Italian East Africa - History

History

The dominion was formed in 1936 during Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini's government in Italy with the defeat of Haile Selassie's Ethiopia in the Second Italo-Abyssinian War.

In February 1937, following an assassination attempt on Italian East Africa's Viceroy Rodolfo Graziani, Graziani ordered Italian soldiers to raid the famous Ethiopian monastery Debre Libanos, where the would-be assassins had briefly taken refuge and had the monks and nuns in the monastery executed. Afterwards, Italian soldiers destroyed native settlements in Addis Ababa, which resulted in 30,000 Ethiopians being killed and their homes left burned to the ground.

Fascist colonial policy in Italian East Africa had a divide and conquer characteristic. In order to weaken the Orthodox Christian Amhara people who had run Ethiopia in the past, territory claimed by Eritrean Tigray-Tigrinyas and Somalis was given to the Eritrea Governorate and Somalia Governorate., Reconstruction efforts after the war in 1936, were partially focused on benefiting the Muslim peoples in the colony at the expense of the Amhara to strengthen support by Muslims for the Italian colony.

Italy's Fascist regime encouraged Italian peasants to colonize the colony by creating agriculture and small industries there. However few Italians came to the Ethiopian colony, with most going to Eritrea. By 1940, only 3200 farmers had arrived to Ethiopia, less than ten percent of the Fascist regime's goal.

Continued insurgency by native Ethiopians, lack of resources, rough terrain, and uncertainty of political and military conditions discouraged development and settlement in the countryside However, Italian Eritrea enjoyed a huge development, supported by nearly 80,000 Italian colonists.

The colony proved to be extremely expensive to maintain the budget in 1936-37 requested from Italy 19.136 billion lire to create the necessary infrastructure for the colony. At the time Italy's entire revenue that year was only 18.581 billion lire.

There was an urbanistic project for the enlargement of Addis Ababa, in order to become the state-of-the-art capital of the Africa Orientale italiana, but these architectural plans -like all the other developments- were stopped by World War II.

In 1940, the adjacent protectorate of British Somaliland was occupied by Italian forces and absorbed into Italian East Africa. The conquest was the only victory of Italy without reinforcement from German troops during World War II against the Allies. This occupation lasted around one year.