Italy’s Sea

'This book is a much needed and welcome addition to the growing body of work on Italian colonialism, as well as broader Mediterranean studies, that also sheds new light on Italian fascism. Valerie McGuire provides an empirically rich and conceptually sophisticated analysis of one of Italy’s lesser studied “colonies”: the Dodecanese Islands.'
Pamela Ballinger, University of Michigan
'In Valerie McGuire’s Italy’s Sea, we encounter two kinds of Italian Mediterranean imaginary. In unearthing the largely forgotten history of Italy’s colonial rule in the Aegean (1924–1943, but de facto since 1912) the author distinguishes between two phases of colonial administration that were characterized respectively by two different Mediterraneanist ideologies. [...] Through thorough research of largely unexplored material [...] the author offers a masterful account not only of how Italian colonial subjecthood was imagined in the Aegean but also of how it was practiced by both colonizers and colonized. [...This book] is a welcome and valuable addition to the field of Italian and Mediterranean studies. [It] deserves high praise for [its] interdisciplinarity and for providing useful tools for addressing the issues with which [it is] concerned.'
Konstantina Zanou, Italian American Review

'[Italy's Sea] provides a very compelling account of the remaking of the Italian identity through the Mediterraneanist discourse and fills a void in the literature about both Italian and Greek histories by shedding new light on the impact of the colonial domination of the Fascist regime in the Dodecanese islands.'
Matteo Giordano, Journal of Contemporary History

‘McGuire’s ambitious and comprehensive work contributes essentially to understanding the intersection of colonial expansion, citizenship, and the construction of race in the Eastern Mediterranean.’ Joanna Bürger, H-Italy

‘Valerie McGuire's book is a fundamentally important contribution to colonial and postcolonial studies… an excellent text, written in captivating prose, a supreme novelty in the field of Italian studies and also in the broader context of colonial and postcolonial studies. The chapter “Everyday Fascism in the Aegean” will become required reading for students in my fascism class.’ Sergio Ferrarese, Quaderni d’Italianistica

‘Italy’s Sea is a fine book that achieves its aims admirably. It makes very important contributions to our understanding of both Italian imperialism and the history and culture of Dodecanese. Its great innovation is to link, convincingly, the Mediterranean heritage of connectivity and pluralism to Italy’s modern imperial project.’ Nicholas Doumanis, Journal of Modern Greek Studies

‘The way in which McGuire’s book adds to and expands the recently proliferating literature on Italian rule on the Dodecanese is by offering to write not simply a history of the archipelago under Italian administration, but a history of Italy – and even of Europe – through the experience of the Dodecanese… this is an important study that speaks to several literatures across disciplines.’ Alexis Rappas, Mediterranean Historical Review

‘McGuire’s book is thorough, creative, and groundbreaking, building upon her dissertation at New York University and perspective gained from years of archival research and oral history interviews in Italy and in Greece. This is an important work for historians of contemporary Italy, Greece, Turkey, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean, and for the field of Italian studies, and will be appreciated by both undergraduate and graduate students… fascinating both as a historical and as a present-minded study.’ Mark I. Choate, Mediterranean Studies

‘Unlike the many recent studies of empire that focus on Italy’s African colonies, the book’s focus on the eastern Mediterranean allows for unique and illuminating perspectives on the trajectory of Italian colonialism and nation-state building… McGuire masterfully recounts the Italian transformation of Rhodes into a cosmopolitan tourist destination that showcased the island’s Mediterranean and Levantine cultural heritage… an important addition to the growing scholarship on Fascism, Italian Empire, and the Mediterranean.’ Michael R. Ebner, Journal of Modern History