The Italian Colonies in the Second Post-War Period: the Republican Party and the Somali Issue (1948-1950)

The essay aims to recollect one of the most intricate pages of the Italian colonial policy: the Somali question from the tragic events in Mogadiscio on 11 January 1948 to 1950 when the Italians returned to Somalia. The national press agreed to consider the British officers in Somalia indirectly responsible for the bloodshed and unable to protect the Italian community in the region. The Republican Party, which was involved in a difficult internal reorganization, avoided to immediately take an official position. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the republican Carlo Sforza, during his intervention in Naples at the XX Congress of the Republican Party - whose main orientation was to continue supporting the Christian Democratic Government and its polices - excluded the responsibility of the British Government in the bloodshed. However, inside the party, conflicts were perceived ever more and at the time became stronger and stronger: the majority was close to the Sforza’s position to favour the return of the Italians in the old territories of Somalia, in order to stimulate cooperation between Europe and Africa and save the national honour, while a minority, composed among others by Giovanni Conti and Giulio Andrea Belloni (who referred to the old ideals of the party), was against this return. The "colonialist" position emerged victorious, also because of the arrival of new political leaders, who modified, not without repercussions, the political trend of the party itself.

Keywords: Somalia, Mogadishu, Republican Party, Giulio Andrea Belloni, Giovanni Conti, Carlo Sforza

Silvio Berardi, Le colonie italiane nel secondo dopoguerra: il Partito repubblicano e la questione somala (1948-1950) in "MONDO CONTEMPORANEO" 1/2012, pp 91-118, DOI: 10.3280/MON2012-001004