| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.3

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Comparative/World

Patrizia Palumbo, editor. A Place in the Sun: Africa in Italian Colonial Culture from Post-Unification to the Present. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. 2003. Pp. 332. $24.95.
African and colonial studies in Italy have traditionally been underdeveloped. There were two main reasons for this. First, Italy's Africanists were closely tied to the Italian political and colonial establishment. Second, they were largely isolated from African studies in other countries, and hence little aware of contemporary African, Anglo-Saxon, and French critiques of colonialism. The result was excessive Italian sensitivity about the country's supposed prestige. A case in point is fascist Italy's use of mustard gas during the invasion and occupation of Ethiopia (1935–1941). Evidence of the intention to utilize gas is preserved in Benito Mussolini's letters to his commander-in-chief, Pietro Badoglio, and conclusive testimony to its use is provided in eyewitness reports. However, all mention of gas is suppressed in Badoglio's memoirs, as well as in those of all other Italian commanders. Given that gas was by all accounts decisive in defeating Emperor Haile Selassie's army, the omission of any reference to it clearly distorts the entire picture of military operations in what Mussolini chose to call Italy's "civilizing mission."	1
What is more alarming is that, despite the fall of fascism, Italy's postwar government, reluctant to come to terms with the reality of decolonization, maintained complete secrecy about the use of gas for sixty years. It was only in 1996—largely through the insistent pressure of Angelo Del Boca, a contributor to this book—that the Italian Ministry of Defense in 1996 finally admitted the truth. Del Boca, today Italy's leading scholar of Italian colonialism, not surprisingly takes a poor view of his country's lack of transparency in matters colonial and Ethiopian. He accordingly entitles his essay: "The Myths, Suppressions, Denials and Defaults of Italian Colonialism."	2
Editor Patrizia Palumbo has done a good job of redressing the imbalance in many earlier Italian compilations. She has assembled over a dozen interesting essays on Italian colonialism, its history, and its characteristics. There are illuminating accounts, not only of Italian "explorers" and military and colonial officials—the stock-in-trade of many earlier works—but also of Italian settlers and physical and social anthropologists, as well as of the nativi, or subject peoples, among them ascari, or "native" troops, and madame, or "native" concubines.	3
Useful comparisons are drawn, notably by Nicola Labanca, between short-lived Italian colonialism (the only example of fascist colonialism on record if we discount that of Portugal and Spain), and that of the European democracies. Labanca, however, also raises questions germane to political and diplomatic history. He poses the intriguing question of why Mussolini chose to attack Ethiopia rather than a Mediterranean country, and why he launched his invasion in 1935. As for the choice of Ethiopia as the victim of fascist aggression Labanca argues convincingly that it was a kind of poor man's choice, Ethiopia being the only country that the Duce could safely attack without coming into conflict with one or other of the Great Powers. As for the timing of the invasion, Labanca argues that this was determined by a combination of numerous interlinking factors. These included the distancing of Italy's fascist regime from the British and Americans; Mussolini's increasing preoccupation with Nazi Germany; Italy's inability to expand its economic penetration in the Balkans; the League of Nations' failure to halt the Japanese invasion of Manchuria; the growing influence on the Duce of Italian expansionist and colonial interests; the desire of Italian army officers, threatened by the expanding influence of the Fascist Party, to find alternative fields of employment and prestige; an Italian commercial interest in boosting economic activity at a time when Italian credit banks, following the Great Depression, were in difficulty, and when Italian unemployment was rising; the Duce's fear that Italy might soon be outclassed by Nazi Germany; and Emperor Haile Selassie's modernization program, which was making his country increasingly difficult to occupy by border penetration.	. . .

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