L’Italia e l’Africa Strategie e visioni dell’età postcoloniale (1945-1989)

The Italian colonial empire collapsed with the Second World War, much earlier than that of the great European powers. Paradoxically, it was precisely this ‘early’ decolonization that allowed Italy to engage, on a political and diplomatic level, no longer in terms of subjection but of partnership. The creation of the Euro-African association, provided for by the Treaties of Rome in 1957, was an opportunity to play a bridging role and acquire unprecedented fame in the newly independent countries. The Catholic Church also interacted with these prospects. The openings of the Second Vatican Council – in which a visible African representation participated for the first time – and the attention shown by Pope Paul VI with his trips to Africa, gave a decisive push to Italy’s African projections. In this context, new subjects of civil society came into play, such as Catholic and lay associations and missionary networks, which contributed to the maturation, in Italian society, of a sensitivity and a varied solidarity drive. All this ended in 1989: the end of the bipolar world and, on the internal level, the dissolution of political structures and the growing immigration phenomenon, opened a season of strong introspective and ‘Afro-pessimistic’ pressures. Thus, that unitive projection that had animated visions and strategies on the political and collective level cracked, isolating Italy and isolating Italy and conditioning the developments of a long-term historical legacy.