swissinfo has launched an interactive, multimedia special aimed at people whose ancestors left Italian-speaking Switzerland for a better life abroad.
The second half of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th was a period of great upheaval as millions of Europeans migrated to North and South America and Australia. Italian-speaking regions of Switzerland were profoundly affected.
"We shall not stay long" includes background texts, interviews with experts and multimedia reports investigating the conditions that led to the migrations, the eventual journey into the unknown for tens of thousands and the world these "emigranti" would eventually find.
Interactive elements include a blog, picture upload, and genealogical database and are designed to bring together people with a common heritage - regardless of what part of the world they now live in.
Anyone interested in migration issues, or who may have a story to tell about their own ancestors, is invited to participate in the blog. A pre-eminent expert on the migrations to Australia and California and a genealogist will also post regularly, as will swissinfo journalists during visits they will make to the places the emigranti settled in - Australia, California and London.
When the project was initiated nearly a year ago, swissinfo sought out people with Swiss-Italian ancestry to find out what they wanted to know about the migrations.
Their answers provided the foundation for "We shall not stay long".
I would like to know...
"I would like to know how Ticino was first settled?" asked one woman from California. "Why isn't it part of Italy?"
"Due to the language barrier we have not learnt much about Ticino's history," stated another respondent. "Who do the Ticinese people identify with, the Swiss or Italians?"
"I would like to know how to contact persons for genealogy purposes," was among the many questions swissinfo received, mostly from readers in the United States, Australia and Britain.
The queries were diverse, focussing on the socio-economic conditions that prompted the migrations and on the impact of the mass departure. "As the region lost so many of its young male workforce in the 1850s, how did it provide labour to work the farms?"
Other questions related to the region's culture – both then and now. One requested any information at all: "Trying to get answers from Ticino has me baffled. I hope what you are doing will make this easier for me."
Many respondents who have paid visits to the land of their ancestors recounted their first impressions.
http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/
2 comments:
I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW...
1. "I would like to know how Ticino was first settled?" asked one woman from California. "Why isn't it part of Italy?”
2. "Due to the language barrier we have not learnt much about Ticino's history," stated another respondent. "Who do the Ticinese people identify with, the Swiss or Italians?"
(… omissis …)
I THINK I CAN ANSWER THESE TWO…
1. The name derives from that of its main river, the Ticino (German: Tessin).
About its settlement and history, google up "Canton Ticino", the answers are given (both Italian and English) by Wikipedia.
2. “LANGUAGE BARRIER” IS A VULGAR EXCUSE: IT’S NOT EXTREMELY DIFFICULT TO BRING IT DOWN, JUST LEARN THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE.THE TICINESI FEEL SWISS.WHEN IT COMES TO BANKING AND TAXATION, ITALIAN WHEN IT COMES TO PRACTICALLY EVERYTHING ELSE, INCLUDING FOOD, WAY OF LIFE AND LANGUAGE – THEY SPEAK ITALIAN, EVEN IF WITH SOME PARTICULARITIES. Since they are Italians they are, also, snubbed by their French and German co-nationals.
Interesting. So, it wasn’t only the people from the famed erstwhile kingdom of the Due Sicilie, harassed by the Northern occupying oppressors, the “fratellastri Italici”, who had to emigrate. The Italian inhabitants of the Canton Ticino, part of Switzerland, that Paradise of democracy, dignity, brotherly love, peace and wealth where they managed in 500 years to produce the cuckoo clock (this one, notoriously, isn’t mine – but Orson Welles’) had to do it, too.
WHO had oppressed the Ticinesi to such extent as to make them “vote with their feet”?
BTW, I read someplace (don’t remember where, and can’t find the reference) that it was neither the Swiss, nor the people of the Schwarzwald (Germany) who invented even the cuckoo clock in 1738 – it had already been a guy called Domenico Martinelli (Lucca, 1650-1718, ?). With a solid mecha-nism, this can have been no great strain for those who as early as the XIV C. had invented “clocks, and other machines, powered by agents known at that time such as water and smoke, sometimes by a mixture of them” (Iraci: “Re: G.B. Fontana”, H-ITAM 27 Aug 2004).
Oh, and BTW: that initial remark, “Some of you may not know that Switzerland is almost equally divided into… etc. etc. “ is a real gem. It just denotes in what consideration the average culture of Italian-Americans can be held.
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