The part played by Italy in the colonization of Africa after the submergence of Roman civilization in that continent under the Arab invasion was remarkable; it was not, however, a part attributable to Italy as a whole, but to some of her component states. The little principality of Amalfi had early dealings with the Saracens, and imported from them some knowledge of the new navigation, and of that newly-introduced group of fruit trees—the orange family—which was to find a second home in Italy. Pisa, Genoa, and Venice alternately warred and traded with the north of Africa. Naples obtained from Egypt the domestic Indian buffalo so early as the 13th century. Sicily was finally conquered by the Saracens in 832 A.C.; and Sardinia from 712 became intermittently a Saracen possession for more than three centuries until it was definitely rescued by the Pisans after 1015 A.C. Consequently Sicilian and Sardinian renegades figure in the early Muhammadan history of Tunis, Tripoli, and Algeria. But the two states which before the Portuguese era shared most prominently in the commerce of North Africa were Genoa and Venice. Genoa had most to do with the Tunis littoral; she had intermittent establishments at Tabarka and Bona, besides occasionally holding Mehdia on the coast of Tunis. Genoa sent several noteworthy seamen to explore the Atlantic, the north-west coast of Africa, the Azores and Canary Islands; and it is believed that Genoese ships may even have found their way along the west coast of Africa to the Gulf of Guinea as early as the 14th century; for in a volume of eight maps—the famous Laurentian Portulano, executed by a Genoese about 1351 (and subsequently acquired for the Laurentian Library at Florence), Africa for the first time in history is delineated as a continent with a great western projection, a tapering southern extremity and its bold eastern horn of Somaliland. (This information, however, may have been derived from Arabs during the Crusades.) Venice cultivated a friendship with Egypt during and after the Crusades, and in this way obtained control over the Indian trade, until the Portuguese discovered and utilized the Cape route. Even then the interest of Italy in Africa did not slacken. It was displayed chiefly in Rome during the 16th and 17th centuries, when the Roman pontiffs took up geographical research into the problems and possibilities of Africa with some eagerness, especially with regard to the Congo, Abyssinia, and the northern Sudan. Noteworthy amongst the Popes who promoted African studies were Leo X, who encouraged the Italianized Moor, Johannes Leo (“Leo Africanus”), to write in Italian a description of his travels through the Nigeria and Northern Sudan^[203]; Sixtus V, who caused his chamberlain Filippo Pigafetta to publish much valuable information from Portuguese travellers and missionaries concerning the Congo and Abyssinia; Paul V, who sent a mission to the King of Kongo in 1621 to report on that West African kingdom; and Urban VIII, who in 1640 erected the Kongo Kingdom into an Apostolic prefecture dependent on the Roman See and despatched many Italian missionaries thither. His efforts were revived in 1652 by his successor, Innocent X.

During the 15th, 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, Abyssinian Christian students frequently journeyed to Rome and lived in Italy more or less as pensioners of the Popes. Similarly, during the 17th and 18th centuries so many Italian craftsmen, surgeons, physicians, naturalists, and botanists, travelled in and through Tunisia and Egypt, and stayed there permanently, that (besides the innumerable Italian slaves captured by the pirates and absorbed into the Muhammadan community) there grew up the great Levantine communities in the principal towns of Egypt and Barbary. In 1600, an Italian surgeon named Federigo Zeringhi killed two hippopotamuses at Damietta, at the eastern mouth of the Nile; and in 1658 other Italian travellers noted the extinction of the hippopotamus in the Nile Delta. Italian influence sank to its lowest ebb in the late 18th century, but after Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt many Italians were employed in the service of that country, under Muhammad Ali. Thousands of Italians (many of them Jews) also emigrated to Eastern Algeria and Tunis in the first half of the 19th century and financed the sponge fisheries off Tripoli. United Italy, in 1862, began to assert herself at first in Tunis. During the sixties of the 19th century the affairs of Tunis, instead of being debated only between France and Britain, were submitted to the consideration of a third power, the Kingdom of Italy; and in 1869 a triple control of these three powers had been established over its finances. Then Britain ceased to claim a consultative voice in the control of this tottering Turkish regency, and France and Italy were left face to face. Italy had to give way in 1881. She had, however, for some time been cultivating an interest in Tripoli, where she had established, as in Tunis and Egypt, “Royal schools” for the gratuitous teaching of Italian; but a too vivid display of her interest in the affairs of Tripoli after the French occupation of Tunis caused the Sultan of Turkey to reinforce his garrison there by 10,000 soldiers, and Italy decided that the time was not then. Italian influence of a more or less Levantine, denationalized stamp had become well established in Egypt before the British occupation, and had to a great extent replaced that of France, the Italian language being employed as a kind of Lingua Franca. The present writer can remember, when first visiting Egypt in 1884, that most of the letter-boxes at the post-offices had on them “Buca per le lettere,” while Italian was much better understood in the towns than French, English of course not being understood at all at that time. So that, if it be true that Mr Gladstone in 1882 invited Italy to take the place of France in a dual control with England over Egypt, the proposal was not, at the time when it was made, such a preposterous one as it might now appear.

So far back as 1873 Italy had cast an eye over Abyssinia; and one of her great steamship companies had purchased a small site on Assab Bay as a coaling station. Assab Bay, in the Red Sea, was on the inhospitable, ownerless Danákil coast, not far from the Straits of Bab-al-Mandib. In 1875 the suspicious movements of Italian ships about Sokotra obliged England to take that island under her protection. From 1870 onwards Italian missionaries and Italian travellers had begun to move about this coast, and to explore the south of Abyssinia. In 1880 the Italian Government revived the Italian claim to Assab Bay, but did not take actual possession of it until July 1882, when the bombardment of Alexandria had awakened Europe to the apprehension of a great change in Egyptian affairs. An acrimonious correspondence took place between Italy, Egypt, and Turkey regarding this claim to Assab Bay; but Italy received the tacit support of England, and when the Egyptian hold over the Sudan crumbled, the Italians rapidly extended their occupation north and south, until Italian influence was conterminous on the south with the French Somaliland territory of Obok (and consequently opposite the Straits of Bab-al-Mandib), and on the north reached to Ras Kasar, 110 miles south-east of Suakin. In this manner Italy acquired about 670 miles of Red Sea coast, including the ancient and important port of Masawa. This coast in its partial condition of sterility and its terribly hot climate would be of little value did it not possess a cool, mountainous hinterland, considerable areas of gum forest, and fertile river-valleys, besides having much grazing ground for camels and other livestock, and commanding the easiest and nearest approaches to Abyssinia. In one part of the coast the natives are practically of Abyssinian stock, and Abyssinia has constantly striven through centuries to maintain her hold on the seaboard, but has always been driven back to her mountains by maritime races, such as the Greeks, Romans, Arabs, and Turks. Seeing Italy step in, after the downfall of Egypt, to replace that power in Masawa and elsewhere, King John of Abyssinia soon fell out with the Italians. The Italians had occupied an inland town called Sahati, formerly an Egyptian stronghold. Ras Alula, an Abyssinian general, with 10,000 men attacked 450 Italian troops on their way to Sahati, and, as may be imagined, massacred nearly all of them. Italy felt her honour at stake, and in spite of the expense, would have been obliged to commence an Abyssinian war but for the good offices of the British Government. Lord Salisbury sent Mr, afterwards Sir Gerald, Portal on a mission to Abyssinia, which had the effect of arranging a temporary peace between the Italians and King John. Shortly afterwards King John of Abyssinia advanced against the Mahdists, and was killed in battle. Italy then occupied the posts of Keren and Asmara, which gave her control over the mountain passes leading, on the north-east, into Abyssinia. She had previously maintained a great friendliness with Menelik, the vassal king of Shoa in the south. (Abyssinia proper may be said to be divided into three principal districts, which sometimes become semi-independent satrapies or kingdoms—Tigre on the north, Amhara in the centre, and Shoa to the south.) When King John of Abyssinia died, Menelik, as the strongest of his vassals, seized somewhat illegally the Abyssinian Empire. Although now viewing the Italians in a more suspicious manner, he nevertheless concluded a treaty with them, which enabled him to negotiate a loan and to obtain a large quantity of war material, but contained a clause dealing vaguely with the “mutual protection” of the contracting parties. The Italian protectorate over Abyssinia was recognized by England and by Germany, but not by France or Russia. In order to annoy Italy as a member of the Triple Alliance, France and Russia commenced encouraging Menelik to a repudiation of the Italian protectorate, and supplied him with quantities of arms and ammunition. Russia, indeed, for years past had shown a disposition to concern herself about Abyssinia on the pretext that the Greek Christianity of that country linked it specially to Russia. She sent numerous “scientific” expeditions thither, and also a party of Cossack-monks to stimulate Abyssinian Christianity. On one occasion these Cossack-monks even went to the length of seizing a port on the French coast, near Obok. This was too much, even for the French; and force was used to expel these truculent missionaries.

In March 1891, with a view to regulating future action on the part of Italy, England had entered into an agreement delimiting the respective spheres of British and Italian interests in East Africa; and by this agreement Italy was permitted, if she found it necessary for military purposes, to occupy the abandoned post of Kasala (then in the hands of the Dervishes), on the frontiers of the Egyptian Sudan. Accordingly this post was occupied by Italy in 1894. In the beginning of 1895, the Italian forces being again attacked by the Abyssinians, the war was carried into the enemy’s country, and after several sanguinary defeats had been inflicted on the Abyssinians, the greater part of the Tigre Province was occupied. Menelik, whose administrative capital still remained at Adis Ababa in Shoa, organized a vast army, and prepared to defend his kingdom. In the early spring of 1896 General Baratieri (in fear lest he might be superseded, and without waiting for sufficient reinforcements) assumed the offensive against the Abyssinians in the vicinity of Adua, with the result that he sustained a terrible reverse. Nearly half the Italian army (13,000 men—7,000 only Italians, the rest natives of the coast—against 90,000 Abyssinians), was killed, and of the remainder many prisoners were taken. This was a terrible blow to Italy, and its effects on European politics were far-reaching. General Baldissera somewhat retrieved the position; but all thought of an Italian protectorate over Abyssinia was at an end, a position frankly recognized by Italy in her subsequent treaty of peace with Menelik. She lost but little of her original colony of “Eritrea,” but Eritrea seemed then of small value except as the stepping-stone to Abyssinia. The French and Russians were triumphant; and French adulation of the Emperor Menelik was scarcely worthy of a nation in the high position of France.

A British mission was sent in 1897 to open up friendly relations with Abyssinia, and to establish a political agency at the king’s court. The treaty concluded seemed at first sight not wholly satisfactory to British interests, as it yielded a portion of Somaliland to Abyssinia, and did not provide for any delimitation of Abyssinian boundaries on the west; but apparently there were other clauses not made public which subsequently ensured the friendly neutrality of Menelik during the Khartum campaign.

Since 1897, or rather since the institution of civil government in 1900, the colony of Eritrea has made a quiet progress towards well-being and commercial prosperity insufficiently appreciated by historians of Africa. “Colony” remains an inaccurate designation, since the excessive heat of the lowlands makes Italian settlement in large numbers impossible (there are only 3000 settlers in the whole colony), while the uplands are either barren or sufficiently well populated by a sturdy race of negroids—a mixture of Hamites, Semites, and Nilotic negroes. But this native population (275,000) has prospered and increased under Italian rule. A considerable trade is being developed in the nuts of the hyphæne palms, exported to the approximate annual value of £50,000. Hides and cattle, wax, gum, coffee, ivory, and salt are also exported; and the annual trade—imports and exports—now (1912) averages £1,000,000 in value. The area of Eritrea, which extends southward to Cape Dameirah on the Straits of Bab-al-Mandib, is 45,800 square miles.

Finding that Germany did not intend to push claims, half-developed, to the Somali coast, Italy in 1889 began to make treaties in that direction, and by the end of that year had established a protectorate over the whole Somali coast from the west side of Cape Guardafui to the mouth of the river Jub, a claim subsequently confirmed by agreements with Britain and with the Sultan of Zanzibar. Italian enterprise has led to a great deal of geographical discovery near the Jub River and the Webi Shebeili, an eccentric stream, which after arriving within a few miles of the sea and meandering along parallel with the coast, loses itself in a sandy desert near the mouth of the Jub River. Several Italian expeditions came to grief in these Somali and Gala countries, but Italy held on, and deserves to succeed in the long run. An Italian commercial company was founded to deal with the exploitation of the Benadir coast—once in the hands of the Sultan of Zanzibar—where there was still some lucrative trade to be done in products of the interior. But complaints were made as to mistreatment of the natives by the Chartered Company; and in 1900 the Italian Government bought from the Sultan of Zanzibar, for £144,000, the ports (Benadir: plural of Bandar, a sea port) of Magdishu, Brawa, Marka, and Warsheikh which had long been appanages of the Sultan of Zanzibar. The name of the “colony” is now “Somalía Italiana,” Italian Somaliland, and the capital is at Magdishu—the “Mogadoxo” of the 16th century Portuguese. Inland, Italian rule stretches along the Jub or Juba river as far as the Gala towns of Bardera and Lugh. Farther north, along the coast, there is the native Somali sultanate of Obbia and then the Somali tribal territory of Nogal. The total area of Italian Somaliland is about 140,000 square miles, and the population (Gala, Somali, Swahili negroes, Arabs, and helot tribes) is 400,000.

About the year 1904 a rapprochement took place between France and Italy relative to a settlement of colonial “aspirations,” coincidently with agreements, secret or avowed, entered into between France and Britain. It was then laid down that, should Italy at any time establish herself in place of Turkey in the Tripolitaine, the boundaries of her sphere of influence there should practically be conterminous with those then recognized by France as being the Turkish limits, comprising Tripoli (as far west as Ghadamés and Ghat), Fezzan, and Cyrenaica. It is probable also that a similar understanding was come to with Great Britain in the early part of the 20th century. In fact it was openly stated in the literature of the period that Italy had “ear-marked” the Tripolitaine as her share of the Turkish Empire should any further curtailment of the Turkish dominions take place. No official repudiation of such an idea emanated from Germany or Austria. Nevertheless, when Italy did move in this direction in 1911, it was from Germany and Austria that she received the bitterest reproaches. The explanation of this changed attitude was no doubt that between 1909 and 1911 an idea had grown up both in Germany and Austria that Tripoli was now considered by Italy as practically worthless from the point of view of a future field for Italian colonization; and that it might be possible, through some scheme of concessions and chartered companies, for the Teutonic allies to effect a settlement and control over the Tripolitaine (under the Turkish flag, possibly). Thence they might build a trans-Saharan railway which would connect this German foothold on the south Mediterranean coast with the future Congolese Empire which Germany was resolving to shape in course of time out of French, Belgian, and Portuguese possessions, by purchase, exchange, and it may be some pressure. This idea bore fruit in an attenuated form in the concessions made to Germany by France in north-west Congoland in 1911 (see p. 234).

Italy had nearly gone to war with Turkey in 1910 over a dispute regarding the Italian Post Offices in the Turkish Empire, and, as her principal means of punishing Turkey, was preparing an expedition to land in Tripoli. But the Turks gave way before a practical ultimatum, and Italy was left without an excuse. Then followed the announcement that a well-equipped Austrian “scientific” mission would start for the thorough exploration of the Tripolitaine in the winter of 1910-1911. Italy appealed to Turkey to grant similar facilities for an Italian expedition, but received an evasive reply. In July 1911 came the startling incident of Agadir, with all that it implied, both as to North African and as to Central African aims on the part of Germany. It was felt soon afterwards that Germany, being baulked of a foothold in Morocco, would be more than ever anxious to establish herself on the Tripoli coast. A quarrel was therefore picked with Turkey on somewhat vague grievances; and a declaration of war was followed by the immediate landing of an Italian army at the town of Tripoli on September 20, 1911. Soon afterwards, in the autumn and winter of 1911, all the other towns on the coast of Tripoli and Cyrenaica were occupied by the Italians, whose Senate, on February 23, 1912, ratified a decree annexing these provinces to Italy, as far to the west, south, and east as the spheres of France, Britain, and Egypt. The whole of the port of Solum and its vicinity was given over to Egypt—a solatium accepted without hesitation by the Anglo-Egyptian government.

The European conscience of course was outraged, and much sympathy was expressed with Turkey, but no assistance furnished. No doubt the action of Italy in theory was a political crime. In a time of perfect peace, she delivered an ultimatum to a neighbouring European power based on ostensible grievances of a trifling kind; and before that power could discuss any rectification of the said grievance, two large provinces of its territory were forcibly annexed. In theory the action of Italy was indefensible; in practice it was probably a matter of stern necessity. The coast of Tripoli is immediately opposite Italy, and it is far away from Turkey. A little hesitancy, and this littoral might have first been assigned commercially to German and Austrian subjects and subsequently have passed for ever beyond the scope of Italian sea-power. Italy would then have had the ironical punishment which Fate so often allots to those who let “I dare not wait upon I would.” As to any regret being felt for Turkey, let us consider for a moment what were her moral claims to these two provinces. Their coast ports were seized by Turkish pirates in the middle of the 16th century. Eventually there grew up a Turco-Arab dynasty of the Karamanli Pashas to whom was delegated by Turkey in the early 18th century the government of Tripoli and Barka (Cyrenaica). The Karamanli Pashas, though they sent out piratical fleets into the Mediterranean to attack the ships of powers not in treaty relations with them, nevertheless did much to open up Fezzan and the northern Sudan to European commerce; and their friendship with Britain made it possible for the British expeditions to Lake Chad and Bornu to take place in 1821-3. In 1835 the Turkish Government at Constantinople, alarmed by the spreading power of Muhammad Ali and the French seizure of Algiers, intervened in the affairs of Tripoli and annexed it; a guerilla warfare continued for ten years afterwards. From 1850 onwards, a great revival of the Sudan slave-trade took place through the Tripolitan ports; and this was still more marked after Egypt, governed by the Khedive Ismail, ceased to export slaves. Under direct Turkish rule, the Tripolitaine became almost impenetrable by European travellers, several of whom were assassinated within its limits. Nothing was done for the improvement of Fezzan, of the oases, or even of the Tripolitan coast towns. Locusts ravaged the crops unchecked; and the desert sands steadily advanced on the cultivable regions. No public works worth mentioning exist to testify to any benefits derived from Turkish rule. Turkey has been tried in the balances of Tripolitan history and found to be utterly wanting.

By the summer of 1912, the Italians had fought many battles and skirmishes with the Turks and Arabs of the Tripolitaine. They had been accused of the usual inhumanities of war by the usual Anglo-Saxon journalist, but they were in possession of all the coast towns, and in several of their lavish public works began to reconcile the much-tried Moorish population to the dominance of the “Rumi”—in this case a singularly truthful term, for it really was the “Roman” come back to rule a land which fourteen hundred years before (prior to the Vandal descent) he had raised to a position of considerable fertility and prosperity. In July, 1912 the chief of the great Senussi brotherhood (see page 236) made terms of peace and amity with the Italians; and, as this edition goes to press, peace has been concluded (Oct. 15, 1912) between Italy and Turkey on the basis of the retrocession to the eldest daughter of Rome of two among the North African provinces torn from her Mother State, first by the Vandals and next by the Arab invasion of the 7th century A.C.

When Italy is enabled to take complete possession of this area of 400,000 square miles, she will find that barely one-third is cultivable, and that the remainder consists of naked plateaus, mountains of sun-baked rock, and vast “seas” of drifting sand. The sand is a less hopeless proposition than the rock, for under it often lie layers of imprisoned water, releasable by artesian wells. But when the claims and requirements of the natives of “Libya” (as the Italians call their scarcely-won possession) are duly provided for, there will not remain much agricultural land for Italian settlement. Yet there may arise many promising industries which will provide employment for Italians in the towns on the coast. Moreover, with time, patience, sympathy and understanding, the Italians will find the million of Arabs, Jews, Berbers, Tibus, negroids and negroes who make up the Tripolitan and Cyrenaic population a people possessing many fine qualities of physique and endurance, who under a wise and fraternal government may cooperate with the European in making the desert blossom as the rose.

Whether Italy will be required to halt on the verge of the Sahara and Libyan Deserts, or whether France and Britain, declining to play the dog-in-the-manger, will withdraw on either side the skirts of their spheres of influence so as to admit the Italian to direct access to the Northern Sudan, on the borders of Darfur and Kanem, is an eventuality on the knees of the gods, and likely to remain for long among unborn events until the sands of the Libyan Desert prove to be valuable enough to be worth claiming and crossing.