Conferences

“Past Subjectivities, Today’s Historians”

“Islands of Italianness”

“Colonial Cultures, Fascist Cultures”

Cultivating Italy's “Fourth Shore”
Agricultural Settlers in Colonial Libya

Following its rise to power in 1922, the Fascist government of Italy denoted the recently acquired colony of Libya as its "fourth shore," to be Italianized via the settlement of hardworking Italian citizens. The official settlement projects of the 1930s sought to create "islands of Italianness" inhabited by "true" Italians that would revive the territory's Ancient Roman legacy. My paper will discuss agricultural discourses, programs, and practices aimed at the "Italianization" of Libya during Fascism.

How was the forceful transformation of the lived environment from Arab pastoralism to Italian cultivation enacted on the ground? My paper illustrates that in financing agricultural settlement projects in Libya, the regime severed its ties with large estate holders and endorsed a form of capitalism centered on small land ownership. The careful selection of prospective farmers was driven by concerns regarding class membership, family structure, and regional provenance. Analysis of the selection process also demonstrates that "Italianness" was primarily identified by prospects' allegiance to Fascism. What was sold as a project of Italianization was really an attempt to create a model Fascist region.

The settlement program in Libya fulfilled both Fascist rural ideology and Fascist modernist aspirations as it strove to turn the desert into a blooming garden. My paper shows that the promotion of a patriarchal model for the family, the cultivation of a national sense of belonging among settlers, and the instilment of an understanding of property focused on emotional attachment lay at the center of Fascism's colonial politics. These principles, however, clashed with settlers' perceptions of ownership, family relations, and communal allegiance. Under strict supervision of the authorities and often in opposition to them, settlers struggled to create a new homeland in a difficult and foreign environment.

Does National History Really Matter Anymore?
Perspectives on Modern Italy

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“Identity Dilemmas” in Colonial History

“Europe's Civilization under Siege”
Assertions of Difference in the Absence of Race

“Fourth Shores” of Italian Fascism

During the 1930s, the Fascist regime aimed at the Italianization of two very distinct territories: the multiethnic border province of South Tyrol and the Mediterranean colony of Libya. As a predominantly ethnic-German province, South Tyrol did not easily fit the category of the national "homeland." Similarly, Libya cannot be equated with the colonial empire in East Africa because policies adopted in Libya aimed at transforming the colony into Italy's "fourth shore." In 1939, Libya's coastal area became the 19th region of Italy. Both South Tyrol and Libya thus occupied hybrid positions in the national and the imperial imagination. And both provided an exceptional playground to forge a specifically fascist version of "Italianness."

Seeking to expand the frontiers of the nation, both government policies and day-to-day encounters between "Italians" and "natives" in South Tyrol and Libya oscillated constantly between the goals of native assimilation and segregation. Contesting a too neat division between "homeland" and "colony," my paper compares and contrasts "national" and "colonial" politics and experiences of Italianization. In particular, my paper focuses on the "scontro-incontro" between the local population and the Italian settlers in agricultural developments in Libya and in industrial developments in South Tyrol. In both locales, the official settlement projects sought to create "isole di italianità", inhabited by "true" Italians from the "old provinces." Coming from different regions, the settlers struggled to create new communities, often under strict supervision of authorities. There was certainly ambiguity and uneasiness about the level of interaction and integration to be desired and achieved between settlers and natives. Even though the new settlements were conceived as self-contained islands of Italianness, both formal and informal contact with the local population ensued.

In my presentation, I focus on everyday encounters within and outside the Italian settlements and illustrate how contacts were mediated by assumptions and expectations on the part of both natives and immigrants. These informal economic ties, neighborhood contacts, and work relations are greatly understudied but their exploration and analysis points to their destabilizing and transforming potential of the regime's increasingly racially-marked efforts at Italianization that shifted from policies of native assimilation and integration to policies of native segregation and separation.

“Mi trovo qui in mezzo a Italiani che non vogliono essere Italiani che se potessero ci vorebbero morti.”
Opera Nazionale Combattenti e l’azione di italianizzazione in Sudtirolo tra le due guerre.

Dal 1927, l'Opera Nazionale Combattenti gestí un'azienda agricola a Merano impiegando coloni ex-combattenti provenienti dal Trentino e dalle cosidette "vecchie provincie" del Regno. Per mezzo della colonizzazione agricola, l'ONC mirava all'italianizzazione del territorio allogeno. Nonostante la dichierata massima importanza di questo obiettivo, l'ONC si trovò ripetutatemente in contraddizione e conflitto con altri organi statali riguardo il trattamento dei coloni e della popolazione autoctona. La costante scarsità di fondi e le divergenze tra sede locale e sede centrale debilitarono ulteriormente l'adempimento del progetto di italianizzazione. I coloni, d'altro canto, tentarono di creare una nuova esistenza per le loro famiglie nei loro rapporti con ONC, autorità fasciste e allogeni.

Colonization, Migration, Identities: Making Libya Italian
The Experience of Italian Settlers in Colonial Libya

My paper discusses discourses, programs, and practices aimed at the "Italianization" of Libya during Fascism. Libya held a particular place within the Fascist colonial empire. Denoted as quarta sponda, Libya was to be Italianized via the settlement of Italian citizens. In fascist discourse, the "Italianità" of the Libyan territory was never questioned. What was at stake was the actualization/materialization of this alleged spatial "Italianness."

The colony's Ancient Roman heritage and its Mediterranean legacy legitimized the "Italianness" of the land and lessened the "foreignness" of the Libyan population. In fact, the perceived historical and geographical linkage between immigrant Italians and native Arabs complicated and challenged clear-cut assertions of racial, cultural, and religious superiority. The ambiguity of official approaches towards the Arab population was reflected, enforced, and at times challenged in the daily encounters between fascist authorities, colonial bureaucrats, Italian settlers, and the different segments of the Arab population.

A number of policies were employed in bringing people (natives and immigrant Italians) in line with the apparent national character of the territory. My paper illustrates some official and private efforts at making the claim of Italianness real, visible, and lived. These efforts often resulted in murky, unstable, and uneven outcomes. State projects of national education and acculturation were selectively aimed at the native population, but increasingly targeted the Italian settlers who in great numbers moved to Libya but fell short of fulfilling the standards of "Italianness" set by the Fascist regime. The educational efforts of the Fascist state went beyond the formal school system, setting the standards for what it meant to live an "Italian" life in the colony: family relationships, land usage, and work habits were defined in nationalistic terms. Yet, the fascist homogenizing project hinged on contradictory definitions of Italianness and gender, age, and regional differences among settlers defied the regime's vision of conformity. Informal economic ties, neighborhood contacts, and work relations destabilized and transformed the regime's efforts at Italianization.

Le “quarte sponde” del fascismo italiano

Durante gli anni trenta la conquista di un impero coloniale in Africa e l'affermazione di un "mare nostrum" mediterraneo divennero priorità nazionali per il regime fascista italiano. La dittatura giustificò le sue imprese coloniali con le presunte "necessità demografiche" del paese. Alcuni coloni si trasferirono in Libia in seguito all'invasione del 1911, tuttavia progetti di colonizzazione di massa vennero promossi solo nella seconda metà degli anni trenta quando intere famiglie provenienti dalle più diverse regioni italiane furono trasferite in Libia con il compito di bonificare gli arridi terreni della Tripolitania e della Cirenaica.

Oltre alla creazione di un impero, il fascismo mirava alla formazione di un'identità nazionale fascista omogenea che non doveva incombere su di una gerarchia sociale e politica ben delimitata nonostante la sua valenza per tutti i cittadini dello stato, adulti e bambini. Una serie di misure sempre più repressive si prefiggeva quindi di italianizzare le popolazioni etnicamente e linguisticamente distinte nei territori annessi nell' Italia del Nord dopo la prima guerra mondiale. Quando questi sforzi fallirono in Alto Adige, il regime fascista perseguì il suo obbiettivo di italianizzazione tramite un'aggressiva politica di insedimento di "veri" italiani delle cosidette "vecchie provincie". Impieghi nell'amministrazione pubblica vennero occupati quasi esclusivamente da immigrati italiani e i tanti progetti di lavori pubblici impiegavano per la maggior parte mano d'opera proveniente dalle provincie adiacenti. Il più grande afflusso di italiani però arrivò con l'industrializzazione di Bolzano, quando generose sovvenzioni governative indussero diverse industrie a trasferire le loro operazioni nella capitale di provincia.

La Libia e l'Alto Adige furono acquisiti dallo stato italiano nello stesso decennio, e tutti e due i territori furono integrati nello stato-nazione italiano principalmente sotto il fascismo. La zona costiera della Libia, denotata come "quarta sponda", venne considerata parte integrante della nazione italiana e, come l'Alto Adige, doveva essere italianizzata tramite l'insediamento di cittadini italiani. In che modo venivano immaginati ed implementati i progetti di colonizzazione ed italianizzazione nella provincia multietnica dell'Alto Adige ed nel territorio coloniale della Libia negli anni venti e trenta? Cosa motivò uomini e donne a migrare verso questi territori presumilmente "italiani" ma in realtà piuttosto "stranieri"? Come affrontarono questi emigranti le difficoltà che incontrarono in ambienti sconosciuti fino a quel momento e come si rapportarono a relazioni sociali, economiche e culturali nuove?

Il mio lavoro di ricerca si prefigge di analizzare queste domande paragonando le modalità e le strategie di colonizzazione fascista "esterna" in Libia ed "interna" in Alto Adige, osservandone quindi somiglianze e differenze. Studi recenti sugli imperialismi europei hanno rilevato i collegamenti, i trasferimenti e le tensioni tra metropoli e colonie ponendo l'accento sulla nazione come spazio "imperializzato". La mia ricerca si basa su queste nozioni, contestando la troppo netta distinzione tra "madrepatria" e "colonia" nello studio di modelli ed esperienze propri di una colonizzazione che oscillò invece costantemente tra assimilazione e segregazione anche quando veniva praticata entro i presunti confini nazionali.

La mia comparazione tra la situazione della Libia e quella dell'Alto Adige dipende, in parte, dalle analoghe imposizioni proposte dal regime fascista: la convinzione nel diritto assoluto dell'Italia al controllo politico, economico e culturale delle due regioni, le insistenti asserzioni di superiorità culturale e razziale, le politiche contradittorie di assimilazione e segregazione, il violento ed umiliante trattamento delle popolazioni native e le pretese risolute di una "missione civilizzatrice" italiana. Nell'analizzare immagini e programmi simili a livello sia nazionale che coloniale non intendo suggerire che le esperienze dei coloni italiani, da una parte, e delle popolazioni native, dall'altra, furono esattamente identiche in Libia ed in Alto Adige. Tuttavia, discorsi e pratiche di italianizzazione e fascistizzazione operarono in entrambe le località, influenzando le esperienze degli immigrati italiani e dei loro "altri" in modo analogo e meritano quindi la nostra attenzione in quanto possono aiutarci a capire in modo diverso la formazione complessa e contraddittoria di una nazione occidentale come l'Italia.

Teaching “Italianness”
The Italianization Efforts of the Fascist Regime in South Tyrol

The conference paper analyzes discourses and practices that sought to delineate the parameters and define the content of "Italianness" (Italianità) during the twenty-year period of Fascist rule in Italy. Specifically, the paper examines the efforts of the Fascist regime to Italianize the ethnic German population of the northern province of South Tyrol (Alto Adige), a former territory of the Habsburg Monarchy annexed by Italy after World War I. One of the ways in which the regime hoped to bring its recalcitrant German-speaking population into the fold of the Fascist Italian nation was by outlawing German schools. Female schoolteachers from across Italy were sent to the recently annexed province in order to educate South Tyrolean children in Italian. The maestre (female teachers), who are vividly remembered by their former pupils, sought not only to teach the Italian language and culture but also to instill the Fascist spirit and an unwavering sense of Italianness. Why did the regime entrust women with the imperative task of constructing a fascist Italian hegemony in South Tyrol? What was the normative understanding of Italianness that these female teachers brought to the province as they attempted to turn ethnic German children into fascist Italians? By investigating the interactions between schoolchildren, female teachers, and the wider social environment, I explore the articulation of racial, ethnic, and gender differences in Fascist Italy.

The Politics of Sentiment in Fascist Italy

My paper analyzes the emotions that underlay, signaled, and informed the relationship between the Fascist regime and Italy's female population. The regime aimed not only to control the political, social, and cultural dimensions of everyday life but also to delineate and pervade the subjectivity of ordinary Italian men, women, and children. It attempted to captivate the Italian population through the prescription, communication, and performance of particular emotions for the purpose of creating a racially pure, imperial, and belligerent Italian nation. Yet, the regime was not always successful in instilling and harnessing sentiments. In spite of its bombastic propagation, the emotional economy envisioned by the authorities was forced to contend with preexisting structures of feelings; novel attitudes, desires, and aspirations; as well as modern developments in gender roles, work patterns, and family relations. The sensibilities opposed by the dictatorship did not necessarily challenge the political power of Fascism. Yet, the presence of alternative subjectivities, practices, and relationships and the incidence of "unfascist" postures toward family, work, and consumption resisted the emotive impositions of the regime and in consequence undermined the national project of fascist subject formation.

Center and Periphery
National Identities Amidst Local Sentiments and Imperial Aspirations

The “local” has been attributed a crucial role in the creation of a homogenous national consciousness in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Germany. Celia Applegate and Alon Confino for instance have analyzed the significance of localized Heimat sentiments in the formation of a statewide sense of national belonging. The employment of the “local” as a category of analysis highlights the relevance of place in historical processes. By calling attention to the engagement of the provincial bourgeoisie in defining and delineating the German nation, Applegate and Confino have countered assumptions about the primacy of the imperial German state in the imaginative creation of a uniform national body. However, the application and reinterpretation of Heimat sentiments for the purpose of forging a common national consciousness was probably a more confrontational process than the analyses of Applegate and Confino suggest, as various actors intervened in the classification of the German nation both by producing and consuming a number of images and by interacting with the state apparatus.