The Ethiopian Revolution () was a period of civil, police and military
upheaval in
Ethiopia
Ethiopia, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country located in the Horn of Africa region of East Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the north, Djibouti to the northeast, Somalia to the east, Ken ...
to protest against the weakened
Haile Selassie
Haile Selassie I (born Tafari Makonnen or ''Ethiopian aristocratic and court titles#Lij, Lij'' Tafari; 23 July 189227 August 1975) was Emperor of Ethiopia from 1930 to 1974. He rose to power as the Ethiopian aristocratic and court titles, Rege ...
government. It is generally thought to have begun on 12 January 1974 when Ethiopian soldiers began a rebellion in
Negele Borana
:
Negele Borana () is a town and separate woreda in southern Ethiopia. Located on the road connecting Addis Ababa to Moyale, it is the capital of the newly-established East Borana Zone of the Oromia Region. Negelle Borana is the largest city ...
, with the protests continuing into February 1974. People from different occupations, starting from junior army officers, students and teachers, and taxi drivers, joined a strike to demand human rights, social change,
agrarian reform
Land reform (also known as agrarian reform) involves the changing of laws, regulations, or customs regarding land ownership, land use, and land transfers. The reforms may be initiated by governments, by interested groups, or by revolution.
Lan ...
s,
price controls
Price controls are restrictions set in place and enforced by governments, on the prices that can be charged for goods and services in a market. The intent behind implementing such controls can stem from the desire to maintain affordability of go ...
, free schooling, and releasing political prisoners, and labor unions demanded a fixation of wages in accordance with price indexes, as well as pensions for workers, etc.
In June 1974, a group of army officers established the Coordinating Committee of the Armed Forces, later branding itself as the
Derg
The Derg or Dergue (, ), officially the Provisional Military Administrative Council (PMAC), was the military junta that ruled Ethiopia, including present-day Eritrea, from 1974 to 1987, when they formally "Civil government, civilianized" the ...
, which struggled to topple Haile Selassie's cabinet under Prime Minister
Endelkachew Makonnen. By September of that year, the Derg began detaining Endalkachew's closest advisors, dissolved the Crown Council and Imperial Court and disbanded the emperor's military staff. The Ethiopian Revolution ended with the
12 September coup d'état of Haile Selassie by the Coordinating Committee.
Background
For many centuries, the
Ethiopian Empire
The Ethiopian Empire, historically known as Abyssinia or simply Ethiopia, was a sovereign state that encompassed the present-day territories of Ethiopia and Eritrea. It existed from the establishment of the Solomonic dynasty by Yekuno Amlak a ...
had a semi-feudal
mode of production
In the Marxist theory of historical materialism, a mode of production (German: ''Produktionsweise'', "the way of producing") is a specific combination of the:
* Productive forces: these include human labour power and means of production (tools, ...
, with most land held by the
church
Church may refer to:
Religion
* Church (building), a place/building for Christian religious activities and praying
* Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination
* Church service, a formalized period of Christian comm ...
(25%), the Emperor (20%), the
feudal
Feudalism, also known as the feudal system, was a combination of legal, economic, military, cultural, and political customs that flourished in Middle Ages, medieval Europe from the 9th to 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a way of struc ...
lords (30%) and the state (18%), leaving a mere 7% to the roughly 23 million Ethiopian peasants. The landless peasants lost as much as 75% of their produce to the landlords, leaving them in a miserable life state.
Haile Selassie
Haile Selassie I (born Tafari Makonnen or ''Ethiopian aristocratic and court titles#Lij, Lij'' Tafari; 23 July 189227 August 1975) was Emperor of Ethiopia from 1930 to 1974. He rose to power as the Ethiopian aristocratic and court titles, Rege ...
had also promised to reform and
modernize the country.
The late 1960s in Ethiopia included
student movement
Student activism or campus activism is work by students to cause political, environmental, economic, or social change. In addition to education, student groups often play central roles in democratization and winning civil rights.
Modern stu ...
s developing their knowledge of and debating the
social sciences
Social science (often rendered in the plural as the social sciences) is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of society, societies and the Social relation, relationships among members within those societies. The term was former ...
and
social change
Social change is the alteration of the social order of a society which may include changes in social institutions, social behaviours or social relations. Sustained at a larger scale, it may lead to social transformation or societal transformat ...
. Their debates were influential in their
opposition to Emperor Haile Selassie.
In
December 1960, a coup d'état attempt seeking liberal reforms, including
land reform
Land reform (also known as agrarian reform) involves the changing of laws, regulations, or customs regarding land ownership, land use, and land transfers. The reforms may be initiated by governments, by interested groups, or by revolution.
Lan ...
s and land redistribution, took place. The
Wollo famine overshadowed the emperor's reputation, affecting the peasants. The government negligence in dealing with the famine was known by this point, and no relief effort report arrived via the Ministry of the Interior.
As the regime of Emperor Haile Selassie declined, the army became increasingly politicized as Selassie increasingly relied on more oppressive measures of governance. As recruitment from educated Ethiopians grew over the 60s and early 70s, the
political consciousness
Following the work of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Karl Marx outlined the workings of a political consciousness.
The politics of consciousness
Consciousness typically refers to the idea of a being who is self-aware. It is a distinction often r ...
of the armed forces grew as well. This awareness grew as the army was increasingly utilized to put down student protests, peasant uprisings and regional revolts in
Ogaden
Ogaden (pronounced and often spelled ''Ogadēn''; , ) is one of the historical names used for the modern Somali Region. It is also natively referred to as Soomaali Galbeed (). The region forms the eastern portion of Ethiopia and borders Somalia ...
,
Bale
Bale may refer to:
Apps
Bale Messenger, an Iranian instant messaging (IM) app owned by the National Bank of Iran
Packaging
* Cotton bale
* Hay or straw bale in farming, bound by a baler
* Paper bale, a unit of paper measurement equal t ...
and
Eritrea
Eritrea, officially the State of Eritrea, is a country in the Horn of Africa region of East Africa, with its capital and largest city being Asmara. It is bordered by Ethiopia in the Eritrea–Ethiopia border, south, Sudan in the west, and Dj ...
. The multiplication of regional revolts and economic downturn in the country during the early 70s made many army units rebellious as their living conditions deteriorated. The military mutiny that precipitated the 1974 revolution started as demands for better working conditions and wages for troops in remote regions, particularly the Ogaden,
Negele and the desert of western Eritrea.
By 1973, it was clear to many observers that the army was the true power behind the throne and it was widely expected that the military would take over in the event of the Emperor's death. Since the failed
Ethiopian coup attempt during 1960, no further coup were attempted largely due to the deep divisions within the armed forces, particularly the officer corps.
Events
When the first social unrest and mutinies broke out across the country during 1974, the Ethiopians had the largest military in
Sub-Saharan Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa is the area and regions of the continent of Africa that lie south of the Sahara. These include Central Africa, East Africa, Southern Africa, and West Africa. Geopolitically, in addition to the list of sovereign states and ...
. The Ethiopian Revolution is widely considered to have begun on 12 January 1974 when a group of Ethiopian soldiers rebelled in
Negele Borana
:
Negele Borana () is a town and separate woreda in southern Ethiopia. Located on the road connecting Addis Ababa to Moyale, it is the capital of the newly-established East Borana Zone of the Oromia Region. Negelle Borana is the largest city ...
. In February 1974, the military rulers of the
Ethiopian Army, who were not ideologically united, comprised conservatives, moderates and radicals. In the process of socialist reforms, the radicals emerged victorious and wrested state power.
In April, the
Ethiopian Muslim protests occurred which was considered a massive rally at the time as over 100,000 citizens were witnessed participating.
The Coordinating Committee of the Armed Forces formed in June 1974, later called the
Derg
The Derg or Dergue (, ), officially the Provisional Military Administrative Council (PMAC), was the military junta that ruled Ethiopia, including present-day Eritrea, from 1974 to 1987, when they formally "Civil government, civilianized" the ...
, which decided to seize power from the emperor while confronting the Prime Minister,
Endelkachew Makonnen.
Endelkachew was criticized for his backwardness in reforms which the
Emperor
The word ''emperor'' (from , via ) can mean the male ruler of an empire. ''Empress'', the female equivalent, may indicate an emperor's wife (empress consort), mother/grandmother (empress dowager/grand empress dowager), or a woman who rules ...
, as the constitutional head, agreed to. On the Coordinating Committee's recommendation, Haile Selassie appointed him Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces in early July 1974.
September Revolution
Endalkachew resigned from office on 22 July and went to
Djibouti
Djibouti, officially the Republic of Djibouti, is a country in the Horn of Africa, bordered by Somalia to the south, Ethiopia to the southwest, Eritrea in the north, and the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden to the east. The country has an area ...
; the Coordinating Committee
took power by the end of the year.
On 12 September, they arrested Haile Selassie, who remained at the National Palace until his death on 27 August 1975.
Analysis
Elleni Zeleke argues that 1960s'
student movements
Student activism or campus activism is work by students to cause political, environmental, economic, or social change. In addition to education, student groups often play central roles in democratization and winning civil rights.
Modern stu ...
' views on
social sciences
Social science (often rendered in the plural as the social sciences) is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of society, societies and the Social relation, relationships among members within those societies. The term was former ...
and
social change
Social change is the alteration of the social order of a society which may include changes in social institutions, social behaviours or social relations. Sustained at a larger scale, it may lead to social transformation or societal transformat ...
were major factors in not only the 1974 revolution itself, but also in socially progressive and lethally repressive aspects of the revolution, and in the later
Fall of the Derg
The fall of the Derg was a military campaign that resulted in the defeat of the ruling Marxist–Leninist military junta, the Derg, by the rebel coalition Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) on 28 May 1991 in Addis Ababa, ...
and events during the rule of the
Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front
The Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF; ) was an ethnic federalist political coalition in Ethiopia that existed from 1989 to 2019. It consisted of four political parties: Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), Amhara ...
.
References
Works cited
*
{{Ethiopian Civil War (1974–1991)
1974 in Ethiopia
1974 in politics
Conflicts in 1974
20th-century revolutions
Derg
Ethiopian Civil War
Haile Selassie