La cittadinanza negata nella Colonia Eritrea (1882-1941)

The article centers on the legal status of the inhabitants of Colonia Eritrea during the years of Italian rule. From the begin of the expansion on the Red Sea coast and after the establishment of the colony in 1891 the Kingdom of Italy faced the issue of how to define the legal status of the local colonial population might be defined. Fundamental was the predominant understanding that put Africans on a lower degree of civilization and race in comparison to Europeans. This determined the creation of different legal status, to which different characters of race and civilization corrisponded. The article investigates the norms ruling these different status of the colonial population. The analysis of the colonial laws goes along with the investigation of administrative practice, paying attention to local players and their agencies. In doing this, the article aims to give a more complex picture of the relations between colonized and colonizers in Italian Eritrea