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Abstract
This article examines the discursive construction of visual imaginations of Italian East Africa through visual and textual materials associated with fascist colonial civil aviation from 1934 through 1940. Analysis of materials produced by Ala Littoria, the fascist regime's main airline, reveals discursive strands and themes that contributed to the deeply modern depiction of Ethiopia, Italian Somaliland, and Eritrea (the constituent colonies within Italian East Africa) as “natural” landscapes that could be accessed, consumed, and dominated through the air, and in particular through aviation technology and the institution of a colonial civil aviation network in East Africa. Aviation was as a hybrid technology that contributed to the discursive, and therefore material, imaginative construction of Italian East Africa through aviation's material and technological basis as well as its visual representation.
Este artículo examina la construcción discursiva de las imaginaciones visuales del África Oriental Italiana por medio de los materiales visuales y textos asociados con la aviación civil colonial fascista entre 1934 y 1940. El análisis de los materiales producidos por Ala Littoria, principal aerolínea del régimen fascista, revela la existencia de sartas de elementos discursivos y temas que contribuyeron a la representación profundamente moderna de Etiopía, la Somalilandia Italiana y Eritrea (las colonias constituidas dentro del África Oriental Italiana) como paisajes “naturales” a los que se podía acceder, utilizar y dominar por aire, y particularmente mediante tecnología aérea y la implantación de una red de aviación civil colonial en aquella parte de África. La aviación fue una tecnología híbrida que contribuyó a la construcción discursiva imaginativa, y por lo mismo material, del África Oriental Italiana a partir de la base material y tecnológica de la aviación, lo mismo que a su representación visual.
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Acknowledgments
This article was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers, Boston, on 16 April 2008. I am grateful to members of the Indigenous Peoples Specialty Group for constructive feedback on the article, to Audrey Kobayashi for her editorial support, and to two anonymous reviewers for their comments. I would like to thank Pete Adey, Sami Moisio, James Kneale, Mariko Yabe, and Gordon Pirie for comments on an earlier draft of this article. I am also grateful to the director and staff at the Central State Archive, Rome; Massimo Mondini, Director of the Historical Museum of the Italian Air Force, Vigna di Valle; Miles Irving and James Quinn for their cartographic work; and Rachele Riva at Monza and Brianza Ethnological Museum, who first presented me with an Ala Littoria colonial route map. All translations from the Italian are mine, as are any resulting errors. This research was generously supported by a British Academy Small Research Grant (SG-41919).
Notes
1. The Central State Archive, or Archivio Centrale di Stato (ACS). Some historical documents used for this study were formerly located in the Historical Museum of the Italian Air Force (Museo Storico dell’Aeronautica Militare Italiana) in Vigna di Valle but were transferred to the ACS. They are cited here using their current archival position in the ACS.
2. Mussolini's government archive, the Segreteria Particolare del Duce, Carteggio Ordinario 1922–1943, henceforth SPDCO.
3. A review of this field of enquiry falls outside the scope of the analysis presented here, although I remain conscious of the need for a hybrid awareness and reflexivity as implied in postcolonial studies of hybridity.
4. Hallion's (2003) analysis, however, is not restricted to the modern period but charts the representation of flight in premodern eras as well as within modernity.
5. For a recent summary of the debate around materalities, see B. Anderson and Wylie (2009).
6. This point is not limited to discourse. B. Anderson and Wylie (2009, 320) included what they termed “figurative or affective effects” within the scope of produced, nonbounded materialities.
7. This is the total weight of passengers and cargo an aircraft can carry.
8. Troops had violated the Ethiopian border the previous day, establishing themselves in and around Aussa (Del Boca 2004).
9. For the international reaction to the invasion, see Del Boca (2004, 422–28). For a brief discussion of British historians critical of colonialism see Bayly (1999, 59).
10. The actual number of troops on both sides at the battle is contested. Italian troop number estimates range from 14,500 to 17,000 (Lewis 1987), and Ethiopian force estimates range from 80,000 to 150,000 (Pankhurst 1968).
11. The use of bacteriological weapons was also considered but was rejected in early January 1936 on the grounds of difficulty of use, low efficacy of chemical weapons that had been employed to date, and possible repercussions in the international arena as well as with local civilian populations (Del Boca 2004). These concerns did not apply to the use of chemical agents.
12. Some of the Great Powers’ public condemnation was clearly rhetorical and did not reflect tacit support or, in the case of Great Britain, tolerance of Italian demands in Ethiopia. See Sbacchi (1985, 7–34) for a more detailed analysis of diplomatic negotiations in 1930 to 1935 that showed that “the European powers had little desire to take up arms to protect Ethiopia, and limited diplomaic determination to defend the independence of the last free African nation” (34).
13. Mussolini is reported to have “suggested” this particular name.
14. Klinger was elected director of SAM in 1930.
15. The exact dates of Bruno Mussolini's executive position at Ala Littoria are not known. Mussolini was, however, a young manager, as seen by the fact that when he perished in an air crash on 7 August 1941, he was twenty-three. At the age of seventeen he had been Italy's youngest military pilot and flew sorties in the Second Italo-Ethiopian War (Ala Littoria 1941; “Bruno's Last Flight” 1941).
16. City names used in this article are of current usage in the countries involved. Khartoum, Sudan, is referred to as Al Khurtum; Massawa, in Eritrea, is Mitsiwa; and Mogadishu, Somalia, is Moqdisho.
17. Based on 1938 data (1 January–25 October). In Italy, 1,076 accidents resulted in 141 fatalities and 210 hull losses; during the same period in Italian East Africa, 70 accidents resulted in 30 fatalities and 13 hull losses (Accident Statistics Report, October 1938).
18. There is also evidence that some Ala Littoria pilots were drawn from the air force and that some military pilots spent time in secondment to the airline in Italian East Africa. This was the case, for example, of Sergeant Niccolo Vatta of Vicenza, who missed a medal award ceremony for military valor because he was flying for Ala Littoria in Italian East Africa at the time (Pricolo to Ministry of Aeronautics 9 April 1938).
19. Based on a U.S. dollar–Italian lire exchange rate of 19.009 in 1937, which gives a 1937 U.S. dollar equivalent of $13,283. In turn, this is equivalent to $191,791 in 2007 using historical exchange rates based on the Consumer Price Index.
20. The Istituto Geografico Militare finally assigned two staff with geodetic survey experience to this task in 1938, pending the availability of instruments (Valle to war ministry 24 November 1937).
21. This letter was sent fom Addis Ababa to the ministry's central office for telecommunications and flight assistance.
22. The dates of production of these maps are, in all likelihood, 1937–1938. This assumption is based on the date ranges of the archival material found in the same folders in which these two undated documents were placed.
23. The poster's author is given as L. Bonacini. I have been unable to determine with absolute certainty which artist this refers to. Referring to material in the Barilla Historical Archive, it is most likely that the artist is Luciano Bonacini, who worked on calendar illustrations and other promotional materials from the 1910s until World War II and later became an established artist and photographer (Barilla Historical Archive 2008).
24. As of 10 June 1940, thirty-eight Ala Littoria aircraft were assigned to military duties. In personnel terms, thirty-three Ala Littoria captains, thirty-three first officers, twenty-two radio operators, and twenty engine mechanics had been militarized by then (Castellanin.d.).
25. Although discourses around civil aviation and associated technologies were distinct in content from the discourses described by Stefani (2007), who focused on other aspects of colonial representation, such as textual accounts.
26. As Gilroy (2000, 2002) has argued, these racializations are not only colonial and historical but closely linked to fascism itself.
27. I use “European” instead of “Italian” here because the measures discussed were also applied to flights on which foreign officials were present.
28. The specific dates are 10 and 14 July 1937 (Pellegrini to Ministry of Aeronautics 27 July 1937).
29. It is unclear whether the three attendants not wearing hats are men or women. Closer analysis of dress styles and representations of Ethiopian women by Italian visual sources in the 1930s has not yielded a definitive answer, although hairstyle seems to suggest that the individuals are female.
30. The taking of the obelisk, its subsequent journey, and the contested meanings around the monument, leading to its return to Ethiopia in 2005, is a separate story that cannot be adequately covered here.