The fascist breadbasket: food, empire, and modernity in Italian East Africa, 1935–1941

Abstract

ABSTRACT Food was critical to the fascist project of occupation of Ethiopia and construction of the Italian Empire in East Africa between 1935 and 1941. The plan, deployed as part of the last and most modern war of aggression in the European Scramble for Africa, included the transfer to Ethiopia of plant and animal breeding biotechnologies and the transplantation of Italian farmers to develop a massive;demographic colonization’; first in experimental model settlements, and then replacing Ethiopian biodiversity with Italian agriculture, husbandry, and civilization. The project of extraction of food resources from Ethiopia prioritized mobility – the construction of the road infrastructure necessary to transport colonial crops to the seaports on the Red Sea and from there to Italy and global markets. As the mass demographic colonization project faltered, though, the Empire absorbed food rather than produce it, and the unexpected most important function of Mussolini’s highways was to deliver high volumes of food imported from Italy to settlers. While the consumption of imported processed food represented an exciting experience of modernity and social mobility for Ethiopia’s Italians, Ethiopian armed and spontaneous resistance insisted on the disruption of the invaders’ colonial food system as the pathway to regain control of their land, agriculture, and food sovereignty.