There is a strong tendency for European historians to regard countries such as Ethiopia not as subjects of their own history but as objects in imperial rivalry. Conversely, African historians need to appreciate how the domestic context in which decisions by the imperial powers were taken could occasionally have devastating repercussions in their own countries. The present paper examines the question of race as a 'factor' in Mussolini's 'policy in Europe and Africa, rather than Mussolini's racial 'policy', because many issues, such as nazi antisemitism, were outside Mussolini's control. So too was the geographical distribution and existing status of Jews in the Mediterranean and Red Sea areas.First, a few observations on racism.' If it is assumed that all humankind is descended from a pair of common ancestors, we can talk of ontogenesis. This means that there are only varieties of the human race, not a plurality of races. On the other hand, if it is held that humans are descended from separate pairs or groups of ancestors, we can speak of polygenesis. If we go one stage further and assert that different groups are not of equal worth and that the superior group must subjugate the inferior, then it is possible to speak of racism. The racist is explicit: 'There must be no sexual relations or intimate fraternization between the superior and inferior groups.' While sexuality is a highly important and emotive impulse behind racism, refusal to share the same table with members of a supposedly inferior group because they themselves, or the sort of food they consume, are ritually unclean is so divisive that it can be described as racism by proxy. It means that 'you are unclean because you drink the milk of the camel. 12 Racism by proxy existed in many parts of Asia and Africa before the arrival of the white man with his built-in sense of superiority, and it has sometimes made it easier for him to play off one cultural or Journal Downloaded from 38 ethnic group against another. Indeed, ill-feelings on account of religious taboos as well as race are so interfused that it is sometimes difficult to draw a hard and fast distinction between them. This applies above all to the Italian fascists' attitudes towards Jews, Arabs and Ethiopians.Until recently, most Italian and non-Italian authorities on Mussolini's Italy have claimed that a sense of racial superiority in a biological sense is alien to Italians and that it found little or no expression in Italian policy either before or after Mussolini came to power. We are told that it was only in 1938, some two years after the community of fate between Italy and Germany had been sealed, that Mussolini, aping his brother dictator Adolf Hitler, introduced antisemitic legislation. One of the striking differences between nazi Germany and fascist Italy is, according to established opinion, the question of race.3 Mussolini certainly believed in the superiority of Latin culture over Teutonic barbarity, and in an effusion made against nazi Germany, probably after the murder of Dollfuss on 25 ...