Italian Invasion Research Articles

Intergenerational trauma and complex implication in Maaza Mengiste’s The Shadow King (2019)

ABSTRACT In the last three decades, numerous literary works have been published by women writers with origins in Italy’s former colonies in the Horn of Africa. These narratives have helped to create a belated form of postcolonial consciousness in Italy. Ethiopian American writer Maaza Mengiste adds to this body of work with her Booker longlisted novel, The Shadow King, which depicts the Italian invasion of Ethiopia (1935–41). This article analyses her text through the lens of intergenerational trauma theory. It applies Michael Rothberg’s notion of “complex implication”, referring to how an inheritance of victimhood may coexist with a position of implication, and Mihaela Mihai’s concept of “impure resistance”, which allows space for the ambivalence that may be implicit in resistance. It thus explores Mengiste’s portrayal of the enduring – and often unconscious – legacy of past trauma on the present and examines how subject positions such as “victim” and “perpetrator” fluctuate over generations.

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.

The Hands Off Ethiopia campaign, racial solidarities and intercolonial antifascism in South Asia (1935–36)

AbstractThe transnational campaign against the Italian invasion of the Ethiopian Empire (1936–36) has been widely acknowledged as a turning point for antiracist and anticolonial political organizing in the African continent and diaspora. This article seeks to reconstruct the South Asian participation in the Hands Off Ethiopia protests, to expand historical knowledge of the early-twentieth-century development of Afro-Asian solidarity ties as well as the intersection of anti-Fascist and anticolonial struggles. It examines the institutional responses to the invasion on the part of the Indian Legislative Assembly, and a series of demonstrations, local meetings and boycotts whose implications reverberated in the local and international press as well as in the concerns of British colonial authorities. As will be argued, this mobilization was fueled by feelings of racial solidarity, anti-imperialist analyses, anti-caste critiques, scriptural interpretations and religious universalisms.

‘With the Abyssinian Armies, in Defence of Africa’s Only Native State’: Varieties of South African Anti-Fascism, 1930s–1960s

ABSTRACT Noting the prominence of anti-fascist rhetoric in contemporary South African politics, the article returns to the varieties of South African anti-fascism inspired by the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935. Opening with a brief survey of South African support for the Italian invasion, three varieties of anti-fascism are analysed: first, white South African anti-fascism, both Prime Minister J. B. M. Hertzog’s support of sanctions against Italy in parliament and popular anti-fascism expressed in the white English-speaking press; second, black South African anti-fascism as articulated in newspapers like Bantu World and Umteteli wa Bantu; and, third, the socialist anti-fascism of the Communist Party of South Africa (in Umvikeli-Thebe/The African Defender and Umsebenzi), of Trotskyist groups (in The Spark), and of independent radicals. Two subsequent expressions of anti-fascism conclude the article. The first is the anti-fascism of the white South African soldiers who fought in Ethiopia in 1940–1941; the second, the 1966 speech in Addis Ababa by Jacob Nyaose, the Pan Africanist Congress Secretary for Labour on the national executive, which commemorated the South African soldiers who died liberating Ethiopia from fascism.

Ireland, Enlightenment and the English Stage, 1740–1820. Ed. David O’Shaughnessy.

<i>Ireland, Enlightenment and the English Stage, 1740–1820</i>. Ed. David O’Shaughnessy.

The intellectual as partisan: Sylvia Pankhurst and the Italian invasion of Ethiopia

ABSTRACT This article examines the feminist, communist and antifascist campaigner Sylvia Pankhurst as a postcolonial intellectual for our times. A forgotten figure in the history of anticolonialism, Pankhurst was active in the suffragette movement and then the communist movement, before devoting her political energies to supporting Ethiopia against the Italian invasion led by Mussolini in 1935. Pankhurst’s broadsheet New Times and Ethiopia News published articles denouncing the Italian occupation as well as writing by prominent African and Asian anticolonial voices. Through the analysis of Pankhurst, this article argues for an understanding of the postcolonial intellectual as a partisan who cuts across civilizational divides, bringing together metropolitan and colonial networks of resistance. I draw on Carl Schmitt’s Theory of the Partisan in which he describes the partisan, exemplified in the political combatant of the wars of decolonization, as the emblematic figure of twentieth-century warfare. I adapt Schmitt’s theory to read Pankhurst’s militancy in favour of Ethiopia in order to argue that the partisan is not only an insurgent fighter but an individual who takes sides in the interconnected struggles against colonialism and fascism. I thus gesture to the possibility of a global theory of resistance.

Crises and Crossroads in Ethiopia

Crises and Crossroads in Ethiopia

The place of Italy in Turkish foreign policy in the 1930s

For many scholars working on Turkish foreign policy in the 1930s, Italy is taken as the greatest threat to the newly-established Republic and one that dominated Turkish foreign policy making in this period. Italy did adopt a threating stance with the Italian occupation of the Dodecanese islands and its expansionist aims in Asia and Africa, which were a cause of concern for the Turkish government. A re-examination of the Turkish-Italian political and economic relations within the broader context of the Mediterranean and the great power politics of the period, however, demonstrates that the bilateral relations, at least officially, functioned without any significant and lasting crisis until the Italian invasion of Albania in 1939. What motivated and drove Turkish thinking and decision-making in the international arena was not Italy’s actions per se but the insecurity in the Mediterranean and beyond of which Italy was a part.

A History of a Reaction of the Mareko People Against the Italian Invasion and the Five Year Italian Rule-in South Central Ethiopia

The prime objective of this paper is to explore a history of reaction made by Mareko people against the Italian invasion and the five year occupation. The paper also uncovers the role played by Mareko and other integrated ethno-linguistic individual patriots who fight against Italian occupation and rule at the then Mareko woreda (district). At the eve of the Fascist Italian aggression Mareko people were lived under Mareko woreda (district) which was under the administrative division of Shawa tekely gezat (division of country). Butajira town was the administrative site of the then Mareko woreda. Like other nation, nationalities, and peoples of Ethiopia, fighting class from Mareko people marched in Maychew and other battles to defend their county from Italian aggression. Even though the final battle at Maychew was unsuccessful, they actively resist Italian rule. To speak frankly the then governor of Dobena Sub- district and his officers peacefully submitted and became a leading collaborator, but the majority of Mareko people resisted for the Italian rule. The resistance was mainly led by Warѐqѐ Mareyamѐ, spiritual leader of Mareko people in Mareko land, and qegnazmach Tuji Anjilo outside Mareko land. Subsequently the Italian Fascist officials established military camp at Koshe kebele the center of Dobena sub-district. This paper presents how and why the Italian divide- rule policy failed in the area under the study. Keywords: aggression, Mareko people, resistance, collaboration, Italian rule. DOI: 10.7176/HRL/53-01 Publication date: April 30 th 2021

Between ‘Coercive League’ and ‘Consultative League’: a reappraisal of debates surrounding the ‘Reform’ of the League of Nations

AbstractThis article addresses debates surrounding the reform of the League of Nations from the viewpoint of Britain and China. They focused on the pros and cons of collective security because the failure of the League to stop Japanese invasion of Manchuria and Italian invasion of Abyssinia threatened the collapse of the League. There were two contrasting visions in debates, the ‘Coercive League’ and the ‘Consultative League’. The ‘Coercive League’ was the course to reinforce collective security to prevent further aggression. Conversely, the ‘Consultative League’ argument was to weaken collective security and induce Germany, Italy, and Japan to cooperate with the League. Deliberations took place in both the Council, in which great powers exerted a strong presence, and the Assembly, in which small powers made their voices heard. Therefore, this article deals with Britain as an example of a great power and China as one of a small power.

The League of Nations, autonomy and collective security

Abstract This article tests the assumption that in institutional and legal design the League of Nations was incapable of providing collective security. The lens through which this issue is scrutinised is the concept of institutional legal autonomy, in other words the legal separation of the organisation from its member states. The thinking is not necessarily that the greater the autonomy the greater the potential of the organisation to fulfil its functions, but that the organisation already had sufficient autonomy in international relations to provide an effective form of ‘collective security’, a term that was not found in the Covenant but, by 1935, was being used to describe the response of the League to the Italian invasion of Abyssinia in 1935. This article tests the assumption that the League did not have sufficient autonomy in terms of collective judgment and power to deliver collective security.

The Lure of Ethiopia and the Saga of Colonel John Robinson, 1935–1937

This essay is centered on the Ethiopian resistance to the Italian invasion of 1935–1936. Among other impacts, this war greatly disturbed African-American activists. They perceived in this uneven contest an extension of their own struggle against white domination, both at home and abroad. Despite forbidding obstacles, John Charles Robinson—black aviation pioneer from deep Dixie—journeyed to Ethiopia. There he led its small air force in battle against Italian conquest. In fighting for an African nation, he also advanced the cause of civil rights in the United States. Woven into this essay are ideas and interpretations developed by W. E. B. Du Bois in his famous study—The Souls of Black Folk—helpful to framing and grasping the Robinson tale. Overall, the essay sits at the intersection of African-American history, aviation history, and the international politics/U.S. foreign relations of the mid-1930s.

A review of the Turco-Italian war of 1911–1912 and related letters of Enver Pasha

From the time of the 1877 Turco-Russian war till its disappearance from the stage of history in 1922, the Ottoman Empire was involved in decades of almost continuous war – in Europe, on the Russian front and in the Middle East. The conflict with Italy of 1911–1912 was an example of how powers in decline are forced into war in the face of peremptory demands from stronger neighbours. Italy's unprovoked attack on the Ottoman provinces of Libya in North Africa paved the way for the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913 and indirectly also hastened the First World War. A group of Ottoman Turkish military officers along with their Arab and Berber Muslim allies in Libya made a heroic defensive stand and kept the Italian naval invasion pinned to the coastal beach-heads of Libya.

Tracking the Spread of Sneaking Aliens by Integrating Crowdsourcing and Spatial Modeling: The Italian Invasion of Halyomorpha halys

Polyphagous phytophagous organisms that shelter in man-made objects have a higher chance of becoming invasive fast-spreading pests, going undetected during phytosanitary checks and travelling with any type of goods. However, if the same organisms are also a household nuisance, they could be used in crowdsourcing surveys aimed at their early detection and to track their spread in real time. By participating in these surveys, people can be educated on the destructive potential of invasive species and on sustainable management options. However, in order to obtain good-quality data, useful to plant protection stakeholders, a one-to-one approach with people is crucial. The case study is the Italian invasion of Halyomorpha halys, among the most dangerous global crop-threatening pests. A 4-year survey that combined active search and a crowdsourcing approach made the tracking of its spread and investigation of its spatiotemporal dynamics possible, showing the functionality of coordinated multiactor approach in data collection.

Reluctant Humanitarians: British Policy Toward Refugees in Kenya During the Italo-Ethiopian War, 1935–1940

ABSTRACTFollowing the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, several hundred Eritrean deserters from the Italian army and several thousand Ethiopian officials, soldiers, and civilians fled to Kenya. British officials on the border, in Nairobi, and in London found themselves deeply conflicted over how to deal with these refugees. Sheltering refugees was costly, and it antagonised the Italians whose friendship (or at least neutrality) the British hoped to win in Europe and in eastern Africa. But vocal critics in London watched for any signs of mistreatment or forced repatriation of the refugees. Government officials themselves expressed a revulsion at the possibility of turning away or repatriating refugees who feared for their lives. Because of this humanitarian sentiment, Kenya sheltered the refugees until the liberation of Ethiopia, much to the dismay of government officials.

MODA NA AUTARQUIA: POLÍTICAS DE MODA NA ITÁLIA FASCISTA NOS ANOS 1930

Na segunda metade dos anos 1930, o regime fascista introduziu a autarquia como forma de autonomia econômica da Itália frente às importações de matérias-primas. A autarquia foi lançada como instrumento para responder à crise gerada pelas sanções impostas ao país em 1935 pela Sociedade das Nações após a invasão italiana à Etiópia. O artigo analisa o papel que a moda teve no programa autárquico lançado pelo regime. Pela sua coação identitária e internacional, a moda permite examinar e colocar em confronto tanto a construção e promoção de uma nova imagem da nação, como as formas de desobediência explícita ou implícita às políticas autárquicas do regime fascista.

Linguistic Landscape as standing historical testimony of the struggle against colonization in Ethiopia

Ethiopia is Africa’s oldest independent country and its second largest in terms of population. Apart from a five-year occupation by Italy, which is considered as a war time, the country has never been colonized. The Linguistic Landscape (LL) of Addis Ababa, the capital city of Ethiopia and the seat of the African Union, prominently depicts that important history. Erected in the main squares of the city, the various monuments serve as standing testimonies of the struggle, victory and important figures pertaining to Italian fascist invasion of Ethiopia. Moreover, there are different institutions (schools, hospitals) and infrastructures (bridges, streets) officially named after significant historical moments. Visible in the central locations and squares of the city, monuments, statues, and the naming of streets, bridges, schools, and hospitals, keep the peoples’ memory about the struggle against the Italian invasion and the victories obtained. Symbols of the Lion of Judah, cross and national flags are also part of the public exhibit marking identities, ideologies and references to the country’s history. This study aims at showing how the LL serves as a mechanism to build the historical narrative of Ethiopia. It overviews how the LL in Addis Ababa via its monuments depicts the anti-colonial struggle and the victory over Fascist Italian forces. The monuments considered are: the Victory Monument, The Patriots Monument, The Abune Petros statute, and the Menelik II Statue. After presenting background aspects, this paper tackles Ethiopians’ memories of the Italian invasion as expressed in Addis Ababa’s LL and their identity construction and reconstruction. The last section discusses the findings and draws concluding remarks. Methodologically, digital Figures of the monuments were collected coupled with interview. Ethnographic approaches to the LL are used to analyze the selected memorial objects. As Creswell (2003) indicates ethnographic designs like qualitative research procedures, aims at describing, analyzing, and interpreting a culture-sharing group’s patterns of behavior, beliefs, and language. Semi-structured interviews were carried out in 2014 with a sample of 15 pedestrians, males and females, of different ages and educational categories who were standing in front of the monuments waiting for buses. The interviewers wanted to know what people think of the significance and relevance of location of the monuments in the public space. Most of the interviewees tended to support the views of the prevailing popular interpretations. They strongly relate the monuments with memories of brutality of Italian invaders on the one hand, and the strong resistance, patriotism and heroism of the Ethiopian people. The interviews agree that this unique victory needs to keep being celebrated and glorified as part of the history of Ethiopia.

In Front of the Distorting Mirror of the Vortex: the Reception of Vorticism in the British Political Press (1913-1916)

The Vorticist movement appeared in 1914, after a fight between the English avant-garde and Italian Futurism, just as England entered World War One, and when the country was facing an uneasy transition from an old and stable order to a new era of trouble reinforced by different strikes conducted by suffragettes, Unionists and workers. The arrival of Marinetti in London in November 1913 had already triggered some interest among political journalists who questioned the consequences of that “Italian invasion”, and the Vorticist movement, born on June 11th 1914, increased their worries by its alleged violence. However, during the war, the appreciation of the avant-garde by political journalists changed: artists became a mirror of the change within British society and Vorticists’ works became closely linked to the enlistment of the artists. The vision of these works by political journalists illustrates how political parties reacted to the war: they linked Vorticist abstract research to the unbearable decline of humanity and civilization.

Counter-currents: Mzabi independence, pan-Ottomanism and WWI in the Maghrib

This paper focuses on the impact of the First World War (WWI) and its aftermath on the political activism of the Mzabi community in the Algerian desert. Following the French annexation of the Mzab Valley in 1882 and the military draft imposed on Mzabis in 1912 and again in 1918, Mzabis, who are Amazighen (sing. Amazigh, also known as Berbers) and Ibadis (members of minority sect in Islam), felt more and more threatened by French policies towards the Mzab and its inhabitants. This paper shows how the events of WWI and the hope in a French defeat and an Ottoman victory provided Mzabis with the opportunity to link to trans-border anti-colonial movements, especially in Tripolitania and Tunisia, and to promote their case for Mzab’s independence from French Algeria. Those movements, tied to Istanbul, had emerged earlier during the Italian invasion of Libya in 1911 and were reinvigorated during WWI and the Ottoman efforts of mass mobilization. Mzabis were linked to resistance groups in Tripolitania and thus were able to easily integrate themselves during WWI into cross-border anti-colonial movements. They perceived themselves as part of a pro-Ottoman North African movement opposed to European colonial projects and not part of an Algeria they considered to be ‘French.’ In particular, given their strong connections to Tripolitanian activists who were also Ibadis and connected to Istanbul, they believed that they were better positioned to negotiate their independence from France than the Maliki (followers of the Maliki religious school of jurisprudence) majority of Algeria. Their activism during and shortly after WWI and struggle for their own independence as ‘Mzabis,’ distinguishing themselves from the rest of Maliki Algerians, highlight three important themes. The first is the need to create one uninterrupted narrative linking the Italian invasion of Tripolitania in 1911 to WWI in terms of shaping cross-border alliances and political strategies in the Maghrib towards the Allies. The second is the significance and continuous relevance of the Ottoman context for North African and Saharan communities in the definition of their political allegiances during WWI. Third are the alternative political imaginations Mzabi activism during WWI presents us. Rather than the usual perception of WWI as being the catalyst for nationalist stirrings in the region, the case of the Mzabis provides a counter-narrative to nationalist historiographies.

Humanitarian Imperialism: The politics of anti-slavery activism, 1880–1940 by Amalia Ribi Forclaz

Reviewed by: Humanitarian Imperialism: The politics of anti-slavery activism, 1880–1940 by Amalia Ribi Forclaz Gelien Matthews Humanitarian Imperialism: The politics of anti-slavery activism, 1880–1940 By Amalia Ribi Forclaz. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. The most remarkable feature of Amalia Ribi Forclaz’s Humanitarian Imperialism is that on a multiplicity of levels it has departed from mainstream academic interrogations of the history of humanitarian movements. This scholarly feat is made possible largely through the examination of humanitarianism against the backdrop of imperialism. The author has succeeded in merging two themes that are usually antithetical and she has done so by being neither romantic nor cynical. It should be noted that there is a new and growing body of work integrating humanitarianism alongside imperialism to which Forclaz’ work belongs. Chief among these is Jean Bricmont’s 2007 publications on the themes. Bricmont, however, lacks the control of perspective that is the hallmark of Forclaz’s study. He rejects and denounces outright the Cold War politics of entities like the Kremlin and Beijing claiming that it was an attempt to exert brutal sway over the entire world.1 Forclaz’s study is not tainted by this caustic, judgmental tone even in her examination of the unpopular Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 (139). The balanced and almost neutral perspective through which she analyses her subject is justified in her comment that both humanitarianism and imperialism wore different faces at different times and, therefore, cannot be totally glorified or totally condemned (8–9). Forclaz’ primary objective in using the imperialistic canvas is not to dismiss European humanitarianism as hypocritical pontification but to internationalize a topic which other historians have tended to limit to the national level. Reginald Coupland (1933) and Frank Klingberg (1968), for example, have conducted research on the British humanitarian movement while much of the Narrative of Frederick Douglass (1845) attacked slavery in the southern USA.2 Forclaz’s study is far more ambitious in the sense that it encompasses anti-slavery in Britain, France, Italy, Switzerland, Holland, Belgium, Spain and Germany (22). Forclaz has also shifted the historiography by making Africa (50) and not the Americas the center stage of her anti-slavery target. By the manner in which and the extent to which Forclaz crossed geographical and national boundaries in her study, she has produced a world history of humanitarianism. It is ironic, nevertheless, that one of the major conclusions of the text is that the European attempt to forge international cooperation in eradicating African slavery virtually failed, as manifested particularly by Italy’s antagonistic relationship with the League of Nations and its rejection of the 1924 Temporary Slavery Commission (130). The European approach to the study of humanitarianism that Forclaz selects enables the author to employ a comparative analytic methodology. She notes, for instance, that while British anti-slavery was largely Protestant in nature, French and the Italian anti-slavery were steeped in Roman Catholicism (15, 18). On the other hand, Forclaz concedes that all three to varying degrees were driven by selfish political, national and imperialistic objectives while simultaneously sponsoring various humanitarian initiatives in their African spheres of influence (165). The chronological markers of Forclaz’s work is also relatively new. While most other historical studies on the subject focus on the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the author sets her chronological parameters in and around World War I and World War II: 1880 to 1940. By so doing, she encounters a range of humanitarian causes beyond the slavery question such as emasculation, the trade in eunuchs and cannibalism (146). The time frame of Forclaz’s study also permits the reader to gaze into the humanitarian methods and objectives which were unique to the later period and yet, in some ways, similar to the previous century. With the new technologies of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, humanitarian propaganda tools were no longer limited to speeches, petitions and publications. They were sharpened by the lantern lectures of such British humanitarians as Lady Kathleen Simon, European and African tours, cinema, pageantry and radio programmes (78). In this regard, Forclaz traces the continuities and changes in Europe’s humanitarian movements and concludes that between...