This account of Mussolinis maneuvers in the 1930s to take over Africas oldest independent state, and the invasion and colonial occupation by Italy that followed, paints a portrait of the particularly brutal forms taken by European colonial rule when the occupying power was itself not only racist but a fascist and militarist state as well. The graphic details the author provides results from his intensive examination of the Italian colonial archives. In the authors words, "raids, theft, rape, and abuse by the colonial troops against defenseless peasants were daily routine," as were hut burnings and deportations of the population. Yet the third of a million Italian troops deployed failed to hold down the people. Economically backward itself, Italy could afford neither to staff its colonial administration nor to develop Ethiopias economy; and its officials were divided, corrupt, demoralized and incompetent. The author also shows how Emperor Haile Selassie and his aristocracy failed the peopleleaving the task of continued armed resistance to the Ethiopian Patriots who launched their own rebellion as soon as the Italian Empire was proclaimed.
