Introduction

In 1944, the British government published a propaganda booklet on the British Military Administration (BMA) of Eritrea and Somalia titled “The First to Be Freed.” British troops had entered Eritrea's capital, Asmara, as early as April 1, 1941. A few weeks later, the governor-general of the Africa Orientale Italiana (AOI) surrendered to British forces, formally ending Mussolini's rule over the Horn of Africa. What did it mean for a colony to be freed from Axis rule? In European countries such as Italy or France, liberation from Fascism and Nazism meant, among other things, the end of foreign occupation, the return to democracy, and an immediate stop to racial persecutions. Did the liberation from Fascist rule mean anything similar in the Horn of Africa?

Soon after the Italian defeat, Emperor Haile Selassie returned to his throne in Ethiopia. But Eritrea had been an Italian colony since 1890, long before Fascism, and no Western power had ever questioned the legitimacy of Italian rule on Eritrea. Thus, when the British army took control of Eritrea, it administrated the territory as an occupied enemy territory, which would presumably be returned to Italy at the end of the war. At this early stage of the war, no one forecast that ultimately Italy would be forced to renounce all of its colonial possessions. In other words, Eritrea, “the first to be freed,” was not actually freed from alien rule. Was it at least freed from the most heinous forms of racial discrimination introduced by Fascist legislation?

British military authorities were firmly committed to respecting international law and, under the 1907 Hague Convention (IV) Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land, military occupants were supposed to respect the laws of the occupied country. Did that mean that the BMA in Eritrea was bound to respect Fascist race laws that discriminated against both Africans and Jews?