Abyssinia Research Articles

TRANSFORMATION OF AMERICAN-ETHIOPIAN RELATIONS IN 1965-1967

In this article, the author aims to explore the place and role of American-Ethiopian relations in US geopolitical strategies. The scientific novelty lies in a comprehensive analysis of the American-Ethiopian relations on the East African region in the context of US foreign policy. Research methods. Historical-genetic method is used in the article, which gave an opportunity to explore the genesis of East African politics of the USA, to identify the main tendencies of this policy direction at every stage. A systematic approach was used for the comprehensive analysis of the USA East Africa policy in 1965–1967, which gave an opportunity to identify economic and geopolitical interests of the USA in East Africa, goals and objectives of major counties towards Ethiopia, and to trace in this regard the attitude of the USA towards Ethiopia’s confrontation with Somalia and Eritrea. Conclusions. Despite the orientation of the Foreign policy of the emperor of Ethiopia to the USA and his attempts to satisfy the USA interests (including the allocation of a military base in Ethiopia), Haile Selassie I failed to fully attract not only American private fund but also to make Ethiopia one of the Foreign policy priorities of the USA government. Ethiopia was of no interest to the USA not only as a potential economic partner (it remained an agricultural country with obsolete modes of production), but also as a military ally. The USA supported some plans of the emperor of Ethiopia, for example the project of accession of Eritrea to the Ethiopian Empire, for the following reasons only: due to independent Eritrean country’s insolvency due to the necessity to maintain peace and order in the Northeastern Africa, on the west coast of the Red Sea. «Right» was given to the Ethiopian Empire, which needed the access to the sea and which at that time had a relatively strong army capable to battle any inner reaction and to defend the borders of Eritrea, where American military bases were located.

Radical Mercantilism and Fascist Italy’s East African Empire

AbstractThis article traces the evolution of Italian strategies for imperial expansion from the decades after unification—when many came to believe that imperial conquest would more advantageously position Italy in the liberal capitalist global economy—to the height of the fascist colonial project in the Horn of Africa—when the fascists tried to break with the liberal global economy and construct a new, radical mercantilist and corporatist empire. Taking inspiration from their predecessors, the fascist regime extracted capital, resources, and labor from Africans and Italians to finance its war against the Ethiopian empire and its colonization of the Horn. While the war temporarily stimulated Italian industry, employed hundreds of thousands of work-hungry Italians, and consolidated the regime’s many corporatist institutions, it drained Italy’s reserves and alarmed the Duce’s allies among Italy’s industrial and financial elite. The regime, thus, shifted strategies, focusing on reducing the cost of the empire by exploiting African workers, eliminating inefficient small enterprises, and creating vast concessions for Italian industrialists. Conquering new territories and markets, acquiring a variety of primary resources, and empowering industry, Mussolini and the radical mercantilist-corporatists aimed to resolve Italy’s perceived under-development, by placing Italy at the center of a great fascist Eurafrican empire that could dictate the terms of its engagement with the rest of the world.

Social and political contexts of religious conversion in Sidaama, Ethiopia, 1891-1974

This article discusses religious conversion in Sidaama, Ethiopia, 1891-1974. The Sidaama area is in Southern Ethiopia, southeast of Lake Hawassa and northeast of Lake Abaya in the Rift Valley of Ethiopia. Most of the population belongs to the ethnic group Sidaama, speakers of the Cushitic language Sidaamu Afoo. The region became incorporated into the Ethiopian Empire during the twentieth century. The article will first provide a historical overview of religious change in the area. Next, the paper will present theoretical approaches to religious conversion. The article's main content focuses on the interreligious encounter between the indigenous Sidaama religion and varieties of christianity. The paper will discuss how the interreligious encounter initiated a process of conversion to Christianity. The conversion process occurred at the intersection between indigenous Sidaama converts and various forms of Christianity and was influenced by internal social tensions and inequalities in Sidaama.

The Kingdom of Limmu Enarya: the hegemony of King Abba Bagibo

ABSTRACT Limmu Ennarya was the first of the monarchical Gibe states, built between 1800 and 1802 in what is now southwestern Ethiopia. It rose to prominence during Abba Bagiobo’s reign. Limmu Enarya was an important trading site for both local and foreign traders throughout the nineteenth-century long-distance trade. However, because of internal power struggles and foreign obstacles, Abba Bagibo’s tenure came to an end, and he was eventually absorbed into the modern Ethiopian Empire by Emperor Menilik in 1891. It was subordinate to the Kaffa Governorate General until the Italian conquest in 1936. In 1941, the central government renamed the previous Limmu Ennarya area as Limmu Awraja. This land encompasses the current districts of Limmu Kossa, Limmu Saqa, Chora Botor, and Nonno Benja. Historians have not adequately investigated and explored the history of the kingdom of Limmu Ennarya; little studies have been undertaken on the Gibe states in general, and Limmu Ennarya in particular. The purpose of the article is to investigate the history of the kingdom of Limmu Ennarya and its dominance and hegemony under the reign of Abba Bagibo. Oral informants and secondary literature are utilized to reconstruct the change and continuity of the historical phenomenon of Limmu Ennarya.

Aliens within homeland: Ethiopian Muslims and their request for “Ethiopianness”

ABSTRACT Being and becoming an Ethiopian has been one of the debating points for Ethiopian Muslims. Throughout the imperial periods of Ethiopia, Muslims were not seen as Ethiopians. They were labeled aliens in their homeland and called ‘Muslims living in Ethiopia.’ Accordingly, for centuries, Islam has not been recognized for its central role in Ethiopia’s socio-political landscape, and Muslims have been regarded as second-class citizens. However, Ethiopian Muslims are indigenous peoples like their Christian fellows. This article assesses the place of Ethiopian Muslims in Ethiopian history and how Ethiopian Muslims have been portrayed in the Ethiopian past by the elites of the country and the state from the 1850s until the 2010s. This article, therefore, focuses on modern Ethiopia’s nation-building and state-making process from the 19th century onwards. A comparison is made regarding the treatment of Ethiopians of Muslims among the imperial Ethiopia, the socialist military, the EPRDF “secular” state, and beyond.

Tigray: A Nation in Search of Statehood?

Abstract A devastating war broke out between the federal government and Tigray regional state of Ethiopia in November 2020. What is its cause and how does it affect the dynamics in Tigray and in Ethiopia in general? The article demonstrates using clear indicators that an authoritarian centrist elite and its policy that came to power in 2018 pursued a very centralised decision making, removing regional state heads and imposed new polices that violate self-government and autonomy of states. It brought back imperial Ethiopia’s polity building narrative accusing its predecessors and the post-1991 federal polity as disruption. Yet Tigrayan nationalism has also long pedigree. Its relative homogeneity and centuries of self-conscious experiment with autonomy has always been fundamental check against the centrist elite. Following the new developments, Tigray is reconsidering whether it is worth staying within Ethiopia or should secede and have its own state. Ideally there are menu of options that could provide a solution to both sides short of secession, but the new elite in power is pushing Tigray to the edges, abrogating its constitutional autonomy, putting under siege and denying all basic services for nearly two years and pursuing age old policy of surrender or perish, literally imposing secession to the region. The study is informed by theories of ethno national based conflicts, political autonomy and secession.

Ethnic Othering and Governance in Imperial Ethiopia - The Other Abyssinians: The Northern Oromo and the Creation of Modern Ethiopia, 1855–1913 By Brian J. Yates. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2020. Pp. 246. $110.00, hardcover (ISBN: 9781580469807); $24.99, e-book (ISBN: 9781787446533).

Ethnic Othering and Governance in Imperial Ethiopia - The Other Abyssinians: The Northern Oromo and the Creation of Modern Ethiopia, 1855–1913 By Brian J. Yates. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2020. Pp. 246. 24.99, e-book (ISBN: 9781787446533). - Volume 63 Issue 3

‘Eating A Country’: The Dynamics of State-Society Encounters in Qellem, Western Ethiopia, 1908–33

AbstractThis article examines state-society encounters in imperial Ethiopia through histories of exploitation and compromise. Focusing on the western province of Qellem, the article investigates Ethiopia's engagement with local rights claims over time, illustrating how the state was imagined, negotiated, and partially legitimated. The inherent incoherence within imperial state structures is traced back to the survival of nodes of indigenous power within territories conquered in the late nineteenth century. Peasant representatives, local elites, and Amhara governors and soldier-colonists engaged with the state to turn it to their benefit, or limit its excesses. Episodes of rebellion, withdrawal, and court arbitration punctuated a cycle of negotiation within which the role of the intermediary was key. Qellem experienced a state-making exercise that was contemporaneous with, and comparable to, the formation of European colonial states elsewhere on the continent. As such, this article provides a radical challenge to dominant historiographical perspectives on imperial Ethiopia.

An Unequal Ethiopia in an Unequal World: Global and Domestic Hierarchies in Afäwärḳ Gäbrä-Iyyäsus’s and Käbbädä Mikael’s Political Thought (1908 and 1949)

ABSTRACT The Ethiopian empire retained its political independence through the European Scramble for Africa. The imperial elites oversaw the transformation of the empire into a territorially-bounded state, part of an international system of states regulated by international law and by international institutions such as the League of Nations, and later the UN. Ethiopian intellectuals were keenly aware that Ethiopia had joined this international system from a subordinated position and that its sovereignty remained at risk. The struggle for sovereignty was fought not only at a diplomatic level, but also at a narrative level. Afäwärḳ Gäbrä-Iyyäsus’s 1908 Traveller’s Guide to Abyssinia and Käbbädä Mikael’s 1949 Ethiopia and Western Civilisation pushed back against the European depiction of Ethiopia as intrinsically inferior and intrinsically unable to develop. Both Afäwärḳ and Käbbädä rejected the rigid determinism of stagist models of development, and argued that Ethiopia and Europe were natural allies by virtue of their shared Christian heritage. Global power hierarchies rigidified Ethiopia’s domestic power hierarchies. The article shows how the way in which Afäwärḳ and Käbbädä defended Ethiopia’s place in an unequal world had important consequences on their vision of domestic nation building, resulting in hierarchical assimilationist policies that marginalised Ethiopia’s non-Christian citizens.

The Hands Off Ethiopia campaign, racial solidarities and intercolonial antifascism in South Asia (1935–36)

AbstractThe transnational campaign against the Italian invasion of the Ethiopian Empire (1936–36) has been widely acknowledged as a turning point for antiracist and anticolonial political organizing in the African continent and diaspora. This article seeks to reconstruct the South Asian participation in the Hands Off Ethiopia protests, to expand historical knowledge of the early-twentieth-century development of Afro-Asian solidarity ties as well as the intersection of anti-Fascist and anticolonial struggles. It examines the institutional responses to the invasion on the part of the Indian Legislative Assembly, and a series of demonstrations, local meetings and boycotts whose implications reverberated in the local and international press as well as in the concerns of British colonial authorities. As will be argued, this mobilization was fueled by feelings of racial solidarity, anti-imperialist analyses, anti-caste critiques, scriptural interpretations and religious universalisms.

"Man Who Won the War": Myth and Reality of Aldo Castellani's Role in Preserving the Health of Troops During the Italo-Ethiopian War 1935-1936.

The invasion of the ancient Ethiopian empire perpetrated by the Italian fascist regime in 1935-1936 deserves all the blame due to a war of aggression, a belated colonial enterprise and a bullying act of a totalitarian regime. Yet there is one aspect of that war that aroused universal admiration among contemporaries and which still deserves to be analysed today: the healthcare of troops. The Italian army, which came close to half a million men, was the largest European army that had ever fought in tropical or sub-tropical territories. Many Cassandras expected a health catastrophe, even more than a military one. But Mussolini decided to entrust Sir Aldo Castellani, the famous tropicalist doctor who had been living between Italy and England for years, with the role of Inspector General of Military and Civilian Health Services for East Africa. At the end of the seven-month victorious military campaign, the very low number of casualties recorded due to illness or injury evoked amazement and admiration. This was not just propaganda, as proved by the uncountable invitations from military and health authorities all over the world (including some of the nations that had imposed economic sanctions against Italy a few months earlier) for Castellani to reveal his secret through lectures, articles and conferences. Even US President Franklyn D. Roosevelt, who as a polio sufferer was particularly sensitive to public health issues, asked for and obtained a long private interview with Castellani, the "man who won the war".

The Sidama Quest for Self-Rule: The Referendum on Regional Statehood Under the Ethiopian Federation

Abstract The Sidama of southern Ethiopia has a long history of struggle to reclaim self-rule, which was lost with the forceful incorporation of their territory into the Ethiopian empire in 1893. With the fall of the military junta in 1991, the new government reconfigured the country into a multinational (ethnic) federation. Years of protests and turmoil led to the consolidation of a nationalist movement demanding the constitutional right to conduct a referendum on the establishment of a separate Sidama regional state under the federation. The process was marred by demonstrations and incidents of violence, but the vote itself was conducted peacefully with an overwhelming 97.7 per cent ‘yes’ vote. Sidama regional state was eventually formed, but the political leadership initially advocating for its establishment was marginalised due to the centralising policies of the federal government party restricting the principles of the constitutional multinational federalism.

A contested financial frontier: banking and empire building in Eritrea,c.1952–73

AbstractThis article provides an account of the relationship between imperial Ethiopia and Eritrea in the realm of banking governance from the start of the federation to the last years of the imperial regime. It looks in particular at the relationship between the Ethiopian administrations and an Italian bank, Banco di Roma, which had its headquarters in Eritrea from 1948 to 1967 before moving to Addis Ababa. The struggle for control of the economic flows generated by the Italian bank is an index of the changes in centre–periphery linkages between Addis Ababa and the sub-regional centre of Asmara. Archival evidence highlights the multifaced nature of Ethiopian governance and the role performed by the Italian institution in providing alternative sources of diplomatic leverage and wealth accumulation to the Eritrean elite. It is argued that the extraterritorial status enjoyed by Banco di Roma until 1967 was actively tolerated by a section of the Ethiopian establishment, which resorted to an established pattern of imperial governance based on flexibility in return for tribute. This centre–periphery arrangement was harshly opposed by prominent Ethiopian officials from the Ministry of Finance and the National Bank of Ethiopia, who struggled to enforce tighter government control over capital flows within and across the country's borders. The National Bank's final success in the quest for financial centralization drained significant resources out of Eritrea, with adverse effects on the preservation of thepax aethiopicain the former Italian colony.

Race, Gender, and Pageantry: The Ups and Downs of an African American Woman in Imperial Ethiopia

Abstract From transatlantic trailblazer to wartime correspondent, from pageantry to widowhood at an early age, pan-Africanist Dorothy Hadley Bayen lived a fast and multilayered life that few of her contemporaries would have imagined. Yet Dorothy Bayen remains ignored in the historical records to the point of erasure. As Kathleen Sheldon and others have pointed out, the absence of women leaders in the history of Black internationalism is a sign of gender-biased scholarship and not a reflection of events on the ground. This article validates that observation. In rescuing Dorothy Bayen and her catalytic role in Ethiopian and African American relations from obscurity, it shows how emphasis on men-centered narratives might compromise, or even stultify, the emancipatory ethos of grassroots social movements.

POLITICS AND RELIGION IN THE FORMATION OF THE ETHIOPIAN STATEHOOD: FROM THE EMPIRE THROUGH THE FEDERAL DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC

The article intends to present some of the most interesting facts of the development of religious traditions in Ethiopia, and religion influence on the politics and vise verse in the process of the Ethiopian statehood formation. Course of development of the Ethiopian Statehood was inextricably linked to significant and contradictory influence of different religions: Christianity, Islam and Judaism, but Christianity above all. However, it is not only religion influences different sides of the country’s political life. From the Empire, later the People’s Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (1987 to 1991), and present-day Federal Democratic Republic, religion has been often exploited for the state’s benefits. Thus, this influence was mutual, but not always mutually beneficial. Realizing the scale and significance of the designated topic of this study, author limits his research ambitions only by highlighting the most general trends in the interrelations of politics and religion within the conditionally allocated three historical stages. Firstly, from 4th century until 1974, or from building and strengthening the Ethiopian Empire since Christianity until the overthrow of the last emperor Haile Selassie I. Secondly, through the attempts to build the socialist state (1974 to 1991). And finally, through the Federate State (1991 – present days).

The First Italo-Ethiopian Clash over the Control of Eritrea and the Origins of Rome’s Imperialism

In the wake of Italy’s unification, the country’s expansionist designs were aimed, as expected, toward the opposite shore of the Mediterranean. The barrage of developments that took place in this strategic area would shape the country’s future alliances and colonial policies. The fear of French aggression on the coast of North Africa drove officials in Rome to the camp of the Central Powers, a diplomatic move of great importance for Europe’s evolution prior to World War I. The disturbance of the Mediterranean balance of power, when France occupied Tunisia and Britain held Cyprus and Egypt, the inability to find a colony in proximity to Italy, and a series of diplomatic defeats led Roman officials to look to the Red Sea and to provoke war with the Ethiopian Empire.

The First Italo-Ethiopian Clash over the Control of Eritrea and the Origins of Rome's Imperialism

Abstract In the wake of Italy's unification, the country's expansionist designs were aimed, as expected, toward the opposite shore of the Mediterranean. The barrage of developments that took place in this strategic area would shape the country's future alliances and colonial policies. The fear of French aggression on the coast of North Africa drove officials in Rome to the camp of the Central Powers, a diplomatic move of great importance for Europe's evolution prior to World War I. The disturbance of the Mediterranean balance of power, when France occupied Tunisia and Britain held Cyprus and Egypt, the inability to find a colony in proximity to Italy, and a series of diplomatic defeats led Roman officials to look to the Red Sea and to provoke war with the Ethiopian Empire.

ЕФІОПІЯ ТА ЄГИПЕТСЬКО-ЕФІОПСЬКИЙ КОНФЛІКТ В КОНТЕКСТІ АМЕРИКАНСЬКО-ЕФІОПСЬКИХ ВІДНОСИН (1955 – 1957 рр.)

In this article, the author aims to explore the place and role of Egyptian-Ethiopian relations during the Suez Crisis in US geopolitical strategies. The scientific novelty lies in a comprehensive analysis of the impact of the Suez Crisis on the East African region in the context of US foreign policy. Research methods. Historical-genetic method is used in the article, which gave an opportunity to explore the genesis of East African politics of the USA, to identify the main tendencies of this policy direction at every stage. A systematic approach was used for the comprehensive analysis of the USA East Africa policy in 1955–1957, which gave an opportunity to identify economic and geopolitical interests of the USA in East Africa, goals and objectives of major counties towards Egypt and Ethiopia, and to trace in this regard the attitude of the USA towards Ethiopia’s confrontation with Egypt. Conclusions. Despite the orientation of the Foreign policy of the emperor of Ethiopia to the USA and his attempts to satisfy the USA interests (including the allocation of a military base in Ethiopia), Haile Selassie I failed to fully attract not only American private fund but also to make Ethiopia one of the Foreign policy priorities of the USA government. Ethiopia was of no interest to the USA not only as a potential economic partner (it remained an agricultural country with obsolete modes of production), but also as a military ally. The USA supported some plans of the emperor of Ethiopia, for example the project of accession of Eritrea to the Ethiopian Empire, for the following reasons only:1. due to independent Eritrean country’s insolvency; 2. due to the necessity to maintain peace and order in the northeastern Africa, on the west coast of the Red Sea. «Right» was given to the Ethiopian Empire, which needed the access to the sea and which at that time had a relatively strong army capable to battle any inner reaction and to defend the borders of Eritrea, where American military bases were located.

“Behold, I have written it on parchment…” Two Early Amharic Poems from Ms. Ef. 10 (Koriander 2), St. Petersburg

The article deals with two short poems in Amharic from Ms. Ef. 10 kept in the Library of the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg. Amharic, a Semitic language of Ethiopia, came to function as the second written language of Ethiopian Empire in the course of the 19th century. Samples of Amharic texts prior to this period are scanty and worthy of special study. The poems in question can be dated to the period end of the 17th – beginning of the 18th century. The article provides the texts of the poems with translation and linguistic and philological commentary, accompanied by a short description of Ms. Ef. 10.

MARRIAGE AND EMPIRE: CONSOLIDATION IN POST-LIBERATION ETHIOPIA (1941–74)

AbstractThis article deals with marriage as mobilized by the Ethiopian Empire as part of its consolidation processes after 1941. It particularly concentrates on post-liberation anxiety and how the Ethiopian Empire envisioned tackling this disquiet by reforming marriage. Within the context of (re)building the empire, policies, laws, and discourses around monogamous marriage instilled normative ideas to produce the imperial subjects — procreative and productive — that a modernizing empire required. Sex was articulated within the confines of a heterosexual union, not only as a legitimate act but also as a responsibility of couples who were accountable for the consolidation of the empire. Sexual relations out of marriage were condemned as a source of degeneracy and the ensuing danger that confronted the empire. New laws were introduced to legislate sex to tackle the unease the empire felt about non-normative sex and associated pleasure(s). What started out as a battle against the Italian legacy continued more forcefully in the 1950s and 1960s with the rise of ‘new problems’ that educated young women and men posed. The article relies on a range of sources such as policy, legal, religious, and travel documents; newspapers; and novels, as well as self-help books produced between the 1940s and 1960s.