Neelam Srivastava. Italian Colonialism and Resistances to Empire, 1930–1970

Scholars of Italian imperialism often find themselves arguing against a perception that Italian colonialism was too late and too short-lived to be of value as a serious topic of study. Neelam Srivastava’s Italian Colonialism and Resistances to Empire, 1930–1970 disputes this by placing the Italian empire at the center of transnational anti-imperial movements. Srivastava focuses on one brief portion of the longer trajectory of Italian colonialism: the fascist occupation of Ethiopia from 1935 until the Second World War. But the “resistances to empire” in the book cover far more ground than the title suggests. Using a wide range of sources—from the novels of Claude McKay and the films of Gillo Pontecorvo to the personal archives of Sylvia Pankhurst and the official archives of the Italian Communist Party—Srivastava connects Italian expansion in East Africa to transnational networks of Pan-Africanism, anticolonialism, and antifascism. Srivastava’s book hinges on an ideological connection between forces of opposition to fascism and imperialism in the early twentieth century. Fundamentally, she argues that “anti-colonialism and anti-fascism are part and parcel of the same ideal: a will to transform the nation from within, a new concept of ‘nation’ that rejects imperialism and fascism in the same breath” (4). In Srivastava’s account, the Italian invasion of Ethiopia—as a distilled manifestation of fascism—clarified the shared interests of otherwise disparate groups. The connection sometimes appears more tenuous than the above quote would suggest, especially in the Italian context. Early on, she claims that “the emergence of socialism and communism as revolutionary and anti-fascist movements is inextricable from their concomitant development of an anti-colonial politics” (7). Indeed, the Italian Communist Party (PCI) formulated detailed plans to engage with anti-imperialist groups in the colonial world—and even participated in armed battle against fascist occupation forces in the Italian invasion of Ethiopia. But as Srivastava’s analysis demonstrates, the PCI maintained a paternalistic attitude toward its African partners and abandoned the anticolonial cause when nationalist sentiment so dictated. Nevertheless, Srivastava’s book provides a valuable rejoinder to those who would dismiss Italian expansion as too late in the game to merit attention. It is precisely because it occurred when it did that Italian colonialism in general and the occupation of Ethiopia more specifically served as a transnational catalyst for anticolonial opposition.

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