Research

“A Tale of Two Borders: Settlement and National Transformation in Libya and South Tyrol under Fascism”

This study explores the Italian project of nation-building in South Tyrol and Libya under Fascism. Settlers from across the peninsula were entrusted with the task of transforming these “foreign” borderlands into model Fascist homelands. Libya, an African colony, was renamed Italy’s “fourth shore,” and South Tyrol, a multiethnic province in the Italian Alps, was construed as a bulwark of Italianness shoring up the nation to the North. Agricultural and industrial settlement projects, tentatively initiated in the late 1920s and aggressively implemented in the mid 1930s, sought to completely alter the social makeup of these linguistically and culturally diverse regions. This study traces these transformative efforts by investigating the Fascist politics of difference, land appropriation, and demography. Their analysis illustrates the how the histories of Italian expansionism along the Alpine ridge and on the African shoreline were intertwined; nationalist ideologies of “redemption,” judicial and administrative directives in support of “Italianization,” strategies aimed at the creation of a ready-made “Italian” environment, and even the attitudes and expectations of settlers converged in remarkable ways.

The juxtaposition of policies and outcomes of colonization in Europe and overseas shows that, under Fascism, national policies did not merely inform imperial policies or vice versa. Rather, national and imperial practices were part of a common, albeit at times ineffectual, strategy of rule. Moreover, Fascist expansionism rested on the forceful management of native peoples and immigrant Italians. The power differential between those in charge of settlement and the settlers themselves speaks of relations marked not only by consent, cooperation, and negotiation, but also by indifference, opportunism, evasion, and coercion. Indeed, violence and force were at play even with respect to the apparently fortunate beneficiaries of state patronage. Finally, Fascism associated its project of national expansion with clear borders marked by “true” Italians. National dominance through settlement rested on a contentious debate and selection process centered on vague and shifting notions of “Italianness.” Correspondingly, we can also witness Fascist conceptions of “the other” changing throughout the interwar period, their translation into policies operating on a sliding scale ranging from assimilation to segregation, even to removal.

Historical Background

Until 1911 the North African regions of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica, which roughly correspond to today’s Libya, were under the formal control of the Ottoman Empire. Arabs and Berbers comprised the majority of the population, with small Jewish, Greek, and Italian communities living in the cities along the coastline. Italy’s official presence in Libya started only with the military campaign of September 1911. After the control of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica passed from the Ottoman Empire to Liberal Italy in October 1912, the Italian colonial authorities continued to face violent opposition from the many factions of the Libyan anti-colonial resistance for years to come...   download more in PDF format