Anti-Colonialism and Class Formation: The Eastern Horn of Africa before 1950

Abstract

Nowhere has African adjustment to the postcolonial period entailed more destructive consequences than in the Horn. The conflict over Ethiopian claims to the Somali-inhabited Ogaden, an extensive inland area between the Ethiopian mountains and the Somali rangelands, is rooted in the specific conditions of a region where an African empire and an African nation pursue irreconcilable objectives. Ethiopian rulers vow to maintain the territorial integrity of their empire-state and repudiate the notion that Somali-speaking people, regardless of their current jurisdiction, should be allowed the right of self-determination. Somalis insist that empirical criteria, not the juridical ones preferred by Ethiopia, objectively establish the socio-economic and cultural orientation of the Ogaden Somalis that forms the basis for their nationalist identification