Imperial Designs Italians in China 1900–1947

Imperial Designs is the first text in English to deal comprehensively with the subject of the Italian colonial experience in China in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Recent scholarship on both the liberal and fascist Italian colonial enterprises centers on the Mediterranean and Northern Africa-expeditions, wars, ultimate occupation of territories, and their effect on Italy. This study delves into the other side of the globe and three Italian enclaves there: Beijing, Tianjin, and Shanghai. These present both a window on the Italian experience in the Far East and confirmation of imperial policy and the rhetoric of conquest used throughout the west in the same time period. Journalist Luigi Barzini, Sr., diplomats Salvago Raggi, Varè, and Ciano, various military personnel, and other foreign nationals tell the story through their letters and diaries. Fascist bureaucrats follow liberal diplomats. They all interact with the local metropolitan and rural poor and cultivate a generalized colonial white man's detachment from their surroundings. A brief summary of the presence of chinoiserie in the Italian imaginary shows how the Celestial Empire has continued to function in the construction of identity as part of the dichotomy between self and other.