(Part 2) Best east africa history books according to redditors

My great-great-great Uncle was the first white man to travel across equatorial Africa in the 1870s. Fortunately for me, my great-great Grandfather was the only one of the numerous siblings to have a line that survived to the present day, thus I am next in line to inherit all of the things that he brought back that are not already on loan to the Edinburgh museum. He's a really fascinating character that doesn't get due respect in History really, but he was quite influential in his day I believe. He wrote a couple books on his journeys; Across Africa (2 Volumes) and To the Gold Coast for Gold (2 Volumes) if you're interested in that sort of thing.

Congrats though on an excellent adventure, I'm very jealous!

Except in publications released by the Eritrean regime, there was never any kind of some 'enormous shock caused by the Eritrean War' - at least not in Ethiopia.

The problem was as follows: during the last decade of the... well, let's call it '1st Eritrean War' (fought 1960-1991), for reasons of simplicity, the Ethiopian political leadership - in close cooperation with its Soviet advisors - de-facto destroyed the Ethiopian military.

Original Ethiopian military was created in the 1940s - 1970s period with extensive help from Sweden (1940s-1950s), some by various other countries, but especially the USA. The resulting Ethiopian military was actually small, voluntary service, led by virtually hand-picked officers and NCOs. By early 1970s, and especially in period 1972-1974, nearly all of these were trained in the USA.

In 1974, Emperor Selassie was overthrown. There followed a period of political turmoil and bloody struggle for power. By the time the 'Derg' - led by Haile Mariam - prevailed (by de-facto summarily executing almost whoever dared challenging them), in 1977, Somalia invaded Ethiopia and brought nearly all of the federal state of Ogaden under its control.

The Derg - and especially the Ethiopian military - were curious to continue cooperating with the USA. Correspondingly, they placed significant orders for F-5Es, M60s etc. However, Carter's admin introduced the policy along which (roughly) arms deliveries were tied to human-rights record of the government in question. The Derg thus only got a small part of what they've ordered from Washington. While this proved enough to enable them to stop the Somali advance into Ogaden, it was insufficient to liberate the state.

That's why the Ethiopians ended trying to buy arms from the Soviet Union. The Soviets were already supporting Somalia, actually curious to instrument a union of Ethiopia, Somalia and Yemen, and not the last keen to have two of countries using their arms fighting each other. Therefore, they said 'nyet'. Haile Mariam then took an indirect route: eh made friends with Fidel Castro, and convinced him he would be leading something like 'Marxist revolution' in Ethiopia. When even that didn't impress the Soviets, Mariam travelled to Moscow where he issued something like a corresponding public statement. At that moment, in November 1977, the Somali dictator Siad Barre lost nerves and kicked the Soviets out of his country. That in turn enraged Soviet leader Brezhnev, who ordered prompt deliveries of whatever war material Ethiopians needed.

...and so it happened that in late 1977 and through most of 1978, the small, US-trained Ethiopian military was wastly expanded through the massive influx of Soviet arms. Furthermore, over a dozen of new divisions of various militias was trained by Cuban advisors. The Cubans also deployed the personnel of two of their mechanised brigades and one fighter-squadron to Ethiopia, and these helped Ethiopians kick Somalis out of Ogaden in a high loop...

Through the same period, Eritrean insurgents brought most of what is nowadays Eritrea under their control. Thus as next, the Ethiopians re-deployed most of their military to that area, and launched a major counteroffensive, in 1978-1979. This proved largely, but not completely successful: at least the northern part of Eritrea remained under isurgent control. The result of this partial failure was a bitter war of attrition that was to last until 1987 - further extended by de-professionalisation of the entire Ethiopian military.

Certainly enough, the Ethiopian military continued its massive expansion through additional influx of Soviet arms, in the 1980s. The army grew to about 30 divisions, all of which were suffering from a severe lack of trained officers and NCOs (not to talk about support services etc.). Indeed, the Ethiopians could never man all the weapons and units. The Soviets continued selling arms, but were delivering only obsolete systems, and did whatever was possible to prevent the Ethiopians from developing ability to maintain these at home. Furthermore, Soviet advisors proved more interested in an ideological re-education of the entire Ethiopian military, than in helping Ethiopians actually win the war against Eritreans. Finally, what the Soviets were advising was essentially the same they were doing in Afghanistan of the same time (or in Chechnya and Syria ever since): a colossal destruction and cleansing of the Eritrean population from insurgent-controlled areas.

On the top of that all, the Derg distrusted the military and introduced an unviable system of tripple command of every unit: in essence, no military commander could do anything without an order from above, plus agreement from his political commissar, plus that from his security service minder. Combined with unusually long tours of duty (for Ethiopian circumstances) - which cost the Ethiopian government and its military all the support it used to enjoy in its own population - this led to the self-destruction of the Ethiopian military: by 1987, there was deep mistrust between various of its commanders, political commissars, and security services, and some of units were more busy fighting each other than the Eritreans.

The weakening of the Ethiopian military not only resulted in defeats that enabled a massive growth of the Eritrean insurgency, but the latter became capable of supporting the Tigrean insurgency in parts of (northern) Ethiopia outside what it claimed for Eritrea. The combination of these two insurgencies, and the collapse of the Ethiopian military resulted in the downfall of the Derg regime, in 1991.

Now, Eritrea then declared its independence, while the Tigreans installed themselves in power in Addis Ababa. Their government de-facto completed the destruction of the Ethiopian military.

However, during the second half of the 1990s, the friendship between two governments turned into enmity, which prompted Addis into imposing economic sanctions against Eritrea. In turn, the Eritreans invaded and occuppied the Badme region, in 1999.

That's where the 'reforms' you mentioned came into being: facing a defeat, the Ethiopian government scrambled to rebuild its military. Thousands of 'Derg officers' that were either purged from the military, or even jailed, were recalled to serve: they not only helped overhaul available military equipment, or train new units, but also took over the command, and were partially re-qualified to operate new equipment acquired from Russia. Ultimate result was an Ethiopian counter-invasion, in 2000, during which the Eritreans suffered a catastrophic military defeat.

Now, whether the Ethiopian government ever overcame its own corruption and nepotism is a matter of quite some (and often fierce) disputes. Certain is that since the end of the Badme War, and despite its victory, it soon found itself at odds with its own military, and especially what many of Tigreans still consider would be 'Derg officers'. That's what resulted in dozens of high-profiled defections (like when most of one of FDREAF's Su-27-squadrons left the service in different ways).

But, it could be said that - at least for the period 1999-2001 - the Ethiopian government found the way to not only 're-introduce', but indeed 'impose' professionalism over everything else in its military.

Considering the same military continued to act quite competently in Somalia ever since, it could be said that this 'left lasting impressions', i.e. resulted in something like creation of the competent and combat-effective Ethiopian military as we know it nowadays. At least there's no doubt that the country is the military power-house on the African horn, ever since.

Regarding references for all of this:

• Harold Marcus' 'A History of Ethiopia' is providing geo-political backgrounds in well-organised, easy-to-read fashion;
  
  
• Fantahun Ayele's 'The Ethiopian Army: From Victory to Collapse, 1971-1991' is providing an excellent, in-depth, even if often too complex review of the Ethiopian military during the given period;
  
  
• various of books and articles by Gebru Tareke are offering exclusive and well-supported insights into Ethiopian military operations of the 1970s and 1980s (indeed, they might be a sort of 'self-sufficient read', perfectly enough on their own);
  
  
• alternatively, take 'Wings Over Ogaden' and Ethiopian-Eritrean Wars, Volume 1 (about to be published in 2-3 weeks), as a summary of all the above-mentioned, plus many other sources (including plenty of interviews with participants and eyewitnesses, and then quite a lots of cross-examination with Somali and Eritrean sources).
  
  AFAIK, currently there's no decent military history of the Badme War, but this is to follow in Ethiopian-Eritrean Wars, Volume 2 late this, or early the next year.
  

Here's the rough outline of what we know as historians of Africa:

1. The spread of Christianity to the northern part of modern-day Ethiopia--really Tigray today--came via Aksum. The key convert is believed to be King Ezana (sorry about wikipedia), whose stelae are still around, likely sometime in the 340s. The conversion of Ezana and his early linkage to the Arian Christians and the Copts is where Frumentius the Syrian, who was apparently his tutor, comes in. His converstion was very likely prompted by the connection to Egyptian Christian traders as well as the Roman Empire's embrace of the faith. It appears to have spread from the port at Adulis, but Ezana took it in for much the same reason that rulers of Swahili towns and empires in West Africa initially accepted an eclectic Islam--trade. The comment made about the connection between the Ethiopian Church and the Egyptian one by ServerofJustice is absolutely correct. (Ezana's focus on trade primacy is also shown by his destruction of the rump of Meroë around 350.) It is to this that Ethiopia traces its Christianity, although during centuries of isolation between Aksum and Ethiopia they apparently did not consult Alexandria. At that time the specific link between King Solomon and the court was not made.
   
   
2. Christianity remained, for a very long time, the faith of the elites; the "rediscovery" of Solomon and Sheba was part of a political consolidation in the 14th century. The faith's exclusivity was a problem because, as CaisLaochach points out, Islam was a likely contender. In fact it did make inroads into parts of the kingdom, as a creed that spoke to "common" people in a feudal system. At various times, Ethiopian rulers acquired Muslim subjects or even Muslim subordinates; that problem never went away. Christianity remained the faith of the elites in part because the kingdom became insular after the rise of Islam and the loss by Aksum of Adulis around ?750. Eventually, the rise of the Solomonids in 1270 brought with it a re-orientation of biblical history in the form of the Kebre Negast within a century or so that fleshed out the "story" of Sheba after Solomon. The reality was that Aksum collapsed in the 8th century and we really don't know much about how it became Zagwe Ethiopia, or if it truly did; it's possible Ethiopia is an only loosely-related, new political formation that "wrote backwards" and claimed Aksum ex post facto, going so far as to enthrone its emperors (negusa negast, or king of kings) there. We do know that one Christian elite gave way to another, and the state shifted southward somewhat, changing its focus from trade to feudal mixed-pastoralism. In that space, a centralizing religious focus was very useful: to defy the Solomonids was to defy God on some level. Ethiopia also wasn't alone: Christian kingdoms with Islamic subjects also existed to the west in the Nile Valley (known as the "Nubian Kingdoms" collectively) as late as the 1400s. Those collapsed not via conquest, but because their populations became so overwhelmingly Islamic and dependent on trade with Muslims that the elites simply converted.
   
   
3. The Portuguese basically saved Ethiopia from the fate of Islamic conquest from Adal, once they "discovered" the true root of their Prester John mythology and the forgotten Christian kingdom in Ethiopia in 1520. The emperor at that time requested Portuguese help against Adal and its Ottoman ally (the latter fresh off its conquest of Egypt and the Holy Places of Islam in 1517) but aid didn't arrive until 1540. The conflict that culminated in the battle of Wayna Daga (1543) won by an Ethio-Portuguese force over a Somali/Adal-Ottoman one, and the naval confrontations at the Protuguese harbor of Diu (several really) saved Ethiopia from being overrun. The Portuguese however quickly wore out their welcome, and Jesuit missionaries came to see Ethiopian Christianity as almost heretical. They made no shortage of attempts to convert Ethiopian courtiers and the emperors themselves. Father Lobo's experience at this moment, when they were actually given to the Ottomans by their Ethiopian "hosts" on the expectation they would be killed, is recorded in A Voyage to Abyssinia and it makes for some delicious "wtf" reading. Yes, Father Lobo really thought the Portuguese and then the Papacy should organize a full-scale invasion of Ethiopia. I'm not even kidding. From the Ethiopian side, conversion to Catholicism would have been a devastating refutation of the basis of their political legitimacy internally, and it could not be allowed. Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity as a closely-held faith only later spread actively to the general population, much as was the case with Islam in the western Sahel and Sudan. I don't know the details of the way that appeal was made, though, or whether it was truly gradual; it was never really victorious, and Islam is still quite prominent today. My recollection is that the sources aren't very frank about it but I'll have a look again when I'm back in my library.
   
   
4. That era's Ethiopia was really only the northern third or so of today's Ethiopia-Eritrea matrix. Only with the 1870-1890 conquests of Menelik II of Shoa did it take its current shape and extent. Yes, at that time it incorporated a lot of additional non-Christians, many of whom converted later and some likely under duress. "Colonists" weren't interested in Ethiopia is a confusing comment, though--do you mean that colonial powers weren't ever interested? Tell that to General Baratieri, defeated at Adwa on March 1st, 1896. It was after that military victory by an African state over a European one that more people began rediscovering Ethiopia's "white past" and trying to justify the exception to the colonial tide.
   
   See, for example, Harold Marcus, A History of Ethiopia upd. ed., (2002); Richard Pankhurst, The Ethiopians: A History, (2001); and a variety of histories of Christianity that treat it in chapters. General histories of Africa, including Robert Collins's and Kevin Shillington's, also spend time with Ethiopia and do so fairly well for overviews.
   
   [Edit: I tried to clarify a few things. I typed this in a very stream-of-consciousness way, so I apologize.]

For anyone who might be interested, /u/jay212127 is referring to The Somalia Affair. A fantastic sociological review of it was written by Sherene Razack, called Dark Threats and White Knights

• Comment en es-tu venu à t'intéresser à cette pratique ?
  
  
• Utilises-tu des drogues ? Illicites ?
  
  
• Quel est le profil des clients qui viennent te voire (si tu en as) ?
  
  
• As-tu déjà lu des livres académique sur la magie exemple ?
  
  Tu peux répondre à autant de question que tu veux, voir aucune ;)

Here is my list:

1. Africa’s First Democrats: Somalia’s Aden A. Osman and Abdirazak H. Hussen
   
   
   
   
   
2. Clan Cleansing in Somalia: The Ruinous Legacy of 1991
   
   
   
   
   
3. Understanding Somalia and Somaliland: Culture, History, Society
   
   
   
   Amazon links:
   
   
   
4. 
   https://www.amazon.com/Africas-First-Democrats-Somalias-Abdirazak/dp/0253022304/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1542961296&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=africas+first+democrats
   
   
   
5. 
   https://www.amazon.com/Clan-Cleansing-Somalia-Ruinous-Pennsylvania/dp/0812223195/ref=mp_s_a_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1542961346&sr=8-1-fkmr0&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=clean+cleansing+in+somalia
   
   
   3.
   https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Somalia-Somaliland-Culture-History/dp/0199326819/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1542961428&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=Understanding+Somalia+and+Somaliland%3A+Culture%2C+History%2C+Society
   
   
   
   
   Download links for ebooks [FREE]:
   
   
   
   http://libgen.io/book/index.php?md5=77EC7B0D8081FC039F9D079EA800DE9A
   
   
   http://libgen.io/book/index.php?md5=D4425B8CA0A72864F071A3FC2A102AD4
   
   
   http://libgen.io/book/index.php?md5=0666CC85027C57844BA514F514D5203B

I second this. Another great book for those interested is Histories of the Hanged: The Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire by David Anderson

A lot of what I talked about is covered in Bahru Zewde's A History of Modern Ethiopia: 1855-1991 where the focus is on the development and destruction of the absolutist monarchy. The first edition was written in 1991, so get the 2nd edition, it has much more information about the successful independence struggle of Eritrea from 1976-1991.

Fantastic! Just what I was looking for. Are you by chance in the UK? I only ask because Amazon has two books on the subject with the exact same cover by the same author and I can't figure out if it's actually two different books or different localizations.

Tip and Run

and

World War I: The African Front

My suggestions:

Raymond Jonas' The Battle of Adwa: African Victory in the Age of Empire chronicles the war waged (and won) by Ethiopia against Italy who planned to conquer it during the Scramble for Africa.

Jeff Pearce's Prevail: The Inspiring Story of Ethiopia's Victory over Mussolini's Invasion, 1935–1941. Well, the title says it all.

I'd recommend more books, but it's late here in the Philippines. If you're eager for more, please reply and I'll post the others. :)

Kenya: A Country in the Making 1880-1940

Its a fascinating book, especially if you are a history buff. You'd know more about Kenya that many Kenyans!

]It is about a journalist who joins the Peace Corp and really had no idea what he was getting himself into. He ended up being a supply speed boat driver through a warlord infested river in Somalia. He gives graphic descriptions of how hellish Somalia really is. It really stuck with me..

http://www.amazon.com/Where-Soldiers-Fear-Tread-Survival/dp/0553803743

A caveat here, I haven't read any of the books I'm linking. I'm somewhat familiar with Irish history, so I'm using what I know to find keywords to get books.

The Flight of the Earls

Biography of Grace O'Malley

Review of a book on Jacobitism in Ireland and possibly touching on the Williamite Rebellion.

Overview of the Penal Code, restrictions on Catholics that lasted a couple hundred years.

A book on the politics surrounding the potato famines

Huge scholarly work on the Irish Enlightenment. Try to find this one in the library as it's REALLY expensive, even for six volumes.

You could also look at a biography of, say Jonathan Swift, or into Handel when he wrote The Messiah and debuted it in Dublin 17 days later.

Nothing under the heading of "earlier stuff" is really coming to mind, unless you're interested in early Christianity.