Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality.
Log in
- Chair:
-
Richard Reid
(SOAS)
- Stream:
- Series E: Health, Housing, Migration and Refugees
- Location:
- GR 204
Short Abstract
to follow
Long Abstract
to follow
Accepted papers
Session 1Paper long abstract
Concepts of the ‘frontier’ and the ‘borderland’ have long been prominent in historical study, from Frederick Jackson Turner’s classic, though contested, application of the idea in North American history in the late nineteenth century to more recent formulations in the context of modern Africa. This paper aims to draw, and build, upon this literature in an attempt to understand the longue duree in Eritrean history, incorporating northern Ethiopia and northeastern Sudan. In particular, further modifying recent theses on African borderlands, the paper represents an attempt to understand the evolution of much of present-day Eritrea as a violent fault-line, with major implications not only for the nature of state and society in Eritrea itself, but for the wider northeast African region, as recent events in places as ostensibly far-flung as Darfur and Somalia have demonstrated. Equally important are the processes of invention in, and indeed celebration of, the Eritrean borderland, which – inadvertently or otherwise – have become central to the latest Eritrean nationalist discourse. It is suggested in this paper that the fault-line paradigm is one within which a sharper appreciation of the provenance and nature of ‘violence’ – in its various forms – in modern Eritrea can be developed. The paper offers some preliminary observations on the utility of this conceptualisation for the region's modern history, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century but with a focus on the era of militarised identities from the 1940s onward. It might be postulated that the Eritrean region is not unique in northeast Africa in presenting us with an example of the ‘volatile borderland’, both real and imagined, and that the concept of political tectonics may provide us with a tool to better appreciate the history of other zones of conflict in Ethiopia, Sudan and Somalia.
Paper long abstract
This paper will discuss the historical meaning of the Sudan-Uganda boundary west of the Nile, building on analyses of boundaries as conduits rather than barriers, but also exploring the ambivalences of cross-border relations. Trade and labour exchanges have generated associated occult exchanges in the form of poison and extractive supernatural forces, while violent conflicts (including civilian killing, mutilation and abduction) have created a frying pan or fire situation for cross-border refugees. The tensions of borderland identities and exchanges have thus been inscribed both visibly and invisibly on the people of South-Central Equatoria, and continue to be debated as cross-border trade has increased since the 2005 Sudanese peace agreement and the LRA ceasefire. Recent complaints by Ugandan traders about their treatment in Southern Sudanese towns have led to vocalisations of brotherhood and unity by Southern Sudanese leaders (as in this paper’s title). Within Southern Sudan itself, however, communal tensions sometimes associate Equatorians and Ugandans economically and culturally, in opposition to ‘Nilotic’ Sudanese, and this also touches on issues of who fought or fled during the Sudanese wars. National identities are thus shaped by their borderlands and cross-border identities, exchanges and migrations.
Paper long abstract
The proposed paper aims to reconstruct the historical trajectories of identity-building processes in Eritrea by looking at the extent to which the demarcation of borders contributed to the creation of homogenous cultures and to the ways in which people accepted, negotiated and resisted borders and the imposition of identities. The paper will utilise patterns of migration in order to examine processes of identity-formation and citizenship in a context in which borders become the paradigm for the definition of all policies. It will examine older (pre-colonial) patterns of migration – for example political and economic migration – and the extent to which migratory movements presented ‘fluid’ features. It will analyse the ways in which the demarcation of borders (and, as a consequence, the political consolidation, socio-economic changes, administrative transformations and especially the militarisation of Eritrea) changed patterns of migration between Eritrea and northeast Ethiopia, creating new forms of inclusion and exclusion and generating new identities as well as reaffirming old ones.
Paper long abstract
Eritrea, not differently from the majority of African countries, is to a great extent the result of colonial administrative and political engineering. What has made special the case of Eritrea has been its missed decolonisation that has transformed the colonial shaping of political and social landscape into the foundation for the political claims of post-colonial struggles. This paper will focus on the procedures followed by the Italian colonial administration in shaping borderlands' identities and social practices, which have nurtured a great deal of Eritrean nationalist narratives. A special attention will be paid to the role played in this process by the deployment of colonial troupes (ascari) and the collection of chief's biographies. I will argue that ascari were crucial in patrolling the borders and therefore in enforcing colonial representations of the space but, at the same time they were also a precious tool for the Italian protracted effort of expanding the southern borders of the colonial state. Similarly, the systematic collection of biographies of local chiefs by the colonial administration played a similar function inasmuch it strengthened the colonial grip over the Eritrean territory and, at the same time, provided social and political knowledge of the political landscape on the other side of the border.