Public History e memoria coloniale: la lunga ombra di Graziani. Dalla scuola fascista alla Repubblica

Abstract

Based on recent history-education publications on “education materials” (Álvarez, Dávila, Naya 2017, pp. 827-845), that also include school notebooks, this contribution analyzes a new source constituted by the essays written by the students of the Royal Lyceum “Alessandro Manzoni” in Milan kept in the Central State Archives. The essays are about the biography of Marshal Rodolfo Graziani, one of the “makers of the victory” of Italy in Ethiopia in 1936. The intent is to reveal the surviving of celebrative stereotypes of this figure, still present in the Republican age, that had an active role in building the memory of the Italian Colonial Age. The research studies in depth the Public History that can successfully dialogue with local communities (Herman, Baster, Del Pozo 2022) that have to deal with monuments and street names of the Colonial Age.