I Didn't Do It for You (44 page)

Chapter 1 The City Above the Clouds

1
Two photographic books capture the wonders of urban Asmara: Edward Denison, Guang Yu Ren and Naigzy Gebremedhin,
Asmara–Africa's secret modernist city
, Merrell, 2003; Sami Sallinen,
Asmara Beloved
, Kimaathi, 2004

2
Presidential interview with Scott Stearns of Voice of America and Richard Dowden of
The Economist
, April 9, 1999

Chapter 2 The Last Italian

1
Cesare Correnti, addressing the Italian Geographical Society, April 18, 1875. Maria Carazzi, ‘La Societa Geografica Italiana e l'esplorazione coloniale in Africa: (1867–1900)',
La Nuova Italia
, 1972, pp 144–57

2
Pellegrino Matteucci took part in an 1879 expedition, subsidized by northern Italian industrialists, to assess Abyssinia's commercial potential. His conclusions were damning. ‘Allowing Italy to nurse any illusions about a country's wealth, if it doesn't exist, strikes me as anti-patriotic,' he recorded in his memoirs: Angelo del Boca,
Gli Italiani in Africa Orientale
,
Vol 1
, Mondadori, p 93

3
Ferdinando Martini,
Nell'Affrica Italiana
, Fratelli Treves Editori, Milan, 1891, p 332

4
Foreign Minister Pasquale Mancini, January 27, 1885:
Gli Italiani in Africa Orientale, Vol 1
, p 182

5
Dizionario Biografico De Guberatis
, Firenze, 1879

6
Former army officer Cesare Pini, who served in Eritrea, recalled a ‘flood' of death sentences in Asmara following the Massawa scandal.
Haunted by those executions–he said he bore personal witness to around 40–he was struck by the fortitude shown by the condemned: ‘I never saw a single one of those blacks, even those who were very young, almost boys, humiliate himself, rage or weep: not once!'
Gli Italiani in Africa Orientale,
Vol 1, p 447

7
Achille Bizzoni,
L'Eritrea nel passato e nel presente
, Milano, Sonzogno, 1897

8
For more on this episode,
see
Massimo Romandini, ‘Il “dopo Adua” di Ferdinando Martini, governatore civile in Eritrea',
Studi Piacentini
, 20, 1996, pp 177–204; Massimo Romandini, ‘Da Massaua ad Asmara: Ferdinando Martini in Eritrea nel 1891',
La Conoscenza dell'Asia e dell'Africa nel X1X Secolo
, vol III, 1989, pp 911–33; Robert Battaglia,
La Prima Guerra d'Africa
, Einaudi, 1958;
Gli Italiani in Africa Orientale, Vol 1
, pp 435–61

9
For more on colonial theories of biological determinism,
see
Sven Lindqvist,
Exterminate all the Brutes
, Granta Books, 1992

Chapter 3 The Steel Snake

1
The idiosyncrasies of Eritrea's system have won it a keen following amongst railway experts around the world. For details,
see
‘Railways Administration in Eritrea', Imperial Ethiopian Government, 1965. ‘Eritrea–Rebirth of a Railway', a video by Nick Lera, Locomotion Pictures, tracks the rehabilitation project; www.trainweb.org/eritrean has a site dedicated to the subject and a book by Jennie Street is due to be published by Rail Romances in 2006

2
Richard Pankhurst,
The Ethiopians: a History
, Blackwell, 2001

3
Gli Italiani in Africa Orientale, Vol 1
, p 740

4
Ferdinando Martini,
Il Diario Eritreo, Vol 1
, Vallecchi Editore, 1946, p1

5
Il Diario Eritreo, Vol 1
, Foreword

6
ibid

7
ibid

8
ibid, p 165

9
ibid, p 29

10
ibid, p 60

11
ibid, p 23

12
ibid, p 165

13
ibid, p 159

14
ibid, p 89

15
Il Diario Eritreo, Vol 2
, p 121

16
Gli Italiani in Africa Orientale, Vol 1
, p 758

17
Il Diario Eritreo, Vol 3
, p 328

18
Il Diario Eritreo, Vol 1
, p 3

19
ibid, p 94

20
Il Diario Eritreo, Vol 3
, p 3

21
ibid, p 424

22
Il Diario Eritreo, Vol 4
, pp 48–9

23
Il Diario Eritreo, Vol 3
, p 248

24
Il Diario Eritreo, Vol 2
, p 472;
see also
, Massimo Romandini, ‘Il Problema Scolastico Nella Colonia Eritrea: Gli Anni 1898–1907',
Africa
, September 1984

25
Massimo Romandini, ‘Ferdinando Martini ad Addis Ababa',
Miscellanea di storia delle esplorazioni geografiche
, IX, Genoa, 1984, pp 201–43

26
Il Diario Eritreo, Vol 4
, p 606

27
Author's interview

28
Emilio de Bono,
Anno XIII: The Conquest of an Empire
, Cresset Press, 1937; Angelo del Boca,
The Ethiopian War 1935–1941
, University of Chicago Press, 1969, p 4

29
The Ethiopian War 1935–1941
, p 21

30
The Ethiopian War 1935–1941
, p 210

31
Giorgio Maria Sangiorgio, see
Gli Italiani in Africa Orientale, Vol 3
, p 219

32
Richard Pankhurst, ‘The Legal Question of Racism in Eritrea during the British Military Administration',
Northeast African Studies
, vol 2, part 2, 1995; Richard Pankhurst, ‘Fascist Racial Policies in Ethiopia 1922–1941',
Ethiopia Observer
12, pp 92–127

33
Martino Moreno, head of political affairs at the Ministry; see
Gli Italiani in Africa Orientale, Vol 3
, p 239

34
Araia Tseggai, ‘Historical Analysis of Infrastructural Development in Italian Eritrea 1885–1941', Part 2,
Journal of Eritrean Studies
, vol 1, no 2, 1987; see also
Gli Italiani in Africa Orientale, Vol 3
, pp 236–23

35
Gli Italiani in Africa Orientale, Vol 3
, p 239

36
Gazetta del Popolo
, May 21, 1936. Once again, top-level attempts to prevent interbreeding proved stunningly unsuccessful. In 1950, the Associazione Meticci dell'Eritrea estimated the number of half-castes
at 25,000, although that number, confusingly, included Eritrean mothers

37
Author's interview

Chapter 4 This Horrible Escarpment

1
‘Retrospect'–Lecture by Lieutenant-General Sir William Platt, Khartoum, 1941

2
AJ Barker,
Eritrea 1941
, Faber and Faber, 1966

3
The tale of the Italian officer who staged the cavalry charge is told in Sebastian O'Kelly,
Amedeo: A true story of love and war in Abyssinia
, HarperCollins, 2002

4
Imperial War Museum, London; Sound Archives 7373/3 A

5
Archibald Harrington, Imperial War Museum; Sound Archives 8332/7 A

6
‘Retrospect'

7
Author's interview

8
Eritrea 1941
, p 101

9
Peter Cochrane,
Charlie Company
, Chatto & Windus, 1977, p 64

10
Imperial War Museum, 7373/3 A

11
Eritrea 1941
, p 136

12
‘Retrospect'

13
Author's interview

14
Charlie Company
, p 72

15
Imperial War Museum, 7373/3 A

16
General Nicola Carnimeo,
Cheren
, Casella Editore, 1950, p 212

17
‘Retrospect'

18
Alberto Rovighi,
Le Operazione in Africa Orientale, Vol 1
, Officio Storico SME, Rome, 1995, p 256;
Gli Italiani in Africa Orientale, Vol 3
, p 433

19
‘The Abyssinian Campaigns', The Official Account, London, 1942, p46

20
MAJ Trimmer, West Yorkshire Regiment, letter of September 1942

21
Imperial War Museum 7373/3 A

Chapter 5 The Curse of the Queen of Sheba

1
GKN Trevaskis,
Eritrea, a Colony in Transition
, Oxford University Press, 1960, p 21

2
Commander Edward Ellsberg, a former US naval officer, was sent
to Eritrea in 1941 to clear the scuttled ships from Massawa port. He must have been in charge of the shipyard labourers from whom Cicoria learned his skills. Ellsberg was nonplussed by the scene that met him on Asmara's streets. ‘Apparently every Italian officer captured in the East African campaign the year before was out, magnificently caparisoned, strutting along the Viale Mussolini…Every one of these prisoners of war was armed–clinging from his waist was an automatic pistol protruding from its holster! There were enough armed Italian officers in sight easily to take over the country.' Edward Ellsberg,
Under the Red Sea Sun
, Dodd, Mead and Sons, 1946

3
The Jewish prisoners were highly inventive, digging tunnels, donning mocked-up British army uniforms, requisitioning buses and disguising themselves as Arab women in their attempts to escape across the border. David Cracknell, deputy police commissioner in Asmara at the time, told the author his men once fished Yitzhak Shamir from the tank of a water container in which he had been hiding, hoping to pass through police checkpoints unnoticed. Cracknell was proud of the fact that 106 of the 107 men who escaped from Sembel internment camp were recaptured. Eliyahu Lankin was the only man to slip through his clutches, reaching Djibouti via Addis. ‘I'll never forget that name,' Cracknell said

4
Author's interview

5
Richard Pankhurst, ‘The Legal Question of Racism in Eritrea during the British Military Administration',
Northeast African Studies
, vol 2, part 2, 1995

6
The political scene was always more complicated than this summary suggests. Woldeab Woldemariam, regarded as the founding father of the Eritrean independence movement, was a Christian highlander who started his political career with the Unionist Party. Moslems were not the only citizens suspicious of Ethiopia, and not all those who believed in Union were Christians

7
Wilfred Thesiger,
Arabian Sands
, Penguin, 1985

8
For an exhaustive account of the theories surrounding the Ark's location, see Graham Hancock,
The Sign and the Seal
, William Heinemann, 1993. Hancock concludes, somewhat surprisingly, that the Ark may well be in Axum

9
Translation used by Miguel Brooks,
Kebra Negast, The Glory of the Kings
, The Red Sea Press, 1995

10
Author's interview

11
SKB Asante,
Pan-African Protest: West Africa and the Italo-Ethiopian Crisis 1934–1941
, Longmans, 1977, p 60

12
Report of the United Nations Commission for Eritrea, General Assembly, Fifth Session, Supplement No 8 (A/1285), New York, 1950, p 46

13
‘The Ethiopian Revolution and the Problem in Eritrea', cited in David Pool, ‘The Eritrean Case–Ethiopia and Eritrea: the precolonial period', Research and Information Centre on Eritrea, Rome, 1984

14
ibid

15
Massimo Romandini, ‘Ferdinando Martini ad Addis Ababa',
Miscellanea di Storia delle esplorazioni geografiche IX
, Genoa, 1984

Chapter 6 The Feminist Fuzzy-Wuzzy

1
FO 371/108261, Public Record Office, Kew