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Ethiopia Historical Setting
by John W. Turner (An African analyst with the Department of
Defense)
Ethiopian Orthodox cathedral at Aksum, built in
seventeenth
century.
MODERN ETHIOPIA IS THE PRODUCT of many millennia of
interaction among peoples in and around the Ethiopian
highlands region. From the earliest times, these groups
combined to produce a culture that at any given time
differed markedly from that of surrounding peoples. The
evolution of this early "Ethiopian" culture was driven by a
variety of ethnic, linguistic, and religious groups.
One of the most significant influences on the formation and
evolution of culture in northern Ethiopia consisted of
migrants from Southwest Arabia. They arrived during the
first millennium B.C. and brought Semitic speech, writing,
and a distinctive stone-building tradition to northern
Ethiopia. They seem to have contributed directly to the rise
of the Aksumite kingdom, a trading state that prospered in
the first centuries of the Christian era and that united the
shores of the southern Red Sea commercially and at times
politically. It was an Aksumite king who accepted
Christianity in the mid-fourth century, a religion that the
Aksumites bequeathed to their successors along with their
concept of an empire-state under centralized rulership.
The establishment of what became the Ethiopian Orthodox
Church was critical in molding Ethiopian culture and
identity. The spread of Islam to the coastal areas of the
Horn of Africa in the eighth century, however, led to the
isolation of the highlands from European and Middle Eastern
centers of Christendom. The appearance of Islam was partly
responsible for what became a long-term rivalry between
Christians and Muslims--a rivalry that exacerbated older
tensions between highlanders and lowlanders and
agriculturalists and pastoralists that have persisted to the
present day.
Kingship and Orthodoxy, both with their roots in Aksum,
became the dominant institutions among the northern
Ethiopians in the post-Aksumite period. In the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries, a dynasty known as the Zagwe ruled
from their capital in the northern highlands. The Zagwe era
is one of the most artistically creative periods in
Ethiopian history, involving among other things the carving
of a large number of rock-hewn churches.
The Zagwe heartland was well south of the old Aksumite
domain, and the Zagwe interlude was but one phase in the
long-term southward shift of the locus of political power.
The successors of the Zagwe after the mid-thirteenth
century--the members of the so-called "Solomonic" dynasty--
located themselves in the central highlands and involved
themselves directly in the affairs of neighboring peoples
still farther south and east.
In these regions, the two dominant peoples of what may be
termed the "Christian kingdom of Ethiopia," the Amhara of
the central highlands and the Tigray of the northern
highlands, confronted the growing power and confidence of
Muslim peoples who lived between the eastern edge of the
highlands and the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. In religious and
ethnic conflicts that reached their climax in the midsixteenth century, the Amhara and Tigray turned back a
determined Muslim advance with Portuguese assistance, but
only after the northern highlands had been overrun and
devastated. The advent of the Portuguese in the area marked
the end of the long period of isolation from the rest of
Christendom that had been near total, except for contact
with the Coptic Church of Egypt. The Portuguese, however,
represented a mixed blessing, for with them they brought
their religion--Roman Catholicism. During the early
seventeenth century, Jesuit and kindred orders sought to
impose Catholicism on Ethiopia, an effort that led to civil
war and the expulsion of the Catholics from the kingdom.
By the mid-sixteenth century, the Oromo people of
southwestern Ethiopia had begun a prolonged series of
migrations during which they overwhelmed the Muslim states
to the east and began settling in the central highlands. A
profound consequence of the far-flung settlement of the
Oromo was the fusion of their culture in some areas with
that of the heretofore dominant Amhara and Tigray.
The period of trials that resulted from the Muslim
invasions, the Oromo migrations, and the challenge of Roman
Catholicism had drawn to a close by the middle of the
seventeenth century. During the next two-and-one-half
centuries, a reinvigorated Ethiopian state slowly
reconsolidated its control over the northern highlands and
eventually resumed expansion to the south, this time into
lands occupied by the Oromo.
By the mid-nineteenth century, the Ethiopian state under
Emperor Tewodros II (reigned 1855-68) found itself beset by
a number of problems, many of them stemming from the
expansion of European influence in northeastern Africa.
Tewodros's successors, Yohannis IV (reigned 1872-89) and
Menelik II (reigned 1889-1913), further expanded and
consolidated the state, fended off local enemies, and dealt
with the encroachments of European powers, in particular
Italy, France, and Britain. Italy posed the greatest threat,
having begun to colonize part of what would become its
future colony of Eritrea in the mid-1880s.
To one of Menelik's successors, Haile Selassie I (reigned
1930-74), was left the task of dealing with resurgent
Italian expansionism. The disinclination of the world
powers, especially those in the League of Nations, to
counter Italy's attack on Ethiopia in 1935 was in many ways
a harbinger of the indecisiveness that would lead to World
War II. In the early years of the war, Ethiopia was retaken
from the Italians by the British, who continued to dominate
the country's external affairs after the war ended in 1945.
A restored Haile Selassie attempted to implement reforms and
modernize the state and certain sectors of the economy. For
the most part, however, mid-twentieth century Ethiopia
resembled what could loosely be termed a "feudal" society.
The later years of Haile Selassie's rule saw a growing
insurgency in Eritrea, which had been federated with and
eventually annexed by the Ethiopian government following
World War II. This insurgency, along with other internal
pressures, including severe famine, placed strains on
Ethiopian society that contributed in large part to the 1974
military rebellion that ended the Haile Selassie regime and,
along with it, more than 2,000 years of imperial rule. The
most salient results of the coup d'état were the eventual
emergence of Lieutenant Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam as
head of state and the reorientation of the government and
national economy from capitalism to Marxism.
A series of crises immediately consumed the revolutionary
regime. First, domestic political violence erupted as groups
maneuvered to take control of the revolution. Then, the
Eritrean insurgency flared at the same time that an uprising
in the neighboring region of Tigray began. In mid-1977
Somalia, intent upon wresting control of the Ogaden region
from Ethiopia and sensing Addis Ababa's distractions,
initiated a war on Ethiopia's eastern frontier. Mengistu, in
need of military assistance, turned to the Soviet Union and
its allies, who supplied vast amounts of equipment and
thousands of Cuban combat troops, which enabled Ethiopia to
repulse the Somali invasion.
Misery mounted throughout Ethiopia in the 1980s. Recurrent
drought and famine, made worse in the north by virtual civil
war, took an enormous human toll, necessitating the infusion
of massive amounts of international humanitarian aid. The
insurgencies in Eritrea, Tigray, and other regions
intensified until by the late 1980s they threatened the
stability of the regime. Drought, economic mismanagement,
and the financial burdens of war ravaged the economy. At the
same time, democratic reform in Eastern Europe and the
Soviet Union threatened to isolate the revolutionary
government politically, militarily, and economically from
its allies.
Data as of 1991
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