Tropical Medicine, the Nation, and the Colonial Expansion in the View of Italian Royal Navy Physicians at the End of the Nineteenth Century

Tropical Medicine, the Nation, and the Colonial Expansion in the View of Italian Royal Navy Physicians at the End of the Nineteenth Century Mauro Capocci & Daniele Cozzoli Chapter First Online: 21 February 2024 23 Accesses Part of the book series: Medicine and Biomedical Sciences in Modern History ((MBSMH)) Abstract This chapter explores the connections between two contemporary historical phenomena that Italian historiography has poorly connected hitherto: the colonial expansion towards East and North Africa and the emigration towards the Americas. In our research, we adopt a fixed point, that of biomedicine. We focus on Navy physicians, who worked aboard ships sent on military missions around the globe and emigration service vessels, between 1882 and 1915. This perspective allows us to see the complex relationships between colonialism, emigration, and the creation of the Italian nation in the context of the development of the European colonial empires. The study of Navy physicians’ writings also allows for the observation of the subaltern angle, since Navy doctors reported on local communities, describing how they perceived the colonialists, as well as how the Italian immigrants related to them. During the Age of Empire, Navy physicians tended to act as collectors of knowledge on indigenous peoples but also on other nations’ colonial organization and other nations’ health institutions. The physicians of the Italian Royal Navy also served as agents of the colonial-nationalist lobby, encouraging more or less explicitly the colonial expansion. They presented themselves as the agents of peaceful penetration, both in the colonies and in the areas in which the Italian emigration was unfolding. They also made suggestions to the military and political authorities, which transcended the limits of their professional activity. In doing so, their reports reveal interesting facets of the Italian liberal elites as well as of this unique group, which combined the values of a scientific and medical elite with those of a military body.