Italian Empire

Italy was a latecomer to colonialism, having only been unified in 1871. Nevertheless, Italy developed a small colonial empire starting in with Assab Bay in modern-day Eritrea in 1882, and ending with the independence of Somalia in 1960.

Understand
After the fall of the Roman Empire, the Italian peninsula was divided into numerous independent city-states. This began to change in the 19th century, as the Kingdom of Sardinia began its conquest of the entire peninsula in 1815. In 1861, the Kingdom of Sardinia changed its name to the Kingdom of Italy, with Vittorio Emanuele II being proclaimed King of Italy. The unification of Italy is generally regarded to have been completed in 1871, when Rome fell to the Kingdom of Italy, and the Pope lost most of his temporal holdings, with the Papal holdings being reduced to what is today the Vatican City.

After unification, Italy had aspirations to grow into a great colonial empire like the French, Germans, British and Russians, but was only able to obtain a limited number of colonies due to being late to the game. Italy's first overseas colony was Eritrea in the Horn of Africa, which it obtained in 1882, followed by neighbouring Somalia in 1889. At the 1884-85 Berlin Conference, at which the major European powers divided Africa among themselves, Italy was granted the right to colonise Ethiopia, but a defeat to Ethiopian forces under the command of Emperor Menelik II at the Battle of Adwa in 1896 meant that Ethiopia was able to maintain its independence, making it one of only two African countries that survived the Scramble for Africa. It would not be until 1936 that the Italians would be able to successfully occupy Ethiopia, but this would be short-lived as they were driven out by an alliance of British and Ethiopian forces by 1941. Following Italy's defeat in World War II, the victorious Allies forced Italy to give up all its colonies, though Somalia would be returned to Italy in 1950 under trusteeship status, until it became independent in 1960, thus bringing an end to the Italian colonial empire.

Greece
Most of the Dodecanese, a group of Greek islands just off the coast of Turkey, were an Italian colony from 1912-1945, conquered from the already failing Ottoman Empire. Following Italy's defeat in World War II, the islands were ceded to Greece.



Libya
Italy conquered the area that is now Libya from the Ottoman Empire in 1911. It was governed as the two separate colonies of Italian Tripolitania in the west and Italian Cyrenaica in the east; the two territories were merged to form Italian Libya in 1934.

Other colonial empires

 * Austro-Hungarian Empire
 * British Empire
 * Danish Empire
 * Dutch Empire
 * French Colonial Empire
 * German Empire
 * Japanese colonial empire
 * Portuguese Empire
 * Russian Empire
 * Spanish Empire
 * Swedish Empire