AHC: Italy keeps Eritrea

Italy keeping Lybia has been discussed quite a few times, but what about Eritrea? As per the title, with a POD after Mussolini's rise to power, can Italy keep Eritrea - or part of it - permanently? Or at least longer than it did in OTL?

First thing that comes into my mind is of course Italy keeping neutral in WWII and the Fascist regime staying in power. But could there ever be enough Italian migrants in Eritrea to keep it as part of Italy even if Mussolini still joins the Axis and loses?
 
Italy keeping Lybia has been discussed quite a few times, but what about Eritrea? As per the title, with a POD after Mussolini's rise to power, can Italy keep Eritrea - or part of it - permanently? Or at least longer than it did in OTL?

First thing that comes into my mind is of course Italy keeping neutral in WWII and the Fascist regime staying in power. But could there ever be enough Italian migrants in Eritrea to keep it as part of Italy even if Mussolini still joins the Axis and loses?
To answer your question no, there's no real incentive for large ammounts of Italians to move to Africa, and espcially Eritrea with its added distance from Italy. And even if Italians ended up making up around 5% of the Eritrean population or more (probably a miracle for Italy) then they would leave or be expelled when the war was over and Ethiopia took control, and the Allies and the UN also have no real incentive to let an axis power keep its colony.
 
To answer your question no, there's no real incentive for large ammounts of Italians to move to Africa, and espcially Eritrea with its added distance from Italy. And even if Italians ended up making up around 5% of the Eritrean population or more (probably a miracle for Italy) then they would leave or be expelled when the war was over and Ethiopia took control, and the Allies and the UN also have no real incentive to let an axis power keep its colony.

Actually Italians were more like 8-10% of the population in 1939. There were some 76,000 Italians living in the country in 1939, being 11% of the population, this was an increase from the 4,188 in 1931. Of these, 53,000 lived in Asmara and some 4,000 in Massawa, showing that they were primarily urban dwellers. The indigenous population was 614,353 in 1939. Though small compared with the Italian population in the Americas, it does show that Italians moved to the colony, particularly after the invasion of Ethiopia in 1935. The primary reason being the huge outlay in public works which sought to turn Italian East Africa into a showplace of Italian colonialism.
 
Actually Italians were more like 8-10% of the population in 1939. There were some 76,000 Italians living in the country in 1939, being 11% of the population, this was an increase from the 4,188 in 1931. Of these, 53,000 lived in Asmara and some 4,000 in Massawa, showing that they were primarily urban dwellers. The indigenous population was 614,353 in 1939. Though small compared with the Italian population in the Americas, it does show that Italians moved to the colony, particularly after the invasion of Ethiopia in 1935. The primary reason being the huge outlay in public works which sought to turn Italian East Africa into a showplace of Italian colonialism.
Yeah but why would even more people move there to make it plurality? It would have to be a significant movement. And why would a large population of Italians (more than 10%) convince the allies to let Italy keep it?
 
Yeah but why would even more people move there to make it plurality? It would have to be a significant movement. And why would a large population of Italians (more than 10%) convince the allies to let Italy keep it?

If Italian rule collapses I can imagine many Italians leaving, as most were only there as civil administrators, military etc. Without Italian rule, there is no reason for the colony to remain Italian, and most Italians there were newcomers, and would leave as there is no incentive to remain. But as things were IOTL there were still 12,800 Italians in Eritrea in 1959.

If Italy remains neutral during the war, they could have enough Italians move to Eritrea to make them a plurality, but it would need a government committed to spending large amounts of capital with no real benefit. The brief period of rule in Italian East Africa in general was a big drain, and based on the grandiose plans the Italians were making, I can see at least 500,000 Italians in East Africa by the mid-1950s (up from 145,000 in 1939). There were fewer than 5,000 Italians living outside of the urban areas in 1939, and I the colony would probably have large modernistic planned cities for Italians as showplaces of fascism. They would be islands in a sea surrounded by indigenous inhabitants reaping little benefits from Italian rule. If they are lucky, the Italian government might start a massive hygiene/health scheme to eradicate diseases among the indigenous population, at least those which could be transmitted to Europeans. However, once nationalism becomes an issue, a significant European population that is entrenched after a few decades might become a major obstacle to decolonisation, as it was in Southern Africa.
 
If Italian rule collapses I can imagine many Italians leaving, as most were only there as civil administrators, military etc. Without Italian rule, there is no reason for the colony to remain Italian, and most Italians there were newcomers, and would leave as there is no incentive to remain. But as things were IOTL there were still 12,800 Italians in Eritrea in 1959.

If Italy remains neutral during the war, they could have enough Italians move to Eritrea to make them a plurality, but it would need a government committed to spending large amounts of capital with no real benefit. The brief period of rule in Italian East Africa in general was a big drain, and based on the grandiose plans the Italians were making, I can see at least 500,000 Italians in East Africa by the mid-1950s (up from 145,000 in 1939). There were fewer than 5,000 Italians living outside of the urban areas in 1939, and I the colony would probably have large modernistic planned cities for Italians as showplaces of fascism. They would be islands in a sea surrounded by indigenous inhabitants reaping little benefits from Italian rule. If they are lucky, the Italian government might start a massive hygiene/health scheme to eradicate diseases among the indigenous population, at least those which could be transmitted to Europeans. However, once nationalism becomes an issue, a significant European population that is entrenched after a few decades might become a major obstacle to decolonisation, as it was in Southern Africa.
If Italy stays neutral than sure they could keep it for a long while. But eventually fascism is going to fall in Italy, either under its own weight or with the death of Mussolini later in the post war environment. It's possible for Eritrea to leave peacefully after this, with some kind of power sharing and agreements between Italians and natives as they weren't as hostile as Ethiopia and Somolia were to Italy.
 
A rough idea for a possible timeline: Italy loses the war with the Ottoman Empire in 1911, and doesn't acquire Lybia as a colony. After the earlier defeat in Ethiopia, this prompts the Italian government to concentrate on Eritrea and abandon further colonial conquests. It also prompts very necessary military reforms.

Let's say alt-WWI starts in 1916 after a border skirmish between Austria and Serbia; the tension was there, I'm afraid, even if the murder of Franz Ferdinand is butterflied. Italy still wants its terre irredente and wants to recover its military lustre, so they join with the alt-Entente and perform marginally better, taking Trieste and managing to hold out against the Austro-German assaults.

The war will have its impact over the Italian people, and there still is chaos and instability after the end of the war. Benito Mussolini is still the charismatic dangerous person that he was, and he remembers well the lesson of the Italo-Turkish war, and of alt-WWI: don't jump into unnecessary wars for no reason and without due preparation. In 1920 he joins a coup d'etat led by Gabriele D'Annunzio and is given the Home Office, the Ministry of Colonies, and a few other governmental responsibilities. He decides to plan for a massive expansion of Italian settlement in Eritrea, to relieve what he sees as excess population in the poorer parts of Italy.

In the meantime in Germany a military authoritarian regime is stirring trouble with Poland over the alt-Polish corridor, and attempting unification with what remains of Austria. This triggers a war with a Polish-French alliance, let's say in 1942; Britain sits out but supports the alt-Allies financially, and interdicts trade with Germany.

In Italy D'Annunzio is getting on in years, and leaves much of the affairs of state to his clique, including Mussolini and a small select group. They decide to keep neutral at first, and Italy profits hugely by selling war material and raw resources to both sides; but eventually the desire for greater international prestige, as well as well calculated offers by the alt-Allies and their British backers, convinces Mussolini to enter the war on their side.

Having to fight on three fronts, the Germans waver; they panic and they make the mistake of sinking US ships en route to France. The USA also enters the war, and this triggers the collapse of the three fronts, and a new coup d'etat in Germany. The new German government immediately sues for peace. Alt-WWII is over by 1946.

This leaves Italy slightly richer, and with a more prominent international role. What about the Italian settlers in Eritrea? We'll say that the people that in OTL went to Lybia, about 120,000, went to Eritrea; that the 30,000ish settlers that went to Ethiopia in OTL went there too; and that most of the 20,000 - 25,000 settlers in Somalia went there too. We'll also imagine that Mussolini's colonial policies managed to attract another 80,000 people, partly from Italy, partly from French Tunisia where many Italian colonists settled. This brings up a total of about 250,000 Italian settlers in Eritrea. Wikipedia has a population of 1,141,000 for Eritrea in 1950 in OTL, out of which 75,000 were Italians. Here, we could hazard a guess that we could have about 1,200,000 to 1,300,000 inhabitants, out of which 250,000 Italian.

This is about 19-20%. Possibly not enough to have Eritrea considered a permanent Italian possession. There is going to be something like OTL-decolonization, and there could well be a war for independence in Eritrea.
 
If Italy stays neutral than sure they could keep it for a long while. But eventually fascism is going to fall in Italy, either under its own weight or with the death of Mussolini later in the post war environment. It's possible for Eritrea to leave peacefully after this, with some kind of power sharing and agreements between Italians and natives as they weren't as hostile as Ethiopia and Somolia were to Italy.

Peaceful disengagement might be difficult. There was a historian of Africa recently who theorized that everywhere where European settlers were at least 1% of the population in Africa, decolonisation became difficult. The larger the European minority, the more difficult it became. This was particularly true as Europeans benefited from a privileged economic position and were loathe to not only give up that position without a fight, but also feared Communism. Despite the Italians being largely urban settlers, the best agricultural lands had been expropriated and turned over to settlers or Italian Economic Groups.
 
Eritrea minus any Italians was split pretty evenly between Christians and Muslims. One scenario would have the local Christians forming a pro-Italy alliance with a quarter million Italian Catholic settlers, with some Muslims willing to participate. Another scenario would have the local Christians and Muslims forming an alliance based on nationalism against the settlers. If the Italians manifest the kind of racism that English and Boer settlers did elsewhere in Africa, a nationalist reaction would be inevitable. One wild card is whether the Vatican could find a way to establish a close interdenominational relationship with the autocephalic Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church. Another wild card is if the local population sees Ethiopia, off the bat, as a bigger threat than Italy. And if Italy is willing to offer full Italian citizenship to the relatively small Eritrean population in say, the late 1940s or early 1950s. Not very likely, but if it had happened, this talented people might have been spared a lot of violence and unhappiness over the past half century or more. The only roughly comparable policies that have been carried out successfully have been in certain former island colonies of France as well as in the U.S. territories of Guam and the Virgin Islands and in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. (I am excluding the British self-governing "colony" of Bermuda, the status of which bears more resemblance to the Isle of Man than to any of the above.) Opportunities during the days of decolonization that might have worked were the Cape Verde Islands (Portugal), Barbados (UK), Bahamas (UK), Newfoundland (UK) and (marginally possible) Malta (UK). The people of those countries are undoubtedly happy today with their independence (or in Newfoundland's case, becoming part of Canada), are political success stories, and in every case so far except Cape Verde, relative economic success stories although Cape Verde with the help of its large overseas migrant communities and a business-friendly democratic government may have higher incomes within reach.

In my opinion, Italy was sufficiently centralized that a province or region of Eritrea would not work without a significant devolution of powers from Italy to the local government. With democratic institutions, this would lead, inevitably, to self-government. Italians might have become a third of the population but even they might see this as necessary. A political link to Italy and formal Italian citizenship for all might be retained in order to keep local Italians happy and Ethiopia at a distance (especially after the Ethiopian Revolution) and so Eritrea could be part of the Common Market and, later, the EU and so migration could be used as a safety valve.
 
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