Empire

Abstract

Mussolini claimed to have revived Ancient Rome and promised to populate Italy’s colonies with Fascist legionaries who, like their Roman predecessors, would till and protect the conquered soil. However, the regime often did not get the settler-soldiers it wanted and instead attracted men mobilized by dreams of becoming estate owners, akin to “the British in Kenya.” Drawing on archival- and oral-history research, this chapter traces the construction of an “everyday” among Italian settlers in colonial Libya. The chapter explores three themes—settlers’ previous experience of penury, the family as the bedrock of the settlement program, and relations with the native population—that show both the tension and the correspondence between settlers’ “common sense” and Fascist rhetoric and policy. The conclusion ponders the moral implication of contradictory proclamations and policies of national regeneration on the one hand and imperial greatness on the other for settlers’ everyday relations on African soil.