Giuseppe Finaldi

Adowa and the historiography of Italian colonialism

Report on the Convegno internazionale di studi nel centenario della battaglia di Adua, Piacenza, 10–12 April 1996, now published as, Angeld Del Boca (ed.), Adua. Le ragioni di una sconfitta, Laterza, Rome ‐ Bari, 1997, 468 pp., ISBN 88–420–5196–9, 45,000 Lire.

Book Review: Philip Morgan, The Fall of Mussolini: Italy, the Italians, and the Second World War, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007; pp. 263 + ill.;

that even students and general readers can follow and digest a complicated narrative. There is little repetitiveness, and no chronology, glossary or list of acronyms to coddle the novice. What the book does provide is a remarkably detailed overview of recent domestic and regional developments in the former Soviet republics, Afghanistan and Xinjiang. Heavy emphasis is placed on the rival Islamist organizations that have challenged regimes across central Eurasia: the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and its successor, the Islamic Movement of Turkestan; the Islamic Renaissance Party; the Liberation Party (Hizb ut-Tahrir); the so-called Wahhabi groups of Chechnya, Dagestan and the Ferghana Valley; and the loose collection of militants associated with the Deobandi society. It is not always clear how exactly these organizations differ from one another in terms of ideology, objectives or strategy, nor how they fit into the domain of ‘jihadis’ and ‘Salafis’. But the lack of clarity lies as much in their respective platforms and modes of operation as it does in Johnson’s recounting. What receives unexpectedly short shrift is the impact of oil on conflict in this far-flung part of the world. Although the author notes that oil wealth has fueled ‘accusations of malpractice and corruption’ concerning the leadership of Kazakhstan (38), radical Islamist movements have been notably absent from that republic, as they have from hydrocarbon-rich Turkmenistan. It is the poorer, oil-deprived countries of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyztan, Dagestan, Afghanistan and Xinjiang where Islamist oppositions have taken shape. Conflict has been pronounced in oil-rich Azerbaijan, but it is more nationalist than religious in nature (167–71). The production and transportation of petroleum lie at the heart of the contest for control of the Caspian Sea involving Iran, Russia, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan (201–6); pipeline politics have raised tensions throughout the region (206–10); and the possibility of gaining a foothold in local oil exploration has attracted the United States, heightening strategic competition with Russia (220–1). Nevertheless, the reader looks in vain for the linkage promised in the title, the one that connects oil, Islam and conflict. Such complex theorizing is perhaps too much to ask of small books on big topics. Fred H. Lawson Mills College, USA