Silk and Shadow
Giacomo Caneva’s Gaze on China in 1859: An Introduction
Abstract
In the late 1840s, pébrine, a disease that affects silkworms, spread throughout southern France, throwing the textile industry into crisis. Initially, Italian breeders profited handsomely from the misfortunes across the Alps, supplying healthy eggs of the Lombard yellow race; soon enough, however, French cultivators, who had tried to raise their diseased stock in the hills of Brianza, introduced the illness to Italy. It began to spread in the Po Valley as early as 1854, rapidly expanding to other Italian regions. Since no effective treatments were known despite experiments by the leading institutions in the field, the only solution was to import silkworm eggs from uninfected areas, such as the Eastern Mediterranean and Asia.
open access
Submitted: Dec. 3, 2025 | Published Feb. 2, 2026 | Language: it
Copyright © 2026 Marta Boscolo Marchi. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/979-12-5742-011-6/001