Seminar: Satan for one, angel for the other: a new look at resistance and collaboration in Ethiopia, 1935-41

This presentation will discuss resistance and collaboration during the Italian Fascist occupation of Ethiopia, 1935-41, the prelude to World Word II. Shiferaw Bekele, Associate Professor of History at Addis Ababa University, will cast a new glance on the topic on the basis of old and new sources: memoirs of Ethiopian veterans and patriots, autobiographies and analyses of Italian participants, and reports of members of the British armed forces who fought in Ethiopia to oust the Italians in 1940-41. Bekele re-evaluates Italian archival sources as well as oral history accounts of Ethiopian informants to reconstruct the major features of the 1935-36 and the 1941 wars and the (Ethiopian) Patriots’ resistance. (Photo: Ethiopian patriot Jagama Kello, middle, fought the Italian invaders.)

'Community collaboration'

Literature so far affirms that resistance was widespread in the country and that ‘collaboration’ with the Italians was limited and not an organized feature. But Bekele's findings are that ’community collaboration’ (from clans, parts of ethnic groups or religious communities) was quite large-scale. And except for the first year of the occupation (1936), resistance was not widespread, but limited to Amhara and Shewa areas and some parts of the Oromo regions, i.e. mainly in the central and northwestern provinces of the country. In terms of ethnic distribution, it involved mainly Amhara, Agew, Gurage, Oromo and Qemant peoples. As to religious affiliation, Muslims largely, though not exclusively, supported the Italians, and the Ethiopian-Orthodox (except in Eritrea) were predominantly resisting. The Italian occupation thus engendered new narratives of oppression among people of the Ethiopian empire, resulting in differential responses to resistance and collaboration, reflecting the precarious unity of the pre-1935 empire, a theme eagerly exploited in Italian colonial propaganda. The issues would come back to haunt the Ethiopian post-War imperial government, faced with various ethno-regional revolts.