L'emigrazione Ligure in California

The survival difficulties of the people of Liguria, a small Northern Italian region, squeezed between mountain and sea, established their familiarity with migrations, more and more directed overseas. The importance of this migration lies in its precocity, compared with the rest of Italy, and on its effects. The westward expansion was a strong attraction factor for Ligurians, many of which were already present in that part of the world. Their contribute was crucial for shaping the characters of California, where gold was found in 1848. Ligurian migration in California met many of the peculiar difficulties of the Italian migration to the United States, but also an unusual success, for the times and the way it was reached, leaving in that part of the world a memory of men, events and institutions.