This article places the origins of Italian settler colonialism and its defeat in the battle of Adwa (1896) in the global perspective of the environmental history of European imperialism. It argues that the Italian project to turn the highlands of the Horn of Africa into a settler colony was an “imperial mirage”: the perception that the momentarily depopulated landscape of Ethiopia, produced by “natural” disasters that were in fact the social products of colonial warfare, would be available to Italian settlers in the future. This mirage was based on a domino effect of environmental catastrophes connecting climate history, animal disease, and the politics of European imperialism. Italians’ introduction of rinderpest in Eritrea in the wake of an El Niño-related drought triggered “the Great African Rinderpest Panzootic” and the “Great Ethiopian Famine”. The mixture of willful ignorance and wishful self-deception that fueled Italian projects explains Italy’s defeat in the battle of Adwa. Building on the methodology of environmental historians and scholars in Science and Technology Studies, this article shifts focus from the power of the state to the techno-politics of colonialism in its impact on natural environments and African communities through the lens of the cultural production of ignorance.

中文翻译：

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十九世纪末非洲的“自然”灾害、无知和意大利殖民者殖民主义的幻象


本文将意大利殖民主义的起源及其在阿德瓦战役（1896年）中的失败置于欧洲帝国主义环境史的全球视野中。它认为，意大利将非洲之角高地变成定居者殖民地的计划是一个“帝国的海市蜃楼”：人们认为埃塞俄比亚暂时人口减少的景观是由“自然”灾害造成的，而这些灾害实际上是社会的产物。殖民战争，将来将可供意大利定居者使用。这种海市蜃楼是基于环境灾难的多米诺骨牌效应，这些灾难将气候历史、动物疾病和欧洲帝国主义政治联系在一起。在厄尔尼诺现象引发的干旱之后，意大利人将牛瘟引入厄立特里亚，引发了“非洲牛瘟大流行”和“埃塞俄比亚大饥荒”。故意的无知和一厢情愿的自欺欺人推动了意大利的计划，这解释了意大利在阿德瓦战役中的失败。本文以环境历史学家和科学技术研究学者的方法为基础，通过无知的文化生产的视角，将焦点从国家权力转移到殖民主义的技术政治对自然环境和非洲社区的影响。