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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 October 2021
Although designed primarily as a national institution, between the 1880s and the First World War the Italian army's military operations were all in the colonial sphere. By 1914, Italy claimed an extensive empire in East and North Africa. How far did imperialism shape Italian military culture and institutions? I identify ‘imperial thinking’ across nine areas of army activity. Italian colonialism relied on a pervasive narrative of Italian benevolence – italiani brava gente – with Italian conduct in war or as imperial rulers portrayed as inherently mild. This was accompanied by a set of anxieties we might term Adwa syndrome: after Italy's defeat by Ethiopia at Adwa in 1896, the Italian army was acutely afraid of possible violent uprisings by the local people. Many army officers expected betrayal and brutality from their colonial enemies or subjects, and acted accordingly. This outlook shaped the army's conduct both in the colonies and when dealing with European adversaries in the First World War. While the army of late Liberal Italy was structurally and doctrinally a national army, it was increasingly imperialist in mindset and outlook, which directly affected its conduct on and off the battlefield.
1 Nicola Labanca, ‘Discorsi coloniali in uniforme militare, da Assab via Adua verso Tripoli’, in Walter Barberis, ed., Guerra e pace (Turin, 2002), pp. 503–45.
2 On Italy's military reputation, see Lucy Riall, ‘Men at war: masculinity and military ideals in the Risorgimento’, in Silvana Patriarca and Lucy Riall, eds., The Risorgimento revisited: nationalism and culture in nineteenth-century Italy (London, 2012), pp. 152–70.
3 Labanca, ‘Discorsi coloniali’, p. 505.
4 Giorgio Rochat, Il colonialismo italiano. Documenti (Turin, 1973); see also Giorgio Rochat, ‘Le guerre coloniali dell'Italia fascista’, in Angelo Del Boca, ed., Le guerre coloniali del fascismo (Rome, 2008), pp. 173–97.
5 The classic accounts are Angelo Del Boca, Gli italiani in Africa Orientale (4 vols., Milan, 1986); Angelo Del Boca, Gli italiani in Libia (2 vols., Rome, 1986); Nicola Labanca, Oltremare. Storia dell'espansione coloniale italiana (Bologna, 2002). Important recent contributions include Bruce Vandervort, To the fourth shore: Italy's war for Libya, 1911–1912 (Rome, 2012); Federica Saini Fasanotti, Libia 1922–1931. Le operazioni militari italiane (Rome, 2012).
6 Key works include Patrizia Palumbo, A place in the sun: Africa in Italian colonial culture from post-unification to the present (Berkeley, CA, 2003); Ruth Ben-Ghiat and Mia Fuller, eds., Italian colonialism (Basingstoke, 2005); Ruth Ben-Ghiat and Stephanie Malia Hom, eds., Italian mobilities (London, 2015).
7 Nicola Labanca, ed., Militari italiani in Africa. Per una storia sociale e culturale dell'espansione coloniale. Atti del convegno di Firenze, 12–14 dicembre 2002 (Naples, 2004). On the officer corps, see Lorenzo Benadusi, Ufficiale e gentiluomo. Virtù civili e valori militari in Italia, 1896–1918 (Milan, 2015).
8 As amply illustrated in John Gooch, ‘Re-conquest and suppression: Fascist Italy's pacification of Libya and Ethiopia, 1922–39’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 28 (2005), pp. 1005–32.
9 Frantz Fanon, The wretched of the earth (New York, NY, 2007; orig. edn 1961), p. 3.
10 Labanca, Nicola, ‘Colonial rule, colonial repression and war crimes in the Italian colonies’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 9 (2004), pp. 300–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Angelo Del Boca, Italiani, brava gente? (Vicenza, 2011); Ian Campbell, The Addis Ababa massacre: Italy's national shame (London, 2019).
11 On imperial thinking in policy and practice, see, among others, Edward Said, Orientalism (New York, NY, 1978); Ann Laura Stoler, Along the archival grain: epistemic anxieties and colonial common sense (Princeton, NJ, 2010).
12 Giuseppe Finaldi, Italian national identity in the scramble for Africa: Italy's African wars in the era of nation-building, 1870–1900 (Oxford, 2009).
13 Christopher Duggan, Francesco Crispi, 1818–1901: from nation to nationalism (Oxford, 2002).
14 Isabella Nardi and Sandro Gentili, eds., La grande illusione. Opinione pubblica e mass media al tempo della guerra di Libia (Perugia, 2009); Luca Micheletta and Andrea Ungari, eds., L'Italia e la guerra di Libia cent'anni dopo (Rome, 2013).
15 Benadusi, Ufficiale e gentiluomo, pp. 155–61.
16 Preparazione, 1 July 1909.
17 Labanca, ‘Discorsi coloniali’, pp. 518–19, 534; on the myth of Italian benevolence, see Del Boca, Italiani, brava gente?
18 Some important recent works in this field include Jörg Muth, Command culture: officer education in the U.S. army and the German armed forces, 1901–1940, and the consequences for World War II (Denton, TX, 2011); Laurence Cole, Military culture and popular patriotism in late imperial Austria (Oxford, 2014); Peter R. Mansoor and Williamson Murray, The culture of military organizations (Cambridge, 2019).
19 Wilson, Peter H., ‘Defining military culture’, Journal of Military History, 72 (2008), pp. 11–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 14.
20 Isabel V. Hull, Absolute destruction: military culture and the practices of war in imperial Germany (Ithaca, NY, 2005), p. 2.
21 Ibid., p. 3.
22 Petra Svoljšak, ‘La popolazione civile nella Slovenia occupata’, in Bruna Bianchi, ed., La violenza contro la popolazione civile nella Grande Guerra. Deportati, profughi, internati (Milan, 2006), pp. 147–63; Marco Pluviano and Irene Guerrini, Le fucilazioni sommarie nella prima guerra mondiale (Udine, 2004), pp. 198–214.
23 Scardigli, Marco, ‘Esercito italiano e guerra di Libia nelle pagine della “Rivista Militare”, 1907–1916’, Africa, 43 (1988), pp. 90–107Google Scholar, at p. 90.
24 John Gooch, Army, state and society in Italy, 1870–1915 (London, 1989), pp. 73–7.
25 Wilson, ‘Defining military culture’, p. 18.
26 Massimo Mazzetti, L'esercito italiano nella triplice alleanza (Naples, 1974); Massimo Mazzetti, ‘I piani di guerra contro l'Austria dal 1866 alla prima guerra mondiale’, in Ufficio Storico, Stato Maggiore dell'Esercito, ed., L'esercito italiano dall'Unità alla Grande Guerra (Rome, 1980).
27 Vanda Wilcox, The Italian empire and the Great War (Oxford, 2021), ch. 7.
28 A useful summary is Saccoman, Andrea, ‘Note sull'esercito italiano dall'Unità alla Grande Guerra’, Politico, 62 (1997), pp. 483–97Google Scholar; compare Wilson, ‘Defining military culture’, pp. 18–22.
29 Enrico Cernigoi, Soldati del regno. La struttura e l'organizzazione dell'esercito italiano dall'Unità alla Grande Guerra (Bassano del Grappa, 2015).
30 Vaccarisi, Achille, ‘Importanza dell'odierna espansione coloniale’, Rivista Militare Italiana, 3 (1911), pp. 1685–1702Google Scholar.
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33 Preparazione, 29 April and 24 July 1909, cited in Labanca, ‘Discorsi coloniali’, p. 533.
34 Richard Pankhurst, ‘British reactions to the battle of Adwa’, in Paulos Milkias and Getachew Metaferia, eds., The battle of Adwa: reflections on Ethiopia's historic victory against European colonialism (New York, NY, 2005), pp. 216–28. On the battle's legacies within Ethiopia, see Maimire Mennasemay, ‘Adwa: a dialogue between the past and the present’, Northeast African Studies, 4, (1997), pp. 43–89.
35 Benadusi, Ufficiale e gentiluomo, p. 29.
36 Gooch, Army, state and society, p. 139.
37 Vandervort, ‘Military history of the Turco-Italian war’, pp. 21–2.
38 Arguably this failing was never fully overcome, despite efforts by Guglielmo Nasi in the late 1920s and 1930s to create an Italian colonial doctrine. See Goglia, Luigi, ‘Popolazioni, eserciti africani e truppe indigene nella dottrina italiana della guerra coloniale’, Mondo Contemporaneo, 2 (2006), pp. 5–54Google Scholar.
39 Dierk Walter, Colonial violence: European empires and the use of force, trans. Peter Lewis (London, 2017), p. 245.
40 Charles E. Callwell, Small wars: their principles and practice, ed. R. Douglas Porch (Lincoln, NE, 1996), p. xii.
41 Daniel Whittingham, Charles E. Callwell and the British way in warfare (Cambridge, 2020).
42 Charles E. Callwell, Petites guerres. Leurs principes et leur exécution, trans. Albert Septans (Paris, 1899); Andrea Beccaro, ed., Small wars. Teoria e prassi dal XIX secolo all'Afghanistan (Gorizia, 2012).
43 Charles E. Callwell, Ammaestramenti da trarsi dalle campagne nelle quali vennero impiegate le truppe britanniche dal 1865 ad oggi: studio (Rome, 1887); Charles E. Callwell, Gli effetti del dominio del mare sulle operazioni militari da Waterloo in poi (Turin, 1898); Charles E. Callwell, La tattica d'oggi; traduzione col consenso dell'autore e prefazione del colonnello Mandile (Messina, 1903).
44 Rivista di Cavalleria, 21 (1908), and Rivista di Artiglieria e Genio, 21 (1904), discussed his ideas on cavalry tactics and field fortifications respectively.
45 Valigi, Marco, Beccaro, Andrea, Giacomello, Giampiero, and Moro, Francesco N., ‘Insurrezioni e controinsurrezione da Callwell a Petraeus’, Politico 78 (2013), pp. 115–41Google Scholar, at p. 122.
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50 An attempt to correct this approach is Orsini, Adolfo, ‘Tripoli e Pentapoli’, Rivista Militare Italiana, 56 (1911), pp. 2589–2604Google Scholar, esp. pp. 2593–4.
51 Pierre Schill, Réveiller l'archive d'une guerre coloniale. Photographies et écrits de Gaston Cherau, correspondant de guerre lors du conflit italo-turc (1911–1912) (Grâne, 2018).
52 Angelo Del Boca, Mohamed Fekini and the fight to free Libya (New York, NY, 2011), pp. 19–29.
53 On imperial anxieties and retributive violence, see Walter, Colonial violence, pp. 175–82.
54 The military policeman Dario Livraghi was subsequently tried in Massaua for murder and extortion but was acquitted on the grounds of following orders: see Del Boca, Gli italiani in Africa Orientale, I, pp. 435–50.
55 Simone Bernini, ‘Documenti sulla repressione italiana in Libia agli inizi della colonizzazione (1911–1918)’, in Nicola Labanca, ed., Un nodo. Immagini e documenti sulle repressione coloniale italiana in Libia (Manduria, 2002), pp. 119–53.
56 Archivio Centrale dello Stato (ACS), Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri (PCM), Guerra europea 1915–1918, b. 75, f. Colonie, sf. 4. Also Archivio Storico del Ministero dell'Africa Italiana, 127/1.
57 Labanca, ‘Colonial rule’.
58 Hull, Absolute destruction, p. 96.
59 Compare the dynamics of violence outlined in John Horne and Alan Kramer, German atrocities, 1914: a history of denial (New Haven, CT, 2001).
60 Benadusi, Ufficiale e gentiluomo, p. 125.
61 Some commentators even lamented the insufficient vigour of Italian repression: ibid., pp. 144–7.
62 Cited in Bernini, ‘Documenti sulla repressione’, p. 194.
63 Cited in Scardigli, ‘Esercito italiano e guerra di Libia’, p. 99.
64 Valle, Enrico Della, ‘Considerazioni sull'importanza della Tripolitania e Cirenaica’, Rivista Militare Italiana, 3 (1912), pp. 1377–1400Google Scholar.
65 Benadusi, Ufficiale e gentiluomo, pp. 127–31.
66 Patrick Porter, Military orientalism: Eastern war through Western eyes (New York, NY, 2009), p. 42.
67 Wagner, ‘Savage warfare’, pp. 222–3.
68 Telegram from Ameglio to the minister of the colonies, 1 Oct. 1915, cited in Bernini, ‘Documenti sulla repressione’, p. 193.
69 Angelo Del Boca, Tripoli bel suol d'amore, 1860–1922 (Bari, 1986), p. 303.
70 Cited in Wagner, ‘Savage warfare’, pp. 225–6.
71 Bernini, ‘Documenti sulla repressione’, pp. 194–8.
72 Vandervort, ‘Military history of the Turco-Italian war’, pp. 23–4.
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79 Ascanio Guerriero, Ascari d'Eritrea. Volontari eritrei nelle forze armate italiane, 1889–1941 (Florence, 2005).
80 On their deployment, see Nir Arielli, ‘Colonial soldiers in Italian counter-insurgency operations in Libya, 1922–32’, British Journal for Military History, 1 (2015), pp. 47–66, https://bjmh.gold.ac.uk/article/view/612.
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86 Andrea Scartabellati, ‘Un wanderer dell'anormalità? Un invito allo studio di Placido Consiglio (1877–1959)’, Rivista Sperimentale di Freniatria, 134 (2010), pp. 89–112.
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93 De Napoli, ‘For a “normal government” of the colony’, pp. 456–7; Labanca, ‘Discorsi coloniali’, pp. 518–19.
94 ACS, fondo Giovanni Ameglio.
95 Database of RMI articles kindly compiled by Demetrio Iannone in 2018.
96 Labanca, ‘Discorsi coloniali’, p. 519.
97 Gooch, Army, state and society, pp. 76–7.
98 Or, to put it another way, relationships to the state and to society, and access to resources; see Wilson, ‘Defining military culture’.
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