Preliminary Programme

The 35th anniversary of the Adwa military defeat, in 1931, occasioned one of the first outburst of the huge propaganda campaign which prepared fascist Italy’s attack on Ethiopia (1935-1936). In the most important Italian newspaper, the “Corriere della Sera”, an influential journalist as Aldo Valori maintained that the new fascist civilisation would finally make possible to wipe out the shame of the many colonial defeats – the most important of which was Adwa, actually preventing from any further expansion in East Africa until 1936 – suffered by the late Liberal Italy, to overcome its disastrous legacy.
But what was the reason for Fascist Italy for endeavouring to alter the established imperial asset in Africa, where the overwhelming possessions held by the British and the French left very little room for new and belated comers? Why holding colonies was felt such a vital necessity even in the Thirties? Why this belated grab for Africa, attempted by the least of the grat powers, should rise the popular enthousiasm for a costly imperialism, which used up much of the nation’s military forces and assets?
The anti-british shade of the arguments raised by Valori was an interesting clue. The increasing anglophobia apparent in the public discourse during the Thirties has been replacing a controversial anglophilia emerged in the early XXth century, when the rising Italian nationalists took as a model the aggressive social-imperialism propped up by Joseph Chamberlain and supported by popular consensus. It was a new kind of anglophilia, fascinated by imperial strength instead of by constitutional liberalism, prone to be dismissed as soon as the imperial schemes designed by the fascist regime clashed against british hostility.
A close investigation into the transition from anglophilia to anglophobia, in order to uphhold the claim of the “necessary” colonial expansion, might shed a new light on the deep relation between national and imperial historical experience, to be carried out in the political and public discourse across Liberal and Fascist Italy. (Show less)

If the nationality and national-minority problematic in Central and Eastern Europe is one thing, the attempts of West European historians to understand and conceptualise it, is another. Among the handful of early-twentieth century Western analysts of Eastern European problems, the Scottish contemporary historian R.W. Seton-Watson was by no means the least important. His work “Racial Problems in Hungary“ from 1908 was a remarkable attempt to analyse the historical evolution of the Slovak-Magyar (ethnic Hungarian) relationship and the contemporary realities of multinational Hungary, in which the non-Magyar nationalities were subjected to a relentless policy of Magyarisation and national oppression. During the First World War Seton-Watson exerted his influence in Britain to help the revolutionary Czecho-Slovak leadership to proclaim a Czecho-Slovak state after the defeat of the Central Powers. At the end of 1918 this state was founded, but a serious problem emerging at the outset was the presence of large German and Magyar minorities in its territory. In the Slovak part of the new state the Magyar minority made up some twenty percent of the population, and the question was what kind of policies the Czechoslovak government was going to implement with regard to the Hungarians and the promises of cultural autonomy. This also included social issues, in particular the question of land reform of which both Slovak and Magyar peasants should benefit, but which overlapped with the ethnolinguistic issue and the empowerment of lower-class Magyars who had been oppressed by the Hungarian landlords as the Slovaks had been. In 1923 Seton-Watson made his first visit to Slovakia after the War and the successful national revolution of 1918, visiting several locations in the country and presenting his findings in “The New Slovakia“, published the following year. This work is interesting for various reasons, and particularly because of the author´s attempt to come to terms with the new reality of a Magyar minority in Slovakia, the world having been turned upside down. It is evident that Seton-Watson found it difficult to evaluate the new situation in a straigthforward or consistent way. He sympathised with the new Czechoslovak state, but he also expressed some criticism with regard to certain Czechoslovak or Slovak policies on the Magyar minority. There was an element of confusion, even bewilderment, in his approach to the problem, defending some Czechoslovak measures constraining the Magyars and their political, social, and cultural position, but questioning other measures that might be short-sighted or counter-productive. His view on the Magyars themselves was complex as well, presenting them in some contexts as victims and in other contexts as deserving of their fate. It would seem that the complexity of Seton-Watson´s views can be seen as an example of the bewilderment of Western commentators when it comes to trying to understand the complexities and dilemmas involved in the national problems of Central and Eastern Europe. This, of course, is an important aspect of the whole problematic itself. (Show less)

Until the First World War, German Zionists developed their ideas about the Jewish colonization of Palestine in a political and ideological environment which was increasingly concerned with and influenced by German colonial and imperial aspirations. This did not only implicate that central concepts of the Zionist enterprise, such as colonization, social reform or development, but also nation, race and power, were deeply entrenched in and influenced by the German colonial discourse. German colonial politics, too, were connected in multiple ways with German Zionism. At the same time, Zionist colonialist activities differed significantly from German colonialism in that they were carried out by an international organization and did not pursue imperialistic goals. Moreover, German colonial discourses often featured radical nationalist ideas which were difficult to reconcile with the humanistic and universalistic elements of German Zionism. The paper will discuss the relationship between German Zionism and German Imperialism and ask how Zionists received, appropriated and criticized German colonialist discourses and politics. In particular, it will discuss how the Zionists tried to solve the contradictions between their own concept of colonizing nationalism, the international dimensions of the German imperialist project and the transnational realities of German and Jewish colonialism. (Show less)