I Didn’t Do It For You: How the World Used and Abused a Small African Nation. Michela Wrong
Чтение книги онлайн.
Читать онлайн книгу I Didn’t Do It For You: How the World Used and Abused a Small African Nation - Michela Wrong страница 24
Название: I Didn’t Do It For You: How the World Used and Abused a Small African Nation
Автор: Michela Wrong
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Историческая литература
isbn: 9780007370016
isbn:
Mussoliniâs new Roman Empire was imploding, and Eritreaâs surrender freed up the troops Wavell desperately needed. They were allowed only the briefest of breathing spaces before being whipped away to fight Rommel. Had Keren not fallen when it did, British morale, bruised by Dunkirk and the Blitz, might never have recovered. Its conquest was a small but crucial part in turning the tide of the Second World War, from a position where a vast Nazi empire seemed a certainty to a point where Allied victory was for the first time conceivable.
Strikingly absent from this whole strategic picture â staggeringly absent, indeed, from all the vivid veteransâ memories and detailed military reports on Keren â is any mention of the people most immediately concerned by the events of 1941: the Eritreans themselves. The British soldiers who fought in Keren struggle to recall a single encounter with a local, an unsurprising lacuna, perhaps, given that until Asmara, Eritrean towns had either been bombed or marched through by the Allies, but never occupied or administered. Asked about the Eritrean countryside, one officer mused, âThere was no countryside, really,â as if he had been marching across a blank vista. What the invaders retained was the impression of a landscape bereft of people, stripped of vegetation, a moonscape so desolate it seemed the ideal setting for a war. As for the Italians, the words they ordered to be carved on the white gravestones erected over the tombs of every Eritrean and Ethiopian who fell at Keren say it all. âAscaro Ignotoâ â âUnknown Ascaroâ. The Italians didnât even know the names of the natives who died for them.
The post-independence Kenyan politician Tom Mboya used to recount how a white customer once poked her head into the office where he was sitting working, looked around, and said: âAh, nobody here,â as an example of how colonial assumptions about authority rendered blacks effectively invisible. There are echoes of the Tom Mboya experience for the Eritreans at this juncture in their history: to the outside world they seemed as insubstantial and transparent as the chill mountain air. Despite all the promises made in the leaflets sprinkled by the RAF, Britain had not invaded Eritrea to free the natives from colonial rule. It had fought the battle of Keren for strategic reasons that stretched far beyond Eritreaâs borders and bore no connection to local wishes, a matter of supreme indifference, at this stage, to London.
It is a view of the world reflected in the story that has passed into Eritrean history concerning Keren. In a way, it doesnât really matter whether the tale is apocryphal or not, because it says so much about the gathering cynicism of a people who had come to understand their country was no more than a proxy location for a war, this merely a dress rehearsal of the great fight between Fascism and Liberal Democracy that would be concluded elsewhere.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.