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The history of the Horn of Africa has largely been dominated by Ethiopia and has been characterized by struggles between Muslim and other herdsmen and Christian farmers for resources and living space. The Christians mostly spoke Semitic languages and the Muslims Cushitic tongues. Although these languages were derived from the same Afro-Asiatic stock, the more apparent differences between the peoples often were excuses for war, which, by the end of the 20th century, was waged under the banner of nationalism and Marxism-Leninism.
Aksum
When the Ethiopian empire of Aksum emerged into the light of history at the end of the 1st century ce, it was as a trading state known throughout the Red Sea region. Its people spoke Geʿez, a Semitic language, and they mostly worshipped Middle Eastern gods, although here and there a traditional African deity survived. Its port of Adulis received a continuous stream of merchants who offered textiles, glassware, tools, precious jewelry, copper, iron, and steel in return for ivory, tortoiseshell, rhinoceros horn, gold, silver, slaves, frankincense, and myrrh. Aksum, the capital, was five days’ march from the coast onto the Tigray Plateau, from which position it dominated trade routes into the south and west, where the commodities originated.
By the 4th century Aksum had become a regional power and an ally of Constantinople, whose language and culture attracted the ruling elites. Sometime around 321 Emperor Ezana and the Aksumite court converted to the monophysitic Christianity—a belief that Christ had one nature that was both divine and human—of Alexandria’s See of St. Mark. During the next 200 years Christianity penetrated the masses, as foreign and native-born monks proselytized the interior, building churches and establishing monasteries wherever they found pagan temples and shrines.
Through the first half of the 6th century Aksum was the most important state in the Red Sea–Indian Ocean region and even extended its power over the kingdom of the Ḥimyarites on the Arabian Peninsula. In the Horn, Aksum dominated Welo, Tigray, Eritrea, and the important trade routes to and from the Sudan. The capital’s stone buildings, monuments, churches, and 20,000 inhabitants were supported by tribute and taxes extracted from vassals and traders.
In 543 Abraha, the general in charge of Ḥimyar, rebelled and weakened Aksum’s hold over South Arabia. This event marked the end of the empire’s regional hegemony, allowed Persia to assume supremacy, and forced Constantinople into an overland trade route with India and Africa. Aksum’s international trade diminished, a shift reflected in the debasement of the state’s coins. The rise of Islam in Arabia a century later almost completely devastated Aksum, as Muslim sailors swept Ethiopian shipping from the sea-lanes.
Aksum lost its economic vitality, and Adulis and other commercial centres withered. State revenues were greatly reduced, and the government could no longer maintain a standing army, a complex administration, and urban amenities. The culture associated with the outside world quickly became a memory, and Ethiopia learned to exist in local terms. The Christian state moved southward into the rich grain-growing areas of the interior, where the rulers could sustain themselves. There they and the local Cushitic-speaking population, the Agau (Agaw, or Agew), worked out a new political arrangement for Ethiopia.
The Somali
Meanwhile, another Cushitic people, the Somali, had separated themselves from the Oromo in what is now north-central Kenya. For their livelihood, they depended upon the one-humped Arabian camel, sheep, and goats. During the first centuries ce they migrated in a southeastern direction, finally following the Tana River to the Indian Ocean. They then turned north and peopled the entire Somali peninsula, coming into contact on the coast with Arab and Persian trading communities, from whom they took Islam and a mythological Arabian origin. By the 12th century the entire northern Somali coast was Islamized, providing a basis for proselytism in the interior. But, as the Somali migration and Islam moved westward, they encountered a resurgent Christian Ethiopia.
The Solomonids
An amalgamated Christian state, led by Semitized Agau, had reappeared in the 12th century. This Zagwe dynasty gave way in the late 13th century to a dynasty that claimed descent from King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, a genealogy providing the legitimacy and continuity so honoured in Ethiopia’s subsequent national history. During the 14th and 15th centuries the Solomonid monarchs expanded their state southward and eastward. By then Muslims dominated Ethiopia’s trade, which exited via Mitsiwa in Eritrea or through Seylac on the northern Somali coast.
The Solomonids permitted Muslim business activities in return for submission and taxes. In 1332 Ifat, a large Muslim polity with its port at Seylac, fed up with being a Christian vassal, declared a holy war against Ethiopia and invaded its territory, destroying churches and forcing conversions to Islam. The Ethiopian emperor, Amda Tseyon, fought back hard, routed the enemy, and carried the frontier of Christian power to the edge of the Shewan Plateau, overlooking the largely Muslim-inhabited Awash valley. One hundred years later, under Emperor Zara Yakob, the Solomonid empire extended its authority southward to modern Bale and Sidamo.
By then Ethiopia faced a challenge from Adal, Ifat’s militant successor. Located in the semidesert Harer region, Adal employed highly mobile Somali and Afar cavalry, whose raiding Ethiopia could not control. Meanwhile, the Solomonid state had begun to decay, owing to succession problems and the sheer complexity of governing a large empire. The Muslims consequently stopped paying tribute and a percentage of their trading profits to the hated Christians. Thereafter, they grew stronger and more daring, responding in part to overpopulation among the Somali.
The distress was exploited by the charismatic Aḥmad ibn Ibrāhīm al-Ghāzī, known to the Ethiopians as Aḥmad Grāñ (“Aḥmad the Left-handed”). A pious, indeed rigorous, Muslim, Aḥmad railed against the secular nature of Adal, mobilized tribesmen to purify the state, and trained his enlistees to use the modern tactics and firearms recently introduced by the Ottomans into the Red Sea region. After he took over Adal about 1526, his refusal to pay tribute triggered a Solomonid invasion in 1527, which his army easily repulsed.
Aḥmad thereupon declared a holy war, led his men into Ethiopia, and won battle after battle, fragmenting the Solomonid state into its component parts. During 1531–32 the Muslims pushed northward, traversing the rich Amhara Plateau north of the Awash and destroying churches and monasteries. Aḥmad Grāñ built a civil administration composed of his own men, remnants of the pre-Solomonid ruling classes, and collaborators. By 1535 he headed a vast Islamic empire stretching from Seylac to Mitsiwa on the coast and including much of the Ethiopian interior, but not the staunchly Christian mountain fastnesses.
There, in 1541, Emperor Galawdewos learned that 400 Portuguese musketeers had disembarked at Mitsiwa in response to pleas for assistance. Though they lost half their strength moving inland, their weapons and tactics inspired Galawdewos to exploit Ethiopia’s difficult terrain by undertaking hit-and-run warfare. Aḥmad never knew where his adversaries would strike and therefore placed his forces in defensive positions, where they lost their mobility, while he and his personal guard acted as a rapidly deployed reserve. Encamped at Weyna Dega near Lake Tana, Aḥmad’s unit was attacked on Feb. 21, 1543, by Galawdewos and a flying column. During the hard-fought battle Aḥmad was killed, and that single death ended the war.
Christian Ethiopia was reprieved, but at a great cost. The country had lost hundreds of thousands of lives, confidence in itself and its religion, and its store of capital. Unable to follow Europe into commercial and then industrial capitalism, Ethiopia rebuilt feudalism, because the state simply had to restore affordable administration. By the early 1550s Galawdewos had fashioned a reasonable facsimile of the high Solomonid empire. Muslims, especially in the border provinces of Ifat, Dawaro (in the modern Arsi region), and Bale, remained disaffected. Christian converts along the periphery of the heartland, south of the Blue Nile and the Awash River, chafed under renewed exploitation, and the Judaized Beta Israel, to the north of Lake Tana, returned to their life of dispossession and economic marginalization. Finally, south of Lake Tana, in modern Gojam, Welega, Ilubabor, Kefa, Gamo Gofa, and Sidamo, a whole range of people remained tributary to the Christian kingdom. From among this last category emerged a new and more fundamental threat to old-fashioned Ethiopia.
Rise of the Oromo
The challenge came from the Oromo, a Cushitic-speaking pastoralist people whose original homeland was located on the Sidamo-Borena plain. From there, the related Afar and Somali peoples had hived off northeastward to the Red Sea coast, the Indian Ocean, and the Gulf of Aden, perhaps in some way causing the pressures that finally erupted in Aḥmad Grāñ’s invasion of the Solomonid state. Some Oromo may have climbed onto the high Christian plateaus as early as the late 13th century, only to be repulsed. Garrisons established along the empire’s periphery by Amda Tseyon and Zara Yakob were designed to keep the Oromo out, but, when these defenses were destroyed during the war with Aḥmad Grāñ, the Oromo naturally resumed infiltrating.
The Oromo had an age-set form of government that changed every eight years, when a new warrior class sought its fortune by raiding and rustling in order to provide resources that the natural environment lacked. Every eight years, from the 1540s on, they advanced farther into the well-watered, fertile highlands—a sharp contrast with their arid bush country. Helped by their adversary’s war-weariness, demoralization, and depopulation, the Oromo invariably won territory after territory. By the beginning of the 17th century they had pushed northwestward into the modern regions of Arsi, Shewa, Welega, and Gojam and northeastward into Harerge and Welo, stopping only where they were blocked by forest, high population density, or effective mobilization of Christian forces.
Abyssinia of eastern Africa
The Christians retreated into what may be called Abyssinia, an easily defensible, socially cohesive unit that included mostly Christian, Semitic-speaking peoples in a territory comprising most of Eritrea, Tigray, and Gonder and parts of Gojam, Shewa, and Welo. For the next two centuries Abyssinia defined the limits of Ethiopia’s extent, but not its reach, for the Christian highlands received the hinterland’s trade in transit to the Red Sea and the Nile valley. A complex caravan network linked Mitsiwa (now Massawa, Eritrea) on the Red Sea coast with the highlands of the interior. Gonder, the new capital, became a regional centre, doing business with the Sudanese cities of Sannār and Fazughli for slaves and gold, bought and paid for with coffee obtained from the Oromo-dominated lands. Demand for Ethiopian products increased considerably during the last quarter of the 17th century, as Yemen, a major trading partner on the Arabian Peninsula, sought increasing amounts of coffee for transshipment to Europe.
Revival of the Ethiopian empire
By the late 19th century the northernmost Oromo had been assimilated into Christian culture, and Abyssinia’s national unity had been restored after a century of feudal anarchy that ended with the accession of Yohannes IV in 1872. Yohannes forced the submission of Ethiopia’s princes, repulsed Egyptian expansionism in 1875–76, pushed back Mahdist invasions in 1885–86, and limited the Italians to the Eritrean coast. Meanwhile, the ambitious King Menilek II of Shewa began a reconquest of Ethiopia’s southern and eastern peripheries in order to acquire commodities to sell for the weapons and ammunition he would need in his fight for the Solomonid crown. Italian adventurers, scientists, and missionaries helped organize a route, outside imperial control, that took Shewan caravans to the coast, where Menilek’s ivory, gold, hides, and furs could be sold for a sizable (and untaxed) profit.
The economy of the Red Sea region had been stimulated by the opening of the Suez Canal, by the establishment of a British base in Aden, and by the opening of a French coaling station at Obock on the Afar coast. Britain sought to close off the Nile valley to the French by facilitating Rome’s aspirations in the Horn. Thus, after 1885, Italy occupied coastal positions in Ethiopia and in southern Somalia. This limited the French to their mini-colony, leaving the British in control of ports in northern Somalia from which foodstuffs were exported to Aden. After Yohannes’ death in March 1889, the Italians hoped to translate a cordial relationship with the new emperor, Menilek, into an Ethiopian empire.
On May 2, 1889, Menilek signed at Wichale (known as Ucciali to the Italians) a treaty of peace and amity with Italy. The Italians’ famous mistranslation of Article XVII of the Treaty of Wichale provided them with an excuse to declare Ethiopia a protectorate. To Italy’s dismay, the new emperor promptly wrote to the great powers, rejecting Rome’s claim. Since neither France nor Russia accepted the new protectorate status, Ethiopia continued to acquire modern weapons from these countries through Obock. When, by 1894–95, Italy not only refused to rescind its declaration but also reinforced its army in Eritrea and invaded eastern Tigray, Menilek mobilized.
In late February 1896 an Ethiopian army of approximately 100,000 men was encamped at Adwa in Tigray, facing a much smaller enemy force some miles away. The Italians nevertheless attacked and were defeated on March 1, 1896, in what became known to Europeans as the Battle of Adwa. Menilek immediately withdrew his hungry army southward with 1,800 prisoner-hostages, leaving Eritrea to Rome in the hope that peace with honour would be restored quickly. On Oct. 26, 1896, Italy signed the Treaty of Addis Ababa, conceding the unconditional abrogation of the Treaty of Wichale and recognizing Ethiopia’s sovereign independence.
During the next decade, Menilek directed Ethiopia’s return into the southern and western regions that had been abandoned in the 17th century. Most of the newly incorporated peoples there lived in segmented societies, practiced animal husbandry or cultivation with digging stick or hoe, followed traditional religions or Islam, and spoke non-Semitic languages. In practically every way but skin colour, the northerners were aliens. Their superior weapons and more complex social organization gave them a material advantage, but they also were inspired by the idea that they were regaining lands that had once been part of the Christian state. Menilek and his soldiers believed that they were on a holy crusade to restore Ethiopia to its historic grandeur, but they did not realize that they were participating in Europe’s “Scramble for Africa” and that they were creating problems among nationalities that would afflict the Horn of Africa throughout the 20th century.
The birth of Somali nationalism
About 1900 the first of these problems erupted in Somali-inhabited regions, under the leadership of Sayyid Maxamed Cabdulle Xasan. The rebellion was directed at the British, Italians, and Ethiopians, whom Maxamed regarded equally as oppressors and infidels. Indeed, these powers admitted their collusion by collaborating militarily against the sayyid and his forces from 1901 to 1904, forcing him to sue for peace and to withdraw into a remote and unadministered area of Italian Somaliland. By 1908 he was again on the attack, this time causing a massive civil war, during which tens of thousands of Somali clansmen died. The Italians and the British chose not to intervene, preferring to let Somali kill Somali, and limited their activities to the coast. It was not until 1920 that British air power ran the sayyid to ground, forcing him to flee into the Ogaden, where he died on Dec. 21, 1920.
Maxamed pioneered the traditions of modern Somali nationalism, which combined Islam and anti-imperialism in a movement that sought to transcend clan divisions and make all Somali aware that they shared a common language, religion, way of life, and destiny. The Somali were further informed about their potential unity by, ironically, their Italian colonizers.
Italian rule
Despite the defeat at Adwa, Rome had not abandoned its dream of an Ethiopian empire. To this end, it worked hard at economic penetration but was invariably frustrated. More successful was its infiltration from Somalia into the adjacent Ogaden, where colonial troops seized strategic wells and posed as the protectors of Islam and the Somali people. By 1932 this advance alarmed Emperor Haile Selassie I, who was building a modern state in order to safeguard Ethiopia’s independence.
As regent to Empress Zauditu from 1916 to 1930, and afterward as monarch, Haile Selassie had worked to reform the economy, government, communications, and military. His success was recognized early, on Sept. 28, 1923, when Ethiopia entered the League of Nations. These achievements presaged a modern Ethiopian state that would block Rome’s colonial plans and perhaps even undermine its position in the Horn of Africa. The potential threat of such a state, as well as considerations of European politics, led to the Italo-Ethiopian War, which began in the Ogaden, in December 1934, with a confrontation between Italian and Ethiopian soldiers at the water holes of Welwel.
Rome used Somalia and Eritrea as bases from which to launch its attack in October 1935. The issue was never in doubt; Haile Selassie had neither the armaments nor the disciplined troops necessary to fight the modern war that Italy mounted. In May 1936, after a terrible war that featured aerial bombardment and poison gas, he went into exile, and Italy proclaimed an East African empire consisting of Ethiopia, Eritrea, and its colony of Somalia.
The new regime, ignoring Ethiopia’s traditional political organization, enlarged Eritrea to incorporate most of Tigray and placed the Ogaden in Somalia. In August 1940, after Rome had declared war against the Allies, the Italians marched north and occupied British Somaliland for seven months until dislodged by an Anglo-Ethiopian victory in the Horn of Africa. In 1942 and 1944 Anglo-Ethiopian treaties left the Ogaden under British rule for the duration of World War II, although Addis Ababa’s sovereignty over the region was acknowledged. The British governed both Somalilands from a single city, Berbera, continuing the unification of the two territories.
Pan-Somalism
The Italians left Somaliland with an administrative infrastructure, communications, and towns, and the southern centres became incubators of pan-Somali ideas, which were quickly transmitted to their northern compatriots. The British allowed their subjects relative political freedom, and on May 13, 1943, the Somali Youth Club was formed in Mogadishu. Devoted to a concept of Somali unity that transcended ethnic considerations, the club quickly enrolled religious leaders, the gendarmerie, and the junior administration. By 1947, when it became the Somali Youth League, most of Somaliland’s intelligentsia was devoted to pan-Somalism. This view was echoed in the British government’s idea of Greater Somalia—a notion that was anathema to Ethiopia.
After his return to Addis Ababa in May 1941, Haile Selassie worked consistently to restore Ethiopia’s sovereignty and to fend off British colonial encirclement and the isolation of his state. He regarded British activities in Somaliland as subversive and turned to the United States, which he concluded would be the dominant postwar power, to balance the geopolitical threat. American lend-lease and other assistance permitted Ethiopia to rebuff Britain and to secure the return of the Ogaden in 1948. The vision of Greater Somaliland, however, dominated Somali political programs in subsequent years.
Eritrean nationalism
Another fixed idea, that of Eritrean independence, also derived from the Italian years. Partisans here argued that Eritrea had evolved modern social and economic patterns and expectations from its colonial experience and, between 1941 and 1952, from the political freedoms allowed by the relatively liberal British military administration. While some Eritreans, especially Muslims and intellectuals, held these views in the 1940s, the idea of union with Ethiopia attracted the largely Christian population in the highlands—arguably the colony’s majority. The Christians joined the Unionist Party, sponsored by the Ethiopian government, which simultaneously sought international support for regaining its coastal province. The Ethiopians were assisted by an international fact-finding commission that visited Eritrea in late 1948 and concluded that there was no national consciousness to nourish statehood and that its backward agriculture, crude industrial base, and poor natural resources would not sustain independence. The commission recommended some form of dependency—a decision ultimately referred to the United Nations, where the United States was the most influential power.
Washington was concerned about retaining control of a communications station near the Eritrean city of Asmera (now Asmara), which beamed intelligence information from the Middle East to the Pentagon, and it decided to support Ethiopia’s claim to Eritrea in return for a formal base treaty. With U.S. leadership, the United Nations agreed to a federation of Ethiopia and Eritrea, which came into being in 1952. One year later, responding to growing Soviet influence in Egypt, Washington decided to provide Ethiopia military and economic aid. The United States subsequently became Ethiopia’s main supplier of capital, expertise, and technology as well as military training, equipment, and munitions—a relationship that ultimately drove Somalia into an alliance with the Soviet Union.
