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.