Colonial mythmaking survived opposition from its own financiers

Evidence

Hence Crispi’s policy was opposed by the (northern) capitalists themselves, who would more willingly have seen employed in Italy the huge sums spent in Africa; but in the South Crispi was popular for having created the “myth” of easy land. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 449

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes later analysis in the reader’s library of how the metropolitan capitalist class itself may resist colonial expenditure while popular myth sustains it.