ABSTRACT

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Italy was lagging behind its European competitors in the race to colonisation. In 1922 Italy seized the territories of Libya, Eritrea and Somalia. After 1925 Italian expansionism started to focus on particular territories in East Africa. The very first Italian occupation of Ethiopia goes back to 1896. Francesco Crispi’s early colonial attempt was ultimately frustrated after his defeat in the Battle of Adwa, fought in March 1896. The superior armament and organisation of the Italians was counterbalanced by impressive Ethiopian tactics, which took the 18,000-strong Italian army by surprise. In the 1930s Benito Mussolini longed for retaliation for what he saw as a humiliation (Salvatorelli and Mira, 1964: 242–312). In late 1934 a boundary incident between Italian Somalia and Ethiopia, in the luxuriant region of Ual-Ual, gave Mussolini the opportunity to denounce alleged aggression on the part of Abyssinia (Labanca, 2005: 229–34). On 3 October 1935 Mussolini sent 140,000 Italian soldiers to invade Ethiopia (Longo, 2005: 60). Allegedly, the purpose of the invasion was to bring ‘the benefits of Christian modern civilisation’ to Ethiopia (Palla, 1993: 102). This invasion was also the climax of ‘the fascist myth of the national regeneration’ (Ben-Ghiat, 2001: 123). The army, in expiation for the ‘shameful Italian defeat’ of 1896, unleashed a singularly violent war against the Ethiopians, whose army was lacking in any modern equipment (Brendon, 2000: 307).