THE RELATIONS BETWEEN THE KINGDOM OF ITALY AND URUGUAY FROM 1861 TO THE FASCIST PERIOD

The essay aims at reconstructing the relations at consular level at first and then at diplomatic level, over a period of about 80 years between the Kingdom of Italy and the Oriental Republic of Uruguay; from 1861 - year of the unification of Italy - to the early 1940s. Relations anticipated by strong connections between the Kingdom of Sardinia (future Kingdom of Italy) and the Oriental Republic of Uruguay in the '30s, '40s and '50s of the eighteenth Century. Focus of the essay will be mainly on the commercial and friendship/cultural relations which continued and became stronger and stronger during the second part of the eighteenth Century and the first lustres of the nineteenth Century when vice-consuls were appointed in several towns of mainland Italy as well as in Sicily and Sardinia. The said relations continued during the Fascist period up to 1942 when they came to an abrupt halt. The essay outlines the long standing friendship as well as the fruitful commercial collaboration between the two countries, interrupted only during the fascist dictatorship.