Yonas Demisse

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor (Assistant) at Addis Ababa University

This article examines how older ideas about manumission came into contact with newer international approaches to abolition in Ethiopia in the early 20th century. It shows that older normative attitudes toward manumission, which were compatible with legal slave ownership, did not disappear when international pressure to abolish slavery stimulated th...

Based on the conviction that politics is predominantly a relation between subjects, this book starts with elite slaves in the political realm and ends with intellectuals in the domain of development. I analyze the dialectical link between the politics of pre-modern state formation on the one hand and the history and politics of geta-barya (master-s...

This paper explores the root causes and trajectories of ethnic conflict in Ethiopian universities between 2017 and 2019. Adopting a critical approach that focuses on structural, historical, and discursive factors I argue that university conflicts constitute a microcosm of wider social and political fractures that have characterised the Ethiopian na...

The nexus between protest–transition–reform situated in a larger frame of Ethiopia’s political dynamics anchored in historical narratives and theoretical debates are presented in this paper. Moreover, the genesis and the dynamics surrounding the rolling out of the post-2018 Ethiopia’s transition are examined from the vantage point of prospects for...

This paper documents a history and politics of memory project called Guzo Adwa. It highlights how, over the last eight years, Guzo Adwa emerged as a popular, performative commemoration of the battle of Adwa. Organised spontaneously by ambitious young men, who are passionate about history and adventure, culture and national politics, art and memory,...

The Ethiopian emperor who is considered the “revolutionary reformer”- Zä Dengel (1603-04) declared an edict, which says säb’e hara wägäbbar meder (man is free or soldiery and land is tributary). The edict of Zä Dengel became popular and the zega or the subject peasants joined the emperor while the class of “professional soldiers” known as c’äwa who...

The concept of ‘occupation’ has been deployed in Ethiopia to represent Italian colonial rule. Italy’s occupation of Ethiopia has been also seen as a failed colonial attempt and has been represented in Ethiopian historiography as war and crisis. This assumption ruled out the question of how Italy ruled Ethiopia even for those five years. This paper...

Book review

The study at hand intended to look into the praxis of pastoralism in Ethiopia. In doing so, a review of pastoral policy of Ethiopia has been done looking into changes and continuities since Emperor Haileselassie's regime. Moreover, an appraisal of existing policies has been conducted by undertaking a fieldwork in two selected kebeles of Assayita wo...