• The “Marseille l'Italienne” exhibition is held until the end of March at the city's municipal archives.

  • As Stéphane Mourlane, historian and one of the exhibition's curators, emphasizes, the presence of Italians in Marseille is old.

  • Today, Mayor Benoît Payan claims this Italian identity.

    It participates in cosmopolitan Marseille, even if the history of the Italians in Marseille shows that the tensions could have been high.

“This story is also my story”. Barely elected mayor of Marseille, Benoît Payan fits into the story of “poor Italian immigrants, Babis who arrived on foot from the Italian Alps, Ritals disembarked by boat from Naples, with no other baggage than their thirst for life”. Through the exhibition “Marseille l'Italienne”, until Saturday March 12, 2022, the city's municipal archives want to go beyond the cliché of the Italian immigrant and tell the daily reality of this Italian presence in Marseille. Meeting with Stéphane Mourlane, lecturer in contemporary history at Aix-Marseille University, and one of the curators of the exhibition alongside Jean Boutier (Center Norbert Elias / EHESS) and Sylvie Clair (Archives de Marseille).

When does this “passionate relationship”, as you call it, between Marseille and Italy date?

Marseille, a city marked for a long time by the Italian presence, long before Italy even existed as a nation state with unification in the middle of the 19th century. We could go back to Antiquity. As part of this exhibition, we have chosen to begin this story, this familiarity between Marseille and Italy, in the Middle Ages, at a time when commercial ties were close. Italians are then not considered as foreigners, but inhabitants of the Kingdom of Italy. And with the county of Provence, Marseille enters the Germanic Roman Empire. We also note that when, towards the middle of the 12th century, the inhabitants of Marseilles wanted to free themselves from the power of the bishop, it was the Italian “communes” which served as their model.The city then appealed on several occasions to Italian magistrates to lead it.

What does the “great Italian immigration” change?

This great wave of immigration, from the end of the 19th century, came mainly from northern Italy, which was then a country which did not enter into the industrial revolution and where demographic pressure was strong.

In France, and in Marseille, on the other hand, there is a need for hands and labor to fuel industrial growth.

In Marseille, this results in an exponential increase in the number of Italians: they are more than 100,000 on the eve of the First World War, that is to say more than one inhabitant in five of the city.

Is there, like in New York, a “little Italy”?

No, not really. We have been able to speak of "Little Naples" in connection with the Saint-Jean district near the Old Port, where fishermen have settled from small coastal villages of the Kingdom of Naples. For the rest, the Italians have settled wherever there is work, near factories. And if in certain districts, like Belle-de-Mai for example, their share is important in the population, their presence is not exclusive there. Moreover, population groups are grouped together less by nationality than by local and regional origin, according to the principle of migratory channels.

Certain Piedmontese villages have thus “moved” to certain places in the city. The Italians have also settled in more bourgeois neighborhoods, those which succeeded in the image of the Storione. These millers, to whom we owe the Francine flour and then the Banette bread, are part of these great Italian families in Marseille. In these quarters, servants are also for many Italian women: Piedmontese cooks and nannies were in great demand.

For the rest, the Italian districts are working-class districts and Italianity manifests itself in different ways: we get together in associations, in churches, in cafes to play Italian games.

Shops and restaurants offer local products and dishes.

Pizza is thus introduced in France in Marseille.

There is also an undeniable cultural proximity between Provençal and the Italian dialect.

How long does this strong proximity last?

In the interwar period, Marseille was the most Italian city in Europe, apart from Italy.

It is also an important port for Italian emigration, with a direct connection to New York from 1881, but also to Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro.

Those who settle in Marseille constitute, before the First World War, nearly 90% of foreigners in the city.

And if their share subsequently decreased, they remained, as in the rest of France, the first foreign nationality until the 1960s.

And today, can we still qualify Marseille as Italian?

Today, the Italian presence in Marseille is important and renewed. We are dealing with a new emigration of young people with a high level of qualification, as we can attest to at the university. The relationship with Italy has also evolved, with an enhancement of Italian culture; there is a real taste of Italy. It has not always been the case. It should be remembered that the Italians were, including in Marseille, rather badly received.

The episode of “Marseille vespers” in June 1881 is a significant event in this regard.

It takes place against a backdrop of strong rivalry on the job market.

France has just established a protectorate over Tunisia.

Whistles are heard on the return of French troops to the port.

The Italian national club, which took out the Italian flag, is singled out.

Several days of hunting for Italians ensued in the city, with three dead and 21 wounded.

It is a major event, which has had international consequences.

He will help push Italy into alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary.

With this exhibition, would you say that the Italian memory of Marseille has been rehabilitated?

In Marseille, this memory of Italian immigration had somewhat disappeared.

We are witnessing a return of memory on the part of the descendants.

The Italians regain visibility.

In the cinema for example, with the film

 Rouge Midi

 in which, in 1985, Robert Guédiguian staged a Calabrian living in the Estaque district in the 1920s. We can also quote the famous trilogy of novels by Jean-Claude Izzo , son of an Italian, who makes his hero, Commissioner Fabio Montale, a transalpine immigrant. 

Our file on Marseille

It is also interesting to note that Akhenaton of the IAM group (whose real name is Philippe Fragione) frequently highlights his Neapolitan heritage.

The fact that the new mayor also claims this Italian identity contributes to this return of memory.

There is also, undoubtedly, a political dimension in this type of discourse promoting the mixing and cosmopolitanism of Marseille.

Even if, and the history of the Italians shows it, the tensions could sometimes be high.

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