Italian imperialism under fascism

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Second World War
(the orange line delimits "Metropolitan Italy", the green line the borders of the enlarged "Italian Empire")

invasion of Greece (1940–41) and the invasion of Yugoslavia (1941) were all undertaken in part to add to Italy's national space. According to historian Patrick Bernhard, Fascist Italian imperialism under Benito Mussolini, particularly in Africa, served as a model for the much more famous expansionism of Nazi Germany in Eastern Europe.[1][2][3]

History

After his appointment as Governor of the

Fourth Shore
or "Quarta Sponda" in Italian).

De Vecchi's dream was an Imperial Italy that included not only all the European territories wanted by the Italian irredentists (Nice, Savoy, Ticino, Dalmatia, Corfu, Malta and Corsica) and populated by Italian communities for many centuries, but even the north African territories (Libya and Tunisia), where Italian emigrants had created "colonies" in the late nineteenth century.

After 1936 and during

Zante, Ithaca, etc.) and the fascist regime soon promoted a process of forced Italianization of these Greek islands.[5]

Italy annexed the coastal provinces of its colony of Libya in 1938 and made them national provinces of Italy that were to be Italianized.

In preparation for war with France in 1940, the Fascist regime intended to gain Corsica, Nice, Savoy, and the colonies of Tunisia and Djibouti from France.

The opinions of De Vecchi were partially accepted[8] by Mussolini in the 1940s, when Italy entered World War II, but found opposition (and scepticism) in the King of Italy, Victor Emmanuel III.

In 1942, with the Italian occupation of Corsica and Tunisia, the territories of the "Imperial Italy" dreamed of by the fascist De Vecchi were fully in Italian hands, with the exception of Malta, but the project was not politically implemented because the war was turning against the Axis powers.[9]

The Dodecanese

De Vecchi affected the first step towards an Italia Imperiale (or Grande Italia) when in 1936, as Italian Governor of the Dodecanese islands, he imposed official use of the

Kingdom of Italy annex the Dodecanese and Ionian islands, with the island of Chios, which had once belonged to the Republic of Genoa
. Italy had taken advantage of the weakness of the Ottoman Empire to annex the islands which were in the hands of the Turks.

The Fourth Shore

Another fascist leader, Italo Balbo, promoted actively the development of Italian communities in coastal Libya, after the country was pacified from an Arab guerrilla war. Balbo called Tripolitania and Cyrenaica the Quarta Sponda (Fourth Shore) of Italy in reference to the other three shores (the western, the Adriatic and the southern) of the Italian peninsula.

One of the initial Italian objectives in Libya, indeed, had been the relief of overpopulation and unemployment in Italy through emigration to the undeveloped colony. With security established, systematic "demographic colonization" was encouraged by King Victor Emmanuel III's government. A project initiated by Libya's governor, Italo Balbo, brought the first 20,000 settlers — the "Ventimila" - to Libya in a single convoy in October 1938. More settlers followed in 1939, and by 1940 there were approximately 110,000 Italians in Libya, constituting about 12 percent of the total population.[11]

Plans envisioned an Italian colony of 500,000 settlers by the 1960s: so, the Italians would be 2/3 of the population in coastal Libya by then. Libya's best land was allocated to the settlers to be brought under productive cultivation, primarily in olive groves. Settlement was directed by a state corporation, the "Libyan Colonization Society", which undertook land reclamation and the building of model villages and offered a grubstake and credit facilities to the settlers it had sponsored.

In November 1942, Tunisia was also included in the "Quarta Sponda" (with nearly 100,000

Tunisian Italians), but a few months later it was occupied by the Allies
.

The Western Balkans

Greater Italia
in 1942 occupied areas of France, former Yugoslavia and Greece (in green). The map also shows the German Reich (red) and its occupied territories, with "Reichskommissariats" (brown)

In spring 1941, Mussolini - with the help of the

German Army - finally defeated Greece and conquered coastal Yugoslavia
.

General Vittorio Ambrosio, the commander of the Italian Army during the conquest of Yugoslav Dalmatia, created a military line of occupation from Ljubljana to northern Montenegro that successively was to be considered as the future border of the "Imperial Italy" in the North-Western Balkans.[12] Within the borders to the south were included Fascist Montenegro, Greater Albania and Epirus.

De Vecchi promoted the inclusion of

Lesvos and Chios (Once controlled by the Republic of Genoa
).

Additional proposals

The Imperial Italy's ambitions never achieved

In the 1940s, De Vecchi contemplated an "Imperial Italy" stretching from Europe to North Africa, made of the "Imperial Italy" (with an enlarged Italian Empire in eastern Africa, from the Egyptian shores on the Mediterranean to Somalia).

He dreamt of a powerful Italy enlarged:

In a hopeful peace negotiation following an Axis victory, Mussolini had planned to acquire for his Imperial Italy the full island of Crete (that was mostly German occupied) and the surrounding southern Greek islands, connecting the Italian Dodecanese possessions to the already Italian Ionian islands.[13][page needed]

South of the Fourth Shore, some fascist leaders dreamt of an Italian Empire that, starting in the Fezzan, would include Egypt, Sudan and reach Italian East Africa.[14]

The Allied victory in the Second World War ended these projects and terminated all fascist ambitions for the empire.

Finally, in 1947 the

Treaty of Peace with Italy. There were discussions to maintain Tripolitania (a province of Italian Libya
) as the last Italian colony, but they were not successful.

In November 1949, the former

United Nations Trust Territory under Italian administration for a period of 10 years. On 1 July 1960, the Trust Territory of Somalia merged with British Somaliland to form the independent Somali Republic
.

See also

Notes

  1. S2CID 159508872
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  2. .
  3. .
  4. ^ Baioni, Massimo. Risorgimento in camicia nera. p. 47
  5. ^ Del Boca, A. Le guerre coloniali del fascismo. p. 71; Galeotti, Carlo. Credere obbedire combattere - I catechismi fascisti. p. 72
  6. ^ Owen Chadwick. Britain and the Vatican during the Second World War. 3rd edition (paperback). Cambridge University Press, 1988. p. 104.
  7. ^ MacGregor Knox. Mussolini Unleashed, 1939-1941: Politics and Strategy in fascist Italy's Last War. 1999 Edition. Cambridge, England, UK; New York, New York, USA; Oakleigh, Melbourne, Australia: Cambridge University Press, 1999. p. 138.
  8. ^ Baioni, Massimo. Risorgimento in camicia nera. p. 73
  9. ^ Blitzer, Wolf. Century of War. p. 125
  10. ^ [1]. Italian rule in the Dodecanese: 1912-1943
  11. ^ Chapin Metz, Helen. Libya: A Country Study. Chapter XIX
  12. ^ Rosselli, Alberto. Storie Segrete. Operazioni sconosciute o dimenticate della seconda guerra mondiale p. 36
  13. ^ Davide Rodogno. Fascism European Empire.
  14. ^ Rosselli, Alberto. Storie Segrete. Operazioni sconosciute o dimenticate della seconda guerra mondiale p. 49

References