1

An Italian officer in colonial Eritrea: administration, ethnography and gender

in the scripts of Alberto Pollera

Barbara Sorgoni

in H. Tilley, R. J. Gordon (eds), 2007, Ordering Africa. Anthropology, European

imperialism and the politics of knowledge, Manchester University Press, Manchester, pp.
330-374.
DO NOT CIRCULATE WITHOUT AUTHOR’S CONSENT

Officially Italian colonialism lasted some fifty years, from 1890 to 1941. It comprised
first Eritrea, then Libya and Somalia, and from 1935, Ethiopia. In 1936 Eritrea, Somalia and
Ethiopia were united to form the so-called Empire of Italian Oriental Africa (AOI).1 Italian
academic anthropology of this era was largely of the ‘bones, bodies and behavior’ variety
(Stocking 1988) concerned with assembling bones and bodies from faraway places and use
them to classify human races. The basic assumption was that a study of bodily artefacts
allowed on to make inferences about the behaviour and the psychological features of the
various races and their level of civilisation.2 Until the 1940s, like early British efforts,
academic anthropology in Italy showed what Stauder sums up as a ‘historical and often
speculative approach, that was primarily concerned with reconstructing the past of mankind’
(Stauder 1993: 410). Given this concern with bones and its largely ‘armchair’ mode, it has
been argued that no academic social anthropology existed in Italy until the end of the second
world war (Lanternari 1974), and the study of the links between the discipline and
colonialism was considered irrelevant in the Italian case (Grottanelli 1977). The above
assumptions implicitly suggest that academic anthropologists were not concerned with
colonial issues and that no other form of ethnographic production (e.g. missionary or
administrative ethnography) existed or is worth studying.
In relation to academic anthropology, I have elsewhere explored how some
prominent professional anthropologists, even though not travelling to the colonies in
person, were actually concerned with issues raised by the colonial process and the racial
classification of the new subjects, and wrote extensively on this topic. In addition, a few of
 2

them did travel to the colonies to do first-hand research (Sorgoni 1998). This chapter
focuses on non-academic ethnographies produced during Italian colonial rule. It challenges
the assumption that pre-professional ethnographies are irrelevant in the Italian case, and
shows that a consistent corpus of ethnographic documentation was indeed produced by
travellers, missionaries and colonial officers from the very outset of Italian colonial expansion.
Ethnographic studies of the peoples inhabiting the colonial territory were carried out mostly
as a means of ‘better’ policing the new subjects, thus pointing to existing links between
colonialism and anthropology, which still need to be thoroughly acknowledged and explored.
So far, only few studies have partially analysed the latter issue (Dore 1980, 1982; Solinas
1988; Sorgoni 1998; Surdich 1979, 1982).
Scholars have dealt extensively with this issue in relation to other colonial settings.
Pels and Salemink (1994: 4) argue that Malinowski’s introduction to Argonauts of the
Western Pacific should be read as an attempt to claim professional anthropologists’
exclusive authority in representing non-western people, ‘through a tactical denigration of
both missionary and administrative ethnographies’. As scientific discourses gained
authority and legitimacy defining their boundaries through processes of inclusion and
exclusion (Foucault 1971), anthropology built its own origin myth by expelling from its
realm those ‘practical men’ who did not fit into the new disciplinary paradigm (Stocking
1983; Clifford 1988). Clearly distinguishing professional anthropologists from their non-
professional predecessors, much disciplinary history has systematically neglected the pre-
professional fieldwork phase, thereby obscuring both the links between anthropology and
colonial practice, and the continuity between different ethnographic genres (Pratt 1985).
Dirks also argues that the concept of culture needed the colonial theatre to be invented, and
suggests to focus on the prehistory of fieldwork and the genealogical critique of colonial
questions (Dirks 1992 and 2001 respectively). Pels and Salemink thus call for an ‘essential
move in the study of the history of anthropology … the dialectical one of accounting for the
extra-academic and extra-disciplinary influences on the constitution of the discipline’
(1994: 3), stressing the importance of the préterrain, the ‘local colonial milieu’ in which
ethnographers’ work was located and where professional anthropologists encountered local
ethnographic strategies and traditions. They also show how ethnographic holism - the use
of synecdoche whereby a part of the society stands for the whole - was itself fostered ‘by
the practical demand of colonial situation’, and how ‘administrative ethnography could
create fertile ground for the relativist and functionalist theories of academic discourse’
(1994: 11 and 14). This allows them to uncover a homology of colonial and academic
 3

discursive patterns, and to argue that theoretical innovations of academic anthropology

(such as ethnographic holism, relativism and functionalism) are products of colonial
practice, which can be found in an embryonic state in preceding local ethnographic
traditions.
The production by administrative ethnographers of static, homogeneous and
separate ethnic identities is an issue, which has also been explored in French colonial
Africa where Amselle shows how ethnic identities were fashioned as discontinuous entities
by both ethnographers and colonial administrators. Far from being mutually exclusive,
these two concepts often overlapped. Amselle roots ‘ethnographic reason’ - a classifying,
separating and ordering operation - within the colonial practice of administrators cum
ethnographers, and sees ethnographic comparative stances as stemming from the colonial
milieu (Amselle 1990, Amselle, Sibeud 1998).
Within the Italian colonial context, the anthropological division of labour consisted
of field collection of ‘manners and customs’ mostly by colonial officers ad officials who
had no specific training and relied almost exclusively upon administration questionnaires
which tended to focus on issues like land rights, crime and punishment. Indeed, throughout
most of the Italian colonial era, colonial officers never received any specific training about
the different life, climate, languages, rights or customs they would encounter in the
colonies. In a few cases, once in the colonies they were explicitly asked to gather data on
behalf of professional anthropologists, who would remain at home. While the latter often
expressed their gratitude towards these non-professional ethnographers for their collecting
efforts (e.g. Loria 1912, Corso 1916), at the same time, they had no doubt that they alone
were entitled to transform what they viewed as raw data, into sound interpretations. This
hierarchical division of labour was manifested by academics referring to the men in the
field as ‘science’s labour force’ (Società di Studi Geografici e Coloniali 1907: 15). It also
points to a peculiarity in the Italian case. Unlike other colonial contexts, until the end of the
second world war, Italian professional anthropologists usually derived their data not from
field work, but largely from such texts. Furthermore, during the 1920s and 1930s - when
British and French social anthropology were being professionalised - Italian anthropology
still consisted largely of physical anthropology and the advent of the Fascist regime further
reinforced this trend, as it was mostly interested in the classification, and separation, of
different ‘biological’ races. One consequence was that Italian cultural anthropology, its
clear distinction from physical anthropology and the related professionalisation of
fieldwork practice, only evolved in the late 1940s and, given the loss of its colonial empire,
 4

concentrated mainly on internal folklore studies.3

This chapter analyses early Italian colonial experience and its ethnographic
production by focusing on Alberto Pollera, an Italian colonial officer who became a self-
made ethnographer, living almost his entire adult life in Eritrea and Ethiopia. The focus is
on some of his early ethnographic works produced between 1902 and 1922 concerning
aspects of the so-called customary laws: local justice in the western lowlands and the
highlands of Eritrea, domestic and private customs, and the way Pollera defined ‘tradition’
while acting as colonial civil judge. His ethnographic knowledge evolved over time and such
changes reciprocally influenced his administrative practice. These two aspects - ethnographic
experience and administrative practice - can be related to aspects of his private life. Pollera’s
complex personality and the strategies he used to describe, police or experience the colonial
subjects differed according to the various social contexts in which he acted.

Ethnography and administration

Alberto Pollera was born in December 1873 in Lucca (Tuscany) to an upper-class

family. After finishing high school at the Military Academy of Modena in 1893, he
volunteered for military service in the newly founded colony named Eritrea, where he
arrived in 1894, and spent the rest of his life there interrupted only by four short ‘home’
leaves. In this regard, his experience is exceptional in that very few Italians actually settled
in the colony until the 1930s.4 He participated in various military actions until 1903, when
he joined the civil colonial administration and was appointed first residente
(commissioner)5 of the Gash Setit area, in the south-western lowlands. Pollera lived in
Barentu for six years, with his partner Unesc Araia Capte - a young woman from Axum,
Ethiopia, whom he had met during his military service in northern Eritrea - and their two
sons. In 1909 he was appointed commissioner of the Seraye region in the Eritrean
highlands, and rented a house in Asmara for Unesc and their sons, so that the children
could attend the catholic missionary school. When in 1912 their last son, Giorgio, was born
in Asmara, Pollera - who was still living in Adi Ugri, Seraye - had already met Chidan
Menelik, a young Tigrinya-speaking Eritrean woman from that district, who was to be his
partner for the rest of his life. When he met Chidan, Pollera terminated his relationship
with Unesc, but continued to provide for her subsistence for the rest of his life. He
legitimised and provided for the subsistence and education of the three children born from
Unesc and the three children born later to Chidan.6 This behaviour was quite unusual as the
 5

vast majority of Italians who had children with local women did not legitimise them, nor
provide support and usually abandoned both women and children once they returned to
Italy (Barrera 1996; Sorgoni 1998). For instance, in 1931 there were about 2,400 Italian
men living in Eritrea, and about 1,000 Italo-Eritrean children, half of whom had been
abandoned by the father (Barrera 2002a).
Pollera left Seraye in 1917, when he was appointed ‘Royal Commercial Agent’ in
Ethiopia and lived in Dessie and Adwa until 1928 with Chidan and their two younger
children. Reacting against a new law, which obliged him to retire in advance,7 he took part
in a controversial exploration of the Eritrean desert along the southern coast, before being
recalled the following year and appointed Italian consul to Gonder (Ethiopia) until 1932.
On the eve of the Italian conquest of Ethiopia, he returned to Asmara where he was to
remain until his death in 1939 responsible for the Government library and serving as
private counsellor to Giuseppe Daodiace, governor of Eritrea from 1937 to 1940. A few
days before his death, he married Chidan Menelik, as a protest against the recent Royal
Decree (R.D.L. 17.11.1938-XVII, no. 1728) which prohibited marriage between the ‘Italian
race’ and any other ‘race’.8
Pollera wrote one of his first ethnographic notes in 1903, shortly after he was
appointed residente in the Gash Setit area, in response to a circular from the first civil
governor Ferdinando Martini, requesting information about the most common crimes found
in each region and the type of customary penalties traditionally adopted. This information
was required because of the impending promulgation of the colonial civil and penal codes,
which would establish which customary norms were to be preserved or suppressed by the
colonial power. Thus, as Pels and Salemink wrote, ‘ethnography, embedded in an
administrative practice, was a legalist act’ and the ‘synecdoche that was most probably
dominant in understanding social wholes in the political field was what Europeans
perceived as “customary law”’ (1994: 11-12). Pollera replied with a long note, listing
crimes and penalties and suggesting appropriate political action. In his view, two issues
required earnest intervention on the part of the colonial power: denounce and arrest. At that
time, he explained, the Kunama did not denounce or arrest someone charged with a crime
because of ‘the strong solidarity existing among members of the same community’9 and he
urged firm reaction, either by punishing the whole village or by setting a price on the
offender’s head.
By comparing this early note on penal justice to those chapters of his first
ethnographic monograph, I Baria e i Cunama (1913a), devoted to the same issue, it is
 6

possible to obtain a first glimpse at how Pollera developed his ethnographic skills and how
his growing familiarity with the local context was reflected in his administrative practice.
As Pels argued concerning Tanganyika, British administrators often had high professional
standards which was later denied by academics during the drive to professionalise
anthropology. This opens up new questions such as ‘what are the social differences
expressed in the discourse of academics as compared to “practical” ethnographers’.10 In
this regard the Italian case was clearly distinct from the British as Italian academics
remained largely interested in physical anthropology and only marginally in social issues.
An example of this is the use Nello Puccioni, a prominent anthropologist, made of
Pollera’s monograph I Baria e i Cunama. While the monograph is entirely devoted to
historical and social aspects, Puccioni (1915) only focused on the short Appendix which
consisted of Kunama physical measurements. Indeed, for some years, Italian academics
simply ignored the ethnological data and interpretations put forward by Pollera; yet, they
extensively discussed the few anthropometric data he collected (Calciati and Bracciani
1927). It was only in 1937 that Puccioni wrote a monograph on Somali social customs; on
that occasion he presented his work as ‘the brother’ of Pollera’s books (Puccioni 1937:
viii). Pollera developed his skills mostly through prolonged contact with the Kunama. The
first colonial conference held in Asmara in 1905, attended by prominent academic
anthropologists might have given him some clues about what type of questions he could
pose to his informants concerning their social customs. Yet, academic interest remained
largely concentrated on physical aspects, which in their opinion could help understand the
origin of the new African subjects and the history of the peopling of Africa.
In I Baria e i Cunama, Pollera wrote that after many years spent among the Kunama
he was finally persuaded that a straight adoption of Italian justice and penal sanctions could
not fit with radically different customs. He further argued that the use of firm and severe
methods would not take into consideration that ‘any custom, however barbarian it may be,
is always rooted in the historical necessity of a specific context’.11 It is in relation to this
proto-functionalism that Pollera adopted a different administrative strategy, not resorting to
those penalties he had previously suggested including imprisonment. He motivated his
argument by pointing out that jail was to be avoided because the institution did not exist
among the Kunama, and they would suffer severely from incarceration. As a more general
principle he believed prison corrupted individuals, while justice was supposed to
rehabilitate those who had ‘made a mistake’ (Pollera 1913a: 19). On the other hand, his
new strategy was rooted in his proto-functionalism. Various ‘crimes’ - including the ritual
 7

killing of an enemy by young Kunama men before getting married - while a practice Italian
colonial justice could not tolerate, were in his opinion a functional strategy adopted by the
group to survive and protect itself against protracted and continuous external assaults from
neighbouring groups. In his view, rather then resorting to severe punishments, Italian
colonialism should concentrate on a long-term policy based on pacifying the area and thus
eliminating the very function of those killings he saw as a necessary ‘survival strategy’.
At the same time he engaged in a new tactic, replacing punishment with ‘persuasion’.
In relation to ritual killing, Pollera found that those hard punishments he had adopted in the
first years had proved useless: the custom was still alive; the only difference being that it
was performed secretly. In his view, this proved that ‘tradition’ could not be suppressed
with a violent intervention from outside, but rather needed to be transformed from the
inside. Marta Pollera recalled:

Mio padre ha cercato di fargli capire che [l’omicidio rituale] non era una cosa giusta,
mentre altre usanze le ha lasciate. ... Ecco un esempio che lui faceva, diceva: ‘se
venisse uno e ti uccidesse, ti piacerebbe? Non ti andrebbe per niente, allora perché lo
devi fare ad un altro?’ ... E’ questo il ragionamento che cercava di fare con loro.
Cercava di ragionare con la loro mentalità facendogli capire dove sbagliavano.12

(My father tried to show them that this [ritual killing] was not right, while other
customs could be preserved. ... This is a example of how he behaved, he told them:
‘if someone comes to you and tries to kill you, would you like that? You would not,
so why should you do this to other persons?’ ... This is the type of argument he used
with them. He tried to reason assuming their own mentality, and showing them where
they were wrong.)

This persuasive strategy recalled by his daughter is confirmed by an event which

Alberto Pollera regarded as highly important. In March 1909 he organised a solemn oath
for various Kunama chiefs, which was staged under his direction at the sacred stone of
Betcom, in accordance with what he perceived to be the traditional mode, and legitimised
by the personal presence of the colonial governor. Pollera prepared a speech in Kunama
language and tried to replicate the traditional oath: the chiefs were to swear in the name of
local divinities Anna, Adum and Aua and the penalty foreseen in case the pact was broken
was the same traditionally used against perjurers (Pollera 1913a: 253-4). He thus tried to
 8

appropriate and manipulate a local institution - the oath - and the local expressive modes in
which it was performed, and to use them to modify local customs to fit with the colonial
administrative needs. His strategy, and the way used to explain it to his daughter, suggests
a highly paternalistic attitude, which condemned the use of colonial violence. He strongly
believed in, and supported, the so-called civilising mission of colonial conquest, which in
his practice amounted to a ‘teaching’ attitude and the parallel perception and representation
of the colonial subjects as lesser beings that needed the white man to evolve. Nevertheless
by conflating violence with the use of physical force, he did not see that violence and
racism were embedded in the very concept of ‘civilising mission’, as well as in every
colonial encounter.
Not only the prolonged field experience did change the way Pollera administered
justice but it also changed his way of ethnographic understanding. In 1902 Pollera wrote
his first ethnographic script, consisting of some notes on the Kunama. While he later made
an effort to learn the local language, in this particular case he resorted to interpreters for the
collection of data. The notes were probably a response to the continuous encouragement of
the first civil governor, Martini, for colonial officers to write extensively about the people
under their jurisdiction (Martini 1913). Pollera sent his 1902 notes with a covering
memorandum in which he specified the research method he had adopted. He had
interviewed local chiefs on ‘intimate’ and domestic issues in order to have access to their
‘manners, customs and traditions’. He also stated that he had documented only those
customs which were validated by more than one informant and which he had witnessed
with his own eyes.13
This methodological explanation is particularly interesting. Two years later, the
geographer and geologist Olinto Marinelli (1905) highlighted the need to compile special
instructions specifically tailored to enable colonial officers and officials to carry out
scientifically valid research. This led to the publication, in 1907, of the Istruzioni per lo
studio della Colonia Eritrea (Instruction for the study of the Eritrean colony, the first
Italian equivalent of the British 1874 Notes and Queries), which stemmed from the
colonial congress held in Asmara in 1905 and attended by Italian professional
anthropologists.14 The Istruzioni, written by the most prominent Italian academics of the
time, suggested that officers collect only that information shared by various informants and
directly verified by the researcher. While it is true that this was the first time professional
anthropologists recommended such a specific research methodology in Italy (Puccini 1998:
150), it is also interesting to note that Pollera (a colonial officer with no professional
 9

anthropological education) had expressed and applied the same method five years before
the publication of the Istruzioni.
The 1902 notes presented a structure similar to that adopted in the 1913 final
monograph: both comprised chapters devoted to the ethnic origin and history of the local
population, its language, religion, political structure, domestic and family life, economic
structure. As concluding remarks, both offered policy guidelines which called for the
valorisation of local customs, that, in his opinion, cannot be eradicated but rather need to
be slowly modified or even preserved, given their function within the local context. What
differs between the two scripts is not only the fact that the later one is more detailed, but
that customs or institutions which in the early notes were merely presented as exotic traits
of ‘a people so far behind us in the civilisation ladder’,15 were viewed in the monograph in
historical terms. This stemmed largely from Pollera’s increased familiarity with the
Kunama after six years of residence, and partly from his participation to the 1905 colonial
conference, where he had his first contact with professional anthropologists. A clear
example of his interpretative shift can be found in his analysis of the Kunama language. In
the early notes, the linguistic structure was described as ‘very simple’ - an error derived
from the fact that Pollera never understood it was a tone language - and this was in turn
taken as a demonstration of Kunama’s primitive and childish psychology, which by nature
was unable to evolve. In contrast, the later monograph tried to offer an explanation rather
than simply judge, thus shifting the emphasis from biology to history. The history of the
Kunama was tragic, a list of continuous assaults from neighbouring groups during which
villages were destroyed and the population killed or enslaved. In Pollera’s opinion, it was
this wretched story which could explain their assumed backwardness: rather than being
biologically unable to evolve, Kunama had so far had no historical chance to do so (Pollera
1913a: 245).
Quite clearly, Pollera was justifying the Italian colonial conquest on the grounds
that it would enforce those peaceful conditions under which Kunama could evolve, thus
contributing to the reiteration of the pax colonica myth. At the same time, he never
questioned their supposed primitiveness, and his text - for decades the only ethnography
entirely devoted to that group - contributed to a stereotyped image of the Kunama as the
most primitive group of the colony.16 While the paradigm he used was obviously
evolutionary, his attempt to read local customs against a historical background allowed him
to shift from a mere description and statement of otherness and incommensurability to a
tentative interpretation of difference. In his view, Italian citizens in the mainland held
 10

‘imagined dreams of ... a fantastic environment’ about the colony, which went so far as to
postulate the existence of cannibalism in that area. His ethnographic effort - as he repeated
in the preface of each publication - was to replace those fantastic dreams with knowledge
and understanding; because ‘this will allow us to better comprehend specific customs ...
and to partially justify barbarianism’.17 To understand, he opined, meant attributing
function to those customs which would otherwise superficially appear as ‘savage’ and
irrational. In this sense his proto-functionalism is strictly related to proto-relativism, since
different contexts justify different (even apparently barbaric) customs.
Pollera juxtaposed visions of ‘barbarianism’ with an embryonic form of relativism in
other texts as well. In one case he suggested that, in given situations, local knowledge
might prove more effective than that imposed or suggested by the ‘superior’ colonisers. He
did this in a 1905 article on Kunama beekeeping, in which he suggested that their practices
were not as ‘irrational’ as they first appeared, by citing an example drawn from his direct
experience. Kunama, he explained, used to push away bees from their hives with torches,
absent-mindedly dropping sparks that set their fields on fire:

Un giorno, a vari anziani riuniti mi sforzavo di far comprendere i danni di tanta

trascuratezza, e dal posto ove mi trovavo mostravo le grosse mandre che pascolavano
in una distesa d’erba vicina; vero emblema di pace e di ricchezza; e più lontano
additavo loro le colline nere, arse dal fuoco, che avevano un aspetto triste di
desolazione e fame. Io speravo che questa impressione che io provavo fosse
perfettamente condivisa dai miei uditori, quando mi sentii dire da un vecchio: ‘da
quella terra bruciata quest’anno non nasceranno cavallette’. Allora tacqui pensando
quale dei due mali non fosse il maggiore. (Pollera 1905: 559)

(One day I tried very hard to persuade the gathered elders about the damages that
their carelessness caused, and from my position I pointed to the herds grazing in the
green fields nearby, a true vision of peace and prosperity; then I pointed to faraway
hills, black and burnt, which sadly signalled desolation and hunger. I hoped my
feelings could be perfectly shared by my audience, when an old man said to me:
‘from that burnt earth, no locusts will come this year’. So I shut up, pondering which
of the two disgraces was worse.)

Gender and the definition of tradition

 11

During the nineteenth and early twentieth century, legal features, in the form of
customary norms, were a core issue in both administrative practice and colonial
ethnography; they were also a central theme in Pollera’s colonial practice and scripts.
While stationed at Adi Ugri, the 1908 Ordinamento della giustizia nella colonia Eritrea
(Judicial system of the Eritrean colony) was promulgated, which established four
jurisdiction levels. In civil suits where no Italian citizens were involved, the local
population was first to resort to their village chief; if no agreement was reached, they
turned to the district chief and, if again no solution was found, to the Italian commissioner
who could ultimately ask the governor to take a final decision. As commissioner of the
Seraye region, Pollera was therefore also acting as civil judge. The Ordinamento also
required that colonial officers submit an annual report to the administration on civil
sentences, so that local customs could be documented and used by future officers for
enhanced administration. The plan was unsuccessful because, apparently, most officers
neglected to provide the central administration with such reports despite repeated requests
in 1917 and 1926 by the Colonial Office.18
Given this lacuna, Pollera felt the need to write a detailed report on Seraye customs.
In a covering letter to governor Salvago Raggi he explained:

Ciò che è esposto in queste pagine non è cosa nuova: la tradizione della legge e della
procedura si formò nei secoli. Le madri la tramandarono insieme col latte ai poppanti,
le generazioni la completarono e la perfezionarono. Tutti i nostri soggetti d’Abissinia
sono dotti in materia. Ma noi dominatori, istruiti e civili, ignoriamo queste leggi che
mai furono scritte, che raramente furono esposte frammentariamente da esploratori e
da viaggiatori e che nessuno, che io sappia, si curò di coordinare e di esporre in modo
chiaro e completo. Eppure amministrando la giustizia dovremmo applicarle. Ecco
perché mi è sembrato utile riunire qualche notizia al riguardo.19

(What I describe in these pages is not new: local legal and procedural traditions were
shaped through centuries. Mothers transmitted them to their babies through
breastfeeding; the following generations completed and refined them. Each of our
Abyssinian subject is skilled on the issue. But we, the civilised and educated masters,
ignore these laws, which were never written down, were rarely and only partially
documented by explorers and travellers, and which nobody, to my knowledge, cared
 12

to co-ordinate and report in a clear and complete way. Yet, since we are supposed to
administer justice, we should apply them. This is why I thought it useful to gather
information on this subject.)

In 1905 the anthropologist Lamberto Loria had already lamented this lack of
knowledge in his speech given at the Asmara colonial conference. In the ensuing
discussion Loria had argued that the concept of race superiority, if wrongly applied, always
led to abuses and called for a deeper knowledge of local customs, since ‘ideas about
propriety and honesty, concepts about good and evil change among different
populations’.20 Pollera participated in the conference, indeed his article on Kunama
beekeeping was circulated among the conferees. His monograph, I Baria e i Cunama,
showed that he had been partly influenced by the methodological suggestions made at the
conference by the professional anthropologists. But he also showed some independence
derived from his own experience and interests. For example, the Istruzioni prepared by the
professional anthropologists suggested that physical features of the people studied be the
first priority (and the first chapter) of any ethnography, with social customs following,
almost as if derived from the first. Pollera inverted the structure suggested and - as recalled
above - in his monograph he relegated physical data to a final, short appendix. Culture, or
customs, were derived in his view pre-eminently from history and context rather than
biology. When, shortly after, he turned his interest to the Abyssinians, he concentrated
entirely on social aspects and totally neglected anthropometry.
In 1913 the Colonial Office published Pollera’s report on Abyssinian justice in the
colonial monographic series. L'Ordinamento della giustizia e la procedura indigena in
Etiopia e in Eritrea (Indigenous justice and procedure system in Ethiopia and Eritrea)
focused on the Seraye Tigrinya-speaking people of the highlands where Pollera had lived
for ten years. He justified his effort: ‘nei paesi abissini, da noi occupati, abbiamo una
organizzazione giudiziaria indigena sostanzialmente buona, che deve essere da noi
accettata e conservata [poiché] non vi è motivo per sostituire la legge nostra alla loro’
(Pollera 1913b: 83-84) (in the Abyssinian countries we occupy, the indigenous judicial
organisation is fundamentally good, and we must accept and preserve it [since] there is no
reason to replace it with our own law). He had no doubt that the spirit of Italian law was
naturally superior, but considered indigenous procedure able to guarantee respect of local
customs. He thus described various local legal institutions, as well as penalties. The
colonial government had modified the latter, he reported, when they applied too harsh
 13

corporal punishments, and substituted it with imprisonment despite the fact that prisons did
not exist in the area.
Pollera also stressed the need to replace common sense with what he termed ‘real
knowledge’ of local customs, which could be located by interviewing and listening to the
natives. Dialogue with the natives, he suggested, should replace superficial stereotypes and
common sense. Explicitly addressing his colleagues, he reminded them that Abyssinians
were ‘by nature willing to speak ... therefore it is necessary to patiently listen to them’ in
order to avoid partiality and arbitrariness.21 His own method as recalled by his elder son,
Giovanni, was to move restlessly about the region verifying each dispute on the spot: ‘his
office was often a tent or, following local manners, under the shade of a huge sycamore’.22
Pollera’s text on legal aspects was published in the same year as I Baria e i Cunama,
but the two scripts differ significantly in relation to literary and rhetoric strategies. The
latter monograph which was actually completed in 1909 focused on two groups who were
poorly known to colonial officers. In contrast to travellers like Bruce, Munzinger or the
scholar Conti Rossini, who had only briefly visited the region, Pollera actually remained in
the area for six years and this gave his book unquestionable authority. Influenced by
evolutionary beliefs, he assumed that, being ‘matriarchal’ (i.e. matrilineal) and ‘egalitarian’
(i.e. segmentary) societies, and darker in colour than the ‘superior’ Hamites and Semites
(i.e. the Abyssinians), Kunama were necessarily inferior. But he was also influenced by a
local belief, failing to question the stereotyped image conveyed by Abyssinians and Habab
- who regarded Kunama as potential slaves - thus enjoying what Legesse (1973: 276) later
termed ‘vicarious ethnocentrism’. It was this perception of inferiority, which accounts for
his literary strategy. Viewing Kunama as a separate but internally homogeneous entity, a
well-defined tribe different and separated from all other groups because of its uniqueness
and primitiveness, he believed he could describe each aspect of their society in a single
book. Their social structure appeared so simple that a single monograph was deemed
sufficient to summarise the main aspects of the whole society. By contrast, ‘Abyssinians’
were perceived and represented by common sense, in administrative practice and scientific
literature as more complex and more advanced societies. Anthropological classification
placed them among the ‘superior barbarians’, half way between primitives and civilised
groups (Mochi 1900: 92). Consistent with this perception, Pollera did not produce one
single book to describe them, opting instead for a series of ethnographic scripts, each
dealing with a specific aspect of their social structure. In this sense, in relation to the people
of the highlands, he adopted a holistic view in which a single social aspect was treated as
 14

synecdoche, as a part, which stood for the whole. This change in his rhetoric strategy points
to the problematic relationship and mutual influences between ‘practical men’ and
academics. It is difficult to assess if any specific ‘scientific’ literature shaped his new
strategy; his library was rather heterogeneous, comprising mostly travel accounts or diaries,
historical books, chronicles and ancient manuscripts in a variety of languages, as well as
unpublished governmental reports. But he does appear to have been particularly influenced
by Carlo Conti Rossini, one of the few accredited scholars who spent some years in the
colony. In many ways, Pollera’s case might be compared to that of Maurice Delafosse, a
more famous administrator cum ethnographer (Amselle, Sibeud 1998); yet, differently from
the latter, he never belonged to learned societies. It is true that, at death, he was lauded as
‘one of the most important Italian Africanists’ who ‘left no issue unexplored in relation to
juridical, historical, social and religious aspects of Eritrean and Ethiopian populations’
(respectively: La Nazione, 8 August 1939: 2; Rivista delle colonie, October 1939: 1417).
But because of the hierarchical division of labour within the discipline, discussed above,
his work was rarely recognised by academics.
In relation to other colonial contexts, it has been argued that different literary
strategies were called for depending on varying perceptions of local societies, which in turn
were derived from operations of racial classification and ordering. These varied literary
strategies also reflected different administrative practices. Amselle (1990) has pointed out
that ethnic invention was the outcome of the joint efforts of ethnographers and colonial
administrators, and that the two roles were often embodied by the same person. Indeed,
Pollera contributed with his ethnographic and administrative practice, to the strengthening
of different ethnic identities for the people of the western lowlands and those of the
highlands. Confronted with what were perceived and represented as radically different
groups, the colonial government adopted different administrative policies, which, in turn,
contributed to the essentialisation of ethnic differences. For example, for the ‘egalitarian’
Kunama the government imposed a chieftainship, while in ‘feudal’ Abyssinian society, it
sought to abolish the threatening authority and power of district chiefs by strictly
controlling their actions.

Pollera’s last work on Seraye is the book La Donna in Etiopia (The woman in
Ethiopia), published in 1922. At that time no professional Italian anthropologist had
extensively addressed a similar topic, and when they did, they referred to the ‘Female Sex’
in its totality or ‘essence’, with no specification of time or space (Puccini 1980). Pollera
 15

was aware of the peculiarity of his selected topic, since he felt the need to repeatedly justify
his choice in a letter to the governor:

Fin dai primi anni della mia non breve vita coloniale mi è capitato spesse volte di
sentir ripetere, fra il chiacchiericcio degli indigeni le parole restì, sabaitì, carcì (la
terra, la donna, il denaro); quasi direi anzi che nessuna discussione intesi mai nella
quale non entrasse almeno uno di questi elementi. E quando più tardi, chiamato ad
esercitare le funzioni di giudice per gli indigeni, ebbi campo di esaminare le
controversie, trovai ancora con sorpresa che quasi sempre terra, donna e denaro erano
la causa prima o l'oggetto diretto o indiretto della contestazione.23

(From the very beginning of my not short colonial life, I often happened to hear in the
natives’ chats, the words resti, sabaiti, carci (land, woman, money); I would even say
that I heard no discussion which did not mention at least one of these words. When,
at a later stage, I was asked to perform my duty as colonial judge, and could examine
legal disputes, I was surprised to notice that almost in any suit land, woman or money
were either the first cause, or were directly or indirectly involved in the dispute.)

The practice of carefully listening to the natives that he had advocated in his earlier
script led him to select his research topics by focusing on what he thought the local people
considered important. Applying this criterion, he later decided to write also about land and
monetary issues (Pollera 1913c, 1916).
Pollera gave also another reason for his new book. He noted that: ‘to examine her
[the Ethiopian woman] allows us to have access to domestic institutions of the indigenous
Christian population, with its origin, its characters, its values and its faults’.24 To obtain
access to women’s spheres of intervention and action, Pollera could rely upon his partner
Chidan, who was living with him, and he always acknowledged the immense support he
derived from her interpretations and explanations. It is likely that local women of the
district turned to Chidan, to intercede with him in disputes concerning them, so that she
probably knew many private stories behind public stances. Yet, it was mostly as civil judge
that Pollera would examine local subjects and pose specific questions on traditional
dispute management techniques and social issues. Pollera himself was aware of the
opportunity (and power) his role granted him:
 16

Ad ogni nuova causa da istruire potetti addentrarmi nella mentalità e nell'animo

indigeno, per scoprirne le ragioni nel modo di sentire e di agire. Quanti perché non
mi si presentarono alla mente in questa indagine ... ai quali non ebbi altra risposta che
quella di ‘così fecero i nostri padri’. Eppure a poco a poco quello che mi sembrava
oscuro … mi divenne palese, e le domande … trovarono la loro risposta in una
conseguenza logica di altri fatti, o di circostanze di ambiente (ibid.)

(Each new judicial case offered me the opportunity to penetrate the indigenous
mentality and soul, in order to discover, in the way they feel and act, their reasons.
During these enquiries, my mind was crowded with the question ‘why?’ ... to which
I got no other answer apart from ‘because our fathers did so’. Yet, little by little, what
seemed obscure ... started to be clear, and the questions ... found an answer through a
logic consequence of other facts or local circumstances.)

The refrain ‘because our fathers did so’, Pollera believed was only a first reaction
which should not be taken literally. On the contrary, the judicial debate allowed him to
‘penetrate’ a deeper level of meaning and reach a definition of ‘true’ tradition. The issue
around the definition of tradition - more specifically, who defines what as traditional and
for which purpose - has been frequently addressed in anthropological literature. According
to Amselle (1990: 58), when the anthropologists ask ‘why do you do this’ and the natives
answer ‘because we always did so’, this linguistic exchange often reinforced the
anthropologists in their belief about the presumed strength of tradition, simultaneously
consolidating the power of the native elders. To this belief, he opposes a vision of tradition
which is continuously contested and negotiated (on a similar issue, see Clifford 1988;
Gordon 1991; and Berry 1992).
Pollera’s efforts to reach a deeper level of meaning shows that he believed that a true
and solid tradition existed, and that it was best expressed by the elders. This had immediate
practical, and painful, effects. In his 1922 monograph Pollera wrote about the local way to
denounce rape: in the indigenous legal system - he explained - a sworn statement on the
part of the woman was sufficient to charge the offender, even in those cases in which the
woman could have called for help, but did not. A woman did not need to prove she had
been raped since her statement was sufficient to prosecute the offender. Yet, when in 1910
Pollera acted as judge in a rape case, things went differently. As usual, he asked three local
notables for advice; two of them agreed that a simple statement on the woman’s part was
 17

sufficient to charge the offender to compensate the woman, yet the third notable dissented:
‘[if we accept this] then all women who dislike us [men] will simply swear in order to get a
compensation from us; it is not right that a woman simply swear … she must show the
proof’.25
While the three notables revealed the contested nature of tradition, Pollera did not
question his own assumptions on local customs and decided, in the end, that the ‘true’
tradition was the one expressed by the majority of the elders. This case also shows how, in
the colonial context, male notables and elders could forge a new tradition, which reinforced
their own authority and limited the power and rights of other more marginal subjects
(women, in this case). Moreover, the opinion of the third notable matched the images of
class and gender hierarchies then shared by most Italians. It is not clear how the case ended
because the archives do not contain the final judgement, however it is clear that the
sentence introduced a new and ambiguous factor, which reflected both the third notable’s
stance and Italian visions of justice. While Pollera accepted the woman’s statement as a
proof in it, he granted the same right to the defendant, who was allowed to swear his
innocence thus contrasting the woman’s assertion.

The public and the private

In La Donna in Etiopia Pollera devoted the last chapter to a discussion of intimate

relationships between Italian men and Eritrean and Ethiopian women. He insisted that
inter-racial unions were inevitable and natural in a colonial context, especially one
characterised by a lack of European women: in 1905, the sex ratio among the Europeans
was 5.5:1 in Eritrea. Under such conditions Italian men expressed a natural desire to form a
family and have a partner, ‘even a coloured one’ (Pollera 1922: 76). He criticised the fact
that many Italians ‘easily have concubines, but they abandon them when children are born,
thus provoking not only the resentment of these unfortunate mothers, but also of their
relatives and families ... Once abandoned, [the woman] falls easily and quickly into
poverty’. Finally, he argued that Italian fathers should be allowed to legitimise the children
born from these unions without being obliged to marry the mother (a condition set by the
Italian civil code) because such a marriage ‘would rightly repel anybody [i.e. the Italian
men] given the huge gap of civilisation’ between colonisers and colonised.26
These statements are ambiguous and partly contradict Pollera’s own behaviour.
Moreover, while Pollera publicly condemned those Italian men who abandoned their local
 18

partners, he was largely concerned with the future of the children born from such unions,
rather than with the fate of the women involved. Yet, when he terminated his relationship
with his first partner, he continued to provide for her for the rest of his life. Pollera also
seems to consider inappropriate both concubinage and marriage between citizens and
subjects, yet lived with an Eritrean woman for most of his life, and married her just before
dying. In his will, he wrote that he would have married Chidan much earlier ‘if only so
many difficulties had not arisen’.27 These included the formal and informal social control
exerted by the colonial sector and the explicit ban by Royal Decrees of 1909 and 1914
which prohibited colonial officers from cohabiting with local women, and implicitly from
marrying them. Officers who married local women would be forcibly retired and
repatriated (R.D. 19.9.1909 n.839, R.D. 10.12.1914 n.16). To understand these contrary
opinions one should note that Pollera was writing for a governmental publication, and was
a colonial officer. It is probable that he agreed with the general colonial belief that the
presumed civilisation gap between colonisers and colonised made such unions
inappropriate. Yet, his own opinion was less simplistic; while in relation to the Kunama
Pollera never questioned their inferiority, his position was much more ambiguous when
writing about the Abyssinians, and many parts in his numerous scripts suggest that he often
did not see much difference between ‘us’ and ‘them’. Undoubtedly, he also knew that
taking a polemical stance against an official decree placed at risk not only his person, but
also the future of his family. Losing his job or being repatriated, would have made it
virtually impossible for him to take care of his children that he was ‘so proud of’ – as he
often stated in his letters. As he repeatedly wrote his elder son, he kept working long after
retirement in order for all of them (including the daughter) to complete high school in Italy,
and if possible to attend University, as two did.
Pollera also knew that concubinage in the colony, though illegal, was widely
practised and to a certain extent even tolerated. From the 1920’s onward, the sex ratio
among the Italians was becoming more balanced and inter-racial relationships were
tolerated locally because they were becoming less frequent and a racial hierarchy was by
then firmly entrenched: a few intimate relationship was not seen as threatening to white
supremacy (Barrera 2002b). This situation drastically changed with the conquest of
Ethiopia in 1936, when the number of colonial subjects increased from a few hundred
thousands to some millions. Yet Pollera also knew that his behaviour was closely watched
by the colonial government and various governors, who from the outset sought to secure
‘white prestige’ through separation from the natives. Especially in the early years much
 19

colonial literature stigmatised acts as mundane as the local partner of an Italian dressing in
European clothes, or if she had a servant provided by her partner, or appeared with him in
public. Governor Martini, and his successor, tolerated concubinage as long as it was kept
private (ibid.). It was this life-style that Pollera and Chidan adopted. Daughter Marta
Pollera recalled that her father never asked Chidan to dress in western clothes or hair
fashion, nor did she appear in public with him. Marta pointed out that such a relationship
could survive only when relegated in the private sphere, and judged her parents’ life-style
as ‘very clever’. Only when Pollera and Chidan were living in Gonder at a time when
Ethiopia was still independent, did he publicly introduce Chidan as his wife. In this
situation he was the only white man in the town, and far from the control of both
government and Italian colonial society.28
Pollera’s life history and private behaviour towards his partner and children partly
contradict the opinions he publicly expressed, revealing that his beliefs about an
incommensurable gap between colonisers and colonised could be undermined by emotional
involvement. Or, to put it in other words, that what he publicly expressed in governmental
scripts reflected an ambiguous compromise between his private experience and his official
role. It is not argued that intimate or sexual relationships per se led to the suppression of
power and racial hierarchies, as most evidence shows the opposite (Sorgoni 1998, Barrera
2002b). For instance, also in relation to other colonial contexts, Stoler (1991: 86) showed
that ‘miscegenation signalled neither the presence nor the absence of racial discrimination’
(see also Berger 1988). Bastide had expressed a similar concept in a poetic form, arguing
that in any colonial situations: it is ‘in the love-making of partners of different colour ... in
those privileged instants which seem to destroy race’, that racialism insinuates (1961: 10).
Such micro-level analysis helps uncover problematic colonial interrelationships between
citizens and subjects, and how the colonisers’ community was far from homogeneous
(Stoler 1989). It also points to the strict control exerted by colonial authority and society on
both citizens’ and subjects’ private lives, and shows that the same subject could adopt
different strategies and express different opinions in relation to changing political and
social contexts.
Pollera never publicly opposed those decrees which outlawed inter-racial
concubinage or marriage. In 1937 governor Guzzoni issued a new decree condemning
those colonial officers who still had local concubines or tolerated such relationships
amongst subordinates, and threatened them with severe punishments.29 Shortly thereafter
the law invoked punishments of up to five years imprisonment for Italian citizens convicted
 20

of having local concubines. At the same time minister for Italian Africa, Alessandro
Lessona, announced that ‘legitimating and adoption of children born from the union
between citizens and subjects must be forbidden’.30

It was against this new disposition that Pollera reacted, taking a public position
against it. In 1937 he wrote a long memoire, probably addressed to minister Lessona, which
contained a point by point rebuttal of official doctrine on the supposed inferiority and racial
degeneration of ‘mixed offspring’ (meticci in the colonial lexicon), as propounded in
contemporary Italian anthropological, medical and genetic literature. However, Pollera
agreed that Italian women’s sexuality needed to be strictly controlled and that they be
forbidden to marry colonial subjects. He also agreed with a partial restriction on unions
between Italian men and colonial women, although he repeated that such phenomena were
natural and inevitable; indeed he even suggested that children born from such unions were
equal to ‘full blood’ Italian ones, since he believed that children inherited most of their
characteristics from the father. Precisely because in the colony the totality of Italo-Eritrean
children had Italian fathers - he argued - to suggest they were inferior was simply an insult,
which could not be proved. Historian Luigi Goglia (1985), who found and published this
document, noted the many concessions to Fascist racial policy on Pollera’s part and
suggested that while Pollera lacked the political power to openly oppose the dictatorship,
he also appreciated the regime for its strong interest in the colonial policy, which previous
liberal governments had lacked.
To disprove pseudo-scientific theses about meticci’s alleged inferiority, Pollera
resorted to various arguments: that children inherited their physical and psychological traits
from their (Italian) fathers; that crossing with Abyssinians brought no racial degeneration
since they were ‘Semites like us’; that morality depended not on genetics but on the
environment in which one was brought up. These arguments could no longer be defended
under the dictatorship. The regime’s strong interest on natality and maternity led scientists
to assign Italian women a new role as defendant of racial purity, thus asserting that genes
were inherited from the mothers (whose sexuality was strictly controlled), and not from the
fathers (as previously believed). Moreover, the new racist doctrine separated Hamites and
Semites from the Aryan race to which Italians were said to belong; at the same time
somatic, psychological and cultural differences were all ground in biology (Sorgoni 1998).
Thus, to affirm that children inherit from their fathers, that ‘we’ (Italians) are like the
Semites (Abyssinians, but also Jews), and that individual differences derive from the
 21

environment rather than from genes - three widely held theses less than a decade before -
was in the late 1930s equated with being outside the Fascist scientific paradigm. Pollera did
not realise that he was using arguments, which were being literally banned in the mainland
with the dramatic changes brought by the consolidation of the regime and the new empire
taking place in the same period. Pollera, who had adhered to Fascism in the early 1920s,
was now taken by surprise by the new racial laws against meticci, and wrote that he could
not believe the pending dispositions were true. He went so far as to argue that colonial
subjects had been wrongly deprived from access to Italian citizenship on the basis of their
skin colour:

La fobia del colore, o quanto meno l’abitudine invalsa di giudicare tutti gli indigeni
alla stregua di questo grave errore, purtroppo diffuso anche fra le persone colte ... ci
ha danneggiato e ci danneggia nella nostra azione coloniale assi di più della tendenza
opposta di coloro che, per una maggiore comprensione dell’anima dei nativi, furono
accusati troppo sovente e ingiustamente di indigenimento (Goglia 1985).

(Colour-phobia, or even the common habit to judge all natives on the basis of this
wrong evaluation, unfortunately also shared by educated people ... damaged and still
damages us and our colonial action much more than the opposite behaviour of those
who, better understanding the natives’ soul, were too often and unfairly accused of
going native).

The final sentence contained an autobiographical and polemical note, since Pollera
himself had been repeatedly accused of ‘going native’.
In December 1938 Pollera wrote a new letter, this time addressing it to Mussolini in
person. The text, hand-written and much shorter than the previous document, had a more
private style and tried to reach Mussolini by touching on personal issues. Pollera turned to
him because, he wrote, he could understand his anguish: ‘You, Duce, are also a father!’
Pollera then recalled that he had lost his son Giorgio in the Italo-Ethiopian war because,
like all colonial fathers, he had taught his ‘meticci children to love their fatherland’ and
added: ‘we do not want, oh Duce … to regret we encouraged them to sacrifice their own
life in the name of a Fatherland which now repudiates them’.31 The letter had some effect,
since the private secretary for the Minister for Italian Africa, Meregazzi, sent Pollera’s
letter to Mussolini with a note, adding that ‘what the officer Pollera affirms is not all
 22

wrong’ and that those Italo-Eritrean children who had already been legitimised by their
fathers should not lose the Italian citizenship.32 This point was later affirmed by the 1940
law against meticci (L.13.5.1940 no.822), the last colonial racial law.
A few months after the letter to Mussolini, Pollera again expressed his opposition
against the racial laws, by marrying Chidan. It is therefore not clear why, despite his
courageous defence of the juridical status of Italo-Eritrean children, Pollera never opposed
those racist laws, which outlawed inter-racial marriage. In this regard, and long before
Fascist racial laws, no single voice strongly opposed the discriminatory treatment of
colonial subjects. The rhetoric about the racial prestige of the coloniser, which an intimate
relationship with the ‘indigenous element’ would have threatened, was from the start
promoted, defended or tacitly accepted by the whole colonial white community. Within this
framework, Pollera’s opposition to a law, which discriminated against Italo-Eritrean and
Italo-Ethiopian children, and his marriage to Chidan were somehow exceptional, but what
he publicly expressed in relation to inter-racial intimate relationships was in line with the
colonial policy of separation between citizens and subjects.

Conclusion

This analysis of the papers and documents of Alberto Pollera addressed two broader
issues: the types of links existing among colonial ethnographies, administrative practices
and professional anthropologies on the one hand; and the creation processes of
discontinuous ethnic identities on the part of administrators cum ethnographers on the
other. These two lines of investigation, which have been developed in the study of other
colonial contexts, have proven fruitful when applied also to the Italian case.
By concentrating on the literary and rhetoric strategies Pollera adopted, one can
highlight how his ethnographic knowledge and descriptive style were reflected in
administrative practices. When comparing two groups (Kunama and Abyssinians, for
instance), Pollera adopted different literary models, which in turn essentialised their alleged
differences, reinforcing the separation between the two groups and justifying divergent
administrative practices. At the same time, as his ethnographic knowledge deepened thanks
to his growing familiarity with a given group, the policy guidelines he suggested and
adopted also changed accordingly.
Finally, by reading Pollera’s texts set against his private life, both his articulated
personality and the complex nature of colonial ethnographic scripts emerge. Common
 23

sense, current stereotypes, normative stances and the author’s own research findings and
personal experience are all juxtaposed in the same work, often contradicting each other,
and thus reveal the hybrid nature of the colonial texts examined here. Moreover, a closer
look at selected examples of Pollera’s private behaviour confirms not only that white
communities in the colonies were not homogeneous, but also that the same individual
could express contradictory positions according to the changing context in which he was to
act.

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 26

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 27

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(1939), monographic issue.

1 Italy had just become a nation-state when it started its program of colonial expansion. This
expansion was seen by the monarchy and the military elite as a means to gain recognition and
prestige vis-à-vis the other European powers. The internal political climate was geared
towards the newly unified country and the creation of a nation-state, and large sectors of the
capitalist classes were either uninterested in, or explicitly against, a colonial adventure. Italy
was characterised by consistent economic depression and uneven development. In this
respect, Gramsci defined Italian colonialism as a ‘passional, oratorial colonialism, without
any economic or financial basis’ (Gramsci 1975: 2018, vol. III). In his opinion, colonial
expansion served to side-track internal economic problems, such as the landless peasants’
claims for land. From the beginning, one of the main purposes - and rhetoric - of colonial
expansionism was to acquire land to provide for the excess and impoverished Italian work
force.
2 For English works on the early history of Italian anthropology, see Taylor 1987 and
1988; on Lombroso’s influential theories about African women, see Gilman 1985.
3 On anthropological trends in 1800 and early 1900, and disciplinary constraints during
Fascism, see the various contributions in Clemente et al. 1995; on Italian folklore studies
see Cirese 1973; for English works on Italian contemporary cultural anthropology and its
traditions see Saunders 1984, 1993.
4 For instance, until 1896 about 60,000 Italian soldiers were sent to Eritrea, but only about
 28

200 actually remained for at least a few years (Labanca 1990: 96). According to the three
following censuses, Italians in Eritrea numbered 2,333 (of which 482 were women) in
1904; 2,410 in 1913; and 4,188 in 1931. At this date, the Eritrean population counted
596,000 individuals (Castellano 1948a, 1948b). Pollera’s case is also exceptional
concerning his class position since few upper class families sent their sons to the colonies.
5 After a decade of military administration, in 1900 the civil and military powers were
separated with the latter subordinate to the former. With Asmara as the seat of government,
civil colonial officers who were initially termed residenti, and later commissari, were sent
to the various districts. Their duties included administering penal justice, hearing
indigenous civil matters on appeal where the village chief or district chief was unable to
satisfactorily resolve the dispute, and all matters involving controversies between citizens
and colonial subjects.
6 I obtained many information about Pollera’s private life through interviews with two of
his children (Gabriele and Marta, on December 1996, and April 1998 and December 2000
respectively) and his grand-son Pier Angelo; and from a thorough study of his private
archive I was allowed to analyse (Sorgoni 2001). For this opportunity, I would like to thank
Marta, Pier Angelo and Albertina Pollera.
7 The Royal Decree (R.D.L. 26.2.1928 no. 355) represented a massive attempt of the
Fascist regime to ‘fascistise’ each apparatus of the Italian state, by replacing pre-existing
officers (who were en masse forced to retire) with young and new ones, who could prove
more faithful to the dictatorship (Pellegrini 1992: 42).
8 Pollera’s marriage is registered as no. 35 (3 August 1939) in the ‘Liber matrimoniorum
privati’ in Asmara’s Catholic Cathedral ‘Beata Vergine del Rosario’, and has been first
found by Giulia Barrera, whom I thank for this information. In the colony, Fascist racial
laws against colonial subjects started in 1937, with a law (L. 30.12.1937-XVI, no. 2590)
prohibiting and punishing cohabitation and concubinage between Italians and Eritreans.
But as discussed below, inter-racial cohabitation and concubinage were actually prohibited
by Royal Decrees from the beginning of that century.
9 ‘la solidarietà completa esistente fra gli individui di una stessa comunità’, A. Pollera,
Residenza del Gasc e Setit, ‘Oggetto: Taglie e Multe consuetudinarie’, 21.6.1903, private
archive.
10 P. Pels, ‘A localizing science: publicity, secrecy and the professionalization of
Tanganyikan anthropology, 1925-1961’, paper presented at the conference ‘Anthropology
and Africa: A Cross-colonial investigation’, 10-12 March 2000, University of Oxford.
11 ‘qualsiasi uso, per barbaro che sia, ha sempre la sua origine nella necessità storica di un
momento’, Pollera 1913a: 159.
12 My interview with Marta Pollera, April 1998.
13 A. Pollera, ‘Appunti’, 1902, private archive.
14 The Instruction’s ethnographic questionnaire is published in Società di Studi Geografici
e Coloniali 1907. Colonial officers usually relied either on a questionnaire prepared by the
colonial government (Governo dell’Eritrea, Comando Reparto Indigeno, ‘Amministrazione
della giustizia in materia civile’, Archivio dell’Ufficio Studi dello Stato Maggiore
 29

dell’Esercito, Carteggio Eritrea, b. 119, Giustizia, f. 5, 1897) or, later, on those prepared in
Italy by academics (Puccini 1998). There is now evidence that also a German questionnaire
prepared by the distinguished jurist Albert Hermann Post was translated into Italian and
circulated in the colony (Guazzini 2000).
15 ‘un popolo tanto indietro nella scala della civiltà’, A. Pollera, ‘Appunti’, 1902, private
archive.
16 At a recent seminar on Italian colonialism (‘Generi Coloniali’, Rome 27-28 October
2000) Alexander Naty, an Eritrean anthropologist who is currently doing research on the
group, reported how influential Pollera’s monograph was in both reinforcing the myth of
colonial peace brought by Italians (still largely acknowledged by the elders), and spreading
stereotypes about their alleged primitiveness.
17 ‘sogni immaginosi di ... un ambiente fantastico’; and ‘ci permetterà di meglio
comprendere il perché di certe usanze ... e di scusarne in parte la barbarie’, Pollera 1913a:
2 and 78.
18 Archivio Storico Diplomatico Ministero Affari Esteri (ASDMAE), Archivio Eritrea
(AE), b. 42, f. ‘Giurisprudenza coloniale eritrea 1908-1919’.
19 Letter from A. Pollera, Seraye Regional Commissar, to H.E. the Governor, Adi Ugri 15
March 1913, private archive.
20 ‘il diritto di proprietà e di onestà, il concetto del bene e del male cambiano presso tutti i
popoli’, Rossetti 1906: 124.
21 ‘per natura loquaci ... occorre pazientemente ascoltarli’, Pollera 1913b: 55.
22 ‘il suo ufficio era spesso costituito sotto la tenda da campo o, all’uso delle popolazioni,
all’ombra di qualche grosso sicomoro’, G. Pollera ‘Alla memoria di Alberto Pollera’,
unpublished script without date, private archive.
23 Letter from A. Pollera, Seraye Regional Commissar, to H.E. the Governor, Adi Ugri 1
January 1917, hand-written, private archive.
24 ‘L’esame di essa dà campo di conoscere tutto l’istituto personale della popolazione
cristiana indigena, nelle sue fonti, nei suoi caratteri, nei suoi pregi, e nei suoi difetti’, ibid.
25 ‘Allora tutte le donne che ci vorranno male potranno giurare per essere compensate, non
è giusto che la donna giuri, essa ... doveva preparare le prove necessarie’, Commisariato
Regionale del Seraè, oggetto: ‘Reclamo Selebà Andetzian’, 8.9.1910, ASDMAE, AE, b.
568, f. ‘Selebà Andetzian’. See Chanock 1982 for a similar case in British colonies.
26 ‘ne fanno facilmente delle concubine, per abbandonarle quando ne abbiano prole;
provocando così non solo il risentimento di queste infelici madri, ma anche quello della
parentela e della stirpe loro ... Abbandonata dall’europeo, [la donna] cade facilmente e
presto nella miseria’, Pollera 1922: 79; and ‘ripugnerebbe giustamente a chiunque, per la
grande disparità di civiltà’, ibid. 82.
27 ‘se tante difficoltà non si fossero frapposte’, Repertorio no. 1890. Raccolta no. 764
‘Pubblicazione di testamento olografo’, 2.8.1939, private archive.
28 My interview with Marta Pollera, December 2000. In his autobiography, the emperor
Haile Selassie (1976) confirmed that in Gonder Pollera introduced Chidan as his wife, but
added that she was just a local prostitute. He believed Pollera responsible for the 1930 Ras
 30

Gugsa Olie rebellion against his authority, and this might explain his dismissal of her as a
prostitute. But Haile Selassie knew Pollera quite well since 1916 - when the emperor was
still Ras Tafari - and it is highly unlikely that he did not know that in 1930, Pollera and
Chidan had already been living together for 20 years and had three legitimised children.
29 Governo dell’Eritrea, Asmara 24.9.1936, in ASDMAE, Ministero dell’Africa Italiana
(MAI), Direzione Generale Affari Politici (D.G.AA.PP.) b. 83, f. 241.
30 ‘la legittimazione e l’adozione dei figli nati dall’unione di cittadini con sudditi devono
essere al pari vietati’, quoted in Teruzzi 1939: 70.
31 ‘Noi vogliamo, o Duce … non dover rimpiangere di averli spinti all’olocausto della
propria vita per una Patria che avesse a rinnegarli’, A. Pollera to Mussolini, Asmara
10.12.1938, in ASDMAE, Archivio Storico del Ministero dell’Africa Italiana (ASMAI),
Gab. 88/XI/V.
32 See Meregazzi to Mussolini Roma, 8.1.1939, and Meregazzi to Pollera, Roma 8.1.1939,
ibid.