Una carriera in Oriente. Giuseppe De Martino console generale in Egitto (1864-1911)

In the second half of the nineteenth century the Italian residents in Egypt constituted the most numerous community of Europeans settled in a province of the Ottoman Empire. In the course of twenty years Egypt passed from the epic construction of the Suez Canal to the protectorate established by England in 1882. The essay presents the peculiar career of Giacomo De Martino, who held the position of Consul General in the country for 25 years from 1864 to 1889. During his long permanence in office he demonstrated a great skill in interacting with a multiclass and sometimes conflicting community, while trying to cope with the growing political influence of France and England in the country, openly supporting the reforming policy and the quest for autonomy from Costantinople of the Khedivè Ismail. This was the only policy that Italy could perform in the Mediterranean after unification, and the consul followed this path acquiring a growing autonomy of political action in front of the Italian Foreign Office that usually payed a distracted attention to the Egyptian events, not fully aware of the complexity of the Mediterranean geopolitics. On the background it is possible to see the contrasted evolution of the Italian diplomacy from an aristocratic career to a professional one.