How a Colonial Subject Became an Italian Citizen: The Life and Naturalization of Sengal Workneh Between Colonial Eritrea and Italy (1880–1929)

The chapter is devoted to the figure of Sengal Workneh, a colonial subject from Eritrea who received Italian citizenship through naturalization in 1919. Differently from other colonial subjects, he managed to change his legal status from subject to citizen. This rare circumstance was due to the exceptional life story of Sengal Workneh who could demonstrate to have—allegedly—reached that level of civilization which Italians deemed a distinctive feature of the colonizers vis-à-vis the colonized. Workneh attended the Italian school in the colony and performed military service in Italy, worked as an interpreter for the colonial administration in Asmara and as a teacher of Amharic and Tigrinya at the Instituto Orientale in Naples. However, it was his engagement in the First World War on the Italian side that made him earn special merits. As a consequence, while previous naturalization requests failed, only the one he submitted during the Great War turned out to be successful despite the restrictive naturalization policy of the time. The exceptional case of Sengal Workneh demonstrates how exclusionary and racist citizenship policy of the Kingdom of Italy worked and why and how a colonial subject could become an Italian citizen. This chapter adds voices from the African continent to the history of European colonialism and its segregatory citizenship system.