Articulating Britishness : cultural mediators and the development of the British Institute of Florence

Abstract

Throughout the early twentieth century, the perpetuated mythologisation of a “golden ring” of Anglo-Florence encouraged residents and visitors, native and foreign, to respectively internalise or impose the imagined idea of a cohesive Anglo-Florentine community (Artom Treves 1956). This chapter focuses upon the establishment of the British Institute of Florence (henceforth, BRI) as a site that was, and remains, a product of and contributor towards a physical and conceptual manifestation of localised attempts to articulate a coherent British identity. Previous scholarship relating to the BRI has presented British residents in Florence as uniformly affected by the toils of war and later fascism in Italy, and as homogenous in their attitude towards cultural activities (Loong 2012; Richet 2018, 40). However, this oversimplification of attitudes and relations has served to blur the lines of difference between the variously patriotic, belligerent, and imperialist motivations of Britons towards the BRI. Furthermore, following from Whitling’s (2019) reassessment of foreign academies’ trivial and often hagiographical histories, analysis of the BRI in this chapter counters Loong’s claim that war had shattered the internationalist ideal among Britons in Florence. Instead, it serves to highlight the presence of progressive internationalism among key local figures, female and male, who stood in opposition to imperialist and chauvinist influences. Moreover, the development of the BRI between the years 1917–1922 represents a period accented by local and individual competition rather than a rigid institutional framework. Although political ideologies and personal rivalries bubbled thinly under the surface and could be viewed as inhibitive, a deeper examination nonetheless reveals how conflict and negotiation during those years instead helped to shape and test the constitutional structure of the BRI, crucial during subsequent periods of radical political and cultural polarisation (Colacicco 2018, 7).