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For the pre-Fascist colonial empire, see Italian Empire. For the Fascist concept of "living space", see Spazio vitale.
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foreign policy of Fascist Italy. Among the regime's goals were the acquisition
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6 Notes
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History
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After his appointment as Governor of the Dodecanese in 1936, the fascist leader Cesare Maria De Vecchi started to promote
within Benito Mussolini's National Fascist Party an idea [1] of a new "Imperial Italy" (Italian: Italia imperiale), one that, like the
Languages
Roman Empire, went beyond Europe and included northern Africa (the Fourth Shore or "Quarta Sponda" in Italian).
Catal
De Vecchi's dream was an Imperial Italy that included not only all the European territories wanted by the Italian irredentists (Nice,
Dansk
Savoy, Ticino, Dalmatia, Corfu, Malta and Corsica) and populated by Italian communities for many centuries, but even the north
Espaol
African territories (Libya and Tunisia), where Italian emigrants had created "colonies" in the late nineteenth century.
Esperanto
Euskara
After 1936 and during World War II, the Greek Dodecanese islands were also included in the project (with the Ionian islands of
Zante, Ithaca, etc.) and the fascist regime soon promoted a process of forced Italianization of these Greek islands.[2]
Franais
Bahasa Indonesia
Italy annexed the coastal provinces of its colony of Libya in 1938 and made them national provinces of Italy that were to be
Italianized.
In preparation for war with France in 1940, the Fascist regime intended to gain Corsica, Nice, Savoy, and the colonies of Tunisia
Lietuvi
Magyar
and Djibouti from France.[3] Foreign Minister Count Ciano on 10 June 1940 issued support for the partition of Switzerland
between Germany and Italy, with Italy annexing Ticino, Grisons, and Valais.[4]
Portugus
/ srpski
Srpskohrvatski /
Suomi
Svenska
The opinions of De Vecchi were partially accepted[5] by Mussolini in the 1940s, when Italy entered World War II, but found
opposition (and scepticism) in the King of Italy, Victor Emmanuel III.
In 1942, with the Italian occupation of Corsica and Tunisia, the territories of the "Imperial Italy" dreamed of by the fascist De
Vecchi were fully in Italian hands, with the exception of Malta, but the project was not politically implemented because the war
was turning against the Axis powers.[6]
Edit links
[ edit ]
De Vecchi effected the first step towards an Italia Imperiale (or Grande Italia) when in 1936, as Italian Governor of the
Dodecanese islands, he imposed official use of the Italian language and created a colony of 7,000 Italians in Rhodes and
surrounding islands.[7] In 1940 he was appointed to the Grand Council of Fascism where later, during the Italian occupation of
Greece, he proposed that the Kingdom of Italy annex the Dodecanese and Ionian islands, with the island of Chios, which had
once belonged to the Republic of Genoa.
[ edit ]
Another fascist leader, Italo Balbo, promoted actively the development of Italian communities in coastal Libya, after the country
was pacified from an Arab guerrilla war. Balbo called Tripolitania and Cyrenaica the Quarta Sponda (Fourth Shore) of Italy in
reference to the other three shores (the western, the Adriatic and the southern) of the Italian peninsula.
One of the initial Italian objectives in Libya, indeed, had been the relief of overpopulation and unemployment in Italy through
emigration to the undeveloped colony. With security established, systematic "demographic colonization" was encouraged by King
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_imperialism_under_Fascism[31/01/2016 18:43:22]
Go
Victor Emmanuel III's government. A project initiated by Libya's governor, Italo Balbo, brought the first 20,000 settlers the
"Ventimila" - to Libya in a single convoy in October 1938. More settlers followed in 1939, and by 1940 there were approximately
110,000 Italians in Libya, constituting about 12 percent of the total population.[8]
Plans envisioned an Italian colony of 500,000 settlers by the 1960s: so, the Italians would be 2/3 of the population in coastal Libya
by then. Libya's best land was allocated to the settlers to be brought under productive cultivation, primarily in olive groves.
Settlement was directed by a state corporation, the "Libyan Colonization Society", which undertook land reclamation and the
building of model villages and offered a grubstake and credit facilities to the settlers it had sponsored.
In November 1942, Tunisia was also included in the "Quarta Sponda" (with nearly 100,000 Tunisian Italians), but a few months
later it was occupied by the Allies.
[ edit ]
In spring 1941, Mussolini - with the help of the German Army - finally defeated Greece and conquered coastal Yugoslavia.
General Vittorio Ambrosio, the commander of the Italian Army during the conquest of Yugoslav Dalmatia, created a military line of
occupation from Ljubljana to northern Montenegro that successively was to be considered as the future border of the "Imperial
Italy" in the North-Western Balkans.[9] Within the borders to the south were included Fascist Montenegro, Greater Albania and
Epirus.
De Vecchi promoted the inclusion of Corfu (with a significant community of the Corfiot Italians), the Ionian islands and the
southern Aegean islands (once controlled by the Republic of Venice), in order to form an "arch" that stretched toward the
Dodecanese, Lesvos and Chios (Once controlled by the Republic of Genoa).
[ edit ]
In the 1940s, De Vecchi contemplated an "Imperial Italy" stretching from Europe to north Africa, made of the "Imperial Italy" (with
an enlarged Italian Empire in eastern Africa, from the Egyptian shores on the Mediterranean to Somalia).
He dreamed of a powerful Italy enlarged:
1) in Europe, from Nice to the Governatorato di Dalmazia in Dalmatia and possibly Greater Albania (see map ), the Ionian
islands, the Principality of Pindus in Epirus (northern Greece), the Dodecanese.
2) in northern coastal Africa, from Tunisia to Libya (the Fezzan of Libya was to be considered a colony of the empire).
In a hopeful peace negotiation following an Axis victory, Mussolini had planned to acquire for his Imperial Italy the full island of
Crete (that was mostly German occupied) and the surrounding southern Greek islands, connecting the Italian Dodecanese
possessions to the already Italian Ionian islands.[10]
South of the Fourth Shore, some fascist leaders dreamed of an Italian Empire that, starting in the Fezzan, would include Egypt,
Sudan and reach Italian East Africa.[11]
The Allied victory in the Second World War ended these projects and terminated all fascist ambitions for the empire.
Finally, in 1947 the Italian Republic formally lost all her overseas colonial possessions as a result of the Treaty of Peace with Italy.
There were discussions to maintain Tripolitania (a province of Italian Libya) as the last Italian colony, but they were not
successful.
In November 1949, Italian Somaliland was made a United Nations Trust Territory under Italian administration and with capital
Mogadishu. This lasted until 1 July 1960, when Italian Somalia was granted its independence along with British Somaliland to
form the Somali Republic.
Notes
[ edit ]
References
[ edit ]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_imperialism_under_Fascism[31/01/2016 18:43:22]
De Felice, Renzo. Mussolini l'Alleato: Italia in guerra 1940-1943. Rizzoli Ed. Torino, 1990.
Del Boca, A. Le guerre coloniali del fascismo Laterza. Roma, 1991
Galeotti, Carlo. Credere obbedire combattere - I catechismi fascisti Stampa Alternativa. Milano, 1996.
Lamb, Richard. Mussolini as Diplomat. Fromm International Ed. London, 1999 ISBN 0-88064-244-0
Payne, Stanley G. A History of Fascism, 1914-45. University of Wisconsin Press. Madison, Wisc., 1995 ISBN 0-299-14874-2
Rosselli, Alberto. Storie Segrete. Operazioni sconosciute o dimenticate della seconda guerra mondiale Iuculano Editore.
Pavia, 2007
Italian Empire
v t e
Western Mediterranean
[hide]
Corsica
Albanian Kingdom
Balkans
Greece
(Hellenic State
Ionian Islands)
Kingdom of Montenegro
Italian Eritrea
(Eritrea Governorate)
Italian Somalia
(Somalia Governorate
Subdivisions
Italian East Africa
(Amhara Governorate
Harrar Governorate
Galla-Sidamo Governorate
Scioa Governorate)
Italian Libya
Far East
Planned expansion
Libya
(Cyrenaica Tripolitania
Fezzan)
Italian concession of Tientsin
Irredentism
Switzerland Corfu
Architecture
Civilian
Urbanism
Infrastructure
Political concepts
Italian Massaua
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Italian fascism
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