Italians at the Manchester Technical School. Entrepreneurial migrations and technical education in late Nineteenth-Century England

During the nineteenth century, foreign entrepreneurs dominated the entrepreneurial scene around the Apulia, a region of South Italy, both in the textile and the mechanical sectors. At the same time, a migration toward European industrial excellence centres originated from this region. Important examples of the latter migration trend are the experiences of the young son of a cloth merchants’ family, who migrated to Manchester in 1875 to complete his formation as a textile entrepreneur, and of Prof. Antonio Sansone, an Italian professor at the Manchester Technical School.