Emigrant Soldiers - it exists!

Written By Selena Daly

Book Cover of Emigrant Soldiers: Mobilising Italians Abroad in the First World War

📘 New Book Announcement: Emigrant Soldiers: Mobilising Italians Abroad in the First World War

Today, I had the immense joy of opening a parcel containing the first physical copies of my new book, Emigrant Soldiers: Mobilising Italians Abroad in the First World War, published by Cambridge University Press. It's a wonderful feeling to hold it in my hands after so many years of researching, writing, and rewriting. Andrew Ward at CUP did an amazing job with the cover. The image is from a 1918 poster for a fundraising campaign to support the war effort promoted by Rio de Janeiro’s Italian diaspora community and I am very happy with how it encapsulates the core topic of the book.

The story at the heart of Emigrant Soldiers is one that has been largely forgotten: during the First World War, over 300,000 Italian emigrants returned from all over the world — the Americas, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Australia — to perform their conscripted military service for Italy. This was a uniquely Italian phenomenon and a remarkable moment of transnational mobilisation.

But what happened to these men once they arrived in Italy? And what became of them after the war? The book reconstructs the lives of these emigrant soldiers, exploring the reasons for their return, their experiences in uniform, their demobilisation and post-war lives. Through a micro-historical approach, and interwoven with accounts of dozens of other emigrants, I follow the life stories of four men:

  • Americo Orlando, conceived in Abruzzo and born in São Paulo in 1895;

  • Esterino Alessandro Tarasca, born in Salerno near Naples and brought to New York by his parents at the age of 11 months;

  • Cesare Bianchi, from Lake Como, who left home at 13 to work in hotel kitchens and restaurants across France and Switzerland before arriving in London in 1913; and

  • Lazzaro Ponticelli, from a remote hamlet in Emilia-Romagna, who emigrated alone to Paris at the age of 9.

Their trajectories — through the Great War, Fascism, and the Second World War — reveal the complexities of Italian national identity and the impact of migration on military service and vice versa.

I completed archival research for the book in Rome, Genoa, Pieve Santo Stefano, Minneapolis, New York, Paris, and London over a period of eight years. I am incredibly grateful for the generous endorsements from historians whose work I have long admired:

"Selena Daly casts aside clichés about those citizens of Italy's world-ranging informal empire who returned to fight after 1915. She thereby movingly restores the complexity and nuance of humanity to these sometime soldiers of the patria, releasing them from the simplicities of the reality and memory of war." — R. J. B. Bosworth, author of Mussolini’s Italy

"A welcome and long-awaited addition to the literature on the First World War and global mobility. Emigrant Soldiers restores the voice and subjectivity of hundreds of thousands of Italians caught in dilemmas of loyalty and patriotism, providing us with a challenging, thoroughly researched, and brilliantly written multifaceted history of their choices and motivations." — Daniela L. Caglioti, author of War and Citizenship

"Selena Daly’s sensitive study of Italy’s 300,000 migrants in uniform tells an absorbing story. Travelling with them to the war and back we discover their motives, share their ups and downs, and learn their fates. Once undeservedly forgotten, they have found the historian they so richly deserve." — John Gooch, author of Mussolini’s War

I began writing this book in 2016 and it has accompanied me as I changed jobs, emigrated, confronted a global pandemic and had a baby. I could never have completed this book without the support, assistance and company of a great many people - all listed in my acknowledgements! In particular, I thank my family — my mother Anne, my sister Erika, my mother-in-law Carla, my husband Andrea, and my son Alessio. Your love and encouragement have carried me through this long journey.

If you’re interested in migration history, global conflict, or the lived experiences of ordinary people in extraordinary times, I hope you’ll enjoy Emigrant Soldiers. Available for pre-order now. It will be officially available within the next couple of months and (in academic terms!) it's a steal at only £35!

📖 Emigrant Soldiers: Mobilising Italians Abroad in the First World War (Cambridge University Press, 2025)

#NewBook #History #WWI #ItalianDiaspora #MilitaryHistory #MigrationStudies #EmigrantSoldiers #SelenaDaly

Selena Daly