HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Prehistory and Aksum: Archaeologists have discovered remains of early hominids in Ethiopia’s Rift Valley, including Australopithecus afarensis, or “Lucy,” thought to be 3.5 million years old. By ca. 7000 B. C., Cushitic- and Omotic-speaking peoples were present in Ethiopia, after which further linguistic diversification gave rise to peoples who spoke Agew, Sidamo, Somali, Oromo, and numerous Omotic tongues. Initially hunters and gathers, these peoples eventually domesticated indigenous plants, including the grasses teff and eleusine, and ensete, a root crop, kept cattle and other animals, and established agricultural patterns of livelihood that were to be characteristic of the region into contemporary times. By at least the late first millennium B. C., it appears, the Agew occupied much of the northern highlands, whereas the Sidama inhabited the central and southern highlands. Both played important roles in subsequent historical developments.

During the first millennium B. C., Sabaeans from southwest Arabia migrated across the Red Sea and settled in the extreme northern plateau. They brought with them their Semitic speech and writing system and a knowledge of stone architecture. The Sabaeans settled among the Agew and created a series of small political units that by the beginning of the Christian era had been incorporated into the Aksumite Empire, with its capital at Aksum. The Aksumite empire was a trading state that dominated the Red Sea and commerce between the Nile Valley and Arabia and between the Roman Empire and India. Centered in the highlands of present-day Eritrea and Tigray, it stretched at its height from the Nile Valley in Sudan to Southwest Arabia. The Aksumites used Greek as a trading language, but a new Semitic language, Ge’ez, arose that is thought to be at least indirectly ancestral to modern Amharic and Tigrinya. The Aksumites also constructed stone palaces and public buildings, erected large funerary oblelisks, and minted coins. In the early fourth century, Christianity was introduced in its Byzantine Orthodox guise. Although it took centuries before Christianity gained a firm hold, in time Orthodoxy became the embodiment of Ethiopian identity. During the seventh century A.D., Aksum began a long decline. By the eleventh century, the political center of the kingdom had shifted southward into Agau territory, and a non-Aksumite dynasty, the Zagwe, had assumed control. Aksum faded, but it bequeathed to its successors its Semitic language, Christianity, and the concept of a multi-ethnic empire-state ruled by a “king of kings.”

The Medieval Period: From Aksumite times, there began a process of cultural and lingustic fusion between the northern Semites and the indigenous Agew that was to continue over the course of a millennium. This process gave rise to northern Christianized Agew, who formed themselves into the Tigray and Amhara ethnic groups. The Zagwe placed their capital, Lalibala, far south of Aksum and constructed there and elsewhere across their domains a remarkable ensemble of rock-hewn churches. In the late thirteenth century, an Amhara dynasty moved the center of the kingdom still farther south into Shewa in the southernmost part of the northern highlands. During the succeeding centuries, the Amhara kingdom, a military state, was often at war either with Sidama kingdoms to the west or with Muslim principalities to the east.

About 1529 a Muslim Afar-Somali army overran the highlands, and during the 1530s nearly succeeded in destroying the Amhara-Tigray state and Christianity. At almost the same time, the Oromo were in the midst of a decades-long migration from their homeland in the far southern lowlands. The Oromo moved north through the southern highlands, bypasssing the Sidama on the west, and into the central highlands, where they settled in the center and west on land, some of which had formerly belonged to the Amhara. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Jesuits arrived to minister to Portuguese soldiers who had helped defeat the Muslims in the early 1540s and who had remained in the kingdom. As part of their mission, however, the Jesuits attempted to convert the Orthodox Ethiopians to Roman Catholicism. They met with some initial success before their crusade set off a religious civil war in the late 1620s that led to their expulsion and an attempt to keep out all “Franks,” as the Ethiopians called Europeans.

Early Modern Times: An era of reconsolidation and cultural flowering ensued during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries following the founding of a new capital at Gondar. The monarchy eventually become a pawn of regional warlords, however, and it was not until the mid-nineteenth century that Tewodros II reunited the kingdom and sought to restore the power of the throne. Most scholars trace the origins of the modern history of Ethiopia to his reign. Menilek II (1889–1913) defeated the Italians in 1896 when they sought to invade Ethiopia, although he allowed them to retain the frontier province facing the Red Sea, which they named Eritrea. Menilek, in turn, sent armies to conquer the southern highlands and surrounding lowlands, annexing them to the traditional Amhara-Tigray kingdom to create the present-day nation-state of Ethiopia with its capital at Addis Ababa. He also opened the country to Western influence and technology, for example, by establishing diplomatic relations with several European powers and by authorizing construction of a railway from Addis Ababa to Djibouti on the Red Sea.

After serving as regent, Tafari Makonnen, a cousin of Menilek, ascended the throne in 1930 as Emperor Haile Selassie I. French-educated and aware of Ethiopia’s backwardness, he began to introduce various Western-inspired reforms, but these changes were hardly underway before war broke out with Italy in October 1935. The emperor’s dramatic appeal for assistance in mid-1936 before the League of Nations, of which Ethiopia was a member, went unanswered. Italian colonization lasted from 1936 to 1941. The Italians never controlled large parts of the countryside and at times ruled harshly. Nonetheless, they constructed public buildings, built a rudimentary road system throughout the country, and in general sought to modernize the country.

The Post-World War II Era: After the war, Haile Selassie pursued a policy of centralization, but he also continued to introduce change in areas such as public education, the army, and government administration. The slow pace of his reform efforts, however, fostered discontent that led to an attempted coup in 1960. In early 1974, a mutiny among disgruntled lower-ranking army officers set a process in motion that led to the fall of the imperial government. The mutineers were joined by urban groups disappointed by the slow pace of economic and political reforms and aroused by the impact of a devastating famine that the government failed to acknowledge or address. Over a period of several months, the rebellious officers arrested the emperor’s ministers and associates, and in September removed the emperor himself. A group of junior military officers, soon known as the Derg (“committee” in Amharic), then assumed power and initiated a 17-year period of military rule.

The Derg pursued a socialist agenda but governed in military style, and it looked to the Soviet Union as a model and for military support. It nationalized rural and urban land and placed local control in the hands of citizen committees; it also devised controversial policies of peasant resettlement in response to another devastating drought in 1984–85 and of “villagization,” ostensibly to improve security. A Somali invasion in 1977–78 to capture the Somali-inhabited southeast lowlands was repulsed with Soviet aid, but thereafter resistance against the Derg arose in all parts of the country, most notably in the north. In Eritrea the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) pursued a campaign against the 1962 annexation and eventually sought separation from Ethiopia. In Tigre, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) sought regional autonomy and the overthrow of the Derg. In the late 1980s, the TPLF and other Ethiopian ethnically based resistance groups formed the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), and, together with the EPLF, administered defeats on a demoralized Ethiopian army that led to the collapse of the Derg in May 1991.

The EPRDF Regime: The EPRDF coalition set up a provisional administration in Addis Ababa under the TPLF’s leader, Meles Zenawi. The Oromo Liberation Front and the (Somali) Ogaden National Liberation Front soon withdrew and resorted once more to armed insurgency. In April 1993, the Eritreans voted for independence, a decision the TPLF leadership and many Ethiopians reluctantly accepted. The EPRDF committed itself to multi-party democracy and to economic reconstruction, for which it relied on international donor assistance. The constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia was adopted in 1994. National elections in 1995 and 2000 produced EPRDF victories but were widely boycotted by opposition parties. Meles Zenawi has remained effective head of government. From 1998 to 2000, Ethiopia and Eritrea fought a bitter war over their common border. Despite international arbitration, the status of the border in mid-2005 remained stalemated and relations between the two nations, hostile.

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This series of profiles of foreign nations is part of the Country Studies Program, formerly the Army Area Handbook Program. The profiles offer brief, summarized information on a country’s historical background, geography, society, economy, transportation and telecommunications, government and politics, and national security. In addition to being featured in the front matter of published Country Studies, they are now being prepared as stand-alone reference aides for all countries in the series, as well as for a number of additional countries of interest. The profiles offer reasonably current country information independent of the existence of a recently published Country Study and will be updated annually or more frequently as events warrant.

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