Eritrea, the newest nation-state in Africa, gained independence from the Ethiopian state after a prolonged and bitter conflict. This book is the first comprehensive analysis of the country's political history over the past three decades. It examines the origins of Eritrean nationalism, and charts the development of its various nationalist movements, assessing the programs and capabilities of the parties contending for power. It also analyzes the regional and international context within which the battles for independence were fought.
Since 1998, Eritrea and its neighbor Ethiopia have spent an estimated $1 million a day in fighting over a disputed area of land. Pool (government, University of Manchester) offers background for understanding the roots of the conflict, looking at Eritrean nationalism, the formation and operation of the liberation front of Eritrea, and the political forces at work in Eritrea's struggle for independence. c. Book News Inc.
The first ethnography of the Eritrean struggle for independence documents the transnational dimensions of revolution and nation-building from the dual perspective of both Eritrea and its U.S. diaspora.
A firsthand account of Eritrea's epic 30-year,struggle for independence and social justice.,""An inspiring story of courage, dedicationachievement and hope with important lessons to,teach"" - Noam Chomsky,""Connell writes in the engaged tradition of John,Reed and Edgar Snow"" - Basil Davidson
Bringing together original, contemporary ethnographic research on the Northeast African state of Eritrea, this book shows how biopolitics - the state-led deployment of disciplinary technologies on individuals and population groups - is assuming particular forms in the twenty-first century. Once hailed as the “African country that works,” Eritrea’s apparently successful post-independence development has since lapsed into economic crisis and severe human rights violations. This is due not only to the border war with Ethiopia that began in 1998, but is also the result of discernible tendencies in the “high modernist” style of social mobilization for development first adopted by the Eritrean government during the liberation struggle (1961–1991) and later carried into the post-independence era. The contributions to this volume reveal and interpret the links between development and developmentalist ideologies, intensifying militarism, and the controlling and disciplining of human lives and bodies by state institutions, policies, and discourses. Also assessed are the multiple consequences of these policies for the Eritrean people and the ways in which such policies are resisted or subverted. This insightful, comparative volume places the Eritrean case in a broader global and transnational context.
Introduction by Basil Davidson and Lionel Cliffe.,In april 1976, Dan Connell slipped into Eritrea's,besieged capital, Asmara, where he witnessed the,assassination of a top-ranking Ethiopian official,and its bloody aftermath - the summary execution,of dozens of innocent civilians. His front page,account in the Washington Post broke Ethiopia's,long-standing information blockade. This is the,first of a two-volume collection of Connell's,writings, spanning a quarter-century, recounting,the experience of Eritrea's protracted war of,independence and its postliberation transition.