Vanishing in Plain Sight: The Ministry of Italian Africa at the End of Empire

This article examines the Ministry of Italian Africa (MAI) from the initial British occupation of the former Italian colonies in 1941 until the dissolution of the colonial administration in 1953. An analysis of the strategies functionaries used to defend the imperial project in a time of crisis and transformation suggests that the colonial cause retained a broad consensus across the political spectrum, even in moments of heightened ideological division. Separated from colonial spaces, MAI officials focused on managing settler and subject populations displaced by the chaos of war. In that process, and into the postwar era, the goal of defining and maintaining racial and cultural hierarchies continued to shape their efforts. The lack of condemnation within an Italian population that remained enamored of the idea of empire, even as it turned away from the ideologies of Fascism, allowed for the imperial project to vanish in plain sight as it transitioned to the neocolonial structures of trusteeship and postimperial international relations.