Abstract
In 1940, the “Norms Concerning Children of Mixed Race” (law of May 13, 1940, n. 822) prohibited Italians from acknowledging the children they had had with Africans and from helping to support them; as for the “mixed-race” children (meticci), the Norms assigned them the juridical status of colonial subjects.1 This law was the culmination of a campaign against “the plague of miscegenation” that arose after the Ethiopian conquest in 1935–1936. It marked a distinct change from preceding policies, under fascist rule as well as liberal-era governments. Indeed, up to that point, the government had not only allowed Italian men to acknowledge and support the children they had with African women: it had encouraged them to do so, and children acknowledged by their Italian fathers had acquired Italian citizenship automatically. Moreover, a law of 1933 had created the possibility for “mixed-race” children unacknowledged by their fathers to obtain Italian citizenship also.2 This law gave legal force to the practice of assimilating unacknowledged Italo-Eritrean children into the Italian community, which colonial governments had sanctioned in practice since 1917.
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Notes
On racial norms in the Italian colonies, see Richard Pankhurst, “Fascist Racial Policies in Ethiopia, 1922–1941,” Ethiopia Observer 12, no. 4 (1969): 270–285;
Luigi Goglia, “Note sul razzismo coloniale fascista,” Storia contemporanea 19, no. 6 (December 1988): 1223–1266; La menzogna della razza: documenti e immagini del razzismo e dell’antisemitismo fascista (Bologna: Grafis, 1994);
Angelo Del Boca, “Le leggi razziali nell’impero di Mussolini,” in Il regime fascista. Storia e storiografia, ed. Angelo Del Boca, Massimo Legnani, and Mario G. Rossi, 329–351 (Rome: Laterza, 1995). On “mixed-race” policies, see
Gianluca Gabrielli, “Un aspetto della politica razzista nell’impero: il ‘problema dei meticci’,” Passato e presente 15, no. 41 (1997): 105;
Barbara Sorgoni, Parole e corpi. Antropología, discorso giuridico e politiche sessuali interrazziali nella colonia Eritrea (1890–1941) (Naples: Liguori, 1998); and
Giulia Barrera, “Colonial Affairs: Italian Men, Eritrean Women, and the Construction of Racial Hierarchies in Colonial Eritrea (1885–1941)” (Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University, 2002). For an overview of studies on Italian colonial racism see
Nicola Labanca, “Il razzismo coloniale italiano,” in Nel nome della razza: Il razzismo nella storia d’Italia, 1870–1945, ed. Alberto Burgio, 145–163 (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1999).
Mauro Da Leonessa, Pro infanzia africana: Per la tutela dei meticci (Rome: Società antischiavista d’Italia, 1932), 6.
Gabriele Ciampi, “La popolazione dell’Eritrea,” Bollettino della Società Geografica Italiana, serie 11, 12 (1995): 487–524.
Vittorio Castellano, “Considerazioni su alcuni fenomeni demografici della popolazione italiana delPEritrea dal 1882 al 1923,” Rivista italiana di demografía e statistica 2 (1948): 386–417;
Vittorio Castellano, “La popolazione italiana dell’Eritrea dal 1924 al 1940,” Rivista italiana di demografía e statistica 2, no. 4 (1948): 530–540.
F. De Angelis, “Il censimento del 1913 della popolazione italiana ed assimilata nella Colonia Eritrea,” L’Africa Italiana. Bollettino della Società Africana d’Italia 40 (1921): 65–73.
Luigi Goglia, “Una diversa politica razziale coloniale in un documento inedito di Alberto Pollera del 1937,” Storia contemporanea 16, nos. 5–6 (1985): 1077. On Alberto Pollera, see
Barbara Sorgoni, Etnografía e colonialismo. L’Eritrea e l’Etiopia di Alberto Pollera, 1873–1939 (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2001).
Ranieri Falcone, “L’amministrazione della giustizia nella colonia Eritrea,” in Ferdinando Martini, Relazione sulla Colonia Eritrea del R. Commissario civile deputato Ferdinando Martini per gli esercizi 1902–1907, Atti parlamentari, Camera dei Deputati, legislatura XXIII, 1909–1913 (Rome: Camera dei Deputati, 1913), 323.
Cf. Ann Laura Stoler, “Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Gender, Race, and Morality in Colonial Asia,” in Gender at the Crossroads of Knowledge. Feminist Anthropology in the Postmodern Era, ed. Micaela di Leonardo, 51–101 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).
Alberto Pollera, La donna in Etiopia (Rome: Grafía, 1922), 76.
Idelfonso Stanga, Unagita in Eritrea (Milan: Cogliati, 1913), 195.
Carlo Conti Rossini, Princìpi di diritto consuetudinario dell’Eritrea (Rome: Unione Editrice, 1916);
Giovanni Barzano, Valore e diritto della prole negli statuti consuetudinari dell’altipiano eritreo (Asmara: Francescana, 1979).
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© 2005 Ruth Ben-Ghiat and Mia Fuller
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Barrera, G. (2005). Patrilinearity, Race, and ldentity:The Upbringing of Italo-Eritreans during Italian Colonialism. In: Ben-Ghiat, R., Fuller, M. (eds) Italian Colonialism. Italian and Italian American Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4039-8158-5_9
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