The motives of empire?

Concerns for international reputation and migration shaped the politics behind colonialism in Europe, North America and Japan, as the mass media grew in significance and as empires relied not only upon overseas collaboration, but also domestic support.

Settler colonialism, or demographic imperialism, illuminates a thorny debate in international historiography: were European colonialisms dictated by domestic or foreign politics? Leopold von Ranke and his historicist followers in the nineteenth century studied foreign policy (Aufienpolitik) as history’s determining factor. In their view, Germany’s political decisions, including imperialism in Africa, were driven by competition with European neighbours.

A colonial focus on German, Japanese and Italian expatriates, however, helps resolve the apparent dichotomy: colonialism transcends the historiographical debate between for­eign and domestic priorities when tied to population movements and emigration. The existence of each nation was predicated upon population, both in the Romantic conception of the early nineteenth century and the Social Darwinist ideology of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Mass migration at once expanded the limits of the nation, relieved over-population and over-supply in labour at home, created new dynamics in national culture, established economic opportunities abroad and opened new possibilities for international influence. In Italy’s case, by focussing colonial policies on the numbers of people settled, whether in the ‘free colonies’ of expatriate communities in the Americas, the ‘demographic colonies’ in Italian Africa or the ‘internal colonisation’ of land reclama­tion projects in Sardinia, the Italian state cut across international boundaries. By con­centrating on extra-legal attributes of citizenship, such as language, patriotic celebrations, social support networks, communications with the mother-country and even tastes in food and music, the Italian government hoped to ensure that its emigrants, or ‘colonists’, remained loyal Italians both abroad and when they returned home. Italy’s achievement in linking migrant communities together brings a new perspective to rapid changes in the transatlantic world, European colonial systems and the rise of a global community. Italy would return nonetheless to the bloody conquest of Africa with the rise of the Italian Nationalist Party. The Italo-Turkish War over Libya, 1911—1912, was followed by Italy’s bloody conquest of Libya itself, lasting into 1931. Italy’s conquest of Ethiopia in 1935­1936, under Mussolini, included attacks on civilians and widespread use of poison gas. Both campaigns used indiscriminate violence to clear away local populations for future Italian settlement. Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in 1931 similarly opened up mass Japanese settlements in mainland Asia. The recruitment of settlers in Asia and Africa relied upon the hollow prestige, false profits and supposed virility of European, American and Japanese imperialism.