{"id":14766,"date":"2025-10-17T15:27:44","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T14:27:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shop.militaria.at\/product\/italy-and-its-colonies\/"},"modified":"2025-12-16T09:46:58","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T08:46:58","slug":"italy-and-its-colonies","status":"publish","type":"product","link":"https:\/\/shop.militaria.at\/en\/product\/italy-and-its-colonies\/","title":{"rendered":"Italy and Its Colonies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For the double volume\u00a0<em>\u201cItaly and Its Colonies\u201d<\/em>, the storage rooms of the museums of the Euregio (Trentino, South Tyrol and Tyrol) open up to reveal a\u00a0<em>\u201chidden history\u201d<\/em>: that of the Italian colonial collections. For decades, African weapons, khaki-coloured uniforms, memorabilia and exotic photographs populated museum showcases \u2013 often without proper contextualization \u2013 and remained as silent witnesses of a repressed past.<\/p>\n<p>This work, edited by\u00a0<em>Nicola Labanca<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0<em>Davide Zendri<\/em><em>,<\/em> and published by MITAG \u2013\u00a0<em>Museo Storico Italiano della Guerra<\/em>\u00a0in Rovereto in cooperation with the <em>Verlag Militaria<\/em>, is the result of an extensive research and cataloguing project carried out for the Euregio Museum Year 2025. It is not a simple catalogue, but an investigation into how these objects \u2013 collected during Italy\u2019s colonial history in Eritrea, Somalia, Libya and Ethiopia \u2013 have come down to us and which narratives they shaped.<\/p>\n<p>The book analyses the creation of these collections, most of which took form during the fascist\u00a0<em>Ventennio<\/em>, when museums such as the one in Rovereto opened special\u00a0<em>\u201ccolonial rooms\u201d<\/em>. In this context, the objects served not only documentation purposes but also the glorification of conquest, the construction of an exotic enemy image, and the strengthening of Italian imperial identity through propaganda.<\/p>\n<p><em>Italy and Its Colonies<\/em>\u00a0questions \u2013 through essays and an image section structured by object categories and regions of origin \u2013 the fundamental nature of these collections. Researchers such as\u00a0<em>Nicola Labanca<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0<em>Emanuele Ertola<\/em>\u00a0explain the specific characteristics of Italian colonialism.\u00a0<em>Massimo Zaccaria<\/em>\u00a0explores the role of the Askari.\u00a0<em>Alessandro Triulzi <\/em>reflects on the complex forms of representing the colony, while\u00a0<em>Nicola Fontana<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0<em>Sabrina Meneghini<\/em>\u00a0examine the surviving photographic collections.<\/p>\n<p>At the heart of the volume is the material culture and material geography of the empire. Detailed analyses by\u00a0<em>Renzo Catellani<\/em><em>,<\/em><em>\u00a0<\/em><em>Gabriele Zorzetto<\/em><em>\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0<em>Davide Zendri<\/em>\u00a0examine uniforms, helmets and insignia.\u00a0<em>Gianfrancesco Lusini<\/em>\u00a0traces the long journey of ethnographic objects from the Ethiopian highlands to European display cases.<\/p>\n<p>This mapping extends from the first possessions in Eritrea and Somalia to the Mahdist War in Sudan, the conquest of Libya and finally the brutal war in Ethiopia, without neglecting lesser-known episodes such as the Tianjin concession or the Dodecanese.<\/p>\n<p>Through the meticulous cataloguing of the holdings of museums such as MITAG, the\u00a0<em>Fondazione Museo Storico del Trentino<\/em>, the\u00a0<em>Museo Caproni<\/em>, the\u00a0<em>Museo Nazionale Storico degli Alpini<\/em>, the\u00a0<em>MAG<\/em>\u00a0in Riva and the\u00a0<em>Palais Mamming<\/em>\u00a0in Merano, the volume offers an essential tool for understanding not only what Italy took from Africa, but also how it chose to narrate that conquest to itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Askaris, Uniforms, and African Heritage in the Museum Collections of Trentino\u2013South Tyrol<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":14815,"template":"","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":""},"product_brand":[],"product_cat":[238,453],"product_tag":[],"test":[],"autoren":[438,1006],"class_list":{"0":"post-14766","1":"product","2":"type-product","3":"status-publish","4":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"product_cat-militaergeschichte-tagebuecher-literatur-en","7":"product_cat-englisch-en","8":"autoren-davide-zendri-en","9":"autoren-nicola-labanca-en","10":"align-center","11":"box-shadow-1","12":"box-shadow-2-hover","13":"ast-product-gallery-layout-horizontal","14":"ast-product-tabs-layout-horizontal","16":"first","17":"instock","18":"taxable","19":"shipping-taxable","20":"purchasable","21":"product-type-simple"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shop.militaria.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product\/14766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shop.militaria.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shop.militaria.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/product"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shop.militaria.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shop.militaria.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"product_brand","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shop.militaria.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_brand?post=14766"},{"taxonomy":"product_cat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shop.militaria.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_cat?post=14766"},{"taxonomy":"product_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shop.militaria.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_tag?post=14766"},{"taxonomy":"test","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shop.militaria.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/test?post=14766"},{"taxonomy":"autoren","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shop.militaria.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/autoren?post=14766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}