ABSTRACT
It was by the early 1880s that the buzzing of activity of religious and not so religious missionaries, the attention of the publishing world, the expeditions of geographical societies, the curiosity of a few businessmen, the adventuring of impetuous nobodies or unemployed aristocrats – some of whom had already paid for their Mal d’Africa with their lives – had procured for Italy in Africa the tiny toehold of Assab. But these had more importantly opened up a vista on that continent where Italians were playing a part. The step to moving in with ships, soldiers, governors and administrators was now relatively small but its taking required other elements not least winning the argument against the idea that the discrete Italian nation, recently liberated from its foreign oppressors, should not become the latter for others, even if they were ‘only’ Africans.
