1818 Grassi Informational Table on the United States of America

A fascinating Italian-language book and table of information about the United States produced in 1818 by Giovanni Antonio Grassi entitled Notizie varie sullo stato presente della repubblica degli Stati Uniti dell'America Settentrionale. Grassi was a Jesuit missionary in the U.S. for nearly a decade and became a U.S. citizen, making him one of the most capable commentators on the new country for an Italian audience.

A Closer Look

The table provides information on the location (latitude and longitude, measured from Washington, D.C.), products, minerals, population, cities, institutions of higher education, and congressional representatives of the various U.S. states and territories. States and territories as of 1818 are listed. The reference to the North-west territory is unclear, but this was likely the northern portion of the Illinois Territory (later Wisconsin) that was transferred to the Michigan Territory when Illinois became a state in 1818. Grassi employs a combination of both standard and unconventional English spellings, with some names 'Italianized' (such as 'Luigiana').

Appealing Ideas

Grassi's book likely appealed to Italians for two reasons. The first, of course, relates to Italian immigration to the United States (although the greatest waves of Italian immigration to the U.S. would not occur until the late 19th and early 20th century). The other, more pressing, reason is the United States provided an example to Italian nationalists who wanted to unite the peninsula. At the time, Italy remained a collection of duchies, kingdoms, and the Papal States. Only a few years removed from the fall of the Napoleonic Cispadane Republic, the 1820s witnessed the first push toward Italian unification after the Congress of Vienna restored the pre-Napoleonic collection of independent governments.

Publication History and Census

This table appeared in Giovanni Grassi's book Notizie varie sullo stato presente della repubblica degli Stati Uniti dell'America Settentrionale, scritte al principio del 1818, published in three editions: 1818, 1819, and 1823. This table was published in the first edition as it includes the Mississippi Territory, which became a state in December 1817. It also does not include Alabama or Maine, which became states in 1819 and 1820, respectively (Maine here is coupled with Massachusetts). These facts fit perfectly with the date Grassi gives in the title as 'the beginning of 1818.' The table is not independently cataloged among the holdings of any institution and has no known history on the market, while the first edition of Grassi's book is held by nineteen libraries in North America and Europe, with a similar number holding later editions.