Gebrehiwot Baikedagn and Eurocentrism By Dr. Messay Kebede March 18, 2005

Gebrehiwot’s major work, Mengistna ye Hizb Astadadar, published in 1910 after his death and translated into English by Tenkir Bonger in 1995 as State and Economy of Early 20th Century Ethiopia, not only proposes insightful recipes for the modernization of Ethiopia, but also attempts a thorough account of the root of Ethiopia’s impediments. Given that common sense maintains that remedies, however sophisticated, are inefficient so long as they do not emerge from an accurate diagnosis, he devotes the first four chapters of the book to depicting the ills of the Ethiopian society.

As is characteristic of Western educated Ethiopians, Gebrehiwot is baffled by the Ethiopian enigma. Here is a society that had reached the peak of human civilization at a time when Europeans lived in caves and survived by hunting and fishing. Aksum and its Amhara extension had produced, by any standard, the basic ingredients of a civilization that could be accurately defined as powerful, advanced, and refined. Yet this brilliant civilization soon lost its dynamism and deteriorated into a stagnant system in which increasing poverty and an arrested state of knowledge and techniques of production became its defining features. How did such deterioration come about? Such is Gebrehiwot’s disturbing question.

It springs to mind that Gebrehiwot’s question presupposes some philosophical premises. In particular, it defines material progress as the goal of human history, there being no doubt, according to him, that the purpose of human life is to become “the master of nature.” (p. 68). This goal of human life is a leitmotiv that runs through almost all the pages of the book. I ask the reader to note that the French philosopher Rene Descartes assigned this same goal to human life three centuries earlier.

What is more, developing a philosophy of history in many ways similar to the views of Hegel and Marx, Gebrehiwot writes: “humanity attained its present level of understanding and wealth not at once but in stages proceeding from one to the other.” (p. 62). The goal of humans is the mastery of nature, and history realizes this goal through a stage-producing-stage movement. Human societies can be defined as backward or advanced in relation to the various stages to which they belong. Clearly, both in his conception of the goal of human life and the mode of achieving it, Gebrehiwot fully endorses the basic tenants of the Eurocentric view of history.

So viewed, history poses a formidable challenge to Gebrehiwot: he must explain why African countries, and especially Ethiopia, did not achieve the same level of development as European countries while being propelled by the same goal. By agreeing to the Eurocentric view of history, he has forfeited the option of considering African societies as different, as pursuing other goals than the mastery of nature. The use of Eurocentric norms forces him to concede that African countries, including his most beloved Ethiopia, must be defined as backward, since the characteristics of advanced societies, such as a representative government, the development of science, and the extensive use of advanced technology in productive activities, are wanting.

But what does backwardness exactly mean? If material well-being is indeed the purpose of life and that only few countries have reached the high level of prosperity, this failure and disparity suggest that severe obstacles have prevented the majority of countries from entering the road to prosperity and enlightenment. Since the presence of formidable obstacles explains why these countries lag behind European countries, the examination of “the factors which hinder the acquisition of knowledge and wealth by people” (p. 69) is the essential prerequisite to correct remedies.

In assigning the retardation of African countries to obstacles, Gebrehiwot discards the racist explanation implied in some Eurocentric views of history. He is not saying that people fail to develop because they are primitive or have some genetic deficiencies that prevent them from going forward. He does not believe in the racial superiority of Europeans. So he speaks of obstacles, of preventions, and maintains that backward peoples have the same desire for wealth and knowledge and the same required abilities as Europeans.

What are these obstacles? Gebrehiwot rejects the obstacles caused by harsh climates and the lack of natural resources. Countries under good climates and with abundant resources have failed to develop while other countries dealing with poor natural conditions have succeeded. Instead, the absence of social peace, caused by incessant internal and external wars and resulting in societies being more shaped to wage war than produce wealth, seems to Gebrehiwot the universal reason for the perpetuation of poverty and ignorance. “Wars,” he writes “are the principal cause of the difference in the level of knowledge and wealth of people in this world . . . . The real aim and the conclusion of the war is looting and subjugation” (p. 74). On top of being torn by internal conflicts and unable to raise its productivity, a society dominated by the purpose of war is enamored with warlike values that hail pillage and subjugation as the appropriate means to make a living.

One wonders to what extent this explanation of Africa’s failure to develop agrees with what we know about European history. In terms of conflict and war, European history is by far unsurpassed, and many African scholars were quick to point out aggressiveness and warlike values as features separating the white race from black peoples. Moreover, many studies argue that war is the mother of invention. More than the desire to boost production, the needs to produce superior weapons of war have inspired scientific and technological inventions.

Be that as it may, Gebrehiwot thinks that the case of Ethiopia perfectly corroborates his analysis. The lack of social peace, and that alone, explains why the great potential of the Aksumite civilization never materializes. In a short review of Ethiopian history, he shows how progress was halted by continuous wars and pillages due to internal religious conflicts, foreign invasions, and regional rivalries for the control of the imperial power. Especially, he highlights the irreparable destructions caused by Gran’s invasion of Ethiopia and its detrimental aftermaths, namely, the weakening of the imperial power and the rise of warlordism, which achieved its highest peak during the period known as the Era of the Princes. Indeed, “while Gran was destroying the county, the Ethiopian people abandoned their work and depended on war which governed their traditions and behavior. Looting and pillaging, which were learnt in that period, are prevalent even today.” (p. 78). In other words, in addition to weakening the imperial institution, the rise of warlordism established rival regional powers and caused a culture change that values war and looting at the expense of peace, production, and knowledge.

By the time Tewodros “rose and defeated all the local warlords and brought back unity to the people of Ethiopia” (p. 78), Ethiopia was not only way behind Europe, but also had developed institutions and values that were inimical to development. Foreign enemies intent on using their advanced technological power to colonize Ethiopia thwarted the little effort that Ethiopians made to go back to a peaceful life. “These foreign enemies sowed the seeds of chaos” (p. 79) until Menelik’s army defeated them at Adwa.

One major consequence of Gebrehiwot’s attribution of the Ethiopian retardation to the rise of warlordism is the suggestion that modernization is dependent on the rise of a strong central government that uproots the very conditions sustaining regional powers. The strengthening of the imperial institution to the detriment of regional forces is, therefore, the sine qua none of Ethiopia’s modernization. We recognize here the very argument that Haile Selassie and his followers used to establish imperial autocracy and annihilate regional autonomy. In the causes of the Ethiopian lag, as analyzed by Grebrehiwot, Haile Selassie and his followers read the need to endow the monarch with absolute power.

This is to say that the rise of Haile Selassie’s autocratic rule has its intellectual roots in the reading of Ethiopian history with Eurocentric norms. While Europeans used feudal institutions to weaken royal absolutism and lay the ground for representative governments, strange is the way Ethiopians thought of moving toward democracy by creating a royal autocracy. The wandering is easily explained: once Ethiopia is perceived as a lagging country, any possibility of developing a positive conception of its history and culture is thereby abandoned. The major question becomes, not what Ethiopians pursued and achieved, but why they failed to be like Europeans. It does not dawn on Gebrehiwot to say that Ethiopia is not like Europe not so much because it was hampered by obstacles as because it had different aims. Ethiopian history should be read in connection with the goals Ethiopians themselves pursued, and not according to the norms of Europe.

In this regard, I have shown in my book-Survival and Modernization-Ethiopia’s Enigmatic Present-that the vocation Ethiopians assigned to themselves was the guardianship of Christianity in a region increasingly shifting towards Islam. Convinced of being God’s favorite country, to stay steadfast and defend Christianity became Ethiopia’s mission. To ensure the survival of their fate, Ethiopians developed defensive institutions, including a tendency to isolation behind mountains. The warlike values of Ethiopians and the institution of a non-hereditary imperial power constantly asserting itself by subduing regional lords fed on the readiness to defend faith. Accordingly, these values are inseparable from the vocation of the guardianship of Christianity. Likewise, the imperial rivalry with regional lords evades the rise of a hereditary monarchy with its propensity to favor lazy emperors. As far as Ethiopians see it, the development of commerce would not have stopped Islam; on the contrary, a trading society would have quickly succumbed to Islamic appeals.

Because Gebrehiwot uses Eurocentric norms, he finds nothing positive in the unfolding of Ethiopian history. Instead, he sees institutions and events that act as hurdles to progress. For instance, he has nothing to say concerning Ethiopia’s amazing long survival and sovereignty. Still less does he ask himself the question of knowing how the institutions that he readily described as hurdles were able to ensure such a long survival. And what about the fact that the system he calls looting and plundering had nevertheless instituted the remarkable rist system, which protected peasants’ right to land ownership? Compare the rist system with European feudalism, which reduced peasants to serfdom, and ponder over the issue of knowing which one was more conducive to stringent exploitation and looting.

From the viewpoint of non-Westernized Ethiopians, Ethiopian history is a success: Ethiopians sacrificed wealth and the refinement of civilization, even opted for isolation, to make sure that they remain faithful to their vocation. They had to live in a tough and hardened system and yet remain tender enough to hold on to Christian values. Their survival as a Christian island “in a sea of pagans,” to quote Menelik, is a proof of their success.

Only when Ethiopia found itself encircled by powerful colonial powers did its social system start to totter and become inadequate. The time of change and adaptation had come. Neither warlordism nor isolation was an option. The enemy was too powerful and had a program of acculturation and settlement that was unprecedented. Ethiopia had to change or perish. Many aristocrats believed that the old system was still viable; few understood the need for change, the precursor being none other than Tewodros who had a program of social reform and was the first to underline the need to steal the manufacturing ability with which Europeans threatened Ethiopia’s integrity.

The Showan nobility and Menelik realized that the machinations and greed of colonial powers would not secure Ethiopia the social peace it needs to change and enough time to catch up with the West. To stop colonialism, Menelik initiated the southern conquest to prevent encirclement, rally new peoples to the cause of Ethiopia’s integrity, and find the resources to buy weapons. The outcome was the rise of Showan power together with a strong and powerful central government that altered the balance of power with regional forces.

In this way, the conditions of the rise of imperial autocracy were gathered. Modern educated Ethiopians started to disseminate the idea that Ethiopia lags behind because of its church and warlords. They called for the disbanding of regionalism and the suppression of the church’s influence. Worse yet, echoing the colonial discourse, they propagate the views that Ethiopia was, not on a different course of history, but simply backward. They began to call for a modernizing monarch, to which call Haile Selassie responded and became their champion. He used them to achieve autocracy and disposed of them as soon as he had the firm control of the new centralized state.

Students and intellectuals of the 60s, furiously more Westernized than the early intellectuals, will radicalize the iconoclastic reading of Ethiopian history and culture by demanding revolution, that is, the complete dismantling of the Ethiopian legacy and its replacement by a society with new foundations and values. For them, too, the wandering of Ethiopian traditions away from the Eurocentric path resulted in an arrested, ossified society. The country had to be rebuilt according to norms borrowed from a philosophy of history that painted the West as the most advanced society, to wit, Marxism-Leninism. Ethiopia had won the battle against colonialism on the battlefield; it lost it in the classroom of modern education, the very place where Ethiopian youth was supposed to glean the secrets of the West.

The damages caused by the infiltration of Eurocentric concepts into the manner Ethiopians perceive themselves and their history are manifold. For instance, it has infected the southern expansion and delayed the integration of northerners with southerners. To underline the superiority of northerners, Gebrehiwot writes: “All the rocks [used for building] in Addis Ababa were not wealth for the Galla [the Oromo] who were living in Gullele. After the Amara came and the construction of stone houses started, people who had stones in their land began to consider them as property.” (pp. 94-95). No extensive research is required to understand that this way of ranking peoples is a byproduct of the internalization of Eurocentrism.

Not only is the disparity between the Amhara and the Oromo greatly exaggerated, but also the use of the evolutionary scheme of Eurocentrism talks Gebrehiwot into placing the Oromo at a lower level of social evolution with regards to the Amhara. Yet no more than the Amhara were Oromo pursuing the conquest of nature. To characterize their mode of life as inferior is improper and unscientific, since they had a social system that corresponded to their values and visions. The truth is that Gebrehiwot’s use of Eurocentric norms had forced him to characterize Ethiopia as retarded. This concession caused a psychological trauma that looked for appeasement through the consolation prize of viewing the Amhara as superior to the Oromo.

Let there be no misunderstanding. The fact that the Amhara felt superior and conquered the Oromo does not mean that the southern expansion was a colonial conquest of the European type. A world separates the feeling of cultural superiority-which the Amhara ruling elite had-from the evolutionary gap of Western racism that assigns unequal human capabilities to non-Westerners. What is more, the establishment of tenancy in the south, which displays a deviation from the northern system of rist, denotes the perversion of a precapitalist mentality by the European notion of private property. As such, it gave birth to a bastard system that actually prevented the implementation of capitalism. A system of absentee landlords still living off subsistence farming instead of proletarizing peasants and producing for the market does not exactly tally with the methods of colonial subjugation.

Unfortunately, instead of referring to a traditional system distorted by the penetration of capitalism and Eurocentric norms, some Oromo scholars speak of colonialism, thereby exhibiting their own internalization of Eurocentric norms. So deep-going is their internalization that, like the one time colonized Eritreans, they have become totally unable to differentiate a local process of expansion and rivalry, which has been going on for centuries, from overseas conquests by foreign invaders who, far from acting as rivals, came to reinforce their system by the peripherization of lagging countries.

These reflections in no way denigrate the great and unique value of Gebrehiwot’s book, which exhibits an association of remarkable theoretical and analytic abilities with an ardent Ethiopian nationalism. The way Gebrehiwot combines economic analyses with philosophical notions testifies to the grand vision of his inspiration. Still, he was so flabbergasted and mesmerized by Western technological marvels that he stumbled and lost touch with his Ethiopian roots. Like many of us, intellectuals of the ’60s and ’70s, he saw Ethiopia more through the eyes of the Western anthropologist than through those of a native scholar.