Studenti stranieri e studenti italiani allogeni dalla fondazione di Ca’ Foscari alla fine della Seconda guerra mondiale (1868-1945)

Since its foundation in 1868 the Scuola Superiore di Commercio di Venezia, today Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, decided to focus its attention on the process of internationalisation. Students studied economics, foreign languages, rights and diplomacy among other subjects. The international purpose of the School was reinforced by the strong presence of foreign citizens and Italians born abroad. This flow never stopped even during both World Wars. Students mainly came from Central and Eastern Europe, testifying to the strong relationship Venice always had with that part of the Old Continent. This article aims to draw a chart of those student nationalities.

‘This could totally happen!’

A unique experiment in the international cooperation between two universities began in 2006 with the official opening of the Ca’ Foscari-Harvard Summer School. Professors and students from both universities and both in equal numbers established a Venetian tradition of ‘internationalization at home’, sharing courses in the humanities, economics, and environmental sciences, joining a network that now counts more than one thousand students, and has offered jobs and further study opportunities abroad to many Cafoscarini.

Ca’ Foscari’s International Relations: One Hundred and Fifty Years of History

This introductory essay provides an outline of the history of the international relations of Ca’ Foscari through its 150 years’ history. It describes how one of the original purposes behind its creation in 1868 was to give an international flavour to the Regia Scuola of Venice, instituted in the most important city on the Adriatic as the oldest of the Italian higher commercial institutes, based on the French-Belgian model, and with foreign languages being an important part of the curriculum. As the contributions to this volume illustrate, the history of Ca’ Foscari is characterised by intense cultural, educational and scientific exchanges with people and institutions outside the national context, and its internationalisation was – and still is – promoted through the presence of foreign teachers and students and native language instructors, the exchange of bulletins and scientific publications with foreign institutions, the international contacts and networks developed by the alumni both individually and collectively, a growing number of scholarships of different kinds for study abroad as well as a growing number of foreign visiting scholars and professors. This volume reconstructs only a part of the history of the intense international relations of Ca’ Foscari, but eloquently testifies to the eminently international vocation that has characterised it since its foundation.

La Regia Scuola e il Giappone

Since its establishment on the eve of the inauguration of the Suez Canal (1869) opening up the route for a privileged sea passage towards the Orient – as it was then called – the Royal Superior School of Commerce of Venice adopted the ambitious and farsighted policy of making it ‘unique in its genre’ by promoting the teaching of foreign languages, particularly the teaching of Oriental languages. The launching of a Japanese language course taught by a native speaker five years after the School’s creation inaugurated a season of relations between Ca’ Foscari and Japan. The year of the Venetian School’s foundation coincides with the beginning of the Meiji period in Japan (1868-1912), which saw its transformation into a modern and industrialised country. The Regia Scuola also entertained direct and indirect relations with similar schools in Japan, exchanging alumni bulletins and scientific publications with them. Many students of Japanese in Venice would spend periods of time in Japan, while native Japanese instructors in Venice, once back in Japan, would transmit knowledge acquired in Venice, sometimes even becoming teachers of Italian in Japan. Scholarships for commercial practice allowed some Venetian alumni to reach Japan, while others were hired by new Japanese educational institutions or attached to the Italian diplomatic and consular missions in Japan. Most of them maintained close ties with Ca’ Foscari by sending postcards, photographs, letters and often detailed reports on Japan to their alma mater, thus helping to increase knowledge of a far and still little-known country, in Venice as well as in the rest of Italy. Young Japanese scholars and prominent professors visited the Regia Scuola, often documenting memories of their Venetian experience in their writings. Following the traces left by some of these characters, the essay aims at reconstructing the many threads of the relationships between the Regia Scuola and Japan in the first six decades of its foundation.

Luigi Casati: from Alumnus of the Regia Scuola di Commercio to Last Italian Consul to The Great Empire of Korea

After studying Japanese language at Ca’ Foscari in the early 1870s, Luigi Casati spent most of his diplomatic career in Japan. Later, he moved to The Great Empire of Korea that, under the Eulsa Treaty of 1905, had become a protectorate of Japan. Casati was Italian consul in Seoul for about three years, and here he spent his final days with two of his daughters. Diplomatic records indicate that at the time Italy was trying to expand its economic presence on the peninsula through the acquisition of a gold mining concession and the increase of trade but, unlike his predecessors (one authored several books and articles and another was a favorite of the small expat community), little has been published about the Casati family’s daily interactions. Through the use of contemporary English-language and Korean newspapers and family history, this paper reveals the final years and resting place of Casati, who died in December 1909. A little over 8 months later, Japan annexed the peninsula making Luigi Casati the last Italian Consul to the Great Empire of Korea.

Ca’ Foscari e il mondo, 1868-1968

Since its creation in 1868, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice has always entertained relations with the world located outside Italy’s borders, either through the physical exchanges of teachers and students, or through more abstract connections involving the production and circulation of ideas. This essay maps Ca’ Foscari’s ‘international relations’ throughout its first one-hundred years (1868-1968) and links the various distinct phases in the development of the University’s cross-border connections with the coterminous foreign policies of the Italian state and national narratives about Italy’s place and destiny in the world.