5 - From Liberation to Revolution 1941-1974

Summary

The period 1941 to 1974 represents a summation of modern Ethiopian history. Emperor Tewodros's efforts at centralization in the nineteenth century were consummated in the absolutism of Emperor Hayla-Sellase in the twentieth century. The perennial quest for a sea coast was finally realized with the federation and then union of Eritrea with Ethiopia. The land privatization process initiated with the institution of land-measurement (qalad), and unequal distribution increased. Extensive land grants by the state to its officials and supporters reduced a substantial portion of the peasantry to the status of tenancy, particularly in the southern half of the country. Peasant rebellions, rare phenomena before the Italo-Ethiopian war, became almost endemic after it. Frustrated in its bid to penetrate the Ethiopian economy in the early twentieth century, foreign capital had relatively better opportunities in post-Liberation Ethiopia. For the Ethiopian state, the pre-war policy of manoeuvring among a number of foreign powers gave way to increasing dependence on one, the United States of America, which provided the infrastructural and superstructural support for the consolidation of absolutism.

Yet, by some kind of historical paradox, the period which marked the high point of Ethiopian feudalism also witnessed its decay and eventual demise. Opposition to the regime, beginning in conspiratorial fashion, reached its climax in the Ethiopian Student Movement, harbinger of the Ethiopian Revolution of 1974, and vociferous successor to the anguished and muffled cries for reform of pre-war intellectuals like Gabra-Heywat Baykadagn.