Colonial Encounters and Land Tenure in Early Italian Rule in Africa. A Critical Enquiry into Recently Rediscovered Personal Papers of Leopoldo Franchetti

To what extent is it possible to disclose an epistemic coloniality within a corpus of primary sources related to encounters with Otherness in the Italian colonies in Africa from the late 1880s till the eve of the First World War? This paper draws on newly rediscovered private diaries and letters related to fieldworks conducted in the African colonies with the aim of analyzing the local land systems which paved the way for settler societies. A preliminary critical analysis of the manuscripts allows an understanding of colonial taxonomies in the making, and how they depended on African intermediaries, whose knowledge informed the colonizers of social and individual disputes, as well as on the local balance of power. The manuscripts are the outcomes of extensive traveling, eyewitness accounts and evidence gathered on the location. Thus, their study contributes to deciphering the framed view of African territories, and the methods employed to manage people’s lives, providing insights into the issue of land tenure during early colonial rule.