Lions and Tigers and Piracy!: Colonialism in Two Versions of Emilio Salgari's Sandokan

Introduction

Sandokan, the pirate of the Venetian writer Emilio Salgari's imagination, came to life in 1883, when the first tale of this iconic character appeared in the periodical La Nuova Arena. The maiden Sandokan story was published in serialized format between October 1883 and March 1884.¹ Its popularity resulted in its 1900 republication in book form under the title Le tigri di Mompracem (The Tigers of Mompracem), which begins a cycle consisting of eleven novels, sometimes referred to as the Ciclo dei Pirati della Malesia or Ciclo della Jungla Indiana.² Five of these works take place in Malaysia, while six are set in India.³ Wherever their plots might unfold, the stories all play out against the backdrop of British colonial rule in nineteenth-century Asia. For this reason, contemporary critics of the author have often debated whether [End Page S-286] Salgari intended to repudiate colonialism in his novels or use it as an allegory for Italy's own struggles leading up to and immediately following the unification of 1861.

Reflecting on this problem, Bruno Traversetti in his study of Salgari envisions an author who is in fact politically neutral but, for the most part, staunchly antiracist.⁴ In other words, Salgari may not have intended to criticize colonialism in and of itself but, instead, to oppose the ideas of "subjects" or "inferior races," which Edward Said has observed are so often associated with the practice.⁵ However, in this same study of the adventure writer's oeuvre, Traversetti acknowledges Salgari's rather negative portrayal of the indigenous peoples of the United States.⁶ It should also be noted that his depiction of the negritos in the seventh novel of the pirate cycle, Sandokan alla Riscossa, stereotypically casts them as a kind-hearted yet dim-witted people. Such descriptions of non-European ethnicities in several of Salgari's works may in turn undercut Traversetti's interpretation of the author's intent to frame his own views of colonial conquest. In her own work on Salgari, Bianca Gerlich diverges from Traversetti's interpretation. She concludes that Salgari's decision to narrate the novels from the point of view of indigenous peoples, not colonizers, suggests an "anticolonial approach" and she also characterizes the pirates as "freedom fighters."⁷ This argument is somewhat contradicted both by Sandokan's original status as a monarch, who himself conquered other lands, and the fact that his Tigers often battle other indigenous peoples, who at times may behave like the British colonizers.

More recently, however, Cristina Della Coletta has weighed in on the debate. She considers Salgari's stance on colonialism to be "unresolved."⁸ She attributes this ambiguity to the inherent conflict between the ideals Italy espoused during its long quest for unification, and to the ideology of conquest that characterizes the acquisition of colonies and the building of empires. As such, the conflict is part of the new nation's efforts to create an identity.⁹ While this argument is certainly defensible, it does not consider that Italy's southern regions were brought into the burgeoning Kingdom of Italy in 1860 through a military operation led by Giuseppe Garibaldi, one that in some ways resembled a type of conquest. Moreover, as Antonio Gramsci [End Page S-287] notes in his Quaderni del carcere (Prison Notebooks), following unification, parliamentary leaders from the north subjected the south to a series of policies that transformed southern Italy into a "semi-colonial market."¹⁰ Therefore, it would seem that even before Italy began to flirt with entering the race for empire, the newborn country was already sacrificing the ideals of its own unification to the ideology of internal conquest. Hence, one can see from this cursory overview of the role of colonialism in the Sandokan novels that arriving at an understanding of the author's views on this subject proves difficult.

Whatever the preferred interpretation of the question, one conclusion is certain: the story of Sandokan experienced a resurgence in the mid 1970s thanks to Sergio Sollima, who, in 1976, directed a six-part miniseries about the pirate...