Il teatro della Nazione: “Giochi identitari” nella Napoli preunitaria

The essay focuses on a group of French immigrants in the pre-Unification Naples. After remarking the difference between the whole French community (that is all French subjects, regardless of their social rank) and the more selected Nation française (that is a corporate group composed by the mercantile elite led by the Consul), the article highlights French merchants’ considerable capacity for integration in the Neapolitan society, both in professional and personal sphere. Their border-line condition enables French merchants to use their multiple identities (national, professional, etc.) in a situational and instrumental way. The second part of the essay shows three different examples of this strategy: Facing a suit in the Neapolitan Court of Commerce, the French négociants Lemaire, Barfell, and Borel try to alternately use their links with Neapolitan context, their “Frenchness”, and their professional status. This tactic, very common in the ancient regime but incompatible with the post-Revolution idea of the Nationhood, doesn’t work always, mostly because of the inertia of human relationships, the social costs of leaving a group, and the resistance of other subjects (mostly public authorities) to ratify any illegitimate national auto-definition. However, when these “identity games” work, they give French merchants a relevant competitive advantage over their local and foreign competitors in the Mezzogiorno.