Blurred Nationalities across the North Atlantic

Long before the mid-nineteenth century, thousands of people were constantly moving between the United States and British North America and Leghorn, Genoa, Naples, Rome, Sicily, Piedmont, Lombardy, Venice, and Trieste. Predominantly traders, sailors, transient workers, Catholic priests, and seminarians, this group relied on the exchange of goods across the Atlantic to solidify transatlantic relations; during this period, stories about the New World passed between travellers through word of mouth and letter writing.

Blurred Nationalities challenges the idea that national origin, for instance, Italianness, comprises the only significant feature of a group’s identity, and reveals instead the multifaceted personalities of the people involved in these exchanges.