Chapter XV: The Italians in Africa

The part played by Italy in the colonization of Africa after the
submergence of Roman civilization in that continent under the Arab
invasion was remarkable; it was not, however, a part attributable to
Italy as a whole, but to some of her component states. The little
principality of Amalfi had early dealings with the Saracens, and
imported from them some knowledge of the new navigation, and of that
newly-introduced group of fruit trees—the orange family—which was to
find a second home in Italy. Pisa, Genoa, and Venice alternately
warred and traded with the north of Africa. Naples obtained from
Egypt the domestic Indian buffalo so early as the 13th century.
Sicily was finally conquered by the Saracens in 832 A.C.; and
Sardinia from 712 became intermittently a Saracen possession for
more than three centuries until it was definitely rescued by the
Pisans after 1015 A.C. Consequently Sicilian and Sardinian renegades
figure in the early Muhammadan history of Tunis, Tripoli, and
Algeria. But the two states which before the Portuguese era shared
most prominently in the commerce of North Africa were Genoa and
Venice. Genoa had most to do with the Tunis littoral; she had
intermittent establishments at Tabarka and Bona, besides
occasionally holding Mehdia on the coast of Tunis. Genoa sent
several noteworthy seamen to explore the Atlantic, the north-west
coast of Africa, the Azores and Canary Islands; and it is believed
that Genoese ships may even have found their way along the west
coast of Africa to the Gulf of Guinea as early as the 14th century;
for in a volume of eight maps—the famous Laurentian Portulano,
executed by a Genoese about 1351 (and subsequently acquired for the
Laurentian Library at Florence), Africa for the first time in
history is delineated as a continent with a great western
projection, a tapering southern extremity and its bold eastern horn
of Somaliland. (This information, however, may have been derived
from Arabs during the Crusades.) Venice cultivated a friendship with
Egypt during and after the Crusades, and in this way obtained
control over the Indian trade, until the Portuguese discovered and
utilized the Cape route. Even then the interest of Italy in Africa
did not slacken. It was displayed chiefly in Rome during the 16th
and 17th centuries, when the Roman pontiffs took up geographical
research into the problems and possibilities of Africa with some
eagerness, especially with regard to the Congo, Abyssinia, and the
northern Sudan. Noteworthy amongst the Popes who promoted African
studies were Leo X, who encouraged the Italianized Moor, Johannes
Leo (“Leo Africanus”), to write in Italian a description of his
travels through the Nigeria and Northern Sudan[203]; Sixtus V, who
caused his chamberlain Filippo Pigafetta to publish much valuable
information from Portuguese travellers and missionaries concerning
the Congo and Abyssinia; Paul V, who sent a mission to the King of
Kongo in 1621 to report on that West African kingdom; and Urban
VIII, who in 1640 erected the Kongo Kingdom into an Apostolic
prefecture dependent on the Roman See and despatched many Italian
missionaries thither. His efforts were revived in 1652 by his
successor, Innocent X.

During the 15th, 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, Abyssinian Christian
students frequently journeyed to Rome and lived in Italy more or
less as pensioners of the Popes. Similarly, during the 17th and 18th
centuries so many Italian craftsmen, surgeons, physicians,
naturalists, and botanists, travelled in and through Tunisia and
Egypt, and stayed there permanently, that (besides the innumerable
Italian slaves captured by the pirates and absorbed into the
Muhammadan community) there grew up the great Levantine communities
in the principal towns of Egypt and Barbary. In 1600, an Italian
surgeon named Federigo Zeringhi killed two hippopotamuses at
Damietta, at the eastern mouth of the Nile; and in 1658 other
Italian travellers noted the extinction of the hippopotamus in the
Nile Delta. Italian influence sank to its lowest ebb in the late
18th century, but after Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt many Italians
were employed in the service of that country, under Muhammad Ali.
Thousands of Italians (many of them Jews) also emigrated to Eastern
Algeria and Tunis in the first half of the 19th century and financed
the sponge fisheries off Tripoli. United Italy, in 1862, began to
assert herself at first in Tunis. During the sixties of the 19th
century the affairs of Tunis, instead of being debated only between
France and Britain, were submitted to the consideration of a third
power, the Kingdom of Italy; and in 1869 a triple control of these
three powers had been established over its finances. Then Britain
ceased to claim a consultative voice in the control of this
tottering Turkish regency, and France and Italy were left face to
face. Italy had to give way in 1881. She had, however, for some time
been cultivating an interest in Tripoli, where she had established,
as in Tunis and Egypt, “Royal schools” for the gratuitous teaching
of Italian; but a too vivid display of her interest in the affairs
of Tripoli after the French occupation of Tunis caused the Sultan of
Turkey to reinforce his garrison there by 10,000 soldiers, and Italy
decided that the time was not then. Italian influence of a more or
less Levantine, denationalized stamp had become well established in
Egypt before the British occupation, and had to a great extent
replaced that of France, the Italian language being employed as a
kind of Lingua Franca. The present writer can remember, when first
visiting Egypt in 1884, that most of the letter-boxes at the
post-offices had on them “Buca per le lettere,” while Italian was
much better understood in the towns than French, English of course
not being understood at all at that time. So that, if it be true
that Mr Gladstone in 1882 invited Italy to take the place of France
in a dual control with England over Egypt, the proposal was not, at
the time when it was made, such a preposterous one as it might now
appear.

So far back as 1873 Italy had cast an eye over Abyssinia; and one of
her great steamship companies had purchased a small site on Assab
Bay as a coaling station. Assab Bay, in the Red Sea, was on the
inhospitable, ownerless Danákil coast, not far from the Straits of
Bab-al-Mandib. In 1875 the suspicious movements of Italian ships
about Sokotra obliged England to take that island under her
protection. From 1870 onwards Italian missionaries and Italian
travellers had begun to move about this coast, and to explore the
south of Abyssinia. In 1880 the Italian Government revived the
Italian claim to Assab Bay, but did not take actual possession of it
until July 1882, when the bombardment of Alexandria had awakened
Europe to the apprehension of a great change in Egyptian affairs. An
acrimonious correspondence took place between Italy, Egypt, and
Turkey regarding this claim to Assab Bay; but Italy received the
tacit support of England, and when the Egyptian hold over the Sudan
crumbled, the Italians rapidly extended their occupation north and
south, until Italian influence was conterminous on the south with
the French Somaliland territory of Obok (and consequently opposite
the Straits of Bab-al-Mandib), and on the north reached to Ras
Kasar, 110 miles south-east of Suakin. In this manner Italy acquired
about 670 miles of Red Sea coast, including the ancient and
important port of Masawa. This coast in its partial condition of
sterility and its terribly hot climate would be of little value did
it not possess a cool, mountainous hinterland, considerable areas of
gum forest, and fertile river-valleys, besides having much grazing
ground for camels and other livestock, and commanding the easiest
and nearest approaches to Abyssinia. In one part of the coast the
natives are practically of Abyssinian stock, and Abyssinia has
constantly striven through centuries to maintain her hold on the
seaboard, but has always been driven back to her mountains by
maritime races, such as the Greeks, Romans, Arabs, and Turks. Seeing
Italy step in, after the downfall of Egypt, to replace that power in
Masawa and elsewhere, King John of Abyssinia soon fell out with the
Italians. The Italians had occupied an inland town called Sahati,
formerly an Egyptian stronghold. Ras Alula, an Abyssinian general,
with 10,000 men attacked 450 Italian troops on their way to Sahati,
and, as may be imagined, massacred nearly all of them. Italy felt
her honour at stake, and in spite of the expense, would have been
obliged to commence an Abyssinian war but for the good offices of
the British Government. Lord Salisbury sent Mr, afterwards Sir
Gerald, Portal on a mission to Abyssinia, which had the effect of
arranging a temporary peace between the Italians and King John.
Shortly afterwards King John of Abyssinia advanced against the
Mahdists, and was killed in battle. Italy then occupied the posts of
Keren and Asmara, which gave her control over the mountain passes
leading, on the north-east, into Abyssinia. She had previously
maintained a great friendliness with Menelik, the vassal king of
Shoa in the south. (Abyssinia proper may be said to be divided into
three principal districts, which sometimes become semi-independent
satrapies or kingdoms—Tigre on the north, Amhara in the centre, and
Shoa to the south.) When King John of Abyssinia died, Menelik, as
the strongest of his vassals, seized somewhat illegally the
Abyssinian Empire. Although now viewing the Italians in a more
suspicious manner, he nevertheless concluded a treaty with them,
which enabled him to negotiate a loan and to obtain a large quantity
of war material, but contained a clause dealing vaguely with the
“mutual protection” of the contracting parties. The Italian
protectorate over Abyssinia was recognized by England and by
Germany, but not by France or Russia. In order to annoy Italy as a
member of the Triple Alliance, France and Russia commenced
encouraging Menelik to a repudiation of the Italian protectorate,
and supplied him with quantities of arms and ammunition. Russia,
indeed, for years past had shown a disposition to concern herself
about Abyssinia on the pretext that the Greek Christianity of that
country linked it specially to Russia. She sent numerous
“scientific” expeditions thither, and also a party of Cossack-monks
to stimulate Abyssinian Christianity. On one occasion these
Cossack-monks even went to the length of seizing a port on the
French coast, near Obok. This was too much, even for the French; and
force was used to expel these truculent missionaries.

In March 1891, with a view to regulating future action on the part
of Italy, England had entered into an agreement delimiting the
respective spheres of British and Italian interests in East Africa;
and by this agreement Italy was permitted, if she found it necessary
for military purposes, to occupy the abandoned post of Kasala (then
in the hands of the Dervishes), on the frontiers of the Egyptian
Sudan. Accordingly this post was occupied by Italy in 1894. In the
beginning of 1895, the Italian forces being again attacked by the
Abyssinians, the war was carried into the enemy’s country, and after
several sanguinary defeats had been inflicted on the Abyssinians,
the greater part of the Tigre Province was occupied. Menelik, whose
administrative capital still remained at Adis Ababa in Shoa,
organized a vast army, and prepared to defend his kingdom. In the
early spring of 1896 General Baratieri (in fear lest he might be
superseded, and without waiting for sufficient reinforcements)
assumed the offensive against the Abyssinians in the vicinity of
Adua, with the result that he sustained a terrible reverse. Nearly
half the Italian army (13,000 men—7,000 only Italians, the rest
natives of the coast—against 90,000 Abyssinians), was killed, and of
the remainder many prisoners were taken. This was a terrible blow to
Italy, and its effects on European politics were far-reaching.
General Baldissera somewhat retrieved the position; but all thought
of an Italian protectorate over Abyssinia was at an end, a position
frankly recognized by Italy in her subsequent treaty of peace with
Menelik. She lost but little of her original colony of “Eritrea,”
but Eritrea seemed then of small value except as the stepping-stone
to Abyssinia. The French and Russians were triumphant; and French
adulation of the Emperor Menelik was scarcely worthy of a nation in
the high position of France.

A British mission was sent in 1897 to open up friendly relations
with Abyssinia, and to establish a political agency at the king’s
court. The treaty concluded seemed at first sight not wholly
satisfactory to British interests, as it yielded a portion of
Somaliland to Abyssinia, and did not provide for any delimitation of
Abyssinian boundaries on the west; but apparently there were other
clauses not made public which subsequently ensured the friendly
neutrality of Menelik during the Khartum campaign.

Since 1897, or rather since the institution of civil government in
1900, the colony of Eritrea has made a quiet progress towards
well-being and commercial prosperity insufficiently appreciated by
historians of Africa. “Colony” remains an inaccurate designation,
since the excessive heat of the lowlands makes Italian settlement in
large numbers impossible (there are only 3000 settlers in the whole
colony), while the uplands are either barren or sufficiently well
populated by a sturdy race of negroids—a mixture of Hamites,
Semites, and Nilotic negroes. But this native population (275,000)
has prospered and increased under Italian rule. A considerable trade
is being developed in the nuts of the hyphæne palms, exported to the
approximate annual value of £50,000. Hides and cattle, wax, gum,
coffee, ivory, and salt are also exported; and the annual
trade—imports and exports—now (1912) averages £1,000,000 in value.
The area of Eritrea, which extends southward to Cape Dameirah on the
Straits of Bab-al-Mandib, is 45,800 square miles.

Finding that Germany did not intend to push claims, half-developed,
to the Somali coast, Italy in 1889 began to make treaties in that
direction, and by the end of that year had established a
protectorate over the whole Somali coast from the west side of Cape
Guardafui to the mouth of the river Jub, a claim subsequently
confirmed by agreements with Britain and with the Sultan of
Zanzibar. Italian enterprise has led to a great deal of geographical
discovery near the Jub River and the Webi Shebeili, an eccentric
stream, which after arriving within a few miles of the sea and
meandering along parallel with the coast, loses itself in a sandy
desert near the mouth of the Jub River. Several Italian expeditions
came to grief in these Somali and Gala countries, but Italy held on,
and deserves to succeed in the long run. An Italian commercial
company was founded to deal with the exploitation of the Benadir
coast—once in the hands of the Sultan of Zanzibar—where there was
still some lucrative trade to be done in products of the interior.
But complaints were made as to mistreatment of the natives by the
Chartered Company; and in 1900 the Italian Government bought from
the Sultan of Zanzibar, for £144,000, the ports (_Benadir_: plural
of _Bandar_, a sea port) of Magdishu, Brawa, Marka, and Warsheikh
which had long been appanages of the Sultan of Zanzibar. The name of
the “colony” is now “Somalía Italiana,” Italian Somaliland, and the
capital is at Magdishu—the “Mogadoxo” of the 16th century
Portuguese. Inland, Italian rule stretches along the Jub or Juba
river as far as the Gala towns of Bardera and Lugh. Farther north,
along the coast, there is the native Somali sultanate of Obbia and
then the Somali tribal territory of Nogal. The total area of Italian
Somaliland is about 140,000 square miles, and the population (Gala,
Somali, Swahili negroes, Arabs, and helot tribes) is 400,000.

About the year 1904 a _rapprochement_ took place between France and
Italy relative to a settlement of colonial “aspirations,”
coincidently with agreements, secret or avowed, entered into between
France and Britain. It was then laid down that, should Italy at any
time establish herself in place of Turkey in the Tripolitaine, the
boundaries of her sphere of influence there should practically be
conterminous with those then recognized by France as being the
Turkish limits, comprising Tripoli (as far west as Ghadamés and
Ghat), Fezzan, and Cyrenaica. It is probable also that a similar
understanding was come to with Great Britain in the early part of
the 20th century. In fact it was openly stated in the literature of
the period that Italy had “ear-marked” the Tripolitaine as her share
of the Turkish Empire should any further curtailment of the Turkish
dominions take place. No official repudiation of such an idea
emanated from Germany or Austria. Nevertheless, when Italy did move
in this direction in 1911, it was from Germany and Austria that she
received the bitterest reproaches. The explanation of this changed
attitude was no doubt that between 1909 and 1911 an idea had grown
up both in Germany and Austria that Tripoli was now considered by
Italy as practically worthless from the point of view of a future
field for Italian colonization; and that it might be possible,
through some scheme of concessions and chartered companies, for the
Teutonic allies to effect a settlement and control over the
Tripolitaine (under the Turkish flag, possibly). Thence they might
build a trans-Saharan railway which would connect this German
foothold on the south Mediterranean coast with the future Congolese
Empire which Germany was resolving to shape in course of time out of
French, Belgian, and Portuguese possessions, by purchase, exchange,
and it may be some pressure. This idea bore fruit in an attenuated
form in the concessions made to Germany by France in north-west
Congoland in 1911 (see p. 234).

Italy had nearly gone to war with Turkey in 1910 over a dispute
regarding the Italian Post Offices in the Turkish Empire, and, as
her principal means of punishing Turkey, was preparing an expedition
to land in Tripoli. But the Turks gave way before a practical
ultimatum, and Italy was left without an excuse. Then followed the
announcement that a well-equipped Austrian “scientific” mission
would start for the thorough exploration of the Tripolitaine in the
winter of 1910-1911. Italy appealed to Turkey to grant similar
facilities for an Italian expedition, but received an evasive reply.
In July 1911 came the startling incident of Agadir, with all that it
implied, both as to North African and as to Central African aims on
the part of Germany. It was felt soon afterwards that Germany, being
baulked of a foothold in Morocco, would be more than ever anxious to
establish herself on the Tripoli coast. A quarrel was therefore
picked with Turkey on somewhat vague grievances; and a declaration
of war was followed by the immediate landing of an Italian army at
the town of Tripoli on September 20, 1911. Soon afterwards, in the
autumn and winter of 1911, all the other towns on the coast of
Tripoli and Cyrenaica were occupied by the Italians, whose Senate,
on February 23, 1912, ratified a decree annexing these provinces to
Italy, as far to the west, south, and east as the spheres of France,
Britain, and Egypt. The whole of the port of Solum and its vicinity
was given over to Egypt—a _solatium_ accepted without hesitation by
the Anglo-Egyptian government.

The European conscience of course was outraged, and much sympathy
was expressed with Turkey, but no assistance furnished. No doubt the
action of Italy in theory was a political crime. In a time of
perfect peace, she delivered an ultimatum to a neighbouring European
power based on ostensible grievances of a trifling kind; and before
that power could discuss any rectification of the said grievance,
two large provinces of its territory were forcibly annexed. In
theory the action of Italy was indefensible; in practice it was
probably a matter of stern necessity. The coast of Tripoli is
immediately opposite Italy, and it is far away from Turkey. A little
hesitancy, and this littoral might have first been assigned
commercially to German and Austrian subjects and subsequently have
passed for ever beyond the scope of Italian sea-power. Italy would
then have had the ironical punishment which Fate so often allots to
those who let “I dare not wait upon I would.” As to any regret being
felt for Turkey, let us consider for a moment what were her moral
claims to these two provinces. Their coast ports were seized by
Turkish pirates in the middle of the 16th century. Eventually there
grew up a Turco-Arab dynasty of the Karamanli Pashas to whom was
delegated by Turkey in the early 18th century the government of
Tripoli and Barka (Cyrenaica). The Karamanli Pashas, though they
sent out piratical fleets into the Mediterranean to attack the ships
of powers not in treaty relations with them, nevertheless did much
to open up Fezzan and the northern Sudan to European commerce; and
their friendship with Britain made it possible for the British
expeditions to Lake Chad and Bornu to take place in 1821-3. In 1835
the Turkish Government at Constantinople, alarmed by the spreading
power of Muhammad Ali and the French seizure of Algiers, intervened
in the affairs of Tripoli and annexed it; a guerilla warfare
continued for ten years afterwards. From 1850 onwards, a great
revival of the Sudan slave-trade took place through the Tripolitan
ports; and this was still more marked after Egypt, governed by the
Khedive Ismail, ceased to export slaves. Under direct Turkish rule,
the Tripolitaine became almost impenetrable by European travellers,
several of whom were assassinated within its limits. Nothing was
done for the improvement of Fezzan, of the oases, or even of the
Tripolitan coast towns. Locusts ravaged the crops unchecked; and the
desert sands steadily advanced on the cultivable regions. No public
works worth mentioning exist to testify to any benefits derived from
Turkish rule. Turkey has been tried in the balances of Tripolitan
history and found to be utterly wanting.

By the summer of 1912, the Italians had fought many battles and
skirmishes with the Turks and Arabs of the Tripolitaine. They had
been accused of the usual inhumanities of war by the usual
Anglo-Saxon journalist, but they were in possession of all the coast
towns, and in several of their lavish public works began to
reconcile the much-tried Moorish population to the dominance of the
“Rumi”—in this case a singularly truthful term, for it really was
the “Roman” come back to rule a land which fourteen hundred years
before (prior to the Vandal descent) he had raised to a position of
considerable fertility and prosperity. In July, 1912 the chief of
the great Senussi brotherhood (see page 236) made terms of peace and
amity with the Italians; and, as this edition goes to press, peace
has been concluded (Oct. 15, 1912) between Italy and Turkey on the
basis of the retrocession to the eldest daughter of Rome of two
among the North African provinces torn from her Mother State, first
by the Vandals and next by the Arab invasion of the 7th century A.C.

When Italy is enabled to take complete possession of this area of
400,000 square miles, she will find that barely one-third is
cultivable, and that the remainder consists of naked plateaus,
mountains of sun-baked rock, and vast “seas” of drifting sand. The
sand is a less hopeless proposition than the rock, for under it
often lie layers of imprisoned water, releasable by artesian wells.
But when the claims and requirements of the natives of “Libya” (as
the Italians call their scarcely-won possession) are duly provided
for, there will not remain much agricultural land for Italian
settlement. Yet there may arise many promising industries which will
provide employment for Italians in the towns on the coast. Moreover,
with time, patience, sympathy and understanding, the Italians will
find the million of Arabs, Jews, Berbers, Tibus, negroids and
negroes who make up the Tripolitan and Cyrenaic population a people
possessing many fine qualities of physique and endurance, who under
a wise and fraternal government may cooperate with the European in
making the desert blossom as the rose.

Whether Italy will be required to halt on the verge of the Sahara
and Libyan Deserts, or whether France and Britain, declining to play
the dog-in-the-manger, will withdraw on either side the skirts of
their spheres of influence so as to admit the Italian to direct
access to the Northern Sudan, on the borders of Darfur and Kanem, is
an eventuality on the knees of the gods, and likely to remain for
long among unborn events until the sands of the Libyan Desert prove
to be valuable enough to be worth claiming and crossing.

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Footnote 203:

Leo Africanus, who wrote the most important work on Africa in the
16th century, was born at Granada in southern Spain in 1494, just
after the capture of that place by the Spaniards. His family
migrated to Morocco, and “Hassan ibn Muhammad al Wizaz,” surnamed
“Al-Fasi,” was educated mainly at Fas or Fez: whence his nickname.
He travelled throughout North Africa and crossed the Desert to the
Niger; visited Guinea, Mandingoland, the Niger Bend, Agades,
Hausaland and Lake Chad, Egypt, and the Nile. Captured by Italian
pirates he was sold as a slave and presented to Pope Leo X, who
converted him, christened him, pensioned him, and encouraged him
to give to the world his valuable geographical and historical
information.