The Building of an Empire: Italian Land Policy and Practice in Ethiopia 1935-1941 (Oxford Studies in African Affairs)

After Italy's conquest of Ethiopia in 1935, Mussolini boasted that Italy has joined the rank of the "satisfied" nations because it "has at last got an empire of her own." In this book, Haile M. Larebo examines the formation, development and workings of Italian colonialism and the forces that shaped it. Ethiopia under Italian rule was to have solved a number of Italy's social and economic problems. The flow of immigrants was to be diverted from the Americas to Ethiopia which, following incorporation into the Italian empire, was to provide cheap raw materials for Italian industry, and become a protected market for its products. In this book, the mythology behind these aims is well drawn, and the vast chasms between policies and practices are charted in detail. Firmly grounded in extensive archival research, the work makes a distinct and original contribution to historical scholarship on Italian colonialism and Ethiopian history and helps us to understand how Italian politics and propaganda worked in the Fascist era.