Bread and revolution the travellin' anarchy (1870-1950)

“Our homeland is the whole world” is not only the line of a well-known anarchist song but also the best representative statement of that cosmopolitan ideal that permeates the entire history of the Italian anarchist movement. A history made up of exile, forced emigration, breached borders and deportations, but also and above all of a daily practice aimed at realizing - at any latitude - that world of free and equal that is the beating heart of the anarchist diaspora.

Between 1870 and 1950, millions of Italians emigrated all over the world in search of a better life. Among them, proletarians among proletarians, there were also many anarchists driven to leave for a reason that was not only economic but political too: to escape a relentless persecution. Having arrived in their destination countries, anarchists of the diaspora - often doubly discriminated against, as migrants and as subversives - give life to a dense transnational network that feeds local workers' movements, while keeping alive a privileged relationship with Italy, the linguistic and cultural “homeland” with which they will always have close ties. From Europe to the Americas, from the Mediterranean basin to Australia, Senta recounts the life trajectories of these “refractories” – both men and women – who, in a world torn apart by nationalist wars, would never abandon the internationalist dream of a universal brotherhood. And it is precisely from these individual stories, unique yet strikingly similar, that a great collective history emerges, made up of strikes, struggles and revolts, but also of cooperatives, libertarian schools, cultural circles, taverns and conviviality. Indeed, bread and revolution.