Italy's Triumphant Burden

Owning colonies during the Imperial Age was a drain on the mother country's economy (just ask Great Britain!).

Now if the Italians had acquired Ethiopia earlier from the 1895 war, how much trouble would the Italian economy face for the years to come?

Would this effect World War 1 in any way?
 
i agree that colonies are more a burden than a help. look at germany, los all of her colonies after the world wars, Great britain or France, both which ruled large parts of the world, are still weaker than germany. Once they have colonies, they start to rely too much on them, and forget to improve the owns country economy.
A good article, about germanys economic miracle, which only happend because it never relied on colonies:
http://www.genius.co.at/index.php?id=419

unfortunatly it is in german, maybe someone who has a better english than me, can make a translated version.

Colonies might were a advantage back in the 1900s, they provided lot of resources, but at least since the end of the WW II, they were just a burden.

depending on what happens, maybe there would not even be a world war as we know it, will franz ferdinand also get assasinated in this timeline ? However a stronger italy also means a bigger problem for Austria-Hungary.
 
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i agree that colonies are more a burden than a help. look at germany, los all of her colonies after the world wars, Great britain or France, both which ruled large parts of the world, are still weaker than germany. Once they have colonies, they start to rely too much on them, and forget to improve the owns country economy.
A good article, about germanys economic miracle, which only happend because it never relied on colonies:
http://www.genius.co.at/index.php?id=419

unfortunatly it is in german, maybe someone who has a better english than me, can make a translated version.

Colonies might were a advantage back in the 1900s, they provided lot of resources, but at least since the end of the WW II, they were just a burden.

I disagree. The entire point of colonies was to drain away resources to improve the mother country. The problem isn't in the opportunity cost-loss of investing in colonies over the motherland (colonies generally got the scraps anyway, unless it was important like French Algeria or British India), the problem is that the costs of occupation and administration outweighed the profit from extraction and exploitation.

As for the OP, Ethiopia actually may have been useful for Italy; it has the potential to be a serious breadbasket, and would have allowed Italy to dominate the Horn. The issue is that the Italian economy wasn't capable of investing in Ethiopia at the levels needed to make the colony profitable. The impact on the Italian economy depends on how Italy proceeds after taking Ethiopia.

After a while though, Ethiopia -unlike Libya- can actually pay off for Italy, if the Ethiopians don't keep rebelling against their new overlords.
 
The chain of event that led to WW1 IOTL will be changed. With Italy not shamed at Adua, it will retain more prestige and the Germans will make more effort to keep the Triple Alliance going. With forces deployed for occupation and to quell rebellions in the area (check the 'Mad Mullah' and others, that operated up to the 1920s) it won't go to war against Turkey in 1911, which in turn will butterfly the Balkan Wars as we know them.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
The actual administration (the official budget) were normally a small profit to a small loss. The cost will be Italy will have to spend a lot of its military budget on occupations. I assume they will not increase the budget by a lot. So some number of soldiers will there in the war. The operation budget will also eat into the hardware purchase budget. You could look at the lead up to WW2 for better numbers, but to guess.


1) 4-9 Fewer divisions in Italy in WW1.

2) 10% fewer machine guns and artillery pieces on TOE.

3) Italy may decide to try to tank German East Africa instead of attacking as much into the Alps. With the 2-3 Colonial corps already in Africa, they will just send one down to take German East Africa, and it will be a fiasco, but Italy will eventually win.
 
Owning colonies during the Imperial Age was a drain on the mother country's economy (just ask Great Britain!).

Now if the Italians had acquired Ethiopia earlier from the 1895 war, how much trouble would the Italian economy face for the years to come?

Would this effect World War 1 in any way?

More than a colony the project was to creat a protectorate of Ethiopia, basically we get in the end of the 19th century the deal that was proposed to the italians during the second Abyssian war, getting great economic concession, direct possession of some border land to annex at Eritrea and Somalia and the king of Ethiopia become basically a puppet.

WW 1 will be a lot influenced by that, as the conquest of Libya is no more a 'necessity' due to the fact that the Adua defeat must be avenged for national prestige, now is simple a question of strategic position and a little more of international recognition. So if the Libya enterprise is even done there is the high probability that the offer of the Porte of giving at Italy for Libya the same deal the France get for Tunisa is accepted basically butterfling away the war between Italy and the Ottoman Empire.
This mean:
- Relationship between Italy and the A-H empire somewhat better as the Hasburg basically acted as an Ottoman ally.
- Better economic situation in Italy due to no cost of war.
- Italy can fight from the beginning WWI as in OTL was still refurbishing the depleted reserve of ammunition and material
- Cadorna is not the commander in chief of the Italian army, he was given the position as was unthouced by any snafu in the war...and there is a possibility that Pollio (his predecessor) will still alive without the stress of the war (and he was pro-CP)
- No balkan war as the OE even if diplomatically hurted has not used is army and navy against Italy suffering a lot of loss and been defeated, so the shark don't smell blood...or even if a war erupted there is the great possibility that the OE will be the winner, giving his a shot of health.
- Maybe this victory make italy more aggressive regarding colonial concession in China and begin to ask more expecially after the boxer rebellion
 
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