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Concept
Italian Egyptians
Summary
Italians in Egypt, also referred to as Italian Egyptians (Italo-egiziani), are Egyptian-born citizens who are fully or partially of Italian descent, whose ancestors were Italians who emigrated to Egypt during the Italian diaspora, or Italian-born people in Egypt. This Italian community have a history that goes back to Roman times.
The last Queen of ancient Egypt (the Greek Cleopatra) married the Roman Mark Antony bringing her country as "dowry", and since then Egypt was part of the Roman Empire and the Byzantine Empire for centuries. Many people from the Italian peninsula moved to live in Egypt during those centuries: the tombs of Christian Alexandria shows how deep that presence was.
Since then there has been a continuous presence of people (born in the Italian peninsula) and their descendants in Egypt.
During the Middle Ages Italian communities from the "Maritime Republics" of Italy (mainly Pisa, Genoa and Amalfi) were present in Egypt as merchants. Since the Renaissance the Republic of Venice has always been present in the history and commerce of Egypt: there was even a Venetian Quarter in Cairo.
From the time of Napoleon I, the Italian community in Alexandria and Egypt started to grow in a huge way: the size of the community had reached around 60,000 just before World War II, forming the second largest immigrant community in Egypt.
The expansion of the colonial Italian Empire after World War I was directed toward Egypt by Benito Mussolini, in order to control the Suez Canal.
The Italian Duce created in the 1930s some sections of the National Fascist Party in Alexandria and Cairo, and many hundreds of Italian Egyptians become members of it. Even some intellectuals, like Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (founder of the Futurism) and the poet Giuseppe Ungaretti, were supporters of the Italian nationalism in their native Alexandria.
As a consequence, during World War II the British authorities interned in concentration camps nearly 8,000 Italian Egyptians with sympathy for Italian Fascism, in order to prevent sabotage when the Italian Army attacked western Egypt in summer 1940.
Official source
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