n 11 Massimo Zaccaria, “In Search of Soldiers: Yemen as a Military Recruiting Ground for the Italian Colonial Army, 1903–1918,” Northeast African Studies, vol. 22, no. 1, 2022, pp. 11–44. ISSN 0740-9133. © 2022 The Author(s). All rights reserved. ABSTRACT When faced with the problem of setting up their colonial troops in Somalia, the Italians adopted a rigid quota system. According to the Regulations of the Royal Colonial Corps of Somalia of 1906, only 10 percent of the available positions were reserved for Somalis. Another 20 percent of the troops was reserved for “people of other races,” whereas the remaining 70 percent had to be made up of “Arab” soldiers from Yemen and the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula. When other colonial armies, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, were unable to reach such percentages, they filled the gaps in their ranks with a large number of “foreigners.” This article looks at why this situation arose and how these men were recruited, investigating the world of transnational enlistment in an area stretching from Benadir to the southern Red Sea. The phenomenon is analyzed through the prism of labor and mobility history, two approaches that allow us to grasp aspects and characteristics that military history alone would be hard-pressed to bring to light. The article argues that for many men, being a SPECIAL ISSUE In Search of Soldiers: Yemen as a Military Recruiting Ground for the Italian Colonial Army, 1903–1918 Massimo Zaccaria Università degli Studi di Pavia