Italian Colonialism Research Articles

Late Colonialism and Postcolonial Development in Africa: A Comparative-Historical Analysis of Former Italian Africa

This article analyzes the development legacies of Italian colonialism in Africa. The comparative-historical analysis shows that colonial Italy pursued “settler colonialism” in areas conducive to colonial settlement and large-scale exploitation, and “plantation colonialism” in areas with fewer resource endowments and settlement opportunities. In the immediate aftermath, while settler colonialism had a positive influence and plantation colonialism exerted a negative impact on economic prosperity, both types of Italian colonialism had strong negative effects on human development. In the post-1960 period, whereas the colonial legacy of plantation colonialism led to persistent poverty in Somalia, long-run development in Eritrea and Libya was contingent on critical junctures, which variously reinforced, destabilized, and/or transformed the institutional and developmental legacies of settler colonialism. I draw on the comparative-historical tradition emphasizing national orientation of European colonizers and natural conditions in colonized areas as key determinants of European colonialism and long-run development. However, I emphasize “factor endowments” as one such condition that defined Italian colonization strategies and institutions, finding little empirical support for factor endowments per se or precolonial ethnic centralization as principal determinants.

The War on Tigray: Geopolitics and the Struggle for Self-Determination

Tigray continues to be a unique case among ancient kingdoms, Westphalia nation-states, post-colonial Africa, and post-Cold War national liberation struggles. It is one of the oldest civilizations (Aksumite Kingdom) and the historical, cultural, and political soul of ancient and modern Ethiopia. But it was made to be an ‘oppressed nation struggling for regional autonomy and survival from genocidal aggression’ by the empire state of Ethiopia and the ‘garrison state’ of Eritrea. It also survived Egyptian and Mahdist expansionists, and Italian colonialism, though it lost ‘Bahre-Negash’ (Eritrea) to Italy due to the Wuchale Agreement (or Treaty of Wichale) in 1889. Eritrea was handed over to Italian colonialists by Menelik II of Shewa-Amhara in order to weaken Tigray’s geopolitical power base. Tigray was also the hotbed of the first Woyane rebellion in 1943 which sparked the idea of ‘land to the Tiller, fair taxation, and self-rule,’ and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) led the second Woyane rebellion (1975–91) that restructured the empire state of Ethiopia into a federation with the 1995 constitution. Since 2018, after 27 years of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF)- led federal experiment, Tigray again became a victim of a ‘genocidal war’ led by the Ethiopian federal army, Amhara forces, Ethiopian regional forces, and Eritrean army, supported by UAE and Turkey drones, and the Somalian army. The international community and the African Union supported Abiy Ahmed and Issaias Afewerki’s genocidal war in the name of “maintaining the territorial integrity of Ethiopia” by neglecting the principles of Responsibility to Protect (R2P), people’s self-determination rights, and the prevention of genocide. Tigray, therefore, is a rare case in the vicious cycle of violence. The Tigrayan ‘two-year’ survival war (from November 2020 to November 2022) against those who practice genocide was destined to break Tigray’s historically vicious cycle of violence perpetrated by Ethiopia and Eritrea. The paper aims to investigate the historical, geopolitical, and security reasons that have trapped Tigray into facing the post-2020 genocidal war.

The Libyan askaris on the eve of national independence: two life stories across different strategies of intermediation

ABSTRACT Italian colonial authorities heavily relied on the askaris (i.e. native soldiers) throughout the history of colonialism to alleviate the economic and political burdens of colonial warfare. For that, the askaris became privileged intermediaries for the Italians and emerged as a de facto elite within colonial society, seeking social mobility for themselves and their families. After the end of the Second World War, the askaris lost their role as soldiers, but gained new relevance as political intermediaries for Italian or British plans regarding the final resolution of the Italian colonies affaire. The article delves into the life stories of two askaris, which were documented by the author on 3rd November 2009, in Tripoli. Their memories highlight the relationships of friendship or intimacy that existed with the colonisers and showcase the askaris’ ability to downplay colonial elements of domination and oppression through their intermediation. Being an askar entailed, on one hand, questioning the political and racial boundaries of society, and on the other hand, challenging the agendas of nationalist groups. The transition to independence indeed involved a struggle between colonisers and the colonised, as well as among various groups of colonial subjects, all vying for power within the post-colonial State and society.

Monuments of Italian Colonialism as a Transcultural Heritage

This essay addresses the material legacies of Italian colonialism, reframing them as a transcultural heritage. With a focus on the complex interplay between memory and displacement, the study retraces the biographies of selected historical monuments from the late nineteenth century to fascism up until postcolonial Italy. Comparing the life and afterlives of the Monument to the Fallen Soldiers of Dogali, still preserved in a public space in Rome, with monuments implicated in processes of restitution, such as the Axum Stele and the statue of the Lion of Judah, both returned to Ethiopia, the essay reflects upon the dynamics of invisibility and absence, examining decolonial claims, and new layers of memory that currently overlap in politically charged spaces.

Built to last? Material legacies of Italian colonialism

This essay discusses what is a colonial trace and what can be done with the material legacy of colonialism in the Italian cities. These questions have been asked to scholars, artists, curators, and activists: historians Ruth Ben-Ghiat and Hannes Obermair, visual artist Alessandra Ferrini, art historian and curator Viviana Gravano, writer Igiaba Scego, and two collectives, Resistenze in Cirenaica and Colletivo Tezeta. They discuss their practices and work, but address also more general issues – such as whether Italy is a decolonized country or not. Interviewees looked at specific cases – like the city of Bolzano or the statue of Indro Montanelli in Milan – and analysed different strategies to resignify monuments and street names. The debate around Italy’s colonial legacy, and in particular monuments and street names, is ongoing and unfolding; these interviews will contribute to frame the debate for the years to come.

Narrating the Nation: Language and the Landscape of Time in Scego’s Adua

In Adua (2015), Igiaba Scego illuminates the legacy of Italian colonialism by chronicling the intergenerational trauma passed from Zoppe, a Somali translator working for Italians during the fascist ventennio, to his daughter Adua, an actress exploited by the Italian film industry. This study analyzes Scego’s use of perspective to represent fundamentally different experiences of time in Adua, emphasizing Scego’s unique contribution to a postcolonial aesthetics that combats colonial temporality as defined by Johannes Fabian. In Time and the Other, Fabian asserts that time has not yet been decolonized, and thus has not been deconstructed as an ideological instrument of power. Scego unflinchingly documents the effects of colonial chronopolitics through her third-person narration of Zoppe’s perspective, which deteriorates into a series of invectives that portray his complete arrest in time. Adua endures similar traumas, but she embraces narration as a means of refashioning her voice and restoring community. In depicting Adua’s story as a triumph over colonial temporality, Scego champions first-person narration as a tool for the construction of a postcolonial chronopolitics that decolonizes time in order to work towards a more ethical geopolitical order.

Citizens, Subjects, Enemies: The First World War and Citizenship Policies in the Italian Colonies

There are few research fields in European history that have received as much scholarly attention over the last few years as citizenship and the First World War. While this is also true for the Italian case, there is still a striking absence of research on citizenship laws in the colonial territories under Italian sovereignty. The present article addresses this gap and challenges the long-established assumption – due to an all too narrow focus on the historical military framework – that the First World War did not really affect the colonies of the Kingdom of Italy. An investigation of how the legal status of the colonial population – especially in Eritrea, on the one hand, and in Tripolitania and Cyrenaica, on the other – was regulated, but also contested, claimed and negotiated, both during the conflict and in its immediate aftermath, reveals that a global event like the First World War actually had a significant impact on the Italian territories in the Horn of Africa and in North Africa. To illustrate this point, the article adopts an approach based on local players in the colonies rather than on legislators or policymakers in the metropole. Contemporary sources collected from several different archives are used to retrace personal stories and administrative processes which reveal important aspects in the story not only of Italian colonialism but of the Italian state in general. Citizenship in the Italian territories in Africa, as much as in other European colonies, was marked by the prejudicial concept of the backwardness of Africans, who were thus excluded from metropolitan citizenship. Beyond that, the article highlights utilitarianism as a concept that can help us to understand how Italy dealt with the inhabitants of its colonies during the First World War.

The Second Italo-Ethiopian War in the publicistics by Yevhen Onatskyi

The article analyzes the evolution of the publicist narrative about the Second Italo-Ethiopian War (1935–1936) of the Ukrainian nationalist intellectual, member of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and its representative in fascist Italy Yevhen Onatskyi (1894–1979). This evolution is presented in the apology of Italian colonialism and the advocacy of the Ukrainian people’s right to national self-determination.The article discusses Onatskyi’s attempts to distribute his views on Italian aggression among OUN top members and other emigration circle representatives through private correspondence. Based on the analysis of these attempts, as well as considering sources of information about Onatskyi’s contacts with officials of the Mussolini regime, preliminary assumptions are made about the degree of Onatskyi’s involvement in the structure of the Italian governmental propaganda machine.Developing his argumentation, Onatskyi relayed to his readers the theses of Italian imperial propaganda, which this article examines as part of a larger network of rhetoric and themes common to Modern colonial powers. In this context are employed models that allow not only the detection of variations of transimperial themes in the Italian fascist propaganda broadcast by Onatskyi but also to detect peculiarities of its application to the Second Italo-Ethiopian War.During 1935–1936, Onatskyi declared the “injustice” of the distribution of colonies between the leading empires, formulated arguments in favor of justifying anti-British sentiment, defended the civilizing mission of the Mussolini regime, appealed to the “barbarism” of Ethiopians using racist rhetoric. In the period of 1936–1937 Onatskyi formulated an interpretive structure that connected pro-fascist, pro-Ukrainian, anti-Ethiopian and anti-Soviet positions into a single authoritarian-nationalist system of views.

Furnishing Italian Colonialism: “Nomad” Interiors and the Habitations of the Empire

abstract: This article explores the display and circulation of furniture and decorative arts between Italy and its African colonies, and discusses the relationship between pieces conceived in the occupied territories, those defined for Italian households, and those envisioned to accompany Italians in their colonial endeavors. The circulation of these different pieces was thought to embody the “expansion of life horizons” characteristic of modernity. However, modernist designers worked alongside ethnographers through the delineation of distinct identities for the inhabitants of the Italian nation and those subjected to colonization, increasingly differentiating who was allowed to engage in the characteristically modern “expansion” and who was forced to remain fixed—as the defining hierarchy of the modern-colonial period.

Roman Routes in Italian Postcolonial Women Writers

Rome is the city where the memory of Italian colonialism is more evident in the urban space. Nevertheless, this heritage is often neglected or forgotten, just like other traces of Italian colonialism in the national territory and culture. This period of Italian history has indeed never been properly elaborated by Italian culture and historiography, as critics have widely demonstrated. In this essay, traces of Italian colonialism in Rome will be investigated through the analysis of literary contributions produced over the last thirty years, and specifically of texts written by women writers, who proved to have a special perspective on colonialism and its effects on the capital. Novels, short stories, poems and autobiographies by Ubah Cristina Ali Farah, Shirin Ramzanali Fazel, Igiaba Scego and Ribka Sibhatu – and specifically the paths covered by their fictional characters in the urban space – will thus serve as guides to explore the city. The aim of the essay is to shed light on the present identity of Rome as a complex city and as the object of new narrations. From Stazione Termini to Quartiere Africano, passing through Piazza di Porta Capena, Piazzale Flaminio and other places, this essay remaps the urban space and questions Rome’s colonial heritage. As a result, it shows that displacing the traditional significance given to monuments, streets and squares in Rome means rediscussing Italian history and national identity.

Dealing with the Material Legacies of Italian Fascist Colonialism in Post-Communist Tirana

Albania was Italy’s most short-lived colony, under official fascist control only from the Italian invasion in 1939 until the collapse of Mussolini’s regime in 1943. However, although the fascist occupation was brief, there had been a significant Italian involvement in Albania since 1923. Thus, the influence of Fascism on Albania and especially on the capital city of Tirana was immense, not least in the areas of urban planning and architecture, most of which was retained intact by the Communist dictatorship which ruled from 1944 to 1990. This essay investigates the afterlives of this fascist-era architecture in post-Communist Tirana. In the panoply of Italy’s imperial territories, Albania was unique in passing from a fascist dictatorship to a Communist one and this trajectory provides important nuance to the current debates regarding the legacies of fascist heritage in the 75 years since the regime’s fall and especially in the twenty-first century. This essay pays particular attention to the years 2016–2020 during which two notable examples of fascist-era architecture in Tirana, namely the city’s football stadium and the National Theatre, have been at the centre of major political and public debates about the future of the city, the country and its governance, asking what these recent cases can reveal about the memory of fascist imperialism in post-Communist, democratic Albania and contributing to ongoing debates about the management, treatment and reception of the material legacies of Italian colonialism more broadly.

Colonial Amnesia and the Material Remains of Italian Colonialism in Mogadishu

This essay examines the material legacies of Italian colonialism in Mogadishu in the aftermath of postcolonial transformations and the devastation of the Somali Civil War. It traces the history of colonial Mogadishu and the deep imprint of the Italian state on the city's spatial organization and architectural heritage. From 1893 to 1941, the city was transformed into a colonial capital through the imposition of a new European-style city upon the old historic centre. This required the demolition of pre-colonial structures and homes, and the displacement of many Somalis to the outskirts the city. With independence, colonial sites were appropriated and nationalized – streets honouring Italian figures were renamed to honour Somalis; colonial buildings became national buildings. With these transformations, however, the colonial history of the now postcolonial capital city became invisibilised and easily forgotten.

Imperial Remnants of a Contested Alpine Border Region: Encountering Bolzano’s Ambiguous Monuments

Italian cities are full of public inscriptions and monuments that praise not only fascism but also its brutal expansionist wars. This situation is especially true in Bolzano, the capital of a formerly contested border region in the north of the country, where such symbols were crucial to claim political and cultural domination over conquered territories – not only in the Mediterranean and Africa, but also within Italy’s own national borders. This essay examines monuments, street names and other material legacies of fascist imperialism in Bolzano and reflects on the meaning given to them by the fascist regime at the time of their erection. It reveals why these symbols were placed at specific points in the city as imperial landmarks and questions the regime’s representative intentions behind it. This essay intends to provide a historical starting point for an overall examination of imperial monuments in Bolzano and, based on this, to enable research on their reception history in further studies. To this end, it examines articles from fascist South Tyrolean newspapers reporting on the inauguration ceremonies of the monuments. In addition, fascist laws and city government protocols provide information about the political ethos under which the regime erected them. Finally, the imperial remnant’s symbolic content will be analysed and compared with the research literature on Italian colonialism and its wars of aggression.

Generations of Empire: Youth from Ottoman to Italian Rule in the Mediterranean. By Andreas Guidi

Generations of Empire: Youth from Ottoman to Italian Rule in the Mediterranean aims to provide a post-Ottoman, colonial, and social history of Rhodes from the perspective of generations and youth. The book serves as both a microhistory of Rhodes and a global history of the Mediterranean in the twentieth century. Despite its apparently narrow focus on youth in a single locality, the book provides a compelling macro picture and delves deeper into the issues of post-Ottoman societies, Italian colonialism (and fascism), and the Mediterranean world. As one of the most significant achievements of the book, Generations of Empire offers “a change of framing toward thinking Italian colonialism as post-Ottoman history” (7). The persistence of Ottoman institutions, social structures, as well as forms of belonging during the island’s Italian colonial rule invites further contemplation of the chronological and geographical implications of “post-Ottoman” space and time. Furthermore, Guidi focuses on the Mediterranean as a divided whole, taking into account imperial continuities, colonial legacies, nationalist tensions, economic expropriation, and migration flows. On a more individual, familial, and rather communal level, the research informs the reader with extremely valuable detail on confessional communities, bonds of loyalty, and surveillance. The book treats communities as “intermediary institutions between government and families” (22) and gives voice to actors and institutions from all confessions in its narrative. The book’s engagement with “youth” and “generation” both as concepts and potential social actors is also quite novel. Guidi uses youth as a “situational” term, stressing that “a Young Turk newspaper, an Italian colonial governor, a group of Orthodox students, a rabbi, or a Muslim notable might all use the term youth with quite different aims.” (7). However, for the state(s), communities, and families alike, youth represented what Luisa Passerini has called “a metaphor of social change” and was a correlative term implying binomial references based on one’s standpoint.

Remediating family memories of Italian colonialism: Beyond the Frame as process and product

The article analyzes Beyond the Frame ( Oltre i bordi, 2023), a film based on Simone Brioni's fortuitous discovery of a family archive: a box of photographs taken in Italian East Africa in the 1930s by a distant relative. Beyond the Frame discusses colonial photography and visuality, as well as the material legacies of that past, challenging the gaze through which they framed the subjective and collective idea of Africa in Italian society. The article is divided into two parts, each of which discusses colonial photography and how Beyond the Frame observes, interprets, and reflects on how the legacy of colonialism shapes our present. In the first part, Brioni traces the process that led to the construction of a narrative that interweaves personal reflections and collective history. In the second part, Gianmarco Mancosu draws upon Ann Laura Stoler's work to discuss how the colonial archive and the remains of empire fashion our present, with a particular emphasis on photography and on colonial traces in the Italian cityscape. The article shows how the film works with as well as against the archive: how it enacts a process of resignification, thus modifying the original meaning of colonial pictures.

Histories of the Channel of Sicily: Architecture, Colonization, and Migrations across the Mediterranean Shores (1932–43)

Histories of modern and Fascist Italy have usually given little space to Italian colonialism, and histories of colonialism rarely mention the Italian South. This paper considers the agrarian colonization of Libya and Sicily together, reading them as key components of Italy’s nation-building and of the Fascist population politics. After the violent reconquest of Libya (1922–32) and the appropriation of all its fertile land, the Fascist regime turned to the rich and restless social fabric of the Italian South, which became the target for a new politics of space and population control. In a complex process of multiple exchanges, the agrarian colonization of Libya (1932–39) became the model for the agrarian colonization of Sicily (1939–43). By bringing together archives that have mostly been kept separate, this paper argues for a more nuanced notion of the South and colonialism. It does so by examining the ways colonialism was theorized and practiced, first by the Italian Liberal governments (1861–22) as a response to the nation’s southern question, and second by the Fascist regime (1922–43) as part of a wider project of reclamation of land and people in Italy and abroad. In particular, the paper compares the uncanny similarities between Fascist architecture and urbanism produced at the height of Fascist rule by the Ente di Colonizzazione della Libia and the Ente di Colonizzazione del Latifondo Siciliano. The paper asks, what links the politics of land, grain, and displacement in Libya and Southern Italy?

Money and the Regularisation of African Soldiers in the Early Phase of Italian Colonialism in Eritrea

The article focusses on transformations in the military labour regimes brought about by the recruitment of African soldiers during the early years of the Italian colony of Eritrea, by analysing colonial reports, correspondence and official regulations. On the one hand, it demonstrates that the lack of complete political control forced the Italians to adapt to the local multiple currency system for the building and maintenance of the indigenous corps. On the other hand, it shows that money was employed in colonial discourse and practice as a tool to facilitate the regularisation of indigenous soldiers.

“Time Meant Nothing”: A New Reading of Pietro di Donato's Three Circles of Light beyond Autobiography and Stereotypes

“Time Meant Nothing”: A New Reading of Pietro di Donato's <i>Three Circles of Light</i> beyond Autobiography and Stereotypes

La banalizzazione dello sguardo: Tempo di uccidere dal romanzo al film

In 1989 was released the cinematographic adaptation of Ennio Flaiano’s novel (1947) Tempo di uccidere (Time to kill) directed by Giuliano Montaldo. This contribution analyses the narratological features of the two versions, showing how in the medial switch the critical sight on Italian colonialism of the novel is turned to a shallow tale where is instead enforced the traditional view of white male superiority, due to the loss of the inner focus, the misread representation of characters, and the underestimation of episodes which served in the book to undermine colonizer’s self-sight and disclose the identity crisis of the following chapters.

Embodying Colonial Ghosts in Postcolonial Italian Women's Writing

While Italian colonialism in Africa is an aspect of Italy’s history that has started to receive academic attention in the last three decades, it remains outside the collective memory of many Italians. In opposition to this lack of mainstream cultural awareness, a proliferation of literary works has been produced, predominantly by female writers with origins in Italy’s former colonies in East Africa, filling in the historical omissions and, importantly, providing a transnational voice to gendered experiences of colonial trauma. Many of these authors foreground the female corporeal experience of colonialism and its legacy. My PhD thesis explores the representation of gendered colonial trauma and its intergenerational transmission through the female body. I examine a range of literary texts by women writers with origins in Somalia and Ethiopia, dating from 2007 to the present. Their work ranges across contexts and languages (Italian and English), yet each narrates colonial history in a highly embodied way, providing an alternative discourse to the nostalgic, mythologising historiography offered by mainstream Italian literature from the post-war period to the present.