Uoldelul Chelati Dirar

Colonialism and the Construction of National Identities: The Case of Eritrea

Abstract In spite of the common agreement on the relevance of Italian rule on the political and social shaping of Eritrea, little investigation has been carried out to analyse the political, juridical and economical, nature of the colonial system in Eritrea and its impact on Eritrean society. This article focuses on the structure and strategies of the colonial state in Eritrea. Special attention is given to the development of an alternative juridical and institutional system for colonial subjects, which is described as both a key aspect of the development and consolidation of colonial powers and a crucial factor in moulding new identities. The final section of the article discusses relations between the colonial state and local elites. It is a common assumption that one of the main negative consequences of the harsh policies adopted by Italian colonialism in order to frustrate Eritrean aspiration and access to education was the suppression of a local elite. It is argued that, while true in a general sense...Abstract In spite of the common agreement on the relevance of Italian rule on the political and social shaping of Eritrea, little investigation has been carried out to analyse the political, juridical and economical, nature of the colonial system in Eritrea and its impact on Eritrean society. This article focuses on the structure and strategies of the colonial state in Eritrea. Special attention is given to the development of an alternative juridical and institutional system for colonial subjects, which is described as both a key aspect of the development and consolidation of colonial powers and a crucial factor in moulding new identities. The final section of the article discusses relations between the colonial state and local elites. It is a common assumption that one of the main negative consequences of the harsh policies adopted by Italian colonialism in order to frustrate Eritrean aspiration and access to education was the suppression of a local elite. It is argued that, while true in a general sense, this assumption needs to be examined more closely. For, in spite of repressive colonial policies, a small and ‘informal’ Eritrean elite grew up during the fifty-one years of official Italian colonial rule, many members of this germinal ‘elite’ going on to play an important role in post-colonial Eritrea.

Experiencing Identities: Making and Remaking African Communities

This issue of the Journal of Eastern African Studies carries five articles on the theme of ‘Experiencing Identities’, each exploring the meaning and significance of identity across time and space in eastern Africa. Issue number 3 of 2007 will carry five further articles on the same theme. This collection was first conceived in the best tradition of cooperation between the disciplines of history and anthropology in the field of eastern African studies. A powerful historical thread runs through the ten articles, and a concern for understanding ‘past states’ in the pursuit of understanding the relationship between experience and identity, but the articles also seek to explain current identities, real or imagined, whether in the eye of the beholder or of the beheld. Each article is thus concerned with change and/or continuity over time, usually within defined spaces or perhaps more accurately spaces in the process of being defined. Studying, no less than understanding, identity is a complex business. Identity shifts across time and space, and can be easily mutable in both its individual and collective senses. It has often been more or less assumed by scholars in eastern Africa that particular communities just were as they said they were, or as others described them. To think otherwise can make the reconstruction of social understandings, whether in the past or in the present, exceedingly difficult to tie down. But by having the courage to think about what identities mean now, and what they may have meant in the past, we open up new areas of enquiry and scholarly investigation. This attempt to unravel the apparent mystery of whether people are what they say they are, or what others say they are, is in many ways a very recent we hesitate to say ‘post-modern’ scholarly endeavour, the symptom, perhaps, of a world as unsure of itself as at any time for the past fifty years or more. Certain terms used in framing this collection of articles warrant some explanation. The first, the notion of ‘experience’, is relatively straightforward. It is no startling assertion to suggest that identity, above all, is an experience: it is simultaneously dynamic and fluid on the one hand, reaffirming and self-fulfilling on the other, in itself rendering further change, or consolidating previous wisdoms. All the articles included here describe identity as a thing which is experienced, something lived. Identity is also, of course, something which is based on experience; identity is accumulated experience, and the