Angelo Del Boca

Angelo Del Boca (23 May 1925 – 6 July 2021) was an Italian journalist. He specialized in the study of the Italian Colonial Empire, and the involvement in Libya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia during the first part of 20th century. An amateur historian without formal graduate-level training in history, Del Boca claimed to be the main expert on Fascist Italy's expansion in Africa and an authority on the crimes committed by the Italian army in Ethiopia and Libya during the Fascist regime and World War II.[1] However, according to university professor and scholar Giorgio Rochat, Del Boca was little more than a popularizer of facts already well known by Italian academics.[2]

Biography

Del Boca was born in Novara in 1925. A committed fascist, in 1944 he enlisted as a volunteer in the collaborationist 4th Alpine Division "Monterosa".[3][4] A few months before the end of the war, however, he switched sides and took part in the Italian resistance movement.[5] After the war, Del Boca joined the far-left Italian Socialist Party of Proletarian Unity.[5] He became editor of the anti-fascist newspaper Il Giorno, and wrote for several left-leaning journals, including the avowedly Marxist Il manifesto. Later in his life he was appointed professor of Contemporary History in the University of Turin's Faculty of Political Science, although he had never obtained a university degree.[6][7] In 2002 Del Boca received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Lucerne.[8]

Del Boca died on 6 July 2021 at the age of 96.[9] In Italy Del Boca has been widely criticized due to his declared ideological views on Italian colonial past, and isn't considered a reliable source by most military and professional historians.[10][4]

Books
  •  ???? La Nostra Africa
  • 1963 La Scelta
  • 1965 Fascism Today
  • 1965 La Guerra d'Abissinia, 1935-1941 English translation The Ethiopian War 1935-1941
  • 1995 Il Negus (biography of Hayla Sellase (Haile Selassie)); English translation The Negus, 2012 Arcada Books
  • 1996 Il Gas di Mussolini
  • 2007 A un passo dalla forca, Baldini Castoldi Dalai, Milan 2007
  • 2009 La storia negata. Il revisionismo e il suo uso politico, published by Neri Pozza.
  • 2005 Italiani, brava gente?

Notes
  1. Introduction by Richard Pankhurst in The Negus (Arcada Books, 2012)
  2. "L'impiego dei gas nella guerra d'Etiopia. 1935-1936". I Gas di Mussolini. Il Fascismo e la Guerra d'Etiopia. Rome: Editori Riuniti: 49–88, 79–81. 1996.
  3. Emiliani, Vittorio. "In ricordo di Angelo Del Boca, ragazzo partigiano e maestro di storia coloniale". italialibera.online.
  4. di Colloredo Mels 2021.
  5. "Angelo Del Boca". Donne e Uomini della Resistenza. Associazione Nazionale Partigiani d'Italia. Archived from the original on 28 September 2017. Retrieved 28 September 2017.
  6. "Del Boca, Angelo". Treccani.it (in Italian). Retrieved 16 March 2023.
  7. Quaglieni 2021.
  8. "Honorary Doctorates - University of Lucerne". www.unilu.ch. Retrieved 15 May 2019.
  9. Morto a Torino lo storico Angelo Del Boca (in Italian)
  10. A. Carioti, “Etiopia, l’esercito corregge gli storici «Sottovalutate le atrocità degli abissini». Del Boca: è vero, stavo dalla loro parte”, Corriere della Sera, 6 January 2011.

Further reading


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