Madamismo and Beyond: The Construction of Eritrean Women

Abstract

This chapter will focus on the madamas, colonial women who contracted to provide all the “comforts of home” to male Italian settlers in East Africa. I discuss the case of Eritrea, which, being the first settler colony of the new Italian state, occupied a central place in the narratives glorifying Italy’s mandate to “civilize” Africa.1 Fueled by state promises to transform them from land-hungry peasants into rich coloniali, large numbers of Italian settlers occupied Eritrea starting in the 1880s, leaving their wives at home.2 While the madamas represented only a small fraction of colonized women in Eritrea, they emerge as a key feature of the Italo-African encounter and dominate colonial discourses regarding native women.3

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