Classe di Scienze Umane, Storia

The paper investigates some of the key features and dynamics of colonization and agrarian development in Ethiopia during the Italian occupation. While historiography on the subject has so far privileged the analysis of the military, diplomatic and ideological dimensions of the «Empire», the paper looks at the development of Italian colonization in Ethiopia «on the ground», i.e. from the vantage point of the very lands where Italian rural expansion took place. From this perspective, the paper makes the case for viewing the encounter and interaction with Ethiopian small farming as a significant aspect in the everyday life of Italian colonization projects and agrarian development at large. To this aim, the paper concentrates on three important «traces» of the relationship between Italian and Ethiopian farmers held in Italian archives. The three cases presented here could be regarded as microcosms encapsulating some of the major facets of the practice of Italian colonial rule in rural Ethiopia. In the last section, the paper situates these three cases within the broader context of Italian agriculture during the occupation, and provides a general analysis of their dynamics and implications.

The dissertation focuses on the history of agrarian development in Ethiopia from the 1930s to the 1950s. It brings together into a common historical narrative the agrarian development projects enacted by Italian policy-makers and experts during the fascist occupation of Ethiopia (1936-1941), the agricultural policies and rural welfare programs carried out by British authorities and the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) following the restoration of Ethiopia's independence during World War II, and the international agrarian development projects of the Food and Agricultural

• In 1925, the fascist regime launched the "Battle of Wheat," a plan of agrarian development aimed at achieving self-sufficiency in wheat, Italy's main food crop. Key to this project was the replacement of traditional landraces with "elite" semidwarf and early-maturing wheat cultivars released by Italy's star plant breeder Nazareno Strampelli. Through the historical analysis of Strampelli's breeding program and of the implementation of the fascist "seed replacement" strategy, this article makes the case for viewing the Battle of Wheat as a "fascist Green Revolution."
• The article draws on new methods and perspectives developed by the historiography of the Green Revolution. It is grounded on the historical analysis of fascist-era publications and archival documents produced by Italian crop scientists and agricultural research institutions.
• While "elite" cultivars spread rapidly in fertile and wealthy northern Italy, they struggled to take hold in the dry and poor Italian South. The article delineates the environmental, social, and economic reasons underpinning this divergence. Focusing in particular on agrarian scientists' approaches to crop improvement in the Italian South, the article shows how this "marginal" region became a key site for the development of scientific counter-narratives and concrete alternatives to the official fascist strategy of "seed replacement."
The article reveals the co-existence of multiple approaches over space and time
within fascist-era agrarian science. Through this case study, it provides new elements
to analyze key themes in science and agriculture historiography such as the
tension between hyper-modernization and agroecological concerns, centralized
and decentralized research, imported technologies and local resources.

This article investigates the global history of dryland modernisation through the case study of southern Italy. From the early twentieth century to the fascist years, several intellectuals, scientists, and politicians reinterpreted the apparent and long-standing backwardness of this region as fundamentally due to its hydrology and climate: southern Italy was rediscovered as a dry land, formally part of Italy and civilised Europe and yet environmentally closer to extra-European spaces of empire. The article shows how Italian agrarian scientists mobilised this ‘environmental Otherness’ of the Italian south as the key to developing a ‘dryland’ science alternative to that of ‘humid’ northern Italy and continental Europe. Instead, this ‘dryland’ approach to modernisation grounded southern Italy within a vast transimperial network defined by the co-production and circulation of knowledge and technologies allowing the adaptation of modern and intensive food production to semi-arid regions. As such, the article argues that Italian agrarian scientists redefined the spatial order of the Italian south in a transimperial sense, embracing its environmental Otherness as a vantage point for its rehabilitation within Italy’s nation-building.