CEIPES ETS implements the community workshop on transnational narratives – Colonial Italy, envisaged in the WP3, D3.2 on the 13th of November 2023.
The Community Workshop on Italian colonialism engaged two high school classes attending the last year of the oldest grammar high school of Palermo, ‘Liceo Classico Vittorio Emanuele II’.
The agenda of the event was the following:
- Introduction of SOLREM project
- Introduction of the workshop
- Italian colonialism
- Mithys and reasons of colonialism
- Afrodiscendent literature
- Connections between past and present
- Feedback and conclusions
Speakers:
Francesca Morganella
Alessia Gambino
Sefora Giaimo
The activity was divided in three different parts, each one was presented respectively by Francesca Morganella, Alessia Gambino and Sefora Giaimo, CEIPES ETS collaborators, who have a background in Political Science and History.
The presentations were structured as explained below.
At the beginning an ice-breaking game with a ball made the participants get to know each other.
Then, a mentimeter quiz addressed general questions to the students related to Italian colonialism to understand the general level of knowledge of the topic.
Francesca Morganella provides a definition of colonialism and she started presenting a map of the African countries that witnessed Italian Colonialism.
Then, the presentation got deeper in history, dividing Italian colonialism in three historical phases related to specific dates.
Thus, the first one was 1885-1896, from the landing at Massawa (Eritrea) up to the defeat at Adua (Ethiopia), then headed by Crispi, in fact Italy’s colonial history was rooted in imperialist ambitions, so much so that after the unification of the country, the first interests were manifested in the Suez Canal, in a land that later took the name of Eritrea. The first phase ended in March 1896 with the defeat at Adua – 4,500 italioan soldiers dead and 1,500 wounded.
The second phase is known as ‘Giolittian’, with Giolitti as prime minister, during 1911-1912 there was an occupation war in Libya. The country was of great interest to Italy because it represented a land beyond the Mediterranean. It had great support in the country. After the conquest of two lands, Cyrenaica and Tripolitania, internal penetration was strongly hindered by the Arabs and came to a halt in 1915, only to resume during Fascism. Later, the Italians would try again hard during fascism.
The third and final phase was that of Ethiopia, 1935-36, in which Italy finally obtained its empire and the A.O.I. Italia Orientale Africana was born.
Contemporary Italy was about to lose World War II and had to abandon all occupied countries that had been liberated by the Allies and slowly became independent. The last one was Somalia, which only became independent in the 1960s.
We had a Mentimeter Quiz.
Alessia Gambino, CEIPES ETS project manager, then spoke about the demystification of the myths of Fascism and Italian colonialism.
She explained the difference between historical reasons, such as diplomacy, international reputation, politics and demographic needs; and propagandistic reasons, referring to the ethical task of European states to bring civilization to backward African populations dominated by barbaric customs. In addition, the geostrategic arguments, control of the Suez Canal and the Red Sea, the Mediterranean; the historical arguments, e.g. Libya was Roman and therefore must become Italian again; the right of conquest for Italian missionaries and explorers; finally, the economic arguments, according to which colonial territories are rich but unused, so intervention is necessary.
Then, it moved on to myths. The most common is the reference to the ‘Italians good people’, which gave the event its name. It is based on the widespread idea that Italian soldiers are anti-war, recalcitrant to acts of violence and oppression, bearers of civilisation and goodness at heart, just like the entire Italian people, dragged into the war, victims of events.
Thanks to the historian Del Boca, this myth turned out to be hollow and true to history. Then, the massacres, the use of illegal gas, the concentration camps are all well documented. Nocra, for example, is the least known and largest concentration camp of the colonial period.
The last part of the workshop focused on Italian Afro-descendant literature, through the poems and novels of Somali-Italian writers Igiaba Scego and Ubah Cristina Ali Farah, while Sefora Giaimo brought attention to post-colonial writers.
Furthermore, the last discussion concerned a new bill, to establish a day of remembrance to commemorate the victims of Italian colonialism, some 700,000 Africans, on 19 February, the anniversary of the beginning of the massacre of the civilian population of Addis Ababa in 1937.