Storiografia e politica: Enrica Collotti Pischel e gli studi sulla rivoluzione cinese in Italia (anni Cinquanta e primi anni Sessanta)

This paper aims to offer an essential analysis of the role, historiographical and ideal at the same time, played by Enrica Collotti Pischel during the years which saw the birth and the development of the “new China” (1950s-early 1960s, before the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution). Prof. Collotti Pischel played at that time a fundamental and pioneering role that laid the foundations for future developments in Italian historiography on modern and contemporary China, in a period during which the international general political context was deeply marked by the Cold War and the intellectual and political forces of the Italian “left” were strongly committed to the aim of promoting a new positive and friendly approach towards the People’s Republic of China.