Italian Fascism in Rhodes and the Dodecanese Islands, 1922-44 (Routledge Studies in the Modern History of Italy)

This book is the first English-language collection of scholarly essays to investigate the ambiguous and supporting role that colonialism in the Aegean Region played in Mussolini’s imperial ambitions, bringing to light a history rarely scrutinized until recently. The Dodecanese archipelago is often absent from histories of Italian fascist colonialism, as Italian territories in East Africa, Libya, and the Balkans have figured more centrally in discussions of how nationalism and later fascism relied on the empire to promote discourses of national renewal and regeneration.Over the past twenty years, a new wave of research has emerged, animated by the opening of previously closed state archives in various countries.This volume’s international contributors provide fresh perspectives on a topic frequently mythologized as a “golden period” of social and cultural intimacy among twentieth-century Greeks, Turks, and Jews.Themes include the fascist adaptation in the islands of Ottoman imperial gov