Transnational Radicals: Italian Anarchist Networks in Southern Ontario and the Northeastern United States, 1915-1940

Abstract

Previous studies of the left have tended to focus on groups or movements within the confines of national boundaries. Yet the adherents of these organizations were often migrants who traveled to and lived in multiple states. The Italian anarchist movement emerged during the latter half of the nineteenth century during the process of that country’s unification. As the need for cheap labour in the industrializing nations of north-western Europe and North and South America grew, a mass exodus of migrants left Italy. Among those migrants were anarchists who established networks that spanned continents and the Atlantic Ocean. Wherever Italian anarchists settled they began to publish journals, engage in anarchist activism, and re-create the radical culture that had its roots in Italy. This dissertation examines a portion of the transnational anarchist movement that existed in Canada and the United States between 1915 and 1940. The themes explored in this work include the formation of these transnational anarchist networks, the divisions within the Italian anarchist movement and their repercussions, how transnational activism was conducted, and the culture these transnational radicals created.