I Didn't Do It for You

by Michela Wrong

  It was at this delicate juncture that the government called in Martini, offering him the post of Eritrea’s first civilian governor. He turned it down, hesitated, then accepted. For conservative leader Antonio Di Rudini, who had taken over from the disgraced Crispi as prime minister, Martini was a canny choice. Although Di Rudini had made huge political capital out of criticizing the government’s handling of Adua, he was a pragmatist on colonial matters. He had decided to hang on to Eritrea, but only after playing briefly with the idea of handing the colony to Belgium’s King Leopold, master of the Congo. He realized that he could only successfully defy public opinion if the colony, focus of so much controversy, assumed the lowest of profiles. It must be removed from the control of a profligate military, its shifting border needed to be fixed and, above all, its demands on Italy’s exchequer must be drastically reduced. By recruiting Martini, who had somehow managed to survive the Massawa debacle with his reputation for feistiness intact, Di Rudini could appear to be responding to public sentiment. In fact, both he and King Umberto knew they were placing the colony in the safest of hands.

  When Martini set to sea, there was talk in Rome of pruning Eritrea down to a triangle linking Massawa on the coast with Asmara and the highlands town of Keren, or something even more modest. Many of Martini’s colleagues actually expected the new governor to waste no time in winding up Eritrea’s affairs. But the establishment was intent on consolidation, not dissolution. ‘I have made quite enough sacrifices to public opinion on this African issue,’ the King confided to Martini before he left. ‘I will not make the ultimate sacrifice: we must and will not descend from the plateau.’4 And Martini, the ever-equivocal Martini, was on exactly the same wavelength. ‘If I can stop Africa being a thorn in our flesh…if I can pacify the colony, raise it to a point where it is self-supporting, allow it to become, so to speak, forgotten, wouldn’t I be doing the country a major service?’ he mused.5 He spelled out his position in a letter to a friend: ‘I will not return a single inch of territory…the day the government asks me to descend to Massawa is the day I land in Brindisi.’

  For Martini, this represented a risky career move. By the time he left for Eritrea in December 1897, he was 56 years old, an age where the delights of African travel, with its malarial bouts, month-long mule treks and most basic of amenities, begin to pall. The job, which meant leaving behind his family, was no sinecure, and others had rejected it. He had already done well for himself, rising briefly to the post of Education Minister. By going to Eritrea, he would be removing himself from the buzz and chit-chat of Montecitorio, with all the opportunities it represented. But at his age, with so much already achieved, such things mattered less than they once had. There were times, indeed, when he felt nothing but disgust for politics, sorry he had ever entered the game. ‘When I look back on my 23 years in parliament, I mourn all that wasted time,’ he told a friend. ‘If I stay here, what will I do? Make speeches to the chamber: Sibylline words, scattered by the wind.’6 The clear skies he had lauded in Nell’Affrica Italiana were calling. Eritrea’s first civilian governor, he knew, would be a huge fish in a tiny pool, always a cheering position to hold. It must have been enormously flattering to think that, once again, the future of Italy’s ‘first-born’ rested largely on his shoulders. Who else, after all, knew more about Eritrean affairs? Who else could be trusted to do the right thing?

  His nine-year stint as governor is recorded in Il Diario Eritreo, 7,000 pages of handwritten entries which constitute a priceless resource of the Italian colonial era. Although he indexed each of its 26 volumes, Martini never seems to have had publication in mind, referring to the work only as a collection of ‘notes’. At most, he probably intended the diary to serve as source material for an African memoir he never, in the end, got round to writing. Had it not been for Italy’s Ministry of African Affairs, which ordered it published in 1946–nearly 20 years after Martini’s death–the diary would have remained locked away in the family’s archives. Why did he put so much care into what was meant as no more than a personal aide-mémoire? Because, one has to conclude, Martini simply could not do otherwise. A man with his inquiring mind, with his lifelong habit of capturing impressions on paper, simply had to record the intense sensations that came with his return to Eritrea. To write something down was to endow it with value, to allot it its proper meaning–the habit came to him as naturally as breathing. ‘There is more satisfaction to be won from writing what seems a stylish page than in overturning a ministry,’ he once remarked. Whether at sea, on the road, or at home, he faithfully kept his diary, rarely skipping a day. And the fact that publication was never on the agenda makes the diary far fresher, funnier and more accessible than the flowery Nell’Affrica Italiana. Martini himself never understood this. ‘In Africa, one writes rather badly,’ he says at one point. ‘This is certainly not a good page.’7 In fact, to modern eyes, he writes far better. A sustained ironic conversation with himself, the diary’s very lack of artifice brings 19th-century Eritrea to life in a way his more laboured writing never could.

  Here is Martini the amused sociologist, fascinated at the goings-on in the stretch of open ground outside his Asmara villa, which serves, he discovers, as a communal latrine. ‘This wretched valley is the debating society for those who feel the need to shed excess body weight…One man comes along and squats. The effect is contagious. Another comes along, measures the distance and squats a dozen metres from the first, in the same position and with the same aim in mind. And then a third, a fourth; sometimes a fifth and a sixth. And the conversation starts…Simultaneous, contemporaneous, in parallel…Words are not the only thing to emerge, but they last longer than the rest.’8

  And here is Martini the urban sophisticate, despairing, as Eritrea’s attorney-general reads out a report, at his colleagues’ pitiable level of education. ‘My God! What a business! It was the most laughable thing imaginable: logic, dignity of expression, grammar, were never so badly mangled. And to think these are the magistrates the government sends to civilize Africa!’9

  Everything interests him, from the awed reaction of Massawa’s residents to his governor’s regalia of plumed hat and gold braid, to the flavour of the turtle soup and ostrich steak (‘like veal’, he notes) he is served at a welcome ceremony. The sexual mores of Eritrea’s tribes, the way in which a visiting chieftain falls in love with his reflection in a mirror, the staggering ugliness of a group of Englishwomen spotted in a Cairo hotel, the gossip in Asmara’s expatriate community, all are recorded with Martini’s characteristic impish sense of humour.

  The task he had been set, he soon realized, was immense. Nearly 30 years after its arrival in the Horn, Italy had pitifully little to show for its investment. The Eritrea depicted in his diary is Italy’s version of the Wild West, swept by locust swarms and cholera outbreaks, braced for outbreaks of the plague; a land in which villages are raided by hostile tribes and shipping attacked by pirates. Half-Christian and half-Moslem, it is a frontier country in which slaves are still traded, shady European businessmen mingle with known spies and where government officials still fight–and die–in duels staged over adulterous wives.

  Just as he had been warned in Rome, the military administration had careered out of control, spending Italian taxpayers’ money as though it would never be held to account. ‘Either idiots or criminals’, the dregs of the soldiering profession were drawn to Eritrea, he noted, men who believed ‘that colonizing Africa and screwing the Italian government are one and the same thing’. ‘Dirty, out of uniform, they frequent the brothels until late, while the officers divide their time between prostitutes and the gaming table.’10 He was appalled to see how the military had lavished government funds on officers’ villas instead of investing in the roads, bridges and sewerage the colony so clearly needed. ‘Even the best soldiers feel they are only doing their duty when they throw money out of the window,’ he lamented after discovering, rotting in Massawa’s storerooms, 60,000 men’s shoes, enough spurs to equip an arm
y, 40,000 mattocks, 9 years’ supply of salt, 3 years’ of wine, 2 years’ of jam, 52 months’ worth of coffee and 22 months’ of sugar.

  His Eritrean subjects were the least of his problems. The nine local ethnic groups had largely accepted Italian rule as a necessary evil. ‘They do not love us, but understand the benefits that come with our rule,’ remarked Martini, noting that local administrators regarded the Italians as ‘good but stupid’.11 The settlers were the real disappointment. Far from serving as an alternative destination for the tens of thousands of Italians heading for the Americas, Eritrea held less than 4,000 ‘Europeans’, and that tally actually included hundreds of Egyptians, Syrians, Turks and Indians judged civilized enough to count as ‘white’. Land had been confiscated and experimental agricultural projects launched, but the going had proved so tough many Italian families begged to be sent home. Martini was none too impressed by those who remained, noting that their Greek colleagues seemed less prone to frittering away their profits. ‘The Greek does not buy horses and does not keep mistresses, the Italian keeps both horse and mistress.’12 The constant complaints by the hard core that remained drove him wild. ‘I’ve always said that governing 20 Italians in the colony requires more patience, courage, and skill than governing 400,000 natives,’ he fumed. When Rome had the temerity to inquire whether an Eritrean display should feature in the Paris Exhibition’s colonial section, an exasperated Martini lost his temper: ‘All we can send are dead men’s bones, bungled battle plans and columns of wasted money. Up till now these are the only fruits of our colonial harvest.’13

  Moving the capital from Massawa to cool Asmara, he set about his work with characteristic briskness. A series of decrees created a new civilian administration, placing the army firmly under its control. Strict limits were set to the number of civil servants employed in Eritrea, a move that slashed Rome’s expenditure. The worst soldiers and officers were simply expelled. ‘These steps will cause a great deal of ill feeling, but I know I am doing my duty. Order, discipline, justice and thrift: without these the colony can neither be governed nor saved,’ Martini pronounced.14 The colony was divided up into nine provinces, each with its own capital, and Martini established the building blocks of a modern society: an independent judiciary, a telegraph system and departments of finance, health and education.

  The man who had calmly predicted the disappearance of Eritrea’s indigenous peoples quickly changed his tone. It was all very well airily discussing the elimination of local tribes as a passing visitor. Now that he was actually running Eritrea and could see for himself the damage–both political and commercial–done by military confrontation, Martini turned accommodating pacifier. Determined to shore up the Eritrean border, he became the perfect neighbour, putting an end to Rome’s long tradition of double-dealing. When rebel chiefs on the other side of the frontier challenged Menelik’s rule, Martini turned a deaf ear to their pleas for weapons. Instead of fantasizing, like so many Italian contemporaries, about avenging Adua, he cooperated with Menelik’s attempts to check the lawlessness on their mutual frontier, stabilizing the region in the process. As for emigration, Martini quickly realized how poorly judged the royal inquiry report had been. The colony was simply not ready for a flood of Italian labourers, who risked clashing with locals and would, in any case, be undercut by Eritreans willing to accept a fraction of what a European considered an honest wage. He scrapped legislation authorizing further land confiscation and pushed employers to narrow the huge differential between the wages paid Italians and Eritreans.

  But while righting certain blatant injustices, Martini was never a soft touch. If Eritrea was to survive, the locals must be taught a lesson in the pitiless consistency of colonial law, the merest hint of insubordination ruthlessly crushed. Mutinous ascaris were shackled or whipped and the sweltering coastal jails filled with prisoners who often paid the ultimate price. ‘I’ve never had a bloodthirsty reputation and I really don’t deserve one,’ Martini wrote, after refusing to pardon a condemned bandit. ‘But here, without a death penalty, you cannot govern.’15 He was building a state, virtually from scratch, and often he felt as though he was doing the work single-handed. ‘There is not a dog here with whom one can hold an intellectual discussion,’ he complained in a letter to his daughter.16 It was a lonely, heady experience, bound to encourage delusions of grandeur. ‘At times, unfortunately,’ he confessed to his diary, ‘I feel it would not be too arrogant to say, adapting the words of Louis 14th, “I am the colony”.’17

  The longer he stayed, the more convinced he became that the success of this monumental project hinged on one key element. He knew Eritrea had gold, fish stocks in abundance and river valleys capable of producing coffee and grain, cotton and sisal. But as long as a rickety mule track was the only way of scaling the mountains separating hinterland from sea, Eritrea would remain forever cut off from the African continent, its ports idle, its administration reliant on government subsidies. Only a railroad could unlock the riches of the plateau and–beyond it–the markets of Abyssinia and Sudan. It was the one explicit undertaking Martini had sought in exchange for his loyal service during his final conversation with King Umberto. ‘Without a railway joining Massawa with the highlands, nothing good, lasting or productive will ever come from Eritrea,’ he told the monarch. ‘Rest assured,’ the King had promised. ‘The railway will be built.’18

  The close of the 19th century was the golden era of African railways. Flinging their sleepers and coal-eating locomotives across savannah and jungle, the colonial powers sent a blunt message to the locals: progress was unstoppable. The railroad was both an instrument of war, depositing troops armed with machine guns within range of their spear-carrying enemies, and an instrument of commercial penetration, bringing the ivory, minerals and spices at the continent’s heart to market, opening the interior to land-hungry farmers and hopeful miners. Cecil Rhodes dreamt of one that would run from Cape to Cairo, the explorer Henry Stanley, nicknamed ‘Breaker of Rocks’, was building one which would link Leopoldville to the sea, the British were braving man-eating lions to connect Uganda with the Swahili coast. Railways were the equivalent of today’s national airlines–no African colony worth its salt could be without one.

  Martini did not intend to be left out, although he knew Eritrea’s topography made this a uniquely demanding challenge. When Martini arrived, the Italian army had already laid 28 km of track to the town of Saati, carrying troops to fight Ras Alula. But the work had been carried out in such haste, it all needed to be redone. There were drawings to be sketched, sites visited, contracts put out to tender and strikes to be settled. It all fell to Martini, acutely aware that Italy’s colonial rivals were establishing their own trade routes into the interior, with France and Britain vying for control of a railway that would link Djibouti with Addis Ababa. ‘The railway means peace, both inside and outside our borders, and huge savings on the budget,’ he told his diary, time and again. Despite the King’s promise, winning the funding did not prove easy. Having sent Martini out with orders to cut spending, Rome did not take kindly to constant requests for money. He would waste months peppering the Foreign Ministry with telegrams, winning his bosses round to the railroad’s merits, only to see the government fall and a new set of ministers take office, who all had to be persuaded afresh. The railway, fretted Martini, ‘would be the only really effective remedy to many–perhaps all–of the colony’s ills. But in Rome they do not want to know.’19

  He assembled a small army of 1,100 Eritrean labourers and 200 Italian overseers for the backbreaking and dangerous work, hacking and blasting through the rock, building stations and water-storage vaults as the railroad inched forwards. Struggling to master the technical minutiae of rail engineering, Martini found himself acting as peacemaker between irate private contractors and his abrasive head of works, Francesco Schupfer, a stickler for detail capable of forcing a company caught using sub-standard materials to knock down a stretch of earthworks and start again. ‘Perhaps he is too rou
gh, but he is a gentleman,’ Martini pondered, intervening yet again to smooth ruffled feathers. ‘He is hated by everyone, but very dear to me.’20 When Britain raised the possibility of connecting Sudan’s rail network to the Eritrean line–a move that would have turned Massawa into eastern Sudan’s conduit to the sea–Martini was almost beside himself with excitement. ‘This is a matter of life and death, either the railway reaches as far as Sabderat or we must leave Eritrea,’ he pronounced.21 Just when his plans looked set in concrete, Rome began wondering–in a reflection of the changing technological times–whether it might not be better off investing in a highway to Gonder and Addis Ababa instead.

  Despite all the telegrams and discussions, the stops and starts, the track slowly edged its way up to Asmara. By 1904, the crews had reached Ghinda, by 1911, four years after Martini had returned to Italy, it had reached Asmara. The final heave up the mountain proved the trickiest. Even today, old men living in Shegriny (‘the difficult place’), remember the dispute that lent their hamlet its name, as a father-and-son engineering team squabbled over the best route to take, each retiring to sulk in his tent before the precipitous route along ‘Devil’s Gate’–little more than a narrow cliff ledge looking out over nothingness–was finally agreed.