Eritrean Nationalism Research Articles

The Resurgence of Religious and Ethnic Identities among Eritrean Refugees: A Response to the Government’s Nationalist Ideology

This article explores processes of identity formation in Eritrean diaspora communities that have reverted to subnational patterns of identification grounded in the historical-political crises of their homeland. Refugees from Eritrea’s open-ended national service have ambivalent feelings towards their national identity: on the surface, they stress the cohesiveness of the Eritrean people, but in their daily lives they embrace ethnic or religious communities. I elaborate the dilemmas of identity formation in the transnational space between religious and ethnic affiliations and Eritrean nationalism. I analyse the expansion of ethnolinguistic and regional associations among diaspora communities and discuss their impact on identity formation. I link cleavages along ethnic and religious lines to collective memories and the government’s attempts to eradicate subnational identities. The study is based on long-term participant observation and semi-structured interviews with Eritreans in exile, and engages with relevant bodies of literature discussing identity formation in African and diaspora contexts.

Borders and boundaries in the state-making of Eritrea: revisiting the importance of territorial integrity in the rapprochement between Eritrea and Ethiopia

ABSTRACTIn this article, the author analyses Eritrean state-making and its foreign policy as driven by the quest for territorial integrity. The article first demonstrates the importance of creating a territorial nation-state for Eritrean nationalism. It subsequently provides an interpretation of Eritrean foreign policy through the lens of the importance of territorial integrity. The article then reflects on how this has underpinned the recent rapprochement between Eritrea and Ethiopia. It ends with some thoughts on what these developments might mean for the future of Eritrea and the wider geopolitical environment of the Horn.

Indigenous Peoples in Eritrea, 2019

Eritrea borders the southern Red Sea in the Horn of Africa. It emerged as an Italian colonial construct in the nineteenth century, which was superimposed over indigenous populations. Eritrea’s current population is between 4.4 and 5.9 million inhabitants. There are at least four indigenous peoples: the Afar (between 4 and 12% of the total population), Kunama (2%), Saho (4%) and Nara (>1%). These groups have inhabited their traditional territories for approximately two thousand years. They are distinct from the two dominant ethnic groups by language (four different languages), religion (Islam), economy (agro and nomadic pastoral), law (customary), culture and way of life. All four indigenous groups are marginalized and persecuted. Following a United Nations Resolution of 1950 calling for the federation of Ethiopia with the Eritrean colony that Britain had captured from the Italians, a federation was established in 1952. Tensions rose immediately when Ethiopia interfered with the Eritrean courts and executive. An armed national liberation struggle broke out in the 1960s when Ethiopia abolished Eritrea’s official languages, imposed Ethiopia’s national language, Amharic, dissolved the federation and annexed Eritrea. The ensuing thirty years struggle succeeded in 1991 when the current regime marched into the capital and took power. Following a referendum in 1993 Eritrea seceded from Ethiopia to form a new state. Eritrean nationalism emanates from the two large ethnic groups (80% of total population combined) that control power and resources. This nationalism is based on suppressing sub-state identities, which the elites see as threatening to the nation building process. In particular, the indigenous peoples have been pressured by the government’s policy of eradicating identification along regional and religious lines. The regime expropriates indigenous lands without compensation and has partially cleansed indigenous peoples from their traditional territories by violence. The existence of indigenous peoples as intact communities is under threat by government policies aimed at destroying indigenous cultures, economies, landholdings and, for some, their nomadic and pastoral lifestyles. Eritrea is a party to the CERD, CEDAW and CRC but not to ILO Convention 169 or the UNDRIP. It is the subject of complaints to the UNHRC, the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in Eritrea, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Eritrea (all of which sustained the allegations) and the Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Peoples. The complaints allege mass murder, ethnic cleansing, displacement of indigenous peoples from their traditional territories and intentional destruction of the indigenous economy.

Indigenous Peoples in Eritrea

Eritrea borders the southern Red Sea in the Horn of Africa. It emerged as an Italian colonial construct in the nineteenth century, which was superimposed over indigenous populations. Eritrea’s current population is between 4.4 and 5.9 million inhabitants. There are at least four indigenous peoples: the Afar (between 4 and 12%), Kunama (2%), Saho (4%) and Nara (>1%). These groups have inhabited their traditional territories for approximately two thousand years. They are distinct from the two dominant ethnic groups by language (four different languages), religion (Islam), economy (agro and nomadic pastoral), law (customary), culture and way of life. All four indigenous groups are marginalized and persecuted. The current regime waged a thirty year national liberation struggle which succeeded in a taking power in 1991, and effected secession from Ethiopia in 1993 to form a new State. A form of Eritrean nationalism emanates from the two large ethnic groups which control power and resources. It is based on suppressing sub-state identities which the elites see as threatening to the nation building process. In particular, the indigenous peoples have been pressured by the government’s policy of eradicating identification along regional and religious lines. The regime expropriates indigenous lands without compensation, and has partially cleansed indigenous peoples from their traditional territories by violence. The existence of indigenous peoples as intact communities is under threat by government policies aimed at destroying indigenous cultures, economies, landholdings and, for some, their nomadic and pastoral lifestyles. Eritrea is a party to the CERD, CEDAW and CRC but not to ILO Convention 169 or the UNDRIP. It is the subject of complaints to the UNHRC (which has sustained the allegations) and to the Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Peoples. The complaints allege mass murder, ethnic cleansing, displacement of indigenous peoples from their traditional territories and intentional destruction of the indigenous economy.

English

The post-2001 Eritrea is repeatedly viewed as North Korea of Africa: small state with isolationist foreign policy that could not burden totalitarianism, that the critical young generation is leaving the state and the remaining population is in a military uniform waiting for an imaginary enemy, that all the critical state institutions are decayed, that the port-based (Massawa and Assab) national economy lost its economic comparative and competitive advantage to Djibouti for decades to come, as a result the policy of “self-reliance” in era of globalization proved to be incompatible with the “Singaporization” of Eritrea. The regime has leased the Eritrean ports to Gulf states like Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates, military based for Sunni Arab states fighting the Shiites in Yemen, to prolong regime survival at the expense of Eritrea’s long term interests which will make Eritrea a proxy base for Middle East’s superpower military competition. Eritrea is thus in the process of becoming a second Somalia in a region where fragile states are pervasive, and the neighboring states mainly Ethiopia should develop a road map to contain the worst case scenario: state collapse. This study therefore aims to critically analysis the post-independence nation building project in Eritrea, and its subsequent dynamics with a particular focus on the post-Ethiopia- Eritrea war of 1998-2000. The study mainly uses secondary data including government policies, declarations, interviews of top officials, and updated discussion papers posted in different Eritrea related websites. Key words: The idea of the state, nation-building, Eritrean nationalism, “one-people, one-heart”, Eritrean national security predicament, Post-colonial African syndrome.

The Historical Orbit of Eritrea’s Agony

Their suffering under racist Italian colonialism pushed Eritreans to retreat into their millennia-old Ethiopian identity. However, suffocation under Ethiopian political oppression and cultural chauvinism led them to don a distinct counter identity of Eritrean-ness. Subsequently, the thirty-year war between the forces of chauvinism (Ethiopia) and the forces of secession (Eritrea) has exposed the unimaginativeness of nationalism. Rather than seeking a mere redress to the legitimate grievances upon which it was constructed, Eritrean nationalism veered into a false consciousness of exceptionalism (Eritreanism), which per force became a zero-sum game for secession. When a divorce was finalized in 1991, both Ethiopia and Eritrea ended up being losers—the former lost access to the sea and the latter lost Ethiopia. By failing to deliver peace, democracy, and prosperity, secession has proven to be against the self-interests of the Eritrean people, so much so that now the very idea of Eritrea verges on death. Thus, based on emotion rather than cognition, nationalism can be a dysfunctional project. However powerful it may be, it does not have to lead to secession.

Paths toward the Nation: Islam, Community, and Early Nationalist Mobilization in Eritrea, 1941–1961 by Joseph L. Venosa

Paths toward the Nation: Islam, Community, and Early Nationalist Mobilization in Eritrea, 1941-1961, by Joseph L. Venosa. Athens, Ohio University Press. 2014. xix, 283 pp. $29.95 US (paper). Eritrean nationalist historiography has suffered from two biases: pro-Christian and pro-Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF). Since the Christian-dominated EPLF was the one that eventually delivered on Eritrean independence, the prejudice echoed the old cliche about history being written by victors. The major significance of Joseph L. Venosa's work lies in its rejection of this hegemonic narrative. In seven chronologically organized chapters that span two decades, plus a detailed introduction and epilogue, Venosa addresses one of the most conspicuous silences in Eritrean history: the history of the Muslim League. The history of what is now Eritrea starts in the 1890s when Italy, unable to penetrate the Ethiopian interior militarily, managed to annex the Red Sea plateau as a colonial territory. In 1935 Mussolini launched another war on Ethiopia, and this time his army was able to occupy the country for five years. The ejection of Italy from Ethiopia with the help of British forces, in 1941, served as a catalyst for Eritrean decolonization. Eritrea was placed under British Military Administration (BMA), while the international community decided on the ex-colony's fate: union with Ethiopia, federation with Ethiopia, partition between Ethiopia and Sudan, or full independence. It was in this volatile context that the Muslim League came into being in December 1946 as the most vocal champion of Eritrean nationalism (chapters one and two). Between 1947 and 1952 the League, along with a small party of Christians and members of the Italo-Eritrean community, campaigned relentlessly on three objectives: territorial integrity, political independence, and rejection of any kind of association with Ethiopia (chapters three through five). To this effect, founding president Ibrahim Sultan travelled to New York twice, in 1949 and 1950, in order to have his organization's voice heard at the United Nations General Assembly (105-10, 130-31). In the mid-1950s, following Eritrea's federation with Ethiopia under un Resolution 390-A, the League tried to work within a constitutional framework to make sure Muslim minority rights and the official status of the Arabic language were respected (chapter six). In the late 1950s, when all peaceful protests against Ethiopianization failed and Eritrean autonomy was but in name, Sultan and other League leaders fled to Sudan and Egypt from where they began their armed struggle as the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) (chapter seven). ELF fighters would dominate the Eritrean insurgency in the 1960s and 1970s, only to be destroyed by the splinter forces of the EPLF in a protracted fratricidal civil war. What particularly enables Venosa's reconstruction of early Eritrean nationalism from a Muslim perspective is the League's own weekly newspaper: Sawt alRabita al-Islamiyya. Published on and off from February 1947 to September 1952, the Arabic newspaper served the duel functions of disseminating nationalist propaganda and facilitating a vibrant intellectual platform. Excerpts from al-Islamiyya and other local papers lend a rich insight into contemporary thoughts and feelings, and are as such the book's main strength as an original work of research. …

Eritrean Asylum Seekers’ Lament Ceremonies in Israel as Contested Sites of Identity Formation

Based on extensive qualitative research, this paper focuses on lament ceremonies Eritrean asylum seekers in Israel performed in public parks in 2008–2014.1 Specifically, we expose social and political structures of this diaspora, including mechanisms of survival in a context of harsh living conditions, a fragile legal status and a hostile environment. Following Werbner’s analysis of diasporas as chaordic entities, having no single representation and fostering multiple identities, we show how chaordicness underlies this diaspora’s ability to survive and thrive in Israel, and to embrace the unique Eritrean trans-local nationalism. We highlight how these public religious rituals were transformed into contested sites of identity formation following Israeli struggles against them. Finally, we shed light on the role that such ceremonies play in shaping transnational identities, as well as how disenfranchised communities of asylum seekers aim for visibility and recognition in the public sphere.

“It seemed like a punishment”: Teacher transfers, hollow nationalism, and the intimate state in Eritrea

ABSTRACTDiscourses of the punishing state that circulated in Eritrea at a time when the government had become increasingly coercive were articulated especially clearly in debates over teacher transfers. Teachers imagined the state on the basis of their intimate encounters with its bureaucrats, who were thought of as capable of punishing, manipulating, or being manipulated. In a country once noted for the effervescent, revolutionary celebration of the state's capacity to defend and develop the nation, thinking of the state as pernicious challenged the core tenets of Eritrean nationalism but left intact lingering fantasies of state fairness. By examining the complexity of debates about teacher transfers, I uncover a multifaceted commentary on government power, a dialogue over the nature and meaning of the notion of duty to the nation, and a reworked popular imaginary of the state.

Adapting to the new path: Khatmiyya Sufi authority, the al-Mirghani family, and Eritrean nationalism during British Occupation, 1941–1949

This article examines the relationship between Sufi authorities and political transformation in Eritrea during the mid- and late 1940s. It analyzes the role of Eritrea's largest and most influential Sufi order, the Khatmiyya, and how its leadership struggled to maintain its influence amidst the rapidly changing political and social climate initiated by the collapse of Italian colonial authority in 1941. With the arrival of the British Military Administration (BMA), much of the region comprising the Khatmiyya's historical heartland in western and northern Eritrea experienced rapid social and political transformation, as landless Tigre-speaking peasants mobilized a widespread emancipation movement to assert their economic independence, while other Muslim groups beyond the Khatmiyya's base articulated a pro-independence political platform. This article argues that Khatmiyya authorities were largely unable to transition the order from its previous role as an Italian-supported Sufi power into a legitimate authority in post-colonial Eritrea. The Khatmiyya leadership's half-hearted, compromised support for “serf” emancipation among Tigre-speaking groups and its eventual withdrawal from the Eritrean nationalist movement signaled a major decline in the order's influence by the end of the decade. This article thus looks at the role of Khatmiyya authorities to help illuminate one of the more complex and misunderstood aspects of Eritrea's early nationalist history.

“Because God Has Given Us the Power of Reasoning”: Intellectuals, the Eritrean Muslim League, and Nationalist Activism, 1946–1950

Abstract This article discusses the rise of Eritrean nationalism in the context of Muslim intellectual acüvism during the later penod of the Bntish Military Administration (BMA). It argues that many of the leading members of the pro-independence Muslim intelligentsia, defined in thh article broadly as the fluid group of waters, Eritreans within the former Italian colonial civil service, and religious scholars serving within or associated with the Eritrean Muslim League, contributed to the naüonaUst movement by taking advantage of the extensive "Islamic social capital" across the region. Using Muslim League publicaüons, personal testimonies, British archival sources, and secondary literature, tfús article will show that throughout the period in question, proactive members of the intelligentsia helped strengthen Muslim civil society while they engaged in broader struggles aimed at achieving social reform and establishing cooperative relationships within the broader nationalist constituency. Their efforts had a tremendous influence on the overall trajectory of nationalism among both League leaders and the orgamzation’s general membership.

"Because God Has Given Us the Power of Reasoning": Intellectuals, the Eritrean Muslim League, and Nationalist Activism, 1946-1950

This article discusses the rise of Eritrean nationalism in the context of Muslim intellectual activism during the later period of the British Military Administration (BMA). It argues that many of the leading members of the pro-independence Muslim intelligentsia, defined in this article broadly as the fluid group of writers, Eritreans within the former Italian colonial civil service, and religious scholars serving within or associated with the Eritrean Muslim League, contributed to the nationalist movement by taking advantage of the extensive "Islamic social capital" across the region. Using Muslim League publications, personal testimonies, British archival sources, and secondary literature, this article will show that throughout the period in question, proactive members of the intelligentsia helped strengthen Muslim civil society while they engaged in broader struggles aimed at achieving social reform and establishing cooperative relationships within the broader nationalist constituency. Their efforts had a tremendous influence on the overall trajectory of nationalism among both League leaders and the organization's general membership.

The Trans-Mereb Experience: Perceptions of the Historical Relationship between Eritrea and Ethiopia

This article offers an exploration of the historical relationship between Eritrea and Ethiopia. This has been a problematic relationship, as demonstrated by the degree of conflict in this region, and, in the abstract sense, insofar as analysis of the history of the relationship has been both polemical and polarised. The region's pre-colonial history has been used either to demonstrate Ethiopia's legitimate historical control of much of what is now Eritrea, or to refute this older, more ‘traditional’, perception and to prove that Eritrea was at no time an integral part of a ‘greater Ethiopian/Abyssinian empire’. This latter, revisionist approach to the pre-colonial past is still in its infancy, the offspring of a recent and potent Eritrean nationalism. Perceptions of key periods in the region's twentieth-century history are similarly polarised. By way of illustration, the article considers four historical scenarios, key snapshots in the history of the relationship: (i) the pre-colonial era; (ii) the period of British administration in the 1940s; (iii) the Eritrean liberation struggle; and (iv) the more recent war between the two countries. Each scenario is looked at in three ways: first, for what we might call the ‘factual indisputability’ of the scenario, in other words presenting as neutral and objective a view of the period as is possible; second, the ‘standard Ethiopianist’ interpretation of the period in question; and third, the ‘Eritrean revisionist’ understanding of the scenario.

From Guerrillas to Government: The Eritrean People's Liberation Front (review)

Reviewed by: From Guerrillas to Government: The Eritrean People's Liberation Front Nelson Kasfir Pool, David . 2001. From Guerrillas to Government: The Eritrean People's Liberation Front. Oxford: James Currey; Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press. 206 pp. $22.95 (paper). The Eritrean People's Liberation Movement (EPLF) capped the longest guerrilla struggle in Africa, and perhaps the world, with victory in 1991, and since then as the People's Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ) has ruled Eritrea with an iron hand. Formerly an Italian colony, Eritrea was controlled by a British military administration from the time it defeated the Italian military until 1952, when the United Nations agreed to its federation with Ethiopia. By 1962, Ethiopia had undermined the federation and absorbed Eritrea. Nationalist response in the 1950s led to guerrilla war. Pool provides us with a full-length treatment of the EPLF from its origins in the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) to its military victory and first decade as the independent government of Eritrea. The penchant of guerrilla leaders for secrecy, a practice essential for survival, makes the formation and development of guerrilla organization an extraordinarily difficult subject for study. It will be a long time before a complete account of the EPLF is possible. We should be grateful to David Pool for the depth of information and subtle social analysis he has presented here. The central question in the book is an important one: how did the EPLF manage to establish itself as an autonomous and cohesive organization, able to defeat and drive out an existing guerrilla organization and gain wide acceptance in all parts of a society marked by religious and ethnic [End Page 124] cleavages? In contrast, as one would expect of any guerrilla organization in a deeply divided society, the ELF was organized on ethnic lines and had a strong Muslim orientation in response to Ethiopian support for Christian organizations. Incorporation by Ethiopia had been in part the consequence of religious divisions that made some Coptic Christians and Tigrinya-speakers allies of their Ethiopian counterparts, leaving Muslim groups to form the nationalist opposition and later the ELF. Pool takes a roughly chronological approach to his analysis of the internal organization of the EPLF, its relations to the population, and its military victories, which led to international recognition and ultimate success. His discussion of the relation of the EPLF and ethnic groups is not conceptually consistent. When he provides ethnographic information about each of the nine significant Eritrean ethnic groups, he implies that each holds a single unchanging homogeneous identity. Yet when he discusses the impact of competing empires on them, as well as their migrations, he explicitly argues that their identities should be considered fluid, not static. In a sophisticated analysis of early Eritrean nationalism, he further shows that nationalist movements blurred sectarian identities without dissolving them, and that the EPLF used cultural differences among ethnic groups ("nationalities") instrumentally to undercut the religious cleavage represented in its competition with the ELF. Nevertheless, he also suggests that hierarchical cultures may contribute to a sense of "stateness" within a guerrilla organization. Does he think the EPLF became an autonomous and cohesive organization because its leaders came from, and first recruited from, settled hierarchical populations long exposed to imperial rule? Finally, he also says he wants to represent the EPLF leaders' view of these "nationalities," even though their view seems considerably more static than fluid. Taken together, these insights into ethnography on the one hand and social change on the other provide an ambiguous contribution to his central question: did the differences among groups demonstrate the difficulty or the relative ease with which the EPLF overcame ethnic and religious cleavages? In the core of the book, Pool discusses the organizational growth and eventual dominance of the EPLF. It is difficult to tell whether pragmatism or the leaders' application of Marxism-Leninism is more important. In either case, overcoming ethnic division was a central goal. Military success against its internal rival may also be part of the explanation of the cohesion and autonomy of the EPLF. Pool traces the unification process of the different groups of defectors that became the EPLF. The critical early decisions were agreement on...

Post-Colonial Journeys: Historical Roots of Immigration and Integration

AbstractThe effect of Italian colonialism on migration to Italy differed according to the pre-colonial social structure, a factor previously neglected by immigration theories. In Eritrea, precolonial Christianity, sharp class distinctions, and a strong state promoted interaction between colonizers and colonized. Eritrean nationalism emerged against Ethiopia; thus, no sharp break between Eritreans and Italians emerged. Two outgrowths of colonialism, the Eritrean national movement and religious ties, facilitate immigration and integration. In contrast, in Somalia, there was no strong state, few class differences, the dominant religion was Islam, and nationalists opposed Italian rule. Consequently, Somali developed few institutional ties to colonial authorities and few institutions provided resources to immigrants. Thus, Somali immigrants are few and are not well integrated into Italian society.

The process of nation-building in post-war Eritrea: created from below or directed from above?

The journey of nation-building is long and complicated. Even though the bases of Eritrean nationalism have been firmly established through our long liberation struggle, it has yet to be concluded. It is known that to build [a] peaceful and rich country is the hardest, and more complicated than to get success in war. The National Charter of Eritrea, EPLF (1994)

Post-Twentieth-Century Eritrea

Post-Twentieth-Century Eritrea Irma Taddia University of Bologna These are some reflections on present Eritrea in the light of its colonial past. I am aware that if the present can only be understood in relation to the past, the colonial past can be analyzed in terms of the present. These reflections are stimulated by various visits to Eritrea in the last years after the change ofpolitical regime in May 1991 and by historical research. If we consider the case of Eritrea and its path towards independence, some differences and analogies emerge in comparison with other former African colonies. The Eritrean experience is taking place today in a very specific context in postcolonial Africa. It is not, I believe, simply a case of delayed decolonization , postponed by 30 years with respect to other former African colonies. I will attempt to identify some récurrent elements and some differences between the Eritrean case and other decolonization models that characterized Africa in the 1960s. Differences/Analogies between Eritrea and Other African Colonial States An event which could have taken place in the 1950 and '60s actually happened only in 1993: the independence of Eritrea and the creation of an autonomous state in the Horn of Africa. This leads us to develop some reflections on the nature of the Eritrean state at the end of the twentieth century and to make a comparison between the Eritrean case and the African decolonization experiences of the 1960s. The history of Eritrea must be studied within the colonial context in which, however, certain differences emerge. Eritrea was a colonial state in the nineteenth®Northeast African Studies (ISSN 0740-9133) Vol. 5, No. 1 (New Series) 1998, pp. 7-29 8 Irma Taddia and twentieth centuries. Like other African colonies it was created during the scramble for Africa. Within this process it achieved a form of identity during the years of colonialism. Colonialism can be analyzed as a crucial and lasting process in the development of a new economic and political structure expressed in the form of a new territorial framework and developed by means of the politics of the colonial state. The colonial state imposed a "national" identity on all African areas of influence through a new territorial politic. Colonial borders were no longer questioned during decolonization. Since Eritrea's experience reflected that of other African colonies, it should have become an independent state during the decolonization process. But Eritrea is a colony that did not become an independent state. This phenomenon can be attributed to various causes I will try to underline. Regarding the colonial process, a strong analogy emerges between Italian Eritrea and other examples of African colonies. It is the same mechanism of colonial power which molded different precolonial systems of power and societies into a unique political body. Eritrea, like the other African colonial states, achieved this unity and identity during the years of colonialism. The idea is widespread in the literature. "Eritrean nationalists describe significant economic and social changes under Italian colonialism, supporting arguments that Eritrea's experience mirrored that of other African colonies."1 The creation of the colony was a premise for a new sense of unity and identity. Colonialism is seen by Eritrean nationalists as a condition for establishing a national identity, while at the same time Ethiopians define Eritrea as an artificial creation.2 It is clear that Eritrea is a political construction of colonialism. However, according to Markakis's viewpoint, Eritrean nationalism is not a product of anti-colonialism, but develops after the fall of the Italian colonial government in 1941. "Eritrean nationalism did not emerge as a reaction to the colonial situation . It made its appearance after the collapse of Italian rule, when the fate of the former colony hung in the balance."3 And nationalism is not—again according to Markakis—"a purely ideological phenomenon," but it is "in the first instance ... a struggle for state power,"4 for the political power inherited by the colonial state. Within the fight for political independence after the 1940s, Italy played a complex and contradictory role which historians have yet to analyze in depth. We have very few studies on this period.5 Post-Twentieth-Century Eritrea...

Discourses on Eritrean Nationalism and Identity

Since Italy's defeat in World Ward II, Ethiopia has pressed its claim to Eritrea. Following an abortive federation imposed by the United Nations in 1950, Haile Selassie annexed the former Italian colony in 1962, and for the last three decades Eritreans have fought for their independence.

Italian colonialism in Eritrea 1882–1941

Abstract When did Eritrean nationalism emerge? Did it emerge during Italian rule, between 1882 and 1941, or was it a later phenomenon? In other words, does Italian colonialism have any impact on Eritrean nationalism? This is the central question which Tekeste Negash's dissertation raises and attempts to resolve.1

The Nationalist Revolution in Eritrea

Now in its third decade, the nationalist revolution in Eritrea is Africa's longest conflict, and one whose nature is often misunderstood by friend and foe alike. Its supporters see it as an anti-colonial campaign, the same as that waged by people elsewhere for independence. Certainly, colonialism has something to do with it, since Eritrea itself was its creation. However, Eritrean nationalism did not emerge as a reaction to the colonial situation. It made its appearance after the collapse of Italian rule, when the fate of the former colony hung in the balance. The issue that proved the catalyst was Ethiopia's determination to absorb Eritrea, as she was soon to do with the collaboration of many of the inhabitants. These peculiar origins have been cited as good reasons for dismissing Eritrean nationalism as a sham, even though the events of the last 25 years offer ample proof to the contrary.1 This article offers a summary view of the conflict's history, and makes an attempt to distil the essence of the movement which is still fighting Ethiopia.2