Oh Capitano! Celso Cesare Moreno--adventurer, Cheater, and Scoundrel on Four Continents

Italian Adventurer and sea captain Celso Cesare Moreno traveled the world lying, scheming, and building an extensive patron/client network to establish his reputation as a middle-man and person of significance. Through his machinations, Moreno became a critical player in the expansion of Western trade and imperialism in Asia, the trafficking of migrant workers and children in the Atlantic, the conflicts of Americans and Native Hawaiians over the fate of Hawai'i, and the imperial competitions of French, British, Italian, and American governments during a crucially important era of sovereign expansion during the nineteenth century. Oh Capitano! teases out Moreno's enormous peculiarities and fascination as well as his significance. With its focus on Moreno, Oh Capitano! illustrates some of the most puzzling cultural traits of emigrant Italian elites. Called a "carpetbagger," "land pirate," and "extinct volcano," among many other derogatory monikers, Celso emerges in this fascinating biography as a multifaceted, chameleon-like personality not reducible to a single epithet. The late Rudolph J. Vecoli was Director of the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota. Book jacket.