The historiography of Italian colonialism has lagged significantly behind that of the modern Great Powers, France and Britain in particular, as obstacles to research (predominantly posed by the Italian state's obfuscations) slowed the field's progress until relatively recently. Alessandro Triulzi, one of the editors of this volume and the author of its introduction, is among the most steadfast Italian historians of the Horn of Africa, and a committed activist when it comes to the plight of East Africans in both the Horn and Italy. To him and his long-standing collaborators here, we owe some of the most rigorous historical works on Italian colonialism of the last decade or so. In part, this volume updates their sustained research projects; it also signals the emergence of new projects and younger scholars.

Departing from the topics broached in their previous volumes, here the editors also take on postcolonialism – a question that is truly recent in Italian public discourse, given that most Italians are uninformed regarding Italy's colonial crimes in East and North Africa. Immigrants to Italy have only begun to change the country's demographic landscape, such that only now are most Italians confronted with their own attitudes toward racial difference. It is fair to say that Italian postcolonial thought is still in its early stages, politically and academically, and that this collection presents a genuinely new intervention in the scholarship on Italy and its colonies. It bridges colonial and postcolonial studies by focusing on migrations, border-crossings, and various forms of cultural exchange and synthesis throughout, as per the book's title: Colony and Postcolony as Diasporic Spaces. Divided into three parts, it succeeds in expanding beyond colonial-era borders spatially and chronologically, linking the colony to the metropole and the metropole to the postcolony, geographically, historically, and culturally.

Part One, ‘The colony as a space of interaction between cultures’, investigates colonial relations and administration per se. It begins with an essay on Italian colonial governments’ efforts to rationalize the nutrition of indigenous soldiers in Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Libya (Federica Guazzini). Three further chapters address colonial Eritrea: Gianni Dore's, on the colonizers’ attempts to adjudicate conflicts over witchcraft in the courtroom; Giulia Barrera's, on the effect of Italian-driven urbanization on the status of Eritrean women; and Silvana Palma's, concerning Italian approaches to the education of Eritrean children. Antonio Morone also studies the Italian use of schools in the context of Italy's trustee role in Somalia in the era of decolonization.

How Italy governed the mobility of its colonial subjects outside their own colonial territories is the topic of Part Two, ‘Beyond the colony’, which provides a denser understanding than usual of the networks that developed between various Italian colonies over time. Both Isabella Rosoni and Massimo Zaccaria write on legislation defining indigenous rights to travel beyond colonial borders – in the first instance, legislation concerning migration rights, and in the second, policies as to Muslims’ rights to travel to Mecca for the haj. Two other essays focus on revealing episodes in the lives of indigenous soldiers: those who deserted in the course of Italy's assault on Ethiopia in 1935–6 (Alessandro Volterra), and those who joined the antifascist Partisans’ side in the civil war that divided Italians in 1943–5, as the Second World War was drawing to a close (Luigi Goglia). With respect to diplomacy and commerce, Dirar analyzes the intricate maneuverings within the Ethiopian embassy in Eritrea in the decades prior to its closure in 1935 and Luca Ciabarri sheds new light on the forging of commercial infrastructures in Somaliland, in connection to ties with Ethiopia and Dubai.

The collection's postcolonial section, ‘Migratory experiences between utopia and dystopia’, takes us ‘beyond the colony’ spatially and temporally. All of Part III speaks to more immediate and heartbreaking effects of colonial relations than the previous sections. The section opens with Gabriel Tzeggai's testimony of his life as a fighter for Eritrea's liberation from Ethiopia, to his escape from the carceral state that independent Eritrea has become. It then moves to Ruth Iyob's essay recounting the transition from independence in 1991 to the beginning of today's tyranny in 2001. The remaining three chapters provide contemporary accounts of the experiences of those who survive the desert and sea crossings from the Horn to Italy. Alessandro Triulzi presents a large-scale and long-term oral history project, while Dagmawi Yimer, the maker and central figure of the award-winning documentary Come un uomo sulla terra, recounts his own voyage from Addis Ababa to Lampedusa, the Italian island that serves as the main destination and gateway for migrants coming by sea. Fittingly the volume ends with Gianluca Gatta's chapter on Lampedusa, where Italy's internal battles over immigration policies and over what kind of human rights record Italy wants to have, are being fought out most ferociously.