The "Manifesto of Race" (), otherwise referred to as the Charter of Race or the Racial Manifesto, was a manifesto which was promulgated by the Council of Ministers on the 14th of July 1938, its promulgation was followed by the enactment, in October 1938, of the Racial Laws in Fascist Italy (1922–1943) and the Italian colonial empire (1923–1947). The anti-Semitic laws stripped the Italian Jews of their Italian citizenship, and they also stripped them of their governmental and professional positions. The manifesto demonstrated the substantial influence of Adolf Hitler over Benito Mussolini since Fascist Italy's growing relations with Nazi Germany, following the Second Italo-Abyssinian War. Mussolini had earlier issued statements ridiculing especially the racial policies and theories of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP), and highly contradictory statements regarding anti-Semitism and Italian Jews, many of which had supported the National Fascist Party (PNF) earlier throughout the dictatorship. Starting with the manifesto, the National Fascist Party took a course considerably more in line with the ideology of German Nazism. History During the previous years of Benito Mussolini's dictatorship, there had not been any race laws promulgated in the Kingdom of Italy prior to 1938. Mussolini had held the view that a small contingent of Italian Jews had lived in Italy "since the days of the Kings of Rome" (a reference to the Benè Romi, or Italian-rite Jews) and should "remain undisturbed". There were even some Jews in the National Fascist Party, such as Ettore Ovazza who in 1935 founded the Jewish Fascist paper La Nostra Bandiera. Among the 180 signers of the "Manifesto of Race" were two medical doctors (S. Visco and N. Fende), an anthropologist (L. Cipriani), a zoologist (E. Zavattari), and a statistician (F. Savorgnan). In recognition of both their past and future contributions and for their service as subjects of the Italian Empire, Rome passed a decree in 1937 distinguishing Eritreans from Ethiopians and other subjects of the newly founded colonial empire in a divide and conquer fashion. In the Kingdom of Italy, Eritreans were to be addressed as "Africans" and not as natives, as was the case with Ethiopian peoples subjected to the colonial rule of the Italian Empire. The "Manifesto of Race", published in July 1938, declared the Italians to be descendants of the Aryan race. It targeted races that were seen as inferior (i.e. not of Aryan descent). In particular, Jews were banned from