Italian Colonialism and Resistances to Empire, 1930–1970

271 Pages·2018·2.12 MB·English

by  Neelam Srivastava (auth.)

Cambridge Imperial & Post-Colonial Studies
ITALIAN COLONIALISM
AND RESISTANCES
TO EMPIRE, 1930–1970
NEELAM SRIVASTAVA
Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial
Studies Series
Series Editors
Richard Drayton
Department of History
King’s College London
London, United Kingdom
Saul Dubow
Magdalene College
University of Cambridge
Cambridge, United Kingdom
The Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies series is a collection of
studies on empires in world history and on the societies and cultures which
emerged from colonialism. It includes both transnational, comparative
and connective studies, and studies which address where particular regions
or nations participate in global phenomena. While in the past the series
focused on the British Empire and Commonwealth, in its current incarna-
tion there is no imperial system, period of human history or part of the
world which lies outside of its compass. While we particularly welcome the
first monographs of young researchers, we also seek major studies by more
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scholarship on world history with an imperial theme.
More information about this series at
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Neelam Srivastava
Italian Colonialism
and Resistances to
Empire, 1930–1970
Neelam Srivastava
School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics
Newcastle University
Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK
Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series
ISBN 978-1-137-46583-2 ISBN 978-1-137-46584-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-46584-9
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017963995
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To my family: Giulia, Yogi and Amrit
A
cknowledgements
I have been able to complete this book thanks to the fundamental support
of many people.
I would like to thank the School of English at Newcastle University for
providing me with much-needed research leave to write this book. Special
thanks to James Annesley for his continued support with this project.
I am grateful to the Leverhulme Trust for awarding me a research fel-
lowship that allowed me to spend a year researching the material for this
book.
I would like to thank Dr. Helen Pankhurst, who graciously gave me
permission to quote from Sylvia Pankhurst’s unpublished letters in Chap.
5. Many thanks to the Istituto Gramsci of Rome for giving me permission
to quote from documents in their archives and to the Archivio Giulio
Einaudi for giving me permission to quote from Giovanni Pirelli’s unpub-
lished letters.
I am grateful to the English Department and the Pembroke Center at
Brown University, where I was a Visiting Scholar in spring 2016 and
where I wrote part of this book. Tim Bewes and Leela Gandhi were won-
derfully supportive hosts. Nicola Perugini offered helpful comments at a
seminar where I presented part of this work. A loving thank you to my
cousin Meenakshi Narain and to Ulrich Heintz for hosting me in their
beautiful Providence home for many months, offering me companionship,
food and a lovely environment in which to write my book.
Robert Young has been an important guiding presence in this project,
encouraging me many years ago to research Italian colonialism and anti-
colonialism. Rajeswari Sunder Rajan provided me with a very welcome
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
home away from home at New York University in the summer of 2016,
and her intellectual inspiration has always been crucial to my work.
Huge thanks to my dear friends Meiko O’Halloran, Robbie McLaughlan
and Anne Whitehead for supporting me and hanging out with me through-
out the writing. Joy Wang has been an amazing and patient friend from
the very beginning of this journey. I owe a very big debt of gratitude to
James Procter, who carefully read a large part of the book and whose bril-
liant comments have certainly improved its quality! Claudia Baldoli offered
invaluable advice and reading suggestions, and I am lucky to have bene-
fited from her expertise on Italian fascism. Many thanks to Tom Langley
for stimulating conversations about many matters that appear in this book,
and for reading portions of the manuscript at an early stage. Thanks to
Sadek Kessous for his friendship.
Eleanor Spaventa has seen me through this book from start to finish,
and, very simply, made me get it done. Sofia and Margherita Grimble
deserve a big thank you for always being so wonderful. Their laughter and
affection kept me sane. Simon Grimble has been a great friend throughout
and kindly read parts of the book.
Rhian Lewis saw me safely through this intellectual and emotional jour-
ney, and I am incredibly grateful for her support.
I am immensely lucky to have a supportive and loving family, who
understand the peculiar pressures of academic writing. This book is for my
mother Giulia Pancheri, my father Yogi Srivastava and my brother Amrit
Srivastava.
Finally, thank you to Taylor and Francis for allowing me to reproduce
part of my article in Chap. 2, “Anti-colonialism and the Italian Left:
Resistances to the Fascist Invasion of Ethiopia”, Interventions: Inter­
national Journal of Postcolonial Studies, 8:3 (2006), pp. 413–429.
A n t
ote on rAnslAtions
All translations from Italian-language material are my own, unless other-
wise specified. I have endeavoured to use published English translations of
Italian texts where available.
ix
c
ontents
1 I ntroduction 1
2 Italian Anti-colonialism and the Ethiopian War 15
3 “Ethiopia’s Cause Is Our Cause”: Black Internationalism
and the Italian Invasion of Ethiopia 65
4 Harlem’s Ethiopia: Literary Pan-Africanism and 
the Italian Invasion 101
5 A Partisan Press: Sylvia Pankhurst, British
Anti-colonialism and the Crisis of Empire 147
6 Internationalism and Third-Worldism in Postwar Italy 195
7 African Decolonization and the Resistance Aesthetics
of Pontecorvo, Orsini and Pirelli 233
Index 263
xi