Staatsangehörigkeit und Rassismus. Rechtsdiskurse und Verwaltungspraxis in den Kolonien Eritrea und Deutsch-Ostafrika (1882-1919)

The book offers a comparative analysis of the history of colonial citizenship in the Italian and German colonial empires based on the close investigation of Eritrea and German East Africa. It not only looks at the production of legal texts, which mostly occurred in the metropolitan context, but also examines their implementation and the administrative practices regarding citizenship on the ground. It aims to make a contribution to institutional history that takes into consideration cultural and social contexts in a global historical perspective. Historians of European colonialism have often stressed the distinction between metropolitan citizens and colonial subjects as an essential feature of colonial governmentality. This distinction existed in Eritrea and German East Africa, too, as Italians and Germans kept their legal status there, while the local population was excluded from metropolitan citizenship. This policy was based on the assumption that local inhabitants were inferior in terms of race and civilization and thus could not be treated as equal to metropolitan citizens. Indeed, overcoming this gap was seen as the proper task of the colonial mission and became the legitimizing ideology of European colonialism. By dealing with colonial citizenship in Eritrea and German East Africa, this book addresses a central issue of European colonialism and its discriminatory nature. Being aware of the many differences between the two East African regions analyzed, the book offers an innovative comparison looking at two colonies established in the same period and ruled by two powers, Germany and Italy, who were ‘late’ in acquiring overseas territories as compared to other European colonial empires. The investigation combines the metropolitan contexts of the Kingdom of Italy and Imperial Germany and the colonial ones of Eritrea and German East Africa. In this imperial space stretching between Europe and Africa, special attention is paid to the population on the spot, especially to agents of local origin. The book adds a new chapter to the global history of European colonialism, its legal structures and social consequences. In addition, the presentation of the facets of citizenship in the colonial past also sheds new light on questions of belonging in the postcolonial present.