Italian Empire: A Visual History

Italy's colonial empire began with the purchase of Assab on the Red Sea in 1882 and grew to include Eritrea, Somalia, Libya (taken from the Ottomans in 1911-1912), the Dodecanese, and, after a brutal war in 1935-1936, Ethiopia. Mussolini added Albania in 1939. At its peak in 1940 it covered about 3.8 million km2 with roughly 12 million subjects. Defeat in the Second World War stripped it all away; the last piece, the trusteeship of Somalia, ended in 1960.

When it existed: the era ribbon

The bold bar is Italian Empire. The lighter bars are empires and wars from the same era and the same part of the world. Click any bar to jump to its page.

Italian colonial territory

Timeline of the Italian Empire

1. 1882
   Assab purchasedItaly's first colony.
2. 1890
   Eritrea founded
3. 1896
   AdwaEthiopia defeats Italy.
4. 1911
   Italo-Turkish WarLibya and the Dodecanese taken.
5. 1935
   Invasion of EthiopiaAddis Ababa falls May 1936.
6. 1939
   Albania occupied
7. 1941
   Italian East Africa lost
8. 1947
   Colonies renouncedTreaty of Paris.
9. 1960
   Somalia independent

Scramble and Adwa

Newly unified Italy wanted an empire to match its neighbours. It took Massawa in 1885 and formed Eritrea in 1890, and gained a protectorate over southern Somalia. An attempt to make Ethiopia a protectorate ended in disaster at Adwa in 1896, where Menelik II's army destroyed an Italian force, killing some 6,000 and forcing Italy to recognise Ethiopian independence.

Libya and the Fascist empire

Italy seized Libya and the Dodecanese from the Ottomans in 1911-1912 but fought Senussi resistance for two decades; under Fascism, Graziani used concentration camps and gas to crush it by 1932. Mussolini invaded Ethiopia in October 1935, using mustard gas and bombing, entered Addis Ababa in May 1936 and proclaimed King Victor Emmanuel III emperor of Italian East Africa. Albania was occupied in April 1939.

Collapse

Italy's entry into the war in June 1940 exposed the empire. British and Commonwealth forces overran Italian East Africa in 1941 and Haile Selassie returned to Addis Ababa; Libya was lost after El Alamein in 1943. The 1947 peace treaty renounced all colonies. Italy administered Somalia as a UN trusteeship until 1960.

Related empires and wars

Chosen automatically by overlap in time and geography, plus a few hand picked connections.

Empires of the same era and region

• Ottoman Empire (1299 to 1922)
• British Empire (1583 to 1997)
• German colonial empire (1884 to 1919)
• Nazi Germany (1933 to 1945)
• Spanish Empire (1492 to 1976)
• Austro-Hungarian Empire (1867 to 1918)

Wars of the same era and region

• Conquests of Menelik II (1878 to 1904)
• Italo-Senussi wars (1911 to 1932)
• World War II (1939 to 1945)
• World War I (1914 to 1918)
• Wars of Italian Unification (Risorgimento) (1848 to 1871)
• Mahdist War (1881 to 1899)

8 surprising things about the Italian Empire

1. Adwa in 1896 was the largest defeat of a European army by an African one in the colonial period.
2. The Italo-Turkish War of 1911 saw the first aerial bombing in history, from an Italian aircraft over Libya.
3. Mussolini's Ethiopian campaign used about 300 tonnes of mustard gas, in violation of the Geneva Protocol Italy had signed.
4. The Fascist regime deported around 100,000 Libyans of Cyrenaica to concentration camps; perhaps 40,000 died.
5. The 'Fourth Shore' project settled 100,000 Italian farmers in Libya by 1940.
6. Italian was made an official language of Eritrea and Somalia; Asmara is still famous for its Italian modernist architecture.
7. The Dodecanese, held from 1912, became Greek only in 1947.
8. Italy's empire at its 1940 peak lasted barely 18 months.

Sources

• Italian Empire Wikipedia
• Italo-Ethiopian War Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Battle of Adwa Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Nicola Labanca, Oltremare: Storia dell'espansione coloniale italiana (2002) Il Mulino

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