Reimagining the nation: Gendered images of Italy and the Italo-Turkish war of 1911–12

The Italo-Turkish war of 1911–12, only fifty years after the unification of Italy, marked a clear attempt by the Italian elite to shift the international image of Italy. They sought to change the trope of weakness that stalked Italy in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to a more masculine, virile story of Italy as a great power. This article examines the Italo-Turkish war as a response to international imaginings of Italy as effeminate and submissive. This essay employs images, published sources, soldiers’ letters, archival sources from Generals Ameglio and Brusati and the periodical collection on the war from the Hamburg Kolonialinstitut, to illustrate the deeply gendered aspects of Italy’s war against the late Ottoman Empire.