History

• People live in the present and they plan for and worry about the future. History, however, is the study of the past.
• History


  The study of the past
• Uses of history


  • Helps better understand the present
  • Provides a sense of identity
  • Provides the basic background for other disciplines
  • Teaches critical skills
  • Helps develop tolerance and open-mindedness
  • Supplies endless source of fascination
• History can be useful, but it can also be abused through deliberate manipulation of the past to fit current political agenda.
• Primary sources


  Surviving traces of the past available to us in the present, original or first hand in their proximity to the event both in time and in space
• Secondary sources


  Second-hand published accounts about past events, written long after the event has occurred, providing an interpretation of what happened, why it happened, and how it happened, often based on primary sources
• Oral data


  Oral traditions and oral histories, especially valuable to study and document the history of non-literate societies
• Historians must find evidence about the past, ask questions of that evidence, and come up with explanations that make sense of what the evidence says about the people, events, places and time periods they study about.
• Historiography


  The history of historical writing, studying how knowledge of the past, either recent or distant, is obtained and transmitted
• Early historiographical traditions


  • Ancient Greek historians (Herodotus and Thucydides)
  • Chinese historical thought and writing (Sima Qian)
• History emerged as an academic discipline in the second half of the nineteenth century first in Europe and subsequently in other parts of the world including the US.
• Leopold Von Ranke


  The "father of modern historiography" who established history as an independent discipline with its own set of methods and concepts
• Early sources on the history of Ethiopia and the Horn


  • Periplus of the Erythrean Sea (1st century AD)
  • Christian Topography by Cosmas Indicopleustes (6th century AD)
  • Manuscripts from Abba Gerima monastery (7th century AD) and Haiq Istifanos monastery (13th century AD)
  • Hagiographies from the Ethiopian Orthodox Church
  • Hagiographical tradition among Muslim communities
  • Indigenous chronicles in Ge'ez and Amharic
• Other sources on the history of Ethiopia and the Horn

  • Accounts of Arabic-speaking visitors to the coast
  • Documents composed by Yemeni writers in the 16th and 17th centuries
  • Abba Bahrey's Geez script on the Oromo
  • Accounts by European missionaries and travelers
• Foreign writers also developed interest in Ethiopian studies, such as Hiob Ludolf, the founder of Ethiopian studies in Europe in the 17th century.
• Sources provide us with valuable information covering a considerable period
• Major topics covered by these sources

  • Religious and political developments within Ethiopia
  • Ethiopia's foreign relations
• Travel documents had important contribution to the development of Ethiopian historiography
• Missionary sources and travelers' materials can only be used with considerable reservations and with care as they are socially and politically biased
• Hiob Ludolf


  The founder of Ethiopian studies in Europe in the seventeenth century
• Ludolf never visited Ethiopia; he wrote the country's history largely based on information he collected from an Ethiopian priest named Abba Gorgorios (Abba Gregory) who was in Europe at that time
• Compared to Ludolf, Dillman demonstrated all markers of objectivity in his historical research endeavors
• Earliest group of traditional Ethiopian writers

  • Aleqa Taye Gebre-Mariam
  • Aleqa Asme Giorgis
  • Debtera Fisseha-Giorgis Abyezgi
• Later writers


  • Negadrases Afework Gebre-Iyesus
  • Gebre-Hiwot Baykedagn
• Unlike chroniclers, these writers dealt with a range of topics from social justice, administrative reform and economic analysis to history
• Works of Taye, Fisseha-Giorgis, Asme

  • Books on the history of Ethiopia
  • A similar work on the Oromo people
• Works of Afework and Gebre-Hiwot

  • Tobiya (the first Amharic novel)
  • Atse Menilekna Ityopia (Emperor Menilek and Ethiopia)
  • Mengistna Yehizb Astedader (Government and Public Administration)
• Works of Hiruy Wolde-Selassie

  • Ethiopiana Metema (Ethiopia and Metema)
  • Wazema (Eve)
  • Yehiwot Tarik (A Biographical Dictionary)
  • Yeityopia Tarik (A History of Ethiopia)
• Gebre-Hiwot and Hiruy exhibited relative objectivity and methodological sophistication in their works
• The Italian occupation of Ethiopia interrupted the early experiment in modern history writing and publications
• Tekle-Tsadik Mekuria formed a bridge between writers in pre-1935 and Ethiopia professional historians who came after him
• Gebre-Wold Engidawork and Dejazmach Kebede Tesema also contributed works on land tenure and the imperial period respectively
• The 1960s was a crucial decade in the development of Ethiopian historiography as history emerged as an academic discipline
• The Department of History at the then Haile Selassie I University (HSIU) was opened in 1963
• The Institute of Ethiopian Studies (IES) is the other institutional home of professional historiography of Ethiopia
• Richard Pankhurst's prolific publication record remains unmatched
• The professionalization of history in other parts of the Horn is a post-colonial phenomenon
• Decolonization of African historiography required new methodological approach to the study of the past that involved a critical use of oral data and tapping the percepts of ancillary disciplines like archeology, anthropology and linguistics
• Foundational research was done at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London and the Department of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
• African universities have, despite the instabilities of politics and civil war in many areas, trained their own scholars and sent many others overseas for training who eventually published numerous works on different aspects of the region's history