Abstract
At the beginning of November 1938 the Reale Accademia d'Italia, the official cultural institution of the Italian Fascist regime, organized a conference on Africa. Mussolini himself had chosen the theme for the conference and major Italian political figures, such as De Vecchi and Balbo, delivered papers, together with French, English and German politicians and scholars. The conference, organized in the same year of Hitler's visit to Italy and of the introduction of the new racial laws, could have offered the cultural justification for a foreign policy alternative to the German turn taken by the regime. Only Mussolini's last minute decision not to attend transformed the Convegno Volta on Africa from a potential alternative foreign policy into a forum where the dissenting voices within the regime voiced their opposition to German style racism.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 161-182 |
Number of pages | 22 |
Journal | Fascism |
Volume | 2 |
Issue number | 2 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 2013 |
Keywords
- Fascist Africanism
- Fascist colonialism
- Italian Fascism
- Reale Accademia d'Italia
- anti-Semitism
- racism
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- History
- Sociology and Political Science