Ethiopia

Markakis has produced a magisterial work that synthesizes a half-century's research into Ethiopia's state formation, assessing the achievements and successes of the ruling elites of the imperial, Afro-Marxist, and Federalist regimes. Going against the conventional stance, which assumes that the Ethiopian state long ago passed the threshold of state formation and has moved beyond consolidating control over its territory and citizens, Markakis argues that the ‘nation-state building project’ which began in the late 1890s ‘has made much progress but is nowhere near an end’ (p. 1). Surveying the long and violent history of the empire he argues for the belated acknowledgment of ‘warfare [as] ... the crimson thread’ that has stitched together the polity and institutionalized a hierarchical society predominantly based on Abyssinian norms and values (p. 3). The author strips away the mythical and ideological veils of the Ethiopian state and lays bare the legacies of slave raids, military conquest, settler colonialism, and armed insurgencies. He weaves an intricate analytical narrative that exposes the political malaise that ails Ethiopia's rulers: the unwillingness and/or inability to reconcile political integration and nation building in ways that acknowledge the shared histories of the core and peripheries and, going beyond rhetoric, to nurture a multi-national foundation for citizens of the twenty-first century. For the ideal of pluribus unum to be realized concretely the Ethiopian template of leadership must move beyond coercion to consensual governance and thereby usher in a coherent nation-state comfortable with its constituent parts.

Colonialism · Empire · Ideology · Marxist philosophy · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Polity · Sociology · State (computer science) · African history and culture analysis · History · Law

• Reply to Hugo Slim

  John Dunn•Contention•2018

  Add to list