Selective memory

Selective memory is a sign of a lack of maturity in historical understanding. It means selecting only events that somehow respond to certain visions, intentionally neglecting others. Among these folds (or wounds) of our country's memory, the events of Italian colonialism deserve an interesting place. Italians are good people, incapable of the harshness of other colonizing peoples, naive, ultimately generous and interested in the development of subjugated peoples. This has given rise to a rather indulgent narrative of our colonial actions. Proof of this is the fact that it is easier to remember the terrible defeat suffered at Adua in 1896 than to remember the victory of Amba Aradam on February 12, 1936, when the Italian troops commanded by General Badoglio killed between 5,000 and 6,000 Ethiopian soldiers in battle with the prohibited weapon of gas and then concluded the work by machine-gunning and bombing the retreating enemy troops. Paradoxically, a defeat is more functional to a narrative that belittles Italian responsibilities.

But what happened in Adua? On March 1, 1896, the Italian army suffered a heavy military defeat with over 5,000 deaths among our compatriots and a thousand Askari, the indigenous troops. We are in Ethiopia, in the Tigray region – still sadly known today for a long trail of blood against the backdrop of the conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea. We are about twenty years after the beginning of our colonial adventure, which began with the purchase of the Bay of Assab and continued with the foundation of the colony of Eritrea and the first Italian settlements in Somalia.

The defeat – caused by our imperialistic initiative – was followed by an interesting debate in which many critical voices appeared, starting with Civiltà cattolica which, on March 7, 1896, wrote with great acumen: «The very idea of ​​a war of expansion, that is of conquest, made to impose with the sword on peoples constituted in national unity, having their own army, their own government, their own laws, their own independence, is diametrically opposed to everything that in the modern age is universally understood as civilization, and that by civilization they say they understand above all our most frantic shouters of Africanism […] they then destroy with cannons in Africa what in the name of modern civilization they built in Italy: political unity, freedom, independence, the right to command in one's own home, excluding any foreign dominator, and to regulate national interests at one's own discretion». Fine understanding that has grasped the deeply ambiguous and contradictory nature of our colonialism since its post-unification beginnings.

All those values ​​that had guided our Risorgimento are diametrically subverted in the colonial logic. Hence the need to justify our colonialism with the subtle but decisive introduction of racism. The values ​​of freedom, self-determination, being masters in one's own home do not have a universal value but are valid for civilized peoples. You cannot ask young and uncivilized peoples for the same degree of awareness and maturity. Too bad that colonial propaganda had completely missed the mark: the Ethiopian people were very different from what we had thought, they were not a collection of backward and rough tribes but possessed a solid military organization, as well as a millenary culture. Behind the propaganda of the civilizing intent was therefore hidden the will to occupy African territories and the belief of being superior. Scratch, scratch, here is the truth.


Renato Bonomo
NP March 2025