There is a marvellous exhibition in Genoa, The Galata Museo del Mare. (The Museum of the Sea).
It tells the Story of Genoa's rise to power as a sea port in the Mediterranean.
The story takes the visitor from Galleys, to Galleons, to the huge cruise ships which now use Genoa as a base for holiday makers choosing a Mediterranean Cruise as holiday or winter break.
Something that I didn't realise although in a sense it shoud have been obvious, is that thousands of poor people fled Italy as unemployment and povery gripped the country.
Like so many Europeans they fled to the USA as emigrants seeking a new life.
Just as in Ireland and Scotland, clearances and dramatic shifts in agricultural practice, enclosures and folk simply driven off the land they had occupied, alongside poverty and starvation, meant that desperate people had no choice.
In one village that we visited, just outside Genoa, there is a huge memorial erected to the memory of those who left their families and communities to seek a new life.
America was the promised land.
The final experience for the visitor to the Museum is to relive the experience of an emigre.
As you arrive, in the exhibition hall on level three you are given a Passaporto and an official (Ufficio) emigration (Emigrazione) certificate or ticket.
You then move through the display which takes the form of boarding the ship that will take you across the Atlantic to New York, your final destination, my ticket was dated 20th September 1922.
The trip was rough, the accommodation poor, the weather terrible with stormy seas, thunder and lightening. But we arrived having managed to avoid the terrible illness that befell many of our fellow passengers.
Then of course we had to be processed through customs.
Then we were questioned by an immigration official.
This turned out to be a frightening experience with questions thrown at you without any obvious logic whilst still reeling from the shock of the voyage, the cramped conditions, the fetid atmosphere of the mens quarters and the poor food.
We had to answer a whole series of questions about our background, our health, our wealth and whether we had relatives or anyone who could sponsor us.
Interspersed with these questions were other questions about our politics and life style.
Was I a polygamist?No!
Was I an Anarchist? Hesitation!
Then came the result, REJECTED.
He who hesitates!
Fortunately I still have my British Passport and continue to be hopeful that when I land in the UK next week I will be allowed to enter the country and hopefully be welcomed.
But even now, in 2011, thousands of people from Africa are desperately fleeing war, turmoil, starvation and seeking a better life in the West, in Europe and in Britain.
As the exhibition dramatically illustrated, they risk seawreck and drowning as they cross the Mediterranean in small boats, often paying huge sums of money for their passage or being recued by the Italian Coast Guard Services.
And then, if they can prove that they are not polygamists or anarchists and do enter Italy, they will be held up and rejected at Ventimiglia when they try to cross into France, this despite the Schengen agreement.
History has a way of repeating itself.
As people seek to better their lives, they encounter frontiers that cannot be crossed and rejection that cannot be appealed.
It tells the Story of Genoa's rise to power as a sea port in the Mediterranean.
The story takes the visitor from Galleys, to Galleons, to the huge cruise ships which now use Genoa as a base for holiday makers choosing a Mediterranean Cruise as holiday or winter break.
Something that I didn't realise although in a sense it shoud have been obvious, is that thousands of poor people fled Italy as unemployment and povery gripped the country.
Like so many Europeans they fled to the USA as emigrants seeking a new life.
Just as in Ireland and Scotland, clearances and dramatic shifts in agricultural practice, enclosures and folk simply driven off the land they had occupied, alongside poverty and starvation, meant that desperate people had no choice.
In one village that we visited, just outside Genoa, there is a huge memorial erected to the memory of those who left their families and communities to seek a new life.
America was the promised land.
The final experience for the visitor to the Museum is to relive the experience of an emigre.
As you arrive, in the exhibition hall on level three you are given a Passaporto and an official (Ufficio) emigration (Emigrazione) certificate or ticket.
You then move through the display which takes the form of boarding the ship that will take you across the Atlantic to New York, your final destination, my ticket was dated 20th September 1922.
The trip was rough, the accommodation poor, the weather terrible with stormy seas, thunder and lightening. But we arrived having managed to avoid the terrible illness that befell many of our fellow passengers.
Then of course we had to be processed through customs.
Then we were questioned by an immigration official.
This turned out to be a frightening experience with questions thrown at you without any obvious logic whilst still reeling from the shock of the voyage, the cramped conditions, the fetid atmosphere of the mens quarters and the poor food.
We had to answer a whole series of questions about our background, our health, our wealth and whether we had relatives or anyone who could sponsor us.
Interspersed with these questions were other questions about our politics and life style.
Was I a polygamist?No!
Was I an Anarchist? Hesitation!
Then came the result, REJECTED.
He who hesitates!
Fortunately I still have my British Passport and continue to be hopeful that when I land in the UK next week I will be allowed to enter the country and hopefully be welcomed.
But even now, in 2011, thousands of people from Africa are desperately fleeing war, turmoil, starvation and seeking a better life in the West, in Europe and in Britain.
As the exhibition dramatically illustrated, they risk seawreck and drowning as they cross the Mediterranean in small boats, often paying huge sums of money for their passage or being recued by the Italian Coast Guard Services.
And then, if they can prove that they are not polygamists or anarchists and do enter Italy, they will be held up and rejected at Ventimiglia when they try to cross into France, this despite the Schengen agreement.
History has a way of repeating itself.
As people seek to better their lives, they encounter frontiers that cannot be crossed and rejection that cannot be appealed.
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