Ebook: Ethiopia: Empire in Revolution

The Ethiopian revolution is considered the first great revolution to take place in black Africa. The momentum for social and political change, which had been steadily increasing in the last years of Haile Selassie's rule, gathered unexpected speed as a series of military protests broke out in early 1974 and suddenly erupted into a national groundswell of revolt. Joined by students, workers, bureaucrats, teachers and other discontented forces in Addis Ababa, the capital city, the military forced the government to concede to demand after another. Though cabinets were changed, salaries raised and political reforms promised (though never really delivered), the aged and now feeble emperor proved unable to respond effectively to the situation. He was deposed in September, and the ancient regime collapsed. Marina and David Ottaway, correspondents for the Washington Post, lived through the revolutionary events in Ethiopia until their expulsion by the Provisional Military Government in mid-1977. Their contacts with government and military circles in Addis and their travels throughout the countryside to investigate provincial conditions gave them an unusual and particularly valuable vantage point from which to observe these developments. They carefully chronicle the unfolding of events, both among discontented troops and the urban citizenry in Addis. They trace the evolution of the government's socialist ideology, the harsh application of nationalization decrees and sweeping social and economic reforms, and the resistance the government encountered from obstinate minority and corporate groups. As the revolution continued, revolts erupted on the right, among feudal remnants, and on the left, among political idealists. As the empire was rocked by ideological concerns, the country's major ethnic groups - Gallas, Somalis, Afars, Tigreans and not the least, Eritreans, whose war of liberation began in 1962 - strengthened their separatist drives against the government in Addis Ababa. Social tensions in the countryside, where secondary and university students were sent to instruct the peasantry in the ways of socialism, and in the cities, where political organizations of bewildering ideological strains engaged in bitter factional disputes and assassinations, persuaded many observers to believe the revolution would consume itself. The Ottoways provide rich details on these fascinating events and give clues to the survival of the first "great revolution" in black Africa.