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The Archives of the Municipality and the High Court of Asmara, Eritrea: Discovering the Eritrea “Hidden from History”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 May 2014

Francesca Locatelli
Francesca Locatelli*
Affiliation:
SOAS
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Extract

Eritrean independence in 1993 raised fundamental questions regarding the Eritrean past. Inevitably, scholars initially focused their analysis on the history of the Eritrean nationalist movement and liberation struggle. The long guerrilla war against the Ethiopian regime attracted the interest of numerous researchers, not only because of its implications for the redefinition of the political landscape of the Horn of Africa, but also because of the ways in which it had mobilized and reorganized Eritrean society. While this literature has shed much light upon interesting aspects of the political history of independent Eritrea, further investigation of the precolonial and colonial past is still required to gain a deeper understanding of the formation of Eritrean national identity in all its intricate facets.

The question of Eritrean national identity is intimately connected to its colonial history, which in many ways remains marginalized in the analysis of Eritrean past. The Italian colonial period between 1890 and 1941 was a crucial moment in the definition of those social and political transformations which contributed to the formation of Eritrea-as-a-nation. Nevertheless, this historical phase remains underexplored. The colonial past has been an issue that European powers to varying extents have had to confront since the end of empire. Both historians of colonialism and Africanist historians have collaborated in the reconstruction of the past of colonized societies. In Italy this process remains in embryonic form. Many Africanist historians, such as Irma Taddia and Alessandro Triulzi, have already addressed the problem concerning the gaps left by Italian historiography on both the colonial past and the history of the colonized societies in its various aspects. As Triulzi points out, both practical and political reasons slowed the development of those debates that were emerging in the historiographies of other excolonial powers.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 31 , 2004 , pp. 469 - 478
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2004

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References

1 See for example Iyob, Ruth, The Eritrean Struggle for Independence: Domination, Resistance, Nationalism, 1941-1993 (Cambridge, 1995)Google Scholar and Pool, David, From Guerrillas to Government. The Eritrean People's Liberation Front (Oxford, 2001)Google Scholar.

2 See Taddia, Irma, Autobiografie Africane. Il colonialismo nelle metnorie orali (Milano, 1996)Google Scholar and Triulzi, Alessandro, “Storia del colonialismo e storia dell'Africa”, in Fonti e problemi della politico coloniale italiana. Atti del convegno Taormina-Messina, 23-29 ottobre 1989 (Rome, 1996), 156–65Google Scholar and idem., “Premessa” in Quaderni Storici 109(2002), 3-19.

3 Boca, Angelo Del, I gas di Mussolini. Il fascismo e la guerra d'Etiopia (Rome, 1996), 17Google Scholar.

4 27 July 2001.

5 Quoted in Boca, Angelo Del, Gli italiani in Africa orientate. La caduta dell'Impero (Milano, 1992[Bari, 1982]), 496Google Scholar.

6 For an Africanist approach to the social history of colonial Eritrea see, for example, the pioneering work of Taddia, Irma, L'Eritrea-colonia 1890-1952. Paesaggi, strutture e uomini del colonialismo (Milano, 1986)Google Scholar, and Barrera, Giulia, Dangerous Liaisons. Colonial Concubinage in Eritrea, 1890-1941 (Evanston, 1996)Google Scholar. See also Jonathan Miran, “Islamic Court Records as a Source for the Social and Economic History of Massawa in the Nineteenth Century,” a paper presented to the First International Conference of Eritrean Studies “Independent Eritrea: Lessons and Prospects,” Asmara, Eritrea, July 2001. Miran is working on the social and economic history of Eritrea in nineteenth century, Massawa in particular, and his work is based on the analysis of Islamic court records. For a wider panorama of recent studies regarding the Horn of Africa see Taddia, Irma, “Notes on Recent Italian Studies on Ethiopia and Eritrea” in Metodo 18(2002)Google Scholar.

7 For the history of the Italian colonial archives, in particular the Archivio Storico del Ministero dell'Africa Italiana (ASMAI) and the Archivio Eritrea (AE), see Alessandro Triulzi, “Premessa” and the catalogs of the Archivio Eritrea (AE) and the Ministero dell'Africa Italiana (MAI) in Archivio Storico del Ministero degli Affari Esteri.

8 See Taddia, Irma, “The Regional Archive at Addi Qäyyeh, Eritrea,” HA 25(1998), 423–25Google Scholar.

9 I found the Registries of the following years: 1902, 1906-09, 1913, 1919, 1922, 1929-31, 1933-36, and 1942. Not all of them are complete.

10 I owe a debt of gratitude to the former Italian ambassador in Eritrea, Antonio Bandini, for helping me to gain access to the Municipality, to my friend and research assistant, Mussie Tesfagiorgis and above all to the Eritrean archivists and workers of the Municipality and the High Court whose exemplary collaboration, friendship, kindness, and availability made me enjoy not only the academic aspect of my research, but also the human side.

11 See Snyder, Francis and Hay, Douglas, eds., Labour, Law and Crime. An Historical Perspective (London, 1987), 1–3Google Scholar.

12 See, for example, Weisser, Michael, Crime and Punishment in Early Modern Europe (Hassocks, 1982)Google Scholar and Rudé, George, Criminal and Victim. Crime and Society in Early Ninteenth-Century England (Oxford, 1985)Google Scholar.

13 The administration of justice concerning civil cases was dealt in the first instance by the local chiefs.

14 We do not have enough information regarding the work of the other commissariati's tribunals. The registries of other commissariati could provide a more detailed understanding of the differences between the administration of the Hamasien and the other districts.

15 The askari were the local soldiers enrolled in the Italian colonial army.

16 See, for example, Taddia, Irma, La memoria dell'Intpero. Autobiografie d'Africa orientale (Manduria, 1988)Google Scholar, and Labanca, Nicola, Oltremare. Storia dell'espansione coloniale italiana (Bologna, 2002), esp. 369–470Google Scholar.