A ‘civil minority’
Costante Danesi, minority community resilience and Australian democracy, 1918–45
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/qre.26427Keywords:
British preference, Costante Danesi, Great Depression, Italian migrants, sugar industry, Weil’s disease, World War IIAbstract
The figure of Costante Danesi (1884–1969) stands out as an unrelenting defender of the rights of Italian migrants in Queensland’s history between the two world wars. Although his activism as an anti-fascist is documented in archival records and mainstream and Italian-migrant newspapers of the time, his role has received little more than cursory attention by scholars to date. This has led not only to confusion about his politics but also neglect of an opportunity for a deeper appreciation of the intercultural dimensions of resilience during the interwar years. Arriving in Australia in 1921, Danesi was not alone in speaking up to defend Italian migrants’ contributions to society or in aiding their wellbeing, and his activism in protecting their rights aligned with the principles of democracy. Yet an examination of those struggles reveals how the experiences of Italian sugarcane workers in North Queensland exposed overt and covert racism alongside Australia’s democratic ideals of the time. Drawing from the works of Joan Beaumont and Arjun Appadurai, this discussion repositions an Italian-born British subject as significant not only within the history of Queensland but also, more generally, in the demonstration of a minority community’s resilience over this tumultuous era.
References
Mat McLachlan interview with Joan Beaumont, ‘Australia after WWI’, Living History Podcast: Live Across the Airways, 22 March 2020 [12 December 2022]. See also Joan Beaumont, Australia’s Great Depression: How a nation shattered by the Great War survived the worst economic crisis it has ever faced (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2022), 2–4.
Beaumont, Australia’s Great Depression, 2.
Beaumont, Australia’s Great Depression, 4–5.
Gianfranco Cresciani, ‘The proletarian migrants: Fascism and Italian migrants in Australia’, The Australian Quarterly, 51(1) (1979), 12. https://doi.org/10.2307/20634991.
McLachlan interview with Beaumont, ‘Australia after WWI’; Beaumont, Australia’s Great Depression, 4, 385–94.
Angela Signor, ‘Angela Signor’, in Anna Maria Kahan-Guidi and Elizabeth Weiss (eds), Give me strength/Forza e coraggio: Italian Australian women speak (Sydney: Women’s Redress Press, 1989), 109, 110, 111. I am reminded of my own Italian-migrant family members who distributed free meals from the family spaghetti factory in Brighton-le-Sands to people in the community (non-Italian Australians) suffering during the Great Depression. Oral interview, Italia Pullè Dewhirst, 1996.
See Kahan-Guidi and Weiss, Give me strength; Ilma Martinuzzi O’Brien, ‘The Internment of Australian Born and Naturalised British Subjects of Italian Origin’, in Richard Bosworth and Romano Ugolini (eds), War, internment and mass migration: The Italo-Australian experience, 1940–1990 (Rome: Gruppo Editoriale Internazionale, 1992), 89–104; Ada De Munari Choat, Alfred Martinuzzi and Ilma Martinuzzi O’Brien (eds), Italian pioneers in the Innisfail district (Brisbane: Minerva E&S, 2003); Maria Glaros, ‘“Sometimes a little injustice must be suffered for the public good”: How the National Security (Aliens Control) Regulations 1939 (Cth) affected the lives of German, Italian, Japanese and Australian born living in Australia during the Second World War’, PhD thesis (University of Western Sydney, 2012); Mia Spizzica (ed.), Hidden lives: War, internment, and Australia’s Italians (Brisbane: Glass House Books, 2018).
For a description of the degree of cooperation to alleviate the strikers’ poverty in an area dominated by Italian-migrant gangs, see Diane Menghetti, ‘The Weil’s disease strike’, in D. J. Murphy (ed.), The big strikes: Queensland 1889–1965 (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1983), 208–9.
Arjun Appadurai, Fear of Small Numbers: An Essay on the Geography of Anger (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), x–xi, 1–3, emphasis added. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822387541.
Appadurai, Fear of Small Numbers, 15.
Appadurai, Fear of Small Numbers, 8, emphasis in original.
Appadurai, Fear of Small Numbers, 83.
This phrase comes from the perceived threat represented by Costante Danesi’s brother, Luigi Giovanni Danesi, explaining why the latter was interned: ‘Regarded as a person not to be trusted, it is suggested that he would, if the opportunity presented itself, be one of the main Italians to organise his countrymen against the British Empire, and even now, it is thought possible that he may be felt working in an underhanded way.’ ‘Suggested that Deterrent Detention could safely be used in this case’, n.d., ‘Danesi, Constante and Luigi’, National Archives of Australia (NAA): A37, C68814. A contradictory report within the same file from Cairns, 14 June 1940, states: ‘Covering newspaper report re the opening of the DANESI MACARONI FACTORY. In his speech, DANESI expressed the hope that Innisfail would introduce new industries for the good of Australia and the British Empire. His speech was pro-Australian.’ See also Margaret Bevege, Behind barbed wire: Internment in Australia during World War II (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1993), 53, 58–9.
Appadurai, Fear of Small Numbers, 84–5.
John Chesterman and Brian Galligan, Citizens without rights: Aborigines and Australian citizenship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 42. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511518249.
Commonwealth Government of Australia, National Security, No. 15 of 1939, 5(1) e, f, 5(2), 66.
Beaumont, Australia’s Great Depression, 4.
William Douglass, From Italy to Ingham: Italians in Queensland (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1996), 135; Catherine Dewhirst, ‘The “Southern question” in Australia: The 1925 Royal Commission’s racialisation of Southern Italians’, Queensland History Journal, 22(4) (2014), 323–6. https://doi.org/10.1080/14443050801993800.
The battle against British Preference is outlined over three chapters in Douglass, From Italy to Ingham, 125–234.
Luke Vitale, ‘The Chinese of Europe and pioneer legends: Race, labour and Italians in white Australia, 1888–1940’, PhD thesis (University of New South Wales, 2021), 36, 117–18.
Douglass, From Italy to Ingham, 236.
Constante Danesi, ‘Italians in Queensland’, The Telegraph (Brisbane), 15 September 1938, p. 12. Note that Danesi’s first name is frequently misspelled. The first time this appears to occur is in the Città di Genova shipping records when he sailed from Melbourne to Sydney. See ‘Vessels arrived in Sydney 1837–1925, Citta di Genova’, 14 April 1921, NSW State Archives: Series 1901–1926, Index 49, p. 403.
Vitale, ‘The Chinese of Europe and pioneer legends’, 186–206. Costante Danesi and/or Luigi Danesi are also discussed in Diane Menghetti, The red north: The popular front in North Queensland (History Department, James Cook University, Townsville, 1981), 87–89; Douglass, From Italy to Ingham, 173–6; David Brown, ‘“Before everything, remain Italian”: Fascism and the Italian population of Queensland, 1910–1945’, PhD thesis (University of Queensland, 2008), 150–4; Catherine Dewhirst, ‘Respectability and disloyalty: The competing obligations of L’Italiano’s editors’, in Catherine Dewhirst and Richard Scully (eds), The transnational voices of Australia’s migrant and minority press (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), 92–5.
Douglass, From Italy to Ingham, 37–60, 90–1; Catherine Dewhirst, ‘Collaborating on whiteness: Representing Italians in early white Australia’, Journal of Australian Studies, 32(1) (2008), 33–49; Dorothy Jones, Hurricane lamps and blue umbrellas: A history of the shire of Johnstone to 1973 (Cairns: G. K. Bolton, 1973), 303–4.
Jones, Hurricane lamps and blue umbrellas, 357; see also Luigi Danesi in ‘Trouble again threatens in cane fields’, The Johnstone River Advocate and Innisfail News, 10 May 1932, p. 1.
Michele Langfield, ‘“White aliens”: The control of European Immigration to Australia, 1920–30’, Journal of Intercultural Studies, 12(2) (1991): 4–5. https://doi.org/10.1080/07256868.1991.9963375.
See Evan Smith, ‘Shifting undesirability: Italian migration, political activism and the Australian authorities from the 1920s to the 1950s’, Immigrants & Minorities, 40(1–2) (2022), 106–31. https://doi.org/10.1080/02619288.2021.1977923.
Stefano Girola and Catherine Dewhirst, ‘Italians’, in Max Bra?ndle (ed.), We are Queensland (Brisbane: Queensland Government, Department of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and Multicultural Affairs, 2015), 167; Commonwealth of Australia, Census of the Commonwealth of Australia, 30 June, 1933, Part V – Birthplace (Canberra: L. F. Johnston, Commonwealth Government Printer, 1933), 734. The censuses excluded ‘full blood’ Aboriginal peoples.
See Dewhirst, ‘Collaborating on whiteness’; Langfield, ‘“White aliens”’, 4–5.
Jens Lyng, Non-Britishers in Australia (New York: Macmillan, 1927).
Dewhirst, ‘The “Southern question” in Australia’, 323–6.
Douglass, From Italy to Ingham, 132; Dewhirst, ‘The “Southern question” in Australia’, 318.
Langfield, ‘“White aliens”’, 3–4; Dewhirst, ‘The “Southern question” in Australia’, 323.
See Barry R. Chiswick and Paul W. Miller (eds), Handbook of the economics of international migration, Vol. 1A: The immigrants (Amsterdam: North Holland, 2014), 65.
Danesi, ‘Italians in Queensland’.
See Cresciani, ‘The proletarian migrants’, 12–13; Menghetti, The red north, 73, 84, 88; Brown, ‘“Before everything, remain Italian”’, 150; on the Italian League of Resistance as well as the Foreign Cutters’ Defence Association, see The Johnstone River Advocate and Innisfail News, 17 May 1932.
Cresciani, ‘The proletarian migrants’, 12. Although Cresciani refers to the anarchists’ ‘sectarian tendency to disunion’ and hence decline, the anarchist Carmagnola was highly respected by Costante Danesi and considered a significant element of the anti-fascist movement in North Queensland. See Cresciani, ‘The proletarian migrants’, 16.
Danesi’s birth certificate dated his birth as 25 May 1884. However, in applying for naturalisation he explained to the officer in charge that this was an error: ‘Applicant explains that there is an error in date of his birth [25/5/1884] in attached papers. May should be substituted for March [sic.].’ See: ‘Report on Application for Naturalization by Constante Danesi (Italian)’, Commonwealth Government Attorney-General’s Department, File of Papers, Subject: Danesi, Constante, Naturalization refused, 21 November 1939, ‘DANESI, Constante Volume 1’, NAA: A6119, 5651; Prisoner of War/Internee, Danesi, Luigi Giovanni, Date of birth – 19 May 1886, Nationality – Italian, 1943–1944, NAA: MP1103/1, Q30125. See also Davide Turcato, Making sense of anarchism: Errico Malatesta’s experiments with revolution, 1889–1900 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 14–35.
‘Evaluation: B.2. Secret Report’, 30 March 1954, NAA: A6119, 5651.
‘Evaluation: B.2. Secret Report’, 5651.
Encyclopaedia Britannica, ‘Pietro Nenni: Italian journalist and politician’, Encyclopaedia Britannica. Available from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Pietro-Nenni [12 December 2022]. See also ‘Evaluation: B.2. Secret Report’.
Encyclopaedia Britannica, ‘Pietro Nenni’; Mary Casolin, ‘The Danesi Brothers: Costante & Luigi’, in Ada De Munari Choat, Alf Martinuzzi and Ilma Martinuzzi O’Brien (eds), Italian pioneers in the Innisfail district (Brisbane: Minerva E&S, 2003), 74.
‘Evaluation: B.2. Secret Report’.
Casolin, ‘The Danesi Brothers’, 74. Danesi’s article may have condemned common Black Shirt violence against Italians, possibly experienced by his own family, such as the practice of forcing large quantities of castor oil down the throats of anti-fascists. See, for instance, Michael R. Ebener, Ordinary violence in Mussolini’s Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 23–47.
Ebener, Ordinary violence in Mussolini’s Italy; ‘Evaluation: B.2. Secret Report’.
Commonwealth Investigation Branch subject of enquiry form, 10 May 1927, NAA: A6119, 5651.
Constable D. Dwyer, Sub-Inspector of Police, Innisfail, 31 May 1927, NAA: A6119, 5651. This was in spite of prominent Innisfail British Australians Charles James Dutton (chemist), William Martin (carpenter) and James Thomson Roberts (Justice of the Peace) supporting his application. See Danesi, Costante – application for naturalisation’, NAA: A1, 1928, 5274.
Diane Menghetti, ‘North Queensland anti-fascism and the Spanish civil war’, Labour History, 42 (1982), 68; Menghetti, The Red North, 87; Robert Mason, The Spanish anarchists in northern Australia: Revolution in the sugar cane fields (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2018), 99–110. https://doi.org/10.2307/27508516.
Security Service, Brisbane, ‘L’Italiano’ correspondence, 3 November 1942, ‘[L’Italiano newspaper] 1940–1944’, NAA: A373, 6230.
Letter, Queensland Regional Director, Attorney General’s Department to ASIO Headquarters, 6 September 1954, NAA: A6119, 5651.
Notes, n.d., NAA: A6119, 5651.
Report, Constable D. Dwyer, 31 May 1927, and Constable B. Cantwell, 4 June 1927, NAA: A6119, 5651.
Letter from Royal Italian Consul-General to the Home and Territories Department’, 17 June 1927, NAA: A1, 1928, 5274.
Memorandum, Home and Territories Department, 18 October 1928, NAA: A1, 1928, 5274
Letters from G. W. Martens, House of Representatives, to C. L. A. Abbot, Minister for Home Affairs, 15 August 1929 and 11 September 1939, NAA: A1, 1928, 5274.
Memorandum, 5 August 1929; Constable A. McElrea, Innisfail Police Station, to Home and Territories Department, 13 September 1929; Memorandum, 11 September 1939, NAA: A1, 1928, 5274.
Douglass, From Italy to Ingham, 112–16; ‘Immigration Encouragement New Settlers League Requirements for Conferences’, NAA: A457, E400/4.
Douglass, From Italy to Ingham, 117.
Douglass, From Italy to Ingham, 147.
See Douglass, From Italy to Ingham, 169–70, 181, 183–4.
John Baily, ‘A word with Mr Danesi’, The Johnstone River Advocate and Innisfail News, 17 June 1930, p. 1.
‘Trouble on the canefields extends’, The Advocate [Burnie], 13 June 1930, p. 5; ‘Italians in Queensland’, The Barrier Miner [Broken Hill], 9 June 1930, p. 1.
The Herbert River Express, 9 June 1930; cf. Douglass, From Italy to Ingham, 173.
‘Italian Protest’, Brisbane Courier, 10 June 1930, p. 17.
Emphasis added.
‘“Foreign Invasion”’, Daily News [Perth], 11 June 1930, p. 1.
‘The case for the Italians’, The Johnstone River Advocate and Innisfail News, 13 June 1930, p. 4.
Baily, ‘A word with Mr Danesi’.
See Douglass, From Italy to Ingham, 6–10.
See Douglass, From Italy to Ingham, 50–1. Douglass notes conflicting reports, with some sources indicating the arrival of only 288 adult men and others noting the arrival of 331 Italians, including women and children. See also Warwick Anderson, The cultivation of whiteness: Science, health and racial destiny in Australia (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2002), 158–62.
R. Rolls, ‘Queensland and British preference’, The Age, 28 June 1930, p. 22; cf. Vitali, ‘The Chinese of Europe and pioneer legends’, 182.
Emphasis added for the last three words.
Douglass, From Italy to Ingham, 171–2.
See Vitale, ‘The Chinese of Europe and pioneer legends’, 187.
‘Trouble again threatens in cane fields’, The Johnstone River Advocate and Innisfail News, 10 May 1932, p. 1.
‘Trouble again threatens in cane fields’, 1, 5.
‘Trouble again threatens in cane fields’, 1; ‘Cane Gangs’, The Northern Miner [Charters Towers], 17 May 1932, p. 3.
See ‘British preference’, The Townsville Daily Bulletin, 29 November 1932, p. 9; ‘British preference appeals dismissed’, The Cairns Post, 9 June 1933, p. 8.
Luigi Danesi, Extract from ‘Canegrowers weekly news’, Mackay, 12 January 1933, ‘DANESI: Luigi, Volume 1’,
NAA: A6119, 5625. Costante Danesi may have delegated his public role to his brother from 1935 because his eldest daughter was suffering paralysis in one leg, which meant frequent medical appointments and travel to Sydney. See Letter, Constante Danesi to Cesare Baucia, 24 February 1939: ‘Baucia, Cesare – Queensland Investigation File’, NAA: BP242/1, Q25546.
Douglass, From Italy to Ingham, p. 186.
Menghetti, ‘The Weil’s disease strike’, 201–16.
Menghetti, ‘The Weil’s disease strike’, 203–4.
‘Strike decision’, The Central Queensland Herald, 8 August 1935, p. 42.
Menghetti, ‘The Weil’s disease strike’, 204.
Menghetti, ‘The Weil’s disease strike’, 206.
‘Strike decision’.
Jean Devanny, Sugar heaven (Sydney: Frank Johnson, 1942 [1936]), 31. See also Errol O’Neill, Popular front (Brisbane: Playlab Press, 1988).
See ‘Vote taken in paddock’, in ‘Strike decision’.
Menghetti, ‘The Weil’s disease strike’, 207, 213–14.
Menghetti, ‘The Weil’s disease strike’, 208.
Menghetti, ‘The Weil’s disease strike’, 214–15.
Letter, Constante Danesi to Norman Colless, 14 September 1938: ‘Baucia, Cesare – Queensland Investigation File’, NAA: BP242/1, Q25546.
Letter, Constante Danesi to Norman Colless; Interpreter J. M. Jones, Security Service, Brisbane, 3 November 1943, ‘[L’Italiano-Newspaper], 1940–1944, NAA: A373, 6230.
Dewhirst, ‘Respectability and disloyalty’, 92.
Interpreter J. M. Jones, NAA: A373, 6230.
‘L’Italiano correspondence’, Interpreter J. M. Jones, 3 November 1943, NAA: A373, 6230.
Letter, Constante Danesi to Cesare Baucia, 14 October 1938, and Norman Colless, 12 October 1938, NAA: BP242/1, Q25546.
See Dewhirst, ‘Respectability and disloyalty’, 94–5.
Security Service, Brisbane, ‘L’Italiano correspondence’, 6230. The first part is quoted from an unknown source.
‘Legal representatives’ for Luigi G. Danesi to the Director General of Security, 25 January 1943, ‘Danesi, Constante and Luigi’, NAA: A37, C68814.
Particulars of Luigi Giovanni Danesi, p. 1; ‘Suggested that deterrent detention’, NAA: A37, C68814.
Particulars of Luigi Giovanni Danesi; ‘Prisoner of War/Internee: Danesi, Luigi Giovanni; Date of birth – 19 May 1886; Nationality – Italian, 1942 – 1943’, NAA: MP1103/1, Q30125.
Commonwealth Investigation Branch to the Commissioner of Police, 23 September 1943, ‘Danesi, Constante and Luigi’, NAA: A37, C68814.
See Gianfranco Cresciani, Fascism, anti-fascism, and Italians in Australia, 1922–1945 (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1980), p. 70; David Faber, ‘Frank Fantin in North Queensland 1925–42’, The Queensland Journal of Labour History, 29 (2019): 41–53.
Letter (translated), Constante Danesi, Innisfail, to T. Saviane, Burwood, 26 April 1943, NAA: A6119, 5651.
