ARTURO COLOMBO

Nell'Italia fra le due guerre. Vittorio Beonio-Brocchieri giornalista-aviatore

 

 

 

211

Gennaio-Aprile 2006

Anno LXXI    n. 1

 

 

 

Summary - This essay does not discuss the activity of Vittorio Beonio-Brocchieri (1902-1978) as a historian of political thought and associate editor of the journal “Il Politico”; rather, it aims to analyse his singular work as a journalist and aviator, above all between the early 1930s to the 1950s. Before the “eye” of the television was to bring images from all over the planet Earth directly into people’s homes, Beonio-Brocchieri showed people the world through his articles in the “Corriere della Sera” newspaper and later in his own books. As an intrepid and solitary aviator, Beonio-Brocchieri told the stories of peoples and countries ranging from one pole to the other – from Alaska to the Far East, from Russia (then at the height of Stalinism) to the African continent and to the communities of the Americas. Although somewhat conditioned by the Fascist regime then existing in Italy, Beonio-Brocchieri’s ability to combine “journeys through time” (that is, the historical perspective) with “journeys through space” (that is, the geographical dimension), lent his journalism great richness, a plurality of experiences, and a rare series of illuminating comparisons. Even in today’s very different world, these comparisons provide an effective testimony to the realization that Europe was no longer at the centre of the world and that the time had come face the challenge of moving “beyond Eurocentrism”. This, many years before theorists were to begin speaking of a fragile, “multipolar” world.