Tag Archives: colonial era

Articles: Afro-Asian Reactions to the Italo-Ottoman War, 1911-1912

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A dossier entitled “Responding to Invasion: Afro-Asian Reactions to the Italo- Ottoman War, 1911-1912” edited by Carlotta Marchi and Massimo Zaccaria has appeared in the journal Africa. Rivista semestrale di Studi e Ricerche (VI/2, 2024). The dossier’s abstract states:

This dossier provides a comprehensive examination of the social, cultural, and material consequences of the Italo-Ottoman War (1911–1912) within a global historiographical perspective. It explores how the Italian invasion of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica sparked widespread solidarity across non-European regions. While the historiography of the conflict has hitherto focused on its European ramifications, this dossier investigates the unexplored reactions from non-European societies, particularly in those regions connected to the Ottoman Empire, such as North Africa, the Horn of Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Indian Ocean. The articles examine global opinion and transnational networks of anti-imperialist and pan-Islamist activists, as well as alternative perspectives supporting Italy. By conducting such an analysis, the articles unveil intricate dynamics that supersede the conventional colonial dichotomy, emphasising collaborative endeavours and mediation initiatives.

Articles

Vanda Wilcox, “Towards a Global History of the Italo-Ottoman War”

Though often overshadowed by the events of the First World War, the Italo- Ottoman War deserves closer attention. Its study might be revitalized by drawing on recent historiographical trends within First World War studies, which emphasize both global perspective and a re- evaluation of chronological boundaries. Future studies might also draw on diverse methodological approaches, including military, social, political, and cultural histories, to deepen our understanding of the war’s multifaceted dimensions. The fields of African and colonial history can suggest further possible future avenues of approach, as can the Second Italo- Ethiopian War. The article calls for a nuanced re-evaluation of the Italo-Ottoman War that transcends Eurocentric perspectives and acknowledges its significance as a pivotal moment in global history, and concludes with a short evaluation of the war’s impact in British India.

Carlotta Marchi, “‘Arab Voices’: Press, Public Opinion and the Intellectual Response in Egypt on the Italo-Ottoman War”

During the Italo-Ottoman conflict of 1911-1912, Egypt played an important moral and material role. It was the scene of a series of manifestations and reactions of solidarity that took place in the press, in public opinion, and in literary and intellectual production. This response reflected the circulation of shared sentiments and ideals, of which Egypt became one of the centres of reference, based on a tangible trans-colonial perspective. In this sense, this paper aims to analyse the construction of awareness of the Italo-Ottoman war in Egypt, focusing on the role of “Arab voices” in promting a common sense of Ottoman, Arab and Islamic identity and solidarity, and a shared critique of Western “civilisation”. The study of newspapers, poems, discourses, reactions, and their impact and circulation favour a broader analysis of the expansion of anti-colonial solidarity, both geographically and temporally.

Massimo Zaccaria, “Courting African Public Opinion: Echoes of the Italo-Ottoman War along the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean”

The Italo-Ottoman war played an important role in mobilising public opinion. In the Americas as well as in Asia, the war aroused a great deal of participation, generated polemics and protests and, to a much lesser extent, gathered support. The study of the reactions to the Italian aggression in Africa has mainly concerned the northern part of the continent. Sub-Saharan Africa remains the great absentee, implicitly conveying the message that this region’s involvement in the conflict was minimal. Indeed, the area was not short of reactions, but one has to use the right sources and look beyond the newspapers. This is the only way to understand the profound impact that the war between Italy and the Ottoman Empire had on the Horn of Africa. Reactions were not clear-cut: the article explains why Pan-Islamism was not the only option available and why in some areas the Ottoman appeal was deliberately ignored.

Çiğdem Oğuz, “Beyond the Nationalist Propaganda: Rethinking Ottoman Literary Production on the Italo-Ottoman War of 1911”

As the last African territory of the Ottoman Empire, Tripolitania was of great importance to the Ottoman government in maintaining its prestige in the Muslim-Arab world. This paper examines the short stories mostly published in the new genre of “national literature” at the time of the Italo-Ottoman War of 1911. The stories provide insights into Ottoman-Turkish perspectives on Turkish-Arab solidarity, especially around the figure of the Caliph, as an Ottomanist strategy. While most of the stories aimed to illustrate the economic and social struggles of the empire and to evoke a sense of voluntarism to save the crumbling empire, they also served the practical purpose of responding to Italian claims of a “civilizing mission” that reduced the Ottoman Empire to colonial status, despite its recent attempt at political reform in 1908 with the Young Turk Revolution.

Silvia Pin, “The Reaction to the Italo-Ottoman War in the Hebrew Press of Jerusalem: A Reading of the Newspapers Ha-’Or and Ha-Ḥerut, October-November 1911″

The Italo-Ottoman war of 1911-1912 sparked bitter reactions in the contemporary press across the Ottoman Empire, as well as indignation and mobilisation against Italy. Amongst the Ottoman press, the Hebrew language newspapers of Jerusalem broadly covered the war, providing local Jewish perspectives on this much-debated event. This article aims to analyse the initial press coverage of the Italo-Ottoman war in two Zionist Hebrew-language newspapers of Jerusalem, the Ashkenazi Ha-’Or and the Sephardi Ha-Ḥerut. In the first months of war, the two Hebrew journals strongly though with some contradictions condemned the Italian invasion of Tripolitania, professed – and promoted – Jewish loyalty to the Empire and in so doing defended the harmless ends of Zionism. They denied that Jews in Tripoli supported the Italians and, in covering pro-Ottoman demonstrations in and out of Palestine, notably in Egypt, Ha-Ḥerut also took note of a burgeoning pan-Islamic sentiment triggered as a reaction to the Italian assault.

Book: La politica berbera nella Libia coloniale

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Chiara Pagano, La politica berbera nella Libia coloniale. Identità, reti e conflitti (1835-1924) (Carocci, 2025).

“A seguito del crollo del regime di Gheddafi l’etnicità berbera/amazigh ha fornito un efficace dispositivo di affermazione politica ad alcuni gruppi libici che si sono mobilitati in aperta polemica con il paradigma panarabo dominante. L’attivismo amazigh ha ricercato nel passato gli argomenti per legittimarsi nel presente, riaffermando un legame originario con il territorio per rivendicare il riconoscimento come popolo indigeno, più che come minoranza. Eppure, come l’identità nazionale, anche l’identità etnica è un prodotto storico contingente, plasmato da specifici processi politici. Il volume ricostruisce in chiave critica la (ri)produzione dell’etnicità amazigh nella storia della Libia contemporanea, focalizzandosi sul periodo tra la metà dell’Ottocento e l’avvento del fascismo. Vengono così analizzate le rivendicazioni avanzate da attori locali definiti come “berberi” nei confronti delle autorità ottomane prima e coloniali poi. Da queste emerge come la politica berbera promossa dalle autorità italiane, e fatta propria da alcuni notabili tripolitani, individuò nell’etnicità uno strumento privilegiato per l’organizzazione gerarchica della società coloniale. Fu allora che vennero poste le basi delle dinamiche identitarie che, ancora oggi, naturalizzano l’opposizione tra gruppi arabi e berberi proiettandone le origini in un passato indefinito.”

Article: Italy, Libya and the EU: Co-dependent systems and interweaving imperial interests at the Mediterranean border

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Alessandra Ferrini, “Italy, Libya and the EU: Co-dependent systems and interweaving imperial interests at the Mediterranean border”, in The Entangled legacies of empire Race, finance and inequality, edited by Paul Gilbert, Clea Bourne, Max Haiven & Johnna Montgomerie (Manchester University Press, 2023), 197–207. Open Access.

Abstract: The picture at the opening of the chapter portrays former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi greeting Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi as he arrives in Rome in 2009. The meeting celebrated the Treaty on Friendship, Partnership and Cooperation between Italy and Libya and the signing of the Bilateral Agreements that have led to the current racialization of the Mediterranean border (through Italy’s right to send migrants arriving by sea back to Libya, where they are incarcerated in detention camps that severely violate human rights). Pinned to Gaddafi’s chest was a photograph of the Libyan anticolonial leader Omar al-Mukhtar in chains, taken before he was executed by Mussolini’s army in 1931. This gesture sparked outrage in Italy, as it was perceived as a mockery of Berlusconi’s earlier visits to Libya where he presented formal apologies and reparations for the Italian occupation of Libya (1911–43) as part of the Treaty. Yet, Berlusconi’s politics of apology was motivated by Italy’s need to reach agreements with Gaddafi on the control of migration across the Mediterranean, as well as agreements on commercial deals – from the supply of oil and gas to the creation of a free market zone in Libya for Italian companies. Thus, colonial reparations were accompanied by a reinforcement of neocolonial relations.

Book: Confronting the Archive of Coloniality Across Italy and Libya

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A new book by artist Alessandra Ferrini, entitled Like Swarming Maggots: Confronting the Archive of Coloniality Across Italy and Libya with contributions from a number of artists and writers (including yours truly), has just been published by Berlin-based Archive Books.

Featuring Ferrini’s long-term research on the colonial and neo-colonial relations between Italy and Libya through a critical engagement with the Italian ‘archive of coloniality’ and its structural violence. The book includes documentation of Ferrini’s major project Gaddafi in Rome, whose last iteration is currently exhibited at the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia curated by Adriano Pedrosa, as well as a series of works reflecting on positionality, censorship, and the erasure of the genocide perpetrated by the Italians in Libya.

Building on the artist’s interest in writing, translation, and collaboration as forms of resistance practice, it brings together different voices and visual materials, putting forward a reflection on the ethical dimension of cultural work. As a result, the book includes original contributions, reprints, and translations by writers, scholars, curators, and practitioners pivotal to the development of Ferrini’s work and thinking.

Like Swarming Maggots: Confronting the Archive of Coloniality Across Italy and Libya includes a preface by Bassam El Baroni and contributions by: Tewa Barnosa, Adam Benkato, NiccolòAcram Cappelletto, Chiara Cartuccia, Sarri Elfaitouri, Amalie Elfallah, Khaled Mattawa, Maaza Mengiste, Barbara Spadaro, Daphne Vitali.

Article: Photography, Media Uses and Emotions during the Italo-Turkish War in Tripolitania (1911–12)

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Pierre Schill, The Brutalised Bodies of a Colonial Conquest Before the Court of Global Opinion: Photography, Media Uses and Emotions during the Italo-Turkish War in Tripolitania (1911–12). History of Photography 47 (2023), pp. 315-343

Photographer unknown, ‘French War Reporters in Tripoli’, 23 October 1911 (Montpellier, archives départementales de l’Hérault (Vigné d’Octon papers), 1 E 1149). See the article for full details.
This article analyses the global circulation of around fifty photographs taken at the end of October 1911 at Shar al-Shatt, near Tripoli, by journalists documenting the mass execution of civilians by Italian soldiers. By attending to the interaction of text and image, and to the layouts of visual spreads in the global press, the article demonstrates how photographs of these dead bodies were imbued with a range of political meanings, variously protesting and legitimising such forms of extreme violence. The article explains how the emotions aroused worldwide by these images prompted the Italian authorities to create a visual counter-narrative by publicising photographs of the bodies of their own soldiers mutilated by a ‘bestialised’ enemy. The dissemination of visual evidence of brutality committed by both sides constitutes an early example of a ‘contest of images’ whereby press photography was used to mobilise antagonistic affective communities: variously pan-Islamic, anti-colonial, and trans-imperial. The diversity and inventiveness of the visual politics of persuasion implemented during the conquest of Tripolitania and the intensity of the reactions that this imagery produced reveal the emerging centrality of photojournalists in bearing witness to mass violence in the twentieth century.

Photographic Archives of the “Italo-Turkish War”

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The Harvard library holds several private photographic albums documenting the Italian invasion of Libya in 1911-12, sometimes referred to as the “Italo-Turkish War”. The albums belonged to individuals: Count Pompeo Campello, a professional photographer and army officer, Carlo Caneva, general of the armed forces in Libya, and Angelo Cormanni, soldier working in the telegraph unit.

Pompeo di Campello (1874-1927): “Campagna di Libia (9 ottobre 1911 – 28 maggio 1912)”

Carlo Caneva (1845-1922): “Guerra Italo-Turca 1911-1912 / Ricordi di Bengasi”

Angelo Cormanni: “Guerra di Africa”

Some studies have been written about these albums:

  • Dalila Colucci, Images of Propaganda: Emotional Representations of the Italo-Turkish War 2021, “Close Encounters in War and the Emotions.” Eds. Gianluca Cinelli, Patrizia Piredda, and Simona Tobia. Close Encounters in War 4 (2021), 75–122.
  • Luca Mazzei, “L’occhio insensibile. Cinema e fotografia durante la prima Campagna di Libia 1911-1913,” in Fotografia e culture visuali del XXI secolo, vol. 2, ed. Enrico Menduini and Lorenzo Marmo (Rome: Roma Tre-Press, 2018).

Some articles on Libyan/Italian entanglements by Italian scholars

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Ravelli, Galadriel. 2024. Libyan deportees on the Italian island of Ustica: Remembering colonial deportations in the (peripheral) metropole. Memory Studies. https://doi.org/10.1177/17506980231224759.

In 1911, the Italian liberal government launched the colonial occupation of what is now known as Libya, which was met with unexpected local resistance. The government resorted to mass deportations to the metropole to sedate the resistance, which continued for more than two decades under both the liberal and Fascist regimes. This chapter of Europe’s and Italy’s colonial history has been almost entirely removed from collective memory. The article explores the extent to which colonial deportations are remembered on the Sicilian Island of Ustica, which witnessed the deportation from Libya of more than 2000 people. Currently, the island is home to the only cemetery in Italy that is entirely dedicated to Libyan deportees. I argue that the visits of Libyan delegations, which took place from the late 1980s to 2010, succeeded in challenging colonial aphasia at the local level. Yet, as a result of Ustica’s peripheral position within the national space, the memory work developed through the encounter between local and Libyan actors remained marginal, despite its potential to redefine the Mediterranean as a symbolic space where colonial histories are articulated and remembered. Italy’s outsourcing of the memory work in relation to colonial deportations implies a missed opportunity to interrogate the postcolonial present and thus question persistent dynamics of power in Europe that exclude the constructed Other.

Morone, Antonio M. 2024. The Libyan askaris on the eve of national independence: two life stories across different strategies of intermediation. The Journal of North African Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/13629387.2024.2360911.

Italian colonial authorities heavily relied on the askaris (i.e. native soldiers) throughout the history of colonialism to alleviate the economic and political burdens of colonial warfare. For that, the askaris became privileged intermediaries for the Italians and emerged as a de facto elite within colonial society, seeking social mobility for themselves and their families. After the end of the Second World War, the askaris lost their role as soldiers, but gained new relevance as political intermediaries for Italian or British plans regarding the final resolution of the Italian colonies affaire. The article delves into the life stories of two askaris, which were documented by the author on 3rd November 2009, in Tripoli. Their memories highlight the relationships of friendship or intimacy that existed with the colonisers and showcase the askaris’ ability to downplay colonial elements of domination and oppression through their intermediation. Being an askar entailed, on one hand, questioning the political and racial boundaries of society, and on the other hand, challenging the agendas of nationalist groups. The transition to independence indeed involved a struggle between colonisers and the colonised, as well as among various groups of colonial subjects, all vying for power within the post-colonial State and society.

Tarchi, Andrea. 2022. A ‘catastrophic consequence’: Fascism’s debate on the legal status of Libyans and the issue of mixed marriages (1938–1939). Postcolonial Studies 25(4). 527–544. https://doi.org/10.1080/13688790.2021.1964764.

This article assesses the role that institutional concern for the possibility of interracial marriages played in the Italian Fascist party’s internal debate regarding the legal status of Libyans in the second half of the 1930s. Following the end of the ‘pacification’ of the Libyan resistance in 1932, Governor Italo Balbo pushed for the region’s demographic colonization and the legal inclusion of the colonial territory and its population within the metropole. In contrast, Fascist Party officials in Rome endorsed starker racial segregation in the colonies based on the racist ideology that permeated the regime after the declaration of the empire in 1936. The legal inclusion of Libyans within the metropolitan body politic touched upon the regime’s most sensitive theme: the need to avoid any promiscuity that could interfere with the racial consciousness of Fascist Italy. This article analyses this dispute through the lens of interracial marriage and concubinage regulations, framing it into the definition of a normative standard of Italian whiteness through the racialization of the colonial Other.

Rossetto, Piera. 2023. ‘We Were all Italian!’: The construction of a ‘sense of Italianness’ among Jews from Libya (1920s–1960s). History and Anthropology 34(3). 409–435. https://doi.org/10.1080/02757206.2020.1848821.

The paper explores how a ‘sense of Italianness’ formed among Jews in Libya during the Italian colonial period and in the decades following its formal end. Based on interviews with Jews born in Libya to different generations and currently living in Israel and Europe, the essay considers the concrete declensions of this socio-cultural phenomenon and the different meanings that the respondents ascribe to it. Meanings span from the macro level of historical events and societal changes, to the micro level of individual social relations and material culture. Viewed across generations and framed in the peculiarities of Italian colonial history, the ‘sense of Italianness’ expressed by Jews in Libya appears as both a colonial and post-colonial legacy.

Novel: L’ascaro (The Conscript) by Ghebreyesus Hailu

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After almost 100 years, the anti-colonial novel “The Conscript” has finally appeared in Italian translation, thanks to the work of translator Uoldelul Chelati Dirar and funding obtained by Alessandra Ferrini.

Originally written in Tigrinya in 1927, an English translation by Ghirmai Negash appeared in 2012, while an Arabic version by Faraj al-Tarhouni has come out in recent years in Libya. The author, Gebreyesus Hailu (1906–1993) was a prominent and influential figure in the cultural and intellectual life of Eritrea during the Italian colonial period and in the post-Italian era in Africa. He earned a PhD in theology, was vicar general of the Catholic Church in Eritrea, and played several important roles in the Ethiopian government, including as cultural attaché at the Ethiopian Embassy in Rome.

The original Tigrinya version of the novel is not in print but a PDF has been made available by Ghirmai Negash, the English translator, and can be found here.

كتاب: الفضائع السود الحمر من صفحات الاستعمار الايطالي

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In the 1930s, a “Commission for the Liberation of Libya” (هيئة تحرير ليبيا) headed by Bashir al-Sa‘dawi published a book entitled The Black-Red Atrocities from the Pages of Italian Colonization in Libya, or, Civilization by Iron and Fire (الفضائع السود الحمر من صفحات الاستعمار الايطالي في ليبيا او التمدين بالحديد والنار) documenting atrocities committed by the Italian colonial occupation in Libya and mocking claims that colonization would lead to modernization and progress for the colonized. It appears to be the case that this book is a revised version of al-Sa‘dawi’s Fadhā’i‘ made by a group of Libyan exiles in Syria. The second printing under this title, in 1948 in Cairo, added a section arguing for Libyan unity and independence after WWII. Together with the earlier edition of Sa‘dawi’s work and Shatwan & Sherif’s “Aspirations et idéal national” it is one of the few Libyan anti-colonial writings of the time.