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The Unity and Territorial Integrity of Ethiopia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Getatchew Haile
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Extract

Under the title ‘The American Dilemma on the Horn’, Bereket Habte Selassie published in this Journal, Vol. 22, No. 2, June 1984, pp. 249–72, a lawyer's presentation of a client's case: that of the Eritrean separatists. Although my views do not necessarily represent those held by the régime in Addis Ababa, they do indicate why Ethiopians resolutely continue to defend the territorial integrity of their motherland with a degree of unity only admitted by a few writers.

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Articles
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The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 24 , Issue 3 , September 1986 , pp. 465 - 487
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

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References

Page 465 note 1 Some of these arguments have also been presented by Bereket Habte Selassie in Thomas, Labahn (ed.), Proceedings of the Second International Congress of Somali Studies, Vol. II (Hamburg, 1984), pp. 311–68, and at the International Symposium on the African Horn, University of Cairo, 5–10 January 1985.Google Scholar

Page 465 note 2 See ‘Eastern Africa’, in The New Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. 17, Macropaedia Knowledge in Depth (Chicago, 1985), pp. 823–8.Google Scholar

Page 466 note 1 Gabre-Sellassie, Zewde, Yohannes IV of Ethiopia: a political biography (Oxford, 1975), p. 1.Google Scholar

Page 466 note 2 For the geographical position of Adal in the Middle Ages, see the 1564 map by Gastaldi, Jacopo, reproduced in The Somali Peninsula: a new light on imperial motives (St. Albans, 1962), p. x, Published by the Information Services of the Somali Government.Google Scholar

Page 467 note 1 At that time ‘poor Egypt had no army worthy of the name, no officers deserving of confidence, no money, no credit, and no men’, according to Portal, Gerald H., My Mission to Abyssinia, 1892 (New York, 1969 edn.), p. 3. Ethiopia could have done better in defending her territories from the Egyptians and reclaiming the island of Massawa, rather than fighting the Sudanese Mahdists in order to rescue the beleaguered Egyptians.Google Scholar

Page 467 note 2 Ibid. pp. 7–9; also Sanderson, G. N., England, Europe and the Upper Nile, 1882–1899, (Edinburgh, 1965), p. 69.Google Scholar

Page 467 note 3 Selassie, loc. cit. p. 254.

Page 468 note 1 It may make good propaganda to ignore history by stating that principalities such as the originally Ethiopian Kefa, or regions such as Bani Shangul, were annexed or that their independence was destroyed by Menelik. At that time, the British were preparing to take Kefa and the adjacent regions, and the Bani Shangul was joined to Ethiopia with the full agreement of the Sudanese leaders. Sanderson, op. cit. pp. 256–8 and 298. Menelik's main policy was clearly to frustrate the colonial powers by all means. ‘At Sabderat a large percentage of Mahdist troops were Ethiopians’, according to Silberman, Leo,‘Why the Haud was Ceded’, in Cahiers d' études africaines (Paris), 2, 1961, p. 41.Google Scholar

Page 468 note 2 Sir Rodd, James Rennell, Social and Diplomatic Memories (Second Series), 1894–1901: Egypt and Abyssinia (London, 1923), p. 110.Google Scholar

Page 469 note 1 Zoli, Corrado, ‘The Organization of Italy's East African Empire’, in Foreign Affairs (New York), 16, 1937, p. 84. Zoli was an Italian Governor of Eritrea.Google Scholar

Page 470 note 1 Mariam, Mesfin Wolde, ‘The Background of the Ethio-Somalian Boundary Dispute’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies (cambridge), 2, 2, 07 1964, pp. 189–219.Google Scholar

Page 470 note 2 Dombrowski, Franz Amadeus, ‘The Growth and Consolidation of Muslim Power in the Horn of Africa: some observations’, in Archiv Orientalni (Prague), I, 51, 1983, pp. 55–67, a study based on contemporary Arabic sources.Google Scholar

Page 470 note 3 Trevaskis, G. K. N., Eritrea: a colony in transition, 1941–1952 (New York, 1975 reprint), p. 76. Trevaskis was a member of the British Administration of Eritrea from its beginning to 1950.Google Scholar

Page 471 note 1 Selassie, loc. cit. p. 255.

Page 471 note 2 In 1978 the language division of Ethiopia was as follows: 37.7 per cent Amharic, 35.3 per cent Oromo, and 27 per cent divided among 98 languages, including Tigrinya which is spoken by 8·4 per cent in the two Provinces of Tigray and Eritrea. Britannica Book of the Year, 1985 (Chicago, 1985), p. 674. Although no exact figures are available, it is my estimation that about 20 per cent of non-Amharans may understand Amharic.Google Scholar

Page 471 note 3 Journal of the Rev. Messrs. Isenberg and Krapf, Missionaries of the Church Missionary Society (London, 1843), p. 3.Google Scholar According to his own chronicler, Grany (Imam Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi), the ruler of Adal (and his army) who invaded the Christian highlands of Ethiopia in the sixteenth century, spoke Amharic, described as the language of the Christians (Kalam an-nasan). One of Grany's effective stratagems was to order his soldiers to pose as Christians by speaking Amharic and dressing their hair in the appropriate fashion. See René, Basset (ed. and translator), Histoire de la conquête de l' Abyssinie (XVI siècle) par Chihab ed-Din Ahmed ben ‘Abd el-Qâder (Paris, 1897–1909), pp. 327–9 for the text, and (Paris, 1897–1901), pp. 436–8 for the translation.Google Scholar

Page 472 note 1 Ullendorff, Edward, Catalogue of Ethiopian Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, Vol. II (Oxford, 1951), p. 21.Google Scholar

Page 472 note 2 See Rubenson, Sven, The Survival of Ethiopian Independence (London, 1976), p. 60.Google Scholar

Page 472 note 3 Erlich, Haggai, ‘Alula, “the Son of Qubi”’, in The Journal of African History (Cambridge), 15, 2, 1974, p. 266;Google Scholar and Carlo, Giglio (ed.), L' Italia in Africa: Etiopia-Mar Rosso, Vol. v (Rome, 1966).Google Scholar

Page 473 note 1 Ellingson, Lloyd, ‘The Emergence of Political Parties in Eritrea, 1941–1950’, in The Journal of African History, 18, 2, 1977, p. 278.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Page 473 note 2 The meeting of 3 Sene 1970 E.C. (= 10 June 1978) between the leaders of the Eritrean separatist movement and the Ethiopian Government, on which many had great hopes, ended before it started because, according to an official publication the separatists refused to hold the negotiations in Amharic. Itti haqqin meftihi'un izzi tirah iyyu (Addis Ababa, Nehase 1977 E.C. [=June–July 1985]), p. 21. Referring to this meeting, Halliday, Fred and Molyneux, Maxine, The Ethiopian Revolution (London, 1981), p. 163, state that the negotiations ‘came to nothing’, choosing to ignore the reason why.Google Scholar

Page 474 note 1 Prouty, Chris and Rosenfeld, Eugene, Historical Dictionary of Ethiopia (Metuchen, 1981), p. 26, who acknowledge the help and advice of Bereket Habte Selassie.Google Scholar

Page 474 note 2 Selassie, loc. cit. p. 255.

Page 475 note 1 Ellingson, loc. cit. p. 261.

Page 475 note 2 Selassie, loc. cit. p. 256.

Page 475 note 3 Trevaskis, op. cit. pp. 10–11.

Page 476 note 1 Statistics can generally be manipulated, but the true picture often appears when confidential evidence becomes public, and when those in authority make casual references to the real situation. A 1943 secret document published in 1970 put the number of Christians at 375,000 and ‘Somalis’ (read ‘Muslims’) at 255,000- to the latter should be added 45,000 Danakils.Google Scholar See Foreign Relations of the United States, 1943 (Washington, D.C., 1970), p. 798.Google ScholarThe implications of the statement by Trevaski, op. cit. p. 46, that ‘The Christian Abyssinians comprised more than two-thirds of the Eritrean population’, becomes unclear in the light of his table on pp. 132–3, ‘Population of Ethiopia, where the Muslim figure is 40,000 higher than that for Christians.Google Scholar According to Spencer, John H., Ethiopia at Bay: a personal account of the Haile Sellassie years (Algonac, Michigan, 1984), p. 230, fn. 2,Google Scholar ‘there were perhaps 18,000 more Moslems than Christians’. General de Bono, Emilio, Anno XIIII: the conquest of an empire, translated by Miall, Bernard (London, 1937), pp. 82–3, complains that Muslims in 1936 were ‘not very numerous in Eritrea’ compared to Christians.Google Scholar

Page 477 note 1 My translation of the relevant part of his biography by Mannaye, Yilma, Gemoraw Zer'ay Deres (Asmera, 1970?), p. 65. Even the Italians dropped pamphlets to the Eritreans written in Amharic when they made their declaration of war against Ethiopia; de Bono, op. cit. pp. 231–2.Google Scholar

Page 477 note 2 Foreign Relations of the United States, 1942 (Washington, D.C., 1963), Vol. IV, pp. 104–5.Google Scholar

Page 478 note 1 Spencer, op. cit. pp. 247–8. This American was the legal adviser in the Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for many years, including the period 1943–1960.

Page 478 note 2 Ibid. p. 197.

Page 478 note 3 See, for example, the documents in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1943, Vol. IV, p. 108; 1944 (Washington, D.C., 1972), Vol. V, p. 409; and 1950 (Washington, D.C., 1978), Vol. V, p. 1641. Quoting John Foster Dulles, the U.S. Secreatary of State, from a questionable source, Bereket Habte Selassie, loc. cit. p. 257, believes that the opinion of the Eritrean people had not received consideration on the part of the American Government.Google Scholar

Page 479 note 1 Foreign Relations of the United States, 1949 (Washington, D.C., 1975), Vol. IV, p. 548.Google Scholar

Page 479 note 2 Ibid. p. 547.

Page 479 note 3 Spencer, op. cit. pp. 198, 213, and 230–1.

Page 479 note 4 Ibid. pp. 197 and 213; Trevaskis, op. cit. p. 97.

Page 480 note 1 Foreign Relations of the United States, 1950, Vol. V, p. 1646.

Page 480 note 2 Rubenson, Sven, ‘“The Last Unresolved Problem of Africa” in Fifty Years’, Perspective’, in Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference of Ethiopian Studies (Addis Ababa), forthcoming. Cf. Trevaskis, op. cit. p. 63.Google Scholar

Page 481 note 1 Spencer, op. cit. p. 217.

Page 481 note 2 My own recollection of the meeting between the Archbishop and Ato Wolde Ab Wolde Mariam.

Page 482 note 1 This information comes from Spencer, op. cit. pp. 302–5.Google Scholar

Page 483 note 1 Selassie, loc. cit. p. 255.

Page 483 note 2 The legend that linked the Ethiopian ruling house with that of Israel, the Kibra Negest, was rendered into Ge'ez by the head of the Church of Aksum in Tigray.

Page 484 note 1 Grühl, Max, Abyssinia at Bay, translated by Kirkness, Kenneth (London, 1935), pp. 166–7, ‘A mighty man of Abyssinia, the Galla Prince Apte Georgis, started his life as a slave boy. Hundreds of similar examples might be quoted’.Google Scholar

Page 484 note 2 Smith, A. Donaldson, Through Unknown African Countries (London, 1897), p. 48.Google Scholar

Page 485 note 1 Britannica Book of the Year, 1985, p. 674.Google Scholar

Page 485 note 2 For example, in 1902, Berkeley, G.F-H., The Campaign of Adowa and the Rise of Menelik (London, 1936 edn.), treats the Battle of Adwas as a Shoan undertaking although all the Provinces had fought united, and Ethiopia's victory would have been in doubt without the intelligence service provided by the Eritreans.Google Scholar

Page 485 note 3 Perham, Margery, The Government of Ethiopia (London, 1948), pp. 444–5.Google Scholar A recent study by Negash, Tekeste, ‘Resistance and Collaboration in Eritrea, 1882–1914’, in Sven, Rubenson (ed.), Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference of Ethiopian Studies (Arlöv, Sweden, 1984), pp. 315–30, Shows the heroic deeds of many Eritreans in fighting the colonisers.Google Scholar

Page 487 note 1 Lewis, I. M., A Modern History of Somaliland (London, 1980), pp. 172–3. Cf. Silberman, loc. cit. p. 66, and Spencer, op. cit. p. 287, fn.I.Google Scholar

Page 487 note 2 See ‘Eastern Africa’, in The New Encyclopaedia Britannica, p. 797.