Education in Fascism’s African colonies

(Mirror.)

Angelo Piccioli, director of schools in Tripoli in 1922, believed that education in the colonies was a ‘political’ problem to be solved — more urgently in Libya than in East Africa — by total subjugation of the colonised by the colonisers (Piccioli 1933b, 1094).

Fascism discontinued the educational policy that liberal governments had previously pursued in Libya, and domination became the pervasive approach. Italian decrees issued in 1924 and 1928 established a separate educational system for the local population in pursuit of ‘peaceful moral conquest’ (Festa 1932, 25), aiming to instil respect and devotion towards [Fascist] Italy. Such measures put an end to the pre‐Fascist period of cooperation and marked the beginning of overt subordination of the local population.

In 1924, it was decided to have separate Italian‐style schools for Italian children and Arabic schools for Muslim Libyans. Secondary education (scuole medie) for Libyans was abolished, as both politicians and Italian experts on colonial issues believed that this could easily ignite anti‐Italian rebellion and subversion.

In 1928, schools for Libyans were required to teach all subjects in Italian except for Arabic, the Koran and religion. In addition, Koranic schools were placed under surveillance, as they were regarded as a potential source of anti‐European fanaticism (Mininni Caracciolo 1930, 21–25; Micacchi 1931, 2–20; De Leone 1933).

In Fascist rhetoric, teachers played the rôle of educators and colonisers who were supposed not only to promote health education among the local youth (Festa 1930, 11–12), but also — according to Andrea Festa, the education officer for Libya and Eritrea — ‘to work towards the moral and spiritual education of the next generation, which must understand Italy’s civilising mission’ (1932, 14). The task of the Fascist school was to produce workers.

According to Festa (1930), Libyan children should become a means by which Italian civilisation could penetrate their clans and tribes. Young people were the main target of Fascism in Libya because they were more malleable than adults; the wish was that ‘the child should learn something of our civilisation, and become a conscious propagandist within inaccessible families; the people should know about Italy, her glories, her ancient history, and thus become willing soldiers under our flag; they should feel, like us, the pride of being Italian, if not in reality then at least in spirit’ (Festa 1930).

[…]

According to the Fascists, primary education in Ethiopia, too, was to improve living conditions and teach basic health education, which would also benefit the Italian colonists. The ultimate goal was to train a skilled labour force for practical jobs such as farmers, interpreters and soldiers; the Italian rulers could not be employed in these rôles as this would diminish their ‘racial prestige’. These workers could potentially be trained in relation to the particular characteristics of local agriculture (Governo Generale A.O.I. 1939, 185–87).

[…]

According to Festa, Africans would learn what had turned Italy into a ‘great, powerful, and feared’ country. They were to study the key stories of the Italian Risorgimento, Italian victories and the Fascist contribution to Italy’s status as one of the most powerful European nations. Italian revolutions were passed over for fear that they could fan the flames of anti‐colonial revolt, but the history of Ancient Rome, and Roman monuments in the Mediterranean area, received significant attention.

Geography was another subject in which the Italian rôle in the Mediterranean was emphasised (Festa 1932, 36–38). In Eritrea, before Fascism, education for local children included geography and history classes: the former focused on Italy and Eritrea, while the latter offered a grounding in Sudanese, Ethiopian and Egyptian history in addition to an explanation of Italian colonisation, with special emphasis on Italy’s rôle as a civilising peacemaker.

These rudiments of history also included consideration of a number of key Italian historical figures (Negash 1987, 87; Smith‐Simonsen 1997, 75–76). In Fascist Eritrea, however, schools suppressed any themes in Italian history that might arouse subversive feelings, confining the teaching to basic material that stressed ‘Italian glories’ in order to encourage Eritrean children to identify with their rulers and to operate as propagandists on their behalf (Negash 1987, 95–97; Smith‐Simonsen 1997, 95–97).

[…]

Italian history was used to illustrate the political message: Libya had been a productive land under Ancient Rome, but when the Romans left there followed dark centuries under Arab and Turkish dominance; a new renaissance resulted from Italian rule, and in particular that of Fascism, which was portrayed as the heir to Ancient Rome and a benevolent ruler of the Italian colonies (Contini 1931, 3, 2, 77–78; Festa et al. 1933, 12–31).

(Emphasis added.)

:::spoiler Click here for events that happened today (October 8). 1884: Walter Karl Ernst August von Reichenau, Axis Field Marshal who was partly responsible for the Babi Yar massacre, polluted the earth.
1888: Ernst Kretschmer, Axis psychiatrist, was born.
1910: Helmut Kallmeyer, Axis chemist who was involved in Action T4, forced his existence on us.
1935: The Regio Esercito entered Makalle, Ethiopia. General Emilio de Bono claimed that slavery was now abolished in Ethiopia, and dispatched emissaries all over the Tigre province to spread the news that Fascist rule was going to be beneficent. Rome was livid.
1938: Czechoslovakia and the Kingdom of Hungary negotiated over territory, but the negotiations soon broke down, and the Kingdom of Hungary threatened Czechoslovakia with war.
1939: The Third Reich annexed western Poland.
1940: The Luftwaffe mounted four raids of thirty to one hundred sixty flightcraft consisted mostly of fighter‐bombers and fighters, with few medium bombers, against London; various government offices in Whitehall and the Charing Cross Railway Station took damage from the bombs. The Axis lost one Bf 109 fighter and three bombers. Overnight, the Axis bombed London, East Anglia, East Midlands, Portsmouth, and Southampton, with a serious fire damaging wharves and nearby warehouses.
1941: During the preliminaries of the Battle of Rostov, Axis forces reached the Sea of Azov with the capture of Mariupol. As well, Panzergruppe 1 reached Berdyansk and Mariupol in Ukraine in an attempt to reinforce the Third Reich’s 11th Army against Soviet 9th and 18th Armies. Across many sectors of the Eastern Front of the European War, heavy rain set in, resulting in mud that crippled the Panzers’ mobility and held up supplies.
1942: An Axis radio announcement stated that from mid‐day (German time) officers and men captured at Dieppe, France had been manacled as a retaliation for the alleged tying of prisoners during a small‐scale raid on Sark five days earlier. Meanwhile, troops of the Eastern Axis’s 81st Naval Garrison executed the following Allied prisoners: war airman Harl Pease, airman Chester Czechowski, airman Harold Massie, coast watcher Cecil John Trevelyan Mason, coast watcher Arthur King, and coast watcher Ray Woodroffe at Rabaul. The Axis executed them either rifle fire or bayonet. An Axis doctor was seen dissecting at least one of the six men after the execution.
1943: Friedrich Schubert's paramilitary group executed approximately thirty civilians in Kallikratis, Crete. :::