At dawn on 5 May 1936, the motorised columns of Marshal Pietro Badoglio crossed the final kilometres separating them from Addis Ababa. The capital of the Ethiopian Empire, hastily abandoned by Negus Haile Selassie a few days earlier, lay semi-deserted, shrouded in the smoke of fires that had devastated entire districts. In streets still frequented by looters and scattered groups of stragglers, Italian troops began to take control of the city, raising the tricolour over government buildings.
The conquest of Addis Ababa marked the end of a short but brutal war, fought with modern means against a courageous but technologically inferior enemy. The use of gas, aerial bombardments, and mechanised superiority had broken Ethiopian resistance in seven months, but had also isolated Fascist Italy on the international stage. Sanctions imposed by the League of Nations were still in force, yet the Mussolini regime rejoiced: after centuries of colonial humiliation, Italy finally had its Empire.
The proclamation of the Empire.
Four days later, on 9 May 1936, from Palazzo Venezia in Rome, Vittorio Emanuele III solemnly proclaimed the birth of the Italian Empire, assuming for himself the title of Emperor of Ethiopia. Italian squares erupted in massive demonstrations, orchestrated by the regime but also animated by genuine popular enthusiasm. For millions of Italians, the Empire represented redemption from poverty, the promise of land and opportunity, and a rediscovered greatness after centuries of division.
Excerpt from the Rassegna delle Poste, dei Telegrafi e dei Telefoni, no. 5 – May 1936 (source: Istituto di Studi Storici Postali “Aldo Cecchi”). The issue published the official accounts of the proclamation of the Empire and the first postal provisions issued after the occupation of Addis Ababa.
From that moment, Ethiopia formally ceased to exist as an independent state. Together with Eritrea, an Italian colony since 1890, and Italian Somaliland, acquired in the early years of the twentieth century, it formed the new administrative entity of Italian East Africa (A.O.I.), a territory almost four times the size of metropolitan Italy, inhabited by around twelve million people.
But behind the triumphalist rhetoric, reality was far more complex. The country was in chaos: infrastructure destroyed by bombardments or non-existent, precarious communications, and an administration to be built almost from scratch. And amid this desolate scenario, one of the first services the Italian authorities hastened to restore was the postal service.
The first days: organising chaos.
Among the buildings reopened in the very first days after the occupation were the post offices of the capital. This was not merely a practical necessity—to allow Italian soldiers and civilians to communicate with the mother country—but also a symbolic gesture: to demonstrate that Italy was capable of “making the newly conquered Empire function”.
The post had always been, in every modern empire, one of the pillars of colonial administration. Transmitting orders, receiving directives, maintaining commercial and family contacts: everything passed through letters. And in an era when intercontinental telephone calls were still an extremely rare luxury and the telegraph limited to brief messages, ordinary correspondence remained the primary means of long-distance communication.
Military Engineering officers took possession of the premises of the former Ethiopian post office, a modest but functional building in central Addis Ababa. The first provisional postmarks were installed, letterboxes for collecting correspondence were set up, and the first connections with Asmara were organised—the major postal hub of Eritrea, which for months would become the true operational centre of A.O.I. postal services.
The first provisional rates (10–31 May 1936).
On 10 May 1936, just five days after entering Addis Ababa, the Bollettino delle Poste e Telegrafi no. 22 established the first provisional rates for outgoing correspondence from Ethiopia. The bureaucratic language of the decree concealed the urgency and improvisation of those days:
«With effect from 10 May 1936, the following postal rates are provisionally established for correspondence originating from the occupied territories of Ethiopia and addressed to Italy and the colonies:
– Airmail letter up to 20 grams: L. 1.45
– Registration: L. 0.25.»
A registered letter addressed to Italy therefore cost a total of L. 1.70, an amount that may seem negligible today, but which at the time represented almost a day’s wages for a worker. Yet in those chaotic early days, many soldiers, officials, and early settlers hastened to write home, eager to recount the enterprise just accomplished and to reassure distant family members.
Cover sent from Addis Ababa to Rome on 18 May 1936, 9 days after the annexation of Ethiopia to the Kingdom of Italy (Longhi catalogue 3561)
The most significant detail of this first phase was the absence of a direct air link between Addis Ababa and Italy. Letters were collected in the Ethiopian capital and then forwarded, by air or overland depending on the availability of transport, to Asmara, the capital of Eritrea, which served as the main logistical and postal hub. From Asmara, the correspondence was loaded onto the regular service of Ala Littoria, the Italian national airline, which connected East Africa to Italy via a spectacular route that was technologically cutting-edge for the time.
The “Imperial route”: the Ala Littoria itinerary.
In 1936, Ala Littoria represented the pride of Italian civil aviation and one of the most effective instruments of Fascist propaganda. Founded in 1934 through the merger of several smaller companies, it was one of the few European airlines capable of operating regular intercontinental services.
The “East Africa” route followed an itinerary that still appears impressive today:
Asmara – Khartoum – Cairo – Crete – Brindisi – Rome
It was a journey of about four days, with technical stopovers in territories then under British control, such as Anglo-Egyptian Sudan and Egypt, in a delicate political balance with London which, though hostile to Italy after the aggression against Ethiopia, tolerated overflights for commercial reasons.
The aircraft used were mainly Savoia-Marchetti S.73 trimotors, robust transport aircraft capable of covering long distances, and occasionally Caproni Ca.133s, employed on shorter sectors. Ala Littoria pilots were veterans of military aviation, accustomed to flying hazardous routes through sandstorms in the Sudanese desert and turbulence over the Mediterranean.
Letters dispatched from Addis Ababa in those early days thus followed a mixed itinerary: an initial internal leg, often on small military aircraft or by motor vehicle, to Asmara; then the great leap northwards, across the Nubian desert, the Nile valley, and the eastern Mediterranean, to the final arrival at Brindisi or directly at Rome Littorio, the modern airport of the capital.
It was the “Imperial route”, as propaganda emphatically called it, but it was also a concrete reality: for the first time in history, Italy was linked to its African colonies by a regular air network capable of transporting not only mail, but also passengers, goods, and—crucially in a time of unstable peace—troops and supplies.
The administrative organisation of the A.O.I. (1 June 1936).
While mail services began to operate, the regime worked feverishly on the administrative organisation of the new Empire. On 1 June 1936, by Royal Decree no. 1019, the structure of Italian East Africa was officially established.
The territory was divided into six governorates:
- Shoa (with Addis Ababa as capital)
- Galla and Sidama (southern regions)
- Harar (east, towards Somalia)
- Amhara (north-west)
- Tigray (north)
- Eritrea (with Asmara as capital)
At the head of the entire A.O.I. was placed the Viceroy, endowed with very broad powers, a sort of alter ego of the King-Emperor on African soil. The first Viceroy was Marshal Badoglio himself, replaced a few months later by General Rodolfo Graziani, a controversial and ruthless figure who would profoundly mark the history of Italian colonialism.
Alongside political organisation, essential public services were absorbed, including the postal service. The Ministry of Colonies in Rome assumed general direction of the postal, telephone, and telegraph services of the A.O.I., coordinating with the Ministry of Communications for links with the mother country.
The new definitive rates (from 1 June 1936).
With the entry into force of the new administrative structure, Bollettino P.T. no. 26/1936 established the definitive rates for airmail correspondence from Ethiopia:
«With effect from 1 June 1936, postal rates for airmail correspondence originating from Ethiopia and addressed to Italy are determined as follows:
– Airmail letter up to 20 grams: L. 1.80
– Registration: L. 0.25.»
The total for a registered letter thus became L. 2.05, a modest but significant increase compared to the provisional rates. This amount appears on many of the first civilian covers sent from Addis Ababa in the following months, now regularly franked with the first colonial stamps and cancelled with the official postmark “ADDIS ABEBA – ETIOPIA”, which replaced the provisional “DIREZIONE POSTE ITALIANE (ADDIS ABEBA)”.
Cover sent from Addis Ababa to Rome on 19 June 1936, 19 days after the entry into force of the definitive postal rates (Longhi catalogue 3571)
The new rate also reflected an improvement in connections: from June 1936, the Ala Littoria route was extended to Addis Ababa, eliminating the need for transit via Asmara for all correspondence.
The new air route: Addis Ababa – Rome.
From June onwards, therefore, the full airmail route from Ethiopia became:
Addis Ababa – Asmara – Cairo – Rome
With an initially twice-weekly frequency, later progressively increased, Ala Littoria’s trimotors departed from the makeshift airstrip set up near the Ethiopian capital, stopped at Asmara for refuelling and crew changes, continued to Khartoum and Cairo, crossed the eastern Mediterranean with a stop at Crete or directly towards Brindisi, and finally reached Rome.
The complete journey still required several days, but it was extraordinarily fast by the standards of the time. A letter posted in Addis Ababa on Monday could be delivered in Rome or Milan by the following Friday or Saturday—a true miracle compared to traditional sea routes, which took weeks.
Airmail thus became the tangible symbol of the Empire: a thin but resilient thread linking the mother country to the new conquests, carrying orders and news, enabling settlers to remain in contact with their families, and conveying the illusion of an Italy that was finally great and modern.
Conclusion: an Empire of paper.
Looking today at those first covers flown from Addis Ababa in late spring 1936 is like leafing through the diary of a newly born Empire. Somali and Eritrean stamps, borrowed out of necessity, coexist with the new issues of Italian Ethiopia, fresh symbols of conquest. On their still irregular surfaces, amid trembling postmarks and handwritten figures, suspended between conquest and illusion, the brief breath of an Empire has been impressed.
The Italian postal service in Ethiopia functioned—and functioned well—for barely five years. In 1941, with defeat in the Second World War, the A.O.I. collapsed under the blows of British forces and Ethiopia regained its independence. Of that Empire there remained only ruins, resentments, and—for historians and collectors—hundreds of letters that crossed Africa and the Mediterranean in those tumultuous years.
But in those covers there is far more than a simple postal document: there is the testimony of an era, of an imperial dream built on violence and destined to dissolve, of men and women who lived—often without fully understanding it—one of the most controversial chapters of twentieth-century Italian history.
