Feasting on History: Ethiopia and the Orientalists
Durgaing the brutal Italian occupation of Ethiopia (1936–1941), the country descended into endless counterinsurgency and mass violence, which specifically targeted local intellectuals with the sanction of Italy’s leading experts. Yet these atrocities followed decades of dialogue between Ethiopian and Italian researchers, and in the postcolonial era, their successors continued to debate Ethiopia’s past and future as survivors and perpetrators. This historical reckoning unfolded against the backdrop of Third World liberation, disputed colonial guilt, and the search for postcolonial justice.

Feasting on History is a wide-ranging intellectual history of the Italian-Ethiopian relationship, told through the intertwined lives of Heruy Wäldä Sellasé, an Ethiopian writer and civil servant, and Enrico Cerulli, an Italian Orientalist and colonial official. It takes place on the battlefields and detention sites of fascist empire, within the evolving institutions of the international system, and throughout the interlinked intellectual worlds of Europe, Africa, and the African diaspora. James De Lorenzi documents the violence perpetrated by experts across these spaces as well as the pioneering Ethiopian effort to address the crimes of empire through international law. He also explores a distinctive European tradition of Africa-focused Orientalism and its critical reception by Ethiopian, African, and Black American scholars, reconstructing a bold multilingual commentary on colonial knowledge, self-determination, and the global color line.

Challenging conventional narratives of African and European intellectual history, Feasting on History vividly illuminates the links among weaponized research, colonial trauma, and the modern international order.
1147057786
Feasting on History: Ethiopia and the Orientalists
Durgaing the brutal Italian occupation of Ethiopia (1936–1941), the country descended into endless counterinsurgency and mass violence, which specifically targeted local intellectuals with the sanction of Italy’s leading experts. Yet these atrocities followed decades of dialogue between Ethiopian and Italian researchers, and in the postcolonial era, their successors continued to debate Ethiopia’s past and future as survivors and perpetrators. This historical reckoning unfolded against the backdrop of Third World liberation, disputed colonial guilt, and the search for postcolonial justice.

Feasting on History is a wide-ranging intellectual history of the Italian-Ethiopian relationship, told through the intertwined lives of Heruy Wäldä Sellasé, an Ethiopian writer and civil servant, and Enrico Cerulli, an Italian Orientalist and colonial official. It takes place on the battlefields and detention sites of fascist empire, within the evolving institutions of the international system, and throughout the interlinked intellectual worlds of Europe, Africa, and the African diaspora. James De Lorenzi documents the violence perpetrated by experts across these spaces as well as the pioneering Ethiopian effort to address the crimes of empire through international law. He also explores a distinctive European tradition of Africa-focused Orientalism and its critical reception by Ethiopian, African, and Black American scholars, reconstructing a bold multilingual commentary on colonial knowledge, self-determination, and the global color line.

Challenging conventional narratives of African and European intellectual history, Feasting on History vividly illuminates the links among weaponized research, colonial trauma, and the modern international order.
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Feasting on History: Ethiopia and the Orientalists

Feasting on History: Ethiopia and the Orientalists

by James De Lorenzi
Feasting on History: Ethiopia and the Orientalists

Feasting on History: Ethiopia and the Orientalists

by James De Lorenzi

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Overview

Durgaing the brutal Italian occupation of Ethiopia (1936–1941), the country descended into endless counterinsurgency and mass violence, which specifically targeted local intellectuals with the sanction of Italy’s leading experts. Yet these atrocities followed decades of dialogue between Ethiopian and Italian researchers, and in the postcolonial era, their successors continued to debate Ethiopia’s past and future as survivors and perpetrators. This historical reckoning unfolded against the backdrop of Third World liberation, disputed colonial guilt, and the search for postcolonial justice.

Feasting on History is a wide-ranging intellectual history of the Italian-Ethiopian relationship, told through the intertwined lives of Heruy Wäldä Sellasé, an Ethiopian writer and civil servant, and Enrico Cerulli, an Italian Orientalist and colonial official. It takes place on the battlefields and detention sites of fascist empire, within the evolving institutions of the international system, and throughout the interlinked intellectual worlds of Europe, Africa, and the African diaspora. James De Lorenzi documents the violence perpetrated by experts across these spaces as well as the pioneering Ethiopian effort to address the crimes of empire through international law. He also explores a distinctive European tradition of Africa-focused Orientalism and its critical reception by Ethiopian, African, and Black American scholars, reconstructing a bold multilingual commentary on colonial knowledge, self-determination, and the global color line.

Challenging conventional narratives of African and European intellectual history, Feasting on History vividly illuminates the links among weaponized research, colonial trauma, and the modern international order.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780231217750
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Publication date: 07/15/2025
Series: Columbia Studies in International and Global History
Pages: 464
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

James De Lorenzi is associate professor of history at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York. He is the author of Guardians of the Tradition: Historians and Historical Writing in Ethiopia and Eritrea (2015) and coauthor of The Many Lives of Täsfa Ṣeyon: An Ethiopian Intellectual in Early Modern Rome (2024).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I: Feasts of History
1. The Power of Tradition
2. Mysterious Magic
3. Reading Philology in Addis Ababa
Part II: Imperial Andromeda
4. Ferragosto
5. Mäskäräm
6. “Cerulli and His Ilk”
Part III: Years of Hardship
7. The Chronicler of Asinara
8. Survival in Shäwa
9. Bath and Dhanaane
Part IV: Dead Reckoning
10. Case 7887
11. Field Operations
Conclusion
Glossary
Transliteration and Dates
List of Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Index
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