"A gust of cleansing wind": Italian archaeology on Rhodes and Libya in the early years of occupation (1911-1914)

The essay explores the way in which a European power deals with its colonial aspirations by legitimizing them, in cultural terms, in part through the specific prospect of safeguarding the historical and artistic heritage. The military occupation of Libya and the Dodecanese islands was in fact accompanied, if not preceded, by a strong ideological tension, aimed at emphasizing the myth of Italy as the cradle of art and civilization. With the issues of civilization and with the idea of European superiority, the professed Italian right of preserving the history of ‘others’ was intertwined, thus rescuing it from the ‘barbarism’ of colonized people. By analyzing mainly sources from archives, in the essay the discourse of ‘civilizing preservation versus destructive barbarism’ is compared with the immediate aftermath of the occupation, that is to say, with that complex network of relationships among individuals, institutions and authorities directly involved in the construction of the administrative apparatus of dominion. What emerges in this examination is the destruction of the image of Italy as a civilizing power, produced by the incompatibility of the positions of archaeologists and scholars, sent by the State to the occupied lands, with those of the soldiers and colonial officers, concerned in the conquest and organization of the space: the contradictions and ambiguities of the ideology of preservation are revealed by the opposing interests clashing over the concrete issue of how to handle and preserve antiquities.