Cultivating Arid Soils in Libya and Brazil during World War Two: The Two-fold War between Colonial and Neo-colonial Experiences

Biasillo, Roberta; Silva, Claiton Márcio da

doi:10.3197/ge.2019.120107

Cited by 4 publications

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“…The outcome of state support was fairly immediate: in 1929, 455 families settled in Tripolitania, a total of 1,778 people, and four years later the number of families rose to 1,500, bringing the total to 7,000 people (Capresi 2009, 36–9). Between 1932 and 1934, the profit-driven and agricultural colonisation was first recast into a para-state, socially-oriented 5 and rural project and, then, especially from 1938, into a state enterprise serving defence policies, military strategy and autarchic plans (Biasillo and da Silva 2019, 159–68; Cresti 2011, 179–214; Istituto Agricolo Coloniale di Firenze 1947a, 34–8; ECL 1941a; Afrus 1938, 182). Approximately 39,000 Italian colonists occupied about 3,700 sq km in Tripolitania and Cyrenaica by the end of 1940, unevenly distributed between state land grants, private properties and colonisation companies (Fowler 1973, 492–3; Istituto Agricolo Coloniale di Firenze 1947a, 113–17; Istituto Agricolo Coloniale di Firenze 1947b, 18–20) 6…”

Section: Environments Of Oppressionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Socio-ecological colonial transfers: trajectories of the Fascist agricultural enterprise in Libya (1922–43)

Biasillo

2021

Mod. Italy

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This paper intertwines the two historiographical concerns of migration and colonialism by exploring the case of Italian rule in North Africa from 1922 to 1943 and by adopting the analytic ground of the environment. The role played by the environment in targeting and shaping specific social groups, forming and grounding specific policies, creating and preventing social and natural transfers, has been overshadowed until now, particularly in relation to Italian colonialism. This study articulates the Fascist agricultural enterprise in Libya around the watershed event of the colony's 1932 pacification. To illustrate its development, it looks at the environment-making processes and transfers entailed in the transformation of the Italian colonial project. This reconstruction contributes to the environmental history subfields of migration and colonialism and invites historians to further explore the first decade of Italian rule in Libya and not to limit historical explorations to the lens of settler colonialism.

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Section: Environments Of Oppressionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Socio-ecological colonial transfers: trajectories of the Fascist agricultural enterprise in Libya (1922–43)

Biasillo

2021

Mod. Italy

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“…But nobody mourned them." 6 Nor did the Italians refrain from using mustard gas in bombarding tribal camps and oases. In a report detailing the interrogation of a prisoner, an Italian colonel noted that the prisoner recounted that "he saw many victims of the gas attacks.…”

Section: Italy's War Against the Anticolonial Resistancementioning

confidence: 99%

Killing Fields: Environment, Agency, and the Fascist Conquest of Colonial Libya

Pergher

2021

PJPS

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The article seeks to reflect on the question of "nature’s agency" in histories of violence. It thus revisits the choices and outcomes of Fascist policy in Libya by foregrounding the colony’s ecology. The determination to win a war on inhospitable terrain led to the regime’s decision to set up concentration camps for Bedouin tribes and their herds in the desert-like and semiarid areas of Cyrenaica, which in turn had a murderous effect on humans and animals. From there, the article moves on to the second phase of Italian conquest, when the defeat of the anticolonial resistance turned into a "conquest of nature", with the agricultural reclamation of the highlands of Cyrenaica for Italian settlers. These agricultural centers and their people, which might at first sight seem bucolic and benign, were just as injurious to the Bedouin ecology predating the Italian occupation as were the concentration camps. The conclusion ponders the moral imperatives in writing histories of Fascist violence and the openings for environmental history.

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Bin ich ein Berliner? Graffiti as layered public archive and socio-ecological methodology

Valisena

Norum

2019

Green Letters

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In this article, we discuss the role played by graffiti in representing, fomenting and studying binary and non-binary sentiments of 'us' and 'them'. Through asocio-textual analysis of examples of public anti-gentrification and anti-touristification protest graffiti in Berlin, we consider the complex layers of history, identity, mobility, community and environment which have been folded onto one another throughout the city over the past decades. By investigating the textual politics of belonging and self as shown through the lens of graffiti, we argue that representational analyses of so-called banal public texts can help to comprehend the complexities that lie behind binary socio-cultural categories (e.g. local/non-local. In exploring some of the defining characteristics that distinguish ecocritical from environmental humanities approaches to critique, the article posits how multiple disciplines-even those well outside humanities subjects-might well be able to benefit from the humanities' distinct approaches to cultural, or indeed social, analysis.

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Cultivating Arid Soils in Libya and Brazil during World War Two: The Two-fold War between Colonial and Neo-colonial Experiences

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

Socio-ecological colonial transfers: trajectories of the Fascist agricultural enterprise in Libya (1922–43)

Socio-ecological colonial transfers: trajectories of the Fascist agricultural enterprise in Libya (1922–43)

Killing Fields: Environment, Agency, and the Fascist Conquest of Colonial Libya

Bin ich ein Berliner? Graffiti as layered public archive and socio-ecological methodology

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