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Italy in the Triangle of the Horn: Too Many Corners for a Half Power

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Giampaolo Calchi Novati
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Extract

A paradox of Italian colonial policy was the striking contrast between the main aims and the actual results of its overseas initiatives. The Mediterranean with its familiar towns, harbours, and cultures, and plenty of Italians transplanted from the poor overpopulated countryside of the Peninsula, was the main area of desirable expansion, but historical circumstances forced Italy to divert her attention towards the faraway and unknown Horn of Africa. The Foreign Minister, P. S. Mancini, in January 1885 adroitly formulated a bizarre aphorism in a bid to convince a disoriented public opinion and doubtful parliamentarians: ‘The Red Sea is the key to the Mediterranean’. So from the outset of Italian colonialism, dreams competed with interests almost making the authorities lose a sense of proportion.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 32 , Issue 3 , September 1994 , pp. 369 - 385
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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References

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17 Ibid.

18 Italy had accepted the federal solution for Eritrea ‘only thanks to the intervention of the [US] Department of State, and assurances provided by the Secretary of State, Acheson, Dean, in September 1950’, according to the minutes of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, September 1951.Google ScholarIbid.

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