How Italy invaded the world

How Italy invaded the world

The Florentine: Your latest book, Italy Invades, takes readers on a tour of military history of il bel Paese. How extensive have Italy’s invasions been down the centuries? Christopher Kelly: Italians have really gotten around. Everyone knows about Christopher Columbus and Marco Polo, but Italians have an amazing

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Thu 05 Nov 2015 1:00 AM

The Florentine: Your latest book, Italy Invades, takes readers on a tour of military history of il bel Paese. How extensive have Italy’s invasions been down the centuries?

Christopher Kelly: Italians have really gotten around. Everyone knows about Christopher Columbus and Marco Polo, but Italians have an amazing military history as well. According to our research, Italians have invaded or fought in at least 50 different countries, or 26 percent of the world based on modern geography. We employed a broad definition of ‘Italian’, which included those living on the Italian peninsula before the birth of the modern Italian state in 1848. So, for example, we noted that in 1521 Antonio Pigafetta of Vicenza served as an officer under Magellan and kept a famous diary of that voyage. Pigafetta was wounded in a skirmish on the island of Mactan in which Magellan was killed; an Italian naval vessel was later named after Pigafetta. In addition, from 1901 until 1947, Italy even had a small 151-acre colony on the coast of northeastern China in Tientsin.

TF: How much did the legacy and might of Ancient Rome have an impact on modern Italy’s military setup?

CK: Romans are not the same as Italians any more than King Arthur is the same as Queen Elizabeth II, but Ancient Rome had a profound enduring influence on modern Italy. The Roman army was, by far, the most powerful and successful fighting force in the ancient world. Roman armies, in fact, invaded or fought in at least 51 different countries by modern geographic reckoning. This is an astonishing tally considering that this happened before aviation and that the Romans were only aware of three of the world’s continents.

 

Later, Mussolini attempted to recapture the martial glory of ancient Rome with disastrous consequences for Italy.

 

NATO’s official motto is Animus in consulendo liber, which means ‘a mind unfettered in deliberation’. It’s derived from a speech by Cato the Younger to the Roman Senate.

 

TF: Let’s talk about peace, too. To what extent is Italy a peacekeeping nation?

CK: Since World War II Italians have served as UN blue helmets in peacekeeping missions around the world. During the Korean War, for example, no Italian soldiers served but an Italian mobile hospital unit did tend to the needs of the wounded. Could they have swapped Martini recipes with the nonfictional Hawkeye Pierces and Trapper Johns of the US Army? 

 

Italians did not, of course, fight in the Vietnam War, but in 1979 the Italian Navy did dispatch a small squadron of two cruisers and a support ship to aid the rescue of the Vietnamese boat people in the South China Sea.

 

In 2010, Italy were involved in peacekeeping missions in 22 different nations.

 

TF: In the book you mention that the Pentagon and Italy enjoy a direct connection thanks to the Renaissance.

CK: On July 28, 1941, the US Congress authorized the construction of the Pentagon, and the design was based on the 15th-century Italian star fortifications. Michelangelo had used a similar pattern to build defensive earthworks for Florence itself. After December 7, 1941, construction of the Pentagon accelerated rapidly, with 13,000 laborers working night and day to open the building in 1942. 

 

TF: For you, who’s the greatest military figure in Italy’s history, modern or ancient?

CK: Napoleone Bonaparte was born in 1769 on Corsica, which had been transferred from the Republic of Genoa to France only the year before his birth. The Bonaparte family had deep roots in Italy and, specifically, in Tuscany. A visitor to San Miniato will find a piazza Bonaparte today. The name ‘Napoleon’ means ‘Lion of Naples’. Napoleon was crowned King of Italy at Milan Cathedral in 1805. Napoleon, though he loved and adopted France, was Italian in pretty much the same way that the world’s most famous Argentine, Pope Francis, is regarded as being Italian!

 

TF: What’s your personal connection to Italy and to Florence in particular?

CK: I have been Italian by marriage now for over 20 years. My wife’s family has roots in Calabria. We have been visiting Florence together since our honeymoon.

 

TF: This is your third book after All the Countries We’ve Ever Invaded and America Invades. What’s your next project?

CK: I’m now working on editing a little book called An Adventure in 1914 that was actually written, though never published, by my great-grandfather, Thomas Wells. He was a New York lawyer and diplomat who was travelling with his family in Europe in the summer of 1914 when World War I broke out. Wells loved Italy and predicted in 1914 that it would enter the war on the Allied side, which it did in the spring of 1915.

 

CHRISTOPHER KELLY is the former Chairman of Chyron Corporation and a retired television executive. He’s had a lifelong passion for military history, and many of his family have fought in previous American wars including one, Stephen Van Rensselaer of NY, who led an ill-fated invasion of Canada. He is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley.

 

STUART LAYCOCK has a degree from Cambridge University. He has worked in advertising, marketing, and TV. Stuart has authored or co-authored a number of history books in the UK, including the best-selling, All the Countries We’ve Ever Invaded and the Few We Never Got Round To. He is also the author of numerous volumes on Roman Britain.

 

Order our signed copy online at store.italyinvades.com.

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