Commentary:

African Studies Association meeting; Preview of talk by Jordan Gebre Medhin in panel on Ethiopia-Eritrea conflict.

As you may know the 1999 Annual African Studies Association meeting will be taking place in Philadelphia November 11-14.

Website: http://www.sas.upenn.edu/African_Studies/ASA/asa42.html

During this meeting several panels organized by Eritrean “intellectuals” will be presenting papers and discussing issues related to the Ethiopia-Eritrea conflict.

I am sure most of you are aware of the spineless role played by the Eritrean “intellectuals” during the current conflict. Some of the more prominent of these will be at the ASA meeting trying to use an intellectual forum to push their propaganda. The panel they have organized will take place on Friday, Nov 12, and will consist of the following talks:

VD19) Explaining the Ethio-Eritrean Conflict - Chair: Kidane Mengisteab, Old Dominion University. Discussant: Tecle Woldemichael, University of Redlands

• Ghidewon Asmerom-Abay, Virginia Commonwealth University, The Ethio-Eritrean Border Dispute: A Cartographic Review
• Tekie Fessehatzion, Morgan State University, Explaining the Unexplained: What Went Wrong in Ethio-Eritrean Relations?
• Jordan Gebre Medhin, Northeastern University, Eritrea and Yohannes IV of Abyssinia
• Gebre Tesfagiorgis, University of Nebraska, Possible Resolutions of the Ethio-Eritrean Conflict
• Kidane Mengisteab, Old Dominion University, State Building and Ethnic Federalism: Ethiopia

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I believe all of these are highland Tigrinya Eritreans – the main ethnic group supporting the EPLF. Some of them have been active already on the internet, and are well known for their faithful aping of the Eritrean dictators shifting responses to the peace plans put forward for the Ethiopia-Eritrea conflict.

The first talk I would like to address is that of Jordan Gebre Medhin “Eritrea and Yohannes IV of Abyssinia”

This fellow is known to me from his book “Peasants and Nationalism in Eritrea.” When the book was first published, I thought it would be quite interesting as the title could lead to a discussion of many issues. But Jordan went the sycophant route and did little or no relevant research. He simply hashed out a cheap regurgitation of the stale EPLF party line. And this is entirely typical of the Eritrean “intellectuals.” As Gerald Prunier (1996) pointed out,

“There is still today no serious balanced historical study of the Eritrean independence struggle, most of the literature being, at least to some degree, of a propagandistic nature.”

But Jordan Gebre Medhin is worse than most, and seems to have developed quite a negative reputation for his poor scholarship even among researchers who are sympathetic to Eritrea. In the following excerpt, Kjetl Tronvoll, a Norwegian scholar who actually spent two years in Eritrea performing fieldwork for his book "Mai Weini" (1999) discusses Jordan Gebre Medhin's previous writings.

“Still a controversial issue in Eritrean history is to what effect the Italian colonial policies left its imprint on Eritrean rural life. Some, as Tekeste Negash, argue that the general colonial impact on the peasantry was not powerful enough to transform in any significant degree, social and production relations (1987:149). While others, as Jordan Gebre-Medhin, a developmental anthropologist, argues that the colonial “impact on rural social class structure was tremendous” (1989:58). In his analysis he puts great emphasis on the alienation of land, which Tekeste Negash has demonstrated was less than one per cent (1987:146). Tekeste Negash, a historian by profession, has conducted extensive studies in the colonial archives together with other Italian sources, and he states that Jordan Gebre-Medhin’s “interpretation of Italian colonial impact cannot be empirically substantiated (1987:146). This statement illustrates the problem with much of the scholarly work on Eritrea; the fact that very few researchers have actually done fieldwork in the country, or on the other hand, conducted substantial archival studies from the period concerned.

“Therefore, scholarly work which is neither based on empirical fieldwork or in-depth archive studies should be assessed with and referred to with care.”

"As an example, one may assess Jordan Gebre Medhin’s stated reason behind the land scarcity in the highlands during the Italian times." [Here, Kjetl Tronvoll goes through an extensive analysis of the issue and concludes with the following devastating comment]

“From the above quotations, we see that Jordan Gebre Medhin’s statement… seems not to be grounded on the sources he is referring to… In the end, this turns out to be a question of the credibility of the researcher and his/her studies, and whether he/she aims at producing scientific works, or political manifestos.”

From the above, and from my own reading of Jordan Gebre Medhin’s book, it is clear to me that he is a “scholar” with bogus credentials and a reluctance to do the hard work of researching archives, performing field work, or checking references. This is why his book ended being a vapid rehash of EPLF propaganda rather than a work of original scholarship.

The current ASA talk promises to be similarly vapid.

Let us start with the title. The author refuses to use the word “Ethiopia” and instead substitutes “Abyssinia.” presumably because according to the Ethiopia-haters, Ethiopia didn’t exist until the time of Menelik II. Never mind the silliness of that position, let us just look at the use of the word “Eritrea” during the time of Yohannes IV.

Indisputably, Eritrea did not exist at any time during the reign of Yohannis IV. Nor was there any prior state or sense of nationhood, or concept of any such thing in the area currently known as Eritrea. The majority of the inhabitants were in fact Abyssinians/Ethiopians. Today the descendants of these Ethiopians, although they are now Eritrean citizens, still refer to themselves as Abesha/Habesha – ie. Abysinnians.

All Ethiopians and Eritreans know this term and its common usage. Our clever scholar is just outdoing himself with this Eritrea vs Abysinnia nonsense. It is intellectually dishonest to even have such a title.

[Note: Even today the legend of origin for Eritrean highlanders has them descending from the central Ethiopian Amhara inhabited regions. ]

The rest of the talk will be your typical Eritrean fabricated history about how Yohannis IV supposedly tried to “colonize” his own Tigrean provinces of Hammassien, Akale-Guzay, and Serae. The typical Eritrean ploy here is to interpret all relations between these three regions and the Ethiopian emperor as being of a special colonial nature. Even though there was nothing special about them and no difference between they way they were administered compared to other regions in Ethiopia. They were Ethiopians. Eritreans need to deal with this fact and stop lying about their own history.

If there was a strong, independent Eritrean tradition of scholarship then this type of shoddy, dishonest, analysis would not be tolerated. But Eritrean scholarship is currently a cultish, sycophantic enterprise. No facts are allowed to get in the way of the EPLFs party line.