Italian Colonial empire is the name, given in 1936, to the set of territories owned by Italy between 1882 and 1947. Origin of Italian colonialism can be found in the desire to take part in the great partition of African lands by European powers, and also in the real need to find a way to channel the surplus of population, that was actually emigrating into Tunisia, France and the Americas. Italy began to form a colonial empire in 1869 by buying land in the Bay of Assab on the Red Sea from the local sultan. It occupied the whole of Eritrea which was made a colony in 1889 but its attempt to seize Ethiopia was defeated at Adowa in 1896. This led to the downfall of the government of Francesco Crispi and remained an embarrassment for nationalists, who had expected a united Italy to gain glory abroad. .
Italy recognized the independence of Ethiopia but still retained much influence there because of her colonies in neighboring Eritrea and Italian Somaliland ; this latter had been annexed or purchased piece by piece with a series of pacific treaties with local sultans and , in part, ceded by Great Britain as a compensation for Italy that did not receive any of the German colonies parted after WWI. Italy acquired Tripolitania and Cyrenaica (these two regions together forms modern Libya) in the war with Turkey in 1911-12, as well as the island of Rhodes an dodekanesos (at present part of Greece) . .
Italy entered WWI on the Allied side in May 1915. After the war, it was overshadowed by the greater powers, although it gained territory including Trieste, the Trentino and the south Tirol (Alto Adige) .
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United States President Woodrow Wilson declared a U.S. policy of absolute neutrality, an official stance that would last until 1917 when Germany's policy of unrestricted submarine warfare - which seriously threatened America's commercial shipping (which was in any event almost entirely directed towards the Allies led by Britain and France) - forced the U.
