Invasion Of Ethiopia Research Articles

The Italo-Abyssinian Crisis and the Shift from Slave to Refugee

Britain's role as the leading anti-slavery force throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth century defined humanitarian action and rhetoric with regard to Africa in this period. At some point in the twentieth century, however, the primary victim group – and focus of humanitarian action – in Africa came to be defined as refugees. This article argues that this was a result of the use of anti-slavery rhetoric in the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, and the corresponding shift in British humanitarian and foreign policy circles to the use of the language and policies previously aimed at African slaves in describing and aiding refugees from the Abyssinian crisis.

Re-Thinking the Emergence of the Struggle for South African Liberation in the United States: Max Yergan and the Council on African Affairs, 1922–1946

This article is about how African American missionary Max Yergan and other African American anti-colonial activists working through the Council on African Affairs (CAA) contributed to the emergence of the struggle for South African liberation in the United States. It subsumes Yergan's arrival in South Africa in 1922 through the establishment of the Council and its initial campaigns on behalf of black South Africans. My intent is to show that the struggle for South African liberation in the United States developed from transnational contact between African Americans and black South Africans, and that the struggle began not in the United States as is most often assumed but in South Africa under the leadership of Yergan, that the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 pushed Yergan and other anti-colonial radicals more assuredly into the fight for South Africa's liberation, and that the Council on African Affairs was critical to the emergence of the struggle in the United States during this early period. It will have further served its purpose if it overturns the lingering idea that African Americans were slow to get serious about the anti-apartheid movement. To the contrary, African Americans were organised and openly protesting for the rights of black South Africans more than three decades before they had won their own civil rights and at least a decade before apartheid had been established in South Africa. Liberal whites played an important role too, especially in providing financial support for the struggle but also through their active participation. My concern is not to write them out of the history of the struggle for South Africa's liberation, but to more effectively write African Americans into it.

J. CALVITT CLARKE III. Alliance of the Colored Peoples: Ethiopia and Japan before World War II.

In this detailed and well-researched study, J. Calvitt Clarke III provides a new perspective on the volatile world politics of the 1930s by investigating the controversial relationship between Japan and Ethiopia. Using Japanese, Russian, Italian, and English-language sources, Clarke shows how the participants in the multisided Ethiopian crisis employed ideas about race to enlist support for their cause. He is especially good at unraveling the complex diplomatic situation preceding Italy's invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 and explaining how individuals and non-governmental groups in Japan and Ethiopia sought to forge cultural connections to promote closer relations. As Clarke explains, the roots of the later international controversy surrounding Japan's involvement in Ethiopia can be traced to the Russian-Japanese War of 1904–1905. Japan's victory over Russia shocked European and American observers and thrilled revolutionaries throughout much of the colonized world. In less than four decades, Japan had transformed itself from a seemingly isolated and backward society to a powerful industrialized nation that had to be counted as among the world's great powers. Japan's rapid rise to power offered nationalists in Africa and Asia a model to emulate, especially after the Great War shook the foundations of European society.

Italy and Albania: The political and economic alliance and the Italian invasion of 1939

As the successful coup d’etat of Rome in October 27 – 29, 1922, successfully unfolded and Benito Mussolini emerged into power, the threat of invasion and spread of fascism was looming over southeastern Europe and North African countries of Ethiopia, Libya and Somalia. Mussolini’s intentions would not be perceptible until October, 1935, the invasion of Ethiopia and consequently almost four years later with the invasion of Albania in April 7th, 1939, which is considered by many as the prelude to World War II. Italy’s role and support towards the implementation of infrastructure projects and economic development initiatives in Albania proved to be essential. The fascist regime of Benito Mussolini was also a strategic ally for King Zog I who was in a desperate need to establish a stable government and secure his monarchy. Although King Zog I came to power with the immense help of Yugoslavia, months later he established strong ties with Italy and worked tirelessly to foster strategic bilateral relations with Mussolini’s administration. Italo-Yugoslav Relations improved greatly after the signing of a bilateral agreement in March 25, 1937, therefore Benito Mussolini had the green light from the Yugoslav government – which brought King Zog I into power in December, 1924 – to storm with loans, equipment and human assets the newly created Albanian government which later would become a Kingdom under the rule of Zog I. The focus of this Essay will be the impact of Italian – Albanian Strategic Alliance, a detailed analysis on the pact of Tirana (1926), the Italian Strategic Interests on western Balkans and its subsequent invasion in April, 1939.

Popular Imperialism: Broadening the Context

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes Rudyard Kipling, ‘The English Flag’ (1891). MacKenzie, Propaganda and Empire. Porter, The Absent-Minded Imperialists. Before anyone leaps in, I also discussed why this might not be especially significant in these cases. Bernard Porter, ‘Further thoughts on imperial absent-mindedness’. John MacKenzie replied to this with “Comfort and conviction”, to which I did not respond at the time, but probably should have done, if only to correct a couple of assertions that a glance at my bibliography would have shown him were mistaken: (a) that I had ‘not looked at the press’: in fact I did, selectively, to be sure, but this was in the days before digitalized newspapers enabling word-searches and (b) that the claim made for me that I had ‘examined hundreds of magazines, memoirs and school textbooks’ was ‘not actually true’. It is: they are listed in the book. He also defended his charge that The Absent-Minded Imperialists would give ‘comfort’ to hidebound old reactionaries, by quoting Ronald Hyam's support for my thesis, which I found odd, not having suspected that other academic historians were the reactionaries he had in mind, and seeing no evidence that Hyam was particularly ‘comforted’. Since this article was completed, Theodore Koditschek has (independently) taken this point up in his excellent Liberalism, Imperialism and the Historical Imagination, with reference to the interaction between imperialism and liberalism at the ‘intellectual’ level in the nineteenth century. Bernard Porter, ‘Edward Elgar and Empire’. He makes the ‘Hobson’ point in his 2008 article, cited above. This was in response to League of Nations sanctions following Italy's invasion of Ethiopia. Finaldi suggests it indicated the ‘adherence of the masses to the myth of the place in the sun’ (p. 220); but surely the main motive was—insofar as it was truly voluntary—simply to defend the Italian national honour. Tilley, Africa as a Living Laboratory. According to Ajagàn-Lester, ‘De Andra’. Afrikaner, ‘scientific racism’ was far more prominent in Swedish school textbooks than I found it to be in contemporary English ones. Quoted in Patrick Salmon, Scandinavia and the Great Powers (1997), 18–19. A reference of course to David Cannadine, Ornamentalism. MacKenzie, “Comfort and conviction,” 659.

Profitability, Practicality and Ideology

The history of the Italian fascist regime's main airline, Ala Littoria, is analyzed in this paper. Operated in 1934-40 throughout Italy, Europe and the Mediterranean, as well as in Italy's North and East African colonies, the airline's civil role progressively decreased in 1940-43 as aircraft and personnel were subsumed into the Italian air force. The carrier was the result of an amalgamation of smaller pre-existing airlines. Ala Littoria is considered with regards to the tension between organising a viable commercial enterprise and the ideological use to which Ala Littoria was put as symbol of fascist modernity and ideology. First, the paper examines the history, operations and place of Ala Littoria within the wider frame of 1930s European civil aviation, especially following the regime's policy of economic autarchy (self-sufficiency) following Italy's invasion of Ethiopia in 1935. Second, from the domestic network to colonial routes, the airline's route network is excavated and segmented on various levels. Third, the paper examines salient problems which the airline encountered in its operations, as well as its attempts to become a vector which could successfully link fascist Italy with Europe and its colonial possessions. , In view of its practical role in fascist transport and colonial projects, and in its symbolic role as a signifier both of political ambition and national pride, the history of Ala Littoria is examined as a commercial company.

‘No more Hoares to Paris’: British foreign policymaking and the Abyssinian Crisis, 1935

AbstractItaly's invasion of Abyssinia in October 1935 prompted a major European crisis. This article applies the main theories of foreign policy analysis to the British Government's handling of this crisis. It argues that bureaucratic politics existed, but had little impact on outcomes. Domestic politics had more influence, but did not provide detailed instructions on how to act. The perceptions of key actors, informed by reasoned judgement, determined this. Fears of the threat posed by rival states coalesced with concerns about Britain's own military weakness, leading decision-makers to emphasise the need to act in tandem with France. British policy was therefore motivated by the tension between the public's desire to see action against Italy and the Government's wish to minimise any breach with her allies. These findings highlight the weaknesses of the bureaucratic politics model and show how domestic politics can affect foreign policy outcomes. They also demonstrate the interaction between rational analysis defined in terms of reasoned judgement, and actors' perceptions. It is thus argued that benefits are to be gleaned from combining these theories.

Algerian nationalists in the French political arena and beyond: the Etoile nord-africaine and the Parti du peuple algérien in interwar France

During the interwar period, North Africans in France had established a tradition of anti-colonial political struggle and nationalism. Their political discourse was structured around a common denominator: their identity as Arabs and Muslims fighting against French colonial oppression. The Algerian anti-colonial movement, born within the structures of the French Communist Party in the mid-1920s was to distance itself slowly from the direct influence of this party. The Etoile nord-africaine developed a discourse that initially encapsulated all North Africans, but soon evolved to focus mainly on Algerian issues: the construction of a ‘modern’ Algerian identity and the struggle for independence. Through an analysis of El Ouma, the newspaper of the nationalist organisation, and of French colonial archives, this article explores some key aspects of the nationalist discourse of the Etoile nord-africaine (ENA) and the Parti du peuple algérien (PPA) on their relationship with the French left. It also assesses some of the ways in which international events such as the invasion of Ethiopia by Mussolini's Italy and the Palestinian question were both evoked to frame their nationalist struggle within the wider anti-colonial agenda of part of the left and establish links with other anti-imperialist and nationalist organisations in France and beyond.

The sovereign remedy of European unity: The progressive left and supranational government 1935–1945

This article is about the role the concept of European unity played in the political discourse of Britain's progressive intellectuals between Italy's invasion of Ethiopia and the end of World War II. It argues that the progressives saw European unity in a socialist federation as a way of staving off the disasters of war, the European hegemony of Nazi Germany, the restoration of ‘small states’ in post-war Europe and a damaging post-war rupture between the democracies and the USSR.

“The Worst of all Worlds:” Oil Sanctions and Italy's Invasion of Abyssinia, 1935–1936

Italy's invasion of Abyssinia in 1935 caused a crisis for the League of Nations. League members imposed limited sanctions against Italy and debated at length the imposition of an embargo on oil shipments to Italy, which came to stand as a symbol of the League's determination to punish the Italian aggressor. The British government conducted a detailed investigation to determine whether or not an oil sanction could compel Italy to abandon its invasion. Although Italy imported the vast majority of its oil, British and League experts concluded that an oil embargo would not succeed. Even if the League instituted a comprehensive embargo amongst its members, Italy could still have secured sufficient supplies from non-members, particularly the United States, which could not legally prevent American companies from trading with Italy. Italy could also have secured additional supplies through third-party transshipments. An additional ban preventing Italy from using League tankers to carry its purchases would not have succeeded either, although the various sanctions together would have increased Italy's costs to import oil and the amount of pressure on its gold reserves. In spite of the technical difficulties involved in implementing an embargo, the British Cabinet continued to support the idea for domestic political reasons; it needed to placate the British public that considered it vitally important to put into practice the League's collective security rhetoric. The League's unwillingness to impose an oil sanction and its evident failure to prevent Italy's conquest of Abyssinia discredited the League and its collective security provisions.

Empire, Gender and the ‘Home Front’ in Fascist Italy

This article considers the ways in which Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 and the subsequent League of Nations sanctions shaped the tasks assigned to women within the Fascist Party. During the period of sanctions and, indeed, after their ending, right up until the Second World War, empire and women’s contribution to it became a core theme in Fascist propaganda. Female party members were mobilised for the imperial cause both as producers and as consumers and this led to a new emphasis on their importance to the nation. The activities of the Fascist women’s groups expanded considerably to include a range of new tasks such as running training courses on how to fight waste in housework, ‘autarkic cookery’ and so on. This article also discusses how young Italian women were prepared for a role in Italy’s ‘place in the sun’ through special courses created to train them for a future as colonial wives.

ANTI-COLONIALISM AND THE ITALIAN LEFT

Italy was, for a short period, an empire; and yet unlike other empires, it apparently lacked a vocal anti-colonial element. This article draws attention to the ambivalence of the Italian response to colonialism, by focusing on a specific moment of Italy's engagement with empire: the invasion of Ethiopia by Mussolini in 1935. On the one hand, this colonial war (one of the very last to be fought) consolidated a mass consensus around the regime. However, the Ethiopian war can also be read as the first opportunity that the Italian left had to articulate its anti-fascism on an international scale. The archives documenting the activities of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) between 1935 and 1946 allow us to reconstruct an oppositional narrative to colonialism that developed among the Italian left in the fascist years. The PCI sent an emissary, Ilio Barontini, to Ethiopia, to organize resistance against the Italian occupying forces. This mission, together with other anti-colonial activities of the PCI in those years, can be read as a pre-history of Italian anti-fascist resistance. The men who went to Ethiopia on an anti-colonial mission were there fighting against some of their fellow Italians, foreshadowing the civil war that would mark the Resistenza between 1943 and 1945. While Italian imperialism was among the bloodiest colonial enterprises ever undertaken, it is shown that in the 1930s there did emerge a vibrant critique of it, whose energies flowed into the anti-fascist struggle in the war years.

‘Fare di ogni famiglia italiana un fortilizio’: The League of Nations' economic sanctions and everyday life in Venice1

The imposition of punitive sanctions against Italy by the League of Nations in November 1935 in response to the invasion of Ethiopia, a fellow league member, provided the fascist regime with an opportunity to mobilize the civilian population into ‘resistance’ against the ‘economic siege’ and to promote its ideals of nationalism, imperialist expansion and autarchy. This article examines the way in which the fascist authorities in Venice, aided by a supportive local press, sought to use the sanctions and ‘sanctions resistance’ to engage Venetians – especially women – in the fascist project and explores the effect of the anti-sanctions resistance measures on Venetians' daily lives. Placing importance both upon the regime's intentions as well as Venetians' reception of the anti-sanctions rhetoric, and drawing upon Michel de Certeau's observations on The Practice of Everyday Life, the article argues that Venetians' reception of such propaganda was characterized above all by confusion and by a multiplicity of personal choices and reactions, spanning a range of possible responses from unequivocal support through passive acceptance or indifference to outright rejection or subversion of the sanctions resistance measures that sought to elicit consent for the fascist project.

Africa And U.S. Foreign Policy

This article is an assessment of the role of African Americans in effecting democratic African politics and leadership. Assessments of African development provide the basis for explaining African contemporary leadership challenges and a survey of U.S. foreign policy toward Africa is used to evaluate the domestic political environment that elicited African Americans’ political activism on behalf of Africa. Two historic case studies, of Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 and the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa during the 1980s, are used to identify, characterize, and assess African Americans’ political influence on African development and leadership. The article assesses the means, motivation, and impact of African American political activity on behalf of Africa to explain how democratic movements may improve African leadership. The article concludes that African Americans most effectively contribute to democratic development in Africa when they interact directly with African social and political organizations to encourage responsive, effective leadership.

Adwa: from monument to document

SummaryTo the Italian historian the Battle of Adwa in March 1896 has offered a field of interpretation which has been heavily marked by the events that occurred between (and within) the two countries—Ethiopia and Italy—before and after the battle. Adwa has been variously depicted by Italian historiography of the liberal period as a major military defeat, a political mistake by Crispi's expansionist government and the result of deep contrasts within the newly born state over the ‘colonial burden'. Fascist historiography painted Adwa as proof of liberal decay and political inefficiency. Adwa's name could be avenged only in the battlefield, which was done during Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia in 1935-36. From the Ethiopian point of view, Adwa's image changes no less. Until recently, the Battle of Adwa was painted as the landmark for Ethiopian unification and independence during the colonial era. Menelik's momentous victory at Adwa crowned his bid for power in the national arena, while his successful ability to stave off external colonial pressure appeared to cancel, or rather conceal, the internal policy of expansion and consolidation of his country's rule in the region. Today's insistence on Adwa as an African victory appears to be the dominant historiographical representation. The different interpretations all contain elements of truth, yet all, if frozen into historiographical truths, become embarrassing to the historian who needs documents, rather than monuments, as tools of analysis. To many historians both in Italy and Ethiopia, Adwa's respective symbolism of victory/defeat has been transformed into an icon, an historiographical monument, unassailable and immovable. The centenary of Adwa allows us to reconsider historical events of a shared past as critical documents and biased representations reflecting their own culture and time. This article attempts to deconstruct the historiographical monument of Adwa in Italian society so as to transmit such a heavily coded event to the critical examination of future historians in both Italy and Ethiopia.

Evelyn Waugh in Ethiopia: the novelist as war correspondent and journalism critic

This study describes novelist-turned-war correspondent Evelyn Waugh's criticisms of war correspondents' practices on the eve of Italy's invasion of Ethiopia in 1935. Few critics during Waugh's time treated Waugh's writings about Ethiopia as formal journalism criticism, elaborating specific criticisms. This problem persists because most contemporary Waugh scholars have literary backgrounds and little interest in journalism. The present study focuses on four specific criticisms: (1) journalists' preparations for war, (2) bribery and expense account abuses, (3) the culture of lying, and (4) journalistic jargon known as "cablese". The study relied on Waugh's diaries, letters, and particularly the books from his Ethiopian assignment. Largely neglected contemporary professional journalism publications and correspondents' memoirs supplemented these sources. Waugh's observations provide alternatives to the mythic accounts of correspondents as heroes. Although many of Waugh's descriptions of correspondents' practices seem implausible, correspondences' memoirs frequently at least partly confirmed his observations. While Waugh's criticisms were insightful, he attributed problems in war reporting to the correspondents and failed to appreciate systemic problems inherent in all journalism. Some of the problems were particular to overseas reporting.

Rising Wind: Black Americans and U.S. Foreign Affairs, 1935-1960 (review)

Reviewed by: Rising Wind: Black Americans and U.S. Foreign Affairs, 1935–1960 Charles P. Henry (bio) Rising Wind: Black Americans and U.S. Foreign Affairs, 1935–1960 by Brenda Gayle Plummer (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 423 pp. Historian Brenda Gayle Plummer has written an admirable history of Black American involvement in US foreign policy during the middle third of this century. Much of the terrain she covers is as unknown to Black audiences as it is to the general public. The role of the Black press in covering African affairs, the increasing numbers of Black professionals working for international organizations, and the strong ties between leaders of the Indian struggle for independence and African Americans are examples of stories seldom told. Moreover, Plummer’s exhaustive coverage of the individuals and organizations directly involved in foreign affairs makes this an indispensable volume. How many would know, for example, of the work of Willis Huggins, a Fordham trained Africanist, who as founder of the Friends of Ethiopia helped develop 106 branches [End Page 195] in the United States in less than half a year in 1935? And how many of those who know that Madame C.J. Walker was one of the first Black millionaires also know that she was a founder of the International League of Darker Peoples? Plummer frames her detailed historical exploration in a context that distinguishes race from ethnicity. Citing Nathan Glazer and Daniel Moynihan’s influential study Beyond the Melting Pot, she states that ethnic group lobbying in foreign policy was an inseparable and natural part of the group’s political agenda. For Blacks, however, the conviction that they should express no concern about matters beyond US frontiers conveniently hid a mirror side, which was that what happens to them concerns no one outside federal borders. As the United States confronted Hitler’s Aryan supremacy and sought to play a leading role in establishing a new world order, it was no longer possible to define the minority situation in the United States as a purely domestic issue. The new internationalism even reached down to Black organizations in small southern towns. Plummer reports on an interracial convention at the University of North Carolina to choose student nonconsultant observers to the San Francisco organizing conference of the United Nations. The representatives from some fifty White and Black southern colleges elected an integrated team as observers. In regard to the three official Black consultants to the 1945 conference, Plummer criticizes W.E.B. DuBois and Walter White for excluding Mary McLeod Bethune from their deliberations and for generally ignoring community based activists. The heightened awareness of international affairs in the Black community in the 1930s creates a new dynamic with domestic ethnics. The invasion of Ethiopia by Mussolini, for example, led to open clashes between Black Americans and Italian Americans. Plummer points out the State Department’s double standard in refusing passports to the former, who wanted to fight for Haile Selassie, while condoning the latter’s enlistment in Mussolini’s army. Moreover, the silence of the Catholic Church on Mussolini’s actions did not go unnoticed in the Black community. Following World War II, Italy received American reconstruction aid while Ethiopia was left to recover on its own. Black indifference to the plight of European Jews does not escape Plummer’s view during this period. Citing Jesse Owen’s praise for Hitler as he campaigned for GOP vice-presidential candidate Alf Landon, she explains his position as a reflection of Blacks’ domestic experience with Jews rather than a broader view of international politics. That is, urban Jews, like Italians, occupied middlemen’s roles in Black communities and often incurred similar resentment. While these domestic concerns were sublimated during World War II, they surfaced again during the Cold War. According to Plummer, civil rights activists searched for ways to demonstrate that civil rights pertained to the national interest. When they could not make this connection they ignored international linkages as when the NAACP failed to support the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya or the African National Congress in South Africa. A number of African Americans participated in State Department subsidized junkets to Asia and Africa...

Between Rome and London: Pius XI, the Catholic Church, and the Abyssinian Crisis of 1935–1936

| caused by the Italian invasion of Abyssinia in October 1935 is its impact on the various Christian denominations. The Protestant denominations of Great Britain and North America, especially the Church of England, actively supported the League of Nations, wishing to punish Italy as an international law-breaker. At the same time, the bishops and clergy of the Roman Catholic Church in Italy opposed the League and actively supported the national war effort. The stance of Italian Catholics, however, did not reflect Catholic opinion in general; while Pope Pius XI and the officials of the Holy See sought to plot a course of benevolent neutrality through the crisis, Roman Catholics in Great Britain were forced to defend papal neutrality to Anglicans who had defined support for the League as the only moral option. This essay explores the reactions of the ecclesiastical authorities to the Abyssinian Crisis and, in particular, considers the varied responses of the Roman Catholic Church.

Mad Dogs and Englishmen: British Rearmament, Deterrence, and Appeasement, 1934-35

Historical accounts of appeasement have underestimated the British government's attempts to develop a comprehensive strategy of deterrence, one that resembles recent theories of conventional deterrence. The decisions of 1934-35 to increase British armaments were based on these assumptions: that appeasement and military deterrence were compatible in a dual policy of conciliating and confining Germany and Japan; that the attainment of adequate levels of peacetime strength constituted the best deterrent, although the simultaneous demonstration of force and the will to rearm might restrain the dictators. While British defense policy had not anticipated the possibility of conflict with Italy, the British used a show of force in the Mediterranean in 1935 both to protect their interests and to support the League of Nations against Italy's invasion of Ethiopia. The failure either to prevent or to limit Italian aggression in this crisis convinced most British policymakers that threatening force before completing rearmament would not deter a Fascist regime from territorial expansion, and that deterrence should be defined more narrowly.

Making Weapons, Talking Peace

My earliest memories of public affairs include the election of Herbert Hoover, the Great Depression, the election of Franklin Roosevelt, the rise of Adolf Hitler, the Japanese invasion of China, and the Italian invasion of Ethiopia—all of which took place while I was still in grade school. They continue with the Spanish civil war, which occurred when I was in high school. The European branch of World War II started in the same month that I entered college at the University of Rochester.