Oromia & Ethiopia: State Formation and Ethnonational Conflict, 1868-1992 (review)

126 Book Reviews Restoring Hope: The Real Lessons of Somalia for the Future of Intervention [Special Report], Washington, D.C.: USIP, 1995. 6.Other volumes in the series include: UNPROFOR (Yugoslavia), UNAVEM (Angola), UNTAC (Cambodia), ONUSAL (El Salvador), ONUCA (Central America), UNTAG (Namibia), UNOMOZ (Mozambique), ECOMOG (Liberia), Haiti and the Commonwealth operation in Rhodesia (1979). 7.According to Stevenson, in peacekeeping missions "American soldiers must be permitted to fire preemptively—that is, before they are fired upon. Provided they are appropriately trained, unjustified casualties would be kept to a minimum" (129). 8.Michael R. Gordon and John H. Cushman Jr., "US Supported Hunt for Aidid, Now Calls UN Policy Skewed," New York Times, 18 October 1993, Al(N). Oromia & Ethiopia: State Formation and Ethnonational Conflict, 1868-1992 Asafa Jalata Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1993. Pp. xii, 233; maps, figure. This book is a mature work of scholarship that explores the historical processes and conjunctures that led to Ethiopia's colonization of Oromia. The author, an Oromo and a sociology professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, reexamines the history of the creation of the Ethiopian state and documents the struggle of the Oromo people against colonial domination. His goal is to present the Oromo people's notion ofEthiopia's colonialism. In view ofhis stated objective , one could say the author has made a pioneering contribution to the growing body of literature on the Oromo who live in Ethiopia. In regard to how Ethiopia successfully colonized the Oromo and maintained its colonial empire, Asafa's answer is simple and emphatic: the Ethiopians were supported successively by European imperialism, Anglo-American hegemonism and Soviet communism . Here, Asafa agrees with the notion of dependent colonial state enunciated earlier by Holcomb and Ibssa.1 The book begins with a discussion of the evolution of the social organization, economy and the political system of precolonial Oromia. There follows a chapter dealing with the Ethiopian social formation and the oppressive colonial structure that perpetuated colonial rule in Oromia. The rest of the work is more Book Reviews 127 topically organized with chapters treating the Euro-Ethiopian imperial alliance that led to the annexation of Oromia; the consolidation of Ethiopian colonialism in Oromia under British and American tutelage; the emergence of new social groups and national/class contradictions that precipitated the 1974 revolution ; the reorganization of the economic and political structures of the colonial state under a military regime sustained by the Soviet Union; and the politics of famine and resettlement schemes aimed at restructuring Oromo identity and nationhood. The final two chapters document the Oromo's struggle against colonial domination that began in the 1860s and continues today under the leadership of the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF). Asafa Jalata is intent on debunking the myths and refuting the presuppositions which continue to underpin the dominant interpretations of Ethiopian history. Previously, Ethiopianists have argued that Ethiopia is an ancient state which, in the nineteenth century, metamorphosed into a modern state. Asafa contends that the contemporary Ethiopian state is a product of Menelik's late nineteenth-century conquests and annexation of Oromia and other independent states and communities in the south. Other scholars have portrayed Menelik as both a freedom-fighter and an imperialist, and his conquests as a process of nation-building which saved the conquered people from falling prey to European imperialism. For Asafa, Menelik is a brutal imperialist whose colonial policies and practices dehumanized the Oromo and reduced them to second class citizens in the Ethiopian empire. Throughout the author draws provocatively on secondary sources, interview materials and his own knowledge of Oromo history to demythologize established notions of Ethiopian history. His view of Oromo history radically diverges from earlier interpretations which simply subsumed Oromo history under the general rubric of Ethiopian history. The very title of the book is a bold rejection of the view of those who, contending that the Oromo nation has always been part of the Ethiopian state, dismiss Oromia as a nation-state invented in the past by contemporary Oromo nationalists. Indeed, Oromo nationalists use the name Oromia to refer to the homeland they aspire to liberate from Ethiopian colonialism, but they neither invented the name nor kindled a...