Ethiopian History

A comprehensive analysis of the war in the Ethiopian region of Tigray. This builds on the work of Volume 1, published in June 2021 and takes the narrative about the war to December 2021. With a forward by the former New Zealand Prime Minister, Helen Clark.
Chapters on:
1. The development of the war, with maps.
2. Humanitarian relief and famine
3. Eritrea and the sanctions regime
4. Diplomacy - both in the region and by the international community
5. Sexual violence and rape
6. The role of the Eritrean and Tigrayan diasporas
7. The looting and destruction of Tigray's unique heritage

La rappresentazione cartografica ha negli ultimi anni attratto attenzioni crescenti e diversificate che vanno inquadrate nel rinnovato interesse che le scienze sociali hanno rivolto alla spazialità e alla visualità. I geografi sono stati, ovviamente, tra i protagonisti di questa profonda operazione di revisione epistemologica. Nel ripensarne i fondamenti sono stati guidati, in particolare, dalla felice collocazione della carta all’incrocio strategico tra il piano della realtà geografica e quello dell’immaginario spaziale. L’articolo si interroga sul ruolo della carta geografica nel rapporto tra questi due piani, sulle forme di potere che essa subisce e su quelle che esercita. Lo fa a partire da una vicenda storica tratta dall’Italia fascista che non era mai emersa in precedenza: la rappresentazione dei confini dell’Etiopia, progressivamente eliminati dai prodotti cartografici ben prima della conquista italiana. Le categorie analitiche da cui muove la riflessione sono tratte dal pens...

DNA and other evidence suggests the early history of the Hebrew Old Testament concerns two entirely separate people united by monotheism and military conquest. The first, taking the name of Israelites from Israel (Jacob), the grandson of the Patriarch Jacob, had a brief stay in the Egyptian Eastern Delta before falling out of favour and eventually fleeing to West Arabia in the chaos of Bronze Age collapse ca.1200 BC. There they were overwhelmed in a lengthy campaign by a black Nubian Cushitic-speaking people called the Hebrew, recently converted to the cult of YHWH. The two peoples intermarried but the Nubian priesthood dominated thereafter and eventually reinvented itself as part of the Semitic Abrahamic tradition. Cut off through Babylonian exile from its gene pool in West Arabia, the Nubian high priesthood identified the present-day area of Israel and Palestine as the Promised Land of Moses and portrayed themselves as a special Middle East people who had escaped slavery in the Delta, not as a black Nubian enslaved gold mining force that had fled to Yemen during a time of ecological disaster characterised by severe earthquake and volcanic activity.

The following text is a response sent to an email dispatched to me by the Chairman of the exiled Oromo Parliamentarians who struggle for the Independence and Self-determination of the 5 millennia long Kushitic Ethiopian Nation of the Oromos.
The Hamitic - Kushitic Oromo Nation - due to criminal, inhuman and evil persecution conceived by the colonial powers (France, England and America) and executed by the colonially promoted barbaric and incestuous pseudo-Christian Abyssinians - lost their kingdoms and were engulfed within the Cemetery of Nations Fake Ethiopia, which consists in the world's most tyrannical realm and the location of the world's more abhorrent, more enduring, and more multifaceted genocides. There are more than 45 million Oromos in Abyssinia (Fake Ethiopia) and Kenya today, despite the notorious and pathetic falsehood propagated by Wikipedia.
The present text enumerates all the major points of historical distortion and falsification carried out and diffused by the colonial academia, mass media, and diplomats, as well as by their local agents and criminal executioners, i.e. the barbaric, incestuous and Anti-Christian tribes of Amhara and Tigray (: the Abyssinians), who usurped the fair name of Ethiopia, which historically denotes the land of North Sudan and the Kushitic Nation that prospered there either in the Antiquity or in the Christian Era. Both, the Oromos and the Arabic-speaking (but not Arab) populations of Northern-Central Sudan are the descendants of Ancient Sudan's (i.e. Ancient Ethiopia's) Kushitic populations.
Representative photographic documentation was herewith added to the text in order to better illustrate the topic.

Refutation of historical forgeries propagated by European colonials and incestuous Abyssinians
First published here:
https://megalommatiscomments.wordpress.com/2017/07/26/kushitic-oromos-ancestry-in-ethiopia-ancient-sudan-semitic-amharas-tigrays-abyssinians-ancestry-in-yemen/

Three thousand years of writing in Africa has yielded perhaps ten known
biographies of African women written by Africans before the nineteenth
century. Autobiographies by premodern African women are even rarer; an early hagiography about an Ethiopian woman, however, may constitute such a text. Gädlä Krəstos Śämra (The Life-Struggles of Krəstos Śämra [Christ Delights in Her]), written in an Ethiopian monastery sometime between 1450 and 1508, is about a saintly woman who lived in the fifteenth century (no exact dates of her birth or death appear in her hagiography). The text gives a
short overview of Krəstos Śämra’s life in the third person, but then proceeds in the first person as Krəstos Śämra describes a series of her religious visions, including one in which she attempts to reconcile Christ and Satan.
Although the text contains a few biographical details about her, it is more of an intellectual autobiography, the narrative of one woman’s philosophy and her belief in the possibilities for healing a broken world. As such, this text expands our understanding of the global female visionary tradition, which tends to be oriented more toward reconciliation than damnation. Krəstos Śämra must be placed alongside such visionary medieval women saints as the English Christians Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe, the Muslims Rabia of Basri and Lalla Aziza, and the Hindu Mirabai. Despite its value, her hagiography has been translated only into Amharic and Italian; in this chapter portions appear in English for the first time.

Excavations were carried out in 1999 on the location of Stela 2 at the ancient site of Aksum in northern Ethiopia.
These excavations have permitted the documentation of the foundation of this stela, which was transported to Rome in 1937. Preparations were also made for the stela’s return to the site in 2005 and its re-erection in 2008 at the exact location where it stood in the 3rd or 4th century AD.
The excavations also made it possible to re-examine our perception of the three giant stelae on the site, from their conception and erection to their destruction.

Recent contributions to a social history of Italian colonialism. This review discusses Emanuele Ertola’s monograph In terra d’Africa. Gli Italiani che colonizzarono l’impero within the recent historiography on the social life of the Italian colonies. The author bases his reconstruction of the social experience of the colonial settlers and labour migrants, examining a wealth of information and data, organizing a bulk of relevant sources often dispersed and not well organized and available. Once the open war against the indipendent Ethiopia was over - as Ertola convincing shows - the Italian colonial authorities faced enormous practical problems. The èlites and the settlers suddenly experienced the gap between ambitious peasant settlement schemes and a local stratified land tenure system, the wide variety of climates and soils, open resistance, a restricted market, language barriers. Despite the incentives, insufficient support and inadequate funds, low expertise, lack of capital and qualification, social weakness, difficult labor recruitment, corruption, created harsh disillusions and conducted the colony to failure even before the second world war. Far for realizing a dream, the colonial experience which lasted only five wears, become a real.

The story of Francis William Rickett is riddled with contradictions. Bluff and resourceful, notorious for his exploits in the world of oil in the 1930s, he remains an enigma today. Speculator and businessman he was, but he also had deeper links with oil companies and foreign governments than appeared in the press reports of the time. Above all, he lived in interesting times, and through his exploits we have a tantalizing glimpse into behind-the-scenes struggles for the control of oil.

Колониальная риторика в конце XIX-XX вв. использовала понятия и метафоры, которые заимствовались из различных областей науки, литературы и изящных искусств, обретая дополнительные, порой неожиданные, значения, влиявшие как на принятие политических решений, осмысливавшихся в этих понятиях, так и на восприятие самих научных или художественных работ, которые становились, таки образом, частью имперской культуры 1. Благодаря рецепции в России британского 2 и немецкого 3 опыта изучения истории понятий в последние годы довольно много было сделано для осмысления ключевых для имперского опыта понятий «нация», «патриотизм», «цивилизация» и другие 4. Не менее важной представляется и идущая от Х. Блюменберга традиция метафорологических исследований 5 , однако в этой области как применительно к российской истории в целом, так в связи с колониальным прошлым, сделано гораздо меньше. При этом, как и в истории понятий, существует необходимость в большей степени учитывать те конкретные исторические обстоятельства, в которых слова могли получать специфические, отличающиеся от общепринятых, значения. В недавнем исследовании Вальтера Шперлинга 6 было обращено внимание на значение метафоры «спящей красавицы» в российской имперской культуре начала ХХ в. в связи с дискуссиями того времени об освоении богатств Крайнего Севера. Эта метафора, однако, использовалась и в иных контекстах, изучение которых может дополнить и в чем-то скорректировать сделанные до сих пор исследовательские наблюдения.

Tekle Ts'adyk Mekurija and Haile Sellassie I – a difficult relationship of a man of letters and a ruler
Tekle Ts'adik Mekuria was an Ethiopian historian and statesman. He belonged to the same generation as Emperor Haile Sellassie. Both Tekle Ts'adik and Haile Sellassie represented these Ethiopians who were aware of the contemporary global situation and believed that it was necessary to adjust the Ethiopian state and society to the changing circumstances. The well-being of the Ethiopian state, the desire to be perceived by the world as partners as well as improvement of life conditions of the Ethiopians were the aims which the Ethiopian intellectuals led by the Emperor wanted to achieve. However, it did not mean that the way to achieve them was smooth. One of the conflicts between the intellectuals and the Emperor was based on a different understanding of the role of a ruler and social structure of the Ethiopian society. This was also true in the case of Emperor Haile Sellassie I and historian and intellectual Tekle Ts’adik Mekuria.

Tekle Ts'adyk Mekurija był etiopskim historykiem i mężem stanu. Reprezentował to samo pokolenie, do którego należał Cesarz Etiopii Hajle Syllasje I. Obaj byli też przedstawicielami tych Etiopczyków, którzy świadomi sytuacji na świecie uważali za konieczne dostosować funkcjonowanie etiopskiego państwa i społeczeństwa do zmieniających się warunków. Dla całej grupy etiopskich intelektualistów, którym przewodził cesarz, dobro ich kraju, pragnienie by być postrzeganymi na politycznej arenie międzynarodowej jako partnerzy oraz polepszenie warunków życia Etiopczyków, były celami, do których konsekwentnie dążyli. Jednak nie oznaczało to braku konfliktów wewnętrznych. Jeden z takich konfliktów polegał na odmiennym postrzeganiu roli władcy i konstrukcji społeczeństwa etiopskiego przez cesarza Hajle Syllasje I i przez historyka oraz intelektualistę – Tekle Ts'adyka Mekuriję.

Parigi 1919. Una prospettiva globale sulla Conferenza della Pace: introduzione (doi: 10.30461/94645) Rivista italiana di storia internazionale (ISSN 2611-8602) Fascicolo 1, gennaio-giugno 2019 Ente di afferenza: Universitgli Studi di Pavia (Unipv) Copyright c by Società editrice il Mulino, Bologna. Tutti i diritti sono riservati. Per altre informazioni si veda https://www.rivisteweb.it Licenza d'uso L'articoloè messo a disposizione dell'utente in licenza per uso esclusivamente privato e personale, senza scopo di lucro e senza fini direttamente o indirettamente commerciali. Salvo quanto espressamente previsto dalla licenza d'uso Rivisteweb,è fatto divieto di riprodurre, trasmettere, distribuire o altrimenti utilizzare l'articolo, per qualsiasi scopo o fine. Tutti i diritti sono riservati. MASSIMO ZACCARIA Parigi 1919. Una prospettiva globale sulla Conferenza della Pace Introduzione Rivista italiana di storia internazionale II, 1/2019, 3-8 ISSN 2611-8602 © SOCIETÀ EDITRICE IL MULINO

Addis Ababa’s early domestic architecture owes much to foreign influences. This is well illustrated with the residence-store, a two-story building whose ground floor was used for business and upper-floor for a residence. At the turn of the 20th century, the residence-store was a structure new to Addis Ababa, one that symbolized the city as the commercial center of Emperor Menelik II’s empire. The Ethiopian capital  funded in the 1880s was the last city in the region to develop as a trading center oriented towards the import-export commercial networks that connected Ethiopia with Yemen, Europe, and India. Like Harar a few decades earlier, the new city adopted features of the trading port architecture strongly influenced by what could be coined as an Indo-colonial style. The presence of Indians merchants, builders, and craftsmen was essential. They introduced the residence-store, which served commercial needs, and a specific package of wooden features that found their way in many Addis Ababa residences and palaces, including Emperor Menelik II’s. This presentation looks at the residence-store’s architecture, the people who built and used them, aiming at a social history of the structure. The number of surviving buildings, a few dozen located mainly in the old commercial area of Piazza, supports this investigation, which combines architectural documentation, oral history, and archival research.

First published in the American Chronicle, Buzzle and AfroArticles on 6th April 2010

Multiple divergent end point game
Consequently, when you have already ceased viewing the world through the eyes of an early 19th century Oromo, and you confidently become greatly assimilated into the global system, you will thoughtlessly tie yourself and your political group or association with the promises given to you by an American Congressman about Oromia’s liberation.

But, quite unhappily, another Oromo, who also believes frankly that he and his movement struggle for the benefit of their subjugated nation, will make a bond with the president of a small and marginalized country, who will be promising similar "delivery". As it happens, behind the American Congressman and the marginal president, there are people belonging in the same decision making center, who by practicing the multiple divergent end point game, ensure that unity will never take place among the Oromos.

If they are successful in their evil game, it is not due to any deficiency of the Oromo system or values, but to the earlier diffusion of the above described global system (an array of mindsets and attitudes). Certainly there are bribes, material goods, monies and other corruption techniques involved, but this matters little; if the same corruption techniques had been performed by representatives of two or more foreign powers before 150 years, the then targeted Oromo leaders would not have reacted in the way today react all the leaders of major Oromo movements.

The Continental version of the New Scientist, the New African, publishes this month of March, 2015 a whole issue on China to Africa relations. The historical part revolves around the October 2014 Addis Ababa world meetup on the Oceanic trade and Sino African relations since the Tang dynasty.

In the aftermath of the 1974 Ethiopian revolution, the government came to adopt an official strand of Marxism that featured a number of characteristics inherited from the late Soviet interpretation of its own experience, and a number of instrumentalist contortions corresponding to the interest of the emergent dominant strata. This generated contradictions between the emancipatory ideational categories employed and the social-material characteristics of the actual process of attempted development. Nowhere were these contradictions greater than in the manufacturing sector, where exhortations and demands for sacrifice on the part of the working class were only matched by the – increasingly farcical – rhetorical place of prominence of that class. By focusing on the rhetorical aims, the practical means, and the achievements recorded in this sector, this article aims to analyse the concrete manner in which these contradictions manifested themselves. The findings indicate that the effort to construct and develop a socialist economy – narrowly defined as such in terms of the judicial form of ownership – failed on a number of levels. This failure is traced back to the nature of power relations in ‘Socialist Ethiopia’, and draws attention to the manner in which the ideology of ‘state socialism’, which shifts attention from the aim of revolutionising productive relations to the development of productive forces under state ownership, has generally been used to legitimise the rule of bureaucratic categories and to conceal exploitative relations prevailing under such rule. In this, the article draws on Marxist theorisation and critique of that ideology.

This is a historical book for the genius policy of Emperor Menelik II, as well his exploited the European conflict interests in Africa during the Era of Colonialism at the 19th century.
The book is an editing by Arabic Language for the author's MA degree; at Institute of African Research and Studies, Cairo University; titled: The Abyssinian Regional Expansion during the Reign of Emperor "Menelik II" 1889 - 1913.

EXPRESSIONS OF TRADITION AND MODERNITY IN THE IMAGE OF THE EMPEROR HAILE SILLASSIE I’S FAMILY: ITS SIGNIFICANCE AS A FORM OF PROPAGANDA

Keywords: Ethiopia, Haile Selassie I, legitimization of power, propaganda, tradition, modernity
The Family of the Ethiopian Emperor Haile Sillasie I played important role in the system of legitimization of power. The image of the family was carefully constructed and distributed through a variety of Ethiopian publications. The aim of the article is to analyse photographs from the books and press of Haile Sillasie’s period in search for references to tradition and modernity represented through images of the members of the imperial family.

Avec Londres et Paris, Bâle constitua, à partir du milieu du 19ème siècle, l'un des « centres » de la première diaspora africaine en Europe de l'Ouest. Toutefois, l'origine de cette étonnante présence d'Africains à Bâle n'est pas due aux activités du commerce international qui préoccupaient tant les métropoles de l'Ouest. À Bâle, ce sont les piétistes qui jouèrent le rôle principal dans la création d'une communauté africaine. On peut, en effet, déjà parler d'une véritable communauté, dans la mesure où non seulement les Africains se connaissaient, mais où ils partageaient aussi un sort commun et effectuaient une grande partie de leurs activités ensemble. En revanche, il serait certainement exagéré de qualifier cette communauté de « diaspora » au sens strict du terme. Cette expression ne serait appropriée que si un nombre important d'Africains, originaires d'une seule région, s'était établi de façon permanente dans cette ville, ce qui ne fut pas le cas. Quelques-uns parmi ceux qui résidèrent à Bâle – surtout à partir des années 1850 – venaient de l'Afrique de l'Ouest, mais la plupart était originaire des régions soudanaise et éthiopienne. Une fraction assez considérable de ces Africains mourut à Bâle, mais plus de la moitié retourna finalement dans son pays d'origine. L'observation suivante est importante, puisqu'elle indique une autre spécificité bâloise qui la distingue de Paris ou de Londres : non seulement la motivation. Une étude proposant des biographies des Africains vivant à Paris ou Londres montre qu'une majorité d'entre eux était des anciens esclaves, des serviteurs de personnalités impliquées dans l'expansion commerciale française ou anglaise, ou encore des ressortissants des premières colonies. - Article : Les Africains de Bâle du 19ème siècle, in: Thomas David et al. (eds.): De la traite des Noirs à la fin du régime de l'Apartheid : trois siècles de relations entre la Suisse et l'Afrique (XVIIIe-XXIe siècles), Münster: Lit-Verlag 2005, 209-225

Italy's celebration of Eritrean askaris - its colonial troops - were celebrated in postcard propaganda. These were miniture masterpieces, which can be traced back to the early 1930's and came to the fore during the Italian invasion of Ethiopia.

This dissertation primarily introduced the Amharic word čạ̈wata as the equivalent for the English word humor and used the word to describe the phenomenon of joke telling and humorous conversation through out the dissertation.

Chapter one discusses čạ̈wata in Ethiopian historiography showing how humor is a part of Ethiopian oral culture that has not been previously seriously collected and studied. Chapter two, three and four discuss humor in three venues. These are the parliament, the theatre and the public spaces of Addis Abäba, respectively. In each chapter, a particular case study is taken for discussion of the sort of čạ̈wata and its purposes in that venue. Each of these chapters begins with a historical investigation to contextualize the venue under discussion, after which the jokes are presented, translated and discussed. On a micro level, all of the jokes of these three chapters have been individually discussed for the sort of humor theory they categorically fall under. The relief theory of humor and the disparaging theory of humor have been used to discuss the effects and purposes of the jokes collected.

The question that led to this research was, what role does humor have in contemporary Addis Abäba? The thesis has presented the purpose of humor as a self-reflective activity, as a means of speaking truth to power, as educational or didactic, as negotiation with power across political elite and with the general public, and finally as a source of entertainment.

The value of the research undertaken is in showing that though there is a serious written and documented political culture in Ethiopia, the relationship between the Ethiopian government and the general public can also be studied from Ethiopians’ oral cultures. Disregarding the jokes discussed beyond the case studies, the number of jokes in this thesis total to one hundred and forty-six. Taken from a mix of each joke’s micro analysis, participant observation, and historical investigation, as well as theories and conjectures, each chapter has made an analysis of the political and social realities of contemporary Addis Abäba. The čạ̈wata studied in this dissertation illuminate an informal and often elusive sphere of communication between the government and the public. Some aspects of the relationship of Addis Abäba with EPRDF, especially post 2005, are highlighted in the jokes made both by the ruling elite and by the urban dweller.

Ethiopia is the cradle of coffee culture, yet early evidence for it is scant. Does the Ge’ez word for coffee reveal clues? I propose an etymological link to the Zorastrian Emperor of Persia, Khosrow I (or II), reflecting contemporaneous Aksumite ‘anti-coffee’ sentiments.

Ge’ez, used in Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo liturgy since the fourth century, is traced to the first century emergence of Aksum(1). Ge’ez for coffee is Etse Kusra/Khusra (Etse=plant)(2). Few early manuscripts exist(1). The fifteenth century Dǝrsanä Ṣǝyon probably reflects earlier traditions: coffee is described as ‘a devilish evil tree’; kusra as traded with Moslems but strictly forbidden for Christians(3).

Tadesse(2) links kusra to Asian words, including eunuch. In Persian, kusra can mean ‘the habit of drinking much wine’(4). Semantic shifts from ‘wine’ to ‘coffee’ are noted in other languages. Alternatively, or concomitantly, the origin could be a name. Likely an enemy: kusra shares the Ge’ez consonants of ‘abominable’(3).

Khosrow I ‘Anushirvan’ was a powerful enemy in the sixth century, so was his grandson Khosrow II ‘Parviz’ in the seventh. Transliterations of Khosrow include ‘Khusrau’(5) and ‘Khusra’(6). Furthermore, Anushirvan likely knew of coffee. He ousted Aksum from Yemen, and actively sought out medical knowledge from other cultures(5).

Il libro ha la presentazione del prof. Antonio Grilli, professore associato di Storia del diritto medievale e moderno, Università e-campus (Novedrate/Roma) e anche il privilegio e la soddisfazione di essere inserito nella collana storica del prof. Mario Ascheri, già Professore nelle Università di Sassari, Siena e Roma 3, Senior Fellow University of California, Robbins Collection Berkeley, Doctor h. c. Université de l’Auvergne (Clermont-Ferrand) e membro del Consiglio scientifico dell’Istituto storico italiano per il Medio Evo. Per me un grande premio già prima dell’uscita del libro. Li ringrazio pubblicamente e sono riconoscente per la loro benevolenza.
Dopo anni di ricerca e studio delle fonti e in attesa di riuscire a trovare i documenti processuali, quasi sull’orlo dell’abbandono del progetto, perché i memoriali dei due protagonisti del libro sembravano introvabili, finalmente ho potuto concludere questo nuovo faticoso libro.
Si tratta del caso giudiziario che fece tremare le fondamenta dell’Italia liberale del primo governo Crispi (1887-1891) e che coinvolse anche gli alti vertici militari e la struttura dell’amministrazione coloniale.
Obiettivo della prima parte del libro, che parte con una lunga e approfondita cornice storica che inizia nei mesi successivi ai combattimenti di Saati e Dogali, è quello di far conoscere che tipo di vita si conduceva a Massaua fra il 1887 e il 1891, quali erano i condizionamenti che derivavano da un perenne stato di guerra, chi erano i personaggi, sia della politica locale che internazionale, con i quali bisognava confrontarsi. Una lettura che accompagna il lettore fino allo scoppio dello scandalo, postumo rispetto ai tragici eventi accaduti. Nella seconda parte viene dato risalto alle cronache giornalistiche raccontate con fervore dal giornalista Napoleone Corazzini ma non si trascurano i numerosi documenti di archivio per riuscire a far luce sulla veridicità delle accuse rivolte dal giornalista e sulle verità emerse dagli interrogatori del processo. Non sono trascurate nemmeno le discussioni parlamentari sulle condizioni del possedimento in Africa, inserite per far comprendere quali erano le argomentazioni pro e contro sul colonialismo italiano. Viene affrontata in dettaglio tutta la procedura processuale riportando le testimonianze degli indagati, sia italiani che indigeni, fino all’atto conclusivo dei due processi, il primo nei confronti di Eteocle Cagnassi, segretario degli Affari coloniali e di Dario Livraghi, tenente dei Reali Carabinieri, e dei loro presunti complici, che hanno come capi di accusa malversazione e appropriazione indebita; il secondo con il capo di accusa di omicidio solo nei confronti del tenente Livraghi e dei suoi presunti complici. Lo scandalo nasce con le sentenze di questi due processi, entrambi conclusi con una assoluzione piena per i due imputati italiani con la motivazione di non aver commesso il fatto e la indiretta assoluzione dei vertici militari presenti a Massaua in quegli anni quanto meno correi dei fatti evidenziati nei processi.
Nell’Appendice del libro sono presenti documenti inediti che riguardano i memoriali scritti da Livraghi e Cagnassi, le sentenze dei due processi e la nota relazione finale scritta dalla Commissione regia d’inchiesta in Eritrea, riportata sulla Gazzetta Ufficiale del Regno d’Italia n. 286 del 7 dicembre 1891.

L’Éthiopie est devenue la deuxième population africaine par le nombre. Sa réalité complexe -et les défis sociaux, économiques et politiques auxquels elle est confrontée- sont le fruit d’un long processus de construction.
Ce livre s’attache à mettre en lumière les grands axes de cette construction (société, pouvoir, religion et culture) et la manière dont ils ont été mis en oeuvre au cours des périodes successives de l’histoire éthiopienne pour aboutir à la formation nationale
actuelle.
Accompagné d’une abondante iconographie, ce livre offre une clef de compréhension de l’actualité tout en illustrant la singularité de l’histoire de l’Éthiopie.

Lovedale, one of the earliest Scottish mission stations and arguably the most renowned in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, unexpectedly became the site for emancipated slave children in the late nineteenth century. In 1888, more than eighty years after the passing of the British Abolition of the Slave Trade legislation in 1807, a consignment of Oromo slave children from Ethiopia was liberated by a British warship in the Red Sea. The H.M.S. Osprey confiscated this cargo of Oromo children aboard an Arab dhow and ferried them to Aden. From there, a number of them were selected by the Free Church of Scotland missionaries at Sheikh Othman, an oasis situated a few miles north of Aden. Others that could not be accommodated there were taken in by the Roman Catholic orphanage in Aden and the Muslim children were adopted by local Muslim families. Many of the children suffered severe ill-health after their arduous “first passage” following their capture and one-fifth of them died. Eleven months later, a further group of Oromo slave children were rescued from several dhows in the Red Sea and taken to Aden. This considerably smaller group joined the surviving children at Sheikh Othman swelling the numbers to forty-two boys and twenty-two girls.

After medical treatment and serious deliberation by the missionaries, these surviving children were shipped down the East Coast of Africa to a Free Church of Scotland mission with a healthier climate, this time a station in South Africa: Lovedale Institution. Here the sixty-four children were incorporated into the institution, housed in quarters constructed for them, educated, trained and baptised into the Christian faith.

By 1909, one third of the original group had decided to settle in South Africa having found partners or established careers, a further third had already died and the final third returned either independently between 1901 and 1909 or en bloc in a group of seventeen aboard the German SS Kronprinz. Given heightened tension between Britain and Germany, particularly with regard to command of the waters of the Indian Ocean washing onto the east coast of Africa, this move caused a considerable stir in the fragile diplomatic fabric of this pre-war period. Four polities were involved: the Cape, the British, the court of Menelik II in Addis Ababa and the Germans.

Authors: Dirar Mantai, Fessehaye Hagos and Ngusse Tsegai
Title: Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF): Its Struggle for Freedom and Social Justice 1961-1982
Language: Tigrinya
Publisher: Homib Publishing, [email protected]
Year: May 2016
Pages: 369

From the early 1430's, and during the course of the century that followed, Jewish society was rife with tales and reports of the rediscovery of the ten tribes. Rumor had it that the courageous and invincible tribesmen had departed their exilic abode of the previous 2100 years, engaging and conquering their neighbors and adversaries, and were now poised to assume a significant political and military role in the international arena. Since the tribesmen's ultimate objective was the reestablishment of an independent Jewish kingdom in the Land of Israel, these rumors assumed messianic significance. It was further claimed that high ranking political forces in Europe and the Islamic world were aware of this process while attempting to contend with it and that portents observed in various places established and corroborated these reports. These rumors surfaced in an intensive correspondence comprising 30 letters from the 1402 to the 1532, exchanged between Italy and the Land of Israel and also circulated within Italy and dispatched to additional countries, dealing with various reports and rumors of the impending redemption
Based on an analysis of these letters I argue that the Jewish expectations for a redemption led by the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel were influenced by European hopes that Prester John would come to their help to eradicate the Ottoman-Islamic threat. These hopes flourished in Italy from the 1430's on due to the political convergence between Italy and Ethiopia, perceived as the land of Prester John, at that time.
I also indicate a shift in the image of the ten tribes, from an image, common between the ninth and fourteenth centuries, of religious piety and complete detachment from what was happening outside their world, to a belligerent military image. This new image is explicitly expressed in the rumors, from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, that the tribes are on their way to become, once more, an active political and martial factor in the world history.
The new militant image, I claim, stems from a Jewish reading of the German anti-Semite traditions of the "Red Jews". According to these traditions the Ten Tribes are wild and fierce warriors and barbarian cannibals. They were prisoned in a remote and isolated place because they endanger the mere existence of the civilized (Christian) world. The Christian traditions of Prester John and the Red Jews, when read through Jewish eyes, have become a source for consolation and messianic hope.
Sixteenth century Jewish messianism was a historical messianism. It was affected by the international and geo-political situation, and envisioned as the rise of a political and martial Jewish power (the ten tribes) as a new and significant player in world politics.

The Quest for Socialist Utopia looks at the Ethiopian student uprising of the 1960s and early 1970s from both a national and global context using an interdisciplinary approach to present a complex analysis of Ethiopian politics, culture and society.

Pre-colonial Africa was not strange for the art of diplomacy. Since the period of antiquity, many African states maintained their close relation through peaceful negotiation of treaties, settlement of disputes as well as peacefully maintained the safe passage of trade and trade route. Likewise the diplomatic history of modern Africa goes back to the Twentieth century Pan-African Movement. It was a corner-stone for the growth and development of the African Diplomacy. Although the Movement pioneered by the Blacks of the New World, later young African intellectuals who studied in Europe, like Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyata, Sekou Toure, Leopold Sengor and many others, initiated the idea of self-determination and self-administration of Africa by the Africans themselves. This young generation, by refuting the domination and exploitation of Africa by the European colonial system as well as the racial segregation of South Africa, worked hand-in-hand for the Liberation of Africa as well for the pursuit of freedom, equality, justice and human dignity for the entire African population. To achieve these, Organization of African Unity /OAU/, the brain-child of Nkrumah, established in May 1963 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Since its inception OAU accomplished a lot in the liberation of Africa as well as eradication Apartheid system from South Africa as well as in the mediation of many inter-state conflicts among member states. OAU, however, faced some limitations escorted by financial health problem as well as the epidemics-of- coups among member states which seriously paralyzed its role as a regional organization that strive for the peace and stability in the continent. Thus this paper is intended to examine the diplomatic history of OAU in the African Diplomatic endeavors.

Im Jahre 1904 startete im Auftrag von Kaiser Wilhelm II. eine Expedition unter der Leitung des Geheimen Legationsrats Friedrich Rosen ins damalige Abessinien. Ziel war der Hof Kaiser Meneliks II, und Ergebnis war die Unterzeichnung eines Freundschaftsvertrages und die formelle Eroeffnung einer deutschen diplomatischen Vertretung in Addis Abeba. Diese Ausstellung des Auswaertigen Amtes, kuratiert und verfasst von Wolbert Smidt, mit historischen Bildsammlungen, stellt die vielfaeltigen kulturellen, politischen und diplomatischen Beziehungen zwischen beiden Laendern mit vielen Illustrationen dar.

To the exaggerated horror of many western powers, in the 1920s, a series of Japanese visitors sought to expand trade between Japan and Ethiopia.  Japanese representatives attended Hayle Sellase’s Coronation in 1930, and soon afterward signed a Treaty of Friendship and Commerce with Ethiopia.  The next year, the Ethiopians promulgated a constitution closely modeled on Japan’s Meiji Constitution of 1889.  Capping this rapprochement, Foreign Minister Heruy Welde Sellase, one of Ethiopia’s most influential “Japanizers,” visited Japan in late 1931.
Heruy sought commercial and political ties as well as military aid.  Widely fêted, Heruy and his party examined many of Japan’s most important industrial and military facilities.  Many of Japan’s most influential nationalist leaders eagerly greeted him hoping to find in Ethiopia an important ally in the struggle of “colored peoples” against white colonialism and imperialism.  Heruy’s visit, however, signaled the high-water mark of cooperation.  Japan’s government proved less willing to risk the wrath of the world’s great powers than were Japan’s super-nationalists.  Based on English, French, Italian, and Japanese primary and secondary sources, this paper describes the motives and consequences of the well-publicized visit.  It also places this example of globalization and westernization through a nonwestern agent in its diplomatic context.

ይህ መፅሀፍ ከዚህ በፊት ቋንቋ እና ነገድ በኢትዮጵያ፡ የኢትዮጵያ ህዝብ ማንነት እና ቅድመታሪክ በሚል የታተመው ተከታይ ቅፅ ነው። በእዚህ መፅሀፍ፣ ማ. ቅፅ ሁለት፣ የተዳሰሱት የኦሞአዊ፣ የአባይሰሀራዊ እና ምድብ ያልለየላቸው እና/ወይም ንጥል/ብቸኛ በኢትዮጵያ እና በኤርትራ የሚነገሩ ቋንቋዎች እና ከዚሁ ጋር በተያያዥነት የእነዚህ ተናጋሪዎች ናቸው። መፅሀፉ በእነዚህ ቋንቋዎች እና ተናጋሪዎቻቸው ላይ መሰረታዊ መረጃ ይሰጣል።

ኦሞአዊ በአፍሮኤሽያዊ ስር ከሚገኙት ቤተሰቦች ሁሉ አነስተኛ የጋራ ባህርያት የሚያሳይ ነው። ይህ ባህርይው በሁለት መንገድ ሲተረጎም ይስተዋላል። አንደኛው፣ ኦሞአዊ ከልዕለ-አፍሮኤስያዊ ቀድሞ የተገነጠለ ነው የሚል ሲሆን፣ ሁለተኛው ጨርሶውንም የአፍሮኤሽያዊ አባል ተደርጎ መወሰድ አይገባም የሚል ነው። ኦሞአዊ ምንም እንኳ የሚያንፀባርቀው የአፍሮኤሽያዊ ባህርያት አናሳ ቢሆኑም፣ የአፍሮኤሽያዊ ወገን መሆኑን የሚያሳዩ የስነምዕላድ እና የቃላት አስረጅዎች አሉ።

አባይሰሀራዊ እንደአንድ የቋንቋ ዘር ቡድን መውሰዱ ላይ አጥጋቢ መረጃ የለም። ይህ አባባል በኢትዮጵያ የሚገኙትንም የሚመለከት ነው። ለምሳሌ፣ በአባያዊ እና በሱርማዊ ቡድኖችም ሆነ በሌሎቹ፣ ኩናማ፣ ናራ (ኤርትራ)፣ ጉምዝ መሀከል ያለው ግንኙነት የዘር ነው ለማለት የሚያስደፍር አይደለም። ሆኖም በእያንዳንዳቸው ላይ ሰፋ ያለ ጥናት ተደርጎ ወደፊት የተሻለ መረጃ
እስከሚገኝ ድረስ፣ በእዚህ መፅሀፍ የተዳሰሱት በአባይሰሀራዊ ስር ተካተው ነው።

በእዚህ መፅሀፍ ምድብ ያልለየላቸው እና/ወይም ንጥል/ብቸኛ ቋንቋዎች ስር የተዳሰሱት ጫቡ/ሻቡ፣ ዖንጎታ፣ እና የኢትዮጵያ የምልክት ቋንቋ ናቸው። ጫቡ እና ዖንጎታ ከአፍሮኤሽያዊም ሆነ ከአባይሰሀራዊ ቋንቋዎች ያልሆኑ ባህርያት አሏቸው። ሆኖም በእዚህ ስራ የመጀመሪያው ንጥል/ብቸኛ፣ ሁለተኛው ደግሞ ምድቡ ያልለየ በሚል ቀርበዋል።