GeoJournal 52: 325–338, 2000. © 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. 325 Signs of power: Fascist urban iconographies in Ethiopia (1930s–1940s) Marco Antonsich Geographical Section, Department of Political Science, University of Trieste, P.le Europa, 1, 34127 Trieste, Italy (e-mail: antonma@univ.trieste.it) Received 21 August 2001; accepted 3 October 2001 Key words: colonization, Ethiopia, fascism, urban planning Abstract The aim of the present paper is to compare two different patterns of urban iconographies in Ethiopia during 1930s: the one of the Amhara – the traditionally Ethiopian dominant ethnic group – and the one of the Italian fascism. The paper gives an historical account of the structure of the Amhara settlements, focusing on the ways the power of their politico-military chiefs, being they the Negus or the Ras, shaped the spatial order of these settlements. When the Italians conquered military Ethiopia in 1936, they started re-shaping this spatial order, erasing the signs of the previous power and imposing their new iconographic apparatus. This was mainly done through urban planning which was devised to ‘write’ the Fascist concepts of progress, order, hierarchy, and racial segregation on the territory. Owing to the short duration of the occupation, the poor material conditions of the colony and the lack of financial resources, such town-planning projects turned out to be just a political rhetoric exercise. Introduction A complete survey of the urban phenomenon in Ethiopia has not yet been carried out. Up to now the literature has been based only on the Amhara perspective, that is to say on the perspective of the dominant Ethiopian ethnic group (Mesfin Wolde, 1965; Akalou Wolde, 1967a, 1967b, 1973; Horvath, 1968, 1969, 1970; Pankhurst, 1982, 1985). A survey of the settlements of the minority ethnic groups (such as, for exam- ple, the Oromo and the Guraghe) is still lacking. The present paper does not pretend to shed new light on alternative his- tories of urbanization in Ethiopia, yet, adopting the present literature, to compare two different urban iconographies, arising from two different patterns of political domination, Amhara and Italian, focusing, in particular, on the practices used by the latter to impose its signs of power on the former. Urbanization in Ethiopia until Italian domination Although some authors have stated that one of the most re- markable facts in the long history of Ethiopia has been the general absence of urbanization (Mesfin Wolde, 1965; Dia- mantini and Patassini, 1993), according to Akalou Wolde, Ethiopia, throughout its history, had urban centers with vary- ing size and range of occurence (Akalou Wolde, 1967b). For the most part, these centers owed their origin more to the po- litical and military power than to the influence of economic functions or to religious activity. The driving force of the process of Amhara urbanization in Ethiopia had been neither the gebaya (the market place) nor the bieta christian (the Orthodox church), but the gebi (the palace of the sovereign). Nevertheless, until the nineteenth century, urbanization had been a cyclical rather than a cumulative phenomenon, be- cause of the constant shift in location of the political and military capitals. This was not due mainly to the lack of natural resources (wood, water and food), as many com- mentators have noted since early times (Ludolph, 1682; de Almeida, 1954; and, more recently, Chojnacki, 1963), but to historical factors such as dynastic changes, 1 tribal and religious wars, and territorial expansion. 3 Since the fourteenth century, the military camp turned out to be the most common way of life of Ethiopian sov- ereigns and their retinue (Akalou Wolde, 1967a). Owing to the absence of a centralized administrative system, the sovereigns were forced to move continuously as a means of controlling the rebellious landlords, levying taxes and escaping the enemy. Besides scattered huts in rural areas, the military camps were the only settlements having an ur- ban spatial pattern. According to Akalou Wolde (1967a), they were of two types: sefer (temporary military camp) and ketema (town or city). Usually, a sefer did not develop into a ketema. It was a decision of the military chief whether to build sefer or ketema. The sefer did not last more than a few days. The site was selected on the basis of its supply of water and firewood and to a lesser extent on whether it was suitable enough for emplacing tents and other tempo- rary structures without being too vulnerable to an enemy’s attacks. On the contrary, natural resources were rarely con- sidered in siting ketema, for which defence was the main concern. Consequently the ketema was put on the summit of hills and mountains. There was no difference between sefer and ketema in their morphological aspects, except for