Revolutionary Ethiopia

" . . . an excellent, comprehensive account of the Ethiopian revolution . . . essential for anyone who wishes to understand revolutionary Ethiopia." —Perspective "This masterly history deals with the Emperor and the Dergue . . . on their own terms. . . . [Keller] buttresses his analysis with careful and useful detail." —Foreign Affairs "Keller's analytic grasp of the complex features of Ethiopian history and society from a wide range of sources is remarkable." —African Affairs

This 1988 text traces the continuities between revolutionary Ethiopia and the development of a centralised Ethiopian state since the nineteenth century.

Revolution, civil wars, and guerilla warfare wracked Ethiopia during three turbulent decades at the end of the 20th century. Here, Tareke brings to life the leading personalities in the domestic political struggles, strategies of the warring parties international actors, and key battles.

First published in 1997. Ethiopia, the only country in Africa to survive the nineteenth-century European scramble for the continent, has a long, unique, and complex history. This stretches back over three million years to Lucy, or as the Ethiopians call her Dinkenesh, the earliest known ancestor of the human race, to the political turmoil of late twentieth-century Africa. Teferra Haile-Selassie writes partly as a historian, but also, and perhaps more importantly, as a sincere and sensitive observer, who lived through the later historical events which he describes, and indeed played a notable role in several of them.

Revolution and Genocide in Ethiopia and Cambodia is the first comparative study of the Ethiopian and Cambodian revolutions of the early 1970s. One of the few comparative studies of genocide in the developing world, this book presents some of the key arguments in traditional genocide scholarship, but the book's author, Edward Kissi, takes a different position, arguing that the Cambodian genocide and the atrocious crimes in Ethiopia had very different motives. Kissi's findings reveal that genocide was a tactic specifically chosen by Cambodia's Khmer Rouge to intentionally and systematically annihilate certain ethnic and religious groups, whereas Ethiopia's Dergue resorted to terror and political killing in the effort to retain power. Revolution and Genocide in Ethiopia and Cambodia demonstrates that the extent to which revolutionary states turn to policies of genocide depends greatly on how they acquire their power and what domestic and international opposition they face. This is an important and intriguing book for students of African and Asian history and those interested in the study of genocide.

This book is a comprehensive account of the Ethiopian revolution, dealing with the entire span of the revolutionary government's life. Particular emphasis is placed on effectively isolating and articulating the causes and outcomes of the revolution. The author traces the revolution's roots in the weaknesses of the autocratic regime of Haile Selassie, examines the formative years of the revolution in the mid-seventies, when the ideology of scientific socialism was espoused by the ruling military council, and finally charts the consolidation of Mengistu Haile Miriam's power from 1977 to the adoption of a new constitution in 1987. In examining these events, Dr Tiruneh makes extensive use of primary sources written in the national official language. He was also the first Ethiopian nation to write a book on this subject. This book is thus a unique account of a fascinating period, capturing the mood of the revolution as never before, yet firmly grounded in scholarship.