Valeria Deplano’s book, L’Africa in casa. Propaganda e cultura coloniale nell’Italia fascista offers a detailed account of many of the strategies adopted by the fascist regime to feed its colonial propagandistic machine and revive imperial ambitions in the nation. The book is also an important catalogue of ministers, university professors, directors and secretaries of the various colonial institutes and societies who, in different ways, worked to generate and fuel Italian colonial aspirations.

The book’s point of departure is a comparison between the limited and uneven effort made during the liberal era to promote the colonial cause and the intense fascist commitment to give life to an Italian colonial consciousness, which, according to Mussolini and his followers, was justified by the glory of the Roman Empire.

Deplano shows how schools, universities and institutions, such as the Società Africana, previously dedicated to the study of African culture, had to submit to the capillary control of the regime and to become ductile instruments of its expansionistic goals. However, even though Deplano examines minutely the initiatives of several institutions complying with or embracing the Fascist regime’s colonial ambitions, she glosses over other powerful propagandistic vehicles. She only touches on women’s colonial camps, and overlooks the significant role of the female population in spreading colonial culture and support for the regime’s endeavours. By doing so, she disregards women’s centrality in the fascist colonial project and their commitment to the reproduction and re-elaboration of the fascist colonial discourse. Similarly, popular culture, an essential tool in fostering a colonial mentality, is reduced by Deplano to a list: advertising, toys, songs, comics, stamps, and postcards.

Besides providing an exhaustive account of the activities conducted by geographic societies and colonial institutes, Deplano deals with the colonial tourism promoted by the Istituto Coloniale Fascista, which organised cruises to the North African coasts to show the tangible reality of Italian colonial expansion. Voyagers were mostly students, the future colonial functionaries, and farmers, the prospective colonists who had to be familiarised with the lands they would populate and cultivate. Deplano’s account of these cruises and of their conception is truly fascinating, as is her section on the permanent colonial pavilion commissioned by the Istituto Coloniale Fascista for the 1928 Fiera di Milano, which combined an old orientalist view with a more practical economic approach.

Deplano’s book is not meant as a full picture of fascist colonial propaganda and Italian colonial culture. Indeed, the author does not deal with the substantial number of novels and films, such as Lo squadrone bianco and Luciano Serra Pilota, which glorified the colonial enterprise and received the Coppa Mussolini.

Deplano mentions that a branch of the Istituto Fascista dell’Africa Italiana was opened in Buenos Aires. In addition, dealing with colonial tourism, she writes that fascist propaganda among the Italians living in Tunis was perceived as urgent by the regime, because France was conducting an assimilation campaign among the Italian residents. But this does not do justice to the enormous importance given by the Fascist regime to Italian expatriates, who were seen as an integral part of the Fascist colonial project. They were the target of vigorous Fascist propaganda aiming to project a triumphalistic image of Italy and its regime and to expand consent. Fascist propaganda among Italian expatriates was at its apex during the Ethiopian war, when many Italian communities in the United States responded enthusiastically to the colonial expansion of Italy. They sent gold, money, trucks and ambulances to be used in Africa and promoted Italian products boycotted by nations opposed to the Italian aggression of Ethiopia.

In spite of the omission of some facets of Fascist colonial propaganda and colonial culture, L’Africa in casa is a well-written and well-documented book, essential to any scholar of Italian and European colonialism.