The
Italian Empire comprised the
colonies,
protectorates,
concessions,
dependencies and
trust territories of the
Kingdom of Italy and, after 1946, the
Italian Republic. The genesis of the Italian colonial empire was the purchase, in 1869, by a commercial company of the coastal town of
Assab on the
Red Sea. This was taken over by the Italian government in 1882, becoming Italy's first overseas territory. Over the next two decades the pace of European acquisitions in Africa increased, causing the so-called "
Scramble for Africa". By the start of the
First World War in 1914, Italy had acquired in Africa alone a colony on the Red Sea coast (
Eritrea), a large protectorate in
Somalia and administrative authority in formerly Turkish
Libya. Outside of Africa, Italy possessed a small
concession in Tientsin in China and the
Dodecanese Islands off the coast of Turkey.