Tapes and testimony : making the local history of Italians in the Western Cape in the first half of the 20th century
The history of long distance immigrant communities, particularly those with few or no written documentary records, is often cited as an obvious example for oral historical enquiry. Such groupings would be represented by the Greek, Portuguese and Jewish as well as the Italian population in South Africa, and by similar settler communities in Great Britain and the USA. The advantages of an orally-derived community history is surely shown by the potential richness of information found in interviews where people's history is offered in their own words, in which migrants consider the life they have lived as basically their own formations. The Italian community was selected because there are only very thin and fragmentary records of its local history and because of the author's own origins. Through interviews, one has been able to expand on the existing sparse historical picture and to gather fresh material concerning a range of active individuals who, through their business lives and practices, established successful new industries and other local economic enterprises. Sample interviews have been transcribed and edited, to illustrate the range of oral testimony. Through them one hears something of the history of men such as Oreste Nannucci who started a laundry business, Giuseppe Rubbi, who was one of the most prominent builders in Cape Town before the Second World War, and Amedeo Traverso who, with his partners, developed the sea front in Sea Point, among many other speculative ventures. Through the examples of Mrs Ida Peroni's and Antonio Introna's testimony we move away from the historical voice of male petty entrepreneurs to obtain a new insight into the fortunes of the Sicilian fishing community. Wherever possible, attempts have been made to check the information generated by oral testimony by consulting census reports, migration figures, consular and parliamentary reports, books, documents, newspapers and personal correspondence both in South Africa and Italy. Written documentary sources are utilised in relevant chapters. By piecing together this disparate range of source material, the present study shows the dimensions of Italian migrant economic and social experience not simply as generalities but as something to be glimpsed in the uniqueness inherent in every life history.
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