Eritrea

Italian Colonization of East Africa (1872 - 1915)

The way in which Eritrea became an Italian colony is unusual. In November 1869, the port city of Assab was bought by an Italian shipping company to facilitate importing goods from the region. The sale was critized by other governments, as well as the Italian parliament and press, as not legal – buying a city. However, since Italian trade with Ethiopia was considerable (e.g., coffee, ivory, and gold), Assab became a useful port for trade with Ethiopia and neighboring lands. To solidify the situation, the Italian government sent troops in 1882 to Assaba to take control of the city, making it an Italian occupation.

In February 1885, in an attempt to expand their operations and influece in the area, Italian troops went north along the coast of Eritea to Massawa (Massaua in Italian). They soon made it an Italian occupation, as well.

The rest of the coast of Eritrea, along the western shores of the Red Sea from Massawa going north to Egypt was controlled at the time by Egypt. This was under an agreement between the emperor of Egypt, Yohannes IV, and Great Britain – who previously occupied the territory.

By the late 1880s, Egypt was losing interest in the area: the already had access to the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea, as well as inner Africa, without Eritrea. The British were worried, though, that France, which controlled part of Somalia (French_Somaliland), would take Eritea and the rest of the Red Sea coast. Rather than violate their own treaty with Egypt, the British encouraged Italy to expand in the area: they preferred Italy over France, which was already a formidable presence in Africa.

In 1889, when Yohannes IV died, Italy took advantage of the situation and the blessings from Great Britain. They seized all of Eritrea and declared it a colony of Italy.

Note

It took a good bit of time to determine all of the stamps for this sub-album, and design the pages in Adobe Photoshop. I wish Leuchtturm would sell pages for the Italian colonies. It’s taken over a year to find and acquire these stamps. I’m missing only a few. Below is a table listing the pages on which I need stamps, I hope to get the remaining ones soon, but the few I have left are a little pricey. For several, I have a link to where I can buy them, along with the price. If you click on the titles for these pages, it’ll take you to those pages so you can see what I’m missing and what it costs to buy them.

remaining stamps & stories in sub-album

page	story	note	used	need

Umberto I	✓	✓	2	3
Vittorio Emanuele III	✓	✓	1	1
Royal Jubilee	✓	✓		1
Express	✓	✓		2
Rome-Mogadishu	✓	✓		1
Postage Due	✓	✓		5
Postage Due	✓	✓		9
Parcel Post	✓	✓		7
Postage Due & Air	✓	✓		2