Contains all of the locatable official letters written by the Ethiopian Kings of the period or by governors on their behalf. Also included in the 235 documents are semi-official and private letters that impinged on the affairs of state. The letters are presented in the original languages with accompanying English translations. An introductory essay provides historical context for the period covered. Originally published in 2000 by Addis Ababa U. Press. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Northeast Africa has one of the richest histories in the world, and yet also one of the most violent. Richard Reid offers an historical analysis of violent conflict in northeast Africa through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, incorporating the Ethiopian and Eritrean highlands and their escarpment and lowland peripheries, stretching between the modern Eritrean Red Sea coast and the southern and eastern borderlands of present day Ethiopia. Sudanese and Somali frontiers are also examined insofar as they can be related to ethnic, political, and religious conflict, and the violent state- and empire-building processes which have defined the region since c.1800. Reid argues that this modern warfare is not solely the product of modern political 'failure', but rather has its roots in a network of frontier zones which are both violent and creative. Such borderlands have given rise to markedly militarised political cultures which are rooted in the violence of the nineteenth century, and which in recent decades are manifest in authoritarian systems of government. Reid thus traces the history of Amhara and Tigrayan imperialisms to the nationalist and ethnic revolutions which represented the march of volatile borderlands on the hegemonic centre. He suggests a new interpretation of Ethiopian and Eritrean history, arguing that the key to understanding the region's turbulent present lies in an appreciation of the role of the armed, and politically fertile, frontier in its deeper past.
The study focuses in particular on the Nile Basin, which has 10 riparian states sharing the waters of the Nile. As water scarcity and population is the #1 problem of the 21st century, a fair and equitable distribution of the available waters among the riparian states is a must. The book is divided into 4 parts: Diplomatic, History, Legal Analysis and developmental analysis.
The ongoing Egyptian-Ethiopian dispute over the Nile waters is potentially one of the most difficult issues on the current international agenda, central to the very life of the two countries. Analyzing the context of the dispute across a span of more than a thousand years, The Cross and the River delves into the heart of both countries' identities and cultures. Erlich deftly weaves together three themes: the political relationship between successive Ethiopian and Egyptian regimes; the complex connection between the Christian churches in the two countries; and the influence of the Nile river system on Ethiopian and Egyptian definitions of national identity and mutual perceptions of the Other. Drawing on a vast range of sources, his study is key to an understanding of a bond built on both interdependence and conflict.
A panoramic global history of Africa in the age of imperialism Africa’s long nineteenth century was a time of revolutionary ferment and cultural innovation for the continent’s states, societies, and economies. Yet the period preceding what became known as “the Scramble for Africa” by European powers in the decades leading up to World War I has long been neglected in favor of a Western narrative of colonial rule. The African Revolution demonstrates that "the Scramble” and the resulting imperial order were as much the culmination of African revolutionary dynamics as they were of European expansionism. In this monumental work of history, Richard Reid paints a multifaceted portrait of a continent on the global stage. He describes how Africa witnessed the emergence of new economic and political dynamics that were underpinned by forms of violence and volatility not unlike those emanating from Europe. Reid uses a stretch of road in what is now Tanzania—one of the nineteenth century’s most vibrant commercial highways—as an entry point into this revolutionary epoch, weaving a broader story around characters and events on the road. He integrates the African experience with new insights into the deeper currents in European societies before and after conquest, and he shows how the Africans themselves created opportunities for European expansion. Challenging the portrayal of Africa’s transformative nineteenth century as a mere prelude to European colonialism, The African Revolution reveals how this turbulent yet hugely creative era for Africans intersected with global intrusions to shape the modern age.
For more than two thousand years, Ethiopia’s ox-plow agricultural system was the most efficient and innovative in Africa, but has been afflicted in the recent past by a series of crises: famine, declining productivity, and losses in biodiversity. James C. McCann analyzes the last two hundred years of agricultural history in Ethiopia to determine whether the ox-plow agricultural system has adapted to population growth, new crops, and the challenges of a modern political economy based in urban centers. This agricultural history is set in the context of the larger environmental and landscape history of Ethiopia, showing how farmers have integrated crops, tools, and labor with natural cycles of rainfall and soil fertility, as well as with the social vagaries of changing political systems. McCann traces characteristic features of Ethiopian farming, such as the single-tine scratch plow, which has retained a remarkably consistent design over two millennia, and a crop repertoire that is among the most genetically diverse in the world. People of the Plow provides detailed documentation of Ethiopian agricultural practices since the early nineteenth century by examining travel narratives, early agricultural surveys, photographs and engravings, modern farming systems research, and the testimony of farmers themselves, collected during McCann’s five years of fieldwork. He then traces the ways those practices have evolved in the twentieth century in response to population growth, urban markets, and the presence of new technologies.
