Recent years have seen an explosion in scholarship on Italy's empire ... Eileen Ryan's study Religion as Resistance ... is a welcome addition to this fast-growing field. Ryan's book is a political and diplomatic history of Italy's imperial project in Libya, with a focus on the intersection of religion and empire. Ryan argues that Italy's pursuit of the colonies brought church and state together: after decades of tensions between Catholic and lay leaders,
originating in the papacy's anger at having to cede temporal power to the new Kingdom of Italy in the nineteenth century, Italy's African empire became a common cause around which both church and state could rally ... A valuable contribution to the growing field of literature about Italian colonialism. Its broad
chronological sweep in particular ... makes it indispensable reading for any student of Italian colonialism.
Eileen Ryan is an Assistant Professor in the History Department at Temple University. She has published articles in Modern Italy and the Annali della Fondazione Ugo La Malfa. She is currently working on an article on Italian settlers as refugees during the process of decolonization. This is her first book.