Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0127/01273.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 37KB | 583 lines

$Unique_ID{COW01273}
$Pretitle{228}
$Title{Ethiopia
Chapter 1A.   Historical Setting}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Richard P. Stevens}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{century
muslim
habesha
christian
oromo
power
peoples
ethiopia
christianity
church}
$Date{1980}
$Log{Orthodox Cathedral*0127301.scf
Figure 2.*0127303.scf
}
Country:     Ethiopia
Book:        Ethiopia, A Country Study
Author:      Richard P. Stevens
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1980

Chapter 1A.   Historical Setting

[See Orthodox Cathedral: Ethiopian Orthodox cathedral at Aksum]

     Ethiopia in its current geographical form dates only from 1962 when
Eritrea's federal status was formally abrogated; but a polity-formally or
informally recognized by other significant states in Europe and the Middle
East-has existed in some form over a substantial part of its present territory
for nearly two millenia, and smaller states preceded it. The territorial scope
of that polity had its primary locus in the northern and central highlands
inhabited by peoples who were converted to Monophysite Christianity beginning
in the fourth century A.D. and who came to be known as Amhara and Tigray.
Together these peoples speaking Ethio-Semitic languages have been referred to
as-and in certain contexts call themselves-Habesha (see Glossary), which is
the probable source of the name "Abyssinia".

     During much of its history the dominant feature of state organization was
the notion of an absolute monarch, but his power in fact fluctuated
considerably under the impact of external onslaughts and internal obstacles to
its exercise. Among other things, the pattern of local and provincial
political power (theoretically under the monarch's control), problems of
succession, and the sheer difficulty of movement over the mountainous terrain
of much of Ethiopia militated against an institutionally stable, large-scale
political system. The idea of a Christian monarchy persisted, however.

     The Semitic-speaking peoples, probably originating in southern Arabia,
constituted part of the ancestors of the Habesha and played a major role in
the political development of the area. They found a number of groups already
in place-the most important of these in the northern and central highlands
were peoples speaking Cushitic languages. Elsewhere lived speakers of other
Cushitic languages and the tongues called Omotic, who were not to be
encountered in force until the latter half of the second millenium A.D. (see
Ethiopia's Peoples: Groups and Categories, ch. 2). The biological and social
mixing of the Semitic and Cushitic speakers, who took on the Semitic speech of
the later arrivals, led to the emergence of a society peculiar to the area. In
the fourth century A.D. the rulers of the kingdom of Aksum, founded several
centuries earlier, were converted to the Monophysite Christianity
characteristic of the Copts of Egypt and some other Eastern churches (see
Religious Life, ch. 2). Gradually its people, too, became Christian. This
faith, linked to a belief in the divinely ordained position of the monarch,
gave common purpose to the people of Aksum and the Habesha, who saw themselves
as the heirs of the Aksumite kingdom.

     The highland locus of the state and the adherence of its dominant peoples
to Christianity in the midst of lands inhabited by peoples converted to Islam
or adhering to local religious systems led to a long period of isolation from
its neighbors. That isolation was broken from time to time by armed conflict
as the Habesha sought, with intermittent success, to dominate those neighbors
or resisted incursions of their home territory. Habesha society was also long
isolated from other Christian societies, a condition that led to forms of
Christianity that differed from Monophysite and other Christianity elsewhere
and to a good deal of conjecture and myth in European Christendom about the
nature of that society and its monarch. Significant relations with the outside
world were established only in the late nineteenth century at about the same
time that Menelik II, not a pure Habesha but claiming direct connection with
the Habesha monarchic line, established a degree of control over much of what
is now Ethiopia. That contact was marked by two efforts to put the kingdom
under colonial rule. The first failed when the forces of Emperor Menelik II
defeated the Italians in 1896; the second succeeded when modern equipment and
the failure to act of other European powers permitted an Italian military
victory in the 1935-36 period. Italian domination was transitory, however, and
was brought to an end by Ethiopian and British forces in 1941.

     In general there was little change in the period from the late nineteenth
century through World War II, although two railroads were built and some other
features of modern technology were introduced. But the life of the people and
the organization of the state remained essentially as it had for centuries.
Moreover, the long isolation and the nature of relations when the isolation
was broken contributed to the suspicion with which Ethiopians tended to regard
all outsiders.

     After World War II, and particularly in the late 1950s and early 1960s
when numbers of African territories achieved independence, Emperor Haile
Selassie and his government developed a strong interest in external affairs,
especially in African matters. During the same period Ethiopians became ardent
champions of collective security through the United Nations (UN), a response
to the failure of the League of Nations to heed Ethiopia's appeals for
protection against Italy in the mid-1930s. Haile Selassie also played a
prominent role in the affairs of the new African states and in the
establishment of the Organization of African Unity (OAU).

     Despite involvement with the outside world, formal adoption of modern
governmental institutions, and tentative approaches to economic development,
the empire retained its fundamental conservatism-a posture perpetuated by the
personal influence of the aging emperor, who had in his earlier years shown
occasional concern for change. The 1960s, however, were marked by the
emergence of new groups tied to changes in the economy and of a generation of
younger men who, educated in the West or by Westerners, demanded that the
country move into the modern world at a faster pace.

     Change was slow in coming, however, and dissatisfactions were many.
Between February 1974 and February 1977 Ethiopia experienced a political,
social, and economic upheaval, which began as the expression of uncoordinated
military, labor, peasant, and student grievances. As the protests continued
and various forces struggled for dominance, violence became commonplace. In
the end the centuries-old imperial structure was swept away and replaced by a
military regime that progressively introduced a Marxist-Leninist approach with
extensive Soviet assistance. By early 1977 the dominant authority of
Lieutenant Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam, a member of the coup group that had
deposed the emperor,was largely consolidated, and the Marxist orientation of
the government was firmly established.

Origins and the Early Period

     Details of the origins of all of the peoples who make up the population
of Ethiopia are still matters for research and debate. It seems fairly clear,
however, that the first peoples of the area were the ancestors of the
Cushitic-speaking and Omotic-speaking peoples and that the northern and
central highlands later occupied by the Tigray and Amhara, speakers of Semitic
languages, were initially inhabited by Cushitic speakers of which the Agew are
remnants (see Ethnic Groups, Ethnicity, and Language, ch. 2).

     The first complexly organized polity and economy near the limits of
present-day Ethiopia was Meroe, its center established north of the confluence
of the Blue Nile and White Nile by the sixth century B.C., perhaps earlier. In
many respects Meroe was an Egyptian culture but inhabited in good part by