The Italian Legacy in the Dominican Republic: History, Architecture, Economics, Society.

• Author: Morris, Jeffery T.
• Position: AMERICAS

Canepari, Andrea, ed. The Italian Legacy in the Dominican Republic: History, Architecture, Economics, Society. Saint Josephs University Press, 2021.

Humans depend on the strength of their connections and relationships with one another to ensure their health and resilience as individuals, communities, societies, nations, and, ultimately, a species. We are social beings who need one another to survive and to thrive. It was therefore both fortunate and gratifying to encounter a book that expansively covers the centuries-long relationship between the people of two nations, Italy and the Dominican Republic, which has enriched both countries.

In The Italian Legacy in the Dominican Republic, Andrea Canepari, who served as Italy's ambassador to the Dominican Republic, brings together in one large volume an impressive number of contributions from individuals of wideranging backgrounds, expertise, and experience, who collectively tell a fascinating story of the long and multifaceted relationship between Italians and Dominicans. The English version of the book is published by Saint Josephs University Press in Philadelphia.

The work covers a wide range of topics, arranged into the following sections: history; architecture; literature and the arts; economics and science; and journalism, law, and society. Within each topical section are diverse contributions of varying length, depth of coverage, level of analysis, and point of view.

It is this diversity that makes reading The Italian Legacy in the Dominican Republic such a delight. In the subsection on ecclesiastical history, for instance, the reader is treated to a historical sweep across Dominican time and space, beginning with a survey of the clash between Bishop Alessandro Geraldini and local officials over indigenous peoples' rights in the early 1500s, to an account of Archbishop Ricardo Pittini's mid-twentieth-century management of the Church's relationship with the Dominican government during the long rule of Rafael Trujillo. Likewise, in the political history subsection, contributions cover a broad swath of time, from a comparison of Dominican hero Juan Pablo Duarte with celebrated Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Mazzini, to an intriguing account of an Italian soldier of the...