8th Cambridge Heritage Seminar, 12 May 2007

Re-visioning the Nation: Cultural Heritage and the Politics of Disaster

Forging the Cultural Identity of a Nation: The Italian Legacy in Eritrea

Dennis G Rodwell

Asmara: FIAT Tagliero street manhole cover Medeber industrial area

Abstract Established as an Italian colony in the 1890s and only gaining its independence in 1993, Eritrea is one the world’s youngest and poorest countries. It remains in a state of war with neighbouring Ethiopia. The Cultural Assets Rehabilitation Programme (CARP), funded largely through the World Bank, has been at the forefront of Eritrea’s affirmation of national identity. But what identity? Eritrea has been home to people of diverse living patterns, traditions, and religions for thousands of years. The nation’s various ethnic groups are closely connected by tradition and family to its neighbours. From the historical perspective, the nation has little to distinguish it culturally and socially other than its manmade borders. This paper focuses on the capital city of Asmara – the ‘shop window’ of the nation – whose image has been forcibly promoted in recent years as ‘Africa’s secret modernist city’, a reflection of the six short years between 1935 and 1941: the period of Italy’s conquest of Ethiopia, the associated building boom in the city, and the dominance of Italian influence in the tangible and intangible culture of the capital. This paper discusses issues surrounding the legitimacy of this heritage as the defining image of a nation whose ethnic traditions are both ancient and complex.

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Context In 2004, I was asked to coordinate and conclude the work of a number of national and international consultants, non-governmental and governmental organisations, in the preparation of over-arching urban planning and building conservation guidelines for Asmara’s historic core. The tangible cultural heritage of the city is young by European standards; its intangible cultural heritage is at least as old. This paper constitutes a reflection on issues that arose in the context of this assignment and that extended beyond its defined terms. Eritrea Modern Eritrea officially declared its independence from Ethiopia in 1993 and is Africa’s youngest nation. It is situated towards the north-east of the continent in the Horn of Africa. It is bordered to its north and west by Sudan, to the south by Ethiopia, to the south-east by Djibouti, and to the east by the Red Sea. The Red Sea coastline is over 1,000 km long, and across it lie Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Eritrea owes its geographical footprint as well as its name to Italy, the last of the European powers to join the ‘Scramble for Africa’ in the nineteenth century. By purchase and conquest the Italians established Eritrea as a colony in the 1890s. They chose an ancient name for it, Eritrea being derived from the Greek word for ‘red’. In 1935, under Mussolini, Eritrea served as the springboard for the Italian invasion and conquest of Ethiopia. From 1941 to 1952, following defeat by Allied forces, Eritrea fell under British Military Administration. Thereafter, this former colony was first federated with and then annexed by Ethiopia, during which period its ethnic languages and distinctive culture were in varying degrees suppressed and economic activity stagnated. Eritrea’s formal independence in 1993 – the first in its history – followed a thirty-year armed liberation movement between two closely related peoples in what is one of the poorest parts of the world, the subject of recurring drought and famine (Figure 1). Border conflict with Ethiopia re-ignited in 1998 and has yet to be resolved.

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Figure 1 Eritrea’ economy is very largely one of subsistence agriculture, some of it worked by nomadic tribes, and only twenty-five per cent of the population lives in urban areas. Eritrea is subject to recurrent drought and food shortages, and is the subject of a number of international aid and capacity-building programmes.

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Eritrea’s estimated population of around million inhabits a land area that is slightly larger than that of England. Eritrea has been home to people of diverse living patterns, traditions, and religions for thousands of years, and its population comprises nine ethnic groups and two main religions: Christianity and Islam. There are three main ethnic languages – Tigrinya, Arabic and Tigre; Italian is still spoken in the cities; and English is widely used as a language of national and local government. Historically, Eritrea is a geographical rather than a cultural concept. Its borders result from the nineteenth century partitioning of Africa by colonial powers from Europe. Much of its tangible and intangible cultural heritage is common to neighbouring countries, and close family ties subsist – especially with Ethiopia. Cultural Assets Rehabilitation Project (CARP) Concern for the preservation of Eritrea’s cultural heritage in its many forms, tangible and intangible, was a major preoccupation before independence and this has accelerated since. Cultural heritage is seen both as an essential component of affirming and promoting national identity and as a cornerstone of sustainable development. The Cultural Assets Rehabilitation Project (CARP) was formally established in 1997, with governmental and popular support. The World Bank is its major partner. CARP’s mandate is to identify, preserve, and promote awareness of the diversity of Eritrea’s cultural heritage, and it is engaged in a number of parallel programmes across the country. CARP’s projects include archaeological sites, record management and museum development, and the recording of oral history and traditions. The built environment is one of CARP’s key programmes, and projects have included the historic Red Sea port of Massawa (Figure 2) and Asmara itself. CARP is also involved with the Massawa-Asmara railway (Figure 3).

Figure 2 Massawa. The surviving structures date from the period of Turkish domination in the sixteenth century. By the nineteenth century it had become an important cosmopolitan seaport with strong trading links to India, the Middle East, and Europe. Massawa was occupied by the Italian expeditionary force in 1885 and was the Italians’ first capital in Eritrea. By the 1930s, it had become the largest port on the East African coast. Massawa was the focus of intense fighting during the thirty-year war of independence, and parts of the old city were reduced to rubble. Today, major areas of historic Massawa resemble a shanty town, with refugees squatting in the ruins of former merchants’ houses – many of which have lost their roofs and are in a state of imminent collapse. The urban conservation of the city has been the subject of repeated study by UNESCO.

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Figure 3 The Massawa-Asmara railway was commenced from Massawa in 1887 and completed to the colonial capital in 1911. A major feat of engineering, it offers one of the most spectacular mountain railway journeys in the world. It covers the ascent from sea level to the highland plateau in 117 km, a distance of only some 70 km as the crow flies. Nicknamed the serpente d’acciaio (steel snake) by the Italians, its narrow-gauge track weaves its way around, across, and through the contours, frequently doubling back on itself. The railway has been reopened following two decades of disuse. CARP has promoted a draft submission for the line to be included in the UNESCO World Heritage List, but it has yet to be placed on the Tentative List for Eritrea.

Asmara The Italians moved their colonial capital from Massawa to Asmara in 1899. Situated on the Eritrean Highlands at an altitude of 2,400 metres, it is Africa’s highest capital city. The area has been settled since the eighth century, when four distinct villages were established. In the fourteenth century they merged to become ‘Arbate Asmara’, which approximately stands for ‘the four united’. Asmara became an important trading centre between Massawa and the Eritrean Highlands. The construction of European building types – as opposed to the modest, stone-walled and either flat- or conical-roofed vernacular dwellings (known as hidmo and agdo respectively) – dates from 1889, the year in which the Italians first occupied the area. From the 1890s onwards the principal areas of the city were planned – as colonial settlements frequently are – to an expanding series of orthogonal grids, adjusted to suit historic caravan routes and natural features. The later and more developed city plans from the Italian period show spacious European quarters in the southern part, a denser mixed quarter centred on the area of the main markets and mosque in the northern part, and an industrial quarter in the north-east corner. Organically developed indigenous quarters were kept outside this planned city. Racial segregation became progressively more rigid with the onset of the Fascist era in the 1920s.

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Asmara was envisaged primarily for an emigrant working-class population from the homeland, which provided the skilled labour force to consolidate the sub-Saharan colony. The new European quarters were laid out to the model of a garden city, with wide tree-lined boulevards and residential streets – planted with a limited range of species including palms and jacarandas – and low-density housing set behind hedges dense with bougainvillea. Asmara provided an urban ideal far from the cramped and unhealthy conditions of nineteenth-century cities in Europe. In mainland Italy, the 1930s’ town of Sabaudia, built on the reclaimed Pontine Marshes 80 kilometres south of Rome, is analogous. Until the early-1930s the architecture of the new city displayed an eclectic range of historical styles, to which architectural historians have attached a multitude of labels: Classical, Romanesque, Medieval, Moorish, Islamic, Renaissance, Lombardian, Venetian, Neo-Gothic, Neo-Baroque, Neoclassical, Alpine, Colonial, Italian vernacular, indigenous vernacular, and early twentieth-century Novecento. The greatest period of construction in Asmara occurred in the six short years between 1935 and 1941, coinciding with the span of Italy’s conquest of Ethiopia and a fifteen-fold increase in the Italian population of the city from 4,000 to 60,000. The building boom transformed the predominant historicism of the city’s early architecture into ‘Africa’s Secret Modernist City’, an urban environment that is unique in Africa and has few parallels anywhere in the world. The legacy of neglected, but largely untouched, Modernist, Rationalist, and Futurist buildings is recognised as one of the great architectural survivors of the twentieth century (Figure 4).

Figure 4 Asmara offered a blank canvas that permitted uninhibited architectural expression. One of the Futurist icons of the city is the Fiat Tagliero service station (built 1938; Giuseppi Pettazzi, architect). The design was inspired by that of an aeroplane: the cantilevered reinforced concrete wings protect the petrol pumps from the heat of the African sun.

Since 1941 and the collapse of Africa Orientale Italiana, Eritreans have adopted Asmara as their own, adapting themselves to it and vice versa. Apart from the diplomatic mission and some trading interests, there are effectively no Italians living in the city and there have been few at any period since the early-1940s. In terms of its tangible heritage of town planning and architecture the dominant image of the city remains 1930s’ Italy. In terms of the city’s intangible heritage the legacy of Italian customs is manifest, especially in what were the European quarters: the café culture,

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complete with cappuccino, macchiato, and expresso coffee; Italian cuisine with pastas, pizzas, and pastry shops; the two hour lunch break; the passeggiata, the leisurely evening stroll up and down Harnet Avenue, where Asmarinos go to look, be seen, and meet their friends; and the cherished and ubiquitous Fiat Cinquecento (Figure 5). Aspects of the city’s life are pure Mediterranean transposed at altitude on to African soil.

Figure 5 Asmara’s principal thoroughfare, Harnet Avenue, is the setting every evening for the passeggiata – one of the many legacies from the Italian era.

But this is only one aspect of Asmara’s rich and varied living culture, of the fusion of twentieth-century Europe, Italian Modernism, and a disparate indigenous culture. The area of the main markets, with their countless stalls selling every imaginable item of food, clothing, craft goods, and with an all-pervading scent of spices, express a mélange of Eastern and African influences. The industrial area of the Italians’ planned city, Medeber, is yet another aspect of Asmara’s rich hybridity. Here, hundreds of self-employed stallholders apply incredible ingenuity and resourcefulness to recycling every imaginable material: pipes into rocking cradles; rubber tyres into rope and sandals; oil cans into cooking stoves. It is the artisan workshop of the city, without which the basic needs of a large proportion of its citizens would not be met (Figures 6 and 7).

Figures 6 and 7 Medeber, the small-scale industrial area to the northeast of the city centre, strategically placed between the railway station and the market square, is enclosed within the old caravanserai. Medeber accommodates hundreds of artisan stalls. Most of the recycling work that is carried out in this area is done by hand without the use of modern machinery.

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And finally, there are the indigenous quarters that have evolved organically, beyond the main markets and Medeber to the north (Figures 8 and 9).

Figures 8 and 9 Non-European vernacular building types and organically developed quarters outside the Italian colonial city.

Promotion of Eritrea’s cultural identity and the role of UNESCO For various economic and political reasons the range of CARP’s work has reduced in recent years and attention has increasingly focused on ‘Africa’s Secret Modernist City’. It is apposite to consider the relationship between this focus and international agendas in the field, specifically the role of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Educational Organisation (UNESCO) in the identification and representation of tangible heritage to the international audience. The 1972 World Heritage Convention was subject in 1994 to a formalised global strategy aimed at achieving a balanced and representative World Heritage List. This global strategy introduced a bias in favour of under-represented regions – including Africa – and themes – such as industrial and modern heritage. Eritrea signed the World Heritage Convention in 2001. In 2004, Asmara hosted a UNESCO Meeting on Modern Heritage for Africa which was convened purposely in order to encourage nominations that would accord with the global strategy. At that time, only two sites were being considered for inclusion on the Tentative List for Eritrea, namely the Massawa-Asmara railway – which is both industrial and modern – and modernist Asmara. In 2005, the ‘Historic Perimeter of Asmara and its Modernist Architecture’ – as the extent of the Italian colonial capital is known – was placed on the Eritrean Tentative List. The extent of this perimeter encompasses the colonial planned areas of the city but excludes the organically developed indigenous quarters.

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Some questions A University seminar offers a forum for discussion and debate, potentially in conjunction with or as a forerunner to topics of research. For this: First, let us reflect on the following:

Post-World War II as well as post-independence, much of northern as well as sub-Saharan Africa has been in ‘denial’ of its colonial past. It is considered to have negative cultural connotations.

In Eritrea, both the Massawa-Asmara railway and Asmara itself focus on that

legacy.

In World Heritage terms, today’s primary focus is on that part of Asmara that may be considered to have ‘outstanding universal value’, the Modernist City:

o built 1935-41, it represents six short years of colonial building boom; o during that period the Italian population increased from 4,000 to

60,000, whereas the Eritrean population remained static (at 100,000); o the Modernist City comprises ‘iconic’ architecture of the period; o designed by Italians, it was built using Eritrean labour; o it constitutes an urban environment unique in Africa – atypical,

exceptional; o it is neglected but largely untouched; o it represents one of the great architectural survivors of the C20; and o it functions today in ways that were unimaginable to its creators.

Second, some general questions on World Heritage:

Why do State Parties seek to get sites on to the World Heritage List? Is it for reasons of :

o national pride/world renown/statement of identity? o potential international funding? … and is this illusion or reality? o tourism benefits/increase? … and is this illusion or reality?

Does the World Heritage List distort values?

o especially in the case of Asmara between tangible and intangible?

Does the process of nomination distort sites?

o are they ‘re-invented’ in order to fit into prescribed categories, criteria,

and the nomination process?

Does the process limit perceptions and reinforce stereo-typical models instead of supporting complex diversity?

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Or does it simply follow a general trend of simplification that is outside the World Heritage Convention?

o for example: stereo-typical Scotland = kilts, haggis, Scotch whisky,

and ghosts in castles. Third, some specific questions on Eritrea: Eritrea has a rich and varied history and amalgam of cultures dating back thousands of years. Asmara is its capital city and ‘shop window’ to the world. The Modernist City of the Historic Perimeter was the creation of six short years, 1935 to 1941.

Is the Modern Heritage of this period the defining moment of the Eritrean nation, encapsulating its cultural identity, or simply a snapshot in time?

How do we define and present the rich tangible-intangible connections of the

nation in ways that express the true richness of Eritrea’s pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial cultural continuum?

And finally, In which sense has the cultural identity of Eritrea been ‘forged’?

THANK YOU

________________

© Dennis Rodwell 2007

dennis@dennisrodwell.co.uk

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BIOGRAPHY Dennis Rodwell, MA, DipArch(Cantab), DipFrench(Open), RIBA, FRIAS, FSA Scot, FRSA, IHBC, StMRTPI Dennis Rodwell is based in south-east Scotland. Trained as an architect-planner, since 1975 he has worked in private practice in Edinburgh as principal of his own consultancy, as a developer and manager of historic property in the Scottish Borders, in local government as a conservation officer in a historic city and World Heritage Site in England and, since 1998, internationally as a cultural heritage consultant. The author of numerous articles and papers concerning heritage matters, including landmark comparative studies of architectural and urban conservation policy and practice in Western Europe, he has undertaken a number of assignments in Central and Eastern Europe on behalf of the UNESCO World Heritage Centre and Division of Cultural Heritage, the German Agency for Technical Cooperation (GTZ), the ARCH Foundation, and the British Council; and in the Horn of Africa on behalf of the World Bank. These assignments have been focused on the implementation of the World Heritage Convention and related Recommendation at National Level; the sustainable management of historic sites and cities within their socio-economic contexts; the importance of identification and continuity of intangible heritage values, traditions, and skills; and capacity building at all levels. BIBLIOGRAPHY Eritrea, Asmara, and Massawa-Asmara railway In date order of publication: Oriolo, Leonardo (ed.), Asmara Style, Scuola Italiana, Asmara (1998). Denison, Edward and Paice, Edward, The Bradt Travel Guide to Eritrea, Bradt Travel Guides, Chalfont St Peter, England (third edition, 2002). Denison, Edward et al., Asmara: Africa’s Secret Modernist City, Merrell, London and New York (2003); Gebremedhin, Naigzy et al, Asmara: A Guide to the Built Environment, Cultural Assets Rehabilitation Project, Asmara (2003); Municipality of Asmara and Cultural Assets Rehabilitation Project, Asmara City Map & Historic Perimeter, Asmara (2003). Selam, Daniel and Russom, Rezene, The Modern Built Heritage of the Eritrea Railways, National Museum of Eritrea in co-ordination with CARP, Asmara (March 2004). Rodwell, Dennis, Over-arching Urban Planning and Building Conservation Guidelines for the Historic Perimeter of Asmara, Eritrea (mission report), Cultural Assets Rehabilitation Project, Asmara (March 2004). Rodwell, Dennis, ‘Asmara: Conservation and Development in a Historic City’, in Journal of Architectural Conservation, Donhead Publishing, Donhead St Mary (November 2004). Miscellaneous In date order of publication: UNESCO, Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, UNESCO, Paris (1972). UNESCO, Recommendation Concerning the Protection at National Level, of the Cultural and Natural Heritage, UNESCO, Paris (1972).

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UNESCO, Recommendation Concerning the Safeguarding and Contemporary Role of Historic Areas, UNESCO, Nairobi (1976). World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future (known as the Brundtland Report), Oxford University Press, Oxford (1987). UNESCO, Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, UNESCO, Paris (2003).

Rodwell, Dennis, Conservation and Sustainability in Historic Cities, Blackwell Publishing, Oxford, (2007). Bortolotto, Chiara, ‘From the Monumental to the Living Heritage: A Shift in Perspective’, in: Carman, John and White, Roger (eds), World Heritage: Global Challenges and Local Solutions, British Archaeological Reports, International Series, Archaeopress, Oxford (forthcoming). Bortolotto, Chiara, 'From cultural objects to cultural processes: UNESCO’s intangible cultural heritage', in Journal of Museum Ethnography, Museum Ethnographers Group (forthcoming).