Emigranti e turisti : la Navigazione generale italiana, 1881-1936

This article aims to reconstruct the events that led the Navigazione generale italiana (thereafter NGI) to become the largest Italian shipping company engaged in the transport of migrants to America. NGI was founded in 1881 by the union of the Florio's and Rubattino's fleets and for the first twenty years of its life it was addressed to State subsidized lines. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the explosion of transoceanic trip and the first law issued by the Italian parliament to regulate this sector invited the NGI to focus on the transport of migrants. Until the early 1920s, its entire strategy was oriented in this direction. Then, the closures made by the US government in migration policy and the appearance of a class of wealthy people interested in using the ship as a vehicle of vacation prompted NGI to modify its ocean liners, specializing them for tourism. [Publisher's text]