Unholy Alliances: Disentangling the Economic Relations between Italy, the Holy See and the Ottoman Empire

After the Kingdom of Italy annexed Rome and its territories from the papacy in 1870, relations between Italy and the Holy See deteriorated steadily. Yet, while at the domestic level political tensions between the two persisted for years, a 'cold' alliance united them when it came to their financial interests in the Ottoman Empire. In this context, Italian foreign policy-makers saw the Holy See's financial resources as a useful bridgehead to justify imperialist policies in the Ottoman lands, despite the general hostility towards such overtures in Ottoman governmental and diplomatic circles. The aim of this article is to understand this apparently ambivalent relationship between Italy and the Holy See through an analysis of their investment strategies in the Ottoman market. Unable to establish itself on the Italian peninsula, the 'unholy alliance' between Rome and the Papacy that materialised in the Ottoman Empire sharply illustrates how Italian and Papal financial and diplomatic elites could easily overcome political conflicts when these concerned investments in 'peripheral' territories where both parties had interests to defend.