nuyt wrote: ↑04 Aug 2022 20:13
Lee-Sensei wrote: ↑04 Aug 2022 06:37
This is all very unrealistic. Barring Ethiopia, most of the Italian overseas territories are sparsely populated. They wouldn’t have to give them back and the UN isn’t going to try to force them to leave. I can see a pull out of Ethiopia and maybe Somalia, but the rest would probably stay Italian.
Absolutely not.
Since you took the trouble of registering here especially to participate in this discussion, allow me to retort.
Sparsely populated? Yeah, in 1939: 100.000 Italians vs 800.000 Libyans. Actually, the whole world was sparsely populated then!
As a rule of thumb, populations in "third world countries" after WW2 would double every generation or so and would outgrow any settler community. So if (and a big if) Fascist Italy survives and if (an even bigger if) there would have been 500.000 Italians by 1960 in Libya, there would also be around 1,5 million Libyans (and there were that many OTL). By 1975 there were 2,5 million. No chance for an Italian majority. Same for the other colonies. Presently Libya has 7 million and yeah, they all live on the coast and the rest is still sparsely populated (and inhabitable).
Press x to doubt. 7 million is relatively tiny and this assumes that demographic changes would follow similar patterns to the ones OTL. If the Libyans rebel, a lot of them are going to be killed off in the pacification process. That’s not a good thing obviously, but it’s going to retard population growth for the Libyans. Meanwhile, population growth in Italy is likely to be higher due to pronatalist policies, restrictions against contraceptions and abortions and a societal push for religiosity and traditional gender roles. We don’t even need to push it to an extreme. If we take interwar Italy’s population growth rate and figure out how large their population would be in 2022, we’re looking at a low estimate of about 97 million Italians.
The more guerilla activities, the less settlers arrive. And Libya would have been hemmed in between two hostile nationalistic countries, Algeria and Egypt. The former had just kicked out one million French colons. The more international pressure, the less foreign investments, the less economic development, the less ... settlers and expats.
France was a liberal democracy and Algeria had a population of 10 million vs 40 million French. About 1 million of those being spied Noirs. Libya doesn’t have that population today.
Spanish and Portuguese authoritarian regimes lost their colonies eventually as well. Spain lost Ifni, the Western Sahara, Bata, etc. All they kept are Ceuta and Melilla, conveniently close to the motherland (you can even see Ceuta from Spain). Portugal lost Goa in a short battle to India and then in 1974/75, in one blow, everything else (because their govt collapsed).
Close to the motherland? You mean like Libya, Albania and the Dodecanese Islands? Spain and Portugal were politically isolated. In a scenario where Mussolini stays neutral, fascism would still be seen as a viable political movement and you’d see a lot more fascistic regimes. Italy would also almost certainly have developed nuclear weapons some time in the early 1960’s at the latest.
If Fascist Italy (why do you want it to survive anyway?) collapses eventually, maybe like Spain and Portugal, the last of its colonies will collapse too. But way before that to happen, the US will interfere and assist the independence of strategic countries (like oily ones). And any European democratic country would want to get rid of most of their colonies by the 70s, except for some islands and small territories, like French Guyana. But Libya is not French Guyana.
I never said I wanted it to survive. I said that expecting them to give up all of their Empire when it’s sparsely populated is unrealistic. The US isn’t going to interfere if Mussolini stayed neutral. If you were arguing that Italy would undergo a bit of liberalization and extend the franchise to ethnic and religious minorities to reduce support for insurgency movements, I’d agree with you. Arguing that Italy would give up oil rich Libya is pure fantasy. Israel has been fighting insurgents for how long now?have they retreated back to the 1967 borders?
One other thing that needs to be considered is that in comparing Italy to Europe in OTL, these countries were broken by WW2 financially. An Italy that stays neutral in the war would likely see an economic boom as great if not greater than Japan in WW2. Its perfectly situated to do business with both the Allies and Germany. By the end of the war, they’d likely be a net creditor. Like Japan was in 1918. They won’t be heavily in debt to the United States.
Today, Russia has a population that’s about 81% ethnic Russian. Have they given up their territory?
Sweet dreams or enlighten yourself.
Enlighten yourself.
