The burden of history: the constraints and challenges of the democratization process in Ethiopia

Paper presented at the Wits History Workshop: Democracy, Popular Precedents, Practice and Culture, 13-15 July, 1994

Svein Ege: Class, State, and Power in Africa. A case study of the kingdom of Shäwa (Ethiopia) about 1840

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The Ethiopian intelligensia and the Italo-Ethiopian War 1935-1941

African Studies Center Papers in the African Humanities No. 15This paper was presented at a Humanities Workshop at Boston Universi1y in September 1991, as part of the Boston Universi1y research project on "African Expressions of the Colonial Experience." It was first prepared for the XIth International Conference of Ethiopian Studies in Addis Ababa, April 1-6 1991

The Dynamics of Political Succession in Ethiopian History

More than once, the history of the International Conference of Ethiopian Studies has been intertwined with the vagaries of the country’s political fortune. My most vivid recollection in this respect is the Eleventh Conference held in Addis in April 1991, about a month before the change of regime. As a member of the National Organizing Committee, I recall the sense of surrealism that pervaded our preparations. I distinctly remember in particular the foreboding felt by our Chairman, the Directo..

The Fall of Tsähafé Teʾezaz Wäldä-Giyorgis: Reminiscences of the Victim

The fall in 1955 of Tsähafé Teʾezaz Wäldä-Giyorgis Wäldä-Yohannes was an event of special importance in the political history of imperial Ethiopia. For nearly a decade and a half after 1941, Wäldä-Giyorgis had exercised power and influence second only to that of Emperor Haylä-Sellasé. Yet, this very power and influence seems to have contributed to his undoing. Those who were shunted aside or feared his growing powers joined forces to estrange him from the emperor and bring about his downfall. The document printed here provides a personal account of the central character, Wäldä-Giyorgis himself, on the buildup to the final moment in May 1955, when he was removed from his powerful position to that of a provincial governor. It underscores the central role played in that downfall by his erstwhile ally, Mäkonnen Habtä-Wäld, as well as the attempt of Church authorities to mediate between the emperor and the powerful minister. Above all, the document gives us a rare insight into the relationship between emperor and minister and the trauma that the breach represented to both. Further, the outward decorum and civility that pervaded the entire proceedings of what must have been a grave political crisis provides a striking contrast to the brusqueness, not to say brutality, with which political opponents – real or imagined – were disposed of in post-1974 Ethiopia

Africa 2060: good news from Africa, April 16, 2010

This repository item contains a single issue of the Pardee Conference Series, As the keystone event of a research program called “Africa 2060,” the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future at Boston University convened a conference on April 16, 2010 called Africa 2060: Good News from Africa. The program featured more than a dozen expert panelists from Boston University and across the world, and the approximately 100 participants included many African scholars and citizens from the continent who contributed to lively and well-informed discussion. The Pardee Center conference was co-sponsored by Boston University’s Africa Studies Center (ASC), the African Presidential Archives & Research Center (APARC), and the Global Health & Development Center (GHDC).This report provides commentary reflecting upon and information pertaining to the substance of the conference. An introductory overview looks at the major issues discussed at the event, which are placed within the larger literature on Africa’s future. Four short essays prepared by Boston University graduate students provide readers with more specific reflections and highlights of each conference session and the main issues discussed by panelists. The final section presents analyses of key trends and projections related to societal, economic, and governance issues for Africa and a commentary on what this information tells us about the drivers that will determine the continent’s future

Refashioning the Ethiopian monarchy in the twentieth century: An intellectual history

This article traces the shift in the Ethiopian monarchical ideology from lineage as symbolic Christian filiation to dynasty as a political genealogy of sovereign power. From the end of the nineteenth century, and more prominently under Haylä Səllase, Ethiopian state sources started qualifying the Ethiopian ruling dynasty as ‘unbroken’ in history. A record of ‘uninterrupted’ power allowed the Ethiopian government to politically appropriate past glories and claim them as ‘ours’, thus compensating for the political weakness of the present with the political greatness of the past. The ideological rebranding of the Ethiopian monarchy in the 1930s brought Ethiopia closer to Japan, and the ‘eternalist clause’ of the Meiji constitution offered a powerful model of how to recodify dynasty in modern legal terms. An intellectual history of dynasty in the Ethiopian context sees the concept simultaneously associated with both hegemonic and counter-hegemonic political projects. The narratives of continuity enabled by the dynastisation of history were successful in invigorating the pro-Ethiopian front during the Italian occupation of Ethiopia (1936-1941), but served at the same time to reinforce domestic mechanisms of class, political and cultural domination

What did we dream? What did we achieve? And where are we heading?

Have the dreams of past generations of Ethiopians come true, or turned to nightmares? Whatever the answer, now is the time to use the lessons of the past to chart a better future. Africa Insight Vol.34(1) 2004: 6-1