The Internal Colonisation: Gardening as Discipline, Control and Reformation

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Paolo Emilio Pisano

The Internal Colonisation Gardening as Discipline, Control and Reformation

1. Towards a project of domestication On the 1st of January 1890, the recently unified Regno d’Italia enforced the Codice Zanardelli1, aiming at an exhaustive reform and consolidation of the national penal system. The Codice lay at the conjuncture of a series of tendencies which had been developing over the previous century and a half, targeting issues of reformation of the criminals, institution of a scale of penalty and colonisation of internal areas of the country which were still under-exploited, sparsely inhabited and subject to a series of late feudal rights of use.

In this context, the institution of a new system of reformation and control in the form of the agrarian penal colonies was, on the trail of recent European experiments, and in particular those in the United Kingdom of Netherlands, instrumental to the creation of an order of discipline that would place a particular emphasis on the reformative qualities of gardening as a practice in the wider sense. Seen as a decorous, productive and educative activity, gardening would be the chosen means of reformation for lesser criminals and form the base for a wider concept of double domestication, of man through land and vice-versa.

The codified system of the penal colony would provide a strategic approach to the internal colonisation, unfolding through: The expropriation of land; The reclamation (bonifica) of wastelands and definition of land uses; The import and formation of specialised industries; The restitution of the expropriated land to a community which has proprietary rights and can maintain it productive. The enactment of such strategies would in effect introduce a new definition of the territory and, as a consequence or result of it, the surge of recognisable paradigms displacing and incorporating historical ones.

1. Giuseppe Zanardelli, Codice Penale Per Il Regno d’Italia (Roma: Stamperia Reale, 1890).

Such an endeavour proved rapidly ineffective in both Italy and the Netherlands, its failure paving the way for a stiffening of the discipline and control over the territory and the inmates. This would cause the undoing of any remaining dream of a productive land or return to a civil settlement, through the constitution a tight hold on the territory and a cessation of the attempt at reformation The Internal Colonisation

Opposite page: 1. The walled garden at Tumbarino branch, Asinara penal colony, 2018.

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of the inmates by means of gardening practices. The colonies would thus often revert to the inertia of penal reclusion and its supposedly moral depravation; the eradication of which they were initially created for. Faced with their dismantling in recent times, local governments had to turn towards the creation of equally strong institutions, able to replace the layers of surveillance of the penal conundrum with a new system of control and, necessarily, the production of new paradigms.

The following study of the Internal Colonisation develops through the analysis of the Asinara Agrarian Penal Colony in Sardinia, Italy, and its wider territory. It involves the tracing and unravelling of the particular nature of three paradigms as projected and enacted by the colonisation project and their shift in recent times. These defined the idea of gardening as a reformative practice through the notions of decorum, production and education. The study aims thus to expose the contradictions arising as a result of the conjuncture of entities of control, that of the Agrarian Penal Colony first, and after its demise, that of the National Park. It is in this conjuncture, such is the assumption, that a means of future use can be brought forth.

2. From overseas colonies to domestic colonies In 1818, Johannes van den Bosch, former lieutenant of the Batavian Army and plantation owner in Java, returned to his native Netherlands to establish an institute for the support of the state indigent, under the name of Society of Benevolence. In collaboration with Gijsbert Karel van Hogendorp, Dutch statesman and at one time promoter of a failed tentative of colonisation in the Western Cape province of South Africa in 1803, van den Bosch presented a proposal to the newly crowned Prince Frederik of Netherlands.2 2. The Steering Group Colonies of Benevolence on the way to World Heritage 2018, ‘Colonies of Benevolence, Nomination File for Inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage List’, 2017, 138143.

3. Van den Bosch treatise title has been translated in English as: Discourse on the possibility, the best way of introducing and the important benefits of a Public Institution for the Poor in the Kingdom of the Netherlands, through the establishment of a colony engaged in agriculture in the Northern part.

Titled Verhandeling over de mogelijkheid, de beste wijze van invoering, en de belangrijke voordeelen eender algemeene armen-inrigting in het Rijk der Nederlanden, door het vestigen eener Landbouwende Kolonie in deszelfs Noordelijk gedeeltei;3 the proposal tellingly argued for the possibility of importation of the oversea model through the creation of a domestic agricultural colony in the northern part of the kingdom. Van den Bosch planned to offer his own expertise as plantation owner, and crucially, set up the ideological basis of the project in a sentence which is essential in the reading of the further development of the colony:

The Internal Colonisation

Opposite page: 2. Map of the Wortel and Merksplas areas in Belgium showing the domestic colonies, 1855. (KoloniĂŤn van Weldadigheid)

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“I myself [have] already cultivated a plot of largely undeveloped, although not entirely barren, land measuring a few thousand hectares, and educated to travail a significant number of people, formerly used to spending their time very badly […], with the happy result that this land, after an eight-year ownership, has been sold at eight times the price of purchase.

And although the circumstances here are certainly not the same, it seems to me, however, that the principles and measures, in one case so fortunate, can also be taken as the basis in the other, with appropriate modification, as in my view also suitable for achieving the salvific purpose here.”4

4. For the original Dutch text, see Johannes van den Bosch, Verhandeling over de mogelijkheid, de beste wijze van invoering, en de belangrijke voordeelen eender algemeene armen-inrigting in het Rijk der Nederlanden, door het vestigen eener Landbouwende Kolonie in deszelfs Noordelijk gedeelte, 1818, 226-227.

5. The Steering Group Colonies of Benevolence on the way to World Heritage 2018, ‘Colonies of Benevolence, Nomination File for Inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage List’, 132-135.

6. Colquhoun in his treatise also makes a clear distinction between Innocent Causes of Indigence irremediable; Remediable Indigence requiring Props to raise it to a state of Poverty; and Culpable Causes of Indigence. This last category was the most dangerous to society and was to be eradicated through the improvement of the morals of the vulgar.

Patrick Colquhoun, A Treatise on Indigence: Exhibiting a General View of the National Resources ...

(J. Hatchard, 1806), 7-10.

7. Patrick Colquhoun.

8. The Steering Group Colonies of Benevolence on the way to World Heritage 2018, ‘Colonies of Benevolence, Nomination File for Inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage List’, 139.

Thus, the Society of Benevolence project for a domestic agrarian colony revolved around two fundamental constructs, which were here for the first time brought successfully together in a long-term business plan: the necessity for fertile but undeveloped land to be made productive through suitable agricultural use, and the moral degeneracy of the indigent requiring reformation through a suitable training, in the form of work, maintenance and education.5 On one hand, the attention towards a maximisation of domestic agricultural production and the renewed popularity of physiocratic theories in this period was symptomatic of the slow decline of the United Kingdom of Netherlands in the early XIX century. Over the previous century and a half in fact, Netherlands had heavily relied on importation of primary agricultural goods from overseas colonies which had, with their recession, exposed a crucial issue of subsistence of the State. This translated in vast swaths of the already limited local territory being still interested by common rights of use or left to bogs and heathlands, requiring hydraulic and preparatory works before they could be made productive.

On the other hand, the presence of a growing number of indigent people in the national territory was creating an increasing security concern. At this time, the distinction of poverty as a “condition in society where the individual has no surplus labour in store, and, consequently, no property but what is derived from the constant exercise of industry” from indigency as “the state of anyone who is destitute of the means of subsistence, and is unable to labour to procure it to the extent nature requires”6 was a crucial one. Thus, although the English translations of van den Bosch proposal generally render the word armen as poor, it is clear that the subjects of the Society of Benevolence have been since the beginning the indigent. While the poor where in fact seen essential to the functioning of the state, as only through the labour of some there could be the surplus production necessary for the wealth of others, the indigent were seen as the evil of society, as their condition implied want, misery and distress.7 The aim of the Society of Benevolence would then be the education of the indigent and the elevation of their morals and degeneracy through work; seen as a means of achieving “a higher level of civilisation, enlightenment and effectiveness.”8 The Internal Colonisation

Opposite page: 3. Wilelmsoord colony, view of two plots, 1830.

In the foreground are the colonists houses surrounded by gardens and with an agricultural field behind. The plantation of trees in front of the houses was laden with symbolism. (Koloniën van Weldadigheid) 4. View of a colonist house and garden in Frederiksoord (Koloniën van Weldadigheid) 5. Colonists working in the fields in Merksplas.

(Koloniën van Weldadigheid)

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9. The seven Colonies of Benevolence are: I. Fredriksoord (1818-1820); II. Wilhelminaoord (1821-1823); III. Willemsoord (1820-1822); IV. Ommerschans (1819); V. Wortel (1822); VI. Veenhuizen (1823); VII. Merksplas (1825). Only the first three colonies where free. The Steering Group Colonies of Benevolence on the way to World Heritage 2018, 245.

10. This is the case of the marken in the Drenthe region. The Steering Group Colonies of Benevolence on the way to World Heritage 2018, 71.

11. Each colonist was required to abide to a strict rule as to what he would be allowed to plant in his garden for decorative purposes. These gardens were in fact highly symbolic and the planting would reflect the level of the colonist in the hierarchical order of the Society of Benevolence. The Steering Group Colonies of Benevolence on the way to World Heritage 2018, 108.

12. The size of the colonist’s agricultural field was increased with every new colony, as it became immediately evident that no farmer would be able to meet the production requirements for subsistence and debt repayment.

From mid XIX century most of the smaller plots where merged in centralised farms of about 50 ha; rigidly disciplined by the Society of Benevolence. The Steering Group Colonies of Benevolence on the way to World Heritage 2018, 84.

13. In the second half of the XIX century Besme, architect and urban planner, had also been responsible for the major renovation of the city of Brussels. His appointment clearly indicates both the national and institutional aspirations of the Society of Benevolence.

The consolidation of the relationship of these two constructs and creation of an environment where their reciprocal reformation would play out in its entirety was crystallised in the project of the Society of Benevolence. This would propose the creation of a system of discipline placing a particular emphasis on the reformative qualities of gardening as a practice in the wider sense. The proposal, after having gained the patronage of Prince Frederik, was ready to test on the field its double domestication bid through the creation of the first of a series of 7 domestic colonies, known from then on as Colonies of Benevolence.9 Its same name, Frederiksoord, in honour to the Prince, was emblematic of a colonialist approach which was now being applied to the domestic territory of the mother land.

The unravelling of this approach would in the first instance affect the definition of ownership of land in the selected areas surrounding existing villages (Fig. 2). These areas, often part of a system hereditary rights of use,10 or making up the common areas for the use of village population, would go through a series of interventions aimed at the instauration of an intensive agricultural regime. The Colony of Benevolence would therefore overlay its geometric scheme onto the existing landscape, aimed to a sedentary model and rigid definition of use of the territory. Within it, every plot would be defined as a farm; consisting of a house for the colonist family, a 2.4 ha agricultural field behind it and small garden providing herbs, fruit, vegetables and the adequate decorum to colonist life.11 (Fig. 3) Every individual plot would have provided for the self-subsistence of the family and produce a surplus, offered to the Society of Benevolence as a repayment in exchange for the admission to the colony and the use of the land and buildings, including facilities provided, such as laundries, school, workshops et al.12 This would substantiate in the contraction of a 16 year’s debt, the clearing of which would determine whether the colonist had been successful, thus free to return to society.

The experiment of the Colonies of Benevolence would rapidly scrap its most liberal precepts and turn into a judicial system in an arc of less than 5 years from the inauguration of Frederiksoord. The process of stiffening of the discipline and control over the territory and what were by now effectively inmates, started already in the 1820s, would be fully completed between 1874 and 1884. This corresponded to the redesign of Merksplas colony – Colony of Benevolence no.07 – by Belgian architect Victor Besme13 and the redefinition of the colony as a state labour institute for persons convicted of secondary offences (Fig. 6).

The colony would thus transform into a highly centralised penal establishment, where the inmates would be deployed as free labour in the fields surrounding the central institution during the day, but would be required to return to it at the end of their duties.

The Internal Colonisation

Opposite page: 6. Colored lithograph of Victor Besme's project for Merksplas, L. Gorby, 1904. (Koloniën van Weldadigheid)

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3. From domestic colonies to Colonizzazione Interna

14. Lit. The Internal Colonisation, in its applications by means of the agrarian penal colonies.

Andrea Doria, La Colonizzazione Interna Nelle Sue Applicazioni Col Mezzo Delle Colonie Penali Agricole, 1st ed. (Roma: Tipo� grafia delle Mantellate, 1912).

15. In 1890 the recently instituted Regno d’Italia publishes the first unitary codex of penal laws, the Codice Zanardelli; while in 1904 the Legge 26 giugno 1904 allows the government to employ inmates in the operations of land reclamation across the kingdom.

16. Giampaolo Salice, ‘Popolare Con Stranieri. Colonizzazione Interna Nel Settecento Sabaudo’, ASEI / Archivio Storico Dell’Emigrazione Italiana, no. 13 (2017): 118–25.

17. Doria, with all the pomp of the time, describes it thus “man improves the land, and the land improves man” (l’uomo migliora la terra, e questa migliora l’uomo). See also Sabrina Pud� du, ‘Colonie Penali Agricole in Sardegna. Appunti per Una Comprensione Dei Principi Insediativi’, in La Colonia Penale Di Porto Conte. Una Ricerca per La Storia e Il Restauro Dell’architettura Moderna in Sardegna,

by Giorgio Peghin and G Zini (Sassari: Delfino Editore, 2015), 69–79.

18. The action of normalization would span from the penal colony to the surrounding land and communities. See Sabrina Puddu, ‘Agrarian Penal Colonies and the Project of Modern Rurality in Italy’ (Fifth International Conference, Architectural Histoy Network, Tallin, Estonia, 2018).

In 1912, Alessandro Doria, then General Director of the Prisons and Reformatories (Direttore Generale dei Carceri e Riformatori), published a report regarding the state of Italian penal colonies, tellingly titled La Colonizzazione Interna, nelle sue applicazioni, col mezzo delle Colonie penali agricole.14 This was the first exhaustive report examining both the theoretical basis and physical appearance and production of a number of agricultural penal colonies which were instituted in the major islands of Sardinia and the Tuscany archipelago, starting from 1858. Having the legislative background been consolidated between 1890 and 1904,15 Doria was now aiming to set a solid theoretical background for the Italian agrarian penal colonies, also in view of mounting concerns relating to the failure of similar models elsewhere in the western European area.

The main confrontation would unsurprisingly be with the Dutch model of the Colonies of Benevolence, which during the period of institution of the Italian penal colonies in the second half of the XIX century, had to face the failure of its original model, in particular due of an irremediable lacking of surplus production, reverting thus to a carcereal regime of forced open air labour.

The Italian theoretical model would thus be essentially different from the Dutch one, and would revolve over a series of strategies which were in part the crystallisation of previous failed projects of re-definition and parcellation of sparsely populated or unproductive areas of the – now – national territory, under the precepts of Colonizzazione Interna. (Fig. 7) The definition of land, still vastly interested by late feudal rights of use, had in particular created, since the early XVIII century, continuous apprehension in the administrative elites, preoccupied with ensuring the productivity of underexploited areas.16 The precepts of the Colonizzazione Interna would thus play out as a response to these various national drives and international experiences through a series of strategies that can be identified as: the temporality of the colony, the breadth of production, and the autarchic ideal. These strategies would be carried out in practice with respect to the overarching mission of moral reformation of the inmate, unravelling through the ideals of education, production and decorum; to be achieved thanks to the double disciplinary purpose of open-air labour, in a similar way to the Dutch example.17

The temporality of the colony constituted the basic working principle of the Italian agrarian penal colony as an instrument for territorial normalisation.18 Emerging as a response to previous failed attempts to initiate the civil colonisation of sparsely populated and undeveloped land, which had either recently passed under the ownership of the state with the dissolution of vast feudal possession, or were still entangled in a series of late feudal rights of use, the agrarThe Internal Colonisation

Opposite page: 7. Map of Asinara showing private and state owned areas before the expropriation of the island, 1847. (Archivio di Stato di Sassari).

8. Cala d'Oliva village, showing the overlay of penal colony and pre-esxisting village, 2018.

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19. Sabrina Puddu, ‘This Is Not the Square of a Rural Village. It Is a Prison’, Trans, no. 28 (2016): 82–87.

20. The original text reads: “La diversità di colture e di allevamenti ha fatto adottare anche un ordinamento tecnico e amministrativo pratico e utilissimo, che certamente l’Italia non ha imitato da altri paesi.” Doria, La Colonizzazione Interna, 216.

21. See The Steering Group Colonies of Benevolence on the way to World Heritage 2018, ‘Colonies of Benevolence, Nomination File for Inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage List’, 203; Doria, La Colonizzazione Interna, 214.

ian penal colonies where in fact defined in relation to the territory as preparatory machines. In Doria’s report, it is clear how the role of the penal colony was primarily one of determination and parcellation of the vast property; to quash illegitimate pretences of use and set up a clear distribution of proprietary rights.

This preparatory role, working at a physical level through the reclamation of unsanitary or fertile but unexploited land, and at a legal level through the institution of private property over the parcellated land; would pose the basis for a future civil colony formed by productive, law-abiding and decorous farmersowners (agricoltori-proprietari); to be implanted once the agrarian penal colony had completed its mission and migrated somewhere else. Seen from this point of view it is clear how the same organisational principle of the settlements relates to their future projected use. These would in fact be organised around a proto-urban core, laid so as to follow the distributive principles of rural villages, or sometimes – such as in the case of Cala d’Oliva in the Asinara penal colony – actually overlaid on existing village settlements (Fig. 8); and a series of decentralised branches (diramazioni) scattered over the countryside.19 The temporal structure of the Italian agrarian penal colony is thus diametrically opposite to the Colonies of Benevolence’s organisational model, in both the theoretical and physical set up. The latter were in fact thought as structures which would insist on a territory over an indefinite period of time, essentially producing a strictly regulated model where the central institution would closely spread over a densely populated area with a recognisably urban grid, with no pretences of turning the colonised land back to the community in the future. Instead the Society of Benevolence would, through the colonies, promote the refinement of the productive environment and technique through a purely business-like model, whose variables would be defined by merely organisational aspects: the proper distance between farm-houses and their appearance to promote a decorous and moral life; the size of individual agricultural fields and gardens to allow for a suitable surplus for the benefit of the Society of Benevolence; the duration of a cycle of colonists to repay their debt with appropriate returns to the Society of Benevolence.

The breadth of production was defined by Doria as a particularly original aspect of the Italian agrarian penal colony, allowing for a “very practical and advantageous technical and administrative organisational model, which certainly Italy has not copied from any other country.”20 This was clearly a response to the failure of the international models, in particular the Dutch one, which Doria specifically critiqued for their “very limited aims” (fini assai circoscritti). The breadth of the Italian model would thus develop through the combination of vastity of land – the biggest of the Italian colonies in Castiadas, Sardinia, owned 6,523 ha; while the sum of the 7 Dutch colonies owned collectively 2,300 ha21.

– and variety of production – from agriculture to fruit, vegetables, arboriculture, The Internal Colonisation

Opposite page: 9. View of orchard and hortus in Asinara penal Colony, 1930s. (Private collection) 10. Poultry and hortus surrounded by a wall in Asinara penal colony, 1950.

(Private collection)

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Location Elighemann (Lecceto

Sub-location

1912 (A.Doria)

Agricultural Area

Legumi (beans) Cereals Pasture on rotation Lecceto (holly oak) Castagno (chestnut tree)

Mountain Area Cala d'Oliva

Urban area 8ha

1968 (EFTAS)

1986-1990 (Cassitta book)

Poultry with trees Hortus (vegetable garden)

Cala della Lavanderia

Cemetery

[Decorative? Gardens] Direttore Maresciallo Ragioniere Capellano Cemetery

[Frutteto 2ha (orchard)

[Frutteto 2ha (orchard)

Hortus (vegetable garden)

Hortus (vegetable garden)

u

e Saucco/Maria Rosaria

eria

u Vignarella Case Bianche

Trabuccato

Agricultural Area

Frutteto (orchard) Vigneto Frutteto (orchard) Vigneto [agricoltura semintensiva]

Vigneto 5ha (1)

[Vigneto] 15ha.

Cereals Ortaggi Vigneto 60 hl/year

[Legumi da sovescio] Lupino con scorie Thomas [Legumi da seme] Frumento (wheat) Avena (oat) [Fieni] (hay) Veccio Avena (oat) Sulla (french honeysuckle?)

Meliga (maize?)

Tumbarino

Sant'Andrea

Erba medica (lucerne?)

Agricultural Area (2) (inc. Santa Maria)

[Legumi da sovescio] Lupino con scorie Thomas Frumento (wheat) Avena (oat) Granturco (maize, corn)

Fornelli

55ha [agricoltura semintensiva] Frumento (wheat)

[Vigneto] 15ha.

Cannonau Vermentino Pascale Muristellu Bovale Nuragus

140 ha

[Fieni] (hay)

Urban Area

Generally

[Frutteto 2ha (orchard)] (4) Agrumi Pero Fico Melograno Cotogno

Hortus

Sulla (french honeysuckle?)

[Cereals] Frumento (wheat) Avena (oat) [Bacelline] Fave (broad bean) Piselli (pea) Oliveto (olive trees)

Campu Perdu

Hortus (vegetable garden) (3) Pomodori da conserva (tomato)

Testimonies

Poultry with trees Hortus (vegetable garden)

Erba medica (lucerne?)

Elighemannu 5ha La Reale

2010 (Piano del Parco)

Grano (wheat) Avena (oat) Mais (maize, corn) Orzo (barley) Cemetery

Cemetery

Decorative garden

Decorative garden

Rimboschimento Leccio Pino marittimo Pino domestico Pino Corso Olivastro Cedro Licio Pioppo Canadese

Ripristino e protezione Leccio

Olivastro Ginepro Euphorbia dendroides Centaurea Horrida

Paolo Emilio Pisano

300-350 ha

450 ha total

700-800 ha (inc santa maria)

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dairy, animal rearing. (Fig. 11) These two elements were strictly related at one and the same time to the structuring of the colony in diramazioni, which could respond to the particular environment where they were set-up with specialised infrastructure aimed at improving production of the most suitable kind; and a pragmatic view of the inmate as not necessarily suitable to or skilled in the production of one particular crop. Thus, a variety of produce would ensure the maximum potential to be extracted from every colonist based on his disposition and respond in part to the reformatory mission of the colony, allowing the inmate to acquire a wider set of skills and paving the way for his successful future return to civil society. In a sense the strategy of widening the production pool of the Italian colonies seemed for a time to be successful, if compared to the Dutch model. In fact, while the Colonies of Benevolence registered their first profit from agriculture and cattle breeding in 1869 – more than 50 years after their first opening – Italian colonies such as the Asinara penal colony – opened in 1885 – had by 1912 registered at least 2 consecutive years of profit;22 although this should be seen more as a measure of the productivity of the colony, than an actual financial profit for the carcereal administration.

22. Antonio Gambardella, ‘Nascita Ed Evoluzione Delle Colonie Penali Agricole Durante Il Regno d’Italia’, Rassegna Penitenziaria e Criminologica, no. 1 (2008): 7–69.

23. For a wider understanding of the theme, see Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish : The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage Books, 1979).

24. Carmelo Grassi, ‘Colonie Penitenziarie’, in Enciclopedia Giuridica Italiana, vol. III (Mi�lano: Società Editrice Libraria, 1912), 175-177.

The autarchic ideal is in fact the last strategical response to the international experiences. This should be seen in relation to the debate, which gained force over the second half of the XIX century, in the aftermath of the evolution of the role of forced labour from an essentially humiliating, punitive activity to a reformative one.23 The contrasting positions would revolve over free labour as merely reformative and capable of offering the necessary self-subsistence, or as something that should provide a surplus value. The Italian response to the debate, also in virtue of the penal colonies projected future community, would not necessarily see the necessity of a surplus value in the labour of the inmates.

These would in fact be expected to produce, with their work, the necessary stock to allow the carcereal society in its wider sense – including administration, officials, ancillary workers and their families – to lead a self-sufficient existence.

Thus, while examples such as the Colonies of Benevolence were often guided by a business model aimed at surplus production and profit, necessary for the successful propagation of the institution; the Italian model would aim to produce, over the life-span of the colony, an ideally autarchic society, which could then be passed to the new civil owners.24 The implementation of this strategy takes on particular importance when considering that most of the Italian agricultural penal colonies where founded in the clearly demarcated territory of domestic islands – and sometimes in secondary islands, contingent to even the already peripheric status of the first. In view of their condition of isolation and relatively scarce connection with the mainland, it was thus essential for the future project of civil colonisation that these territories could support themselves through a comprehensive and efficient autarchic production, turning thus the physiocratic The Internal Colonisation

Opposite page: 11. Matrix of land use in Asinara.

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drive of the state into defined, condensed cores of perfect self-sufficiency.

A constellation of attempted self-sufficient cores would thus represent the pervasive project of the agrarian penal colony through the concentration of the above strategies into the rigid boundaries of minor islands. By introducing an increasing degree of territorial characterisation and specialisation these would in fact re-define the entirety of the island in relation to the penal colony as a wider society, its inherent requirements and needs; producing thus extremely paradigmatic settlements. This is particularly true of the case of the Asinara, a minor island separated from the north-western tip of Sardinia by a narrow strait. From 1885 on, the institution of an agrarian penal colony, occupying its whole 5,900 ha. extension, pursued here the creation of an order of discipline that would place a particular emphasis on the reformative qualities of gardening in the wider sense. Articulating through this circumscribed territory, this would thus produce an extremely paradigmatic environment where what is by now the gardener reformation could unravel.

4. The Gardener Reformation “Dal Mare non nascono né vite né ulivo, ma le isole, si, che danno loro radice.”25

25. “Neither vine nor olive trees are born from the sea, but islands are, which give them roots.”

Massimo Cacciari, L’arcipelago (Milano: Adelphi, 1997), 16.

26. Although the island was known as Insula Herculis in antiquity, the name Asinara is in fact a corruption of the later, medieval name Sinuaria, of the sinuous shape. This name is sometimes wrongly attributed to the considerable presence of donkeys (asini) in the island. Casalis, Goffredo. Dizionario geograficostorico-statistico-commerciale degli stati di S. M. il Re di Sardegna. G. Maspero, 1833, 412-423.

27. Michele Gutierrez, Antonello Mattone, and Franca Valsecchi, L’isola dell’Asinara: l’ambiente, la storia, il parco (Nuoro: Poliedro, 1998), 94-102.

In virtue - or in spite - of its segregation, the island of the Asinara had for century existed in a primeval condition, torn between a seasonal but flourishing coastal activity and a sparsely inhabited interior. Occupying a key strategic position as the breakwater of the gulf of Porto Torres and thanks to its sinuous shape,26 the island offered a safe haven throughout the year and the perfect conditions for the installation of a network of control towers. This made it an essential outpost for any mercantile or political power aspiring to laying pretences of control around the surrounding area of the Mediterranean. The combination of a displacement in mercantile routes from the XVII century and the rise of the Italian Nation State in the XIX century provoked a major shift in this panorama.

The same notion of island, on the wane of its relevance in commercial trades, was relegated to a marginal, peripherical role in the politics of the sovereign state, whose aim was now the normalisation of the state of exception of its territory. This materialised in a push towards introversion through repopulation and intensification of agricultural production.

In this context, the institution of the penal colony and – for a period – of a sanitary station27 from 1885 on, introduced at one time a forceful definition of the territory into strict, specific units, (Fig. 12) which represented the new paradigms of the island as projected by the carcereal administration. What was The Internal Colonisation

Opposite page: 12. Cartographic map of Asinara showing branches and locations.

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A.

B.

C.

D.

E..

F.

G.

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once a territory interested by a dynamic and agile constellation of rights of use, modulating the inhabitant’s pretensions of tenure over swaths of land, became fixed into a long-term project aimed towards the accomplishment of maximum productivity of soil, to achieve an ideal autarchic model of subsistence. The segregation of the island became thus a fundamental aspect in the promotion of the autarchic tenet, which would be instrumental to a later colonisation by a productively fit civil society.

28. Since its formation in 1861 the Regno had shown a renewed interest for a crackdown on feudal rights of use and a resulting parcellation of land and redistribution of smaller, easier to control portion of the territory through a legal regime of private property (proprietà perfetta).

Doria, La Colonizzazione Interna, 7-12.

29. Asinara was granted as a feud to the Marquis of Mores (Antonio Manca) by the Sabaudian Monarch in 1775 for the price of 70.000 Piedmontese lire.

It is unclear whether the feud included the whole island or only the area to the north of Cala degli Stretti. By 1885, time of the creation of the penal colony, the land ownership of the Asinara was split in two main areas: to the south of Cala degli Stretti, where Fornelli is located, it was state-owned (demaniale); while the north was interested by late feudal rights of use (ademprivio and cussorgia) where the land had over time been appropriated and enclosed by its inhabitants, by means of rights of property through uninterrupted inhabitation and use. For more information see Andrea Cossu, Xavier Monbailiu, and Antonio Torre, L’isola dell’Asinara, Guide e itinerari ambientali (Sassari: Carlo Delfino Editore, 1994); Ente Parco Nazionale dell’Asinara, ‘Piano Del Parco Nazionale Dell’Asinara - Area Marina Protetta “Isola Dell’Asinara”, Relazione Generale’, 2010.

The paradigms of the Island would thus unravel through a series of elements, responding to site specific potential. In this wider context, some of them would eventually crystallise into the definition of the notions of decorum, production and education which embodied the project of reformation of the inmates through what were essentially gardening practices.

5. The Village: Decorum It’s on the 7th of May, 1885 that a Surveying Commission from the Ministry of the Interior, after many deliberations, eventually identified the small village of Cala d’Oliva as the ideal site for the creation of a modern agrarian penal colony and the outpost for the internal colonisation of the island of Asinara. The choice of place was revealing, as it would expose the push for appropriation of the territory by the newly born state entity known as Regno d’Italia28. In fact, through the expropriation of the whole of the northern part of the island, where Cala d’Oliva is located, from its original inhabitants, the State would finally align an axis of control spanning from the area of influence of the village to the north, to the area of Fornelli to the South.29 Part of a territorial system of seasonal routes, strategically located to keep the whole gulf surrounding it at ease of reach and from the XVI century under the protection of two coastal control towers and their vaster surveillance system (Fig. 13F); Cala d’Oliva was occupied at intervals since primeval times. The village acquired its most stable character from 1768 on, when the failure of an attempt of colonisation by the Marseillese Velixandre brothers marked the quashing of any forms of external colonisation. The aftermath of the failed attempt saw return to the island of its most recently settled inhabitants, comprised of shepherds from the Nurra region and Ligurian fishermen from Camogli. The short civil history of the village was thus obliterated after a little more than one hundred years, replaced by the judicial system of the penal colony. This would impose a new organisational model centred around the institutional complex of the Diramazione Centrale and its ancillary edifices and stratify a new system of

The Internal Colonisation

Opposite page: 13. Cartographic map of Cala d'Oliva Village: A. Diramazione Centrale di Cala d’Oliva B. Cala d’Oliva cemetery C. Kitchen garden D. Houses and gardens of the officials E. Lavanderia F. Tower of Cala d’Oliva G. Cala Murighessa or Cala della Lavanderia

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meaning and hierarchy over the existing structures of the village in an overtly ideological move, aligning with the new precepts of Colonizzazione Interna (Internal Colonisation).30 Thus, the village of Cala d’Oliva and its newly founded productive rural environment, suitably established by free labour force in the figure of the colony inmates, would eventually be returned to a community of private proprietors able to upkeep the thriving local economy.

A scenography of traces dotted the way to the village through the only road leading to it from Trabuccato. These would have had an instrumental role in introducing the traveller, be him an inmate, official or visitor, to the adequate or proper expression (decorum) of the carcereal institution and, consequently, of what was expected of the inmate life and labour. An oliveto was thus planted on a steep hill rolling down towards the sea and lovingly tended by one of the colonists; anticipating a breath-taking view over Cala Murighessa, framed by eucalyptus trees on one side and a coastal control tower – the Cala d’Oliva one – on the other. Tellingly the cala had been also nicknamed of the inmates (dei detenuti), as this was where the inmates were brought for their weekly dip. On the other side of the road, a small orchard and hortus were annexed to the laundry of the village (lavanderia), where inmates also work (Fig. 13E; 14).

30. For more information on the exporpriation of the Asinara, and the notion of Colonizzazione Interna in general, see Doria, La Colonizzazione Interna; Grassi, ‘Colonie Penitenziarie’; Agostino Depretis, ‘Relazione Sull’Esproprio Dell’Isola Dell’Asinara, Presentata Al Consiglio Dei Ministri Il 16 Giugno 1885’, 1885; Puddu, ‘Colonie Penali Agricole in Sardegna. Appunti per Una Comprensione Dei Principi Insediativi’; Puddu, ‘Agrarian Penal Colonies and the Project of Modern Rurality in Italy’.

31. Ente Parco Nazionale dell’Asinara, ‘Piano Del Parco Nazionale Dell’Asinara - Area Marina Protetta “Isola Dell’Asinara”, Relazione Generale’, 23-24.

32. The original reads: “direttore, maresciallo, ragioniere, cappellano” Giampaolo Cassitta and Lorenzo Spanu, Supercarcere Asinara. Viaggio Nell’isola Dei Dimenticati, VII (Genova: Fratelli Frilli Editori, 2007), 52.

The beginning of the urban area was characterised by the remains of cultivated area pre-dating colonial times, also including orchard and hortus. These became part of the system of subsistence of the settlement promoted by the penal colony, extending from here up the hill. Flanking the sinuous road which climbs through the village houses up towards the Diramazione Centrale, it incorporated the working environment for inmates under different regimes of surveillance; from the orchard to the various vegetables and herbs plantations, the poultry and pigstry, onto the dairy and slaughterhouse.31 But this area was strictly separated from the village, contiguous but removed through a wall which claimed the virtue of silence and labour as instrumental to the achievement of the moral reformation of the colonists; until such moment, there was no allowance for mingling with civil society.

The Diramazione Centrale towered monumentally above the village, its courtyard disposition reminiscent of local rural working lodges, which in turn descended from the country-side roman villa. (Fig. 16) The village and Diramazione Centrale role as the institutional fulcrum of the penal colony was underlined by the relatively elaborated decorative aspect of the gardens surrounding the lodges of the officials – director, marshal, accountant, chaplain32 – (Fig. 15) the village cemetery, and the road leading up to the Diramazione Centrale. The practice and upkeeping of the village decorum were an integral part of the reformation of the inmate, which closely related in particular to the re-introduction of the morally disciplined ones, identified through a particular class named sonsegnati. Trusted with a less rigid regime of control and work unThe Internal Colonisation

Opposite page: 14. View of the lavanderia, Cala d'Oliva, 1938. (Private collection) 15. View of official's house.

1938. (Private collection) 16. View of the internal courtyard, Diramazione Centrale di Cala d'Oliva, 1948. (Private collection)

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encumbered by immediate surveillance, the sconsegnati would have a decisive role in overcoming the ideological barrier of moral depravity which the prison administration had imprinted on the inmates, being instead able to have a direct relation with civil society.33 They would often be allowed to keep and take care of their own allotments or crafts of their choice, or sent to work on peripherical areas of the colony, sleeping outside the central institution. Tellingly, one of the most notorious examples of sconsegnati is of one inmate which was allowed to reside in the village lavanderia after this fell into disrepair, and kept there the hortus and orchard, for his own and the society aesthetic pleasure.34

6. The Vineyard: Production

33. Gambardella, ‘Nascita Ed Evoluzione Delle Colonie Penali Agricole Durante Il Regno d’Italia’, 27-28.

34. Cassitta and Spanu, Supercarcere Asinara. Viaggio Nell’isola Dei Dimenticati, 53-57.

35. Carlo Hendel, ‘Torre Trabucato’, Isola AsinarA (blog), 21 June 2017, http://www.isolaasinara.it/torre-trabucato/.

36. Doria, La Colonizzazione Interna; Ente Parco Nazionale dell’Asinara, ‘Piano Del Parco Nazionale Dell’Asinara - Area Marina Protetta “Isola Dell’Asinara”, Relazione Generale’, 150-152.

37. In 1953 the canteen was extended to store up to 1800hl of wine. Carlo Hendel, ‘Storia Agri�cola e Ordinamento Carcerario’, in Asinara. Storia, Natura, Mare e Tutela Dell’ambiente (Sassari: Delfino Editore, 1993), 53–55.

38. For a wider knowledge on the notions of indigence, its relation to immorality and the evolution of the means of proper training, see Patrick Colquhoun, A Treatise on Indigence; Foucault, Discipline and Punish.

39. Dino Grandi, Bonifica Umana, Decennale delle leggi penali e della riforma peniterziaria, vol. I (Roma: Tipografia delle Mantellate, 1941), 41.

La diramazione del vino (the wine branch), thus it was known Trabuccato. Extending between a Spanish control tower on the east (Fig. 17D) and the III period of the Cala Reale sanitary establishment on the west, Trabuccato was part of the wider system of the Reale, which presents the more consistent signs of a continuous inhabitation of the island – at least 60 people in 1703.35 The area, allocated to the Navy in 1885 – was incorporated in that of the Ministry of the Interior already in 1912, to perform a crucial strategic role in reaching the planned autonomy and subsistence of the island. Alessandro Doria described the area in 1912 as a productive hub which, notwithstanding the production of beans and cereals, should be mainly commended for an extensive vigneto, covering 5ha. Doria went on auspicating a project for the increase of the productive vineyard to about 15-20 ha (Fig. 17B). This would have been able to deliver a good variety of local grapes – Cannonau, Vermentino, Pascale, Muristellu, Bovale, Nuragus; so that the island would finally emancipate itself from the import of wine from the mainland.36 The prominence of such an enterprise could be fully understood when thinking that not only the penal colony had to necessarily rely on its own resources in view of its isolation, but also the island had very limited fresh water supplies. Water had in fact to be imported through a cistern-boat for the initial period of existence of the colony and until when infrastructural water works – comprising the creation of dams and artificial ponds – were carried out. The diramazione Trabuccato thus became – through the project of the vineyard and the wine canteens37 – the productive paradigm of the penal colony and its moral reformation programme. (Fig. 17A) The reformatory mission of the colony would be in fact strictly connected with the theory of a reciprocal negative relation of immorality and inertia; which could be corrected through a mean of proper training38 and the instillation of an ideal of productivity. This would lead to a renewed sense of caring for the self and individual possessions, subsistence, and thus, necessarily, moral righteous-

The Internal Colonisation

Opposite page: 17. Cartographic map of Trabuccato: A. Diramazione Trabuccato B. Vineyard of Trabuccato, in darker grey the first phase inspected by Doria C. Trabuccato wine canteen D. Tower of Trabuccato

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ness. In this sense the instigation of open-air labour as a penal obligation39 – not waged but free and essentially virtuous – would be seen as an improvement of the condition of the colonists, who would through his work cater for the needs of the community. This ideal would thus respond not only to the imperative of moral amelioration, but also to the necessity of reintroducing the inmates into a society from which, with their crime, they had removed themselves.

Trabuccato would grow in this way to produce 60 to 100hl of wine per year on a regular basis,40 the vineyard extending over the whole plain in a regular succession of rows, separated by drywalls dividing the different varieties. (Fig. 18)

7. The Plain: Education

40. Cassitta and Spanu, Supercarcere Asinara. Viaggio Nell’isola Dei Dimenticati; Hendel, ‘Storia Agricola e Ordinamento Carcerario’.

41. Francesco Floris, La grande Enciclopedia della Sardegna, vol. 5 (Cagliari: Edizione della Torre, 2002), 67.

42. Carlo Hendel, ‘I dromi di Fornelli’, Isola AsinarA (blog), 12 June 2018, http://www.isolaasinara.it/i-dromi-di-fornelli/.

43. This overlay ascribes the castel to the Malaspina Family.

Ente Parco Nazionale dell’Asinara, ‘Piano Del Parco Nazionale Dell’Asinara - Area Marina Protetta “Isola Dell’Asinara”, Relazione Generale’.

44. Particular uses, either common or through hereditary pretences of property, of extensive feudal property in Sardinia, for more information, see. Giuseppe Todde, ‘Ademprivio (1882)’, in Scritti Economici Sulla Sardegna (Cagliari: Cuec Editrice, 2003), 47-48 and the work of Gian Giacomo Ortu.

Pliny the Elder, in its Naturalis Historia, refers to it as Herculis Insulae.41 A primeval myth recounts how the semi-god detached the smaller island from the vaster extension of Sardinia with its strength, clamping it by its southern tip, just about where Fornelli lays. Thus, since antiquity, the detachment became an essential element in the strategical control of the sailing routes which, through the strait named Passo dei Fornelli, aimed to leave the rough, turbulent mare di fuori – the western Mediterranean Sea – and find solace in the placid waters of the mare di dentro – the Asinara Gulf. But this narrow stretch of sea was as much alluring and promising – of serene waters and a 20 miles shortcut through the circumnavigation of the island – as perilous, as attested by the extensive remains of ancient shipwrecks. In fact, the only safe passage through the strait would be signalled by the alignment of two couplings of furnaces (fornelli)42; their control would essentially mean the domination of the route and, by extension, a crucial surveillance role over the traffic in the gulf. Tellingly, the overlay of myth and history in the island ascribes to the mercantile Ligurian elite43 the establishment of a castle high in the Fornelli mountain range. Together with the control of the furnaces and the mooring area, the castle would ensure their supremacy in the area over the XIII and XIV centuries and be instrumental to the suppression and quenching of the continuous raids carried out by Arab corsairs.

Concurrently, the areas of Fornelli which were not under the direct interest of sea traffic, were inhabited by Sassaresi and Nurresi shepherds, which had obtained rights of ademprivio and cussorgia44 over the extensive territory which was then under feudal control. The rights of use of land were still intact when the territory moved under the ownership of the state (demanio) in XIX century and were consecutively rendered obsolete with a new push for the enclosure of land as a result of the institution of the agrarian penal colony, of which Fornelli The Internal Colonisation

Opposite page: 18. View of the vineyard in Trabuccato, 1938. (Private collection) 19. View of Trabuccato wine canteen, 1965. (Private collection) 20. Wine press at Trabuccato 1938. (Private collection)

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was a strategic outpost on the south of the island. The treatment of the area in Fornelli was in fact a paradigmatic expression of the ethos of what Dino Grandi described in 1941 – during fascist time and with all the pomp of the epoch – as Bonifica Umana, essentially a positivistic view of reclamation of land through the labour of the morally depraved, whose soul would in turn be redeemed and reformed by this very act.45

45. For an understanding of the relation of Colonizzazione interna with previous politics and projects by the Sabaudian State and their reflection on the ideas of privatisation of demanial land see the work of Sabrina Puddu, in particular Sabrina Puddu, ‘Under the Blue Vault of the Sky. Ter�ritorial Discipline and Agrarian Penal Colonies’, Rassegna Di Architettura e Urbanistica, no. 150 (2017): 100–105; Puddu, ‘Colonie Penali Agricole in Sardegna.

Appunti per Una Comprensione Dei Principi Insediativi’; Puddu, ‘Agrarian Penal Colonies and the Project of Modern Rurality in Italy’.

46. This consisted in 1833 of 8 families. Ente Parco Nazionale dell’Asinara, ‘Piano Del Parco Nazionale Dell’Asinara - Area Marina Protetta “Isola Dell’Asinara”, Relazione Generale’, 85-86.

47. Article of Italian penal law enforcing complete control and isolation for dangerous inmates, often related to mafia or terro organisations, see Art. 41 bis co. 2 ss. l. 26.71975, n. 354; Cost. artt.

3, 27, co. 3; CEDU artt. 2, 3, 8.

Grandi thus, although recognising the millenary character of the penalty as punishment and moral reaction, highlighted the intrinsically educational role which a modern agrarian penal colony would have to carry out. This would happen through the instillation of open-air labour, and in particular the practice of gardening in the wider sense. Such a practice would enter the ‘rule’ of the inmate life and be instrumental to the achievement of the educational aim of the penalty. Gardening would thus bring together a moral reformation ideal and a set of skills which could assist the former inmate in carving his own position in civil society. Thus, the grand project involving the colonisation of a largely unexploited fertile plain and reclaiming of marshlands surrounding it was put in motion through the construction of the two branchess of Fornelli (1885) (Fig. 21A) and Santa Maria (1919). (Fig. 21D) These were annexed to the pre-existing core of the shepherd’s village.46 The combination of the two in a vast campaign of land reclamation would eventually lead to the creation of an extensive agricultural area of 700-800 ha. producing a vast variety of legumes, vegetables and hay. (Fig. 21C) But the educational paradigm was also where the failure of the model started to become evident. Far from being the sign of a successful colonisation campaign and expansion, the later addition of the Santa Maria branch should rather be seen as a signifier of the undaunting resolution of an administration not ready to resign to the increasingly penitentiary nature of the area. This matched a renewed effort – after the temporary cessation of all productive activity and transformation of most of the island in a prisoner of war camp during the first world war – to promoting the suitability for colonisation and belated transformation of the land into a productive civil society. Even this last attempt would eventually be crippled in 1938, when Fornelli underwent a restauration process which irremediably turned it into a Sanatorio Giudiziario, (Fig. 23) to front the renewed war effort and the presence of an increasing number of infirm in the prisoner ranks. From there on, the branch started a history of coercive confinement and isolation, reaching its apex in the 1970s, with the enforcing of the recently approved Article 41 bis of the Italian Constitution.47 (Fig. 24) The result was the production of a disciplining apparatus which abandoned its outlook towards the vastity of the open territory and turned all its efforts on the un-redeeming surveillance over single individuals. Thus, the failure of gardening as a practice was manifested in an area enclosed between tall walls and barbed wire, which internalised the open-air ideal and reduced it to the view of a small square secThe Internal Colonisation

Opposite page: 21. Cartographic map of Fornelli: A. Diramazione Fornelli B. Cemetery of Fornelli C. Plain of Fornelli D. Diramazione Santa Maria E. Porto Pagliacca, former marshland

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tion of sky, as the last gesture of grace and solace towards the regulated routine of an otherwise forcedly idle existence.

Other signs would substantiate the shift in this area. The state of demise of the small cemetery and church, only visible signs of a former prisoner of war camp dating to World War I, stands as explicative of the ingrained character of centralism acquired by the high-security branch. This was the only element towards which the definition of the area was now directed. Positioned in an axial location from the moorings on the strait, the high-security branch stood connected through a bush-tree lined road. This enclosed and directed the view towards the entry gate while climbing the gentle steep, raising the edifice above in a better position of control towards a territory about which it was not interested anymore. The four control turrets at a short distance from the main building articulated the centralism of the prison all the more, directed towards one another but not looking at the land around them, to expand but seal once again its strict perimeter of control.

8. The paradigms of the Island In recent times, with the superimposition of a new form of control over the depleted and crumbling carcereal model, the paradigms of the island have shifted again. Their complete reorganisation has been elaborated by the entity known as the Ente Parco, responsible for the definition and actuation of the core strategy of the island - now Parco Nazionale dell’Asinara.

The new paradigms overlaying on the old ones, these have sometimes incorporated previously defined characteristics, but they essentially differ from them in one critical component. This is to be identified with the selective erasure of the coercive aspect of the paradigm through the construction of surrogate memories and its reversal – the protection of the landscape from any attempt of violence.

In fact, while the older paradigms promoted the education and reformation of the colonist-inmate through the productive means of agriculture and gardening, the new paradigms strategically put an emphasis on the preserved landscape, removing value from the destination of use of the territory and placing it onto a number of supposedly original characteristics. These can be experienced through contemplation but, deliberately, not through a direct engagement.

Opposite page: 22. Inmates working in the plain, 1938. (Private collection) 23. Fornelli as a judicial sanatory, 1937. (Private collection) 24. Fornelli as a highsecurity branch, 1970s.

Note the wall built right in the middle of the courtyard, to block views from the cell. (La Nuova Sardegna Archive)

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9. The Park: Epilogue The island as a garden is what remains.

Once the various degrees of coercive activities have abandoned the scenery of the island, the latter survives as a space of exclusion, enveloped by a sea which clearly demarcates its boundaries. There is a certain symbolic proximity between the status of the island as a territory enclosed by the sea, the garden in its derivation from garth or geard (enclosure, fence) and paradise, from pairidaēza (enclosure, park).

Centaurea Horrida (Badarò)

48. In italian this is rendered as deperimento controllato, Ente Parco Nazionale dell’Asinara, ‘Piano Del Parco Nazionale Dell’Asinara - Area Marina Protetta “Isola Dell’Asinara”, Relazione Generale’, 87.

49. The Parco Nazionale dell’Asinara currently counts four terrestrial integral reserve areas, amounting to 590 ha. or 10% of the total surface of the island; and three marine integral reserve areas, amounting roughly to an additional 590 ha. No human access is allowed in integral areas if not for management and research purposes under strict rules of conduct. These were established starting from 1976 and relate to an idiosyncratic character of the nation state, possessing an intrinsic quality as habitat for endemic species and characteristic environment delicately formed in historical times and thus accepted as original. For reference, see Ente Parco Nazionale dell’Asinara.

It is as such that the new paradigm of the Park encompasses and assimilates the rhetoric of the enclosure and exclusion in its core, acting as an apparatus of selective erasure and reconstruction of – often violent – history and memories.

The whole bent on the pursuit of one single objective, the protection, conservation and restitution of the ideal condition of the island as the primeval garden; the achievement of a perfect equilibrium where what is supposedly proper of the island is promoted, while the rest is slowly eroded from the territory as from memory, crumbling away until finally it disappears.

The previous paradigms are thus identified by what remains, a series of signs now devoid of any significance. These, regardless of the bigger, more formally iconic structures and thus part of the reconstructed memory of the park, are a series of drywalls, piers, turrets, terraces, steps, bridges, ditches, pathways; which once served as clear demarcation of the different areas of control and organisation, the gardens of the island. This is the dominion of the scorched Mediterranean scrub; only more regulated, through the rhythmic emergence of marks of enclosure and irrigation, dirt roads and thresholds sinking into it. Small and crumbling structures and buildings emerge from it, looking out towards the innumerable bays and inlets, woodlands and scrub, hills and plains. All encumbered by their own status of controlled ruin,48 yet another method of control to restrict and retain the inaccessibility of certain areas.49

The Park re-establishes the sovereignty of the local institutions over the contested domestic territory. But it does so as a new instance of colonisation, essentially excluding the civil society which was the end subject of the ideal trajectory of colonizzazione interna in the first place. When it does include it, it is as a concession; the permission of surrogate use and regulated enjoyment of the island; crucially failing to re-habilitate its notion.

The Internal Colonisation

Opposite page: 25. The plain of Fornelli overgrown with Mediterranean shrub. Visible are, from fore to back: entrance piers to the former fields; the oblong tower of the Fornelli cimitery church; one of the dromes of Fornelli, 2018.

This Page: 26. Drawing of the Centaurea Horrida.

Endemic plant recorded, at mondial level, only in a very limited area of Sardinia, including the Asinara. The plant is listed as endangered in the IUCN Red List and is protected under the Berne Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats.