With so many hotspots and tense border stand-offs across the world, the dispute over an obscure island in the Arctic region by two peaceful modern western democracies definitely flies under the international radar. The unlikely spot is Hans Island, a 1.3 square kilometre slab of rock situated in the middle of the Nares Strait separating Greenland from Canada’s Northeast periphery. Barren and uninhabited, devoid of natural resources, the island has been the object of claims on it by both Denmark (of which Greenland is a sovereign part) and Canada since the 1930s¹.
Initially, the League of Nations adjudged the dispute in Denmark’s favour in 1933². But given the ineffectiveness and eventually dissolution of the inaugural world body, the LoN’s ruling carried little weight.
Over the decades Denmark and Canada continued to disagree on who owns Hans Island – without either doing anything about it. Bilateral negotiations in 1973 completely sidestepped the issue of the island’s sovereignty – a maritime border with the vertical line drawn through Nares Strait conveniently left the island itself untouched, and thus still unresolved.
An assertion of sovereignty done with humourand good nature
The 1980s saw an escalation of the competing claims in a tit-for-tat exchange of flag-planting on the island. First there was the hoisting of the Canadian maple leaf (accompanied by an additional item, a trademark bottle of Canadian whisky). The Danes duly responded with their own flag and a bottle of Danish schnapps.
The issue threatened to flare-up again in 2005 when Canadian defense minister Bill Graham earned Copenhagen‘s ire with his unilateral visit of Hans Island. However common senseprevailed and both sides committed to enter into a process to resolve the matter…since then though little headway has been made towards this goal.
A proposal for Inuit authority on the ground
In 2002 academics proposed that Canada and Denmark share control of Tartupaluk (the Greenlandic nameforHans Island), with hands-on management devolving to Inuit control. So far nothing has come of this.
Postscript: A straw prize on the surface but potentially a promisinglong-term prospect?
Though never getting remotely close to a militaryconfrontation, the periodic posturing and grandstanding by Canada and Denmark reflects the desire of both governments to secure possession of Hans Island. Two material considerations seem to inform the disputants‘ commitment to the cause – the possibility of oil and gasreserves in the seabed around Hans Island and the potential of the (Nares) strait as a future international shipping route.
End-note: A third claimant to Hans Island has emerged in recent years, Russia, filing its claim throughtheorthodox UN channels
————————————————
¹ “a bizarre sliver of territory for two countries to fight over” as one observer depicted it (Bender)
² a tricky matter to adjudicate on as the island technically lies in both countries’ waters, falling within the 12 mile-territorial limit under international law
❖❖❖🇩🇰🇨🇦
Referenced websites and sources:
‘Analysis: Hans Island – and the endless dispute over its sovereignty’, (Martin Breum), High North News, 24-Oct-2018, www.highnorthnews.com
‘2 countries have been fightingover an uninhabitedisland by leavingeach other bottles of alcohol for over 3 decades’, (Jeremy Bender), Business Insider, 10-Jan-2016, www.businessinsider.com
‘Canada and Denmark Fight Over Island With Whisky and Schnapps’, (Dan Levin), New York Times, 07-Nov-2016, www.nytimes.com
‘Hans Island Case – A territorial dispute in the Arctic’, (Master Thesis), (Nikoleta Maria Hornackova), Aalborg University, May 2018, www.projekter.aau.dk
These days the Australian government it seems welcomes the French presence in New Caledonia. Canberra offered a tacit endorsement of France’s retention of its colonial hold over New Caledonia following the recent referendum which voted for a second time against independence for the French Pacific colony. From a geopolitical standpoint it seems that it is in Canberra’s interest for the French, a Western naval power, to continue to have a stake in the Pacific…as it constitutes the existence of a “significant counterweight” to the uncertain but fluid intentions of China in respect of the western Pacific [‘Australia is part of a Black region; it should recognise Kanaky ambition in New Caledonia’, (Hamish McDonald), The Guardian, 25-Oct-2020, www.theguardian.com].
Noumea, NC ▵
A look back into history reveals that Australia hasn’t always been as sanguine about the French settlement in its near Pacific island neighbour. The French connection with New Caledonia formally began in 1853 when it established a colony, settling a small expat population from Metropolitan France. Prior to this time the British through its colony in New South Wales had assumed a sort of “titular control” of New Caledonia❋. As well as being within the British-Australian sphere of influence, there was a pre-existing triangular trade between Australia, the New Caledonian islands and China… Australian merchants traded iron and metal utensils and tools and tobacco for sandalwood with the native (Kanak) population, which the merchants then exchanged with China for tea [‘The Perils of Proximity: The Geopolitical Underpinnings of Australia’s View of New Caledonia In The 19th Century’, (Elizabeth Rechniewski), Portal. 2015. Vol 12, No 1. http://doi.org/10.5130/portal.V12i1.4095].
France’s decision to annex New Caledonia (NC)—a further sign to the British of French imperial designs in the south Pacific after its earlier acquisition of Tahiti—prompted a considerable degree of commotion within the Australian colonies. They criticised the colonial office in London for being lax in not having secured the colonisation of NC by Britain to block just such a takeover by the French. Australian newspapers like the Moreton Bay Courier had been warning for some time of NC’s suitability as an ideal location for a naval station from which to attack the Australian coast (Rechiewski).
Pacific pénitentaires◌◌◌◌◌◌◌◌Australian concerns and anxieties grew exponentially in 1864 when the French turned NC into a penal colony using Britain’s penal system as a model – prisons were established at two locations, at Île Nou (Noumea Bay) on Grande Terre (NC’s main island), and a second pénitentaire on Île des Pins (Isle of Pines, or Kunié in Melanesian culture)✪. The outcry from the press in Australia and from some politicians against the French presence intensified…a NSW colonial secretary urged Britain take diplomatic action to discourage Paris from continuing the transportation of “these scum of France”.The intensity of Australian hostility to the NC penal colony, has led one historian to suggest that the fierceness of the opposition may have reflected an element of post-convict shame” within Australian society itself, given that transportation to Australia had only recently been ended [Jill Donohoo, ‘Australian Reactions to the French Penal Colony in New Caledonia’, Explorations: A Journal of French-Australian Connections, 54, 25-45, www.isfar.org.au].
▿Isle of Pines: vestiges du Bagne (Photo: Marco Ramerini/www.colonialvoyage.com)
19th century “boat people”: Apprehensive eyes looking west ◌◌◌◌ ◌◌◌◌◌◌◌ ◌◌ ◌◌◌◌ In the last quarter of the century the principal external anxiety, especially for Queenslanders and New South Welshmen, was the fear of ‘invasion’ from bagnards or forçats (convicts) in NC. Many east coasters on the mainland were fixated on the threat of convicts—either having escaped from the NC colony or whose sentences had expired or had been pardoned—coming to Australia. Although perhaps exaggerated in actual numbers involved, the incidence of arrivals was more than merely perception, with periodic if isolated boatloads landing mainly on the Queensland coast (also in NSW and some reached New Zealand). With France flagging its intent to increase its transportation of habitual criminals to NC in the 1880s, anxieties further intensified. An additional concern was that in the event of a war erupting between France and Britain, France might unleash boatloads of the most dangereux kind of convicts in menacing numbers onto coastal Australian towns. A French proposal at the time to up the annual transportation numbers of bagnards including lifers to NC and to extend transportation to the adjoining Loyalty Islands as well, did nothing to abate Australian apprehensions [‘The problem of French escapees from New Caledonia’, (Clem Llewellyn Lack), Journal of the Royal Historical Society of Queensland, Vol. 5, No. 3, 1954].
Queensland’s northward anxieties◌◌◌◌◌ ◌◌◌◌◌◌◌At the same time the Queensland colonial government in particular was equally anxious about imperial German ambitions in the region. Fear of German intentions to annex the eastern half of New Guinea to its immediate north, prompted Queensland first to push the colonial office in London to ratify a British protectorate over thesouthern portion ofeastern New Guinea, and then to unilaterally and rashly plunge ahead with its own plans for annexation in 1883 [‘Queensland’s Annexation of Papua: A Background to Anglo-German Friction’, (Peter Overlack), Journal of the Royal Historical Society of Queensland, Vol. 10, No. 4, 1979].
Conditions in the Île des Pins were of an extreme nature, the bagnards were subjected to cellular isolation, material deprivation and endemic disease, and worse, they were brutalised, beaten and tortured by the guards. The severity of their treatment was conceivably aggravated by the invidious situation of the wardens who themselves were in a kind of “occupational neverworld” (Toth). Entrapped in a low pay, no future work environment, theguards were looked on by both administrators and prisoners as merely “loathed turnkeys” [‘The Lords of Discipline. The Penal Colony Guards of New Caledonia and Guyana’, (Stephen A Toth). Crime, Histoire and Sociétés. Vol. 7. No. 2, 2003. Varia. http://doi.org/10.4000/che.544].
Memorial to 1871 political deportes, Île des Pins
By the time France ceased transportation to the Nouvelle Calédonia pénitentaires in 1897—a decision prompted by the economic failure of using bagnard labour to colonise NC rather than by any humanitarian motives—anywhere up to a total of 40,000 convicts had been transported since 1864. This includedsome 5,000 political prisoners – the Communards, transported for their involvement in the Paris Commune revolt at the end of Napoleon III’s disastrous 1870 war with Prussia (Lack).
Spying for the nation, the first tentative steps◌◌◌◌◌◌◌◌◌◌◌◌◌◌◌◌◌◌◌◌◌ Nouvelle Calédonia and other Pacific islands played a role in the formative days of Australia’s espionage history. In 1902 Major William Bridges, acting on orders from the commander of the Australian land forces General Hutton, undertook a military spy mission to NC with the purpose of ascertaining the strength of fortifications in the French Pacific colony. Bridges came to this task already with experience of intelligence work having been on a mission to Samoa in 1896 to suss out German designs for the island [‘The growth of the Australian intelligence community and the Anglo-American connection’, (Christopher Andrew), Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 4, 1989 – Issue 2, 218-256, http://doi.org/10.1080/02684528908431996; Richard Hall, The Secret State: Australia’s Spy Industry, (1978)].
Aside from having French and German ambitions in the region to worry about, the Australian colonies from the 1890s had a new threat to preoccupy them, Japan. Through a series of bold and aggressive moves—annexing Formosa (Taiwan) and Korea , establishing a foothold on the Chinese mainland, and in defeating Tsarist Russia in a Pacific war—Japan signalled it’s arrival as a force in the Asia/Pacific region, and a rival to British-Australian (or Australasian) dominance in the western Pacific. As the 20th century progressed Australian anxieties about the “Japanese menace” would reach a level of hysteria.
PostScript: New Hebrides – contested ground◌◌◌◌◌◌◌By the 1880s the Australian colonies’ concern about the French in NC had extended to elsewhere in Oceania, especially its ambitions for nearby New Hebrides (NH). Some in Australia feared that France might use NC as a base to annex Nouvelles-Hebrides and energies in Australia were directed at ensuring the British government blocked any French attempts to plant the French tricolour on the island group. In 1886 France did just this, establishing military posts with small detachments of troops at two ports, Havannah and Sandwich. The Queensland government, alarmed that this presaged French intentions to also use NH as a convict dump, pressured London into securing assurances from Paris to the contrary (Lack).
Condominium compromise Notwithstanding this, the French maintained a presence in NH and tensions between the British and French on the islands persisted, including some violent exchanges between the two groups. In 1904-06 a curious solution of sorts was reached with an accord in which both sides made concessions⚉, future governance of NH was to comprise an Anglo-French Condominium. This created a dual system with separate administrations (known as residencies) in Port Vila, police forces, prisons and hospitals▣. The French and British residencies had control over their own ressortissants (‘nationals’) with separate Francophone and Anglophone communities – which led to the inevitable communication difficulties. All of this administrative duplication proved unwieldy and at times unworkable. In the middle of what some cynics tagged “the Pandemonium” rather than the Condominium were the disadvantaged indigenous population of NH, the Ni-Vanuatu who were left stateless (proving difficulties for some of them later trying to travel overseas when they found that they lacked a proper passport) [‘New Hebrides’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org; Lack]. The unique if bothersome governance arrangement continued until 1980 when the island state finally gained independence as Vanuatu.
↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜
❋ the island chain’s first visit from a European was by Captain Cook in 1774 who gave it its name but didn’t formally claim if for Great Britain
✪ prior to colonising New Caledonia France had shown an interest in the southwestern region of Australia as a possible repository to offload criminals from overcrowded French jails [Bennett, B. (2006). In the Shadows: The Spy in Australian Literary and Cultural History. Antipodes,20(1), 28-37. Retrieved November 2, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org./stable/41957504]. A few French convicts were despatched to a spot in the Pacific even more remote, Tahiti
⚉ France recognised the British occupation of Egypt in return for recognition of its interests in Morocco
▣ though there was a Joint Court established for all residents
The Russian Revolution in 1917 fostered a desire for self-determination within the Ukraine (as with other national minorities inside the empire), setting up the impetus for a conflict in Russia’s ‘underbelly’ which would become economically and geopolitically crucial to Soviet ‘imperial’ statehood. The Ukrainian conflict that followed (1917-21)✱ was a complicated affair involving a civil war, foreign interventions by countries from both the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance, the White Armies (a loose confederation of international anti-communist forces), the Bolsheviks (the Red Army) and from neighbouring countries Poland and Romania with their own territorial ambitions in the Ukraine. The struggle for political control in Ukraine involved the succession (and sometimes the co-existence) of 14 separate governments◘, before the Bolsheviks finally established the country as a constituent republic of the USSR [The Times Guide to Eastern Europe, (Edited by Keith Sword), (1991); Encyclopedia of the USSR, (Warren Shaw & David Pryce), (1990)].
Reds, Whites and Blacks Various social and political groups within Ukrainian society—peasants, Cossacks, nationalists, socialists, communists, anarchists—formed into autonomous partisan detachments and embroiled themselves in the southern front showdown between the Red (Russian) and the White (foreign) armies. Of these groups, the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine, colloquially known as the Black Army, in particular found itself in the middle of the White versus Red warfare.
Makhnovia AKA ’Makhnochina’
Of the assortment of homegrown players in the conflict in Ukraine, the Black Army was the most intriguing ideologically. Led by a brilliant military commander, Nestor Ivanovitch Makhno, and composed of peasants and workers, they were an army of revolutionary anarchists (or anarcho-communists). Makhno was engaging in a social revolution experiment by trying to establish a stateless, libertarian society in “free territory”. The Makhnovist Movement was based on the principle of self-government, a “federation of free soviets” without recourse to a dominant central authority◔ – a defiantly anti-statist position that was of course anathema to the Soviets. Aside from anarchists, the movement’s ranks were also swelled by Left Social Revolutionaries, Maximalists and maverick Bolsheviks [Nestor Makhno, Anarchy’s Cossack: The Struggle for Free Soviets in the Ukraine 1917-1921, (Alexandre Skirda), (2004)]. At its high-water point Makhnovia boasted an army some 100,000-strong [‘The forgotten story of the Free Territory’, (John Dennehy), Contributoria, July 2015, www.contributoria.com].
The Bolsheviks in their Ukraine military campaign alternated between forming alliances with the Black Army against the White Army when it suited them, and warring with them at other times. Makhno’s effective use of guerrilla tactics and his own martial innovation, the tachanka◘, played a decisive role in stopping the advance of Anton Denikin’s White Army on Moscow by cutting its lines of supply. When the Reds eventually got the better of the Whites in the war, Leon Trotsky (Soviet Commissar of War) reneged on the agreement with the Makhnovists, vilified Makhno as a “bandit warlord” and a “counter-revolutionary”, and proceeded to crack down on the Blacks ruthlessly [‘Free Territory of Ukraine’, Libertarian Socialist Wiki, www.libsoc.wiki.fandom.com]. With the Black Army’s strength decimated by the desertion of thousands of soldiers, the Red Army,superior in numbers and better equipped✧, ultimately defeated and dispersed the Blacks, forcing Makhno to flee Ukraine, eventually taking refuge in France.
Footnote: Makhnovia’s geographical base in eastern Ukraine Makhno’s powerhouse was on the left bank of the River Dniepr, in the provinces of Ekaterinoslav and Northern Tavrida and in part of neighbouring provinces…an area forming a rectangle measuring 300 km by 250 km and populated by seven-and-a-half million people (Skirda).
⇣ A 1919/20 pictorial map of Ukraine(Image source: Christophe Reisser & Sons)
Postscript: Ukraine, ‘Malorossiya’ and historic ‘Great Russia’ assumptions of hegemony The perception historically of Ukraine as “Little Russia”—held by by both Russians and the outside world—as a geographic entity falling naturally within the realm of “Great Rus” or even as indivisible from it, has acted as a handbrake on Ukraine’s aspirations for independence❂. In the present Ukraine/Crimea imbroglio, Russia’s military intervention and support for separatism in Ukraine (ie, the 2014 idea of eastern Ukraine as ‘Novorossiya’, (“New Russia”), the encouragement of the separatist “Donetsk People’s Republic”), is the Soviet strategy redux of what happened in 1917 – the setting up of an alternative authority in the country to that of the Ukrainians, namely a pro-Russian regime in Kharkiv. The Europeans in 1917, perhaps with an underlying sense of the vast, sprawling Russian Empire as amorphously heterogeneous, had a poor awareness of the difference between Ukrainians and Russians (the Soviet policy of Russification was designed to further blur those differences)⧆ [‘Illusion of a friendly empire: Russia, the West, and Ukraine’s independence a century ago’, (Ihor Vynokurov), Euromaidan, 02-Sep-2017, www.euromaidan.com].
✱ because of the causal link the conflict in Ukraine is sometimes characterised as the southern front of the Russian Civil War. Invading White Army leader General Denikin referred to the region as “Southwestern Krai”, a name with Russian imperial overtones
◔ Makhnovia relied on the adherents to an anarchist model to self-organise into peasant communes and worker co-operatives (Dennehy)
◘ horse-drawn machine guns
✧ the Bolsheviks routinely and deliberately underarmed Makhno’s army (the Black Army always had more volunteers than guns) (Skirda)
❂ this is a part of a continuum which had its genesis with Muscovy’s supplanting of Kyiv as the centre of the Russian state
⧆ when the Ukrainian war for independence broke out, the western powers, in striking contrast to their ready endorsement of Polish self-determination and independence after WWI, failed to offer the same support to the Ukrainians’ aspirations (Vynokurov)
In the aftermath of the Great War, among the numerous issues facing the post-world war peacemakers was what to do about the status of Fiume, which had been part of the(dissolved) Austro-Hungarian Empire. Both the newly established Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (KSCS), and Italy, laid claims to the city whose population included significant numbers of Italians as well as Croats and Slovenes. While the Paris Peace Conference deliberated over Fiume’s fate❈, an Italian poet-adventurer named Gabriele d’Annunzio took advantage of the city’s state of flux to invade with a small private force in the name of Italian irredentism.
The “Poet-Warrior” D’Annunzio was an international celebrity in his time, an unconventional, physically small but larger-than-life, multi-faceted character, an Italian man of letters who also saw himself as un uomo d’azione (‘a man of action’)⌖. Having seized the disputed Adriatic port of Fiume, d’Annunzio offered his prize to the Italian government who not wanting to endorse d’Annunzio’s dubious coup, rejected the offer [‘An Irishman’s Diary on Gabriele d’Annunzio — the “John the Baptist of Fascism” and would-be IRA quartermaster’, (Mark Phelan), The Irish Times, 07-Mar-2018, www.irishtimes.com]. Spurned, d’Annunzio reacted by declaring Fiume’s independence as the “Italian Regency of Carnaro”, AKA Impresa di Fiume (‘Endeavour (or Enterprise) of Fiume’).
Progressive reforms and a repudiation of the Versailles Treaty The constitution(la carta del Carnaro) of d’Annunzio’s unrecognised enclave contained an idiosyncratic “grab-bag” of ideas, including elements from both the Left and Right. The charter included many progressive articles – calling for the full equality of women in society, tolerance for both religion and atheism, a social security system, medical insurance and age pensions✪[Michael A Leeden, The First Duce: D’Annunzio at Fiume, (1977)]. D’Annunzio’s regime was the first to recognise the Soviet Union and pitched the idea of a kind of “anti-league of nations” for (select) oppressed peoples of the world—which in d’Annunzio’s thinking was those countries which fared badly in the post-WWI territory carve-up and were holding a grudge—including offering assistance in the form of arms to the IRA in its struggle to free itself from British colonialism (🔺photo: d’Annunzio and some of his supporters in Fiume).
Culture, ‘counterculture’, plus proto-fascism La carta del Carnaro made music a key principle of the state, the arts flourished with daily public poetry readings and concerts. Impresa di Fiume established a corporatist state along anarcho-syndalicalist lines. The Adriatic city exuded a veritable bohemian buzz, becoming, as Hughes-Halley notes, a “political laboratory” for all manner of political persuasion including anarchists, syndicalists, socialists and ultimately, fascists. It wasn’t all politics either…all manner of perceived ‘subversives’ and outliers, including the socially marginalised, the unorthodox and the disenfranchised, flocked to d’Annunzio’s enclave – fugitives, drug dealers (and takers), prostitutes, discontented idealists, ‘pirates’, dandies, homosexuals, artistic “drop-outs”, runaways, and so on⊞ [Lucy Hughes-Halley, The Pike: Gabriele D’Annunzio, Poet, Seducer and Preacher of War, (2013)].
Although the Fiuman duce wasn’t a fully-fledged fascist himself, his political ideas and his aesthetics in inspired an imitator in Benito Mussolini and informed the blueprint for the future Italian corporatist-fascist state – d’Annunzio’s legacy which prompted many to see him as a kind of “godfather of Italian Fascism” includes the staging of mass rallies, demagogic speechifying, black-shirted vigilantism and Roman salutes (Phelan). Moreover, d’Annunzio’s adventurism in the Regency of Carnaro contributed to a weakening of Italian democracy and paved the way for the Fascist takeover and consolidation of the corporatist state (Hughes-Hallett).
D’Annunzio’s exile and defenestration Under a deal between Italy and KSCS (Treaty of Rapallo, 1920), the enclave’s name was changed to the Free State of Fiume. D’Annunzio refused to acknowledge the agreement and having failed to reach a modus vivendi with the Italian government, impetuously and unwisely declared war on Italy – with predictable, disastrous results. Fiume was bombarded and d’Annunzio was forced to flee—relocating in exile to Lake Garda in the eastern Lombard region—leaving his Reggenza and his schemes for a new world order in tatters. A later agreement (Treaty of Rome, 1924) sealed Fiume’s full annexation by Italy. Injuries sustained by the still popular d’Annunzio in 1922 when he mysteriously fell from a window (possibly an assassination attempt) worked to Mussolini’s favour, whether he was implicated or not. D’Annunzio withdrew from politics and Mussolini secured his continued inactivity through the payment of inducements. D’Annunzio however characteristically did not remain entirely mute, proffering advice to Mussolini whenever he felt the inclination◰, such as his warning, unheeded, in the 1930s to Il Duce not to enter into an axis pact with Hitler.
Topnymic end-note: Flume, Fiume, Rijeka Fiume today is the city of Rijeka (‘River’ in Croatian) within the Republic of Croatia (post-Yugoslavia space)… roughly, a bit over twice the size of Fiume in d’Annunzio’s day, it comprises the most important deep-water port on the Croatian coast.
⋄⏦∝⧜∘⋄⏦∝⧜∘⋄⏦∝⧜∘⋄⏦∝⧜∘⋄⏦∝⧜∘⋄⏦∝⧜∘⋄⏦∝⧜∘⋄⏦∝⧜
❈ the Allies’ (and US president, Wilson’s) preference had been to make Fiume into a buffer state, a prime candidate for the headquarters of the soon-to-be created League of Nations
⌖d’Annunzio was many more things as well — decadent artist and musician, aesthete, war-monger and war-hero, necromancer, pioneering aeronautist, serial debt-defaulter, libertine and cad, above all perhaps, an indefatigable self-publicist (Hughes-Halley)
✪ progressive platform aside, Comandante d’Annunzio retained an elitist perception of his own role in national affairs, inspired by Nietzsche, that of the Übermenschor superuomo (the “superior man” who rises above society’s mediocrity)
⊞ it would be interesting to know if the Fiume Enterprise had any influence on the creation of contemporary Užupis, the bohemian “independent republic” of artists ensconced within the city of Vilnius, Lithuania 🇱🇹 – see blog Vilnius I, Senamiestis & Užupis: From Old Town to Artistocrazy? (06-November 2015)
◰ Mussolini and d’Annunzio exchange some 578 letters and telegrams until the latter’s death in 1938 [Peterson, Thomas E. “Schismogenesis and national character: the D’Annunzio-Mussolini correspondence.” Italica, vol. 81, no. 1, 2004, p. 44+. Gale Academic OneFile, Accessed 21 Sept. 2020].
Postscript: A straw prize on the surface but potentially a promising long-term prospect? 
