Cyber Ethiopia

The area South of Addis has an interesting mixture of peoples and cultures which gives clues to the ancient history of Ethiopia.

Down the road to Butajira, which cuts off from the Jimma road about 20 km from the centre of Addis at Alem Gena, the farmers in the fields are Oromo. About 50 km south, the area begins to be mixed, Oromo and Gurage. By 100 kilometers South you are fully in Gurage territory.

Addis itself is in Oromo country, the Oromo name for Addis is Finfinne. Although the majority in the city are Amhara people, the countryside is mostly Oromo. The Oromo northern migrations of the 17th and 18th centuries brought them from the Southeast of present day Ethiopia into the centre and north. They filled a vacuum left by the rapid rise and fall of the Harar leader Mohammed Gran in the 1500’s. An Oromo dynasty even took over the Emperorship in the Northern Highlands. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tracing the story of international reactions to war crimes, and in particular to the trial of Italian war criminals, we saw that the Ethiopian Government had provided the UN War Crimes Commission with a list of ten individuals against whom it wanted to levy war crimes charges. Though the Commission had accepted the prima facie charges against eight of the ten, and of the remaining two as witnesses to war crimes, the Ethiopian Government waived the charges against all but two: Marshals Badoglio and Graziani.

Since Ethio-Italian diplomatic relations had not yet been established, the Ethiopian Government wrote to the British Government, on 23 November 1948, requesting it to raise the matter of the two marshals on the basis of the Italian Peace Treaty of 1947, which stated that disputes over its implementation should be the responsibility of the Ambassadors in Rome of the Four Great Powers. Read the rest of this entry »

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TAITU HOTEL

In the Piassa area just past the road on which the famous Castelli’s restaurant holds court, is the oldest still functioning hotel in Ethiopia. Founded by Empress Taitu of Ethiopia in 1914, the hotel started a new tradition in the country.

It may be hard to imagine now, but food and accommodation for travellers was entirely through private hospitality up until that time. The generous and hospitable nature of Ethiopians was clearly exceptional. In Europe the notion of Inns dated back thousands of years, and even in the nearby Middle East Joseph and Mary could rely on an Inn 2000 years ago. Read the rest of this entry »

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We saw last week that the British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin had turned down the Ethiopian Government request to use the machinery of the Four Great Powers in Rome to request the extradition of the two Italian marshals, Pietro Badoglio and Rodolfo Graziani, against whom the UN War Crimes Commission had found a prima facie war crimes case.

Now read on:

Ato Abebe Retta, the Ethiopian Minister in London.

Faced with the well-nigh insuperable difficulty that there were no diplomatic relations with Italy, the Ethiopian Government made one last heroic effort to bring the two Italian marshals to trial. Read the rest of this entry »

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The strategy of food security in Ethiopia is tied with the overall development strategy of Agricultural Development-Led Industrialization (ADLI). This strategy is aimed at structural transformation of the economy in which a high growth of agricultural development is envisaged to raise the share of industry and social services in terms of output and employment. Read the rest of this entry »

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This week’s announcement that the remains of Emperor Haile Selassie are to be buried on November 5th (assuming any complications are worked out) coincides nicely with this article. The remains of Haile Selassie are in the Bata Maryam church now, where Emperor Menelik is entombed, and are due to be buried in the Holy Trinity Church. Here is a description of both churches.

The Mausoleum of Emperor Menelik

Just past the Hilton Hotel and up the hill, there is a big round road that encircles a walled and heavily treed lot. Like most people who live in Addis I went on that road many times. However, it took a long time before I actually visited this great site. Read the rest of this entry »

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The loot from Maqdala seized by British troops in April 1868 was three years later the subject of a dramatic debate in the British House of Commons, on 30 June 1871.

Gold Crown and Chalice

The matter came to the fore when Colonel North, a Member with a military background, raised a remarkable matter: the British troops had seized a solid gold crown believed to have belonged to the Abun, or Head of the Ethiopian Church, and a gold chalice dating back to the reign of Emperor Iyasu I, but not received any prize money for them! Read the rest of this entry »

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We saw last week that the question of two important Ethiopian artefacts, a crown and a chalice, looted by British troops from Maqdala in 1868, was discussed in the British House of Commons on 30 June 1871.

In the course of the debate it was revealed, as we saw, that Lord Napier, the victor of Maqdala, had proposed that this loot be placed temporally in the British Museum, but be returned to Ethiopia as soon as it was known who was replacing Tewodros as ruler.

The House, discussing a motion for the purchase of these two items of loot, waited with great interest to hear what the Prime Minister, the great Liberal leader William Ewart Gladstone (who had come to power after the Expedition), was to say. Read the rest of this entry »

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Ethiopian historiography justly pays great attention to the foreign travellers to whom we are indebted for so much information on the country’s past. Insufficient attention is, however, often paid to the Ethiopian guides, informants and advisers whose knowledge lay behind the writings of such travellers.

Our essay for today focuses on a certain Abdallah, apparently from Tegray, who became a servant or slave of the notable French traveller Antoine d’Abbadie (1810-1897), author of a famous Amharic dictionary and many works on the country’s culture. He mentions Abdallah in his “Douze ans de sejour dans la haute Ethiopie”, i.e. “Twelve Years Residence in High Ethiopia”, where he notes that the latter informed him about traditional Tegray ideas on augury: how travellers on a journey would be influenced, and be guided on their progress, by the sight of a bird beside the path, etc. Read the rest of this entry »

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Historical Article on Ethiopia and the International Situation in 1935 Concluded

We took as our text last week a long-forgotten article on the “Italo-Abyssinian Conflict” of 1935-6, published in August 1935, by the notable Hungarian scholar Karl Polanyi. We now come to his conclusions:

“Political or Economic Partition”

Discussing British policy towards Ethiopia in 1935. Polanyi declared that when the English refused to admit that they had made partition agreements in relation to Ethiopia, this should be taken as no more than “shadow fencing”. The protestation that they were thinking “only” of spheres of economic influence, and on no account of political ones, was not convincing when one considered the normal practice of the Great Powers. They normally spoke of “economic spheres” when subsequent events revealed that their true ambitions were political in intent. Read the rest of this entry »

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