دانلود کتاب Fourth Shore: The Italian Colonization of Libya

Italy was never a major imperial power, and the handful of books in English on Italian imperialism affords little support to a comparative approach. Further, with the exception of writings on Ethiopia, scholars have given little attention to even the internal history of the Italian "colonies." Today imperial history, written both from the inside out and the outside in, demands a broader focus than ever before. Claudio G. Segrè's work provides precisely this broadened focus, making it possible for us to understand the role of Libya in the Italian state, and of Italian culture, business, and politics in Libya. Although Italy did not possess the high technology common to Britain, Germany, and the United States (and for this reason has been thought by some not to have been an imperialist nation), its technological power relative to the areas into which it expanded was nonetheless great. If one accepts that imperialism is essentially a strategy used by an expanding industrial state against a preindustrial one, it is the gap between the two societies, and not their specific position on some imaginary column dominated by GNP figures, that helps determine the actual imperial relationship. Then, too, there is an imperialism of the mind, a desire to expand one's ideas, culture, and normative modes of existence to and over another people, and in this sense Italy shared certain characteristics with the major imperial powers. Nonetheless Italian imperialism was distinctive, and it is by showing us the nature of that distinction, as well as illumination the comparative elements, that Professor Segrè's book tells us so much.

(From Series Editor's Preface by Robin Winks)