Qualla: Italian Empire

Italian Empire: Introduction

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nick.mon, CC BY-SA 4.0. The empire began with a navigation company buying a bay. In 1869, as the Suez Canal was opening and changing global trade forever, the Rubattino Shipping Company purchased Assab Bay on the southern Red Sea coast from local Danakil chiefs - a coaling station for Italian steamers bound for India. Thirteen years later, the Italian government took it over. By 1941, the same Italian state claimed Libya, Eritrea, Somalia, Ethiopia, the Dodecanese Islands, Albania, and a concession in Tianjin. By 1960, all of it was gone. Italy's colonial project lasted 78 years, took hundreds of thousands of African lives, and ended with the country's soldiers expelled from every overseas holding they had ever claimed.

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Image: Nick.mon | CC BY-SA 4.0

Italian Empire: Latecomer to the Scramble

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Photograph by API, Public domain. Italy had only become a unified country in 1861. By the time it tried to compete for overseas colonies, Britain, France, Belgium, and Germany had already staked out most of Africa. The 'Slap of Tunis' in 1881 - when France imposed a protectorate on Tunisia despite a significant I...

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Image: Photograph by API | Public domain

Italian Empire: Adwa, and the Humiliation That Lasted Forty Years

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hvalencia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Italy's first major confrontation with the Ethiopian Empire ended in one of the great military disasters of the 19th century. Prime Minister Francesco Crispi, believing he could make Ethiopia an Italian protectorate, pushed troops across the border in 1895. The Treaty of Wuchale,...

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Image: Hvalencia | CC BY-SA 4.0

Italian Empire: The View from the Other Side

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. Tell the colonial story honestly and the African voices cannot be missing. In Libya, Italian rule from 1911 onward included mass displacement, concentration camps in Cyrenaica that killed tens of thousands of civilians, and the execution of resistance leader Omar Mukhtar in 1931....

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Italian Empire: Italian East Africa, 1936-1941

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rodolfo Graziani (1882-1955), Public domain. In May 1936, Mussolini proclaimed the Italian Empire and merged newly conquered Ethiopia with existing colonies of Eritrea and Italian Somaliland into Africa Orientale Italiana - Italian East Africa. The goal was 'demographic colonization': by 1939, some 165,000 Italian settlers ...

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Image: Rodolfo Graziani (1882-1955) | Public domain

Italian Empire: The Empire Unravels

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit AtilimGunesBaydin, Public domain. World War II destroyed it in five years. The East African Campaign of 1940-41 saw British, Indian, African, and Free French forces attack Italian East Africa from every direction. On 5 May 1941 - exactly five years after Mussolini's proclamation of empire - Emperor Haile Selassie...

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Image: AtilimGunesBaydin | Public domain