Chapter 6: Colonialism and Decolonization Inhistory Textbooks Foritalian Uppersecondary School

Italy was the latecomer in the history of European colonialism. Its adventure was concentrated in Africa from the late 19th century until the Second World War and can be divided into three main phases. The first one took place in the Horn of Africa, and began in 1882 when the Italian government bought the Bay of Assab from the Italian shipping company Rubattino, soon to occupy in the port of Massawa (Massaua) 1885, north along the Eritrean coast. From there Italy made many attempts to penetrate into Ethiopia, stopping after the heavy defeat in the battle of Adwa (Adua) in 1896. Meanwhile Italy created, through agreements with local rulers, a zone of influence in Somalia: in 1889 it established the protectorate on the sultanates of Hobyo(Obbia) and Majeerteen (Migiurtinia), and negotiated the rent of the ports of the Banaadir (Benadir) with the sultan of Zanzibar. The second phase started with the occupation of Libya in 1911–1912 through a war against the Ottoman Empire. The peace treaty did not bring about the pacification of the new colony. Guerilla warfare continued strenuously, and during the First World War Italian control was reduced to Tripoli and a few places on the coast. In 1921 military campaigns were planned to gain control of the whole of Libya, and these were immediately carried out by Mussolini when he became Prime Minister, with very hard measures like the destruction of livestock, reprisals, and mass deportations of civilians. Resistance stopped only after the execution of its leader Omar al-Mukhtar in 1931. The third phase was characterized by the Second Italo-Ethiopian War in 1935–1936 (known in Italy as Guerra d’Etiopia). During the campaign, the Italian army used chemical weapons against troops and civilians extensively, despite the fact that Italy had signed the Geneva Protocol of 1925 prohibiting them. After the end of the war and the departure of Negus Haile Selassie, resistance continued, unleashing brutal reprisals, among them the massacre in 1937 in the monastery of Debra Libanos, after an assassination attempt on the Italian governor, Rodolfo Graziani. The Second World War brought about the end of Italian colonialism. With the peace treaty, all Italian colonies became independent, with only Somalia under Italian trusteeship administration until July 1, 1960. Unlike other colonial powers, therefore, Italy did not experience the troubles of decolonization.