Quelle que soit la raison pour laquelle ils ont péri ». Commémoration des soldats morts au front et mémoire du colonialisme au Sacrario dei caduti d’Oltremare de Bari

This article examines the relationship between the politics of commemorating the dead and the construction of a colonial memory in republican Italy through the reconstruction of history and the analysis of the setting up of the Sacrario dei caduti d’Oltremare (Military Shrine of the Overseas Dead) in Bari, Puglia. This shrine is a memorial site commissioned and built by the Italian state after the Second World War to commemorate the dead of that war, and it is still used to celebrate the main national holidays. While historiography has analysed the theme of the commemoration of colonialism primarily from the perspective of associative memories, the history of the Sacrario of Bari allows us to reconstruct the role played by the Italian state in the construction of an official memory of the colonial experience. The article shows how the depoliticised narrative of the Fascist wars, developed in the post-war period with the aim of managing the conflicting memories inherited from the first Republican governments, provided the context for including the dead of the colonial wars in commemorative practices; and how the normalization of colonialism through these practices enabled the celebration of Italian expansionist policy.