Navigando attraverso l'Alterità. L'identità italiana nelle relazioni di viaggio della Marina Militare della seconda metà dell'Ottocento
none ; In her 2013 La Sapienza doctoral dissertation on the second half of the nineteenth century notes and diaries of Italian Navy mariners, Dr Dimpflmeier developed a framework for looking at how the representation of otherness is presented in Italian travel accounts. The time frame of her research has been chosen on the basis of the fact that during the second half of the nineteenth century, shortly after the reunification of Italy, a period of Italian presence on the international seas began: it was geared to building diplomatic contacts, helping to find countrymen and Italian explorers missing in different parts of the world, and looking for potential colonies. For the first time after the Maritime Republics, Italy started to project again her dreams on the sea, slowly igniting the possibility of building a maritime power on the Mediterranean Sea that could support her new presence in the European and international contest for territory and influence. A particular 'sea mystic' that silently influenced the empowerment of the Italian Navy, playing a strategic part in the Italian nation building process and early intermingling with Italian colonial ambitions. During these voyages, amounting to eleven circumnavigations of the globe and twenty-one oceanic campaigns from 1866 to 1890, Italian naval officers had the chance to come into contact directly and for the first time with the most diverse populations: from the Japanese to the Chinese, from the aborigines of Tierra del Fuego and Patagonia to the inhabitants of Papua-New Guinea. In her dissertation, Dr Dimpflmeier considered Italian mariners' travel notes and diaries, partly available in the 'Rivista Marittima', the official journal of the Italian Royal Navy, or published as independent volumes, as travel narratives influenced by the new Italian politics of navalism, which was focusing on building a strong and powerful image of the Navy on the seas and of Italy as a civilized nation. In particular, she studied how Italian Navy officers used to picture ...