The Untold History of Eritrea’s Northern Red Sea: A Crossroads of Empires and Modern Struggles
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Eritrea’s Northern Red Sea region is a land of stark beauty and layered history. From ancient ports to colonial battlegrounds, this sliver of coastline has been a stage for global power struggles, cultural exchange, and resilience. Today, as the Red Sea becomes a flashpoint for geopolitical tensions, understanding this region’s past is more urgent than ever.
Long before modern borders, the port city of Adulis thrived as the maritime heartbeat of the Aksumite Kingdom (1st–7th centuries CE). Ships from Rome, India, and Persia docked here, unloading spices, ivory, and glass in exchange for African gold and slaves. The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, a Greco-Roman navigational guide, described Adulis as "a legally limited port" – hinting at early trade regulations.
By the 7th century, shifting trade routes and the rise of Islam marginalized Adulis. For centuries, its ruins lay buried until 19th-century European explorers "discovered" them – a narrative that erases local oral histories. Recent excavations reveal Aksumite-era Christian basilicas, challenging stereotypes about pre-colonial African societies.
In 1557, the Ottomans seized Massawa, transforming it into a slave-trading hub. Coral-block forts like Badel still stand, their walls whispering stories of resistance. The Habesh Eyalet (Ottoman Eritrea) became notorious as the "Blood Coast," where Ethiopian highlanders raided lowland communities for captives to sell. This trauma echoes in today’s ethnic tensions.
Few know that Massawa was once the main export channel for Yemeni coffee. Ottoman tax records show that by 1700, over 60% of Mocha beans passed through Eritrean ports – an early example of global commodity chains exploiting African geography.
When Italy colonized Eritrea in 1890, they rebuilt Massawa with Art Deco lighthouses and a railway to Asmara. The 1938 Piano Regolatore envisioned a "White City" for 50,000 Italian settlers – complete with opera houses and segregated beaches. Today, these ghostly structures serve as Airbnb curiosities while locals grapple with unpaid colonial reparations.
The 1941 Battle of Massawa saw Italian forces scuttle 27 ships to block the British – creating one of the world’s most hazardous ship graveyards. Divers now recover unexploded ordnance beside coral-encrusted tanks, a surreal metaphor for unresolved colonial legacies.
During the 1970s, the USSR turned the Dahlak Archipelago into a secret nuclear submarine base. Declassified CIA memos reveal panic over "Project Anadyr" – Soviet plans to station missiles here during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The islands’ nomadic Dahlak fishermen were forcibly relocated, their ancestral waters poisoned by leaking fuel.
When Eritrea fought for independence (1961–1991), the Marxist Derg regime turned Massawa into a killing zone. In 1990, they carpet-bombed the city with cluster munitions, destroying 80% of buildings. Survivors still find bomblets in schoolyards – a grim parallel to contemporary Gaza.
Northern Red Sea beaches are now departure points for Yemen-bound refugees. In 2023, over 1,200 Eritreans drowned attempting the crossing – yet EU funds for coastal surveillance dwarf humanitarian aid. A local fisherman told me: "We pull bodies from the same waters where our ancestors traded pearls."
The Massawa Free Port Project, funded by Chinese loans, aims to revive ancient trade routes. Satellite images show dredging destroying mangrove forests critical for carbon sequestration. Meanwhile, the UAE’s military base in Assab (just south) turns Eritrea into a new node in the India-Middle East-Europe Corridor (IMEC) rivalry.
Deep-sea mining companies eye the Red Sea Rift’s polymetallic sulfides. Eritrea’s 2021 deal with Polaris Metals risks repeating colonial resource extraction – all while ignoring the region’s black smoker vents, home to extremophile microbes that could revolutionize medicine.
Every dawn, Afar salt miners still hack slabs from the Dahlak salt flats, loading camel trains bound for Ethiopia. This 2,000-year-old practice now contends with climate change – temperatures here hit 63°C (145°F) in 2022, melting the salt roads. UNESCO debates listing the trade as "intangible heritage," but miners demand concrete support.
In the Dahlak Islands, women-led cooperatives are reviving pearl diving – once banned by Italian colonizers who monopolized the trade. Using recycled wetsuits and GoPros, they document reef health while earning incomes. "Our grandmothers dove with no oxygen," says leader Aisha Mohammed. "Now we dive for data."
As Saudi Arabia’s NEOM megacity rises across the Red Sea, Eritrea faces pressure to "modernize." But the Northern Red Sea’s true value lies not in its strategic location, but in its people’s uncanny ability to adapt – whether as Aksumite merchants, Ottoman resistance fighters, or climate-change innovators. The next chapter won’t be written in boardrooms of Dubai or D.C., but in the coral-stone alleys of Massawa and the windswept camps of Afar nomads.