Irma Taddia

Post-Twentieth-Century Eritrea

These are some reflections on present Eritrea in the light of its colonial past. I am aware that if the present can only be understood in relation to the past, the colonial past can be analyzed in terms of the present. These reflections are stimulated by various visits to Eritrea in the last years after the change of political regime in May 1991 and by historical research. If we consider the case of Eritrea and its path towards independence, some differences and analogies emerge in comparison with other former African colonies. The Eritrean experience is taking place today in a very specific context in postcolonial Africa. It is not, I believe, simply a case of delayed decolonization, postponed by 30 years with respect to other former African colonies. I will attempt to identify some récurrent elements and some differences between the Eritrean case and other decolonization models that characterized Africa in the 1960s.

Italian Memories/African Memories of Colonialism

Francophone and Anglophone Africa have received much attention from Africanists, resulting in a vast literature. This body of work has partly privileged oral literature and the production of memories. Besides collections of Africans’ personal memories assembled by historians, anthropologists, and other specialists on colonialism, we also have access to a rich memoiristic literature by Europeans who were bureaucrats, settlers, travelers, and soldiers in the African colonies. But documentation of oral literature concerning Italian East Africa (Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia from 1936 to 1941) is meager. Italians left few first-person accounts of their African experiences, and contemporary scholars of Italian colonialism have not sought to transcribe the memories of its protagonists, whether Italian or African. This is an essential premise of my work on oral histories. I have sought to reconstruct Italian colonialism in East Africa through two types of individual, informal oral testimonies: those of surviving Italian colonizers, whom I interviewed in Italy many years after their experiences, and those of once-colonized Africans.1 The present essay is a synthesis of my works on these subjects; but it also addresses new reflections, and outlines a first stage of comparison between Italians’ and Africans’ memories of Italian colonialism—a comparison that provides us with a new interpretative key for many colonial histories.

The Horn of Africa, Italy, and After

The historical development of the Horn of Africa is significantly different from the experiences of other African regions. First of all, Italian colonialism left behind it a very complex heritage, a legacy that created a certain distance between Italy and its former colonies. Moreover, after the Second World War, Italian efforts to eradicate the fascist colonial experience from the history of the nation led to the break-up of relations between Italy and the Horn of Africa. The long tradition of scholarship that connected Italy and Africa was also affected African colonies were completely removed from the collective memory. As a result of this process, the history of Italian colonialism in the Horn and its developments are on the verge of being forgotten. Since the Second World War, relations between the former Italian Africa and Italy have never been systematically fostered on new bases as happened in most colonized areas hence the tradition of studies that connected Italy to its former colonies has been interrupted. Erasing the fascist episode meant that the memory of colonialism was not transmitted to contemporary Italian political culture. In

On Some Unpublished Material Regarding Eritrean Social History: The Trevaskis Papers in the Bodleian Library

Few documents are as totally unknown to scholars as the Trevaskis papers kept in the Bodleian Library in Oxford.1 Ignored by historians of modern African history, they provide a useful and, in many respects, unique background for the social history of Eritrea.2 My aim in this note is to present the material systematically and to consider more carefully only those documents which deal with the social history of Eritrea, since I believe that they should be made known to a wider group of scholars. The Trevaskis papers are the most important of all available documents for an understanding of the agrarian history of the colony. They are central to the study of the land tenure system of the Eritrean highlands throughout the precolonial period as well as to an observation of the changes effected during colonialism. Furthermore, they incorporate a large amount of information on the Eritrean lowlands and their nomadic populations, as well as political material dealing with Eritrean issues from the 1940s to 1950s. These papers form a private collection in the Bodleian Library; in order to consult and reproduce them, scholars must obtain special permission from the Trevaskis family.3 The material is divided into two different boxes: Box 1 concerns six items related mainly to the social history of the colony; Box 2 deals with two items regarding political matters during the period of British Military Administration.4