Storie di vita degli italiani di Tangeri. Un cosmopolitismo incerto?

Tangier, door of Africa and crossroads between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic world, was the diplomatic capital of the Moroccan empire in the 19th century and its cultural and commercial heart connected with Europe. The Italians who migrated from the Italian peninsula or from other North-African colonies to settle down in Tangier constituted a small community which contributed to the creation of the cosmopolitan nature which defined Tangier until the Moroccan independence in 1956. Both the end of the international regime and the colonial occupation caused the loss of the privileges the Italians, and the Europeans in general, had been enjoying. Furthermore, they were compelled to relocate themselves in the new society, the Moroccan one for those who decided to remain, or the Italian, Spanish or French one for those who decided to leave. In other words, they had to rethink their own cosmopolitan identity in national terms alone. During the process of re-negotiation of their belonging, consciously or unconsciously, they found themselves partially Moroccan, proving that the cosmopolitanism was also related to Africa and the Africans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]