The Kingdom of Montenegro or the Independent State of Montenegro existed from 1941 to 1943 as a puppet protectorate of Fascist Italy, a component of the envisioned Italian Empire. The Italian Fascist regime saw Montenegro as a future part of an Imperial Italy that would span the Adriatic coast to northern Greece (incorporating the lands once controlled by Venice), where local populations would be forced to adopt Italian national identity, and colonization by Italians would be promoted (as it was in Italian-held Albania) to eventually displace all non-Italian populations.