A clash of races
In 1876, when King Leopold began an imperial project in the Congo basin, his goals were economic, viewing the Congo as a business opportunity rather than a racial confrontation. He treated the region as a blank slate, not as enemy territory.
But by the end of the century, the growing use of Social Darwinism made racial questions central to imperialism, as in the anti-imperialist Hobson’s phrase ‘unassimilable peoples’.40 The embrace of irrational, destructive, racialist and wasteful colonialism comes out in Rudyard Kipling’s famous poetic appeal for American imperialism, ‘The White Man’s Burden’ (1899). Ideals of assimilation were abandoned in colonial administration, and all wars became racial and ethnic struggles. The war between Italy and Turkey over Libya (1911—1912), and the resulting First and Second Balkan Wars, were ostensibly over territory but quickly became fights over ethnic and religious identity. Italy planned a strictly coastal campaign, but fighting inside Libya lasted into the 1930s, with a bloody and brutal Fascist war against the Libyan resistance.Italians claimed that their African colonies, as havens for Italian emigrants, were uniquely benign and justifiable, following the convenient stereotype of ‘good Italians’ (italiani brava gente). In fact, settler colonies were more insidious and more devastating than newer forms of economic exploitation. Until losing Eritrea, Ethiopia and Libya in the Second World War, Italy pursued the same course that led the French in Algeria and the Portuguese in Angola and Mozambique to long, disastrous wars of decolonisation. In a rivalry of numbers between colonisers and colonised, zero-sum games could never produce a peaceful resolution. Bloody civil wars were the inevitable outcome of demographic colonialism in Africa.
In Asia, the Russo-Japanese War of 1904—1905 marked the high point of imperial warfare, before the Great War itself.
The fight was depicted worldwide as a racial war, a test of national strength more than a mere conquest of territory in Korea and Manchuria. Following Japan’s total victory, the Japanese settlements of the former Chinese territories became deliberate showcases to document and demonstrate Japanese superiority over all else. This new dynamic, creating a totalising cultural war in addition to military planning, would also drive the global conflicts of the two world wars.Although economic factors have often been highlighted as the driving force of the new imperialism, settler colonialism remained central into the twentieth century for imperial projects and their justifications, blurring domestic and foreign policy motivations. The projected displacement of entire races, and the imposition of new racial regimes, created spectres that continue to haunt the world.
Notes
1 All translations are my own, unless otherwise noted. Atti Parlamentari, Camera dei Deputati (AP CD) Leg. XIV, prima sessione, Discussioni, tornata 7 December 1881, pp. 7,587-7,588, and prima tornata 27 January 1885, p. 11,074. The Rubattino Steamer Company had leased Assab in 1869. Giacomo Gorrini, ‘I primi tentativi e le prime ricerche di una Colonia in Italia (1861-1882)’, in Attilio Brunialti (ed.), Biblioteca di scienze politiche e amministrative (Turin, 1897); Giorgio Doria, Debiti e navi (Genoa, 1990).
2 The French negotiated a treaty for possession of Obock in 1862, and established a colony there in 1884, but by 1894 had moved the main colony to Djibouti on the other side of the bay.
3 See conflicting interpretations in Carlo Giglio, L’articolo XVII del trattato di Uccialli, Istituto Italiano per l’Africa (ed.), Vol. 8, Series 1, Quaderni d’Africa (Como, 1967); and Sven Rubenson, Wichale XVII: The Attempt to Establish a Protectorate over Ethiopia (Addis Abeba, 1964).
4 I thank Andy Goldman and Kristen Needham for assisting me with the translation of the Amharic text reproduced in Rubenson, Wichale XVII.
See also Sir Francis Clare Ford to Salisbury, 20 March 1896, Public Record Office, London (PRO), Foreign Office (FO) 403/239.5 See Rubenson, Wichale XVII, and Giglio, L’articolo XVII.
6 Ethiopian losses were estimated between three and twelve thousand dead. See Archivio dell’Ufficio Storico dello Stato Maggiore dell’Esercito (AUSSME), L-7 racc. 95, f. 3; ibid., pp. 447-452. The figures I have given are the ‘numbers which the [Italian army] archive provides to answer requests’.
7 AUSSME, L-7 racc. 93, f. 9; L-7 racc. 94; see letters from General Baldissera and Major Salsa, Archivio Centrale dello Stato (ACS), Carte Martini b. 14 f. 46.
8 See the boast of Ambassador James Rennell Rodd to the British Foreign Office, 1 3 May 1 897, Sudan Archive, Durham (SAD) 122/9. The Ethiopians accused the Italians of treachery in writing a different version in Italian for the Treaty of Wichale of 1887; the same accusations over the Amharic and Italian versions surfaced over the Treaty of Addis Abeba of 1896. Rodd to Salisbury, 22 June 1897, SAD 122/9.
9 Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, De la Colonisation chez les peuples modernes (2nd edn) (Paris, 1882), p. xi. Preface to the first edition of 1874.
10 Paul Leroy-Beaulieu and J.R. Seeley were translated into Italian in 1897 and published together with Attilio Brunialti’s ‘Le Colonie degli italiani’, in Brunialti (ed.), Biblioteca di scienze politiche e amministrative.
11 Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, L’Algerie et la Tunisie (2nd edn) (Paris, 1897).
12 William L. Langer, The Diplomacy of Imperialism 1890-1902 (2nd edn) (New York, 1968); G. Borsa, ‘La crisi italo-cinese del marzo 1899 nelle carte inedite del ministro Canevaro’, Il Politico, Vol. 34, No. 4 (1969), pp. 618-643; Umberto Levra, Il colpo di stato della borghesia (Milan, 1975), pp. 311-325; Bryna Goodman and David S.G. Goodman (eds), Twentieth Century Colonialism and China: Localities, the Everyday, and the World (London, 2012).
13 Guido Cora, ‘L’Italia in China. La Baia di San-Mun’, Nuova antologia, Vol.
164 (1899), p. 353.14 ‘V.’, ‘L’Italia in China’, Nuova antologia, Vol. 164 (1899), p. 749; Cesare Lombroso, ‘L’Italia in China. Il pericolo giallo’, Nuova antologia, Vol. 164 (1899), p. 338.
15 Leone Carpi, Delle colonie e delle emigrazioni d’italiani all’estero sotto l’aspetto dell’industria, commercio, agricoltura e con trattazione d’importanti questioni sociali, 4 vols (Milan, 1874), Vol. I, p. 12.
16 Carpi, Delle colonie e delle emigrazioni d’italiani, Vol. I, p. 13.
17 For example, Giovanni Battista Penne, Per l’Italia africana: Studio critico (Rome, 1906); Pietro Gribaudi, La più grande Italia. Notizie e letture sugli Italiani all’estero e sulle colonie italiane (Libia, Eritrea, Somalia) (Turin, 1913).
18 Discorsi parlamentari di Francesco Crispi, 3 vols (Rome, 1915), 6 March 1890, Vol. 3, p. 469.
19 AP CD Leg. XVI, 2a sessione 1887, Documenti n. 85, 15 December 1887, p. 9; ‘Il progetto di legge sull’emigrazione’, Rivista della Beneficenza Pubblica e delle Istituzioni di Previdenza, Vol. 16 (1888); Renato Mori, La politica estera di Francesco Crispi (1887-1891) (Rome, 1973).
20 Discorsi parlamentari di Francesco Crispi, 3 vols (Rome, 1915), Vol. III, p. 359, 17 June 1889, emphasis added.
21 James C. McCann, People of the Plow: An Agricultural History of Ethiopia, 1800-1990 (Madison, 1995).
22 Discorsi parlamentari di Francesco Crispi, Vol. III, p. 469, 6 March 1890.
23 See Alberto Aquarone, Dopo Adua: Politica e amministrazione coloniale, Ludovica de Courten (ed.) (Rome, 1989).
24 Jan Pakulski, ‘Cultural Citizenship’, Citizenship Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1 (1997), pp. 73-86.
25 John Robert Seeley, The Expansion of England (London, 1883).
26 Speech of President Hon. Ernesto Artom to Assemblea Generale dei Soci, 30 May 1915, Archivio Storico Ministero dell’Africa Italiana (ASMAI) pos. 163/2 f. 19, emphasis added.
27 Maurice Bruezière, L’Alliance franpaise (Paris, 1983); Alain Dubosclard, Histoire de la Federation des Alliances Franpaises aux Etats-Unis (Paris, 1998).
28 Bericht des Ausschußes des Kolonialraths zur Berathung des Entwurfes eines Gesetzes über das Auswanderungswesen, 28 January 1896, Bundesarchiv, Berlin-Lichterfelde (BArch), R 1001/ 6234, Bl. 107, emphasis added; Denkschrift des Auswärtigen Amtes über das deutsche Auslandsschulwesen (Berlin, [1913?]), Lichterfelde Archiv-Bibliothek, AA Bibliothek, RD 16/5.
29 H.H. Herwig, Germany’s Vision of Empire in Venezuela, 1871-1914 (Princeton, 1986); Nancy Mitchell, The Danger of Dreams (Chapel Hill, 1999).
30 See Pasquale Villari’s speeches of 1897 and 1903, and the Central Council’s report of 1907: Atti della Società ‘Dante Alighieri’ n. 13, December (1903), pp. 9-10; n. 7, February (1898), pp. 10-13; n. 28, January (1908), pp. 8-18; Archivio Storico Diplomatico, Ministero degli Affari Esteri (ASDMAE) Serie P, pacco 726 posiz. 1090.
31 Klaus Bade, Friedrich Fabri und der Imperialismus (Freiburg, 1975).
32 Eiichiro Azuma, Between Two Empires (Oxford, 2005), p. 17.
33 Ibid., pp. 17-31; Akira Iriye, Pacific Estrangement (Cambridge, MA, 1972), pp. 133-136; Louise Young, Japan’s Total Empire (Berkeley, 1998), pp. 307-341; Kenji Kimura et al., Japanese Settler Colonialism (Cambridge, MA, 2002).
34 John O’Sullivan, ‘Annexation’, United States Magazine and Democratic Review, Vol. 17, no.1 (July-August 1845), pp. 5-10; the famous phrase is on p. 5.
35 Eckart Kehr, Der Primat der Innenpolitik, Hans-Ulrich Wehler (ed.) (Berlin, 1965); Wehler, Bismarck und der Imperialismus (Koln, 1969); Wehler, ‘Industrial Growth and Early German Imperialism’, in Roger Owen and Bob Sutcliffe (eds), Studies on the Theory of Imperialism (London, 1972).
36 John A. Hobson, Imperialism: A Study (London, 1902), p. 6.
37 Hobson, Imperialism; Richard Hakluyt, Discourse of Western Planting (London, [1584] 1993); Gustavo Coen, La questione coloniale (Livorno, 1901). See also PJ. Cain and A.G. Hopkins, British Imperialism (London, 1993).
38 V.I. Lenin, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (New York, 1939).
39 John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson, ‘The Imperialism of Free Trade’, The Economic History Review, 2nd series, Vol. 6 (1953), pp. 1-15; Ronald Robinson, John Gallagher and Alice Denny, Africa and the Victorians (2nd edn) (London, 1981).
40 Raymond F. Betts, Assimilation and Association in French Colonial Theory 1890--1914 (New York, 1961).
Further reading
Bade, Klaus J., ‘Imperial Germany and West Africa: Colonial Movement, Business Interests, and Bismarck’s “Colonial Policies”’, in Stig Forster, Wolfgang J. Mommsen and Ronald Robinson (eds), Bismarck, Europe and Africa: The Berlin Africa Conference 1884-1885 and the Onset of Partition (Oxford, 1988), pp. 121-147.
Choate, Mark I., Emigrant Nation: The Making of Italy Abroad (Cambridge, MA, 2008).
Conrad, Sebastian, German Colonialism:A Short History (Cambridge, 2011).
Hobson, John A., Imperialism: A Study (London, 1902).
Lieven, D.C.B., Empire: The Russian Empire and its Rivals (New Haven, 2001).
Müller, Sven Oliver, and Cornelius Torp, Imperial Germany Revisited: Continuing Debates and New Perspectives (New York, 2011).
Uchida, Jun, and Harvard University Asia Center, Brokers of Empire: Japanese Settler Colonialism in Korea, 1876-1945 (Cambridge, MA, 2011).
Vanthemsche, Guy, Belgium and the Congo, 1885-1980 (New York, 2012).
Wehler, Hans-Ulrich, ‘Bismarck’s Imperialism, 1862-1890’, Past & Present, No. 48 (1970), pp. 119155.
Wong, Aliza S., Race and the Nation in Liberal Italy, 1861-1911: Meridionalism, Empire and Diaspora (New York, 2006).
Young, Louise, Japan's Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism (Berkeley, 1998).