Piero Sraffa’s Internment on the Isle of Man in 1940 as a British ‘Enemy Alien’

On 10 June 1940, the Axis power of Italy declared war on Great Britain and France. Shortly thereafter the British government extended to Italians its policy of internment that had previously applied to Austrian and German nationals living within its borders. In this essay the authors present newly declassified documents from the British Home Office as well as previously unearthed correspondence by Keynes from the Wren Library that bring color to the story of Sraffa being caught up in this fervor which resulted in his internment on the Isle of Man for a three-month period. The new evidence uncovers John Maynard Keynes in a fever pitch to secure the safety and eventual release of Sraffa and a few other Continental colleagues also caught up in this geopolitical quagmire. While in internment Sraffa was able to have delivered from the publisher a brand-new copy of the Aveling and Moore English translation of Marx’s Capital, Volume I. Sraffa studied this volume with great intensity while in confinement as evidenced by the scores of various markings he made in that volume, including a two-page index he had written out on the last pages of the volume.