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STATE BUILDING E SICUREZZA NELL’ESPERIENZA
DELL’AMMINISTRAZIONE FIDUCIARIA ITALIANA IN SOMALIA

2. The historical-political framework of the Italian return to Somalia
In the aftermath of the Second World War, Italy, a newborn Republic,
found itself facing the delicate chapter of its colonial past, trying to systematize
it with the new democratic orientation of the country, the emerging division
into blocks of the international context and the expectations of a people who,
while aware of the role played under Fascism, hoped for a benevolent treat-
ment by the victorious Powers, in the light of the “co-belligerence”, ensured in
the last two years of the conflict. In fact, within the country and the first De
Gasperi government, an almost monolithic line emerged, transversal to all poli-
tical parties, effectively summarized by Varsori as founded on the:
(1)
➣ “desire to obtain an affirmation of prestige that clearly sanctioned the
acceptance of Italy, and of the new Republican regime, in the international
community;
➣ the intention to achieve diplomatic success useful for internal purposes;
➣ the need to counter certain resurgent chauvinistic tendencies;
➣ the hope of opening, through African territories, migratory solutions
for the poorest masses of the country”.
This aspiration was intertwined, however, with the position of the main
players in international politics of the time.
The United Kingdom supported Ethiopia’s ambitions on ‘Eritrea, giving
to Somali nationalists a glimpse of the recognition of an autonomous Greater
Somaliland, merging the British possessions with the old Italian colony, while
in Libya it intended to preserve Cyrenaica, leaving Fezzan to the French and
starting Tripolitania to a swift independence.
The French, on the contrary, saw in the Italian presence in Africa the
important function of balancing the equilibrium in the continent, where other-
wise the British presence would have been overflowing and the possibility of
avoiding the arising of autonomous States, mostly under an Islamic pattern,
which could have acted as a continuous reference to the claims of anti-colonial
nationalisms already alive within French territories.
The US and the USSR, then, while looking with suspicion at the jumble
of colonial interests of the old powers, balances that the two superpowers
intended to overcome, realized the importance of avoiding “power gaps” in
certain strategic areas. The USA, then, ensured moderate support for the still
lively European colonial aspirations, in order not to alienate the feelings of the
citizens of the old powers.

(1) A. VARSORI, The different decline of two colonial powers - The events of Mogadishu in January 1948 and
the Anglo-Italian relations, Quaderni della FIAP, Elengraf, Rome, 1981.

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