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The Franco-Italian Agreements (often called Mussolini-Laval Accord) were signed in Rome by both French Foreign Minister Pierre Laval and Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini on 7 January 1935. [1]
After its victory in World War I, it was agreed that Italy would not receive territories from the defeated German colonial empire. These territories were to be divided between France, Japan and the British Empire, but Italy would be rewarded some bordering areas from the British and French colonial possessions. That was considered by Italians to be very little compensation for their sacrifices in the bloody war, which was one of the reasons of the rise to power in Italy of Mussolini's fascism.
The British ceded Oltregiuba (today Jubaland) from Kenya to Italian Somalia in 1924, but the French delayed their contribution some years until 1935, under Laval's leadership, and gave only a small amount of territory in eastern Africa and a desert area in the French Sahara.
Laval had succeeded Louis Barthou as Foreign Minister after the latter's assassination in Marseilles on 9 October 1934, along with King Alexander I of Yugoslavia. Laval borrowed the idea of his predecessor of a system of collective security to contain the threat of Hitler in Europe. On 4 January 1935 Laval went to Rome, the capital of Italy, to meet Mussolini. It was the beginning of a diplomatic offensive intended to contain Nazi Germany by a network of alliances.
He proposed a treaty to Mussolini to define disputed parts of French Somaliland (now Djibouti) as part of Eritrea, redefine the official status of Italians in French Tunisia and give Italy a mainly-free hand to occupy Ethiopia during the Abyssinia Crisis.
Italy was also to receive the Aouzou Strip, which was to be moved from French-ruled Chad to Italian-ruled Libya (that issue would have some implications in World War II and in the later Toyota War between Libya and Chad).
In exchange for those concessions, France hoped for Italian support against German aggression, which did not occur.
The agreements were confirmed by a law of the French Parliament on 26 March 1935. [2] The French and the Italian Parliaments ratified the 1935 agreement. Since the instruments of ratification were not exchanged, ICJ named the agreement as "Non-ratified". [3]
The agreement had the following main terms:
Italian East Africa was an Italian colony in the Horn of Africa. It was formed in 1936 after the Second Italo-Ethiopian War through the merger of Italian Somaliland, Italian Eritrea, and the newly occupied Ethiopian Empire.
Rodolfo Graziani, 1st Marquis of Neghelli, was a prominent Italian military officer in the Kingdom of Italy's Royal Army, primarily noted for his campaigns in Africa before and during World War II. A dedicated fascist and prominent member of the National Fascist Party, he was a key figure in the Italian military during the reign of Victor Emmanuel III.
The Abyssinia Crisis, also known in Italy as the Walwal incident, was an international crisis in 1935 that originated in a dispute over the town of Walwal, which then turned into a conflict between the Fascist-ruled Kingdom of Italy and the Ethiopian Empire. The League of Nations ruled against Italy and voted for economic sanctions, but they were never fully applied. Italy ignored the sanctions, quit the League, made special deals with the United Kingdom and France and ultimately annexed and occupied Abyssinia after it had won the Second Italo-Ethiopian War. The crisis is generally regarded as having discredited the League.
The events preceding World War II in Europe are closely tied to the bellicosity of Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, Francoist Spain, and Imperial Japan, as well as the Great Depression. The peace movement led to appeasement and disarmament.
The Second Italo-Ethiopian War, also referred to as the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, was a war of aggression waged by Italy against Ethiopia, which lasted from October 1935 to February 1937. In Ethiopia it is often referred to simply as the Italian Invasion, and in Italy as the Ethiopian War. It is seen as an example of the expansionist policy that characterized the Axis powers and the ineffectiveness of the League of Nations before the outbreak of the Second World War.
Italian Somaliland was a protectorate and later colony of the Kingdom of Italy in present-day Somalia, which was ruled in the 19th century by the Sultanate of Hobyo and Majeerteen in the north, and in the south by the political entities; Hiraab Imamate and the Geledi Sultanate.
The Stresa Front was an agreement made in Stresa, a town on the banks of Lake Maggiore in Italy, between French prime minister Pierre-Étienne Flandin, British prime minister Ramsay MacDonald, and Italian prime minister Benito Mussolini on 14 April 1935. Practically, the Stresa Front was an alliance between France, Italy, and Great Britain, aimed against Nazi Germany. Patrick Buchanan's Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War considered the Stresa Front the last chance to stop Hitler before the Second World War.
The Aouzou Strip is a strip of land in northern Chad that lies along the border with Libya, extending south to a depth of about 100 kilometers into Chad's Borkou, Ennedi Ouest, Ennedi Est, and Tibesti Regions for an area of 114,000 km2. It is named after the small town and oasis of Aouzou. The strip played a significant role in the Chadian–Libyan War when it was claimed, alongside the Borderlands region, by Libya.
The Italian colonizationof Libya began in 1911 and it lasted until 1943. The country, which was previously an Ottoman possession, was occupied by Italy in 1911 after the Italo-Turkish War, which resulted in the establishment of two colonies: Italian Tripolitania and Italian Cyrenaica. In 1934, the two colonies were merged into one colony which was named the colony of Italian Libya. In 1937, this colony was divided into four provinces, and in 1939, the coastal provinces became a part of metropolitan Italy as the Fourth Shore. The colonization lasted until Libya's occupation by Allied forces in 1943, but it was not until the 1947 Paris Peace Treaty that Italy officially renounced all of its claims to Libya's territory.
Libya was a colony of Fascist Italy located in North Africa, in what is now modern Libya, between 1934 and 1943. It was formed from the unification of the colonies of Cyrenaica and Tripolitania, which had been Italian possessions since 1911.
Chad–Libya relations have arisen out of centuries of ethnic, religious, and commercial ties.
The Italian colonial empire, also known as the Italian Empire between 1936 and 1941, was founded in Africa in the 19th century and it comprised the colonies, protectorates, concessions and dependencies of the Kingdom of Italy. In Africa, the colonial empire included the territories of present-day Libya, Eritrea, Somalia and Ethiopia ; outside Africa, Italy possessed the Dodecanese Islands, Albania and also had a concession in Tianjin, China.
De Bono's invasion of Ethiopia took place during the opening stages of the Second Italo-Ethiopian War. Italian General Emilio De Bono invaded northern Ethiopia from staging areas in the Italian colony of Eritrea on what was known as the "northern front".
Italian Eritrea was a colony of the Kingdom of Italy in the territory of present-day Eritrea. The first Italian establishment in the area was the purchase of Assab by the Rubattino Shipping Company in 1869, which came under government control in 1882. Occupation of Massawa in 1885 and the subsequent expansion of territory would gradually engulf the region and in 1889 the Ethiopian Empire recognized the Italian possession in the Treaty of Wuchale. In 1890 the Colony of Eritrea was officially founded.
The Southern Military Territory was a jurisdictional territory within the Italian colonies of Cyrenaica and Tripolitania (1911-1934) and later Italian Libya (1934–1947), administered by the Italian military in the Libyan Sahara.
Italian Ethiopia, also known as the Italian Empire of Ethiopia, was the territory of the Ethiopian Empire, which Italy occupied for approximately five years. Italian Ethiopia was not an administrative entity, but the formal name of the former territory of the Ethiopian Empire, which now constituted the Governorates of Amhara, Harar, Galla-Sidamo, and Scioa after the establishment of Italian East Africa.
French Somaliland, with its capital at Djibouti, was the scene of only minor skirmishing during World War II, principally between June and July 1940. After the fall of France the colony was briefly in limbo until a governor loyal to the Vichy government was installed on 25 July. It was the last French possession in Africa to remain loyal to Vichy, surrendering to Free French forces only on 26 December 1942. Pierre Nouailhetas governed the territory through most of the Vichy period. After aerial bombardment by the British, he instituted a reign of terror against Europeans and locals. Nouailhetas was eventually recalled and forced to retire. From September 1940, the colony was under an Allied blockade, and many of its inhabitants fled to neighbouring British Somaliland. After the territory's liberation, there were many governors and recovery from the deprivation of 1940–42 was only beginning when the war ended in 1945.
The Chad–Libya border is 1,050 km in length and runs from the tripoint with Niger in the west, to the tripoint with Sudan in the east.
The Ethiopia–Somalia border stretches 1,500 kilometers. In the 19th century, both Britain and Italy contributed to shaping the modern border, on behalf of their colonies of British and Italian Somaliland. The Somali people were thus under British, French, Italian and Ethiopian rule. During World War II, Britain gained control of the Ogaden and Haud territories and returned them to Ethiopia in 1954, but not delimited beyond the provisional line. Since 1960 independence, the border suffered serious skirmish involving both countries soldiers. From 1977 to 1978, Ethiopia and Somalia fought Ogaden War led by Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam and General Siad Barre respectively. The EPRDF government demarcated the border of Ogaden into Somali Region. Somalia is located at the base of Ethiopia's protrude southeast region; from South, it is bounded by Wabi Shebelle and Genale Valley.
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