debor044

The following three part series seeks to trace the military and diplomatic origins & course of Italian Imperialism in the mid to late 19th century to the early 20th century, especially at it pertains to Ethiopia and Northeastern Africa.  Check out the Mad Monarchists blog post on the Italian Colonial Empire http://italianmonarchist.blogspot.com/2012/03/italian-colonial-empire.html Of the several great Imperial powers worth studying in the 19th and early 20th centuries, Italy always seems to fall short of the standards of conquest, through military and/or diplomatic means, that defined the course of history for Europe but more importantly the developing nations and republics which formed after the retreat of imperialism and colonialism in Africa especially. Like in Germany or even America in the mid to late 19th century, Italy's national identity was fragmented due regional attitudes which eschewed the very idea of a centralized empire controlling all of the natio...

One of the largest and most destructive wars in Latin American history was the Chaco War, or the Gran Chaco War fought from 1932-1935 between the South American nations Paraguay and Bolivia. Fought over the more than 250,000 square miles of hot and arid desert terrain of the Gran Chaco known also as the Chaco Boreal , on the border with Paraguay, Bolivia, Argentina, and Brazil. What started as a 19th century territorial dispute over vast amounts of lands never formally annexed by the many South America republics that emerged after the Napoleonic Age and the end of imperialism, developed into a major Inter-War era conflict that saw mass mobilization of conscripted soldiers and true war economies on both sides. The diplomatic situation in the Chaco which had been unstable in the late 1920's escalated into total war following the break down of peace talks in Washington D.C.  on July 8, 1932 between Paraguayan/Bolivian representatives and the American governmen...