Being Young in Mussolini’s Empire. Fascism and the Socialisation of Youth in Rhodes from a Post-Ottoman Perspective

Although imperialism in the Mediterranean and the myth of youth are considered two pillars of Italian fascism, works exploring the socialization of youth in colonial settings are still rare. This article focuses on the town of Rhodes, the capital of the Dodecanese territory occupied by Italy between 1912 and 1945, to rethink the history of Italian colonialism from a post-Ottoman perspective. A focus on the interactions between state authority and local specificities highlights the competition between fascism and other political references in the Mediterranean, the regime’s adaptation to institutions existing since the Ottoman period (and vice versa), as well as the demarcation vis-à-vis the Ottoman past. Within these three dynamics, youth was a crucial challenge. By using archival sources and the local press, this article combines a historiographic discussion on colonialism with an empirical analysis of youth as a political category. It explores the domains of education, of sport, and of nationalism agitation at the intersection of the colonial subjects’ experience and the government’s actions. This study allows to value the role of colonial youth as a force at the heart of the aspirations, but also the dilemmas of fascism’s imperial project.