154 BOOK REVIEWS

The Oromo and the Christian Kingdom of Ethiopia, 1300–1700, by

The present book, by prominent historian Mohammed Hassen, joins the

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accelerating discussion in Ethiopia about the country’s integration (or lack
thereof ). Under the aegis of the 1991 federal constitution, Ethiopia’s leadership
has been for years celebrating diversity and even encouraging it among its more
than eighty ethnic and language groups. But now Ethiopians, irrespective of
their ethnicity, are raising pertinent questions and wondering if perhaps they
have a shared history to cherish and a more mixed ‘ethnicity’ than has hitherto
been assumed. Nowhere is this discussion more debated than concerning
the historical relations between Ethiopia’s two largest ‘ethnic’ groups, the
Oromo and the Amhara. For long held to be opponents, now the history of
the Oromo–Amhara relationship is being looked at in a different light. An
instance is Feqre Tolosa’s Yeoromoenna yeamhara: ewneteñña yezer hereg mench
(‘The Oromo and Amhara: A Truthful Lineage Descendance’, [2016]) which,
since its release, has circulated extensively in Ethiopia and claims a common
origin for the Cushitic-Oromo and the Semitic-Amhara families.
With more solid historiographical foundations than Feqre Tolosa’s pamphlet,
Mohammed Hassen’s book reconstructs the thousand-year-old intermingling
of Oromo and Amhara histories. Hassen is perhaps the most notable scholar to
attempt this crucial and current issue in Ethiopian historiography. An associate
professor of history at Georgia State University, he is known chiefly as the
author of The Oromo of Ethiopia: A  History 1570–1860, which was released
back in 1990 and focused on the expansion of Oromo tribes northwards into
‘Christian Semitic’ territory from the sixteenth century onwards. The present
book indeed appears as the continuation of the former study, which left
unanswered one of its central hypotheses, namely that the Oromo were an
integral part of Christian Ethiopia’s ‘original’ territory much earlier than was
previously thought, at least as far back as the fourteenth century. But while the
new book shares a common background (indeed, the maps are re-used from
the previous study) and aims with the previous one, it appears as the work
of a more mature historian, with a more ambitious scope and far-reaching
implications.
In the preface, Hassen states the three chief objectives of his study: firstly,
to correct the historical narrative that has favoured the Amhara over the other
ethnic groups (p. ix); secondly, to discuss the patterns of Oromo migration
during the sixteenth century (p. x); and thirdly, to provide a more complex
picture of the interaction between the Amhara (in Ethiopian historiography
often seen as the victims) and the Oromo (portrayed usually as the invaders).
Throughout the eight chapters and the epilogue, Hassen presents convincing
evidence supporting his main thesis, namely that the Oromo were original
inhabitants of the territories long held to be dominated by the Christian Semitic
populations. Chapter One focuses on Oromo presence north and south of
Shewa in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Here, the main sources are
Oromo oral traditions and Hassen relies largely on inference to carry out his
historical reconstruction. Then, in the successive chapters, the book advances
in time and taps on important episodes in the history of Oromo and Amhara
(confusingly referred to in the text as ‘Christian and Muslim communities’)
relations. The last epilogue stretches the chronological scope of the book way

EHR, cxxxiii. 560 (February. 2018)

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Throughout the narrative Hassen confronts head on the theories of past
scholars, from Abba Bahrey (to whom Chapter Six is dedicated) to Enrico
Cerulli (p. 103) and Ulrich Braukämper (pp. 99, 108 and passim), showing not
only his mastery of the historiographical debates on Ethiopia’s ethnic history
but also a different way to interpret the available historical evidence.
Yet, in this ambitious work some shortcomings should be noted. Firstly,
the monograph is punctuated by numerous editing and layout mistakes that
one does not expect to find in a work hosted in such a prestigious publishing
house. Thus, ‘Lauto Biografia’ for ‘L’autobiografia’ and ‘Reule’ for ‘Reale’
(p. 1), ‘Zitelman’ for ‘Zitelmann’ (p. 27), ‘Hamanot’ for ‘Haimanot’ (p. 39),
‘Arba Faqih’ for ‘Arab Faqih’ (p.  94), ‘in habited’ for ‘inhabited’ (p.  95),
‘Galawdeows’ for ‘Galawdewos’ (p.  140), ‘Zara Yaegob’ for ‘Zara Yaqob’
(p.  153), ‘Alemeida’ for ‘Almeida’ (p.  298). Some paragraphs are accidentally
cut off in the middle (p.  32 and footnote 68, p.  153). The citation style in
the footnotes is not completely consistent (e.g. with Sumner’s Oromo Wisdom
Literature in footnotes 75 and 77, p. 28; Arab Faqih in footnotes 160 and 161,
p. 94; Almeida in footnotes 5 and 12, pp. 298–9). The author’s style is at times
repetitive; thus, Chapter One is introduced three times (pp. 15, 17 and 18) and
a passage on the ‘Oromo Sacred Book’ is repeated twice (pp. 32 and 34). He is
also guilty of some blatant contradictions. For instance, initially he claims that
the term ‘Galla’ is exogenous to the Oromo and that ‘out of over two thousand
and eight hundred named Oromo clans … not a single one “uses [Galla] as a
self-identification”’ (p. 3), but further on in the text he writes ‘that the name
came from an Oromo descent group or gosa name of Galan (also spelled as
Gallan)’ (p. 65).
It is also plain that, while Hassen is quite at ease when reconstructing the
complex history of the dozens of Oromo clans and tribes, he is less so when
discussing the history of Oromo’s main neighbours to the north, the Amharas.
Thus, the transcription of some Amhara names appears odd (‘Sbla Wangle’ in
p. 191 for the more accepted ‘Seble Wengel’; ‘Dangaz’ on p. 283 for ‘Dankaz’;
‘Liban Dengel’ on p. 285 for ‘Libne/Lebne Dengel’). The ‘Emperor of Spain
and Portugal’ in the time of Pedro Páez (pp. 250 and 307), i.e. Felipe III of
Spain and II of Portugal, was not emperor but simply king. Similarly, King
Susenyos appears with two different birth dates (1569 and 1572 on pp. 260
and 273 respectively, but the actual birth date is probably 1571). He refers to
Susenyos’ father as Fasiladas (p. 260), but the latter was better known as Fasil
Gerram; he also describes him as the ‘universally admired Fasiladas’ (ibid.),
which seems indeed an overblown expression for such a little-known historical
figure. Map 7 (p. 111) is not the original ‘Almeida’s map of Abyssinia’ but a
modern cartographically accurate map showing some of the place names
mentioned in Almeida’s seventeenth-century map. The province of Damot
during the time of Susenyos was not south of the Abbay or Blue Nile river
(pp. 276–7) but north of it. More censurable is the fact that the bibliography
used to cover the so-called Jesuit period is outdated, as it relies basically on
Philip Caraman’s largely inaccurate The Lost Empire, published back in 1985
(e.g. footnote 19, p. 263), which has been long superseded. He even falls into
EHR, cxxxiii. 560 (February. 2018)
156 BOOK REVIEWS
the ‘Semiticocentric’ trap for which he criticises others, for he takes at face
value some ethnic terms found in Ge’ez historical literature, such as the tribe
name ‘Shankilla’ (p. 285), which have long been abandoned as they have a
derogatory meaning. He also refers to the famous Empress Mentewab, born in

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the then Agaw-dominated province of Qwara, as ‘a brilliant Oromo woman’
(p. 344), but such an Oromo identity appears nowhere in the historical
literature nor does the author produce any evidence thereof. Last but not least,
in Chapter One he speaks of the interactions between ‘Oromo, Christian and
Muslim communities’ (p. 15), but these are hardly commensurable terms, as
Oromo refers to an ethnic group while Christian and Muslim are religious
denominations. It would have been better to speak of Christian Amharas and
Muslim Amharas, or the like.
Hassen’s book thus falls short of being a flawless monograph. The book would
have profited immensely if true specialists from the different geographical
areas, ethnic groups and the different periods covered by the narrative had
read it and given their critical comments, which manifestly was not the case.
Thus, while the chapters entirely dedicated to the Oromo skilfully combine
a rich set of sources—from oral traditions to historical accounts—to produce
a plausible narrative of the Oromo centuries-old presence in Ethiopia, those
focusing on the interactions between Amharas and Oromos are punctuated by
several problems. Despite this, Hassen’s reconstruction of the latter interactions
provides a much-needed ‘Oromo’ perspective which has hitherto been absent
from Ethiopian historiography. For this reason, his book will surely become
obligatory reading for specialists and the wider public who are interested in
Ethiopian history. It will also encourage new approaches in the study of the
so-called medieval period of Ethiopia, when the modern Ethiopian nation
established its roots.
ANDREU MARTÍNEZ D’ALÒS-MONER
doi:10.1093/ehr/cex369 University of Gondar, Ethiopia

Rural Society and Economic Change in County Durham: Recession and Recovery,
c.1400–1640, by A.T. Brown (Woodbridge: The Boydell P.; 2015; pp. xv +
288. £60.)

A.T. Brown opens this useful study with an overview of the various ‘schools
of thought’ about what was once called ‘the transition from feudalism to
capitalism’: demography, commercialisation, landlord and tenant relationships,
and ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ versions of Robert Brenner’s Marxian emphasis on class
relations. He argues for ‘a pluralism of causes in creating economic change’
in the period between the Black Death and the early seventeenth century,
and adds a critical variable of his own: ‘estates and institutional constraints’.
These, his book shows, must be added to the recipe of social change. Existing
institutions play a ‘considerable role in affecting how societies respond to
changes in demography, commercialisation and class relations’. ‘The way
organisations and institutions interact with formal and informal constraints
often helps to explain why some societies experience economic growth and
others experience long-term stagnation’ (pp. 3–7).
EHR, cxxxiii. 560 (February. 2018)