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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780855984847 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Oxfam Publishing |
| Publication date: | 07/28/2003 |
| Series: | Oxfam Country Profiles Series |
| Edition description: | Second Edition |
| Pages: | 72 |
| Product dimensions: | 7.50(w) x 9.75(h) x 0.23(d) |
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Beginnings
The cradle of humanity
We all come from Ethiopia. Four million years ago, this land was the home of the ancestors of homo sapiens. In 1974, near the Gona river in the Afar desert, archaeologists discovered a partial female skeleton which added dramatic new evidence to the story of human evolution. She was called Dinqenesh ('You Are Amazing') by Ethiopians, and Lucy by Dr Donald Johanson, who discovered her. Her Latin name is Australopithecus afarensis.
More discoveries in 1994 supported the theory that our earliest ancestors – the first hominids to walk on two legs and evolve away from the apes – were born along the African Rift Valley, which passes through Ethiopia, and continues southwards to Mozambique.
Fragments of bone and teeth in the Afar desert of Ethiopia give a glimpse into the dimmest distant past, long before our ancestors used stone tools or fire, and migrated out into Asia and Europe. History is alive in Ethiopia.
Breaking new ground
For the last 3,000 years, a rich and unique culture has been evolving in Ethiopia. In the last 30 years, the land has had to contend with war, famine, and utter destitution. Medieval churches, hewn out of the rock, served as shelters from MiG fighter-bombers. At least half a million people died of hunger. Now an impoverished and battered nation is emerging into an uncertain future with new borders, young leaders, and a radical new political strategy. An uneasy peace prevails, as a new social and economic order takes shape. The stakes are high. Keeping body and soul together is still the challenge for most Ethiopians.
CHAPTER 2
A bird's eye view
As big as France and Spain combined, Ethiopia is home to about 54 million people. In the heart of the Horn of Africa, it is on the borders between the Arab and the African worlds. About half the population is Christian and half Muslim.
The landscape varies from barren, salty desert to lush, dripping forest. Some parts of the Afar desert, in the north-east, are 100 metres below sea level. They seethe with volcanic activity, a moonscape of sulphurous salt pans and rocky lava fields.
Rising westwards beyond the Afar desert, the land becomes higher, greener, and cooler, up to the craggy highlands, where plateaux are riven by gorges and watered by great rivers. The Blue Nile starts its long journey to the Mediterranean at Lake Tana, just below the Simien mountains, where the highest peaks are topped by Ras Dashen (4,620 metres), Ethiopia's highest mountain. The great waterfalls of Tissisat ('water that smokes') at the source of the Blue Nile were described as 'one of the most magnificent, stupendous sights in the creation' by the eighteenth-century Scottish traveller James Bruce. Dividing the highlands from north-east to southwest is the Rift Valley: a vast geological phenomenon that stretches from Syria to Mozambique.
To the west of the highlands are forests; to the south-east, rangelands on the border with Somalia; in the far west are fertile arable plains on the border with Sudan. To the north and east is Eritrea, with its 1,000 km coastline along the Red Sea. To the south is Kenya.
At the centre of Ethiopia the capital, Addis Ababa, is the national crossroads. Major roads fan out to the four points of the compass. A 781 km railway leads from Addis Ababa to the Red Sea port of Djibouti.
Ethiopia's million square kilometres include a rich variety of climatic and ecological conditions. Population density ranges from fewer than five people per square kilometre in the herding rangelands of the Ogaden to 200 or more in the central and south-western areas. Most of the population, human and animal, is concentrated in the cool central highlands, settled for more than 5,000 years. Here pressure on land and other natural resources is increasing.
Ethiopia's ecosystems support thousands of species of plants, birds, and mammals; some are found nowhere else in the world, and nine of the mammal species are classified as threatened. Ethiopia is among the most important reservoirs of biological diversity in Africa, and many crops cultivated elsewhere, like millet, are thought to have their genetic origins here.
CHAPTER 3
A land of plenty
Ethiopia was settled by peoples from two of the main lineages of human ancestry: the Hamitic peoples and the Semitic peoples (named after Ham and Shem, sons of Noah). A third line, the Cushitic ethnic groups, is found particularly in the south and south-west. There are now at least 64 languages spoken in Ethiopia, and perhaps 80 different ethnic groups. The two largest are the Oromo and the Amhara peoples. Other large ethnic groups include ethnic Somalis, Tigrayans, and Gurages. Some of them are spread over national borders, so not all are Ethiopian citizens.
Ethiopia, Cush, Nubia, and other ancient African civilisations merge into each other in translations of Old Testament scripture, travellers' tales, and myths. 'Ethiopia' – mentioned several times in the Bible and in Greek literature - became a metaphor for remoteness, or plenty, or simply a land of unknown dark-skinned peoples. The name 'Ethiopia' derives from the Greek for 'burnt faces'. 'Abyssinia', as Ethiopia was commonly known by outsiders until the mid-twentieth century, probably derives from the word which Ethiopians use to describe themselves: habesha.
The Ethiopians' national literary epic, the Kebra Negast, tells the story of the Queen of Sheba travelling from Ethiopia to meet King Solomon of the Jews in Israel almost 1,000 years before Christ. She then returned to Ethiopia and bore a son, Menelik I, from whom Ethiopian Emperors used to claim descent. This rich brew of myth and fable makes the actual early history of present-day Ethiopia almost impossible to trace. But from the last 2,000 years, parts of Ethiopia can offer a history, with artifacts, recorded events, and travellers' accounts.
When did 'Ethiopia' come into existence, and where was it? Can it be called one of the most ancient states in the world, or is it just an ancient name? Many Ethiopians are proud that the name of their country and its settlements are scattered in the most ancient of historical documents. Others suspect that history has been manipulated to serve the interests of those in power, and that most of the territories of today's Ethiopia bear little, if any, relation to the ancient civilisations of the Red Sea.
The empire of Axum
Ethiopia's natural wealth and strategic location led at the time of Christ to the rise of an important Red Sea trading and military empire, with its capital at Axum in present-day Tigray. The ancient civilisations of northern Ethiopia dominated the Red Sea region for almost a thousand years from 200 BC. A naval power developed, and Axum's traders and travellers, using the port of Adulis on the Red Sea, reached as far abroad as Egypt, India, and China. Exporting ivory, rhinoceros horn, and spices, and importing metal and cloth, Axum grew wealthy and powerful through trade and conquest.
Today, Axum is most famous for its archaeological ruins: obelisks, tombs, and palaces, and the claim by the Orthodox Church that Axum is the resting place of the Ark of the Covenant – the chest containing the ten commandments engraved on stone and handed to Moses by God.
Axum's tallest standing obelisk, 23 metres high, probably a huge gravestone, is carved from a single piece of rock. With windows and doors on ten 'storeys', it looks like the world's first skyscraper. With half a dozen others, it has remained standing through the centuries and withstood the rumbling of tanks and shelling during the Italian invasion of 1935 and the civil war of the 1970s and 1980s.
Lalibela: built by angels
Christianity was introduced into Ethiopia in AD 341. In the Middle Ages the Orthodox Church built hundreds of rock-hewn churches. The greatest are found near the village of Roha in the Wollo region of the central highlands. Beginning in the twelfth century, workmen and priest-kings constructed a fantastical complex of churches, monasteries, baptismal pools, and secret tunnels. Ethiopian legend says that the whole massive undertaking was inspired by a dream of King Lalibela, and built with the help of angels.
The churches are almost invisible until one stumbles upon them through an ordinary-looking Ethiopian town. Carved into the hillside, each of the ten churches is interconnected by a series of labyrinthine passages, stairways, and openings carved in the red rock.
On a cool Sunday morning, the austere chants of some of the 450 priests of Lalibela rise echoing from the subterranean places of worship. Deep drum beats resonate from the recesses of the churches. Worshippers from the town and surrounding villages kneel to kiss the rock itself and, wrapped against the cold in traditional thick, white, gabi blankets, murmur prayers to the walls.
Skeletons of famous monks are still stored in crevices in the rocks. Inside the gloom of the churches, frayed embroideries shroud the inner sanctum from prying eyes and tourists' cameras. Sunlight pierces the open windows in shafts, and pigeons flutter noisily in the courtyards. Indian swastikas and Jewish Stars of David are carved side by side on the walls, striking evidence of Ethiopia's position at the crossroads of human beliefs.
The movable monarchy
After the almost monastic period of King Lalibela, dynasties came and went, capitals rose and fell, and power shifted from the northern Tigrayans to the central Amharas and back. Society oscillated between anarchy and feudal monarchy, closely associated with the Orthodox Church. Literature and philosophy flourished. There was no fixed capital, but the seat of power was effectively wherever the king and his army happened to be camped.
Islam had filtered into Ethiopia from Arabia since the time of the Prophet Mohammed, and its strongholds were naturally towards the east of Ethiopia. From the mercantile city of Harar, Ahmed Ibn Ibrahim El Ghazi, nicknamed Gragn (The Left-Handed'), rose up against the Christian emperor Lebna Dengel in 1527. Gragn launched a jihad against the Christians, and over-ran much of the country, burning churches and looting gold wherever he went. His armies, demanding conversion to Islam or death, reached as far north as Axum. But travellers' tales of Ethiopia's Christian Empire had filtered out to Europe. In response to Lebna Dengel's appeal, the Portuguese sent a group of musketeers, who contributed to the defeat and death of Gragn in 1543.
The coming of the Oromo
At about the same time as the Christian Empire was under attack from the east, the south was being overtaken by the Oromo people. They spread north, east, and west throughout the sixteenth century, and penetrated the Amhara areas as far north as Wollo and Gojjam. Gragn's former power base, Harar itself, was attacked until a peace agreement was signed in 1568. The Oromo region today makes up the heart of Ethiopia. The conquests and subsequent settlement of Oromos all over Ethiopia have been described by one sociologist as 'the making of modern Ethiopian society'. Rather than ruling the people of the areas they invaded, the Oromo tended to integrate and intermarry. Today, they are the most numerous ethnic group in Ethiopia, and one of the largest tribes in Africa.
The rise and fall of the Empire of Gonder
As Ethiopia recovered, reduced in power and territory after 16 years of civil war, the Emperors moved farther north and west, close to Lake Tana. A new capital was formed at Gonder in 1636, which became the first fixed capital of Ethiopia since Lalibela. A series of rulers built solid palaces and castles in the city, and some finely decorated churches still stand testimony to the zenith of Ethiopia's renaissance.
The Gonderine empire itself began to collapse in the late 1700s, and Ethiopia disintegrated into an amalgamation of principalities controlled by warlords. From the mid-nineteenth century, two unifying leaders, Tewodros II and Yohannes IV, started to pull Ethiopia together again.
Enter the British
Tewodros II tried to gain support for his reforms and technical schemes by writing to Queen Victoria. When his letters went unanswered, he imprisoned a British consul and several missionaries. This led to a British military expedition, which stormed his mountain stronghold at Magdala in 1868, where Tewodros, crying 'I shall never fall into the hands of the enemy', shot himself in the mouth with his pistol. The British force then proceeded to loot the libraries of the palace and church nearby, taking hundreds of manuscripts back to England. Few have been returned from the British Museum to this day.
Yohannes IV, a chief from Tigray, succeeded in holding the expansionist forces of both Egypt and Italy at bay, but was killed in battle against the Sudanese Mahdist armies in 1889. Power then reverted to the Amhara line, from the central region of Shoa, and Emperor Menelik II was crowned.
CHAPTER 4
Menelik the Moderniser
Emperor Menelik II was a moderniser and an expansionist. In a series of brutal raids on neighbouring peoples, he tripled the territory of the empire. But he also managed to withstand the European 'Scramble for Africa', through a combination of cunning and brute force. He imported modern firearms in large numbers, and understood the rivalries that motivated the Western powers as they used Africa as a playing field for their power struggles.
The Italian government had its eye on Ethiopia, from the vantage point of its colony in Eritrea. In 1895, the Italians invaded Tigray, in northern Ethiopia, and occupied the town of Adigrat. Menelik assembled an army of 100,000 troops and moved north to challenge them. When the decisive battle took place, near Adwa, on 1 March 1896, the Italians were outnumbered by about five to one, and outmanoeuvred.
This humiliating defeat of a white army in Africa, according to Ethiopian historian Bahru Zewde, 'stemmed the tide of colonialism'. It also led to treaties that established Ethiopia's newly-expanded borders, which have more or less survived until the present.
The symbolic and historical significance of the battle of Adwa, which preserved Ethiopia's independence until the 1930s, is one of the most potent ingredients of Ethiopia's special status in African and black history.
During Menelik's reign, Ethiopia saw the advent of motor cars, Ethiopic typewriters, piped water, the telegraph and the telephone, and diplomatic relations with foreign powers. With the support of his wife Empress Taytu, a leader in her own right, he established the foundations of a modern state: a bank, a post office, a railway line to the port of Djibouti, and schools and hospitals.
While modernising the centre, Menelik terrorised the periphery. The bitter experiences of peoples such as the Gurage, the Wollayta, the Kafa, the Beni Shangul and the Gimira, who suffered terrible and brutal conquest, still rankle today. Tens of thousands of people from newly conquered regions in the southwest were sold to be slaves of the highlanders. Only in September 1923 did Ethiopia ban the slave trade.
Menelik II is the most controversial figure in modern Ethiopian history. Ethiopia owes its borders to his conquests, and also perhaps owes him its instability and ethnic disharmony. In trying to cement together a huge mosaic of peoples, he was storing up trouble for his own successors. He left behind a chaotic struggle for succession, and a country that had expanded but not consolidated its new territories. Kingdoms and principalities, especially among the Oromo lands, on the verge of statehood themselves, were unceremoniously annexed, and forced to pay tribute to the Ethiopian Emperor. Menelik's successes in technological progress have to be set against the turbulent legacy which his 'African colonialism' left behind.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Ethiopia"
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Copyright © 2003 Oxfam GB.
Excerpted by permission of Oxfam Publishing.
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Table of Contents
| Beginnings | 3 | |
| A bird's eye view | 4 | |
| A land of plenty | 6 | |
| Menelik the Moderniser | 10 | |
| Haile Selassie, King of Kings | 11 | |
| The Derg years | 13 | |
| The nationalities question | 16 | |
| Building the Second Republic | 21 | |
| A life of exile | 25 | |
| Living off the land | 28 | |
| The environment | 32 | |
| Farming and herding | 35 | |
| Can Ethiopia feed itself? | 39 | |
| The world's second-poorest economy | 42 | |
| Education: a way out of poverty? | 45 | |
| Women's lives: the 15-hour day | 47 | |
| 'May God grant you health' | 49 | |
| Surviving in the city | 51 | |
| A land of righteousness | 53 | |
| The re-invention of Ethiopia | 58 | |
| Dates and events | 60 | |
| Up-date: events in Ethiopia since 1995 | 61 | |
| Facts and figures | 70 | |
| Further reading | 71 | |
| Oxfam in Ethiopia | 72 |