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Description, appropriation, transformation: Fascist rhetoric and colonial nature

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Abstract

During the period of Fascism, a variety of discourses and representations were attached to colonial landscapes and to their uses. African nature was the subject of diverse rhetorical strategies, which ranged from the persistence of visions of wilderness as the locus of adventure to the domesticating manipulations of an incipient tourist industry aiming to familiarise the Italian public with relatively tame forms of the exotic. Contrasting images of bareness and productivity, primitivism and modernisation, resistance to change and dramatic transformation found their way into accounts of colonial territories ranging from scientific and pseudo-scientific reports to children's literature, from guidebooks to travel accounts, all of which were sustained not just by written texts but also by iconographic representations. This article will look at the specific example of accounts of Italian Somalia in order to explore Fascist discourses regarding colonial nature and its appropriation. Documents examined will include early guidebooks to the colonies, a small selection of travel accounts aimed at the general public, as well as the works of a number of geographers and geologists who were among the most active polygraphs of the period, and whose writings addressed a wide range of Italian readers.

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DriverFelix. Geography Militant: Cultures of Exploration and Empire. Maiden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers. 2001. Pp. viii, 258. $29.95. ISBN 0-631-20112-2. - Volume 33 Issue 3 - Dane Kennedy
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Is Italy il bel paese—the beautiful country—where tourists spend their vacations looking for art, history, and scenery? Or is it a land whose beauty has been cursed by humanity’s greed and nature’s cruelty? The answer is largely a matter of narrative and the narrator’s vision of Italy. The fifteen essays in Nature and History in Modern Italy investigate that nation’s long experience in managing domesticated rather than wild natures and offer insight into these conflicting visions. Italians shaped their land in the most literal sense, producing the landscape, sculpting its heritage, embedding memory in nature, and rendering the two different visions inseparable. The interplay of Italy’s rich human history and its dramatic natural diversity is a subject with broad appeal to a wide range of readers.
Environment and Empire Fascist Modernities: Italy 1922– 1945
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Madison, WI: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. Beinart, William, and Lotte Hughes. 2009. Environment and Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ben-Ghiat, Ruth. 2001. Fascist Modernities: Italy 1922– 1945. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Bell, Morag, Robin A. Butlin, and Michael J. Heffernan, eds. 1995. Geography and Imperialism, 1820– 1940.
L'ultima spedizione Africana di Gustavo Bianchi: Diari, relazioni, lettere e documenti editi ed inediti. Due volumi a cura di Carlo Zaghi
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Manchester: Manchester University Press. Bianchi, Gustavo. 1930. L'ultima spedizione Africana di Gustavo Bianchi: Diari, relazioni, lettere e documenti editi ed inediti. Due volumi a cura di Carlo Zaghi. Prefazione dell'esploratore Ludovico M. Nesbitt. Milan: Alpes.
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Bosworth, R. J. B. 2006. Mussolini's Italy: Life under the Fascist Dictatorship, 1915– 1945.
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New York: Penguin. Bottego, Vittorio. (1895) 1997. Il Giuba esplorato, edited by Nicola Labanca. Parma: Guanda. Brigante Colonna, Gustavo. (1935) 1944. I grandi viaggiatori: Avventure di terra e di mare, illustrated by Golia. La scala d'oro. 3rd reprint. Turin: UTET. Brilli, Attilio, and Francesca Chieli, eds. 2001. Immagini e retorica di regime. Milan: Motta. Burdett, Charles. 2007. Journeys through Fascism: Italian Travel Writing between the Wars. Oxford: Berghahn Books.
La Società Geografica Italiana e l'esplorazione coloniale in Africa
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Carazzi, Maria. 1972. La Società Geografica Italiana e l'esplorazione coloniale in Africa. Florence: La Nuova Italia.
Nature as the Laboratory: Darwinian Plant Ecology in the German Empire
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Cittadino, Eugene. 2002. Nature as the Laboratory: Darwinian Plant Ecology in the German Empire, 1880– 1900.
Affrica. Il mito coloniale africano attraverso i libri di viaggio di esploratori e missionari dall'Unità alla sconfitta di Adua
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Comberiati, Daniele. 2013. Affrica. Il mito coloniale africano attraverso i libri di viaggio di esploratori e missionari dall'Unità alla sconfitta di Adua (1861 – 1896). Florence: Cesati.
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Prefazione In Alfredo Oriani, Gli eroi, gli eventi, le idee: Pagine scelte
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Robecchi-Bricchetti, Luigi. 1890. All'Oasi di Giove Ammone. Milan: Treves. Robecchi-Bricchetti, Luigi. 1893. La prima traversata della penisola dei Somali. Rome: Società Geografica Italiana. Robecchi-Bricchetti, Luigi. 1896. Nell'Harrar. Milan: Galli. Robecchi-Bricchetti, Luigi. 1899. Somalia e Benadir: Viaggio di esplorazione nell'Africa Orientale.
Nel paese degli aromi: Diario di una esplorazione nell'Africa Orientale da Obbia ad Alula
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s production also included a Libyan travelogue, All'Oasi di Giove Ammone (1890), and the volume Dal Benadir: Lettere illustrate alla Società Antischiavista
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Il sentiero delle belve: Sensazionali avventure di caccia del Tenente Colonnello V.T. Zammarano nell
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