Ethiopia

Gebru Tareke examines how peasants in Ethiopia protested and resisted authority, concentrating on three significant rural revolts that broke out between 1941 and 1970. His aim is to identify the defining characteristics of popular dissent in Ethiopia before the revolution. Working from substantial evidence, he argues that these uprisings did not stem from capitalist exploitation, the usual cause of peasant unrest across much of the Third World. He links them instead to the emergence of a modern, bureaucratic state encompassing many ethnic groups. Tareke challenges the common view of Ethiopian peasants as conservative and passive, while noting that their resistance was not revolutionary in nature. The study also offers a possible account of why armed conflict spread through rural Ethiopia after 1974, and it adds to broader theoretical debate on social movements in agrarian societies.