Pioneers of Change in Ethiopia: The Reformist Intellectuals of the Early Twentieth Century (review)

Bahru Zewde has written an important and compelling book, which chronicles the long and difficult struggle of early-twentieth-century Ethiopian intellectuals to effect reform in the country. As the subtitle indicates, the book is not primarily a study of an organized movement for reform but rather a survey of the quest of a few individuals who, owing to their exposure to modern education and experience abroad, realized the backwardness of their country and strove to persuade three successive Ethiopian monarchs to adopt and implement their reformist ideas. Given the scattered nature of previous historical writings on the subject, Pioneers of Change in Ethiopia provides a critical framework for understanding Ethiopia's recent political history and explains the roles of ideas and of individuals with ideas who have shaped it. This book is densely packed in its evidentiary basis, and a culmination of ideas previously put forward by Zewde in several articles and presentations. The author engages trenchantly with the existing literature and historiography to create a work that sometimes synthesizes, and at other times departs from, conventional wisdom on the relationship between intellectuals and "progress" in Ethiopia.

The book has three main parts. The first part provides "the global and continental framework" in which the story unfolds. Then the author introduces the intellectuals he calls the pioneers, individuals who excelled in traditional church education, guided European travelers in the production of numerous travel accounts about Ethiopia, and served Ethiopian monarchs in their dealings with the outside world. An important chapter in this section is the story of the expansion of schools, which concludes with the curious but telling observation of one woman (in 1926) that the schools of the early twentieth century, introduced as a vehicle for modernization, had not produced a measurable degree of progress.

The second section is a collective biography of Ethiopian intellectuals. The author divides them into the "first generation," a group that was educated at home and abroad during the reign of Emperor Menelik II (1889–1913), and the "second generation," educated abroad through state patronage in the 1920s and 1930s. Together, the two generations comprise the reformist intellectuals whose careers the section traces. The third and most important part of the book analyzes the intellectuals' ideas, accomplishments, and impact on contemporary Ethiopian conditions and long-term developments.

Indeed, these two generations of educated Ethiopians were reformists with a broad transformational agenda for their country. They sought to create a constitutional government to ensure Ethiopia's independence (including the independence of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church from Alexandria), modernize the national economy to improve the plight of the downtrodden, and implement legal reforms to guarantee equality. To implement their program, the intellectuals sought to enlighten the ruling monarchs concerning the necessity of reform. They believed they had a chance with Haile Sellassie and worked for him loyally. To their disappointment, the monarch proved to be more interested in using them against his political opponents than in using their ideas to advance the cause of modernity. He began pushing them aside once he consolidated his power. The highpoint of his willingness to implement the intellectuals' reform program was the promulgation of a constitution in 1931. When Italy invaded the country in 1935, most of the educated group were killed, the remnants disillusioned, and the possibility of reform in liberated Ethiopia markedly diminished. After 1941, Haile Sellassie had little use for them and their reformist ideas.

After reading about the intellectuals' careers and ideas, one would naturally expect an analysis of the long-term impact of the reform effort. Zewde devotes a whole chapter to this task, but in an effort to lower expectations, he diminishes the importance of his analysis. He expresses frustration that he cannot assess the reformists' social and political impact, because he cannot establish a "clear and incontrovertible connection between the...