I'd rather invest in the Paludi Pontine, Fucino, Polesine, Maremma than in attempting to settle Somalia or things like that...
You, me and everyone else that had not the head screwed backwards
Mind, the reclamation of marshland is quite a backbreaking job without the help of steam driven dredges and dewatering pumps. Probably it could be done, but it would be a monumental work.
Colonial expansion is a tricky thing: a settlement colony is almost always a good investment, even if the mother-state sooner or later has to let the children go and make a life on their own. Unfortunately, all the valuable real estate has been already staked, picketed and fenced by the middle of the 19th century. Please don't try to sweet-talk me into looking for a settlement colony in the middle of Africa. That is going to end very badly, whatever good are the intentions at the beginning (and they normally aren't). In the end it goes back to the point we were discussing before: invest money in improving the land one nation already owns.
Securing a safe harbor from were an economical penetration can be handled better than simply over long distances (with its corollary of the coaling stations that are needed in the age of steam) looks certainly more attractive, and slightly less imperialistic. However it is an unfortunate fact of life that usually the economic penetration turns into monopoly and exploitation, and most often into political penetration.
Then there are the truly exploitative colonies: a scarce resource (be it rubber or oil or a rare metal) can be found in good quantity in a land that doesn't care or is not advanced enough to gather it themselves and trade. Will I take the high moral way, and do without what is not mine?
Let's not kid ourselves: colonial expansion in the second half of the 19th century was not really an economic investment, but rather a search for captive markets which degenerated into a kind of desperate hunt for status symbols. It was almost at the level of "The Joneses have 5 colonies, why cannot you find a couple for us?"
Colonially speaking, 19th century Italy really should only be concerned with Tunisia and Libya, maybe investments in Egypt. With 20/20 hindsight, I'd recommend both Italy and Germany avoid colonies and indeed try to push decolonization to mess with the British but that's a bridge too far for contemporaries.
Libya would be a useful colony if kept into the 20th century, once oil is discovered though this would require more sophisticated technology than was available prior to the 1950s or so.
All very good points. I like the idea of pushing for decolonization, and in a way the Americans reached that point before anyone else (the Open Door policy in China, for example). It's a pity that the same approach was not implemented in the settlement of the North American continent.
That was "Manifest Destiny", wasn't it?
Italy and Germany (which were late comers to the game) should have stayed away from it, but in the end the status symbol madness took them too. It is quite possible that it was an epidemic against which no cure was available.