Ethiopia

History

• Pre History

  Details on the origins of all the peoples that make up the population of highland Ethiopia were still matters for research and de bate in the early 1990s. Anthropologists believe that East Africa’s Great Rift Valley is the site of humankind’s origins. (The valley traverses Ethiopia from southwest to northeast.) In 1974 archaeologists excavating sites in the Awash River valley discovered 3.5-million-year-old fossil skeletons, which they named Australopithecus afarensis. These earliest known hominids stood upright, lived in groups, and had adapted to living in open areas rather than in forests.

  The late Stone Age, recent research in historical linguistics—and increasingly in archaeology as well—has begun to clarify the broad outlines of the prehistoric populations of present day Ethiopia. These populations spoke languages that belong to the Afro-Asiatic super-language family, a group of related languages that includes Omotic, Cushitic, and Semitic, all of which are found in Ethiopia today. Linguists postulate that the original home of the Afro-Asiatic cluster of languages was somewhere in northeastern Africa, possibly in the area between the Nile River and the Red Sea in modern Sudan. From here the major languages of the family gradually dispersed at different times and in different directions—these languages being ancestral to those spoken today in northern and northeastern Africa and far southwestern Asia.

  The first language to separate seems to have been Omotic, at a date sometime after 13,000 B.C. Omotic speakers moved southward into the central and southwestern highlands of Ethiopia, followed at some subsequent time by Cushitic speakers, who settled in territories in the northern Horn of Africa, including the northern highlands of Ethiopia. The last language to separate was Semitic, which split from Berber and ancient Egyptian, two other Afro-Asiatic languages, and migrated eastward into far south western Asia.

  By about 7000 B.C. at the latest, another linguistic evidence indicates that both Cushitic speakers and Omotic speakers were present in Ethiopia. Linguistic diversification within each group thereafter gave rise to a large number of new languages. In the case of Cushitic, these include Agew in the central and northern highlands and, in regions to the east and southeast, Saho, Afar, Somali, Sidamo, and Oromo, all spoken by peoples who would play major roles in the subsequent history of the region. Omotic also spawned a large number of languages, Welamo (often called Wolayta) and Gemu-Gofa being among the most widely spoken of them.

  During the first millennium B.C. and possibly even earlier, various Semitic-speaking groups from Southwest Arabia began to cross the Red Sea and settle along the coast and in the nearby highlands. These migrants brought with them their Semitic speech (Sabaean and perhaps others) and script (Old Epigraphic South Arabic) and monumental stone architecture. A fusion of the newcomers with the indigenous inhabitants produced a culture known as preAksumite. The factors that motivated this settlement in the area are not known, but to judge from subsequent history, commercial activity must have figured strongly. However, The most recent research, shows that Ge’ez, the ancient Semitic language spoken in Eritrea and northern Ethiopia in ancient times, is not derived from Sabaean. There is evidence of a Semitic-speaking presence in Eritrea and northern Ethiopia at least as early as 2000 BC.

  The first kingdom known to have existed in Ethiopia as well as Eritrea was the kingdom of D’mt, with its capital at Yeha, where a Sabaean style temple was built around 700 BC. It rose to power around the 10th century BC and ended in the 5th centuries BC. The kingdom is known for developing the irrigation schemes, used plows, grew millet, and made iron tools and weapons. Few inscriptions by or about this kingdom survive and very little archaeological work has taken place. As a result, it is not known whether Dʿmt ended as a civilization before Aksum’s early stages, evolved into the Aksumite state, or was one of the smaller states united in the Aksumite kingdom possibly around the beginning of the 1st century. 

  The port city of Adulis, near modern-day Mitsiwa, was a major regional entrepot and probably the main gateway to the interior for new arrivals from Southwest Arabia. Archaeological evidence indicates that by the beginning of the Christian era this pre-Aksumite culture had developed western and eastern regional variants. The former, which included the region of Aksum, was probably the polity or series of polities that became the Aksumite state.

• The Aksumite Kingdom

  The Aksumite state emerged at about the beginning of the Christian era, flourished during the succeeding six or seven centuries, and underwent prolonged decline from the eighth to the twelfth century A.D. Aksum’s period of greatest power lasted from the fourth through the sixth century. Its core area lay in the highlands of what is today southern Eritrea, Tigray, Lasta (in present-day Welo), and Angot (also in Welo); its major centers were at Aksum and Adulis. Earlier centers, such as Yeha, also continued to flourish. At its height, Aksum extended its influence westward to the kingdom of Meroe, southward toward the Omo River, and eastward to the spice coasts on the Gulf of Aden. Even the South Arabian kingdom of the Himyarites, across the Red Sea in what is now Yemen, came under the suzerainty of Aksum.  However, Christian power in South Arabia ended after 572, when the Persians invaded and disrupted trade. They were followed 30 years later by the Arabs, whose rise in the 7th and 8th centuries cut off Aksum’s trade with the Mediterranean world.

  The Aksumites created a civilization of considerable distinction. They devised an original architectural style and employed it in stone palaces and other public buildings. They also erected a series of carved stone stelae at Aksum as monuments to their deceased rulers. These records were written in two languages—Gi’iz and Greek. Gi’iz is assumed to be ancestral to modern Amharic and Tigrinya, although possibly only indirectly. Even more remarkable and wholly unique for ancient Africa was the minting of coins over an approximately 300-year period. These coins, many with inlay of gold on bronze or silver, provide a chronology of the rulers of Aksum.

  One of the most important contributions the Aksumite state made to Ethiopian tradition was the establishment of the Christian Church. The Aksumite state and its forebears had certainly been in contact with Judaism since the first millennium B.C. and with Christianity beginning in the first century A.D. During the second and third centuries, Christianity spread throughout the region. Around A.D. 330-40, Ezana was converted to Christianity and made it the official state religion. The variant of Christianity adopted by the Aksumite state, however, eventually followed the Monophysite belief, which embraced the notion of one rather than two separate natures in the person of Christ as defined by the Council of Chalcedon in 451.

  The rise of Islam in the Arabian Peninsula had a significant impact on Aksum during the seventh and eighth centuries. By the time of the Prophet Muhammad’s death (A.D. 632), the Arabian Peninsula, and thus the entire opposite shore of the Red Sea, had come under the influence of the new religion. The steady advance of the faith of Muhammad through the next century resulted in Islamic conquest of all of the former Sassanian Empire and most of the former Byzantine dominions. Despite the spread of Islam by conquest elsewhere, the Islamic state’s relations with Aksum were not hostile at first. According to Islamic tradition, some members of Muhammad’s family and some of his early converts had taken refuge with the Aksumites during the troubled years preceding the Prophet’s rise to power, and Aksum was exempted from the jihad, or holy war, as a result. Problems between Aksum and the new Arab power, however, soon developed. The establishment of Islam in Egypt and the greatly reduced Aksum’s relations with the major Christian power, the Byzantine Empire.

  Although contact with individual Christian churches in Egypt and other lands continued, the Muslim conquests hastened the isolation of the church in Aksum. Limited communication continued, the most significant being with the Coptic Church in Egypt, which supplied a patriarch to the Aksumites. Such contacts, however, were insufficient to counter an ever-growing ecclesiastical isolation. Perhaps more important, Islamic expansion threatened Aksum’s maritime contacts, already under siege by Sassanian Persians. Red Sea and Indian Ocean trade, formerly dominated by the Byzantine Empire, Aksum, and Persia, gradually came under the control of Muslim Arabs, who also propagated their faith through commercial activities and other contacts.

• The Zagwe Dynasty

  By the middle of the ninth century, Islam had spread to the southern coast of the Gulf of Aden and the coast of East Africa, and the foundations were laid for the later extensive conversions of the local populace to Islam in these and adjacent regions. East of the central highlands, a Muslim sultanate, Ifat, was established by the beginning of the twelfth century, and some of the surrounding Cushitic peoples were gradually converted.

  As Christian shipping disappeared from the Red Sea, Aksum’s towns lost their vitality. The Aksumite state turned southward, conquering adjacent grain-rich highlands. Monastic establishments moved even farther to the south; for example, a major church was founded near Lake Hayk in the 9th century. This southward expansion continued over the next several centuries. The favored technique involved the establishment of military colonies, which served as core populations from which Aksumite culture, the Semitic language, and Christianity spread to the surrounding Agew population.

  By the tenth century, a Post-Aksumite Christian kingdom had emerged that controlled the central northern highlands from modern Eritrea to Shewa and the coast from old Adulis to Zeila in present-day Somalia, territory considerably larger than the Aksumites had governed. Military colonies were also established farther afield among the Sidama people of the central highlands. These settlers may have been the forerunners of such Semitic-speaking groups as the Argobba, Gafat (extinct), Gurage, and Hareri, although independent settlement of Semitic speakers from Southwest Arabia is also possible. During the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the Shewan region was the scene of renewed Christian expansion, carried out, it appears, by one of the more recently Semiticized peoples—the Amhara.

  Over time, one of the subject peoples, the Agaw, learned Geʿez, became Christian and assimilated their Aksumite oppressors to the point that Agaw princes were able to transfer the seat of the empire southward to their own region of Lasta. Thus, about 1137 ad new dynasty came to power in the Christian highlands. Known as the Zagwe and based in the Agew district of Lasta, it developed naturally out of the long cultural and political contact between Cushitic- and Semitic-speaking peoples in the northern highlands. Later ecclesiastical texts accused this dynasty of not having been of pure “Solomonic” stock (i.e., not descended from the union of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba), but it was in the religious plane that the Zagwe nonetheless distinguished themselves.

  Staunch Christians, the Zagwe devoted themselves to the construction of new churches and monasteries. These were often modeled after Christian religious edifices in the Holy Land, a locale the Zagwe and their subjects held in special esteem. Patrons of literature and the arts in the service of Christianity, the Zagwe kings were responsible, among other things, for the great churches carved into the rock in and around their capital at Adefa(Roha). In time, Adefa became known as Lalibela, the name of the Zagwe king to whose reign the Adefa churches’ construction has been attributed. At the Zagwe capital of Roha (modern-day Lalibela), Emperor Lalibela (reigned c. 1185–1225) directed the hewing of 11 churches out of living rock—a stupendous monument to Christianity, which he and the other Zagwes fostered along with the Ethiopianization of the countryside.

  The “Restoration” of the “Solomonic” Line

  The Zagwe ‘s championing of Christianity and their artistic achievements notwithstanding, there was much discontent with Lastan rule among the populace in what is now Eritrea and Tigray and among the Amhara, an increasingly powerful people who inhabited a region called Amhara to the south of the Zagwe center at Adefa. About 1270, an Amhara noble, Yekuno Amlak, drove out the last Zagwe ruler and proclaimed himself as a king. His assumption of power marked yet another stage in the southward march of what may henceforth be termed the ‘ ‘Christian kingdom of Ethiopia” and ushered in an era of increased contact with the Levant, the Middle East, and Europe. The new dynasty that Yekuno Amlak founded came to be known as the “Solomonic” dynasty because its scions claimed descent not only from Aksum but also from King Solomon of ancient Israel.

• The Reign of Fasiladas

  Following close upon the Portuguese musketeers were missionaries who, sent by the Jesuit founder St. Ignatius of Loyola, sought to convert Ethiopia to the Western church. The most successful of these was the Jesuit Pedro Páez; his personal authority and eminent qualities were such that Emperor Susenyos (reigned 1607–32) was persuaded to accept the doctrine of the dual nature of Christ and to notify the pope of his submission. This apostasy was joined by many in the royal court but met with violent resistance from the provincial nobles, the church, and the people at large. Susenyos was forced to abdicate in favour of his son Fasilides (reigned 1632–67).

  Although the Gonder period produced a flowering of architecture and art that lasted more than a century, Gonder monarchs never regained full control over the wealth and manpower that the nobility had usurped during the long wars against Gran and then the Oromo. Many nobles, commanding the loyalty of their home districts, had become virtually independent, especially those on the periphery of the kingdom. Moreover, during Fasiladas ‘s reign and that of his son Yohannis I (reigned 1667-82). Iyasu I (reigned 1682-1706) was a celebrated military leader who excelled at the most basic requirement of the warrior-king. He campaigned constantly in districts on the south and southeast of the kingdom and personally led expeditions to Shewa and beyond, areas from which royal armies had long been absent. Iyasu also attempted to mediate the doctrinal quarrel in the church, but a solution eluded him. He sponsored the construction of several churches, among them Debre Birhan Selassie, one of the most beautiful and famous of the churches in Gonder.

  Fasilides established a new capital at Gonder, a trading centre north of Lake Tana that connected the interior to the coast. At its height about 1700, the city supported the arts and educational, religious, and social institutions as well as Beta Israel craftspeople, Muslim traders, and a large population of farmers, day labourers, students, and soldiers. Emperor Fasiladas kept out the disruptive influences of the foreign Christians, dealt with sporadic Muslim incursions, and in general sought to reassert central authority and to reinvigorate the Solomonic monarchy and the Orthodox Church. He revived the practice of confining royal family members on a remote mountaintop to lessen challenges to his rule and distinguished himself by reconstructing the cathedral at Aksum (destroyed by Gran) and by establishing his camp at Gonder—a locale that gradually developed into a permanent capital and became the cultural and political center of Ethiopia during the Gonder period.

  The court sponsored secular and religious construction, manuscript writing and copying, the verbal arts, and painting. A second wave of cultural productivity followed, in the middle decades of the 18th century under the sponsorship of Empress Mentewwab (reigned 1730–69), a remarkable woman who ruled jointly with her son and grandson. However, ethnic, regional, and religious factionalism undermined the kingdom and led in 1769 to its collapse.

  Iyasu ‘s reign also saw the Oromo begin to play a role in the affairs of the kingdom, especially in the military sense. In the late 16th and early 17th centuries, conquests by the Abyssinian Empire in southern and southwestern Ethiopia had left a territorial vacuum, allowing the pastoral Oromo to settle in the vacated territories and incorporate socially dislocated peoples into their gada system. As they moved into earlier Islamic hubs, the Oromos increasingly adopted Islam, and Iyasu on his part co-opted some of the Oromo groups by enlisting them into his army and by converting them to Christianity.

  In the first decades of the 19th century, three Oromo monarchies, Enarya, Goma and Guma, rose to prominence. The collective area was known as Orormo-land and comprised most of central and southern Ethiopia, including lands now held by other ethnic regions.One of the Oromo leaders named Ras Gobana Dacche led the development of modern Ethiopia and the political and military incorporation of more territories into Ethiopian borders. Gobana, under the authority of Amhara ruler Emperor Menelik II, incorporated several and brought large sections of the Horn of Africa into a centralized Ethiopian state. 

• Modern Ethiopia

  The state’s largest ethnic Oromo were neither politically nor culturally unified. Some were Christian, spoke Amharic, and had intermarried with the Amhara. Other Christian Oromo retained their language, although their modes of life and social structure had changed extensively from those of their pastoral kin. At the eastern edge of the highlands, many had converted to Islam, especially in the area of the former sultanates of Ifat and Adal.

  The Oromo people, whether or not Christian and Amhara in culture, played important political roles in the Zemene Mesafint—often as allies of Amhara aspirants to power but sometimes as kingmakers in their own right. Meanwhile, to the south of the kingdom, segments of the Oromo population—cultivators and suppliers of goods exportable to the Red Sea coast and beyond—had developed kingdoms of their own, no doubt stimulated in part by the examples of the Amhara to the north and the Sidama kingdoms to the south. The seventeenth through nineteenth century was a period not only of migration but also of integration, as groups borrowed usable techniques and institutions from each other. In the south, too, Islam had made substantial inroads. Many Oromo chieftains found Islam a useful tool in the process of centralization as well as in the building of trade networks.

  Tewodros II’ s origins were in the Era of the Princes, but his ambitions were not those of the regional nobility. He sought to reestablish a cohesive Ethiopian state and to reform its administration and church. He did not initially claim Solomonic lineage but did seek to restore Solomonic hegemony, and he considered himself the “Elect of God.” Later in his reign, suspecting that foreigners considered him an upstart and seeking to legitimize his reign, he added “son of David and Solomon” to his title. Tewodros’ s first task was to bring Shewa under his control. During the Era of the Princes, Shewa was, even more than most provinces, an independent entity, its ruler even styling himself negus. In the course of subduing the Shewans, Tewodros imprisoned a Shewan prince, Menelik, who would later become emperor himself. Despite his success against Shewa, Tewodros faced constant rebellions in other provinces.

  In the first six years of his reign, the new ruler managed to put down these rebellions, and the empire was relatively peaceful from about 1861 to 1863. The energy, wealth, and manpower necessary to deal with regional opposition, however, limited the scope of Tewodros’s other activities. By 1865 other rebels had emerged, including Menelik, who had escaped from prison and returned to Shewa, where he declared himself negus. In addition to his conflicts with rebels and rivals, Tewodros encountered difficulties with the European powers. Seeking aid from the British government (he proposed a joint expedition to conquer Jerusalem), he became unhappy with the behavior of those Britons whom he had counted on to advance his request, and he took them hostage. In 1868, as a British expeditionary force sent from India to secure release of the hostages stormed his stronghold, Tewodros committed suicide.

  Tewodros never realized his dream of restoring a strong monarchy, although he took some important initial steps. He sought to establish the principle that governors and judges must be salaried appointees. He also established a professional standing army, rather than depending on local lords to provide soldiers for his expeditions. He also intended to reform the church, believing the clergy to be ignorant and immoral, but he was confronted by strong opposition when he tried to impose a tax on church lands to help finance government activities.

  In 1872 Kasa Mercha was crowned negusa nagast in a ceremony at the ancient capital of Aksum, taking the throne name of Yohannis IV.  From the beginning of his reign, he was confronted with the growing power of Menelik, who had proclaimed himself king of Shewa and traced his Solomonic lineage to Lebna Dengel. While Yohannis was struggling against opposing factions in the north, Menelik consolidated his power in Shewa and extended his rule over the Oromo to the south and west. He garrisoned Shewan forces among the Oromo and received military and financial support from them. In many of Yohannis ‘s external struggles, Menelik maintained separate relations with the emperor’s enemies and continued to consolidate Shewan authority in order to strengthen his own position. In a subsequent agreement designed to ensure the succession in the line of Yohannis, one of Yohannis ‘s younger sons was married to Zawditu, Menelik’ s daughter.The khedive in Egypt envisioned a “Greater Egypt” that would encompass Ethiopia. In pursuit of this goal, an Egyptian force moved inland from present-day Djibouti but was annihilated by Afar tribesmen. 

• Menelik II

  The Battle of Gundet and Gura

  The Battle of Gura was fought on March 7–9, 1876 between the Ethiopian Empire and the Khedivate of Egypt near the town of Gura in Eritrea. It was the decisive battle of the Ethiopian–Egyptian War. The Egyptians invaded from their coastal possessions in what is now Eritrea. The armies of Yohannes and Isma’il met at Gundet on the morning of 16 November 1875. There was a crushing rout of the vastly-outnumbered but well equipped invading Egyptian force at the hands of the defending Ethiopian force. News of this huge defeat was suppressed in Egypt for fear that it would undermine the government of the Khedivate. After the defeat at Gundet, the Egyptians sent another, much larger force, which was armed to the teeth to invade from the north. They built a fort there but were again defeated at the Battle of Gura in March 1876.

  By 1900 Menelik had succeeded in establishing control over much of present-day Ethiopia and had, in part at least, gained recognition from the European colonial powers of the boundaries of his empire. Although in many respects a traditionalist, he introduced several significant changes. His decision in the late 1880s to locate the royal encampment at Addis Ababa (“New Flower”) in southern Shewa led to the gradual rise of a genuine urban center and a permanent capital in the 1890s, a development that facilitated the introduction of new ideas and technology.

  The capital’s location symbolized the empire’s southern reorientation, a move that further irritated Menelik’s Tigrayan opponents and some Amhara of the more northerly provinces who resented Shewan hegemony. Menelik also authorized a French company to build a railroad, not completed until 1917, that eventually would link Addis Ababa and Djibouti. Menelik embarked on a program of military conquest that more than doubled the size of his domain. Enjoying superior fire power, his forces overran the Kembata and Welamo regions in the southern highlands. Also subdued were the Kefa and other Oromo and Omotic-speaking peoples.

  Expanding south, Menelik introduced a system of land rights considerably modified from that prevailing in the Amhara-Tigray highlands. These changes had significant implications for the ordinary cultivator in the south and ultimately were to generate quite different responses there to the land reform programs that would follow the revolution of 1974.  While Menelik was extending his empire, European colonial powers were showing an interest in the territories surrounding Ethiopia. Menelik considered the Italians a formidable challenge and negotiated the Treaty of Wuchale with them in 1889. Among its terms were those permitting the Italians to establish their first toehold on the edge of the northern highlands and from which they subsequently sought to expand into Tigray.

  The agreements over the contents of the treaty eventually induced Menelik to renounce it and repay in full a loan Italy had granted as a condition. Thereafter, relations with Italy were further strained as a result of the establishment of Eritrea as a colony and Italy’s penetration of the Somali territories. Italian ambitions were encouraged by British actions in 1891, Britain agreed with the Italian government that Ethiopia should fall within the Italian sphere of influence. France, however, encouraged Menelik to oppose the Italian threat by delineating the projected boundaries of his empire. Anxious to advance French economic interests through the construction of a railroad from Addis Ababa to the city of Djibouti in French Somaliland, France accordingly reduced the size of its territorial claims there and recognized Ethiopian sovereignty in the area.

  The Battle of Adwa 

  Italian-Ethiopian relations reached a low point in 1895, when Ras Mengesha of Tigray, hitherto reluctant to recognize the Shewan emperor’s claims, was threatened by the Italians and asked for the support of Menelik. In late 1895, Italian forces invaded Tigray. However, Menelik completely routed them in early 1896 as they approached the Tigrayan capital, Adwa. This victory brought Ethiopia new prestige as well as general recognition of its sovereign status by the European powers. Besides confirming the  annulment of the Treaty of Wuchale, the peace agreement ending the conflict also entailed Italian recognition of Ethiopian independence; in return, Menelik permitted the Italians to retain their colony of Eritrea.

• Haile Selassie

  April 1930, Negus Tafari was crowned Haile Selassie I, “Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah, Elect of God, and King of Kings of Ethiopia.” As emperor, Haile Selassie continued to push reforms aimed at modernizing the country and breaking the nobility’s authority. In July 1931, the emperor granted a constitution that asserted his own status, reserved imperial succession to the line of Haile Selassie, and declared that “the person of the Emperor is sacred, his dignity inviolable, and his power indisputable.” All power over central and local government, the legislature, the judiciary, and the military remained with the emperor. The emperor took nonmilitary measures to promote loyalty to the throne and to the state. He established new elementary and secondary schools in Addis Ababa, and some 150 university-age students studied abroad. The government enacted a penal code in 1930, imported printing presses to provide nationally oriented newspapers, increased the availability of electricity and telephone services, and promoted public health. The Bank of Ethiopia, founded in 1931, commenced issuing Ethiopian currency.

  Mussolini’s Invasion and the Italian Occupation

  A latecomer to the scramble for colonies in Africa, Italy established itself first in Eritrea In the 1880s and secured Ethiopian recognition of its claim in 1889. Despite its failure to penetrate Tigray in 1896, Italy retained control over Eritrea. A succession of Italian chief administrators, or governors, maintained a degree of unity and public order in a region marked by cultural, linguistic, and religious diversity. 

  After Benito Mussolini assumed power in Italy in 1922, the colonial government in Eritrea changed. The new administration stressed the racial and political superiority of Italians, authorized segregation, and relegated the local people to the lowest level of public employment. Nonetheless, it became clear that Italy wished to expand and link its holdings in the Horn of Africa. In September 1935, the League of Nations exonerated both parties in the Wal Wal incident. The long delay and the intricate British and French maneuvering persuaded Mussolini that no obstacle would be placed in his path.  On October 3, 1935, Italy attacked Ethiopia from Eritrea and Italian Somali-land without a declaration of war. On October 7, the League of Nations unanimously declared Italy an aggressor but took no effective action.

  Despite a valiant defense, the next six months saw the Ethiopians pushed back on the northern front and in Harerge. Acting on long standing grievances, a segment of the Tigray forces defected, as did Oromo forces in some areas. Moreover, the Italians made widespread use of chemical weapons and air power. On March 31, 1936, the Ethiopians counterattacked the main Italian force at Maychew but were defeated. By early April 1936, Italian forces had reached Dese in the north and Harer in the east. On May 2, Haile Selassie left for French Somaliland and exile—a move resented by some Ethiopians who were accustomed to a warrior emperor. The Italian forces entered Addis Ababa on May 5. Four days later, Italy announced the annexation of Ethiopia.

  On June 30, Haile Selassie made a powerful speech before the League of Nations in Geneva in which he set forth two choices support for collective security or international lawlessness. The emperor stirred the conscience of many and was thereafter regarded as a major international figure. Britain and France, however, soon recognized Italy’s control of Ethiopia. Among the major powers, the United States and the Soviet Union refused to do so.

  Selassie’s army consisted of around 500,000 men, some of whom were armed with spears and bows; other soldiers carried more modern weapons, including rifles but many of these were pre-1900 equipments and obsolete. According to Italian estimates, on the eve of hostilities, the Ethiopians had an army of 350,000–760,000 men. Only about 25 percent of the army had any military training and the men were armed with a motley of 400,000 rifles of every type and in every condition.  The serviceable portion of the Imperial Ethiopian Air Force under the command of the French Andre Maillet, included three obsolete Potez 25 biplanes. Fifty foreign mercenaries joined the Ethiopian forces, including French pilots like Pierre Corriger, the Trinidadian pilot Hubert Julian, an official Swedish military mission under Captain Viking Tamm, the White Russian Feodor Konovalov and the Czechoslovak writer Adolf Parlesak. Several Austrian Nazis, a team of Belgian Fascists and Cuban mercenary.On May 5, 1941, Haile Selassie reentered Addis Ababa, but it was not until January 1942 that the last of the Italians, cut off near Gonder, surrendered to British and Ethiopian forces.

• The End of the Monarchy 

  Despite criticism of the emperor’s 1936 decision to go into exile, the concept of the monarchy remained widely accepted after World War II. The country’s leaders and the church assumed that victory over the Italians essentially meant the restoration of their traditional privileges. Before long, however, new social classes stirred into life by Haile Selassie’s centralizing policies, as well as a younger generation full of frustrated expectations, clashed with forces bent on maintaining the traditional system. Overt dissidence in Tigray during Haile Selassie’s reign centered on the 1943 resistance to imperial rule known as the Weyane. The movement took advantage of popular discontent against Amhara rule but was primarily a localized resistance to imperial rule that depended on three main sources of support. These were the semi pastoralists of eastern Tigray, including the Azebo and Raya, who believed their traditional Oromo social structure to be threatened; the local Tigray nobility, who perceived their position to be en- dangered by the central government’s growth; and the peasantry, who felt victimized by government officials and their militias

  In pursuit of reform , Emperor Haile Selassie faced the recalcitrance of the provincial nobility, other great landholders, and church officials, all of whom intended to maintain their power and privileges. Moreover, some provincial nobility opposed the emperor because of their own long-held claims to the throne. Whatever his intentions as a reformer, Haile Selassie was a political realist and recognized that, lacking a strong military, he had to compromise with the Amhara and Tigray nobility and with the church. And, where required, he made his peace with other ethnic groups in the empire. For example, he eventually granted autonomy over Afar areas that Addis Ababa could not dominate by armed force to the sultan of Aussa. In general, political changes were few and were compromised at the first sign of substantial opposition. In the 1950s, despite his many years as emperor and his international stature, there was almost no significant section of the Ethiopian population on which Haile Selassie could rely to support him in such efforts.

  Haile Selassie’s efforts to achieve a measure of change without jeopardizing his own power stimulated rising expectations, some of which he was unwilling or unable to satisfy. Impatient with the rate or form of social and political change, several groups conspired to launch a coup d’etat on December 13, 1960, while the emperor was abroad on one of his frequent trips. The leadership of the 1960 revolt came from three groups: the commander of the Imperial Bodyguard, Mengistu Neway, and his followers; a few security offi- cials, including the police chief; and a handful of radical intellec- tuals related to the officials, including Girmame Neway, Mengistu ‘s brother. The coup was initially successful in the capital, as the rebels seized the crown prince and more than twenty cabinet ministers and other government leaders. The coup’s leaders failed to achieve popular support for their actions. Although university students demonstrated in favor of the coup, army and air force units remained loyal to the emperor, who returned to the capital on December 17.

  Outside the Amhara-Tigray heartland, the two areas posing the most consistent problems for Ethiopia’s rulers were Eritrea and the largely Somali-occupied Ogaden and adjacent regions.  The Liberation Struggle in Eritrea Eritrea had been placed under British military administration in 1941 after the Italian surrender. In keeping with a 1950 decision of the UN General Assembly, British military administration ended in September 1952 and was replaced by a new autonomous Eritrean government in federal union with Ethiopia. In 1958, a number of Eritrean exiles had founded the Eritrean Liberation Movement (ELM) in Cairo, under Hamid Idris Awate’s leadership. This organization, however, soon was neutralized. A new faction, the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF), emerged in 1960.

  On March 5, the government announced a revision of the 1955 constitution—the prime minister henceforth would be responsible to parliament. In late June, a body of men that eventually totaled about 120, none above the rank of major and almost all of whom remained anonymous, organized themselves into a new body called the Coordinating Committee of the Armed Forces, Police, and Territorial Army. This body soon came to be called the Derg (Amharic for “committee” or “council” —see Glossary). They elected Major Mengistu Haile Mariam chairman and Major Atnafu Abate vice chairman, both outspoken proponents of far-reaching change.

• Cold War and Post Cold War Ethiopia

  The Derg borrowed its ideology from competing Marxist parties, all of which arose from the student movement. One of them, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party (EPRP), believed so strongly in civilian rule that it undertook urban guerrilla war against the military rulers, and anarchy ensued in the following years. In February 1977 Mengistu seized complete power as chairman and head of state. A series of EPRP attacks against Derg members and their supporters, known as the White Terror, was countered by Mengistu’s Red Terror, a bloody campaign that crushed armed opponents among the EPRP and other groups, as well as members of the civilian populace. As a result of the campaign, which continued into 1978, thousands of Ethiopia’s best-educated and idealistic young people were killed or exiled; in all, as many as 100,000 people were killed, and thousands more were tortured or imprisoned.

  Meanwhile, in May and June 1977, Somalia’s army advanced into the Ogaden. The U.S.S.R. labeled Somalia the aggressor and diverted arms shipments to Ethiopia, where Soviet and allied troops trained and armed a People’s Militia, provided fighting men, and reequipped the army. Mengistu quickly shifted troops to Eritrea, where by year’s end the Eritrean nationalists had been pushed back into mountainous terrain around Nakʾfa. On September 10, 1987, after thirteen years of military rule, the nation officially became the People’s Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (PDRE) under a new constitution providing for a civilian government. The PMAC was abolished, and in June of that year Ethiopians had elected the National Shengo (National Assembly), a parliament. Despite these changes, members of the now-defunct Derg still ran the government but with different titles.

  The Soviet Union changed policies toward its allies among the developing countries in the late 1980s; these changes appeared likely to result in significant reductions in its hitherto extensive support of Ethiopia. By then it was evident that the Soviet-Ethiopian relationship had undergone a fundamental reorientation. The change was partly the result of the new directions in Soviet foreign policy undertaken by Mikhail Gorbachev. This resulted in more economic hardship and the collapse of the military in the face of determined onslaughts by guerrilla forces in the north. The collapse of socialism in general, and in Eastern Europe during the revolutions of 1989, coincided with the Soviet Union stopping aid to Ethiopia altogether in 1990, made the strategic outlook for Mengistu quickly deteriorated.

  In May 1991, EPRDF forces advanced on Addis Ababa and the Soviet Union did not intervene to save the government side. Mengistu fled the country and was granted asylum in Zimbabwe, where he still resides. The 1st multiparty election took place in May 1995, which was won by the EPRDF, and its  leader Meles Zenawi, became Prime Minister. Meles died on 20 August 2012 in Brussels, where he was being treated for an unspecified illness.Deputy Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn was appointed as a new prime minister until the 2015 elections, and remained so afterwards with his party in control of every parliamentary seat.

  Soon after, mass protests erupted in Ethiopia’s populous Oromia region – home to the Oromo, Ethiopia’s largest ethno-national group – in 2015 after a master plan was unveiled to expand the boundaries of the capital, Addis Ababa. The Oromo protesters’ first demand, therefore, was to cancel the master plan outright. But their demands quickly grew to include the release of prisoners of conscience and more political and socioeconomic rights for the Oromo, who make up more than 34 percent of the country’s 100 million citizens and have long complained of being marginalized. Angered by an unfulfilled demand to retake control of some of their lands, the Amhara – Ethiopia’s second-largest ethnic group, constituting about 27 percent of the population – launched protests in their region soon thereafter. 

  On February 16, 2018, the government of Ethiopia declared a six-month nationwide state of emergency following the resignation of the former Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn. Hailemariam is the first ruler in modern Ethiopian history to step down; previous leaders have died in office or been overthrown. As a result Ethiopia elect its first ever Ethnically Oromo Leaders in all its 3000 or more history.  The New  leader is Dr. Abiy Ahmed, who seems equipped with deep understanding of his surrounding and the world as whole. With his educational and millinery background, Abiy’s ascension to power could be the Turning point for Ethiopia.

• Source:

  https://cdn.loc.gov/master/frd/frdcstdy/et/ethiopiacountrys00ofca_0/ethiopiacountrys00ofca_0.pdf

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopia

  https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/iv.html

  https://www.britannica.com/place/Ethiopia

  https://www.encyclopedia.com/places/africa/ethiopia-political-geography/ethiopia

  http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/ethiopia

  https://www.export.gov/article?id=Ethiopia-Market-Overview

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Ethiopia

  http://www.everyculture.com/Cr-Ga/Ethiopia.html