Bahru Zewde

Traces the history of Ethiopia from Biblical times to the present.

"Bahru Zewde, one of the foremost historians of modern Ethiopia, has constructed a collective biography of a remarkable group of men and women in a formative period of their country's history. He traces their influence on the articulation and resolution of such central political issues as 'the national question', and the legacy of these reformist intellectuals on the revolutionary intellectuals of the 1960s and 1970s. It is a unique contribution to the intellectual history of both modern Ethiopia and modern Africa."--Jacket.

Analyzes the role of intellectuals and students in Ethiopian state power before and after the Italian Occupation (1936-1941).

"In the second half of the 1960s and the early 1970s, the Ethiopian student movement emerged from rather innocuous beginnings to become the major opposition force against the imperial regime in Ethiopia, contributing perhaps more than any other factor to the eruption of the 1974 revolution, a revolution that brought about not only the end of the long reign of Emperor Haile Sellassie, but also a dynasty of exceptional longevity. The student movement would be of fundamental importance in the shaping of the future Ethiopia, instrumental in both its political and social development."--Provided by publisher