Eritrea (Africa in Focus Series) (review)

Mussie Tesfagiorgis’s new reference work on Eritrea is a welcome addition to the growing corpus of scholarly literature on the country and a pioneering volume in ABC-CLIO’s new “Africa in Focus” series. At more than 400 pages long, the book provides a rich, well-rounded, and timely analysis of all things Eritrean, from colonial history and contemporary political dynamics to foodways, language, religion, and the environment. In addition, a wealth of interesting and often quite useful features is included, such as photographs, timelines, tables, and Tigrinya terms and phrases. Interested in the number of hectares devoted to cultivated land compared to grazing land? The names and locations of Orthodox monasteries? Contact information for every governmental ministry? The positions, dates of arrest, and last known locations of the detained government officials known as the G-15? Tables for all of those and much more are featured in the section entitled “Facts and Figures.” Additionally, an annotated bibliography subdivided by theme provides an excellent overview of key works.

There are few surprises in this encyclopedic work as far as organization and format are concerned, however. The book follows the kind of formulaic, quasi-functionalist framework that has long characterized the reference genre, consisting of chapters on geography, history, government and politics, economy, society, culture, and contemporary issues. Given the dominance of analyses of Eritrean history and politics to date, the chapters on society and culture are the most fresh and original, with many subsections dealing with topics like social classes and ethnicity, women and marriage, education, language, etiquette, literature, art and aesthetics, music, food, leisure and sports, and traditional medicine. The author’s own Eritrean background is a great benefit in this respect, and his capacity to clearly illustrate and discuss the significance of many fine-grained cultural nuances stands out beautifully.

In addition to the especially rich discussion of social and cultural life, there are other surprises in terms of the content and tone of the work if not the organization and format. The book is clearly part of a new orientation in Eritreanist scholarship generally. A palpable shift has taken place over the past decade, away from works that reflect a nationalist orientation more or less consistent with that of the current government to those that are sharply critical of Eritrea’s deepening political repression, militarization, and poor human rights record. From the very first pages, informed readers are keenly aware that this volume is not just so much propaganda for the regime. In a remarkably concise and critical introduction, the author synthesizes the burgeoning scholarship of the past decade or so, while also providing some new perspectives on Eritrea’s history and current configuration.

He confronts matter-of-factly the realities of contemporary political repression (ending the current timeline with the 2001 crackdown on journalists, students, and government reformers, for example), and, in later chapters, he re-presents aspects of Eritrean history in such a way that those knowledgeable about current conditions are encouraged to see both past and present in new ways. For example, the discussion of military conscription by the Italians (54) and the use of conscripts for projects like road building (46), as well as land expropriation by the state (40) and the exploitation of ethnolinguistic and religious differences (55), remind readers that such patterns in Eritrea’s present have roots that long predate modern nationalism.

In this way, and more subtly than in other critical approaches, Mussie Tesfagiorgis’s work is part of the larger trend in Eritreanist scholarship that aims to rethink not only the nationalist revolution but also the colonial and precolonial trajectories that shaped it. Until recently, scholars who attempted to approach nationalism as anything other than either a radical break from the past or a sacred manifestation of autochthony were marginalized in a highly politicized academic environment; today, to fail to do so marks one as an apologist for a regime now distinguished more for its brutality than for its heroism.

Mussie Tesfagiorgis is...