ventimiglia, there have been the comings and goings of French engineers who say they have been commissioned by a company to study the diversion of the waters of the Roia for the irrigation of neighbouring countries. Many suppose that under the guise of the engineer there is an officer of the state. […]’ Corriere della Sera, 21–22 August 1881.
- 11.
‘Mr. de Colomb, General, Commander-in-Chief of the Fifteenth Corps, has just returned from his tour on the Alps border. […] The general reported the best view of the work that must be done to strengthen our border.’ Le Figaro, 18 July 1883.
- 12.
‘Work on the high forts to defend the passage which, through the valley of Roja through the Tende pass of the Ligurian Alps, leads from the Corniche to Haut-Piémont road’. Le Figaro, March 1889.
- 13.
‘One can forget in Italy that the French soldiers fought at Turbigo, Magenta and Solferino; just as one can forget in France that Garibaldi put his glorious sword at the service of the invaded nation; but this omission cannot prevail against interests. However, it can well be said that these interests, far from making Italy an ally of the German empire, should make it an ally of its Latin sister, republican France’. Le Figaro, 20 October 1890.
- 14.
‘Mr. Mayor, […] there is clear proof that the ties that unite Italy and France cannot be broken and that these two noble nations will in the future be the two sisters whose union was sealed on the battlefields of 1859’. Le Figaro, 6 June 1893.
- 15.
‘Mr. de Bismarck never misses an opportunity to play a bad trick on France, says the Constitutional Court. After trying to isolate it diplomatically, he sought by all possible means to isolate it commercially and industrially from other nations. It was under his auspices and at his instigation that the Gotthard Tunnel was built. Thanks to this new route, German goods destined for the Mediterranean are freed from any tribute to France, which benefits Switzerland and Italy,[…] so that the goods will cross our borders without paying a cent of entry or transit duty’. Le Figaro, 8 January 1886.
- 16.
‘Indeed, after all the events of the past, Tripolitania risked becoming a question on which it would have been impossible for Italy to negotiate […]. Therefore, since there was mutual goodwill on the part of the Italian and French Governments to strengthen the good relations restored between us, it was appropriate, through frank explanations, to clear up any possible misunderstanding and to acknowledge that their interests could be reconciled’. Le Figaro, 24 April 1902.
- 17.
‘General de Sonnaz arrived last night on the last train […] Is it for the construction of a fort? This is very likely, because, in the event that enemy troops would like to avoid the fortifications of the Tende Pass by the Roya, Italy could block their passage from Piedmont to the above-mentioned place’. Le Figaro, 9 January 1889.
- 18.
“It is very desirable that French publicists, when speaking of Italy, avoid offending a national sentiment that, deep down, is very respectable. No people more than the Italians have shown, over the past ten to twelve years, so much heroism in accepting hard sacrifices, voluntarily suffered, in order to support and make a purely moral conception prevail. No country is no longer burdened with taxes; yet no country bears them with more resignation or courage. And for what? For unity; to keep the hope, or illusion, of influencing the destinies of the world, by remaining a first-rate nation. In the presence of such precarious and miserable expedients, the sympathies we profess for the Italian nation and for King Humbert can only be translated into the known exclamation: ‘Unfortunate people! Unfortunate King!’”. Le Figaro, 21 January 1896.
- 19.
“Our alpines of the 15th region are worthy of their neighbours. […] The French negotiators of the treaty that gave Nice to France left Italy the source of the torrents. Our neighbours can therefore prepare themselves without our knowledge, and enter our home without difficulty; hence the need to prepare the defence of the gorges and mountains. […] So the invasion will be done through the summits. Possession of these would deliver the parade routes to the enemy. This is why manoeuvres are carried out every year on the most apparently unaffordable peaks” . Le Figaro, 28 July 1898.
- 20.
‘Esterhazy reminds us of the trials to which Dreyfus was subjected by the general staff, who wanted to convince himself that he was the traitor. He said that one day, a quite fantastic plan was dictated for the concentration of troops on the southwestern border, and that, sometime later, the spies serving France in Italy informed the intelligence service that the Italian staff was making some changes at the border around Nice. However, these changes corresponded exactly to the changes announced in the project that had been dictated to Dreyfus. Esterhazy, also said that Dreyfus could spend a long holiday in Germany, without being worried about the German authorities, which was further proof that he was well known in Germany. Esterhazy declares that he wrote the slip without any hesitation’. Le Figaro, 6 September 1899.
- 21.
‘The times are over from the struggles of the early ages; since those heroic days, two races have mingled, two peoples have merged, two souls have fraternized in the blossoming of civilization and in the glory of eternal art; above the borders, two languages, one of which was the immortal mother, the other the resplendent child, sealed the unity of hearts, and, if the people of Paris were moved today, it is to finally reclaim this historical unity that the politics had at one time compromised’. Le Figaro, 5 octobre 1903
- 22.
‘A rectification of the border between France and Italy - Rome, December 21. - The Giornale d’Italia writes that Mr. Mussolini received Deputy Gelesia, who urged him strongly to deal with the rectification of the Italian-French border in the Roya Valley’. Le Figaro, 22 December 1922.
- 23.
‘I do not despair, however, that by examining with a spirit of friendly cordiality […] an agreement can be reached with France […]. Then we move on to the bill concerning the agreement between Italy and France for the Libyan-Tunisian border and the conditions of the Italians in Tunisia’. Corriere della Sera, 12 December 1924.
- 24.
‘To strengthen our south-eastern garnisons, border security services and several gendarmerie brigades. Indeed, one cannot take too many precautions in the very interest of the continuity of good relations between the Italian Government and ours’. Le Figaro, 25 November 1926.
- 25.
“The new Italian Penal Code […] Any offence against the Italian State, either in the person of its representatives or against the acts of the regime, is punishable; whether committed by an Italian subject or a foreigner, whether it has been committed in Italy or beyond its borders. The new Code will prosecute foreigners who, even across borders, attack the fascist state, and sentences may be enforced if the foreign offender owns property in Italy, or when he enters Italian territory, when the judgment against him has been handed down”. Le Figaro, 29 December 1927.
- 26.
“We use our weapons to solve, after the problem solved by our continental borders, the problem of our maritime borders; we want to break the chains of territorial and military order that suffocate us in our sea, because a people of forty-five million souls is not really free if it does not have free access to the Ocean”. (Palazzo Venezia, 10 June 1940).
- 27.
‘New claims by France against Italy. The Government of Paris asks for the areas of the Piccolo San Bernardo, Mount Chaberton and Moncenisio, a part of the Susa valley and the Brig and Tenda basins - Intense surprise in Rome’. Corriere della Sera, 21 May 1946.
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Archives
Corriere della Sera, 1876–1946. http://archivio.corriere.it/Archivio/interface/landing.html.
Gazzetta Ufficiale del Regno d’Italia.
Italian Civil Code.
Le Figaro, 1826–1946. https://gallica.bnf.fr.
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De Nuzzo, C. (2020). The Two Dimensions of the Border: An Empirical Study France–Italy. In: Ambrosini, M., Cinalli, M., Jacobson, D. (eds) Migration, Borders and Citizenship. Migration, Diasporas and Citizenship. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22157-7_8
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