Bond Without Blood A Study Of Ethiopian Caribbean Ties 1935 1991

Since 1896, the year in which Ethiopia scored a major victory against an invading European army, occidental blacks had been fascinated with East Africa, the land whose history resonated a racial golden age. Through subsequent decades Ethiopia remained a powerful signifier in modern black thought, while Ethiopianism became the catalyst of twentieth-century nationalist expressions. Modern Ethiopianism is, however, much more than a quest for an idyllic past. Given the state-of-the-art means of communication, Ethiopia is no longer a far off abstraction. Modern Ethio-Atlantic racial ties are articulated by tangible historical events. The manifestation of Ethiopian art in Reggae, the Rastafarian deification of Haile Selassie, and the transplantation of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church in the Western Hemisphere, are but a few examples of Ethiopian cultural crossovers in the New World. Inversely, black American Soul and Jamaican Reggae have spiced up Ethiopian urban culture, as have their political heroes and sports icons. Bond without Blood constructs the narrative of the Ethio-Atlantic ties with three interwoven themes in mind: pan-African nationalism, repatriation, and cultural cross-fertilization. The overall thesis that holds this book together is that contemporary Ethiopian and New World black relations are more than a mere psychological preoccupation. East Africa and the black Atlantic, despite great physical distances, continue to impact on each other's awareness through migration, religion, secular culture, as well as through a shared history of anticolonial activism. Book jacket.

This engaging and informative historical narrative provides an excellent introduction to the history of Ethiopia from the classical era through the modern age. The acute historical analysis contained in this volume allows readers to critically interrogate shifting global power configurations from the late nineteenth century to the twentieth century, and the related implications in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa region. Adejumobi identifies a second wave of globalization, beginning in the nineteenth century, which laid the foundation for a highly textured Ethiopian Afromodern twentieth century. The book explores Ethiopia's efforts at charting an independent course in the face of imperialism, World War II, the Cold War and international economic reforms with a focus on the gap between the state's modernization reforms and the citizenry's aspirations of modernity. The book focuses on Ethiopians' efforts to balance challenges related to social, political and economic reforms with a renaissance in the arts, theater, Orthodox Coptic Christianity, Islam and ancient ethnic identities. The History of Ethiopia paints a vivid picture of a dynamic and compelling country and region for students, scholars, and general readers seeking to grasp twenty-first century global relations. The work also provides a timeline of events in Ethiopian history, brief biographies of key figures, and a bibliographic essay.

The books in the Florida and the Caribbean Open Books Series demonstrate the University Press of Florida’s long history of publishing Latin American and Caribbean studies titles that connect in and through Florida, highlighting the connections between the Sunshine State and its neighboring islands. Books in this series show how early explorers found and settled Florida and the Caribbean. They tell the tales of early pioneers, both foreign and domestic. They examine topics critical to the area such as travel, migration, economic opportunity, and tourism. They look at the growth of Florida and the Caribbean and the attendant pressures on the environment, culture, urban development, and the movement of peoples, both forced and voluntary. The Florida and the Caribbean Open Books Series gathers the rich data available in these architectural, archaeological, cultural, and historical works, as well as the travelogues and naturalists’ sketches of the area prior to the twentieth century, making it accessible for scholars and the general public alike. The Florida and the Caribbean Open Books Series is made possible through a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, under the Humanities Open Books program.