I utilized my time at the BSR working on my book project, provisionally entitled ‘Fascist Italy's Colonial Hero: The Myth of Rodolfo Graziani’, based on my recently defended doctoral dissertation which provides the first comprehensive assessment of the public life, myth-making and collective remembrance of Italy's most prominent colonial general, Rodolfo Graziani, in light of his publicly funded monument near Rome in 2012. By detailing the heroic construction of Graziani, the project aims to offer critical new insight into imperial heroism and popular culture during the Fascist Ventennio and their legacies after 1945 in relation to recent global events, from the rehabilitation of the far right in contemporary politics to debates about imperial monuments since the transnational rise of the Black Lives Matter movement.
My primary research has revealed that Graziani's rise to fame can be traced back to his role in the ‘pacification’ of Libya in the 1920s as the Fascist government was attracted by Graziani's youth, ambition and leadership. His brutality and rapid military successes consequently led to his heroization, as he initiated genocidal measures such as the creation of concentration camps in Libya, which caused the death of 83,000 Cyrenaicans, and the extensive utilization of illegal poison gases during the Second Italo-Ethiopian War. Whilst the Libyan population named him ‘the butcher’ for his terror tactics, Italian journalists deemed him ‘il grande condottiero del continente nero’ for his leading role in ending the Libyan ‘pacification’ in 1931 and his successful military campaign in Ethiopia which prompted Mussolini's declaration of the Fascist Empire in 1936. His atrocities were heavily censored in national press reports which were instead filled with intense praise of Graziani's military might as he came to embody contemporary ideologies of national pride, identity and empire.
Through examination of literary and visual propaganda, I have found that the Fascist regime utilized Graziani as the military poster-boy for Italy's colonial wars and aspirations. Graziani's portrayal as Fascist Italy's imperial ‘uomo nuovo’ was disseminated in mainstream domestic publications: the front pages of Corriere della Sera's weekly supplement, for example, printed fierce watercolours of Graziani and his mechanized army throughout the Ethiopian campaign and colourful depictions of Graziani with the shadows of Roman emperors leading him into battle. Images of Graziani as a prototype of modern Italian masculinity were widely disseminated in popular newspapers and magazines, emanating themes of heightened masculinity and connections old and new between heroes of the Roman Empire, Renaissance ideals and neoclassical sculpture.
Heightened visual analysis and new historical insight has allowed me to draw critical comparison between the material culture of the ancient Roman Empire and the propaganda and censorship of the Fascist regime and its colonial enterprises. As a trained historian of modern and contemporary Italy, the vast interdisciplinary network of artists, classicist and art historians at the BSR has helped me to expand my research scope and methodological framework in order to produce truly interdisciplinary work. I am very grateful to have been part of this wonderful community, which has given me crucial access to the BSR library's wealth of resources, Italian archives and a highly productive and welcoming work environment.
