Transnationalizing Mussolini. Reactions to Italian fascism in Asia during the interwar period

Maria Framke addresses in her presentation the question how Indian intellectuals and politicians understood and engaged with Italian Fascism. First, she analyses Indian discussions that considered Fascist youth and economic policies as potential role models for postcolonial India and traces the different trajectories of exchange between Indian and Italian actors. Second, the presentation focuses on Indian debates on Italy’s expansionist foreign policy in the 1930s and asks, how these debates contributed to the formation of a globally operating anticolonial solidarity.

In the early 1930s, fascism mutated into a transnational phenomenon that appeared to be on the verge of a great future. The focus here is not to consider whether Japan was fascist, but how the Japanese Empire should be integrated into a global history of fascism. An entangled history of Italy and Japan reveals the degree to which fascism in the interwar period was not a European but a global phenomenon, and its globality did indeed have repercussions on Europe. Thus Daniel Hedinger explores the potential that global-history approaches could have for comparative research on fascism.

As a characteristic element of Mussolini’s performative technique of ruling, aiming to consolidate his personal dictatorship at home and abroad, the „Duce“ tried to manipulate the image of Italian Fascism in foreign countries by receiving in his office every day a consistent number of foreign politicians, diplomats, high ranking military officers, journalists, artists and cultural mediators meeting. Lutz Klinkhammer analyses from a praxeological point of view persons or groups that were admitted to the dictator’s office and contributed with the propagation of their experience to the globalization of Fascist ideas and institutions.

As the personification of Italian Fascism, Mussolini was one of the most effective vehicles to promote fascism in wartime Japan. For Japanese political and business leaders, he was the model for the popular mass leader. For the Japanese public, he represented the human face of fascist politics and culture. Janis Mimura examines the diverse ways in which Mussolini, as symbol and image, helped make fascism recognizable, understandable, and adaptable to wartime Japan.