Giovanni Pullè: Pioneer and Founding Father of Italian Ethnicity

Abstract

Giovanni Pullè (1854-1920) was an Italian migrant in Australia during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who attempted to unite a fragmented, geographically dispersed, and diverse Italian migrant population during a crucial phase in Australia's history. Becoming an independent merchant, and later a member of the Italian business élite, he founded both L'Italo-Australiano (1905-1909) and the Oceania (1913-1915) which remain testimony to the collective presence of Australia's early Italian migrant 'communities'. Pullè's newspapers illustrate an important episode in Italo-Australian history and their analysis describes how Pullè and others constructed a cohesive communal identity. Exploration of the particular ventures that Pullè undertook enables us to acknowledge him not only as a pioneer of italianità but also as a founding father of Italian ethnicity.