Italian Colonial Empire

Italian Empire
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Kingdom of Italy   Colonies of Italy in 1939   Territories occupied during World War II

The Italian Empire (Italian: Impero Italiano) comprised the colonies, protectorates, concessions, dependencies and trust territories of the Kingdom of Italy and, after 1946, the Italian Republic. The genesis of the Italian colonial empire was the purchase, in 1869, by a commercial company of the coastal town of Assab on the Red Sea. This was taken over by the Italian government in 1882, becoming Italy's first overseas territory. Over the next two decades the pace of European acquisitions in Africa increased, causing the so-called "Scramble for Africa". By the start of the First World War in 1914, Italy had acquired in Africa alone a colony on the Red Sea coast (Eritrea), a large protectorate in Somalia and administrative authority in formerly Turkish Libya. Outside of Africa, Italy possessed a small concession in Tientsin in China and the Dodecanese Islands off the coast of Turkey.

From early in the "scramble", Italy had designs on the Ethiopian Empire, but was twice defeated in the 19th century: first at the Battle of Dogali in 1887 and then in the first invasion of Ethiopia in 1895–96. During the First World War, Italy occupied southern Albania to prevent it from falling to Austria-Hungary. In 1917, it established a protectorate over Albania, which remained in place until 1920. The Fascist government that came to power with Benito Mussolini in 1922 sought to increase the size of the Italian empire and to satisfy the claims of Italian irredentists. In 1935–36, in its second invasion of Ethiopia Italy was successful and it merged its new conquest with its older east African colonies to create Italian East Africa. In 1939, Italy invaded Albania and incorporated it into the Fascist state. During the Second World War (1939–45), Italy occupied British Somaliland, part of Western Egypt and Tunisia but soon lost those conquests, as well as all its African colonies, including Ethiopia, to the invading allied forces. It was forced in the final peace to relinquish sovereignty over all its colonies. It was granted a United Nations trust to administer former Italian Somaliland in 1950 under United Nations supervision. When Somalia became independent in 1960, Italy's eight-decade experience with colonialism ended.