The failure to prevail against French expansionism in Tunisia did not however blunt Italy’s wish to acquire a colonial empire. There had been an Italian presence in what became Eritrea since the mid-1880s when an Italian shipping company purchased a harbour at Assab from the Sultan of Obock. The Italian government took over the harbour in 1882 and developed it whilst spreading its presence along the coast and inland. In 1885 the Italians occupied Massawa but this expansion caused them to come into conflict with the Abyssinians, ruled by Yohannes IV, particularly when they occupied the town of Sahati. This confrontation resulted in the Dogale Massacre, when the Abyssinian forces encircled an Italian contingent at the town of that name some 18 kilometres from Massawa and defeated and killed them all. However, rather than finding this incident discouraging it only spurred the Italian government on, and they determined to increase their military presence with a view to colonising more of the area. This process, encouraged by Britain, continued until the Treaty of Ucciale (Wichale) (Trattato di Uccialli) formalised the matter. Agreed between Italy and King Menelik II of the autonomous Abyssinian Kingdom of Shewa (who later became Emperor of Abyssinia), and signed on 2 May 1889, it ceded what became Eritrea to the Italians. They named it as such, Colonia Eritrea, and declared it their Colonia Primigenia on New Years Day 1890.84
Under the terms of the treaty Italy recognised Menelik as Abyssinian Emperor and agreed to provide financial assistance and military aid. However, the two parties swiftly came into dispute over the wording and meaning of it. The Amharic version and the Italian version differed it appears, and whilst Menelik thought he had agreed only to consult with Italy over foreign policy if he so desired, the Italian version stipulated that he would do so as a matter of course. In other words, Menelik considered he had been duped into conceding an Italian protectorate over Abyssinia and formally repudiated the treaty on 22 February 1893.85
Bordering Abyssinia to the east was another Italian territory, Italian Somaliland or Somalia Italiana. Italy had acquired this area piecemeal, reaching agreements with Sultan Ali Yusuf regarding a protectorate over Hobyo Sultanate in December 1888, and similarly with Sultan Osman Mohamoud and the Alula Sultanate in April 1889. Negotiations with the Sultan of Zanzibar, Sayid Barqash, yielded a fifty-year lease on the ports of Mogadishu, Merka, Warsheikh (Warshiikh) and Brava (Barawa) in 1892, which were purchased outright in 1905.86 Administratively, Italian Somaliland was divided into six administrative subdivisions; Brava, Merca, Lugh, Itala, Bardera, and Jumbo.87
The difference of opinion regarding the Treaty of Ucciale led to Italy mounting an invasion. The governor of Eritrea, General Oreste Baratieri, led a force into Abyssinia in December 1894, but was unable to force the opposion to a decisive battle. In January 1895 he fell back to a defensible position close to the border and hoped to induce the enemy to attack him there, knowing that such a tactic would allow his superiority in rifles and artillery to tell. Bariateri commanded some 20,000 men in four brigades with fifty-six artillery pieces whilst Menelik, who commanded in person, had around 100,000 though not all possessed firearms. Wisely refusing to fight on Italian terms, Menelik’s army advanced as far as Adwa (Adowa) and remained there throughout February. However, as Bartieri was well aware, his enemy could not keep large forces in the field for long periods because they lacked any effective logistical organisation, and so by waiting he would compel the enemy to either attack or disperse. Political considerations then intervened when the government in Rome, led by Francesco Crispi, became frustrated at the apparent lack of success. Bartieri received a telegraph message from the Prime Minister on 28 February in which he likened the campaign to a progressive wasting disease. The admonition continued:
I have no advice to give you because I am not on the spot, but it is clear to me that there is no fundamental plan in the campaign, and I should like one to be formulated. We are ready for any sacrifice in order to save the honour of the army and the prestige of the monarchy.88
Although worded diplomatically there could be little doubt what was expected, and following consultation with his subordinate commanders on 28 February Bartieri determined to advance to the attack the next day. Accordingly, on the evening of the 29 February the four brigades advanced towards Adwa; three brigades abreast under Matteo Albertone on the left, Giuseppe Arimondi in the centre and Vittorio Dabormida on the right. One brigade, under Giuseppe Ellena, followed as the reserve.
The fighting began soon after 05:30 hrs on the morning of 1 March. By noon the battle was effectively over. It had ended in utter disaster for the Italians, and the Battle of Adowa has been accurately dubbed ‘the bloodiest defeat ever suffered by a colonial power in Africa.’89 It was certainly bloody; out of some 17,700 engaged on the Italian side only about 9,000 – about half Italian and half locally recruited – survived the retreat to Eritrea. Amongst the senior officers Dabormida and Arimondi were killed, Albertone was taken prisoner and Ellena was wounded. Only Bartieri, who had boasted he would bring Menelik home in a cage, escaped unscathed. When the news reached Italy the next day it caused civil unrest on a considerable scale, particularly in urban areas, which the army was called out to control. Bartieri was swiftly recalled to Rome to face a court martial (he was acquitted). Crispi was forced to resign whilst Menelik, who might have attempted a pursuit into Eritrea, retired into Ethiopia to await negotiations. On 26 October 1896, he signed the Treaty of Addis Ababa, which abrogated the Treaty of Ucciale. Adowa was considered a national disaster.
The army, disgraced though it had been by Adowa, continued to be used against the Italian people, particularly those who were perceived as threatening the stability of the state such as the socialists. The Italian Socialist Party (PSI), which changed its name from the Socialist Party of Italian Workers at Parma on 13 January 1895, was composed of several strands, including anarchists, advocates of revolution, and evolutionary socialists. The latter strand became the dominant one in the 1890’s and though ultimately committed to the socialisation of production and exchange the party opted for an evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, approach under the leadership of Filippo Turati.90 Despite opting for a constitutional approach, Turati and the PSI were viewed with extreme suspicion by the Italian government. Indeed Turati was sentenced to twelve years in jail for ‘instigating civil war’ following the Bava-Beccaris massacre on 6 May 1898.91
Named after General Fiorenzo Bava-Beccaris, the massacre took place as part of the bloody repression of widespread strikes and riots in Milan in early May 1898. On 5 May 1898 a large-scale strike was organised to protest against the increase of food prices amidst the near famine that was affecting the country. The police were unable to control the crowds and resorted to shooting, which led to one demonstrator in the town of Pavia, Muzio Mussi, the twenty-three year old son of a prominent radical, being shot and killed.92 On the morning of 6 May the workers at the Pirelli factory went on strike and leaflets denouncing the killing the previous day, were distributed. Rioting broke out, and ‘owing to the imbecility of the authorities, sufficient force was deployed to provoke, not to overawe, and they allowed the riots to make head.’93 Two rioters were shot dead and several wounded. In response the government proclaimed a state of siege in Lombardy and ordered Bava-Beccaris, the commander of VIII Corps, to the area. Reserves were also mobilised, raising the total manpower available to the general to around 45,000, including infantry, cavalry, artillery and, because the railway men were on strike, railway troops. The forces were comprised particularly of men from rural districts and the alpine regions as these were considered to be more reliable than those recruited from the urban working class.
On 7 May 60,000 Milanese went out on strike and large numbers of them began to move towards the city centre from the outlying working class districts. Bava-Beccaris was determined to stop them and force them back into their districts. Accordingly he deployed forces in the Piazza del Duomo, the central square overlooked by Milan Cathedral. From this position they began to move outwards, clearing t
he demonstrators’ barricades and pushing them back into the districts of Ticinese to the south, Romana, Vittoria and Venezia in the east and Garibaldi to the north. He also wanted to regain control of the central station and the railway in general.94 This however proved more difficult than was envisaged. Some of the insurrectionists had armed themselves with rifles, removed from the workshops of arms manufacturers, whilst many had installed themselves on the roofs of the houses and pelted the troops with stones and roof tiles. The state of the streets, encumbered with rubble and barricades, limited the use of the cavalry and blocked the movement of artillery. Bava-Beccaris however had authorised the use of both rifle and cannon fire against the insurgents, and the streets were thus cleared. Reinforcements arrived outside the city on 8 May and began moving in with the aim of trapping the insurrectionists between two fires. The whole affair was over by the evening of the following day, with order definitely restored by 10 May. Casualty figures are much disputed; the contemporary official accounts reckoned a cost of 80 dead and 450 wounded on the civilian side, whilst two policemen and soldiers had been killed and twenty-two wounded. By way of comparison, it might be noted that the massacre at the Winter Palace in St Petersburg in 1905, which sparked off a full-blooded revolution, left 130 dead and around 300 seriously wounded according to official figures.95
It is possible that Bava-Beccaris thought he had been facing a revolutionary situation. He had military tribunals set up, over some of which at least he personally presided. Around 1,500 Milanese were sentenced to prison terms, and ‘the whole conduct of the authorities was a travesty of justice and a mockery of legal procedure.’96
The repression went further; any press organ deemed to be in opposition to the government was muzzled, and Catholic and socialist associations were dissolved. As already related, amongst those jailed was Turati, who, far from instigating the disturbances, had attempted to calm the situation issuing a leaflet arguing that the ‘days for street fighting are past’ and calling on the populace to be ‘calm and patient.’97
In an astonishingly crass move, Umberto I, who had succeeded Victor Emanuel II on 9 January 1878, awarded Bava-Beccaris a medal for ‘great services to the State in the suppression of the revolution,’ the Gran Croce dell’Ordine Militare di Savoia,98 and promoted him to the Senate. There was a massive and popular backlash against the monarch, the soldier, and the repression in general. One of the results of this was that Turati was released in 1899. He drew certain lessons from his experiences. Battles with the power of the state were to be avoided and the disavowal of anarchist methods was confirmed; both in Sicily in 1893-4 and again in 1898 the Italian army had demonstrated it had the capacity, and the willingness, to maintain order. The way ahead was via the parliamentary route, and when necessary, alliances with Liberals and others would be enacted in order to preserve a constitutional system within which a socialist party could exist at all.
Indeed, it was via the parliamentary route that the political left won a significant victory. General Luigi Pelloux, who had filled the same role as Bava-Beccaris in Bari in May but without resorting to martial law and overt aggression, had become Prime Minister in June 1898. This was following the fall of the previous ministry, largely because of the results of the policies that had led to the massacres and repression. In February 1899 Pelloux presented to parliament a comprehensive Public Safety Bill, also known as the coercion bill, which would have severely curtailed civil liberties. The opposition parties – socialist, radicals and republicans – combined to thwart attempts to get the bill passed, and when Pelloux had parliament prorogued, and the bill passed by royal decree, he caused uproar. This episode was known as the ‘Obstructionist Crisis’ and even members of his own side accused him of acting unconstitutionally. With little support outside the normal bastions of extreme conservatism and reaction, Pelloux dissolved the chamber in May 1900 and elections were held the next month. Despite the highly restrictive franchise,99 which meant that only eight per cent of the Italian population could vote, he was defeated, inasmuch as he could no longer count on a parliamentary majority.100 The President of the Senate, Giuseppe Saracco, was able to muster such a grouping, including of course the socialists, and thus form a ‘Cabinet of Pacification.’101
This peace was to be relatively short lived, for in a reversal of the ususal direction of travel, a silkworker domiciled in Paterson, New Jersey, Gaetano Bresci, travelled to Monza, Italy and, on the evening of 29 July 1900, fired three revolver shots into Umberto I. The King perished, and Bresci, a self-proclaimed anarchist justified the regicide on the grounds of avenging those people killed during the Bava-Beccaris massacre. Bresci had been a skilled textile worker in Tuscany before becoming a victim of state repression; he was placed in internal exile on the island of Lampedusa in 1895. In early 1898 he emigrated to the US where he acquired a wife of Irish extraction. He had been horrified to discover that Umberto had decorated Bava-Beccaris for the Milan massacres, rather than hanging him, and determined to take revenge.102 Umberto could not, even if he had so desired, hanged Bava-Beccaris.103 The Kingdom of Italy’s first penal code, the Zanardelli Code of 1889, abolished capital punishment. Justice minister Giuseppe Zanardelli had argued that it was ‘absurd that the law should avenge homicide by itself perpetrating homicide’ and that capital punishment was ‘calculated to blunt the best sensibilities of mankind.’104 This of course meant that Bresci could not be executed for murdering the king and he was accordingly sentenced to life imprisonment on 29 August. ‘I shall appeal after the coming revolution’ he is supposed to have said, but whilst serving his sentence at the Santo Stefano Ergastolo (a place of confinement for those serving life sentences) he committed suicide, or was murdered, on 22 May 1901.105
Saracco, who was seventy-nine when he assumed the premiership, did not remain long in office. His administration was brought to an end in February 1901 by a vote in the chamber condemning his perceived weakness in relation to a large-scale strike on the docks at Genoa. The inability of the government, any government, to achieve industrial peace, (it has been calculated that in the period 1890-1901 there were some 1,700 major strikes),106 was to become manifest over the next decade or so. Although the Socialist PSI had remained united while there was something tangible to unite against, it remained a grouping of strands, and indeed strands within strands. The members of these factions, when released from the common threat, seemed more concerned with their differences rather than unity as a whole. Accordingly, by 1902 the PSI had fractured into three parts, each antagonistic to the others and all, naturally enough, claiming to be the only real socialists. Whilst Turati continued to head the revolutionary wing, the leader of those professing revolution was Enrico Ferri.107 Ferri said of Turati: ‘He hates me because he thinks there is not enough room for two cocks in the same chicken house.’108
The labour unrest of the period culminated in the general strike of 16-20 September 1904 – Italy’s first. Encouraged by revolutionary elements in the PSI, the strike resulted from the use of the military in shooting workers engaged in lesser industrial action. Whilst the strike was effective inasmuch as ‘for three whole days the city of Genoa was left without light and bread and meat; all economic life was paralysed,’109 it swiftly collapsed thereafter. One side effect of the militancy was the relaxation of the Papal non expedit; in 1904 Pius X urged Catholics to vote to halt the spread of socialism.
There is no doubt that up to that time the PSI exerted a powerful influence upon the workers. To the intellectuals at the head of the party however, general strikes were akin to forms of revolutionary experimentation.110 After the general strike that influence began to wane very rapidly. The workers began to suspect the motives of those who led the party. In the opinion of Agostino Lanzillo, who moved from revolutionary syndicalism to Fascism, the primary aim of the intellectuals, who included parliamentarians, lawyers, physicians, and teachers, was financial success through ‘a socialist career.’111 The PSI had made progress in terms of parliamentary s
uccess; despite the restricted franchise there were fifteen PSI deputies in 1897 and thirty by 1904.112 Had it managed to remain united, and had there been even a semblance of party discipline, it is possible that it might have made great strides, as did the SPD in Germany. It was however not to be, and internecine strife between the reformists and revolutionaries wracked the movement up until 1906, when the reformists themselves started to fragment.113
Despite the various stresses, and indeed fractures, and general instability in Italian political and social life over the period, and despite even the disaster of Adowa, there was one foreign policy and colonial aim that remained more or less constant. It became, following the French acquisition of Tunis, an axiom of Italian foreign policy that Tripoli, with its long Mediterranean littoral, must some day be Italian territory.114 Indeed, those who had a hope of seeing Italy as an independent state had foreseen that colonies, including Tripoli, would figure in the national life. Italian interest in the acquisition of colonial territory was undoubtedly related to what is now termed social-imperialism; an attempt to focus the population on foreign policy rather than domestic issues and to arouse patriotic feelings. This policy was undoubtedly encapsulated by the maxim attributed to Massimo d’Azeglio after his death in 1864 - ‘we have made Italy, now we must make Italians.’115 This dictum was generally adopted by the Italian political elite following the debacle of Adowa, and its use, or resurrection, has been attributed to the former minister, and Governor of Eritrea from 1897 to 1907, Fernando Martini.116 Martini blamed the failure of the army on a lack of patriotism amongst the soldiery.117 There had always been a bellicose side to Italian nationalism,118 but rather than being quelled somewhat by the disaster that had attended the attempts to realise this facet, it became, if anything, enhanced by them. Indeed, to the political elite, foreign adventurism of some sort seemed to be the only answer to many of Italy’s problems, which did not lessen as the fiftieth anniversary of unification approached.
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