Ethiopia, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country located in the Horn of Africa region of East Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the north, Djibouti to the northeast, Somalia to the east, Kenya to the south, South Sudan to the west, and Sudan to the northwest.
Location of Ethiopia in Africa.
The term Ethiopia is derived from the word Ethiopis, a name of the Ethiopian king, the seventh in the ancestral lines. Metshafe Aksum or the Ethiopian Book of Aksum identifies Itiopis as the twelfth king of Ethiopia and the father of Aksumawi. The Ethiopians pronounce Ethiopia እትዮጵያ with a Sades or the sixth sound እ as in incorporate and the graph ጰ has no equivalent in English or Latin graphs. Ethiopis is believed to be the twelfth direct descendant of Adam. His father is identified as Kush, while his grandfather is known as Kam.
Ancient Origins and the Kingdom of Aksum
Several important finds have propelled Ethiopia and the surrounding region to the forefront of palaeontology. The oldest hominid discovered to date in Ethiopia is the 4.2 million-year-old Ardipithecus ramidus (Ardi) found by Tim D. White in 1994. The most well-known hominid discovery is Australopithecus afarensis (Lucy). Known locally as Dinkinesh, the specimen was found in the Awash Valley of Afar Region in 1974 by Donald Johanson, and is one of the most complete and best-preserved adult Australopithecine fossils ever uncovered. Lucy's taxonomic name refers to the region where the discovery was made. Ethiopia is also considered one of the earliest sites of the emergence of anatomically modern humans, Homo sapiens.
Replica of the Lucy fossil, a significant find in Ethiopia.
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In 980 BC, Dʿmt was established in present-day Eritrea and the northern part of Ethiopia in the Tigray region, and is widely believed to be the successor state to Punt. After the fall of Dʿmt during the 4th century BC, the Ethiopian plateau came to be dominated by smaller successor kingdoms. In the 1st century AD, the Kingdom of Aksum emerged in what is now Tigray Region and Eritrea.
Around 316 AD, Frumentius and his brother Edesius from Tyre accompanied their uncle on a voyage to Ethiopia. When the vessel stopped at a Red Sea port, the natives killed all the travellers except the two brothers, who were taken to the court as slaves. They were given positions of trust by the monarch, and they converted members of the royal court to Christianity. Frumentius became the first bishop of Aksum. A coin dated to 324 shows that Ethiopia was the second country to officially adopt Christianity (after Armenia did so in 301), although the religion may have been at first confined to court circles; it was the first major power to do so. The kingdom adopted the name "Ethiopia" during the reign of Ezana in the 4th century.
Medieval Ethiopia and the Solomonic Dynasty
The Ethiopian Empire initiated territorial expansion under the leadership of Amda Seyon I. He launched campaigns against his Muslim adversaries to the east, resulting in a significant shift in the balance of power in favor of the Christians for the next two centuries. After Amda Seyon's successful eastern campaigns, most of the Muslim principalities in the Horn of Africa came under the suzerainty of the Ethiopian Empire. During the reign of Emperor Zara Yaqob, the Ethiopian Empire reached its pinnacle. By the 16th century, an influx of migration by ethnic Oromo into northern parts of the region fragmented the empire's power.
Between 1769 and 1855, Ethiopia witnessed the Zemene Mesafint or "Age of Princes," a period of isolation. Ethiopian isolationism ended following a British mission that concluded with an alliance between the two nations, but it was not until 1855 that the Amhara kingdoms of northern Ethiopia (Gondar, Gojjam, and Shewa) were briefly united after the power of the emperor was restored beginning with the reign of Tewodros II.
The Reign of Menelik II and the Battle of Adwa
Ethiopia, in roughly its current form, began under the reign of Menelik II, who was Emperor from 1889 until his death in 1913. He had signed the Treaty of Wuchale with Italy in May 1889, by which Italy would recognize Ethiopia's sovereignty so long as Italy could control an area north of Ethiopia (now part of modern Eritrea). The Italians used the time between the signing of the treaty and its ratification by the Italian government to expand their territorial claims.
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This First Italo-Ethiopian War culminated in the Battle of Adwa on 1 March 1896, in which Italy's colonial forces were defeated by the Ethiopians.
Ethiopian forces triumph in the Battle of Adwa.
During this time, about a third of the population died in the Great Ethiopian Famine (1888 to 1892), and the rinderpest swept through the area, destroying much of the herd economy.
Haile Selassie and Modernization
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The early 20th century was marked by the reign of Emperor Haile Selassie (Ras Tafari). He came to power after Lij Iyasu was deposed, and undertook a nationwide modernization campaign from 1916 when he was made a Ras and Regent (Inderase) for the Empress Regnant Zewditu, and became the de facto ruler of the Ethiopian Empire.
Iyasu was replaced by Menilek’s daughter, Zauditu. Since it was considered unseemly for a woman to serve in her own right, Ras Tafari, the son of Ras Makonnen and a cousin of Menilek, served as Zauditu’s regent and heir apparent. Ras Tafari also engineered Ethiopia’s entry into the League of Nations in 1923, reasoning that collective security would protect his backward country from aggression. By 1928, when Zauditu named Tafari king, the economy was booming, thanks mainly to the export of coffee. In the countryside, local officials built roads and improved communications, facilitating the penetration of traders and entrepreneurs. On April 1, 1930, Zauditu died, and Tafari declared himself emperor.
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During 1931-34 Haile Selassie instituted projects for roads, schools, hospitals, communications, administration, and public services. The combined effect of these projects was to increase the country’s exposure to the world economy. Haile Selassie’s success persuaded Italy’s ruler Benito Mussolini to undertake a preemptive strike before Ethiopia grew too strong to oppose Italian ambitions in the Horn of Africa. Haile Selassie continued to trust in the collective security promised by the League of Nations. Only on October 2, 1935, upon learning that Italian forces had crossed the frontier, did he order mobilization.
Italian Occupation and World War II
The independence of Ethiopia was interrupted by the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, beginning when it was invaded by Italy in early October 1935, and by subsequent Italian rule of the country (1936-1941) after Italian victory in the war. Italy, however, never managed to secure the country in its totality, due to resistance from the Arbegnoch; this made Ethiopia, along with Liberia, the only African countries to never be colonized.
During the subsequent seven-month Italo-Ethiopian War, the Italian command used air power and poison gas to separate, flank, and destroy Haile Selassie’s poorly equipped armies. For five years (1936-41) Ethiopia was joined to Eritrea and Italian Somaliland to form Italian East Africa. During this period Italy carried out a program of public works, concentrating especially on highways and on agricultural and industrial development. Resistance to the occupation continued, however.
Following the entry of Italy into World War II, British Empire forces, together with the Arbegnoch, liberated Ethiopia in the course of the East African campaign in 1941. When Italy joined the European war in June 1940, the United Kingdom recognized Haile Selassie as a full ally, and the emperor was soon in Khartoum, Sudan, to help train a British-led Ethiopian army. This joint force entered Gojam on January 20, 1941, and encountered an enemy quick to surrender. On May 5 the emperor triumphantly returned to Addis Ababa.
Post-War Era and Internal Strife
On 24 October 1945, Ethiopia became a founding member of the United Nations. Washington, wishing to secure a communications base in Asmara (Asmera) and naval facilities in Massawa-and also to counter possible subversion in the region-supported Eritrea’s federation with Ethiopia. During the 1950s Ethiopia’s coffee sold well in world markets.
In November 1955 the emperor promulgated a revised constitution, which permitted the parliament to authorize finances and taxes, to question ministers, and to disapprove imperial decrees. At the same time, the emperor retained his power of decree and his authority to appoint the government. Some officials concluded that the country would move ahead only when the imperial regime was destroyed. In December 1960, while the emperor was abroad, members of the security and military forces attempted a coup d’état. The coup rapidly unraveled, but not before the country’s social and economic problems had been described in radical terms.
Haile Selassie showed himself unable to implement significant land reform, and, as a result, progressives and students opposed the regime. Somalia’s independence in 1960 stimulated Somali nationalists in Ethiopia’s Ogaden to rebel in February 1963. When Somalia joined the fighting, the Ethiopian army and air force smashed its enemy. Meanwhile, an insurrection in Eritrea, which had begun in 1960 mainly among Muslim pastoralists in the western lowlands, came to attract highland Christians disaffected by the government’s dissolution of the federation in 1962 and the imposition of Amharic in the schools.
The Derg and the Red Terror
The Derg borrowed its ideology from competing Marxist parties, all of which arose from the student movement. In February 1977 Mengistu (now a lieutenant colonel) survived a battle between his supporters and those of rivals on the PMAC. Andom and several other members were killed, and Mengistu seized complete power as chairman and head of state. A series of EPRP attacks against Derg members and their supporters, known as the White Terror, was countered by Mengistu’s Red Terror, a bloody campaign that crushed armed opponents among the EPRP and other groups, as well as members of the civilian populace.
Mengistu sought to transform Ethiopia into a command state led by a disciplined and loyal party that would control all organs of authority. Extensive nationalization of industry, banking, insurance, large-scale trade, and urban land and extra dwellings completed the reforms and wiped out the economic base of the old ruling class. To implement the reforms, adjudicate disputes, and administer local affairs, peasants’ associations were organized in the countryside and precinct organizations (kebele) in the towns.
Challenges of Land Reform and Famine
Despite initial expectations, farmers failed to generate the high yields expected from the land reform, for there was little incentive for them to do so. Moreover, their plots were tiny, rendering the legal limit of 25 acres irrelevant. Holdings varied according to the country’s different regions, but overall probably averaged not much more than 3.7 acres (1.5 hectares).
Meanwhile, drought intensified yearly from 1980, building to a climax in 1984, when the small rains were scanty and the main rains failed altogether. Famine ensued, government controls limiting the mobility with which peasants had responded to previous shortfalls. Donors were not so forthcoming for a mammoth population-resettlement program that proposed to move people from the drought-prone and crowded north to the west and south, where supposedly surplus lands were available. The Mengistu regime handled the shift callously and did not have the necessary resources to provide proper housing, tools, medical treatment, or food for the 600,000 farming families it moved.
| Era | Key Events |
|---|---|
| Ancient Times | Emergence of hominids, establishment of D'mt, rise of the Kingdom of Aksum |
| Medieval Period | Reign of Amda Seyon I, territorial expansion, Zemene Mesafint |
| 19th Century | Reign of Menelik II, Battle of Adwa |
| 20th Century | Reign of Haile Selassie, Italian occupation, Derg regime |
