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Lation in the Ethiopian Empire Notes Chapter I 1. Because of the politics involved there is disagreement on the size of the Oromo popu- lation in the Ethiopian empire. In The Journal of Oromo Studies, vol. 4, nos. 1 and 2, Fey- isa Demie notes that “Oromia [the Oromo country] had an estimated population of 13 million in 1970.The most recent census in 1984 gave a total population of 21 million. By the year 2004, Oromia’s population is expected to reach 34 million.The forecast is that the total population can easily exceed 39 million by the year 2014” (p. 165). How- ever, some scholars, government census, and The World Almanac and Book of Facts (1999, p.787) estimate the Oromo population at 40 percent of the Ethiopian population. 2. Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the Making of America (New York:Macmillan, 1987), p. 34. 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid., p. 22. 5. Ibid., p. 7. 6. For discussion on maroon settlements, see Richard Price, ed., Maroon Societies: Rebel Slave Communities in the Americas, 2nd ed. (Baltimore: John Hopkins, 1979). 7. See Julian B. Roebuck and Komanduri S. Murty, Historically Black Colleges and Universi- ties:Their Place in American Higher Education (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1993). 8. For details, see Martial de Slaviac, Un People antique au pays de Menelik: Les Galla, Paris, 1901; Bonnie K. Holcomb and Sisai Ibssa, The Invention of Ethiopia:The Making of De- pendent Colonial State in Northeast Africa (Trenton, N.J.:The Red Sea Press, 1990);Asafa Jalata, Oromia and Ethiopia: State Formation and Ethnonational Conflict, 1868–1992 (Boul- der: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1993). 9. Martial de Slavic, Ibid. 10. Oromos call their region or country Oromia. Oromia occupies three-fourths of the Ethiopian empire. Currently,it is officially considered one of the administrative regions of Ethiopia. 11. See The National Summit on Africa, Draft National Policy Plan of Action for U.S.-Africa Relations in the 21st Century, February 16–20, 2000. 12. Theda Skocpol, Social Revolutions in the Modern World (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer- sity Press, 1994), p. 303. 13. Ibid., p. 333. 14. See Andre Gunder Frank, World Accumulation, 1492–1789 (New York:Monthly Review Press, 1978); Karl Marx, Capital, vol. I, ed. F.Engels (New York:International Publish- ers, 1967);Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (Washington,D.C.: Howard University Press, 1972); Immanuel Wallerstein, The Politics of the World-Economy: The States, the Movements, and Civilizations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984); Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System III:The Second Era of Great Expansion of the Capitalist World-Economy, 1730–1840 (San Diego: Sage, 1988). 154 • Fighting Against the Injustice of the State and Globalization 15. Karl Marx, Capital, vols. I and II, ed. by F.Engels (New York:International Publishers, 1967), p. 17. 16. See Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. 17. Karl Marx, op. cit., p. 763. 18. For example, see Edward Said, Orientalism (New York:Vintage Books, 1978); Robert J. C.Young, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory,Culture and Race (New York:Routledge, 1995); Howard Winant, Racial Conditions: Politics,Theory,Comparisons (Minneapolis: Uni- versity of Minnesota Press, 1994). 19. See Perry Anderson, Lineage of the Absolutist State (London:Verso, 1974). 20. Ibid., p. 1. 21. According to Kamenka, “Economic developments were transforming the domestic economy of the rural manor and the urban guild into a national economy. Feudal and inter-urban warfare were gradually supplanted by warfare of a large scale . monar- chies were becoming symbols of national power and prestige, while upper and middle classes were becoming more enthusiastic exponents of national, as against local or cos- mopolitan interests.” Eugene Kamenka, “Political Nationalism—the Evolution of the Idea,” in Nationalism:The Nature of the Idea, ed. E. Kamenka (Canberra: Australia Na- tional University Press), pp. 1–20. 22. John Breuilly, Nationalism and State (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), p. 54. 23. Thomas R. Shannon, An Introduction to the World-System Perspective (San Francisco:West- view Press, 1989), p. 51. 24. Ibid., p. 44. 25. See Louis Synder, Varieties of Nationalism: A Comparative Study (Hinsdale: The Dryden Press), p. 77. 26. Ibid. 27. Ibid., p. 80. 28. Gurutz J. Bereciartu, Decline of the Nation-State, trans.W.A. Douglass (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1994), p. 11. 29. Louis Synder, Varieties of Nationalism, p. 10. 30. Derek Heater, National Self-Determination:Woodrow Wilson and His Legacy (London: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), p. 4. 31. Giovanni Arrighi, Terence Hopkins, and I. Wallerstein, Anti-Systemic Movements (Lon- don:Verso, 1989), p. 30. 32. Leonard Tivey,“Introduction,” in The Nation-State, ed. L.Tivey (New York:St. Martin’s Press, 1981), p. 13.Tivey comments that the nation-state “created the idea of the ‘citi- zen’—the individual who recognized the state as his legal home. It created the idea of a uniform system of law throughout the country . of legal equality,where all citizens have the same status before the law . of a state that exists to serve those citizens . of loyalty to a larger group than clan . of common languages and common education systems, and common legal systems within clearly defined state boundaries.” 33. Benjamin Quarles, op. cit., p. 21. 34. Ibid. 35. Asafa Jalata, op. cit.; Bonnie Holcomb and Sisai Ibssa, op. cit. 36. See Karl Marx, Capital, p. 765. 37. Amharas and Tigrayans prefer to call one another Habashas to indicate that they are the mixture of the so-called Semitic group and Africans. According to Jalata (1993, p. 31), “The Arab elements immigrated to this part of Africa [currently called Eritrea and northern Ethiopia] probably in the first half of the first millennium B.C., and the de- scendants of the Arab immigrants who assimilated with the Africans on the coast” evolved as Habashas. The name Abyssinia emerged from the term Habasha. The Habasha warlords called their country and the regions they colonized Abyssinia, and they later changed it to Ethiopia. For most people the difference between the ancient mythical Notes • 155 Ethiopia and contemporary Ethiopia is not clear because the Abyssinian warlords and clergy facilitated this confusion to appropriate the history of the ancient mythical Ethiopia. According to Budge (1928, pp. 120–121), “The translator of the Bible into Greek identified Kush with Ethiopia . and they, like the classical writers...appar- ently knew nothing of Abyssinia. The name Ethiopia was definitely given to Abyssinia by those who translated the Bible from Greek into . Geez, and the Hebrew word Kush is translated by . Ethiopia.” In reality, as Budge continues,“The descrip- tions of Ethiopia given by Homer, Herodotus, Diodorus, strabo and Pliny make it quite clear that they indicated by this name the vast tracts of country [regions] in Asia and Africa that were inhabited by dark-skinned and black-faced peoples.” The name Ethiopia derived from the Greek word, “Aithiops”; this name was given by ancient Greek scholars to indicate that Ethiopia was the region of the black peoples or “burned-faces” peoples. Historically speaking Abyssinia and Ethiopia are not one and the same; Abyssinia is part of the Ethiopia. Today Amharas and Tigrayans are credited for things that are associated with the ancient mythical Ethiopia that was associated with all black peoples.According to Melbaa, replacing the name Abyssinia by Ethiopia enabled Habashas to claim that “Ethiopia, as a country and under their rule, existed in Biblical times and . maintained its independence for over 3000 years. On the basis of this myth . they justified their colonization of the Oromo....More than anything else it is this substitution of Ethiopia for Abyssinia that led the colonized peoples such as Oromo to reject the term Ethiopian when applied to them” (1988, p. 36). In this book, I use interchangeably the names Habashas, Abyssinians, and Ethiopians to refer to Amharas and Tigrayans. A.Wallis Budge, A History of Ethiopia, vols. 1 and 2 (London: Methuen, 1928); Gadaa Melbaa, Oromia:An Introduction (Khartoum, 1988). 38. See Harry Magdoff, Imperialism: From the Colonial Age to the Present (New York:Monthly Review Press, 1978);Albert Bergesen,“Cycles of Formal Colonial Rule,” Process of the World System, ed.T. Hopkins and I.Wallerstein (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1980);Andre Gun- der Frank, World Accumulation, 1492–1789. 39. Andre Gunder Frank, ibid.; A. G. Frank, “The Modern World System Revisited: Rereading Braudel and Wallerstein,”in Civilizations and World Systems, ed. S. K. Sander- son (Palo Alto, Calif.:Altmaira Press, 1995). 40. See Kenan Malik, The Meaning of Race (New York: New York University Press, 1996). Malik asserts that “the meaning of ‘race’ cannot be confined to a simple definition or reduced to a single property or relationship. Rather, race rises out of complex contra- dictions within capitalist society and articulates those contradictions in complex ways”(p. 265). 41. Howard Winant, Racial Conditions, p. 24. 42. For detailed discussion of these issues, see Benjamin P.Bowser and Raymond G. Hunt, eds., Impacts of Racism on White Americans, 2nd edition, (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1996), pp. 1–23. 43. Etienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein, Race, Nation, Class:Ambiguous Identities (New York:Verso, 1991). 44. Ibid., p. 6. 45. Explaining why it is difficult to define race, Malik mentions the following points:“Ge- neticists have shown that 85 per cent of all genetic variation is between individuals within the same local population.A further 8 per cent is between local populations or groups within what is considered to be a major race. Just 7 per cent of genetic varia- tion is between major races.” Malik, The Meaning of Race, p. 4. 46. Robert Staples,“White Racism, Black Crime, and American Justice:An Application of the Colonial Model to Explain Crime and Race,” in Sources: Notable Selections in Race and Ethnicity (Guilford, Conn.: Dushkin/McGraw-Hill, 1998), pp.
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