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Imperial Thinking and Colonial Combat in the Early Twentieth-Century Italian Army

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 October 2021

Vanda Wilcox Open the ORCID record for Vanda Wilcox [Opens in a new window]
Vanda Wilcox*
Affiliation:
Department of History and the Humanities, John Cabot University, Rome, Italy
*
Email: vwilcox@johncabot.edu
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Abstract

Although designed primarily as a national institution, between the 1880s and the First World War the Italian army's military operations were all in the colonial sphere. By 1914, Italy claimed an extensive empire in East and North Africa. How far did imperialism shape Italian military culture and institutions? I identify ‘imperial thinking’ across nine areas of army activity. Italian colonialism relied on a pervasive narrative of Italian benevolence – italiani brava gente – with Italian conduct in war or as imperial rulers portrayed as inherently mild. This was accompanied by a set of anxieties we might term Adwa syndrome: after Italy's defeat by Ethiopia at Adwa in 1896, the Italian army was acutely afraid of possible violent uprisings by the local people. Many army officers expected betrayal and brutality from their colonial enemies or subjects, and acted accordingly. This outlook shaped the army's conduct both in the colonies and when dealing with European adversaries in the First World War. While the army of late Liberal Italy was structurally and doctrinally a national army, it was increasingly imperialist in mindset and outlook, which directly affected its conduct on and off the battlefield.

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The Historical Journal , Volume 65 , Issue 5 , December 2022 , pp. 1333 - 1353
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Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

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2 On Italy's military reputation, see Lucy Riall, ‘Men at war: masculinity and military ideals in the Risorgimento’, in Silvana Patriarca and Lucy Riall, eds., The Risorgimento revisited: nationalism and culture in nineteenth-century Italy (London, 2012), pp. 152–70.

3 Labanca, ‘Discorsi coloniali’, p. 505.

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5 The classic accounts are Angelo Del Boca, Gli italiani in Africa Orientale (4 vols., Milan, 1986); Angelo Del Boca, Gli italiani in Libia (2 vols., Rome, 1986); Nicola Labanca, Oltremare. Storia dell'espansione coloniale italiana (Bologna, 2002). Important recent contributions include Bruce Vandervort, To the fourth shore: Italy's war for Libya, 1911–1912 (Rome, 2012); Federica Saini Fasanotti, Libia 1922–1931. Le operazioni militari italiane (Rome, 2012).

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8 As amply illustrated in John Gooch, ‘Re-conquest and suppression: Fascist Italy's pacification of Libya and Ethiopia, 1922–39’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 28 (2005), pp. 1005–32.

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27 Vanda Wilcox, The Italian empire and the Great War (Oxford, 2021), ch. 7.

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38 Arguably this failing was never fully overcome, despite efforts by Guglielmo Nasi in the late 1920s and 1930s to create an Italian colonial doctrine. See Goglia, Luigi, ‘Popolazioni, eserciti africani e truppe indigene nella dottrina italiana della guerra coloniale’, Mondo Contemporaneo, 2 (2006), pp. 5–54Google Scholar.

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61 Some commentators even lamented the insufficient vigour of Italian repression: ibid., pp. 144–7.

62 Cited in Bernini, ‘Documenti sulla repressione’, p. 194.

63 Cited in Scardigli, ‘Esercito italiano e guerra di Libia’, p. 99.

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