Italian colonies

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The desired empire: Italian colonies (dark green), the briefly reached (medium green) and the never reached empire (light green)

The Italian colonies were acquired by the Kingdom of Italy after it was unified in the Risorgimento in the late 19th and first third of the 20th century. The through industrialization increased demand for raw materials and a pressure to emigrate tried to channel the former Italian governments towards their own colonies, but suffered setbacks again and again. Italy oriented itself mainly towards North Africa and East Africa . After the First World War , Italy fell to smaller areas in the Mediterranean , some of which were inhabited by long-established Italian minorities ( Italia irredenta ). These were incorporated into the mother country and did not have the status of colonies, but the predominantly Slavic non-Italian population of these areas was subject to a ruthless policy of Italianization .

In Europe

prehistory

As early as the Middle Ages, the Italian maritime republics of Venice (from 1206) and Genoa (from 1261) acquired colonies in the Aegean and Black Seas as a result of the Fourth Crusade . In the Adriatic, Venice took possession of Dalmatia . While the remaining possessions of Genoa and Venice were lost again by 1475 (Modon until 1500 and again from 1699 to 1718 Venetian), Dalmatia remained Venetian until 1797 and was incorporated into the Kingdom of Italy created by Napoléon Bonaparte in the north of the peninsula from 1805 to 1809 . Irredenta claims made after the unification of Italy (1861/1870) were thus justified.

Territories of the Kingdom of Italy

After the First World War - which Italy entered after the Allies had promised almost all the required areas in the secret Treaty of London (1915) - the following areas, some of which were inhabited by Italians , came to Italy:

They were incorporated into the kingdom as parts of Julian Veneto . After the Second World War, these areas fell to Yugoslavia , the Italian- (more precisely: Venetian-) speaking population there was mostly expelled, killed or voluntarily left the country annexed by the Titoist Yugoslavia .

The Italian motherland also included:

During the Second World War, the following areas were annexed (1941 to 1943):

Protectorates

The status of Italian protectorates had:

Occupied Territories

Italy occupied during World War II:

In Africa

From 1928 to 1940 and again from 1948 to 1956, Italy was also one of the eight or nine contracting states that exercised joint administration over the International Zone of Tangier (northern Morocco).

Acquisition of the colonies

After the annexation of Rome (1870), the Società Geografica Italiana moved there

Like the German Empire , Italy, too, found a sustainable overall state order very late, only in the second half of the 19th century. After the Italian unification (1861) or the failure to achieve the Irredenta goals (especially Trento, but also Istria with Trieste) in the Austro-Prussian War (1866), Italian entrepreneurs began to finance research trips in Africa, which in addition to the geographical above all had commercial development for the purpose and should promote a later colonial penetration through trade. In 1867 the Italian Geographical Society (Società Geografica Italiana) was founded in Florence , later also the Society for Geographical and Colonial Studies as well as the African Society in Naples and the Society for Geographical and Commercial Research in Milan. In 1869 and 1870, the Genoese Rubattino trading company acquired the port of Assab at the southern end of the Red Sea. In addition, Italian politicians had unsuccessfully negotiated with Portugal in 1862 and 1869, with Denmark in 1865 and with the Netherlands in 1868 to buy some islands in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans.

After Italy was unable to acquire either Trento or compensation in Albania at the Berlin Congress (1878), the demand for colonies was also publicly raised from 1878. The upswing in the industrial sector that began with unification led in Italy, as in Germany, to an enormously increased demand for raw materials , which was to be satisfied by the exploitation of colonies . At the same time, there was great pressure to emigrate , around 14 million Italians left their homeland and sought their fortune in North and South America between 1876 and 1915.

In 1882 Great Britain invited Italy to take part in the occupation of Egypt instead of France, whose influence on Egyptian affairs Great Britain intended to eliminate with the occupation. According to the British offer, Italy was to occupy those distant Egyptian possessions on the southern shores of the Red Sea that Egypt wanted to evacuate because of the Sudanese Mahdi uprising (1881–1899) (e.g. Massaua), but Finance Minister Agostino Magliani had initially refused. France, on the other hand, had proposed Italy in 1884 and 1888 as a compromise to seize Tripolitania instead of Tunisia, which was disputed between the two states . In the Triple Alliance Treaty renewed in 1887, Germany and Austria-Hungary also agreed to the possibility of an Italian occupation of Tripolitania, and by renouncing its claims to Somaliland in 1888, Germany cleared the way for Italy there too.

Italian East Africa

In 1882 Italy took over the port city of Assab, which had been acquired by the Rubattino Society, but it was not until 1885 that Italy followed another British invitation and annexed Massaua. It was only two years after their defeat by Ethiopian troops that Italian troops finally occupied Keren and Asmara in 1889. The colony of Eritrea formed from it in 1890 was initially limited to the triangle formed by these three cities. On the Somali coast, Italy had also concluded protectorate treaties with the Somali majerteen sultanates of Hobyo and Bargaal in 1888 and 1889 . Together with the Somali port cities acquired from the Sultanate of Zanzibar in 1892 , this became the colony of Italian Somaliland . The submission of Ethiopia also failed in 1896 with the Italian defeat at Adua .

After another Italian-Ethiopian war , the three colonies Italian-Somaliland, Eritrea and occupied Ethiopia became a new colonial area in 1936, which was named Italian-East Africa . The former Ethiopian regions of Tigray and Ogaden were added to the colony of Eritrea and Italian Somaliland (including Oltre Giuba ) .

During World War II , Italian East Africa was occupied by British troops. Ethiopia regained independence in 1941. Eritrea was placed under a British UN mandate and was united with Ethiopia in 1951. Italian Somaliland, however, was again placed under Italian administration as a UN mandate in 1950 (until 1960).

Italian Libya

Territorial development of Libya under Italian colonial rule (1912–1943)

The countries of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica were the last provinces of the Ottoman Empire on African soil and were separated from the motherland by British rule over Egypt . The Ottoman Empire had largely lost power and more and more territorial possessions in the 19th century. Because of its location on the Mediterranean Sea and its proximity to Italy, the African provinces came under the spotlight of the Italian colonial endeavors. In order to divert attention from domestic political difficulties, the then Prime Minister of Italy Giovanni Giolitti planned a campaign in North Africa in the summer of 1911.

Italy cited the bad treatment of the Italian citizens in Tripoli as the reason for the war. On September 27, 1911, Italy issued an ultimatum to the Ottoman Empire in which the provinces were to be handed over unconditionally to Italy. Sultan Mehmed V rejected this, the Italians responded with a declaration of war and the Italian-Turkish war broke out .

Italy, which was initially victorious, underestimated its opponent, who put up a strong resistance. The Italians then used their superior fleet and captured the Dodecanese in 1912 . The Ottoman fortresses in Beirut and on the Dardanelles were under fire and the anti-Turkish uprising in Asir was supported.

During the peace negotiations in Lausanne on October 18, 1912 , the Ottoman Empire had to cede Tripoli to Italy. As compensation, Italy was supposed to cede the previously occupied Dodecanese back to the Ottoman Empire, which Italy did not adhere to. The Ottomans, in turn, supported the resistance of the Libyan Senussi, which continued even after the cession, especially during the First World War. Before 1919, Italy therefore ruled only five port cities on the coast; it was not until 1931 that the rest of the interior was conquered with a tank advance on Kufra.

In 1934 Italy declared its Libyan possessions a colony. During the Second World War, Libya was occupied by French and British troops in 1943. The Italian colonists had already been evacuated back home in 1942. Italy also formally ceded Libya in the peace of 1947; the UN gave it to France and Great Britain as UN trust territory (until 1951). The Bevin-Sforza plan to divide Libya and at least return Tripolitania to Italy as a UN mandate failed due to resistance from the USA, the Soviet Union and, above all, the Libyans themselves.

Further colonial plans

Tunisia

Italy had already clashed with France in 1881 when France annexed Tunisia , to which Italy had also claimed. Large amounts of Italian capital had already flowed into Tunis, and the Italian Rubattino company had applied for the concession for the Tunis- Goletta railway line . Italy then merged with the German-Austrian two-way alliance to form a three-way alliance and was promised Corsica, Nice and Savoy in addition to Tunis . It was not until 1896 that Italy recognized the French protectorate over Tunisia. Up to 93,000 Italian settlers remained in the country even under the French protectorate. At the beginning of the war in 1914, the number of Italians exceeded the number of French immigrants.

Sudan

Immediately after the occupation of Massaua, the Italian war minister Cesare Ricotti-Magnani had instructed the local commanders in 1885 to make a "detour to Khartoum" in order to subdue the Sudanese Mahdi Empire . But it was not until 1893 that Italy was able to achieve a small victory over the Mahdists and only conquer the city of Agordat , which was annexed to Eritrea. Although the Italians also conquered Kassala in 1894 , they had to vacate it again in 1897 in favor of English and Egyptian claims.

Crete

Italian barracks and troops in Chania, Crete (1905)

After the Turkish-Greek War , Crete was given extensive autonomy in 1898 with only formal membership of the Ottoman Empire and under the protection of a multinational protectorate of Great Britain, France, Russia and Italy. Each of the four powers initially administered one of the island's four prefectures, Italy that of Chania (the westernmost and thus closest to Italy). After that, the gendarmerie of the entire island was under an Italian commissioner. The four protecting powers formed an advisory body, which initially had its seat in Rome, and whose approval the (Greek) High Commissioner entrusted with the government of the island had to obtain on certain issues. In 1907 the seat of this advisory body was relocated to Athens, in 1908 Crete was finally annexed to Greece and the Italians as well as the other powers were forced to withdraw.

China

Concession areas in Tientsin, the Italian sector is marked in green

Encouraged by the German occupation of Kiautschou , Italy also tried to acquire a lease port in China. In March 1899, Italian Foreign Minister Felice Napoleone Canevaro ordered his navy to occupy San Mun Bay in the province of Zhejiang , but as early as April 1899 Italy had to face diplomatic pressure from the USA and Russia as well as Great Britain and Japan, which this province was already known as claimed their sphere of influence , withdraw again. Although Italy then participated in the intervention of the United Eight Nations during the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 , it did not succeed in acquiring a lease area in China afterwards either - apart from a small branch in the international concession area of Tientsin (1901–1947).

First World War

The zone of influence in Anatolia assigned to Italy in 1920 in the Treaty of Sèvres (green, Izmir, which was promised in 1915, was no longer part of it) and the areas actually occupied (Zona italiana)

Despite the formal alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary, Italy initially remained neutral when the war began and demanded compensation from both sides for entering the war. Instead of Tunis, the Triple Entente offered Italy, in addition to the areas of Austria-Hungary inhabited by Italians, also the southwest of Anatolia , which was finally recorded in the London Treaty (1915) and confirmed again in 1917. The zone of influence and sphere of interest granted to the Italians in Anatolia (not identical to the areas actually occupied) should extend from Smyrna-Izmir via Aydın and Antalya to Konya (see map).

In a parallel secret agreement (not including France) in 1915, Great Britain assured Italy that it would acquire Abyssinia (Ethiopia), but in 1916 the Italian colonial minister called for British Somaliland and French Somaliland (Djibouti), two provinces of the Anglo-Egyptian, in addition to Abyssinia Sudan and 2.5 million km² of hinterland from Libya to Lake Chad (i.e. northern Chad and large parts of Niger).

In 1919 France left Italy with two smaller Algerian and West African desert regions bordering Libya. It was not until 1924/26 that the British gave the now fascist Italy some Egyptian and Kenyan border areas as compensation to round off Libya and Italian Somaliland (oasis of Jarabub, Jubaland). Great Britain had already given up the Kufra oases , which had previously been under Egyptian suzerainty, but Italy was only able to occupy them in 1931.

Georgia

In order to persuade Italian troops to intervene in the Russian Civil War , British Prime Minister David Lloyd George is said to have offered Italian Prime Minister Vittorio Emanuele Orlando the protectorate or mandate over Georgia in 1919 .

Cameroon

Instead of smaller rounding off the existing colonies, Italy had actually hoped for additional new colonies in 1919. B. the League of Nations mandate on the former German colony of Cameroon . Italy sought access to the Atlantic Ocean via Cameroon and the Libyan hinterland, which is also claimed, to Lake Chad. Cameroon, however, was divided between Great Britain and France, with France receiving the majority. Italy came away empty-handed and initially had to come to terms with it. From 1932 onwards, Mussolini again raised claims and finally demanded the ultimate mandate over French Cameroon in order to remain in the British-French-Italian Stresa Front directed against Germany in 1935 , which French Prime Minister Laval strictly rejected.

As part of the British-French appeasement policy towards fascist Italy, Great Britain ceded the Sudanese Sarra triangle (Ma'tan as-Sarra) in 1934, and France the Chadian Aouzou strip to Italian Libya in the same year . A 22 km long (and a total of around 800 km²) coastal strip of French Somaliland (Djibouti) between Doumeira and Moulhoule was to be left to Italian Eritrea, but never surrendered because of the failure to ratify the treaty. In the Hoare-Laval Pact , Great Britain and France agreed in 1935 to pledge large parts of Ethiopia to Italy (Tigray, Ogaden) if it stopped the war against the rest.

After the victory over Ethiopia and the break with France and Great Britain in 1936, Italy gave up its claims to Cameroon in favor of Germany in the steel pact .

Asir and Yemen

The Farasan Islands lie between Asir or Saudi Arabia, Yemen and the former Italian Eritrea

Already during the Italo-Turkish War , Italy had supported the revolt of the Idrisiden von Asir from 1911 with money, weapons and through Italian naval operations in the Red Sea. Asir became briefly independent under the de facto protectorate of Italy. In the First World War, Italy supported and courted the Idrisids again from 1915. Italy hoped to maintain or at least lease the Farasan Islands , which were disputed between Asir and Yemen . The Idrisids, however, relied more heavily on Great Britain (the British gave them the Yemeni port city of al-Hudaida and the Farasan Islands after the end of the war ), and in 1919, instead of the Italians, French and British companies received comprehensive concessions for oil production on the Farasan Islands.

Fascist Italy instead began to support the claims of North Yemen. Armed with Italian weapons, Yemeni troops overran the Idrisids and recaptured al-Hudaida in 1925. Italian agents tried in 1926 to force Yemen to occupy the Farasan Islands as well. Mussolini and his colonial minister Pietro Lanza di Scalea supported the claims of the Yemeni Imam Yahya to (the British) South Yemen and Asir and thus hoped to secure Italy a privileged position in Yemen and (through treaties similar to the Tirana treaties with Albania) as To establish “protecting power”.

Italy built an ammunition factory, built radio stations, airfields and port facilities, and sent doctors and engineers. In the "Friendship and Trade Treaty" of September 2, 1926, Italy recognized Yahya as "King" and assured Yemen of the "protection" of its independence. In a secret supplementary agreement of June 1, 1927, Italy undertook to deliver further arms, including three aircraft - against which Great Britain in particular protested, which had been waging war against “insubordinate” Yemen since 1927.

The engagement of Rome on the coast of southern Arabia opposite the Italian-Eritrea led to the deterioration of the British-Italian relations, an attempt at a conference in Rome failed in 1927 because of the Italian claims on the Farasan Islands. Rome was not interested in a complete break with London, however, and in February 1934, without Italian help, Yemen was forced into a treaty with the British to give up its claims to South Yemen. Italy had already signed a friendship treaty with Saudi Arabia as early as 1933. Saudi Arabia then invaded Asir and Yemen in 1934 and occupied al-Hudaida. A British-French-Italian naval demonstration and the landing of Italian marines in al-Hudaida forced the Saudis to surrender the city, but the landing was only to protect Italian citizens and institutions, not to protect Yemeni interests. An Italian mediation proposal was rejected by the British, and in the Saudi-Yemeni peace treaty of May 1934, Yahya retained al-Hudaida, but also had to give up claims to Asir. The importance of Italy to Yemen then declined, although Yemen remained neutral during World War II. At the beginning of the Second World War, Italy again raised claims to sovereignty over Yemen and Saudi Arabia in secret German-Italian agreements.

Second World War

Italian prisoners of war in Tunisia, 1943

Agreements between the two Axis powers, the Greater German Reich and Italy, provided for Italy to gain territories at the expense of France: Italy was to receive Corsica and, in Africa, Tunisia, Djibouti and northern Chad. Italian East Africa would thus have bordered directly on German Central Africa . British Somaliland had occupied Italy as early as 1940 and annexed Italian East Africa. In addition, Italy demanded the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, Malta, northeast Kenya, Yemen, Aden, Oman, Treaty Man and Qatar. According to the Axis Powers, Egypt itself should change from British dependency to Italian dependency.

Italian attacks on Kenya ( Moyale , Mandera , El Wak, Todenyang) and Sudan ( Kassala , Gallabat , Kurmuk and Qeisan occupied from July 1940 to January 1941) failed; the British counterattack led to the loss of all of Italian East Africa by November 1941. In November 1942, German and Italian troops actually still occupied most of Tunisia, but after the loss of Libya, they were finally forced to surrender in Tunis in May 1943.

Aftermath

Foreign Minister Carlo Sforza tried in vain to get the colonies back in 1949

In the Paris Peace Treaty of 1947, Italy renounced all colonies. However, the victorious powers could not agree on the future of the former Italian colonies and transferred responsibility to the newly founded UN. In 1950 the UN General Assembly gave Italy another ten-year mandate over the former Italian Somaliland. A similar plan ( Bevin-Sforza-Plan ) for a ten-year tripartite division of Libya between Italy ( Tripolitania ), Great Britain ( Cyrenaica ) and France ( Fessan ) failed in 1949 due to protests by Libyans and the UN. As a prerequisite for this plan, Great Britain had encouraged the return of Italian settlers to Tripolitania from 1947 onwards. The settlers stayed in the country even after Libya became independent (1951/52); in 1962, around 35,000 Italians lived in Libya again. After the revolution of 1969, the Italian settlers were finally expropriated and expelled from Libya under various measures and laws between 1970 and 1974.

At the time of independence (1960), Somalia still had around 4,000 Italian settlers; after Siad Barres came to power (1969), their number had fallen to 3,300 by 1975 and to 2,300 by 1982. The last Italians left the country after the collapse of Somalia and the start of the civil war in 1991.

See also

literature

  • Benedetto Croce: History of Italy 1871-1915 . Lambert Schneider publishing house, Berlin and Munich 1928

Web links

Commons : Italian colonies  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Croce, page 123
  2. ↑ Nikolaos Mavropoulos: The Japanese expansionism in Asia and the Italian expansion in Africa - A comparative study of the early Italian and Japanese colonialism , pp. 57f. Dissertation at the University of Rome 2019 ( PDF )
  3. ↑ Awkir: History of Eritrea
  4. ↑ Croce, page 122
  5. ↑ a b Croce, page 111
  6. ↑ Croce, page 308
  7. ↑ a b Croce, page 175
  8. ↑ a b c Croce, page 191
  9. ↑ Munzinger Archive / Internationales Handbuch - Zeitarchiv 36/83 Libya, page 1
  10. ^ Lothar Rathmann : History of the Arabs - from the beginnings to the present , Volume 2 (The Arabs in the fight against Ottoman despotism and European colonial conquest), page 461. Akademie-Verlag Berlin 1975
  11. ↑ a b Croce, page 200
  12. ↑ The New York Times of March 10, 1899: Italy's demand in China  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / query.nytimes.com  
  13. ↑ Günter Kettermann: Atlas on the history of Islam. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 2001, ISBN 3-534-14118-0 , pp. 137f.
  14. ↑ Vladimir Petrowitsch Potjomkin (ed.): History of diplomacy. Volume 2: Venjamin M. Chvostov, Isaak Israelewitsch Minz : The diplomacy of modern times. Publishing house for foreign language literature, Moscow 1948, p. 342.
  15. ^ Gerhard Hellwig, Gerhard Linne: Daten der Weltgeschichte , pages 373 and 377. Bertelsmann Lexikon Verlag Gütersloh 1975
  16. ^ Dietmar Stübler: Italy. 1789 to the present. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-05-000077-5 , p. 106.
  17. ^ WP Potjomkin (ed.): History of diplomacy. Volume 3, Part 1: Venjamin M. Chvostov, Isaak Israelewitsch Minz : Diplomacy in the period of preparation for the Second World War (1919–1939). 2nd Edition. Publishing house for foreign language literature, Moscow 1948, p. 36ff.
  18. ↑ The fact that the Italian Parliament never ratified the Mussolini-Laval Agreement and Mussolini himself even terminated it in 1938, later strengthened France and Chad in their legal opinion that the Aouzou strip had never been ceded and therefore never legal possession of Italy or Been in Libya. In fact, however, it belonged to Italian Libya from 1935 until the French reconquest in 1943.
  19. ^ Lothar Rathmann : History of the Arabs - from the beginnings to the present , volume 2 (The Arabs in the fight against Ottoman despotism and European colonial conquest), page 386. Akademie-Verlag Berlin 1975
  20. ^ Clive Leatherdale: Britain and Saudi Arabia, 1925-1939 - The Imperial Oasis , pp. 136-165. Abingdon / New York 1983
  21. ^ RB Serjeant (Ed.), John Baldry: Arabian Studies , Volume 3, pages 51-64. Cambridge 1976
  22. ↑ Lothar Rathmann : History of the Arabs - from the beginnings to the present , Volume 3 (The Arab liberation movement in the fight against imperialist colonial rule, 1917-1945), pages 219-223. Akademie-Verlag Berlin 1975
  23. ↑ WP Potjomkin (Ed.): History of Diplomacy , Volume 3, Part 2: Diplomacy in the period of preparation for the Second World War (1919-1939). 2nd Edition. SWA-Verlag, Berlin 1948, p. 25f.
  24. ↑ Manuela Williams: Mussolini's Propaganda Abroad - Subversion in the Mediterranean and the Middle East, 1935-1940 , pages 38-43. Abingdon / New York 2006
  25. ^ Massimiliano Fiore: Anglo-Italian Relations in the Middle East 1922-1940 , pages 12-32. Farnham / Burlington 2010
  26. ^ Lothar Rathmann : History of the Arabs - from the beginnings to the present , Volume 5 (The collapse of the imperialist colonial system and the formation of sovereign Arab nation states), page 113. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1981
  27. ↑ Gustav Fochler-Hauke (Ed.): Der Fischer Weltalmanach 1969, page 100. Frankfurt am Main 1968
  28. ^ Lothar Rathmann : History of the Arabs - from the beginnings to the present , Volume 6 (The struggle for the development path in the Arab world), page 184. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1984
  29. ↑ Gustav Fochler-Hauke (Ed.): Der Fischer Weltalmanach 1962, page 163. Frankfurt am Main 1961
  30. ↑ Gustav Fochler-Hauke (Ed.): Der Fischer Weltalmanach 1967, page 131. Frankfurt am Main 1966
  31. ↑ Gustav Fochler-Hauke (Ed.): Der Fischer Weltalmanach 1975, page 156. Frankfurt am Main 1974
  32. ↑ Gustav Fochler-Hauke (Ed.): Der Fischer Weltalmanach 1982, page 446. Frankfurt am Main 1981