The project proposes an articulated study of the last two centuries of the history of Oriental Studies in Rome. That of Oriental Studies in Rome is a unitary tradition, also known as the Oriental School, which has continued uninterruptedly from the 14th c. to the present day. This tradition constitutes a fundamental part of the history of the University of Rome and, more generally, of the Italian university. The project will focus on three thematic areas related to this tradition, taken into consideration from the first decades of the 19th c. until today: the events, the prominent figures, and the manuscript and book collections. The area of the events will include an investigation into the history of the chairs of Oriental languages in a period of great transformations, which encompass, among other things, the transition from papal to royal government and the era of Italian colonialism. It was during this period that the denomination of the Oriental School, which was already in use informally, was officially adopted by an association of chairs of the University of Rome (1903). Subsequently, this association assumed the configuration of the Department of Oriental Studies, then that of the Faculty of Oriental Studies, and finally that of the Italian Institute of Oriental Studies (2010). This area of investigation will also include an examination of the influence that the School has suffered from the cultural context, and, more importantly, the influence that the School has exercised over the Italian cultural and political scene. The area of prominent figures will include in particular the bio-bibliographic study of scholars, whose work, despite its scientific relevance, is not yet sufficiently known within the international academic sphere. The third area will include the description and history, which cannot be separated from that of the School, of extremely important manuscript and book collections preserved in Rome, and in particular in the library of the ISO.
The project poses itself as highly innovative since wide-ranging studies dedicated to the albeit very long and successful history of Oriental Studies in Rome have never been promoted to date. The advantage of undertaking a systematic study of this history and a reflection on its meaning is therefore evident: such a study can give at least some scholars from the Oriental School whose work was often pioneering the consideration they deserve. This is the case, for example, for I. Guidi, who brought Arabic and, more generally, Semitic studies in Rome to levels of absolute excellence.
What matters most, this study will make it possible to verify a series of relevant historiographic hypotheses, never investigated before. Our central hypothesis is that a sort of ideal continuity was established in Rome: despite the obvious ideological opposition between papal power and the Italian government, Oriental studies, which for centuries had been driven by missionary activity, received a major thrust forward from plans linked to colonial growth, after the unification of Italy. These studies, therefore, could have been motivated continuously by expansionist programs, which were of a religious and cultural type in the phase of the papal government, and of a colonial and commercial type in the phase of the royal government. Furthermore, contrary to what is thought, the contrast between papal and Italian interests might not have been so irreducible and constant when it came to expansionist politics. For example, when some missionaries were taken prisoner in central Africa in 1883, the Società africana d'Italia, one of the greatest advocates of colonialism, organized a public conference aimed at paying the ransom. Furthermore, the recordings of the missionaries made Oriental and African prospects fascinating to the general public, as in the case of the diary, often reprinted or abridged, of the capuchin G. Massaja (1809-1889).
A second historiographic hypothesis is based on the premise of the contiguity of the academic domain of Oriental Studies in Rome with politics. The Italian government and parliament were constantly involved, for better or for worse, in the development of Oriental studies, while in turn Oriental studies provided politics with parliamentarians, as in the cases of G. Lignana, G. Ugdulena (1815-1872), and I. Guidi. This phenomenon will be considered from two different perspectives. The contiguity between politics and Oriental studies can be understood as proof that the leaders of post-unification Italy attributed special significance to those studies. At the same time, the phenomenon could be a further indicator of the undue pressure that politics exerted on the university. Our assumption will be that it is not possible to trace a dividing line between the governing class's desire to self-reproduce in all dominant positions, including academic ones, and a sincere scientific enthusiasm for Oriental studies, albeit tinged with colonialist ideology. In the final analysis, according to our interpretation, which must be verified, it was not so much that the political upheavals influenced Oriental studies; rather, the sphere of politics and that of Oriental studies had large areas of direct overlap. The study of the interaction between the School of Rome and the national political scene in the second half of the 19th c. is of course vital for a broad reconstruction of the history of the School, which is one of the objectives of this project. Nevertheless, our hypothesis is that such an issue is even more crucial for a correct reconstruction of the Italian expansionist policy up to the Second World War. For example, I. Guidi, perhaps the most brilliant scholar in the period under examination, encouraged colonial expansion in an increasingly strident manner, and his support culminated in a notorious speech given in 1913 at the Accademia dei Lincei. It will therefore be necessary to examine to what extent the ideological position of this celebrated Roman scholar and other members of the School interacted with the planning of Italian colonial policy. Even with respect to this topic the project stands out as innovative, since no systematic reflection on the relationship between Oriental Studies and colonialism in Italy has ever been made to date.
The project is highly interdisciplinary not only thanks to the variety of disciplines related to the School (sinology, arabistics, indology, yamatology, tibetology, etc.), but also because these call into question the most varied branches of humanistic knowledge: history, archeology, paleography, epigraphy, codicology, linguistics, philology, philosophy, art history etc.