Italian people

Italians
Italiani

1st row: Alessandro Volta, Rita Levi-Montalcini, Vittorio Gassman, Caravaggio 2nd row: Carlo Goldoni, Martino Martini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Elena Cornaro Piscopia 3rd row: Leonardo da Vinci, Francis of Assisi, Maria Montessori, Galileo Galilei 4th row: Giordano Bruno, Mia Martini, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Umberto Boccioni 5th row: Grazia Deledda, Luigi Pirandello, Salvatore Fiume, Antonio Gramsci
Total population
140,000,000Including those with Italian ancestry
Regions with significant populations
Italy        60,000,000
Brazil 25 million [1]  Argentina 20 million [2]  United States 17.8 million [3]  France 5,000,000 [4]  Uruguay 1,500,000 [5]  Canada 1,445,335 [6]  Venezuela 900,000 [7]  Australia 852,418 [8]  Switzerland 800,000b [9]  Germany 611,000 [10]  Peru c. 500,000 [11]  Belgium 290,000 [12]  Spain 153,700c [13]  Chile 150,000 [14]  United Kingdom 133,500 [15]  Paraguay 100,000 [14]  Romania 40,000 [16]  South Africa 35,000 [15]  Croatia 19,636 [17]  Mexico 15,000 [18]  Monaco 10,000 [19]
Languages
Italian and Italian dialects (Sicilian · Southern Italian languages · Corsican · Sardinian · Northern Italian languages · Friulian) languages of resident countries
Religion
predominantly Roman Catholic, others
Footnotes
a Italians by birth, not including an indeterminable number of Frenchmen of Italian ancestry numbering as much as five million.[20] b includes 291,200 permanent residents;[21] not including about 500.000 Italian-speaking Swiss people, c Italian citizens, many of which are Latin American nationals with Italian citizenship.

The Italian people (Italian: italiani) are a people that share a common Italian culture, ancestry and speak the Italian language as a mother tongue. Within Italy, Italians are defined by citizenship, regardless of ancestry or country of residence (though the principle of Jus Sanguinis is used extensively and arguably more favorably in the Italian nationality law), and are distinguished from people of Italian descent and, historically, from ethnic Italians living in the unredeemed territories adjacent to the Italian peninsula.

In addition to the 60 million Italians in Italy and 28,000 in San Marino, Italian-speaking, autochthonous groups are found in neighbouring countries: about 500,000 in Switzerland, a large, but undefined population in France (Nice, Corsica),^[22] and smaller groups in Slovenia and Croatia, primarily in Istria.

Because of wide-ranging and long-lasting diaspora, about 4 million Italian citizens and over 70 million people of full or part Italian ancestry live outside of Italy, most notably in South America, North America, Australia and other parts of Europe.

Italians have greatly influenced and contributed to science, the arts,^[23][24] technology, culture, cuisine, sport and banking^[25] abroad^[26] and worldwide. Italian people are generally known for their regionalism,^[27] attention to clothing,^[28][29][30] family values^[30][31] and devoutness to the Christian faith and association with the Catholic Church.^[29][32]

Genetics

Italians have a wide range of genetic makeup, among the most diverse in Europe, even though there is a unifying Italic Latin genetic substrate and Romanisation throughout the Italian peninsula. This is due to immigration and conquests of people from many other territories and regions throughout Europe and the Mediterranean basin.

In addition to the Romanisation of the indigenous Italic peoples, other groups have left strong traces. Proto-Celts^[33] had yet infiltrated and settled down in the western Po Valley area in the 13th century BC. The Etruscans, despite difficulty in tracing their true origins, were mainly based in Etruria (modern Tuscany) and parts of other regions.^[34] Southern Italians and Sicilians also have diverse origins, with the Latin and strong Greek^[35] stratums absorbing the original indigenous peoples, and subsequent settlements of Lombards, Byzantines, Saracens, Normans, Spaniards, Albanians, French, and other peoples contributing.

Although Sardinians also do not constitute a homogeneous population, Sardinia has unique genetic composition, when compared to other Italian, European and Mediterranean populations.^[36] Migration from the Iberian peninsula, rather than southern France or Liguria, may have resulted in a common Y-chromosome haplogroup I being present.

History

The Italian people have somewhat varied European origins apart from the original Ancient Italic peoples: Northern Italy had a Celtic presence in Cisalpine Gaul; the area of which they conquered from the Etruscans, Ligurians, and from the possibly Etruscan Raeti tribe. Their ubiety lasted until the Romans conquered and colonized the area in the 2nd century; the central portion of the Italian peninsula was inhabited by the Etruscans and Italic people; and southern Italy and Sicily was settled by Greeks (see Magna Graecia) before being colonized by the Romans.

The Romans romanized the entire peninsula and preserved common unity until the fifth century AD. In the later centuries of the Western Roman Empire, the militarily-weakened Italian peninsula was infiltered by Germanic peoples crossing the Alps, establishing settlements in north-central Italy and to a lesser degree in the south. These Germanic tribes; however, were of a notably fewer number than the existing Roman population in Italy (numbering in the tens of thousands to the possibly ten million Italians), and thus, underwent rapid Romanization.

The Byzantine Greeks were an important power in southern Italy for five centuries, fighting for supremacy first against the Ostrogoths and later against the Lombards of Benevento. Greek speakers were fairly common throughout Southern Italy and Sicily until the 11th century when Byzantine rule ended: a few small Greek-speaking communities still exist in Calabria and Apulia ^[37]

In 827 AD, the island of Sicily was invaded starting a period of Arab influence in Sicily. Arabs controlled Sicily until the Norman Christians conquered much of southern Italy and all of Sicily in 1091 AD.^[38]

For more than 500 years (12th to 17th centuries) after Norman rule, Swabian (German) and Angevin (French) swapped control of regions in Italy, predominately southern Italy and Sicily. During the 11th through 16th century the majority of city-states from Northern and Central Italy remained independent, nurturing the era now known as the Renaissance. Habsburg Spain and Bourbon Spain dominated in southern Italy. From the 16th C. right through to unification, most of the Italian states were controlled by the emerging European political powers, most notably the Austrian Habsburgs, Spain, and by the 19th C., Napoleonic France.

In 1720, Sicily came under Austrian Habsburg rule and was swapped between various European powers until Giuseppe Garibaldi conquered Sicily and southern Italy, allowing for the annexation of the former Kingdom of the Two Sicilies into the new Italian state in 1860 (see Risorgimento).

Since the 19th century, the economic conditions of the agrarian southern and north-eastern regions resulted in mass migration from these regions to the Americas, industrial parts of northern Italy, and to other parts of Western Europe such as France and Belgium. By the 1970s economic conditions in the poorer regions of Italy improved to the point that even the less-developed regions of South Italy received more immigrants than it sent outwards.

Today, the population of Italy is less concentrated in large cities than in other European countries, with 67% of Italians living in a major urban area- compared to 76% of French, 88% of Germans and 90% of Britons. The vast majority of Italians live outside of the large (over 1,000,000 population) cities.^[39]

Culture

From the Lombard invasion until the mid-nineteenth century, Italy was not the nation-state it is today. The Italian regions were fractured into various kingdoms, duchies, and domains. As a result, Italian dialects or regional minority languages and customs evolved independently. While all Italian states were similar and they retained basic elements of Roman language and culture, each developed its own regional culture and identity. As a result, even to this day, Italians define themselves primarily by their home region, province or city, and many still speak a local dialect or regional language in addition to standard Italian. Regional diversity is important to many Italians, and some regions also have strong local identities.

Language

In Italy, a standardised Italian language has steadily replaced the numerous dialects and Italic languages such as Gallo-Italic, Sicilian, Venetian, Sardinian, Friulian, Ladin, Franco-Provençal and Neapolitan. The standardised Italian language originated in literature of the 12th to 15th centuries, and was based on the dialects of Tuscany, along with influences of Sicilian and Venetian. In the 19th century, Italian became more common and helped unify the country.

Some non-Italian speaking minorities live in Italy and are Italian citizens. Thousands of German Bavarian speakers remain in the extreme northern province of Bolzano-Bozen. Portions of the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region have a small Slovene-speaking minority of Slavic origin. A small cluster of French-speaking people live in the region of Aosta Valley and a small Catalan-speaking enclave in Sardinia goes back five centuries after first settled by Catalans from Catalonia in Spain. In addition, two minor Italic languages are spoken outside of modern Italy—Corsican in Corsica, France and Romansh in eastern Switzerland. In Istria and Dalmatia there are significant Italian speaking communities. There are several clusters of Albanian-speaking (Arbëreshë) communities in southern Italy, the language which belong to the 15th century Skanderbegians who fled Albania.^[40] and

Religion

The most common religion practised by Italian people is Roman Catholicism.^[41] This reflects the enormous historical influence the Roman Catholic Church has had over the Italian peninsula, since the early 4th century when the Emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. Rome became the home of the popes, with the Vatican City an independent state within Rome, the headquarters of the Catholic Church. The majority of popes have been Italian and, for a long period of Italian history, they exercised temporal control over much of the peninsula (most notably the Papal states). A minority of Italians belong to other Christian denominations such as Protestantism and Eastern Orthodoxy, or belong to other religions such as Judaism.

Arts

Alessandro Manzoni, one of 19th century Italy's greatest literary figures

The people of Italy have contributed significantly to world culture and scientific, and technological, progress continuously since ancient times. In the Arts, Italy gave birth to some of the most widely known sculptors, painters, architects, and the historically remarkable movement of Renaissance. Notable examples of Italian artists include Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael and Caravaggio. In literature, poet Dante, writer Boccaccio and playwright and novelist Pirandello made cornerstone contributions to their fields. Italian composers, such as Scarlatti, Vivaldi, Rossini, Verdi, and Puccini, contributed to the evolution of western music, in whose context Italians are credited for the creation of the opera. Some of the most famous luthiers are Italians, like Andrea Amati, Antonio Stradivari, and the Guarneri family.

Science

Famous Italian scientists include Leonardo da Vinci, who made scientific investigations into anatomy, geology, botany, mechanics, hydraulics and aerodynamics; Galileo, the first to describe the laws of movement and use explicitly the experimental method; Alessandro Volta, the inventor of the electric battery; Antonio Meucci, inventor of the telephone (though his role in the invention was long disputed in the United States); Antonio Pacinotti, inventor of the direct-current electrical generator, or dynamo, and of the electric engine; Galileo Ferraris, inventor of the alternating-current motor; Eugenio Barsanti and Felice Matteucci, who patented the first working efficient internal combustion engine; Guglielmo Marconi, the first to develop the wireless broadcasting, known as radio; Enrico Fermi the discoverer of neutron chain reaction and builder of the first atomic pile, and Giulio Natta for his research in the polymerization of alkenes.

Italian contributions to architecture and engineering are numerous since ancient times. Renowned architects include Brunelleschi, Alberti, Michelangelo, Vasari, Palladio and Bernini.

The rise of humanism and modern commerce can be attributed to conditions found in Italy during the Renaissance. This ambience also lead to the rise of the "universal man", of which Leonardo da Vinci often is considered as the prime example.

Cuisine

Spaghetti with tomato sauce, a symbolic dish in Italian cuisine.

The Italian people are well-known for their contribution to cuisine; several of the world's most well-known dishes, including pasta, pizza, ragù, risotto, tiramisù, panettone and baccalà, to name a few, are Italian dishes.

Ingredients and dishes vary by region. There are many significant regional dishes that have become both national and regional. Many dishes that were once regional, however, have proliferated in different variations across the country in the present day. Cheese and wine are also a major part of the cuisine, playing different roles both regionally and nationally with their many variations and Denominazione di origine controllata (DOC) (regulated appellation) laws. Coffee, and more specifically espresso, has become highly important to the cultural cuisine of Italy.

Italian diaspora

Over 70 million people of full or partial Italian descent live outside of Europe, with nearly 50 million living in South America (primarily Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay), about 19 million living in North America (United States and Canada) and 850,000 in Australia. Millions of others live in other parts of Europe (primarily France, Germany and Switzerland). Most Italian citizens living abroad live in other nations of the European Union.

There is a history of Italians working and living outside of the Italian peninsula since ancient times. Italian bankers and traders expanded to all parts of Europe and the Mediterranean, sometimes creating outposts. In medieval times, there was a significant permanent presence in Flanders, Lyon, Paris and outposts were created throughout the Mediterranean and the Middle East. Since the Renaissance, the services of Italian architects and artists were sought by many of Europe's royal courts, as far as Russia. This migration, though generally small in numbers, and sometimes ephemeral, pre-dates the unification of Italian states.

Italy became an important source for emigrants after about 1870. More than 10 million Italians emigrated between 1870 and 1920. In the beginning (1870–1880), the main destination of the migrants were other European countries (France, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, the United Kingdom and Luxembourg), where most Italians worked for some time and then returned to Italy. During this time many Italians also went to the Americas, especially to Brazil, Argentina and the United States. From about 1880 until the end of the early 1900s, the main destinations for Italian immigrants were Brazil, Argentina as well as Uruguay. Smaller migration patterns of Italians went to Mexico, the United States, and Corsicans constituted a large proportion of immigrants to Puerto Rico (see Corsican immigration to Puerto Rico).

New World

Mulberry Street, along which New York City's Little Italy is centred. Lower East Side, circa 1900

Italian immigration to Argentina began in the nineteenth century, just after Argentina won its independence from Spain. There are many reasons explaining the Italian immigration to Argentina: Italy was enduring economic problems caused mainly by the unification of the Italian states into one nation.

Italians arrived in Australia most prominently in the decades immediately following the Second World War, and they and their descendents have had a significant impact on the culture, society and economy of Australia. The 2006 Census counted 199,124 persons who were born in Italy, and Italian is the fifth most identified ancestry in Australia with 852,418 responses, excluding interfamily marriages . Italian Australians experienced a relatively low rate of return migration to Italy.

Brazil is home to 25 million Italian Brazilians, the largest number of people with full or partial Italian ancestry outside of Italy. The country was in need of workers to embrace the vast coffee plantations, and Italian immigrants became a main source of manpower for its agriculture and industry.

A substantial influx of Italian immigrants to Canada began in the early twentieth century when over a hundred thousand Italians moved to Canada. In the post-war years (1945-early 1970s) another influx of Italians emigrated to Canada, again from the south but also from Veneto and Friuli and displaced Italians from Istria.

Starting in the late 19th century until the 1950s, the United States became a main destination for Italian immigrants, most settling originally in the New York metropolitan area, Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, New Orleans and Chicago. Many Italian Americans still retain aspects of their culture. In movies that deal with cultural issues, Italian American words and lingo are sometimes spoken by the characters. Although many do not speak Italian fluently, over 1 million speak Italian at home according to the 2000 US Census.^[42]

Europe

Napoleon Bonaparte, French emperor and general, ethnically Italian of Corsican origin, whose family was of Italian (Genoese and Tuscan) ancestry.^[43]

In a wave of temporary Italian migration, from 1920 to the early 1970s (peaking in the periods of WWI and WWII), Italian "guest workers" went mostly to Austria, Belgium, France, West Germany, Switzerland and Luxembourg.^[44]

Italian migration into what is today France has been going on, in different migrating cycles, for centuries, beginning in prehistoric times right to the modern age.^[20] In addition, Corsica passed from the Republic of Genoa to France in 1770, and the area around Nice and Savoy from the Kingdom of Sardinia to France in 1860. Initially, Italian immigration to modern France (late 18th to the early 20th C.) came predominantly from northern Italy (Piedmont, Veneto), then from central Italy (Marche, Umbria), mostly to the bordering southeastern region of Provence.^[20] It wasn't until after World War II that large numbers of immigrants from southern Italy immigrated to France, usually settling in industrialised areas of France, such as Lorraine, Paris and Lyon.^[20] Today, it is estimated that as many as 5 million French nationals have Italian ancestry going back three generations.^[20]

In Switzerland, Italian immigrants (not to be confused with a large autochthonous population of Italophones in Ticino and Grigioni)^[45] reached the country starting in the late 19th century, most of whom eventually came back to Italy after the rise of Italian Fascism. Future Fascist leader Benito Mussolini emigrated in Switzerland in 1902, only to be deported after becoming involved in the socialist movement.^[46] A new migratory wave began after 1945, favoured by the lax immigration laws then in force.^[47]

Africa

An image showing an Italian couple in Libya during the Italian colonial rule of Libya.

Italian communities once thrived in the former African colonies of Eritrea (50,000 Italian settlers in 1935),^[48] Somalia and Libya (150,000 Italians settled in Libya, constituting about 18% of the total population).^[49] A significant portion of the pied-noir community of French Algeria was also of Italian descent, though much of this population naturalized as French citizens, and most migrated to France after Algerian independence.

Today, there are still some Italian descendents remnant in African nations since colonial days, although most returned to Italy or moved elsewhere after the second world war. There is a significant post-colonial immigrant community, however, in South Africa.

Autochthonous communities outside Italy

In both the Slovenian and Croatian portions of Istria, as well as in the city of Rijeka (Fiume), "Italian" can refer to autochthonous speakers of the Venetian language, natives in the region since before the inception of the Venetian Republic, and also to descendants of Italians that migrated to the area in the early to mid 20th C. when it was a part of Italy. It can also refer to Istrian Slavs who adopted the Italian culture and language as they moved from rural to urban areas, or from the farms into the bourgeoisie, since the time of the Austrian Empire through to the period of annexation to Italy. In the aftermath of the Istrian exodus following the Second World War, most Italian speakers consider themselves ethnic Italian and are today located in the south and west of Istria, and number about 35,000. The number of inhabitants with Italian ancestry is likely much greater but undeterminable.

The Dalmatian cities retained their Romanic culture and language in cities such as Zadar (Zara), Split (city) (Spalato) and Dubrovnik (Ragusa). The 1816 Austro-Hungarian census registered 66,000 Italian-speaking people amongst the 301,000 inhabitants of Dalmatia, or 22% of the total Dalmatian population.^[50] Today, they number under 1,000.

In figures

Italian citizens, any ethnicity

Country	Population	References	Criterion	Primary source	Year
Italians in Germany	582,111	[51]	Italian citizenship	Italian Ministry of the Interior	31-12-2007
Italians in Argentina	527,570
Italians in Switzerland	500,565
Italians in France	348,722
Italians in Belgium	235,673
Italians in Brazil	229,746
Italians in the US	200,560
Italians in the UK	170,927
Italians in Canada	131,775
Italians in Australia	120,239
Italians in Venezuela	94,704
Italians in Spain	83,924
Italians in Uruguay	71,115

Italian-born, any citizenship

Country	Population	References	Criterion	Primary source	Year
Italians in Switzerland	530,000	[9]	?	?
Italians in Belgium	290,000	[52]	?	N.Perrin, M.Poulan, Italiens de Belgique. Analyses socio-démographiques et analyses d’appartenances	2002

Full or partial descent

Country	Population (% of country)	References	Criterion	Primary source	Year
American people of Italian descent	17,829,184 (~6%)	[53]	Self-description	US Census Bureau	2000
Argentines of Italian descent	20,000,000 (~50%)	[54][55]	?	FedItalia	?
Australians of Italian descent	852,421 (4%)	[56]	Self-description	Australian Bureau of Statistics	2006
Brazilians of Italian descent	25,000,000 (15%)	[57][58]	?	?	?
Canadian people of Italian descent	1,445,330 (~4.5%)	[59]	Self-description	Statistics Canada	2006
Chileans of Italian descent	150,000 (~1%)	[14]	?	?	?
French people of Italian descent	5,000,000 (~9%)	[55][60][61]	?	?	?
Peruvian people of Italian descent	28,000 (ca. 0.2%)	[11]	?	?	?
Uruguayans of Italian descent	1,000,000 (~29%)	[55]	?	?	?

See also

• List of Sardinians
• List of Sicilians
• Demography of Italy
• Italian Citizenship
• Anti-Italianism
• European ethnic groups
• Genetic history of Europe
• Italian language

References