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Template:Italian ethnicity The Italians are a Southern European ethnic group found primarily in Italy and in a wide-ranging diaspora throughout Western Europe, the Americas and Australia. Their native language is Italian, and historically Italian dialects and languages. Their religion is predominantly Roman Catholic. The Italian people have varied origins, due to Italy's long history of invasions and migrations. The appellation Italian is possibly derived from the Greeks who used the term to describe the Ancient Italic peoples, who pre-date the coming of Indo-European languages.

There are almost 56 million autochthonous Italians in Italy, about 750,000 Italians in Switzerland, and about 28,000 in San Marino. There is also a large but undefined, autochthonous population in France (Nice, Corsica, Savoie). Smaller groups can also be found in Slovenia and Croatia. There is a notable population of Italian descent in Brazil (Italian Brazilians), Argentina, the United States (Italian Americans), Venezuela, Uruguay, Canada (Italian Canadians), Australia (Italian Australians), and throughout Europe- mainly in Belgium, United Kingdom (Italian-Scots/Britalian), France and Germany (Italo-Germans).

Historical background

Main article: History of Italy

The history of the Italian people is ancient and stretches back millennia to Paleolithic times. With the rise of agriculture by the 6th millennium BC, Italy's population grew. Indo-European languages reached Italy between 2000 and 1200 BC and their speakers mingled with the local Italic tribes. The Bronze Age by the 2nd millennium BC shows mutual influences involving the Aegean and the first folks of the Italian Peninsula and his islands. Minoan and Mycenaean influences can be seen in archaeological finds in the Lipari islands near Sicily, while Sardinian influences can be found in the Greek buildings and artcrafts of Mycenae and Minoa. While, early Latin peoples dominated the north, Greeks settled parts of the south Italy and the small islands of Sicily. The use of iron is seen as evidence of a strong influence from the north as the Latin language developed near the Tiber region.

By the 8th century BC, ancient Rome bore, while Greek colonists settled in eastern Sicily and along the coast near modern Naples. These early Greeks formed independent city-states that often fought each other, but mainly prospered as more Greeks arrived due to overpopulation and political struggles in Greece. Around the same time period, Etruscans began to develop a state of their own. The origins of the Etruscans remain a mystery; speculation points towards their early forebears coming from Lydia or Troy in western Anatolia, while other sources contend that they were an indigenous Italian people. Etruscan language remains undeciphered. Trade with the Greeks to the south brought prosperity to Italy.

Etruscans and Greeks began to lose their holdings in Italy as Gauls (a Celtic group) invaded the north and Romans overthrew their Etruscan rulers to become masters of the peninsula. From 509 to 202 BC, the Roman Republic conquered all of Italy and engaged in the Punic wars to become masters of a new empire the likes of which had not been seen in Europe. Until the death of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, the Roman Empire knew few rivals in the world. It slowly declined due to Germanic invaders from the north and belonging to the Roman Empire, pressures from the Persians in the east and most importantly, an enormous economic recession in part caused by the massive civil wars of the 3rd Century.

Remnants of the empire survived and during the reign of Constantine I The Christian faith emerged as the main religion and completely transformed the early Italians. Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Lombards, and other Germanic peoples conquered Italy in the 5th and 6th centuries, but were themselves romanized. Bulgars also came with the Lombards. A small group, Alcek (also transliterated as 'Altsek' and 'Altzek'), led by Emnetzur, settled in northeast of Naples.

In the 9th century, Sicily and southernmost parts of Italy such as Apulia were raided and captured by the Muslim Saracens (Arab pirates), and were occupied until the 11th century when the Normans (a Christian people of Viking origins) conquered the regions and began an extensive system of conversion of the Moors (Saracens) from the Italian peninsula and Sicily.

Also to note in the early 16th century, the expanding Spanish Empire included the southern half of Italy (i.e. Calabria, Naples, Apulia, Sardinia and Sicily) and some Spanish features in culture and language appeared in local identities, though Spanish rule in southern Italy (later they became the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies) lasted only until the late 1700s.

Italy emerged from the Middle Ages as an important centre of religion, as the Papacy gave the region significant political clout and authority throughout the Christian world. The Normans conquered southern Italy and Sicily by the 11th century, but over time they were absorbed by the local population. Numerous city-states maintained a high degree of autonomy that led to literally hundreds of dialects that were often unintelligible to other Italians. The age of the Renaissance can be traced to the creative and commercial activity that began in Italy with the international trade and exchange of ideas coming through the powerful city-states such as Venice. The Italian Renaissance was carried later in France, UK, Spain and Denmark.

By the 15th century, many of the Italian city-states began to be dominated by the "Principati" (regional States). This system of regional States (Milan, Venice, Florence, Rome, Naples) maintained a political balance for most of the 15th Century, but experienced a sharp crisis following 1498 (French invasion). The Italian Wars, fought by the nation-states of Spain and France, in movable alliances with the Italian states, gave way to the predominance of Spain and then of the Habsburg Austrian Empire until the rise of Italian nationalism. Napoleon's efforts in fusing Italy into a single unit inspired many local nationalists in both the north and south to seek some form of unification. This risorgimento period in the 19th century was, for various reasons, supported by France and Great Britain, while the Habsburg Empire was the principal target of conspirations and insurrections. Italy with the exception of Rome and Venice became a nation-state led by the King of Sardinia, from the House of Savoy in 1861. After ten years of resistance from the Pope and the clergy, Rome was incorporated with the rest of Italy and made the capital of the new state, Italy was finally unified for the first time since the end of the 6th century AD. Major changes began to unfold in 1896, the country experienced unparalleled industrial growth and social progress. Following numerous conflicts including World War I, the Axis Alliance in World War II along with the rise and fall of a short lived Italian Empire, Italy emerged in its modern incarnation with borders that largely corresponded to an Italian majority population.

Origins of Italian people

Italians have varying physical characteristics, a fact that may result from the ancient settlement of the peninsula by ethnically different peoples other than the original native Italic tribes.

The Gauls in the north, the Etruscans in Central Italy (Tuscany and parts of Umbria and Latium) and the Greeks in the south preceded the Romans, who in turn "Latinized" the whole country and preserved unity until the 5th century AD. Jewish settlements were established in Italy as early as the Roman Republic and survive to the present day.

After the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West, the Italian peninsula was invaded by Germanic peoples crossing the Alps, establishing settlements in north-central Italy and to a lesser degree in the south. The Germanic tribes underwent rapid Latinisation and were assimilated into the native Latin-speaking majority. There is a German minority in Northern Italy. Most Italians are descended from the Romans.

The Byzantine Greeks were an important power in Italy for five centuries, fighting for supremacy first against the Ostrogoths and later against the Germanic Lombards of Benevento. Greek speakers were fairly common in Calabria and Apulia until the 11th century when their rule ended: a few small Greek-speaking communities still exist in southern Italy and Sicily.

In the 9th century, the island of Sicily was invaded by Saracens from North Africa who established control on the island and the lower regions of Apulia especially Bari for 200 years, until the Norman Christians (of Viking and Celtic origin) conquered much of southern Italy and Sicily and began an extensive conversion and deportation system of the Arabs, mostly practicing Muslims from Sicily.

Starting from the 15th to 16th centuries, southern Italy especially experienced a wave of refugees from Albania where their descendants, language, customs and religious elements still exist in communities in Calabria, Apulia and Sicily, and are collectively know as Arbereshe.

There are still small Greek fishing villages, Maltese-Italian residents whose family originated from Malta under Italian and then British rule from the 18th to the mid 20th centuries, and Catalan communities in Sardinia to this day.

For more than 500 years (12th to 17th centuries) after Norman rule, Swabian (German), and Angevin (French) swapped control of regions in Italy. In the 13th century, Norman rule ended to be succeeded by the Aragonese the Spanish in southern Italy. Some Spanish features in culture and language appeared in the identity of the occupied areas.

In 1720, Sicily came under Austrian Habsburg rule and was swapped between various European powers until Giuseppe Garibaldi conquered Sicily and Southern Italy, allowing for the annexation of the former Kingdom of the Two Sicilies into the new Italian state in 1860.

In very general terms, many Northern Italians tend to have fairer complexions, somewhat similar to central Europeans, along with a higher frequency of light-coloured hair (see image) and eyes. Most Southern Italians tend to have darker features, similar to other peoples of Southern Europe such as the Spaniards and the Greeks. Due to population movements throughout Italy's history, these physical characteristics are not greatly pronounced. For the Y-chromosome and mtDNA genetic lineages of the Italian and other peoples, see: Y Haplogroups of the World and Atlas of Human Journey.

Italian society and culture

Historically, Italians have been more loyal to their town and region than to the state. This is still evident in Italian culture today, even as the Italian language replaced the numerous dialects and Italic languages, such as Sicilian, Venetian, Emiliano-Romagnolo, Lombard, Sardinian, Piedmontese, Ligurian (also known as Genoese), Friulian, Ladin, Franco-Provençal and Neapolitan. Standard Italian originated in literature of the 12th to 15th centuries, and was based on the dialects of Tuscany, along with influences of Sicilian and Venetian. In the 19th Century, Standard Italian became more common and helped unify the country.

Some non-Italian speaking minorities live within Italy. Thousands of German Bavarian speakers remain in the extreme north province of Bolzano-Bozen. Portions of the Friuli-Venezia-Giulia region have small Slovene and Serbo-Croatian-speaking minorities of Slavic origin. A small cluster of French-speaking people live in the province of Aosta and a small Catalan-speaking enclave in Sardinia goes back five centuries after first settled by Catalans from Catalonia in Spain. Two minor Italic languages are spoken outside of modern Italy- Corsican in Corsica, France and Romansch in eastern Switzerland.

Since the 19th century, the economic disparity between the industrial north and the agrarian southern and north-eastern regions resulted in mass migration from the southern regions to the Americas, northern Italy and to other parts of Western Europe such as France and Belgium. Economic conditions in the poorer regions of Italy improved, even in the south, to the point that even the less-developed regions of the Mezzogiorno receive immigrants rather than send immigrants outwards. Today, Italy is less urban than other countries in Europe, with 67% of Italians living in a major urban area- compared to 76% of French, 88% of Germans and 90% of Britons. The vast majority of Italians live outside of the large (over 1,000,000 population) cities.

Although the practice of international IQ assessments remains highly controversial and questionable, some recent global IQ testing (2006) suggests that Italians have the highest IQ scores in Europe.

Italian diaspora and Italians abroad

Main article: Italian diaspora

There is a history of Italians working and living outside of the Italian peninsula since ancient times. Italian bankers and traders expanded to all parts of Europe and the Mediterranean, sometimes creating outposts. Since the Renaissance, the services of Italian architects and artists were sought by many of Europe's noble courts. This migration, though generally small in numbers and sometimes ephemeral, pre-dates the unification of Italian states.

Italy became an important source for emigrants after 1870. More than 10 million Italians emigrated between 1870 and 1920, mostly from the country's underdeveloped southern regions and the agrarian north-east regions. In the beginning (1870-1880), the main destination of the migrants were other European countries (France, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, the United Kingdom and Luxembourg), where most Italians worked for some time and then returned to Italy. Many Italians also went to the Americas, especially to Argentina, Brazil and the United States. From about 1880 until the end of the early 1900s, the main destinations for Italian immigrants were Brazil, Argentina as well as Uruguay and Venezuela. Brazil was in need of workers to embrace the vast coffee plantations, and Italian immigrants became a main source of manpower for that country. Argentina and Uruguay were rapidly industrializing and attracting immigrants for work and settlers to populate the country. Italian immigration heavily influenced the culture and development of these countries (Today, Argentina and Uruguay have the highest national concentrations of Italians outside of Europe - about 50% of the population in each country). Starting in the early 20th century until the 1950s, the United States became a main destination for Italian immigrants, settling mainly in the New York metropolitan area, as well as cities such as Boston, Philadelphia, Detroit, and Chicago. Other countries that received large numbers of Italians, primarily from about 1940 to the 1970s, were Australia, Canada, and again Venezuela. Smaller migration patterns of Italians went to Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, Chile, Panama and Corsicans constituted a large proportion of immigrants to Puerto Rico. (see Corsican immigration to Puerto Rico).

In other waves of Italian migration, from 1920 to the 1970s (peaking in the periods of WWI and WWII), Italian "guest workers" went mostly to Austria, Belgium, France, West Germany, and Luxembourg. Like the earlier waves, most Italians returned to Italy, but some remained and assimilated in these countries.

The migration of Italians has at times been very large and has influenced much of the world. It is estimated about 80 million people of Italian origin live outside Europe, primarily in the Americas. Large numbers of Italian descendants are found in Brazil (25 million people of Italian descent), Argentina (18 million), the United States (17 million -unofficial estimates claim as many as 26 million), Australia, and Canada.

Significant Italian expatriate population is noted in Cyprus, Egypt, Ethiopia, Greece, Israel, Malta, Morocco, Spain, Turkey and South Africa. Former Italian communities once thrived in their African colonies of Eritrea, Somalia and Libya (150,000 Italians settled in Libya, constituting about 18 percent of the total population) until the late 20th century. Today, with the economic assimilation of the European Union Italians, as other Europeans, are mobile throughout Europe and can be found in most major centres in Europe.

Within Italy

From the Lombard invasion until the mid-nineteenth century, Italy was not the nation-state as we know it today. The landmass was fractured into various kingdoms, duchies, and domains. Over the centuries, dialects or regional minority languages and customs evolved differently as a result of isolation of the kingdoms from one another, and their being influenced by foreign powers. While all these states were similar in that they retained basic elements of Roman language and culture, each one built upon this ancient culture to develop their own independent culture and ethnic identity. Even to this day, Italians living in their homeland define themselves by their home region or even by their home province, and many speak the local dialect or regional language in addition to standard Italian. In the 1980s and 1990s, small regional separatist movements (that never reached more than 5% of the national vote) developed in the Northern regions of Italy (where they promoted support for a new nation-state nicknamed Republic of Padania), in Sicily and in Sardinia.

Italians and Italia irredenta

Main article: Italia irredenta

The process of unification of the Italian people in a national State was not completed in the nineteenth century. Many Italians remained outside the borders of the Kingdom of Italy and this created the Italian irredentism.

Italia irredenta (Unredeemed Italy) was an Italian nationalist opinion movement that emerged after Italian unification. It advocated irredentism among the Italian people as well as other nationalities who were willing to become Italian and as a movement; it is also known as Italian irredentism. Not a formal organization, it was just an opinion movement that claimed that Italy had to reach its "natural borders". Similar patriotic and nationalistic ideas were common in Europe in the 19th century.

Italian irredentism obtained an important result after World War I, when Italy gained Trieste, Gorizia, Istria and the city of Zara. During WWII Italy defeated Yugoslavia and created the "Governatorato di Dalmazia" (from 1941 to September 1943), so the Kingdom of Italy annexed temporarily even Spalato (Split), Cattaro (Kotor) and most of coastal Dalmatia. From 1942 to 1943 even Corsica (Corse) and Nizza (Nice) were temporarily annexed to the Kingdom of Italy, nearly totally fulfilling in those years the requests of the Italian irredentism.

The movement had for its avowed purpose the emancipation of all Italian lands still subject to foreign rule after Italian unification. The Irredentists took language as the test of the alleged Italian nationality of the countries they proposed to emancipate, which were Trentino, Trieste, Dalmatia, Istria, Gorizia, Ticino, Nice (Nizza), Corsica and Malta. Austria-Hungary promoted Croatian interests in Dalmatia and Istria to weaken Italian claims in the western Balkans before WWI. After WWII the irredentism movement has faded away in the Italian politics. Only a few thousands Italians actually remain in Istria and Dalmatia as a consequence of the Italian defeat in WWII and of the forced removal of Italians (Istrian exodus) by Tito's Yugoslavia.

References

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Cavalli-Sforza, Luigi Luca (1996-08-05). History and Geography of Human Genes, abridged paperback edition. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0691029054. OCLC 35527063. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |origdate= ignored (|orig-date= suggested) (help)
"2005 World Development Indicators - Urbanization" (PDF). Worldbank.org. 2005. Retrieved 2007-05-02. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
"Order Sons of Italy in America". OSIA.org. Retrieved 2007-05-02.

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