González-Ruibal, Alfredo. "Fascist Colonialism: The Archaeology of Italian Outposts in Western Ethiopia (1936-41)". International Journal of Historical Archaeology, Vol.14, No.4 (2010): 547-574.

 

González-Ruibal, Alfredo. "Fascist Colonialism: The Archaeology of Italian Outposts in Western Ethiopia (1936-41)". International Journal of Historical Archaeology, Vol.14, No.4 (2010): 547-574.

• This paper covers an archeological investigation of three abandoned Italian colonial outposts in Benishangul-Gumuz region of Ethiopia that was conducted between 2006 and 2007 (552). The three outposts were were Was'i and Afodo in the region south of the Blue Nile in the Asosa zone and Gubba in the region north of the river in the Metekel zone (554).
  
  • The Was'i site is an Italian fortified outpost outside of Asosa and near the Sudanese border, making it the westernmost Italian colonial outpost. The outpost is built on a rocky spur, defended by drystone parapets, two dugouts, and a trench. The purpose of the site was to control the Sirokoli/Sherkole valley that is a trading route with Sudan. The outpost was probably garrisoned by colonial troops from the village of Mahdi and rotated every week. No combat is remoted at the site, likely indicating retreat or surrender before the Belgian Congolese force sent to take control of the valley. The only archeological finding were some fragments of green glass (555). There is a map of the site on page 557.
    
  • The Afodo/Afodu site was a fortification on the ridge overlooking Asosa and controlling the main road thru Gizen towards Sudan. The site was occupied by a banda of between 250 and 300 colonial soldiers of the 4th Gruppo Bande di Frontiera and the 10th Battery. The site consisted of a number of fortified positions, including at least two 19th Century Turkish-Egyptian forts that were reinforced with bamboo barricades (555-556). There is a map of the site on page 558.
    
    • There was a battle over the ridge on March 8, 1941, between the Italians and British Sudanese forces, in which the Italians lost 50 killed, 68 captured, and the British lost 4 dead, 31 wounded, and the Italians were forced to retreat first to the Dabus River and from there to Dembidolo, where they surrendered in June 1941 (556).
      
    • The archeological dig focused on the two Turkish-Egyptian forts, one of which had a number of glassware, tin cans, and whiteware. These items suggested an obvious use pattern, with most activity occuring in one part of the fort. It also indicated, as supported by oral testimony, that the colonial troops and their families lived together in the forts (556). Images of this material are on page 559.
      
  • The Gubba site was actually the palace of local lord Hamdan Abu Shok, which was taken over the Italians. The palace, which overlooked the town of Gubba, was turned into a headquarters for the comisariato and the 2nd Gruppo Bande di Confine under Major Quigini was garrisoned in huts around the palace (558, 564).
    
    • There were a large number of archeological finds at this site, including glassware, tin cans, whitewear, a Ford Model T, parts of military equipments, shell casings, parts of a battery, and metal scrap (560-561). Some of these items are illustrated on page 562.
      
    • The fort at Gubba was evacuated by the Italians on January 10, 1941, after several Free French bombing raids carried out from Chad and Cameroon between October 1940 and January 1941. The bombing raids lit the palace on fire, injured the comissioner, and so weakened the Italian forces that they stopped sending patrols into the town. The Italian forces there retreated first to the Shogali Ford on the Blue Nile, then combined with other forces and retreated to the Highlands (561).
      
• Italy was late to colonization due to its late unification and its colonial ventures were largely failures. The biggest of these failures was the Italian defeat by Emperor Menelik II at Adwa in 1896 (548).
  
• Italy declared war on Ethiopia on October 3, 1935 after a period of pointless mediation by the League of Nations and invaded with 200,000 soldiers. The invasion used massed artillery, airpower, and tanks against a materially inferior enemy. In May 1936, Italy was victorious and Emperor Haile Selassie left for exile in Britain (548).
  
  • Benito Mussolini saw colonization and specifically war against Ethiopia as a way to build unity within Italy. He also sought to recreate the Roman Empire, relieve Italian population pressure through settler colonialism, and instill Italians with new national values linked to war and aggressiveness (548).
    
•  In the aftermath, Italy occupied the country and incorporated it into Italian East Africa (548). The Italian occupation was a shitshow despite having 300,000 troops in the country. The engineering and industrial projects were failured and massively costly, only a few thousand settlers came, the country was a net food importer rather than a breadbasket, and Italian faced a fierce insurgency throughout the entire occupation (549).
  
  • Italy responded to the insurgency with reprisals and, when this also didn't work, Italian forces retreated into fortified towns. They were terrified of reprisals and attacks by the native population and so remained in their fortifications even when the British invaded in January 1941. This largely explains the poor military performance of Italian soldiers and why so many surrendered to the less numerous British forces. On November 27, 1941, General Guglielmo Nasi surrended his forces in Gondar, bringing an end to the Italian occupation (549).
    
    • The siege mentality of Italian occupation is reflected in the architecture of the time period, with even Addis Ababa being surrounded by forts and barbed wire (549, 571).
      
  • The Italian response to the insurgence was extremely brutal as was the conduct of Italian soldiers, including massacres; the mutiliation of corpses, including the removal of male genitals; mass execution of resistance fighters; torture; use of chemical weapons; and the confinement of Ethiopian civilians in concentration camps (552).
    
• Archeology can provide new insights into Italian fascism and colonialism because the existing written sources do not cover culture and daily life. Written sources are mainly military, technical, or operational, and even personal papers and diaries from this period mainly talk about work topics. Pictures suffer similar problems, as they are mainly of soldiers and military equipment (549-550). Archeology can provide insight into these quotidian aspects of life in the colony (551).
  
  • Additionally, these existing sources are from the perspective of Italian colonizers, meaning that the brutality of the occupation is downplayed or justified and that the Ethiopian perspective and even information about the Ethiopians are missing from current sources (550). Archeology can help destroy these perceptions by cataloging and exploring the concentration camps and mass graves that prove the crimes of Italian colonialism (552).
    
    • This idea of a 'humane' occupation remains in the Italian collective memory, which views Italian colonialism as less sinister than other forms of European colonialism. This view paints the 'tolerant' Italians are less inclined to racism and ignores the racist policies of the colonial regime as well as its brutal conduct against the occupied population (551-552).
      
  • Main written documents from the period of Italian colonization are also missing. The records and diaries from isolated outposts disappeared. There is also almost no documentary evidence of the experience of Ethiopian partisans (550).
    
• The majority of the occupational force in Ethiopia was Africa. There were 91,000 Italian soldiers versus 200,000 African troops, including Somalis, Eritreans, Libyans, and Ethiopians (550).
  
• Italian fascism triumphed technology, modernity, youth, progress, and permenant revolution (551). This was incorporated into the colonial project in Ethiopia in the form of architecture as well as modernization and road building projects (551). 
  
• Benishangul-Gumuz is a lowland area of western Ethiopia that is bisected by the Blue Nile river. The landscape is composed of undulating hills covered with thick savannah and bamboo woodlands. The natives of the region are primarily Nilo-Saharan farmers practicing slash-and-burn agriculture; north of the Blue Nile it is mainly Gumuz, while most living on the south of the river are Bertha (552-553).
  
  • During the period of Italian occupation, the old administrative divisions in Ethiopia were abolished and new ones were created based on ethnicity, with the north part of Benishangul-Gumuz made administratively part of the Amhara Region, while the south was placed in the Galla-Sidamo Region. The people living there were ignored in these administrative divisions because they were 'too primitive' (552-553).
    
  • The region attracted European colonial attention prior to Italian occupation due to its gold deposits. The Italians began to explore and develop these resources during their brief occupation (553).
    
  • There were little Italian presence in Benishangul-Gumuz because the Italians, correctly, believed that any future Allied attack would come from the north in Eritrea or from Kenya in the south. The soldiers stationed there played almost no role in the war and most outposts were abandoned before the British even arrived (553).
    • There were only 1,500 soldiers along the Sudanese frontier and these were mainly colonial troops or irregulars supplied by the local chiefs, while the main defensive forces and Blackshirts were kept on the Highlands (553-554).
      
      • The limited combat that occured in Benishangul-Gumuz to the north of the Blue Nile was related to the return of Emperor Haile Selassie to the country, which required marched through Metekel in northern Benishangul-Gumuz on the way to Addis Ababa. Prior to invasion, British forces under Mission 101 entered this region and worked with Ethiopian partisans to neutralize the Italian forts protecting the western approaches to the Ethiopian Highlands. This mission, commanded by Major Orde Wingate of the Gideon Force, entered Ethiopia on January 20, 1941, and participated in minor battles in Benishangul-Gumuz before moving on to capture Debre Markos on April 4, 1941, and towards the capital (553).
        
      • The limited combat that occured to the south of the Blue Nile was conducted by the Belgian Congolese Battalion, the King's African Rifles, and the Sudan Defense Force, assisted by Ethiopian partisans. The main town of this area, Asosa, was liberated on March 11, 1941 (553).
        
    • The main area occupied by the Italians during the war was Asosa, the capital of Benishangul-Gumuz. The Italians stationed 4,000 soldiers of the 10th Brigata Coloniale under the command of Colonel Giuseppe Cloza and Major Venturini in the town, including Somalis, Eritreans, Amhara, Tigray, and some local Oromo soldiers. There were a number of Italian fortifications and administrative buildings in the town, but they were all destroyed (554-555).
      
      • Asosa was the operating base of one of the only Italian offensives into Sudan. In mid-October 1940, Colonel Rolle took 1,800 men and raided Sudan before retreating. This offensive was not repeated (555).
        
• Material culture is paramount in understanding colonialsm, particularly because of the attention that colonialism paid to spatial organization and arrangement and partially the use of space to separate and distinguish the colonizer from the colonized (563).
  
  • This use of spatial arrangement to embody the messages of colonialism is demonstrated at the Gubba site, where Italian occupation of the palace, used by the slave trader kings of the region, simultaneously dethroned the slavers and let everyone know who the new boss was. This was also true for the Turkish-Egyptian forts at Afodo and the occupation of Sheikh Khojele's palace in Asosa, both of which had been used by slavers and now were occupied by the abolitionist Italians (563-564).
    
  • The presence of a showerhead at Gubba and whitewear at multiple sites indicates that resources were used to make possible the material culture of the Italians, particularly showering and eating from individual plates, that differentiated the 'clean' colonizer from the 'unclean' colonized who couldn't shower and ate from communal pots (563).
    
    • The presence of prepackaged drinks and tin cans from Europe at these archeological sites and their large numbers indicates that a massive logistic effort was involved in keeping these garrisons, composed almost entirely of East Africans, supplied with European food and drink. In fact, testimony indicates that Italians and their colonial soldiers only ate local food in cases of starvation despite its widespread availability. This indicates that food and drink, as well as eating habits, were important means of creating a cultural distinction between the colonizer, including Italians and East African colonial soldiers, and the colonized (566).
      
    • The use and availability of different kinds of clothes was also used to distinguished colonizer and colonized. Italians disliked when Africans wore European clothes, which was seen to challenge racial distinctions. This distinction was maintained within the army, as colonial soldiers were not issued and were not permitted to wear boots, which were reserved for Italians (566).
      
  • The organization of the colonial troop's barracks at Gubba also demonstrates a colonizing influence, as they were square huts in contrast to the circular or rounded huts traditionally built in East Africa. The troops were lived there were subjected to two pressured related to space: they were quartered together as Italian subjects regardless of ethnicity and spoke Italian and adopted some forms of Italian material culture; and they were physically separated from the local population. The physical separation of the colonial soldiers from the local population is also observed at the Afodo site (565).
    
    • The presence of a large number of liquor and wine bottles at these sites, especially the living quarters of colonial troops, indicates another difference in the material culture of colonial troops versus the local population, as this represents a European drinking culture markedly different from the large communal pot of alcohol that characterized drinking culture in the native lands of the soldiers (565-566).
      
    • The Italian colonial tactic of creating a visable and physical separation between the occupying colonial forces and the local population was evidently successful, as locals in western Ethiopia remember the forces occupying all three sites as 'Italians', despite the fact that almost everyone there was an East African (566-567).
      
• The native inhabitants of Ethiopia, as well as native Africans everywhere, were active participants in WWII, despite the dismissive attitude with which they are treated in contemporary accounts. Contemproary accounts by Europeans are mystified at African actions and ignore the range of local politics underpinning African behavior (567-568).
  
  • Zalak'a Liku, a lord of the Agaw, joined the resistance against the Italians because of a combination of national pride and the Italian abolition of the slave trade in Benishangul-Gumuz. The fight for national liberation and the return of the emperor lived alongside a reassertion of his rights to enslave and raid the Gumuz (568-569).
    
  • Sheikh Khojele al-Hassan, a Bertha ruler, initially offered support for the Italians as a means of aligning himself against the British in Sudan, who had impeded his slave trading and imprisoned his wife, Sitt Amma, on charges of slave trading. Alliance with the Italians also allowed Sheikh al-Hassan to accumulate modern guns and a large number of new prestigous medals and awards. Sheikh al-Hassan rapidly changed sides in the war and donated huge sums of money to Emperor Haile Salessie in order to retain power after the war, an act for which his palace was burnt down by the retreating Italians (568).
    
  • The reaction of the common people to the Italian invasion was disperate and depended on history, ethnicity, and religion. Initially, the Gumuz and Bertha fled their villages but, once it was discovered that the Italians were not there as slave raiders, they returned. Many Gumuz collaborated with the Italians, voluntarily or forcibly, as did Muslim Berthas. The Gumuz in particularly were targetted by Ethiopian patriots after the war for their collaboration (569).
    
• The memory of the Italian occupation in the communities nearby to the archeological sites is limited. In Afodo, the only memory is the Italians drinking too much. In Was'i, the memory is largely restricted to an old song that mocks the Italians as cowards. The common thread in Benishangul-Gumuz is a linkage between the Italians and gold, as it is reported that the Italians came in search of gold or that gold mines are haunted by Italian ghosts. Italians graves have also been ransacked in search of gold (569-570).
  
• Fascist colonialism was not fundamentally different from other types of colonialism, as all shared racism, massive inequality, violence, and a pervasive and paranoid fear of revolt and rebellion. These fears manifested in Italy but also in South Africa and British Kenya, both of which were used by the Italians as models for colonial and apartheid rule (571).