Italian Colonialism in Africa as a Connected System: Institutions, Men and Colonial Troops

ABSTRACT

In the last two decades studies on Italian colonialism have shown remarkable vitality and many positive results. But in spite of this undoubted progress there still remain some limitations of approach that prevent any real outstripping of the interpretive schemes hitherto used. The research being conducted largely follows the nation state paradigm: the Italian colonies are viewed and studied as essentially independent entities, devoid of relations with the surrounding territories and, above all, between each of these and the others.

This article offers an interpretive scheme that stresses the intimate relationship among the Italian colonial possessions in Africa, their status as a system, by moving away from a representation that has always favoured a rigorously individualised treatment of Italy’s colonies. It emphasises three main levels of interconnection: administrative structures, officials and colonial troops. While the first two were also common to other colonial entities, the extreme recourse to the mobility of colonial troops was a distinctive feature of the Italian version and the main factor of interconnection among Italy’s territories.

Our analysis also enables us to better understand the place violence held in Italian colonialism. Along with analyzing the deportations, massacres and use of gas, we must consider the uninterrupted cycle of campaigns that from 1911 to 1941 Italy inflicted on its colonies. For the most part, wars were delegated to colonial troops who for thirty years, moving from one colony to another, made war and violence a fundamental aspect of the Italian colonial experience.

KEYWORDS:

• Italian colonialism
• Africa
• Horn of Africa
• Libya
• Eritrea
• Ethiopia
• Somalia
• colonial troops
• colonial officials
• military history

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Massimo Zaccaria http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2144-1457

Notes

1 Palumbo, A Place in the Sun; Andall and Duncan, Italian Colonialism; Andall and Duncan, National Belongings; Lombardi-Diop and Romeo, Postcolonial Italy.

2 MacKenzie, “The British Empire,” 100–101. For German exceptionalism see Conrad, “Rethinking German Colonialism,” 543–66.

3 The ‘Grande proletaria’ was the title and the first sentence of a speech given by Giovanni Pascoli at Barga on November 16, 1911.

4 Del Boca, “The Myths,” 17–36.

5 For the Nordic countries, see Loftsdóttir and Lars, Whiteness. On Switzerland see: Purtschert et al., “Switzerland,” 286–302.

6 Labanca, “Perché ritorna la ‘brava gente’,” 69–105.

7 Andall and Derek, Italian Colonialism, Legacy and Memory, 17.

8 Doumanis, Myth and Memory; Uros “Italian Liberal Imperialism,” 1068–75.

9 Mondaini, Manuale, 1924–27; Gaibi, Manuale di storia; Ciasca, Storia coloniale.

10 Battaglia, La prima guerra.

11 Del Boca, Gli italiani in Africa Orientale; see also Gli italiani in Libia.

12 Labanca, Oltremare. Recently this approach has also been adopted by Calchi Novati, L’Africa d’Italia.

13 Ruini, L’Islam.

14 Monzali, “Il ‘partito coloniale’.”

15 Lydon, “Writing Trans-Saharan History,” 295.

16 Ben-Ghiat and Fuller, Italian Colonialism.

17 See for example the dispute raised by the volume: Guerriero, Ascari d’Eritrea, and Silvana Palma’s criticism of the exhibition organised on Italian colonial troops by Guerriero, “Il ritorno di miti,” 57–78.

18 Negash, Italian Colonialism in Eritrea, 175.

19 Labanca, In marcia verso Adua; Labanca, La Guerra italiana.

20 Zaccaria, “Colonial Troops,” 107–111.

21 I am thinking in particular of the contribution by Lester, Colonial Lives, 1–16; Lester, “Place and Space,” 300–14.

22 Cooper and Stoler, Tensions of Empire.

23 For the minimal impact thesis see: Porter, The Absent-Minded.

24 According to Antoinette Burton the British Empire was a: ‘fundamental and constitutive part of English culture and National identity at home’. Burton, After the Imperial Turn, 2–3.

25 See for example: Bertella Farnetti and Dau Novelli, Colonialism and National Identity.

26 Tony Ballantyne’s idea of ‘webs of empire’ was launched in Orientalism and Race.

27 ‘the empire not in terms of a spoked wheel with London as the “hub”, where the various spokes (whether flows of finance, lines of communication, or the movement of people and objects) from the periphery meet, but rather in terms of a complex web consisting of horizontal filaments that run among various colonies in addition to “vertical” connections between the metropole and individual colonies’. Ballantyne, “Rereading the Archive,” 112–3; see also: Potter and Saha, “Global History.”

28 L’Istituto agronomico coloniale per l’Oltremare, 13–37.

29 Bruner, Leopoldo Franchetti.

30 Aquarone, Dopo Adua.

31 Monina, Il consenso coloniale.

32 The Ministry of the Colonies was set up on 20 November 1912 with Regio decreto n. 1205. For a factual reconstruction of the administrative history of colonial Italy see: Marinucci, Il governo dei territori oltremare.

33 Pellegrini and Bertinelli, Per la storia, 68.

34 Labanca, “L’amministrazione coloniale,” 361–72.

35 On. Gray, in Atti Parlamentari, Legislatura XXVI, 1st session, discussions, 2nd round on June 20, 1922, 6504 and then the intervention on June 22nd by On. Colonna di Cesarò, on the same theme, cfr. Atti Parlamentari, Legislatura XXVI, 1st session, discussion, 2nd round on June 22, 1922, 6658.

36 Vanni, Il diario di Gaspare Colosimo; Colosimo, Opera tratta dagli scritti di Gaspare Colosimo.

37 Triaud, “L’islam au sud du Sahara,” 907–50.

38 Atti Parlamentari, Legislatura XXVI, 1st session, discussion, 2nd round June 20, 1922, 6497.

39 Atti Parlamentari, Legislatura XXVI, 1st session, discussion 2nd round on June 20, 1922, 6497.

40 Atti Parlamentari, Legislatura XXVI, 1st session, discussion, 2nd round on June 22, 1922, 6658.

41 Salvago Raggi’s diplomatic experience included a posting in Istanbul (1892), three detachments in Egypt (1895, 1902–1906, 1916), and the lead of the Italian Legation in China (1897–1900). From 1907 to 1915 he was Governor of Eritrea, where his skills and above all his knowledge of the delicate regional balance of power emerged.

42 Cerrina Feroni was a naval officer who had built his career in the Red Sea and Benadir, where he was first posted in 1888–1889. In 1906, he was Regent of the Benadir government and five years later he led the operations in the Red Sea against the Turkish navy. After having been entrusted with the government of Eritrea, Cerrina Feroni was given the leadership of Somalia (1916–1919).

43 Gasparini boasted a brilliant past in Mogadishu, where he arrived in the retinue of Senator Giacomo Martino in 1910, later becoming also the right-hand man of Cerrina Feroni.

44 Riccardo Astuto di Lucchese held his first position in Libya (1913–1920) to be later transferred to Somalia at the head of the Direzione degli Affari Civili e della Colonizzazione. In 1922 he returned to Tripolitania (as regional commissioner of the western border, with headquarters in Zuara) and then in 1923 he went to Cyrenaica. From 1924 to 1930 he was called back to Italy as General Director of Political Affairs and was later nominated Governor of Eritrea (1930–35).

45 After Libya, the First World War and Albania, De Bono was nominated Governor of Tripolitania from 1925 to 1928 and then Vice-Secretary of the Colonies (1929–1935). He ended his career in Eritrea as the High Commissioner for Oriental Africa and as a leader in the operations to conquer Ethiopia (1935).

46 Labanca, In marcia verso, 99–141; Labanca, La Guerra italiana, 32–34.

47 From 1915 to 1918 Badoglio fought in the First World War, where he demonstrated great command skills, even though he was partially blamed for the defeat in Caporetto. In 1919 he was nominated Chief of Staff and then in 1926, Maresciallo d’Italia (Marshal).

48 Labanca, La Guerra italiana, 143–4, 180–1.

49 Dominioni, Lo sfascio dell’impero.

50 Mezzetti gathered the memoirs of his years in Libya in a book, a fairly rare event, seeing as not many officers committed to paper their counter-insurgency experience: Mezzetti, La guerra in Libia. See also Goglia, “Popolazioni, eserciti africani”. We could add many other names to this generation of colonial officers: Guglielmo Nasi, Luigi Frusci, Pietro Pintor and Orlando Lorenzini, to name just a few.

51 Metcalf, Imperial Connections, 185–7.

52 Pasquier, “L’influence de l’expérience,” 263–84; Robinson, “France as a Muslim Power,” 123.

53 Pasquier, “L’influence de l’expérience,” 268.

54 Joly, Guerres d’Afrique, 88–90, 94.

55 Frémeaux, Les bureaux.

56 Triaud, “L’islam au sud du Sahara,” 907–50.

57 Berhe, Notabili libici, 167.

58 Berhe, Notabili libici, 184.

59 Berhe, Notabili libici, 190.

60 Bruner, “At Least So Long.”

61 Ministero delle Colonie, Libia, 123.

62 Palieri, Note per la storia.

63 Summary of the forces present in the various colonies on the 1 October 1925, Archivio Centrale dello Stato (ACS), Ministero Africa Italiana (MAI), Direzione Generale Affari Politici, Archivio Segreto, 1, ‘1.2.1. Riepilogo della forza presente’.

64 Arielli, “Colonial Soldiers,” 55–56.

65 Del Boca, Gli italiani in Africa Orientale, vol. 1, 57.

66 Ciampi, “La popolazione dell’Eritrea,” 495–8.

67 Parsons, The African Rank-and-File, 20–21.

68 Antonio Dusnasi, Relazione annuale. Anno 1920, Asmara, 1 March 1920, cit. in Volterra, Sudditi coloniali, 43–44.

69 RCTC to Governo della Colonia, Asmara June 17, 1920, no. 286, ASMAE, Archivio Eritrea (AE) 839. For Italian trade agencies in Ethiopia see: ‘Agenzie commerciali, compagnie di navigazione e näggadras. La definizione dello spazio coloniale nell’Eritrea italiana’, in Isabella Rosoni and Uoldelul Chelati Dirar (ed.), Votare con i piedi, 273–312.

70 RCTC, circular no. 5638, Asmara on October 12, 1920, ASMAE, AE 839.

71 Hailu, The Conscript, 26.

72 Cona, “L’Eritrea nei suoi principali aspetti,” 28.

73 De Martino a S. Sonnino, Asmara March 26, 1917, no. 1329, in the Ministry of the Colonies. Direzione Generale degli Affari Politici, Arabia, vol. II: 1916 and January–April 1917, Roma, Tipografia del Ministero degli Affari Esteri, 1919, 411–3.

74 Salvago Raggi to Martini, Asmara 1915, report no. 23512, ASMAE, ASMAI, 34/3, f. 69. In Bellucci and Zaccaria, “Wage Labor,” 97.

75 Arielli, “Colonial Soldiers,” 58–59.

76 Del Boca, La guerra d’Etiopia, 92–93. In this case too we can find figures referring to the number of men used in the field, Catellani and Stella talk of 20543 nationals and 28328 colonial troops, cfr. Catellani and Stella, Soldati d’Africa, 44.

77 Volterra, Sudditi Coloniali, 85.

78 Zaccaria, Anch’io per la tua bandiera, 47, 132.

79 Guglielmo Nasi (1879–1971) was in Libya for his first stint from 1912 to 1913. He returned in 1928, as Chief of Staff of the colonial troops and then as Vice-Governor of Cyrenaica from 1934 to 1935. In 1936 he was at the head of the Libyan Division and when he terminated his operations he was nominated Governor of Harar from 1936 to 1939 and then of Scioa (1939–1940). His name was on the Ethiopian government’s list of war criminals.

80 Gualzetti, Battaglione Leopardo, 149. A recent study of the Divisione Libia is the diary of Carmelo Sirianni, edited by Olindo De Napoli: Sirianni, VI Battaglione.

81 Del Boca, “La Divisione Libia,” 231–6; Arielli, “Colonial Soldiers,” 62–66.

82 Labanca, La guerra d’Etiopia, 187.

83 Saini Fasanotti, Etiopia 1936–1940. This study is one of the most recent and informed contributions on ‘colonial police operations.’ The wealth of documentation used by the author does not protect the volume from certain unacceptable conclusions, such as the attribution of violence to the colonial troops, who, in any case, were always commanded by Italian personnel.

84 Volterra, Sudditi Coloniali, 86, 90.

85 Howe, “British World, Settler Worlds,” 699.