2014 Theses Bachelor's

Imagined Proximities: The Use of History and Geography as Rhetorical Justifications for Italian Colonial Conquest in Tripolitania

Volpe, Charlotte

This paper describes how a new emergent Italian nationalism and mass emigration from Italy were related to Italy's colonial invasion of Libya in 1911. The thesis argues that Italian nationalists' political rhetoric rallying for an invasion of Libya was unique among European colonial justifications. Imperial nationalists drew upon similarities between Italianate and Libyan histories and geographies, which was only possible in the Italian-Libya case. Because of past Roman imperial presence in Libya (demonstrated by visible ancient Roman art and architecture in North Africa) and Libya and Italy's geographic vicinity, the nation of Italy used these symbols to justify a "return" to Libya in the early-twentieth century.