Le note del commissario Teobaldo Folchi e i cenni storico amministrativi sul commissariato di Massaua (1898) (review)

To this volume, the great expert on colonial photography Massimo Zaccaria has brought his special penchant for historical primary sources and his tireless commitment to thoroughly exploring archives and other not easily accessible depositories of history (e.g., not only Kew or Aix-en-Provence). His new documentary discovery was made in the archives of the Museo del Risorgimento e della Resistenza in Vicenza. Thanks to his energy and drive, and to the generosity of the institute director, Mauro Passarin, Zaccaria located a report written by Teobaldo Folchi in 1898, during a six-month spell of duty as a civilian commissar in Massawa, Eritrea. It is this document that is reproduced in this book.

Since the Italian defeat at Adwa, the colony of Eritrea, established in 1890, was administered by Ferdinando Martini. In his various successive positions up to the rank of minister of colonies, Martini was a prominent representative of the supposedly poor quality Italian colonial personnel. Folchi, on the other hand, was a military man and anxious to engage himself in the activity he privileged; indeed, in his eyes, more battles, killing a few blacks and conquering new lands, would have boosted the fortunes of an empire still in progress, not to mention embellishing his chest with fresh medals. Despite the civilian/military rivalry, Folchi accomplished his civilian assignment in Massawa with competence and devotion. Unfortunately, however, the price of his unfriendly relationship with Martini was a predictable end to his honorable service in Africa. At this point, it is not clear whether his long report on the ethnic groups, institutions, economy, and geography of the territory under his direct responsibility was ever read by his superiors in the colonial capital or elsewhere.

Having deciphered Folchi’s difficult handwriting, Zaccaria believes that this report should be viewed as a good example of nonprofessional colonial ethnography. The text is noteworthy because it comprises an eyewitness account, composed within a specific political and cultural sphere at the time of the events it describes. However, the Note del commissario is a flawed document and deserves extensive chiose (glosses), like a sixteenth-century manuscript, in order to put facts, names, and analyses in their own historical context, and to highlight errors. Instead, Zaccaria has edited the text without providing a single footnote. So, for example, one of the most resented dramas of the Italian campaigns in Africa—the affair of Dogali—is reported as if it happened in 1886 and not in 1887 (153). Furthermore, Alessandro San Marzano, who headed the expedition deployed to plant and display the Italian flag after the disaster, was not the governatore generale, a position that did not yet exist (143), and we know from other sources and analyses that the objectives of the entire operation were not as superficial as Folchi reckoned. Such errors raise the question: might this long and somewhat boring document, which is often just a list of localities, genealogies and origins of clans, and statistics on the components of villages and communities, help us a century later to better comprehend Italian colonialism in Eritrea, especially beyond the institutional dimension?

In his very rich and admirably written introduction, Zaccaria prefers to address general “prejudices” having only an indirect connection with the report, rather than dealing with specific, crucial points of fact. His main aim is to reevaluate colonial history and the part played in it by the bureaucracy in the field, both in an elaboration of administrative methods and in the presentation of a basic source for a more accurate historical reconstruction. Probably, Folchi was not as “ignorant” as most of the Italian military and civilian personnel employed in Africa were, at least according to Giorgio Rochat’s claim in the works mentioned by Zaccaria on page 45. Recently, Barbara Sorgoni, in her studies of Alberto Pollera (Etnografia e...