Non-Fascist Italy and its Colonies

xsampa

Banned
If Mussolini had not led the march on Rome and turned Italy into a fascist state, what would have happened to Italy's colonies? Would Italy have intensified settler movement into Libya or tried to integrate Eritrea/Somalia into Italy?
 
If Mussolini had not led the march on Rome and turned Italy into a fascist state, what would have happened to Italy's colonies? Would Italy have intensified settler movement into Libya or tried to integrate Eritrea/Somalia into Italy?
Lybia would've probably seen as the best possible bet for Italy: even if at the time most of it looked like was just a bunch of empty sand, the coast was fertile enough to allow a stable agricultural population: given that ITTL the industrialization efforts will be blander, there would be plenty of poor landless farmers eager to get a piece of land to work, which in turn would reduce Italian emigration to other countries (problem that the governments of Italy in the pre-Fascism period struggled a lot to solve). Lybian interior might remain fully Lybian unless actively fough for, and that'd make It indipendent when times comes to decolonize (although perhaps Lybia May end up landlocked ITTL).

Eritrea was more of a "Prestige colony": it could be technically be integrated into Italy, but it was never going to be top priority save strange deals with Britain. Overall, if Italy isn't involved in any war, it could manage to retain without much effort, but wouldn't be very jealously defended or overly funded either (although the fact that Eritrea IOTL wasn't all that eager to leave Italy could be chalked up to Fascism making actual efforts to integrate the area).

Somalia... is going to need a lot of work to be retained. Even assuming that Ethiopia Is left undisturbed, and that Lybian rebels die off/are outnumbered, Italy may not have enough resources to pacify the population. Perhaps it could manage to make some spots majority-Italian, but that's assuming a lebel of expenditure that I don't see non-Fascist Italy making.
 
Lybia has to be pacified anyway, after WW1. Probably it will be a longer and less bloody pacification process under a democratic Italy but I would not bet a lot of money on "less bloody": see the war of the Rif, for example, or the British "pacification" of Iraq.
It is not completely clear to me why less industrialization in Italy: if anything, a democratic Italy would be more open to foreign investment, and anyway the military industries created to cope with the demand of WW1 cannot be just left to wither on the vine. The products of these industries should be turned to feed internal demand and export, plus infrastructures in Italy (which also will include drying up marshes and creating new agricultural land: more or less the same things that fascism promoted).
Obviously it depends on the reason why there is no fascism: it is quite different if fascist March on Rome is stopped by the army or if fascism just fails to gather enough traction just because the immediate post war is better.
Using Lybia for settlement will certainly happen, but it will require pacification first and infrastructures: it will happen not earlier than the second half of 1930s, since the financial crisis will still happen.

Eritrea will also get infrastructures, same as it did IOTL. The highlands are better than the coast of Lybia, anyway.
Eritrea never was hostile to Italian presence, and I'd expect the same happens ITTL: independence will likely be granted peacefully in the 1960s (while I doubt the same will happen to Lybia, given the presence of oil and the high number of Italian settlers) but Eritrea will remain close to Italy.

Somalia is a bit of a lost cause, as well as a backwater: it is likely to remain a colony until the 1960s, and afterwards to gain independence. I don't see much good for them in the future, while Eritrea should be in a much, much better shape than OTL.
 
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