Ahmed

Balsvik

Bhabha

Clapham

Crummey

De Lorenzi

Giorgis

Gäbrä-Maryam

Gäbrä-Mädhən

Kebede

Kumsa

Mekonen

Milkias

Rubinkowska

SARA MARZAGORA

Tareke

Triulzi

Virtanen

Yusuf

Zewde

Marzagora, Sara

SOAS Research Online

History in twentieth-century Ethiopia: The ‘Great Tradition’ and the counter-histories of national failure

AbstractDrawing from both fictional and non-fictional sources, this article traces the way history was conceptualised in twentieth-century Ethiopia by secular educated elites, charting the changing power relations between Ethiopia's hegemonic historiographical paradigm and the alternative historical visions that challenged this ‘Great Tradition’ over the course of the century. While the Great Tradition extols Ethiopia's past and future glories, the counter-histories focused instead on the country's failure to develop and democratise. Against the interpretation that the counter-histories supplanted the Great Tradition in the late 1960s, the article examines them in terms of complementarity. The intellectual interventions of young student radicals in the late 1960s constitute a break, but not a drastic paradigm shift from the past. The Great Tradition had already been called into question by older generations of intellectuals, even if they proved unable or unwilling to translate their disillusionment into political action.</jats:p

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The Journal of African History

HISTORY IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY ETHIOPIA: THE ‘GREAT TRADITION’ AND THE COUNTER-HISTORIES OF NATIONAL FAILURE

https://soas-repository.worktribe.com/file/423625/1/Marzagora-2017-history-in-twentieth-century-Ethiopia-the-great-tradition-and-the-counter-histories-of-national%20failure.pdf

History in twentieth-century Ethiopia: The ‘Great Tradition’ and the counter-histories of national failure

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