Interpreting the Ethiopian Revolution - by Etana H Dinka (Hardcover)

About the Book

The first comprehensive scholarly reassessment of the 1974 Ethiopian revolution and its broader significance, published in commemoration of fifty years since the revolution, itself

Book Synopsis

Fifty years after the 1974 Ethiopian revolution, Etana H. Dinka brings together a who's-who of modern Ethiopian studies in order to offer this long-overdue analysis of the revolution and its legacies.With contributions both from seasoned academics-many of whom wrote about the revolution as it developed-and from representatives of a younger generation, this six-part collection offers new insights not only into the revolution itself, but also into issues such as the Red Terror, the EPRDF revolution of 1991, and Abiy Ahmed's repositioning of Ethiopia after 2018.

Such wide-ranging analyses cumulatively cast Ethiopia's three successive post-revolution regimes not as separate entities, but rather as successive attempts to fulfil the promise of the revolution surrounding issues such as ethnicity, the nationalities question, economic development, and the land tenure question. In developing this model, the collection captures the defining developments and issues in Ethiopia, the Horn, and the Red Sea region over the past fifty years, and it speaks directly to a global body of knowledge about revolutions; state-making projects and empires; and warfare and military interventions in politics.

A unique collection that expands the historical revolutionary analyses of Ethiopian politics and society to the present in order to suggest new ways of ensuring social, economic, and environmental justice for all, this book is a must-read for researchers and upper-level students interested in Ethiopia, the Horn of Africa, African Studies, and revolutionary politics and land economics in general.

Review Quotes

More than a half-century after the Ethiopian Revolution, scholars continue to debate its nature and lasting impact. In Legacies, Etana Dinka has assembled a rich and provocative interdisciplinary collection. With diverse contributions addressing local, regional, national, and international and diasporic iterations of ideology, nationality, ethnicity, land tenure, religion, and political violence, this important book re-instantiates why Abyssinia and Ethiopia occupy a venerable space in African studies scholarship.
Benjamin N. Lawrance, University of Arizona, USA

Social revolutions-those great upheavals that transform not only who controls the state but also what class dominates the economy-produce especially long-lasting reverberations. This important collection examines the ways in which the 1974 Ethiopian revolution continues into the present. Required reading for specialists and the general public.
Donald L. Donham, distinguished research professor, University of California, Davis, USA

About the Author

Etana H. Dinka is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Miami, where he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in African history. His research focuses on the late nineteenth and twentieth-century political and environmental history of Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa region. Dr Dinka's latest research articles and reviews were published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of African History, African Studies Review, Northeast African Studies, Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, and the Journal of Oromo Studies. He is the editor of Shadows of History: Nationalism, Violence and State Crisis in Ethiopia (Red Sea Press, 2025), and is a co-editor and co-translator (along with A. Triulzi and T. Ta'a) of Negotiating Power in Imperial Ethiopia, Wallagga, 1890s-1930s: A History in Documents (Naples, IT: Unior Press, 2025).