CHAPTER THREE
The Donkey and the Minaret
Francesco Crispi’s ‘youthful passion for freeing Italians from the empire of Austria matured as a passion for saving Africans from the empire of France and subjecting them to that of Italy.’
Leonard Woolf, Empire & Commerce in Africa: A Study In Economic Imperialism1
‘I think that the constant study of maps is apt to disturb men’s reasoning powers.’
The Marquess of Salisbury, House of Lords, 10 July 1890.
Lady Gwendolen Cecil, Life of Robert Marquis of Salisbury, Volume IV 1887-18922
‘Italy appears to have gone to war with Turkey and to have occupied Tripoli and Benghazi.
Extraordinary piratical business.’
C E Callwell, Field-Marshall Sir Henry Wilson: His Life and Diaries, Volume I3
CESARE Balbo, who anticipated the future of Italy as a confederation of separate states led by Piedmont-Sardinia, had written in 1844:
Italy, as soon as she is independent […] will have in turn to think of that need of expansion, of expansion eastwards and southwards […] Then, Naples […] will be called upon to play the first part in this work of external expansion. Whether it be to Tunis, or to Tripoli, or to an island […] matters not.4
Giuseppe Mazzini had also continued this theme in his 1871 essay ‘Principles of International Politics’ arguing that ‘Italy was once the most powerful coloniser in the world.’5
Tunis, Tripoli, and the Cyrenaica belong to that part of Africa up to the Atlas Mountains that truly fits into the European system. […] Already in the past, the flag of Rome was unfurled on top of the Atlas Mountains, after Carthage had been vanquished, and the Mediterranean became known as Mare nostrum. We were the masters of that entire region until the fifth century. Today the French covet it and they will soon have it if we don’t get there first.6
Italy failed to get to Tunis first, leaving only Tripolitania and Cyrenaica as potential Italian territory. To Italian nationalists these areas had much to commend them, being close to Italy with a geographic position that promised strategic value. One Cyrenaican port, Tobruk, possessed one of the finest natural harbours along the entire coast. The Tripoli vilayet had also, as Mazzini stated, been a part of the Roman Empire from the first century BC until its loss in the fifth century AD, and this counted for much amongst those who thought of fulfilling the long standing patriotic dream of building a Third Roman Empire.7
Indeed, though there was no ‘master plan’ as such for taking possession of Tripoli, it is unarguable that the ground, as it were, was well prepared for such an undertaking. The other members of the Triple Alliance were the first to be squared, at least formally, with the renewal of that Alliance in 1891. At that time a separate treaty was negotiated with Germany under the auspices of that renewal, Article IX of which stated:
Germany and Italy engage to exert themselves for the maintenance of the territorial status quo in the North African regions on the Mediterranean, to wit, Cyrenaica, Tripolitania, and Tunisia. The Representatives of the two powers in these regions shall be instructed to put themselves into the closest intimacy of mutual communication and assistance. If unfortunately, as a result of a mature examination of the situation, Germany and Italy should both recognize that the maintenance of the status quo had become impossible, Germany engages, after a formal and previous agreement, to support Italy in any action in the form of occupation or other taking of guaranty which the latter should undertake in these same regions with a view to an interest of equilibrium and of legitimate compensation. It is understood that in such an eventuality the two Powers would seek to place themselves likewise in agreement with England.8
During the negotiations for the fourth renewal of the Alliance, in 1902, Italy managed to gain Austro-Hungarian approval of its position vis-à-vis Tripoli. This was not expressed via the text of the treaty, which remained the same as that of 1891. However, on 30 June 1902 the Austro-Hungarian Ambassador to Rome, Baron Marias Pasetti, wrote an official declaration to the Italian Government, setting out his government’s position. This document was to be ‘secret’ and would be ‘produced only in virtue of a previous agreement between the two Governments.’
I the undersigned, Ambassador of His Imperial and Royal Apostolic Majesty, have been authorized to declare to the Government of His Majesty the King of Italy, that, while desiring the maintenance of the territorial status quo in the Orient, the Austro-Hungarian government, having no special interest to safeguard in Tripolitania and Cyrenaica, has decided to undertake nothing which might interfere with the action of Italy, in case, as a result of fortuitous circumstances, the state of things now prevailing in those regions should undergo any change whatsoever and should oblige the [Italian] Government to have recourse to measures, which would be dictated to it by its own interests.9
Having asked for and gained these gestures of highly qualified approval from formal allies, approaches were made to Britain and France in search of something similar. In 1900 an exchange of letters between the Italian Foreign Minister and the French ambassador was initiated. The thrust of this correspondence was that Italy would, diplomatically, give France a free hand in Morocco in exchange for a reciprocal arrangement vis-à-vis Italy and Tripoli. This exchange was symptomatic of a more general rapprochement between the two states. Indeed, it was obvious from this point on that Italy’s involvement in the Triple Alliance was somewhat tenuous. As Andre Tardieu, who later served as Prime Minister of France on three occasions, put it in his 1908 book: ‘Since the rapprochement, the Triple Alliance has lost its edge.’10
The new friendship between France and Italy was notable in several contexts. On 8 April 1901 an Italian squadron under the command of Prince Tommaso, the Duke of Genoa and uncle of Victor Emmanuel III, arrived at Toulon on an official five-day visit. The Duke met with Emile Loubet, the French president, and invested him with Italy’s highest decoration, the Collar of the Annunciation.11 The relationship between the two states deepened. Victor Emmanuel III was feted at Paris during a state visit on 14 October 1903, and at the conclusion of a banquet at held at the Elysée Palace, Loubet commented on the significance of the visit as demonstrating:
[…] the close agreement which, responding equally to the sentiments and interests of the Italian and French peoples, has been established between their Governments. It is assured that the two countries can pursue their national tasks with reciprocal confidence and goodwill.12
The following March the visit was reciprocated, an event that greatly upset the Pope, Pius X, who, because he was ignored, saw it as a provocation.13 The Pope was not alone in feeling discomfited by the Franco-Italian rapprochement. Italy’s allies were also troubled. Count Karl von Wedel, Ambassador at Rome for the German Empire enunciated some of these worries in a letter written to Friedrich von Holstein, the ‘grey eminence’ who headed the political department of the Foreign Office, on the final day of the Toulon naval visit:
The festivities in Toulon are today happily reaching their end, after having finally after all exceeded the limits of a simple exchange of courtesies. This was to be expected. What causes me most concern in all this is the undoubtedly increasing megalomania in certain Italian circles. France’s wooing strengthens the Italians’ consciousness of their own importance and of the great value of Italian friendship.14
Despite the obvious, and continually improving, diplomatic relationship with France, the Italian foreign office nevertheless continued to insist to Germany and Austria-Hungary of the centrality of the Triple Alliance in Italian Foreign policy.15
The symbolic manifestations of Franco-Italian cooperation and friendship were underpinned however by rather more concrete results, such as the mutual abandonment of the concentration of military forces on the Franco-Italian frontier.16 In the colonial context, the rapprochement culminated in an exchange of notes during July 1902 whereby it was agreed:
[…] that each of the two powers can freely develop its sphere of infl
uence in the above mentioned regions [Tripoli and Morocco] at the moment it deems opportune, and without the action of one of them being necessarily subordinated to that of the other […]17
Italy also recognized at this time a settlement over the borders of Tripoli and Chad (later, from 1910, French Equatorial Africa) that had been agreed under an Anglo-French convention of 14 June 1898, which delineated British and French spheres of influence east of the Niger River. Further to this, a joint declaration of 21 March 1899 stated that the French zone started from the point of intersection of the Tropic of Cancer with the 16th degree of longitude and then ran south east until it met the 24th degree of longitude (the latter not determined until 1919).18
This proprietorial interest in the international border of a territory that, formally and legally, had nothing to do with Italy was not a novel phenomenon. In December 1887 Italy had reacted with indignation to a report in that month’s Bulletin de la Société de Géographie announcing that an agreement had been reached between the Ottoman Empire and France regarding the border between Tunis and Tripoli. What particularly aroused the ire of the Italian foreign office and government was the supposed shift of the border, as it touched the Mediterranean coastline, eastwards by some thirty-two kilometres. The Italian Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Baron Alberto de Blanc, was ordered as a matter of urgency to seek an audience with the Ottoman government, in order to clarify, and if necessary to protest regarding, the matter. He was assured, both by the Grand Vizier (Prime Minister) and the Sultan, that there was no such agreement.19 Indeed, real or imagined disputes with France regarding the Tunis-Tripoli border were to be a recurring theme in Franco-Italian relations right up to the time of the relaxation of tensions.
Africa in 1911, showing the colonial possessions of the various powers. Many of the territories bordering the Mediterranean and Red Sea were nominally Ottoman, but only Tripoli (roughly modern-day Libya) was not under European domination of one kind or another. In the entire continent, only Liberia and Abyssinia (Ethiopia) were independent. (© Charles Blackwood).
It can be reasonably argued then that, by the early years of the twentieth century if not before, it had become an article of faith, perhaps even an idée-fixe in foreign policy terms, amongst important sections of the Italian political class at least, that Tripoli was destined to become Italian territory. The Italians hoped that under their management the country, which had had a reputation for great productivity in ancient times, might become once more a garden. Perhaps most importantly of all, it was the only area on the southern Mediterranean littoral to which Italy could aspire without coming into conflict with the interests of England or France. Indeed, it is hardly an exaggeration to say that it became axiomatic to any Italian government, no matter what its political complexion, that Tripoli was a ‘promised land’ that would some day belong to Italy.
This was a matter that was not just confined to the political right. On 13 April 1902, the journalist Andrea Torre published in Giornale d’Italia an interview he had conducted with Antonio Labriola, the ‘father of Italian Marxism.’20 Labriola was a theoretician whose 1896 Essays on the Materialist Conception of History have been described as soon becoming ‘a classic in European Marxist literature,’ whilst their author is considered as being a forerunner of Gramsci in formulating the concept of neo-Marxism.21 Trotsky also described Labriola’s writings, which he had read in their French translation, as having influenced him.22
During the course of the interview Torre asked Labriola about the usefulness of Italian expansionism into Tripoli, and if he, and socialism generally, would be opposed to it. Labriola replied that socialist interests couldn’t be opposed to national interests; indeed they must promote it in all its forms.23 This coincidence of interests came about because Labriola visualised Tripoli under Italian occupation or control as an outlet, a destination, for Italian workers, who might otherwise emigrate to foreign countries and be lost to Italy thereafter.24 The latter opinion was optimistic; as an experienced reporter was later to put when the opportunity arose for Italians to actually live in Tripoli: ‘No Italian emigrant will go [to Tripoli], so long as there is such a place as Chicago.’25 Labriola the theoretician was to be proven rather too cerebral in his general thesis also; most Italian socialists were to prove violently opposed to Tripolitanian colonialism.
Internationally, the UK, the power with the longest standing modern commitment to, and interest in, stability vis-à-vis the Mediterranean, would also have to be squared. British sea power in the area was centred on Malta, a strategically vital point so situated as to be able, especially with a powerful fleet based there, to control communication between the eastern and western Mediterranean. The sea route through the Mediterranean was, even before the advent of the Suez Canal exponentially increased its importance, a vital imperial artery to India and Britain’s far eastern possessions and territories. Prior to the construction of the canal, the journey to India via the Mediterranean had involved disembarking on the Syrian coast and travelling overland through Mesopotamia to the Persian Gulf before boarding ship again. The land portion of the journey was then one through Ottoman-controlled territory and was thus dependant upon Ottoman goodwill and stability, neither of which could be considered reliable or eternal. The more secure sea route involved an immense voyage via the Cape of Good Hope. Accordingly, following the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, albeit that Egypt was nominally Ottoman territory, the Mediterranean sea-route, and thus the island of Malta, became of vital importance to the British Empire.26 It naturally followed that Malta then became the base for the largest and most powerful Royal Navy fleet, comprised of the most modern ships.27
This was to change however; as Admiral Sir John Fisher, who had become First Sea Lord in 1904 and remained in the post until the beginning of 1910, put it in 1906:
Our only probable enemy is Germany. Germany keeps her whole Fleet always concentrated within a few hours of England. We must therefore keep a Fleet twice as powerful concentrated within a few hours of Germany.28
This strategic realignment was, as is well known, brought about by the contemporaneous Anglo-German naval race. Despite the downgrading of the Mediterranean, the British Admiralty still retained powerful forces there; the core of the fleet in 1907 comprised six (pre-Dreadnought) battleships.29 These forces were gradually withdrawn, the French Navy concentrating its fleet there whilst the British concentrated in the North Sea. However, the Royal Navy, which held that dependence upon the French fleet was ‘unpalatable’, still possessed the ability to send heavy units there if required.30 The 1912-13 deployment of battle-cruisers is evidence of this.31
Since Malta and the Royal Navy also sat athwart the north-south sea-lanes between Italy and Tripoli, it followed that any Italian intervention in the latter area would have to take place with at least the tacit agreement of the British government. This had been, at least to some extent, obtained in 1902 when Britain’s Lord Lansdowne, ‘the Foreign Secretary who abandoned isolation,’32 authored a note to his opposite number Guilio Prinetti:
His Britannic Majesty’s Government have no aggressive or ambitious designs in regard to Tripoli as above described; that they continue to be sincerely desirous of the status quo there, as in other parts of the coast of the Mediterranean and that if at any time an alteration of the status quo should take place it would be their object that, so far as is compatible with the obligations resulting from the Treaties which at present form part of the public law of Europe, such alteration should be in conformity with Italian interests. This assurance is given on the understanding and in full confidence that Italy on her part has not entered and will not enter into arrangements with other Powers in regard to this or other portions of the Mediterranean of a nature inimical to British interests.33
This and the other somewhat hazy and heavily qualified statements of support for Italian designs on Tripoli have been dismissed as agreements which, ‘the other Great Powers had simply signed to pacify Italy’s apparently
insatiable appetite for verbal [sic] agreements which would never be acted on.’34 While this is a statement that is difficult to controvert, there seems little doubt that they were taken seriously by Italian politicians. For example, Prinetti’s successor but one, Tommaso Tittoni, was called upon to elucidate Italian foreign policy in respect of Tripoli in the Senate on 10 May 1905. He began by pointing out that he could not detail all the various understandings reached with other states regarding the matter:
If the necessary reserve incumbent upon the Government forbids me from speaking of the single acts by which all the interested Powers have recognized Italy’s prior rights on Tripoli as before those of any other nation, nothing prevents my saying that these rights have been assured in the most explicit and efficient manner.35
He went on to make clear that, at least at the present time, these ‘rights’ so assured did not translate into the physical occupation of the territory. He did however leave open the question as to whether this might occur in the future:
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