432 pp. - colour ill. - softbound - printed 2023
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ITALIAN MAIL IN THE FAR EAST
The work is meant to illustrate the postal implications of the Italian military presence in the Far East, from 1861 to 1947 (from the unification of Italy until the return to China of the Tientsin Concession, following the Paris peace treaty).
The aim is to tell the story of the Italian presence that derives from the use of soldiers and/or civilians and which is accompanied by postal aspects of interest for the purposes of postal history.
The book is developed in seven parts:
- the years from 1861 to 1899: the first institutional contracts with China, with the sending of the R.N. "Magenta" (1866), up to the issue of San Mun Bay;
- the years from 1900 to 1905: the "Boxer" war (1900), with the sending of an Expeditionary Corps, the establishment of a Royal Navy Detachment in China and the creation of an Italian territorial Concession in Tientsin;
- the years from 1906 to 1914: the period preceding the outbreak of the First World War, with the Beijing-Paris car raid and the urban development of the Italian Concession of Tientsin;
- the years from 1915 to 1919: the First World War, with the story of the "Unredeemed" (who arrived in Tientsin from prison camps in Russia) and the sending of an expeditionary force to the Far East (1918/19);
- the 1920s: from the establishment in China of a battalion of sailors of the "St. Marco", to the local establishment of river companies up to air raids from Italy to Japan;
- the 1930s: from attempts to penetrate China commercially (with specific missions by the fascist government) up to the sending of a Battalion of the "Grenadiers of Savoy" at the time of the Sino-Japanese war (1937). The birth of Manchukuo;
- the 1940s: from Italy's entry into the Second World War up to the armistice of 1943 and then up to the conclusion of the conflict, with the restitution of the Tientsin Concession to China, on the basis of the Paris peace treaty of 1947.
An extensive bibliography concludes the volume.