Asmara: making (colonial) modernity work through transport networks and infrastructure

Abstract

The chapter investigates the representation, in 1930s newsreels and documentaries, of Asmara as both the quintessential, fascist, modern colonial city, and as a hub connecting Italian East Africa with the imperial ‘centre’. The focus in on analysing how strategies of visuality were deployed, through the moving image, to hold together the representation of Asmara as either a self-sustaining colonial city, or as a city whose importance lay less in its architectural solidity, and more in its constructed interdependence with Italy and other colonial cities. The chapter investigates notions of interdependence in the context of colonial city networks by excavating the depiction of Asmara as a veritable ‘hub of Empire’, through the focus, evident in the moving image, on the city as a node in networks of modern technology, from air transport to rail, to roads and trade.