IRH Fellow:
Ali Humayun Akhtar (Kingdon Fellow, 2015-2016)
Synopsis:
Italy and the Islamic World tells the story of how Italian cities have been centres of international exchange for centuries, linking Europe with the most storied marketplaces of the Middle East and North Africa. From the Ancient Roman period and the Renaissance to the rise of the Italian Republic, Italy has been a global crossroads for more than two millennia. In Ali Humayun Akhtar’s new picture of European history, Italy’s debates about trade with its southern neighbours evoke an earlier era of encounters – one that sheds light on where the EU is heading today.
Beginning with the fall of Ancient Rome and the rise of the Papal State, Ali Humayun Akhtar traces the stories of merchants and diplomats among the peninsula’s Pisans, Genoese, Venetians, Florentines and Livornans as they navigated cultural difference in pursuit of commerce and adventure. Their stories offer a colourful picture of the connections between the peninsula and the Islamic world that survived the turmoil of Napoleon’s conquests and two World Wars. By the 20th century, following the Italian Unification (Risorgimento), Livorno and Cairo became cultural centres of Italian-speaking Roman Catholic, Greek and Jewish communities who navigated democratic revolutions and new discourses around nationhood.