Locating Ethiopia

Even though Ethiopia is widely mentioned in great Classical mythologies, maps, art, sculptures, poetry, war narratives, it has always been difficult to establish the country or its people in concise geographical and historical contexts on the basis of these sources.  Moreover, Ethiopia’s location has varied since the ancient times.

The Bible (Genesis 2:13) indicates that Ethiopia is the country surrounded by the Ghion (Nile) River, which winds all through the land of Kush (Ethiopia).In Isaiah 18:1, Ezekiel 29:10, Zephaniah 3:1, the Bible refers to Ethiopia as a remote country, placed in the southern part of the far east and far west.

Careful examination of maps suggests regional, continental and intercontinental geographical location of Ethiopia. For instance, a map dated 1600 and titled ‘Africae Nova Defcripto’ Ethiopia is a term used to refer to the continent of Africa and to the Atlantic Ocean south of the equator. In this map the equator divides the North Atlantic Ocean or ‘Mare Atlanticum’ from ‘Oceanus Aethiopicus’ or South Atlantic Ocean. The map also makes a distinction between Ethiopia and Abyssinia. The territories of Abyssinia correspond to the present day Ethiopia.  Abyssinia (it is spelled Abissinia on the map) is also shown as region east of the Nile, whereas the western part of the Nile was Nubia. The linking of Ethiopia with Africa, with few exceptions, continued to the first half of the twentieth century. In other words, its geographical dimension suggests globality.

Broadly speaking, the Ethiopians are from warm climatic regions.  They are found in southern Egypt, in Libya, North Africa, south India, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Horn of Africa. William Leo Hansberry, a pioneering historian with regard to the conceptions of African Studies and Ancient African history, identifies Kerma Ethiopia, Napata Ethiopia, Meroitic Ethiopia, and Alpine Ethiopia. Hansberry’s geographical location and description of Ethiopia is assigned the following format:

“In Nilotic Ethiopia – corresponding roughly to the modern Anglo-Egyptian Sudan – were the kingdom of Napata and the Kingdom of Meroé; while Alpine Ethiopia – which embraced the regions designated on modern maps as Ethiopia (sometimes incorrectly called Abyssinia) as well as the Somaliland and Eritrea – was the seat of the far-famed kingdom of Axum (or Aksum) – widely held to be the home of the Queen of Sheba and the kingdom over which she ruled.”

Ali Mazrui, one of the most distinguished and accomplished Global Africanist scholars, in an interview conducted at Cornell University, stated that “the name Ethiopia—biblically speaking—was equated with the name Africa—land of Black people.” He further explained that ancient Libya was as big as ancient Ethiopia and yet Libya never fired the imagination of the African Diaspora as much as Ethiopia did.The name Ethiopia is originally attributed to Homer.  It was supposed to have been derived from the Greek word Aethiops, which means “the Glowing” or “the Black.”  The other names, some more ancient than the Greek period, for Ethiopia include Taseti, Punt, Kerma, Napata, Kush, Meroé, Nubia, Abyssinia, Agazia and Aksum. These are names of reputed ancient civilizations and cultures of North East Africa, presently comprising the countries of the Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia and Yemen. According to Ethiopian sources, Abyssinia is derived from Habisi, who was the son of Kush.  Aleqa Asras YeneSaw, a prominent traditional Ethiopian scholar, emphatically rejected the link between the Arabic word Habesh and Abyssinia.

To St. Clair Drake, Ancient Ethiopia, which is mentioned in the Greek legends, extend westward to the Ethiopian (now called Atlantic) Ocean, eastward to Elam near the mouth of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. In Ancient Ethiopia, again based on Greek mythology, Perseus rescued Andromeda from a sea monster.  Andromeda is described as the immortal daughter of King Cephus and Queen Cassiopia of Ancient Ethiopia.  Andromeda married Heracles, the son of Zeus and they had a child. Andromeda is immortalized because stars, visible in the summer time are named after her.  It is indeed Andromeda who inspired W. E. B. DuBois to link her mythology with the freedom aspirations of the African Americans.  He writes: “We owe it to Africa and ourselves to release Andromeda and place her free and beautiful among the stars of the sky.

Ancient Ethiopia was also the land south of Ancient Egypt below the first cataract, including eastern Ethiopia.  Ancient Ethiopians during the 18^th Dynasty (1570-1320 BCE) provided troops to Amenhotep III, who was the father of Amenhotep IV or Akhenaton, who was believed to be the founder of a monotheistic tradition.

In the Old Testament, Ancient Ethiopia is referred to as Kush. Kush, according to the Israelites, settled in Africa and he had descendants in Mesopotamia and Arabia as well. By the time of the 25^th Dynasty (751 BCE – 663 BCE), Kush refers to the Ethiopians of Napata, which was an ancient capital located near the third cataract of the Nile.  Napata was one of the first great civilizations of Nubia in the Sudan where Napata rulers such as Taharka ruled Egypt and Nubia. In 284 BC, the 70 religious scholars of Syria replaced the word Kush with Ethiopia when they translated the Old Testament from Hebrew to Greek.

Meroitic Ethiopia was the land of the great Kandake women rulers for almost 400 years (284 BCE–115 CE), just before the rise of Aksum on the highlands of Ethiopia.The word Candace is a corruption of the Meriotic title kdke, a title that all royal female members carried.  According to some historians, Meroé remained strong for about 1000 years, ruled by both men and women. It is also important to note that:

“Herodotus had visited Egypt and based on the info gathered from historians, travelers, priests, had divided Ethiopia into Eastern Ethiopians and Western Ethiopians.  He also identified Asiatic Ethiopians.”

Aksum Ethiopia, on the other hand, is known for, among other things, for the kingdom of the Queen of Sheba and her descendants, Ge’ez language (a non-ethnic foundational language of a free people) and the Ethiopic writing systems as well as the Arc of the Covenant which is housed in the Aksum Zion Church.  “The Aksumite kingdom stretched to Nubia, Yemen, the Red Sea coast, and southern Arabia, and monopolized the spice, incense and ivory trade, which it exported all over the ancient world.”

Prester John Ethiopia is the medieval Ethiopia beginning from the twelfth century of the Common Era. Munro Stuart-Hay describes how Europeans refer to Prester John as a designation to the emperors of Ethiopia from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century CE.There was a concerted effort in the medieval era to locate the legendary Prester John so that he would assist European Christians against the expansion of Islam. A map published by Sebastian Munster at Basle in 1544 locates Prester John Ethiopia in the northern part of Ethiopia, including Eritrea. According to Reader, the Ethiopians had been visiting Europe since 1306, that is, before the Europeans’ encounter with Ethiopia in 1407.

Ethiopia in Antiquity and Classical Sources

The narratives and tales of Greek classical writers, such as Homer (the eldest eponymous poet writes about the Olympian Gods who sought peace in distant Ethiopia), Herodotus (provided substantial eye-witness accounts of Ethiopians), Xenophanes (the first to apply to an Ethiopian a physical characteristic other than color), Aeschylus (the first Greek to locate Ethiopians in Africa), Hesiod (the first to group Scythians with Ethiopians). Isocrates, Socrates, Plato, and Arctinus also became handy to the framers of the idea of Ethiopia.

Ancient Ethiopians are also topics addressed by Roman writers, such as Diodorus (interviewed Ethiopian ambassadors resident in Egypt), Strabo (traveled as far as Syene and the frontier of Ethiopia), Vergil, Seneca, Ovid, Philostratus, Pliny, and Heliodorus.

According to Snowden, Aithiops (Aethiops), the most common generic term in the Greek and the Roman world applied to blacks from the south of Egypt and from the southern fringes of northwest Africa, highlighted the color of the skin.  The word meant literally a ‘burnt-faced person,’ a ‘colored’ person from certain regions of Africa, and in origin was a reflection of the environment theory that attributed the Ethiopians’ color as well as their tightly coiled hair to the intense heat of the southern sun.”

While Snowden’s comprehensive research to affirm the humanity of African peoples is commendable, he tends to endorse the so-called Ethiopian type.  In other words, he relied on Physical Anthropology, just like Beardsley and others, to make his case, which of course is substantively different from the racialists.

I argue that while European scholars use the Ethiopian type to scientifically castigate and physically exploit the Africans, the intellectuals of the African Diaspora have utilized the Bible and religion to extricate themselves from servitude, slavery and colonialism.  White scholars use the Greek sources on Ethiopia to prove scientific racism. On the other hand, the Africans utilized religion to seek freedom, to break the chains of bondage.

As a result, Ethiopians should be examined in the context of place, languages, cultures, and other traditions.  Physical Anthropology, particularly phenotypic descriptions as a basis of identity and category, should be deemphasized, for it is unreliable and unscientific to establish the identity of a people.

The ancient Greek and Roman writers have documented cultural attributes of the Ethiopians, such as food habits, facial scarifications, hunting skills, rituals, beliefs, and governance.  As a result, Ethiopia’s enduring significance and ideational capacity should be investigated within historical and cultural frameworks.

Ethiopia in Religious Sources and Traditions

In an attempt to break the cycle of racial domination or paternalism associated with European Christianity, African Americans sought to forge liberation ideologies for “a distinct and particularistic Black version of Christianity. This new conception of religion and culture in the nineteenth century is known as “Ethiopianism,” which is coined by the great African American sociologist, St. Clair Drake. Ethiopianism was conceptualized in order to resist white domination in all aspects of Black life, particularly in the spiritual and cultural realms.

Some historians believe that Ethiopianism or religious independence and distinctiveness “cradled Black Nationalism and nurtured political resistance to White supremacy and racial inequality.”The Biblical source of Ethiopianism, as mentioned earlier, was Psalms 68:31, which prophesied that “Princes shall come out of Egypt; Ethiopia shall soon stretch forth her hands unto God.  Sing unto God, ye kingdom of the earth.”

Since antiquity, Ethiopia has borne great meaning for the African world as a whole.  The most cherished quotation from the Bible among African people is the quotation from Psalms 68:31:

… Ethiopia shall soon stretch forth her hands to God.

Besides this most widely used biblical verse, Africans have identified over 60 verses that make reference to Ethiopia, mostly in positive terms. According to religious historian Albert Raboteau, it was “without doubt the most quoted verse in Black religious history.” The Ethiopian prophecy was directly associated with freedom from enslavement or racial discrimination for Africans in the Americas.  According to Frederickson elaborates the prophecy as follows:

“The suffering of captivity and slavery, a miraculous emancipation, the wandering in the wilderness, and the return to the promised land–to Ethiopia or Africa provided an intellectually and emotionally satisfying narrative structure for Black hopes and aspirations.  It also planted the seeds of Pan-Africanism.”

To J Mutero Chirenje, the psalm prophecy has become a foundational idea to base the struggle against oppression on a millennium of bliss and not wretchedness.

One of the earliest uses of the Psalms verse in recorded documents is in a prayer sermon given by Absalom Jones (1746-1818) in 1808.  In a prayer entitled “A Thanksgiving Prayer for the Abolition of the African Slave Trade,” Jones sermonizes, “May Ethiopia soon stretch out her hands unto thee, and lay hold of the gracious promise of the everlasting covenant.” Jones delivered his prayer at the time of the eclipse of the African gods, as Washington puts it, as a result, in his next sentence, he condemns indigenous African religions as false religions. In 1835, Maria Stewart (1803-1879), a popular abolitionist speaker, gave “A Prayer for the Children of Africa in America.”  Stewart uses the Psalms verse:

“Lord, Bestow upon them wise and understanding hearts.  Clothe us with humility of soul, and give us a becoming dignity of manners: may we imitate the character of the meek and lowly Jesus; and do thou grant that Ethiopia may soon stretch forth her hands unto thee.”

The Psalm verse becomes a guiding principle in the establishment and maintenance of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York City.  To the founders of this historic church, the religious institution was “part of the fulfillment of the Ethiopian “prophecy” contained in Psalm 68, verse 31, that ‘Ethiopia shall rise and stretch forth its hands to God.’”With regard to the name Abyssinia, the Church leaders believe that it is “a synonym for Ethiopia, a place referred to in the Bible where black Christians lived.”

The verse’s influence can also be deduced from the rationale given by Bishop Richard Allen, the founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Bethel Church in Philadelphia.  The Bishop evokes Psalm 68:31 for his decision to establish the first and independent Black Church in 1796 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

According to Hutton and Murrel, the idea of Ethiopia is associated with the spiritual or physical repatriation to Africa within the African Diaspora. Repatriation means struggle for freedom and the fulfillment of biblical references to African states and peoples. It also served as an important current in abolitionist thoughts. Embracing Ethiopianism means embracing the struggle for freedom and redemption.

Scholars, such as Scott and Frederickson argue that the idiom of Ethiopianism was central to the rise of a literature of Black political protest in the nineteenth century in the United States.  “In 1829 Robert Alexander Young, a Black New Yorker, published at his own expense The Ethiopian Manifesto, Issued in Defense of the Black Man’s Rights in the Scale of Universal Freedom.  Addressed not simply to American blacks but to all those proceeding in descent from the Ethiopian or African people, it paraphrased the biblical prophecy to make it an explicit affirmation of black nationality,” writes Frederickson.

Young’s revised conception of the biblical reference is as follows: “God  …hath said ‘surely hath the cries of the black, a most persecuted people, ascended to my throne and craved my mercy; now behold!  I will stretch forth mine hand and gather them to the palm, that they become unto me a people, and I unto them their God.’” He also predicted the coming of black people as a nation, thereby pioneering the conception of Black Nationalism.

Similar conception of Black Nationalism through the reformulation of the biblical reference was developed in 1830 when David Walker published his Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World.  In Appeal, he writes:

The God of the Ethiopians has been pleased to hear our moans and the day of our redemption from abject wretchedness draweth near, when we shall be enabled …to stretch forth our hands to the LORD Our GOD, but there must be a willingness on our part for GOD to do these things for us, for we may be assured that he will not take us by the hairs of our head against our will and desire, and drag us from our very, mean, low, and abject condition.”

Walker recognized the need for self-determination and the biblical text becomes handy to advance secular nationalist causes.

The Reverend Highland Garnet, in his 1848 address, the Past and Present Condition, and the Destiny of the Colored Race, interpreted the biblical prophecy as a sign of optimism.  Garnet writes,

“It is said that ‘Princes shall come out of Egypt, and Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God.’  It is thought by some that this divine declaration was fulfilled when Phillip baptized the converted eunuch of the household of Candes, the Queen of Ethiopians.  In this transaction, a part of the prophecy may have been fulfilled, and only a part.”

To Garnet, the complete fulfillment of the prophecy meant the liberation of African people from enslavement and their striving to become fully human again.  It is also important to note that Garnet’s Ethiopia was Meroitic Ethiopia, for he was making a reference of the Candaces or women rulers of Meroe. The biblical prophecy concerning Ethiopia was incorporated into African social, religious, cultural, political and economic movements. Magubane observes that for a people whose history had been deliberately starved of legend, Ethiopia linked the African, thanks to the intellectual works of the African Diaspora, to the glory of the ancient times.

Bishop Richard Allen was among the early Ethiopianists who learned and applied the civilizational accomplishments of Ancient Ethiopians in the broader sense to the struggle for emancipation and social equality.  In contrast, contemporary Ethiopianists, such as the Rastafarians, draw their inspiration from Aksumite classical civilization and monarchy.

The idea of Ethiopia may have attained “its highest level of intellectual complexity in the writings and sermons of Edward Blyden and Alexander Crummell.” Blyden and Crummell’s writings gave shape to Ethiopianist thoughts, which were increasingly tied to the causes of Liberia, in particular and West Africa, in general.  This means that they saw the redemption of Africa through the agency of Africanized spirituality and solidarity. They were also responsible for transforming the thoughts into a trans-Atlantic or black Atlantic perspective, which later was recognized as Pan-Africanism.  In fact, DuBois reinforced the position of his mentors, Blyden and Crummell, by delineating the tenets of modern Pan-Africanism.  He saw a role for African Americans in it.  He also led the struggle to decolonize Africa.  His Pan-Africanism was political and its aim was freedom from European domination and exploitation.

Symbolic Importance of Ethiopia and African Diaspora Thoughts

Ancient and contemporary Ethiopia, apart from their restorative and inspirational value for resistance and identity, they have served as a foundation and reference point to Pan-African movements and organizations throughout the African world.  Given the many references to them in so many circles, it is fair to say what I call the idea of Global Ethiopia was a catalyst for reputable and historic movements, such as Garveyism, Rastafarai movement, and Ethiopianism from Harlem to Kingston to Johannesburg.

Ancient Ethiopia’s reference in the Bible and ancient classic literatures generated a powerful symbol and a source of inspiration to African peoples throughout the world.  The aspiration for freedom linked the enslaved, colonized, and oppressed Africans to contemporary Ethiopia as well as a sacred symbol of African peoples’ power and independence.  Virginia Lee Jacobs, in her book Roots of Ras Tafari, outlines contemporary Ethiopia’s four symbolic significance: Ethiopia as a symbol for Africa’s struggle for independence from European colonialism; Ethiopia as the shrine enclosing the last sacred spark of African political freedom; Ethiopia as the impregnable rock of African resistance against white invasions; and Ethiopia as a living symbol, an incarnation of African independence. In other words, Ethiopia’s long and successful history of anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism has served as a model to fight against colonialism.

Joseph E. Harris further asserted that African Americans were inspired by the contemporary Ethiopian symbolism and they felt that Ethiopia was part of their heritage. Magubane added: “The quest for dignity and identity has for many years received a classic exemplification in the Blacks of the United States.” In his seminal work, A Study of Afro-American and Ethiopian Relations: 1896-1941, William R. Scott concluded that identification with Ethiopia has been a constant theme in African American national and religious thoughts.  This identification was so firmly embedded to inspire the most dramatic manifestation of Pan-Africanist sentiments in African American history.

Scott further articulates that ‘Ancient Ethiopia, meaning Nubia, gave African-American scholars searching for signs of greatness in their past ample proof of African achievement and represented a black civilization with which New World Africans could proudly identify.’ (Scott, p. 19)

George M. Fredrickson presents a thorough discussion of the religious nationalist movement known as Ethiopianism (in both its American and South African variants). Frederickson locates Ethiopia in time from the medieval period, a period in which the legend of Prester John spreads widely in Europe.  I associate the legend of Prester John with white Ethiopianism thereby reaffirming the global dimension of the idea of Ethiopia. The most recent reference to Ethiopia in the African Diaspora is in conjunction to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.  Frederickson’s Ethiopia is the present-day Ethiopia.

My approach is similar to Frederickson and the works of other historians, a focus on an intellectual history by looking into the writings of religious and cultural leaders.  According to William Finnegan, Frederickson relates the philosophical lineage of Ethiopianism to the reaction against the Enlightenment.

To Caribbean scholars, “Ethiopianism emerged as a strain of Black Political Thought in the nineteenth century.”

Modern Ethiopia and Pan-African Movements

As much as ancient Ethiopia inspired Pan-Africanist movements and organizations throughout the African world, contemporary Ethiopia’s history also has its significance in the dynamics of Pan-Africanism.  The connection between contemporary Ethiopia and the African Diaspora has been the subject of many scholars including Fikru Gebre Kidan.  In his important book Bond Without Blood: A History of Ethiopian and New World Black Relations, 1896 – 1991, Fikru presents historical documentation and interpretation on the nature and relevance of the relations from the time of the Battle of Adwa in 1896 to the end of the military government in 1991.Contemporary Ethiopia was particularly brought to the African world’s attention in 1896 when Ethiopia, an African country, defeated Italy, a European country, at the battle of Adwa.

According to Donald Levine, “the Battle of Adwa qualifies as a historic event which represented the first time since the beginning of European imperial expansion that a nonwhite nation had defeated a European power.” The Berlin Conference of 1885 found its most important challenge in this famous battle.  European strategy to carve Africa into their spheres of influence was halted by Emperor Menelik and Empress Taitu Betul at the Battle of Adwa.  The Europeans had no choice but to recognize this African (not European) power.

The African world celebrated and embraced this historic victory.  In the preface to the book An Introduction to African Civilizations With Main Currents in Ethiopian History, Huggins and Jackson wrote: “In Ethiopia, the military genius of Menelik II was in the best tradition of Piankhi and Sheshonk, rulers of ancient Egypt and Nubia, when he drove out the Italians in 1896 and maintained the liberties of that ancient free empire of Black men.”  Huggins and Jackson analyzed the victory not only in terms of its significance to the postcolonial African world, but also in terms of its linkage to the tradition of ancient African glories and victories.

Adwa symbolizes the aspirations and hopes of all oppressed people.  Adwa catapulted Pan-Africanism into the realm of the possible by reigniting the imaginations of Africans in their quest for freedom throughout the world.  Adwa foreshadowed the outcome of the anti-colonial struggle.  Adwa is about cultural resistance; it is about reaffirmation of African ways.  Adwa was possible not simply because of brilliant and courageous leadership, but also because of the people’s willingness to defend their motherland, regardless of ethnic, linguistic and religious differences.  Adwa was a story of common purpose and common destiny.  The principles established on the battlefield of Adwa must be understood and embraced for Africa to remain centered in its own histories, cultures and socioeconomic development.  We should always remember that Adwa was won for Africans. Adwa indeed is an African model of victory and resistance.

The 1930 crowning of Haile Selassie as an Emperor of Ethiopia was received with great enthusiasm in the African world, particularly in Harlem, USA, and Jamaica.  According to Horace Campbell, the crowning of Haile Selassie was “a welcome diversion from the constant reminder of the portrait of the White king and his wife, which graced the walls of all public buildings in Jamaica.” In fact, the news of Haile Selassie’s coronation provided the basis for the founding of the Rastafari movement, a dynamic and global cultural and religious movement.The movement became more solidified after the 1935 Italian invasion of Ethiopia.

African Americans of all classes, regions, genders, and beliefs expressed their opposition to and outrage over the 1935 Italian invasion of Ethiopia in various forms and various means.  The invasion aroused African Americans-from intellectuals to the common person in the street-more than any other Pan-African-oriented historical events or movements had done.  It fired the imagination of African Americans and brought to the surface the organic link to their ancestral land and people.

African Americans, for the most part, interpreted the 1935 Italo-Ethiopian war as a racial war.  They looked at the Italian aggressors as White aggressors against Black Ethiopians whom they considered ancestral relatives.  In Roy Ottley’s view,

“The Italian assault on Ethiopia, at long last, was some sort of tangible idealism-certainly a legitimate issue-around which the Black nationalist could rally, and, indeed, rally a great section of the Black population. …Almost immediately it put the nationalist organizations on sound agitational footing and increased their membership considerably.”

Contemporary Ethiopia sought partnership with European powers of the time.  She signed several treaties with France, England, and Italy beginning in 1889.  In 1903, a little more than a century ago, she established official relations with the United States of America. While Ethiopia regarded treaties and diplomatic relations as peaceful and internationally binding means to preserve her sovereignty and independence, the Europeans, particularly Italy, considered the treaties as a tactical weapon to colonize Ethiopia. As a result, Menelik II and Haile Selassie I had to expend their considerable energy and resources, including enormous human sacrifices, in order to ward off the European colonial ambition for Ethiopia.  It appeared that the strategy our leaders chose in order to preserve Ethiopia’s sovereignty was that of manipulating and cajoling European powers, seeking royal solidarity with the British Royal family, and signing concessions with France and Italy.

It also came at enormous sacrifice to the people of Eritrea.  Further, the African world did not enter into their vision or strategy until it was too late.  According to Mazrui and Tidy, Ethiopians did not regard themselves as Black Africans in this period. It was the invasion and rape of Ethiopia by Fascist Italy that forced them to “re-Africanize” themselves.

Even though Pan-African visions did not play a primary role among the contemporary Ethiopian leadership, attempts were made to recruit African American “farmers, engineers, mechanics, physicians, and dentists.” Ethiopia sent delegates to the United States for this purpose.  According to Roi Ottley, in 1927, Doctor Workineh Martin, later Ethiopian Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of St. James’ in London, came to the United States and invited the African Americans to settle in Ethiopia. Among those who accepted the invitation were Doctor John West of Washington, D.C., who was appointed as a personal physician of Emperor Haile Selassie and John Robinson, a Chicagoan, a personal aviator, and Rabbi Arnold Ford, and Mignon Ford. And a number of World War I veterans were given commissions in the Ethiopian Army.

Ras-Tafarai as Neo-Ethiopianist Global Movement

While the Ethiopianism of the nineteenth century is primarily a source to seek religious autonomy and self-affirmation, the Ethiopianism of the of the twentieth century gave birth to Ras Tafarai movement, a movement with both a secular and religious agenda with the intent of advancing the just causes of oppressed people.  In addition, Ras Tafarai movemnet is directly linked to Haile Selassie’s Ethiopia.

Even though the idea of Ethiopia surfaced in Jamaica as early as 1784 with the establishment of the Ethiopian Baptist Church, it was the coronation of Ras Tafari in 1930 as Emperor Haile Selassie that sealed the significance of Ethiopia to Jamaican Ethiopianism and, more specifically, to the Ras Tafari movement. As Bedasse puts it, “the crowning of a Black king in Ethiopia came to represent a radical reversal of the European Christianity to which Jamaican Blacks had been exposed and the support they found in the Book of Revelations (5:2,5 and 19:19-20) was proof that Haile Selassie was indeed the Messiah.  With the coming of the Messiah to the land of Africans, the roots of the Ras Tafarian religion were firmly planted.

The Ras Tafarians believe that the Jesus spoken of in the Bible is Haile Selassie. Bedasse provided an excellent explanation of the symbolic importance of Haile Selassie and Ethiopia to Jamaicans.  To her, “the crowning of Haile Selassie symbolized a religious triumph for the Blacks of Jamaica and it boosted their political stance against White domination.  It confirmed their interpretation of the Bible and it gave them a true sense of power and pride as they struggled to assert their worthiness in a colonial society.”  Over the last seventy years the perspectives of the Rastas has evolved and adjustments have been made in their views of Haile Selassie.  His centrality to the movement varies with mansions of the movement.  For instance, the 12 Tribes of Israel acknowledge his importance to the movement, but they no longer see him as a Jesus-like figure.  Noting the diversity of doctrines and perspectives in the movement, Salter writes: Rastafari’s central features are not necessarily found in either beliefs or practices, both of which appear rather free flowing, unconstrained, and at times, spontaneous.”

Conclusion

With regard to the question of why African Diaspora thoughts remain short of bringing total freedom, including social, economic and political progress, the issue may be traced back to the fact that the idea of Ethiopia was not cultivated in conjunction with the intellectualization of enslavement and its consequences.  In other words, Ethiopianism may have offered some reprieve and avenues of cultural progress, but it was not sufficient by itself to bring about complete liberation.  In other words, in the new century, we have to come up with an intellectual equation that includes, among other things, both the idea and detailed documentation and interpretation of enslavement, from the shores of Africa, to Middle Passage to the plantations of the Americas.  It is only by combining the experience and knowledge of colonialism with the idea of Ethiopianism that we might be able to see the unscrambling of the African World.

The highest stage of Ethiopianism among African Americans, in my estimation, is the founding of the black churches, which are significant institutions within the Black community.  The black churches have served as one of the most secure safe spaces for the Black people to maintain their social coherence, individual development, and spiritual sustenance both in the Antebellum and Post Antebellum periods.  Biblical verses are reconfigured in the discourse and the struggle against slavery and racism.  Richard Allen, Absalom Jones, Frederick Douglass, Maria Stewart and other prominent Black intellectual thinkers were versatile in their use of verses.

In the Caribbean, the highest stage of Ethiopianism is Rastafari movement, a particularly counter-cultural global movement.  One of its main attractions is Reggae music, which is widely popular throughout the world.  Reggae music has become a new banner to young people in the industrialized world against the push of globalization. In Germany, Japan, Russia, the United States, Poland, Israel, the youth flocks out in thousands to attend Reggae concerts. Maureen Warner Lewis observes that the “cultural emphasis of Rastafarianism has allowed it powerful popular media by which to promulgate its orientation towards Africa as motherland.”The “distinctive Rastafarian lifestyle, plastic arts and musical expression” are instrumental in African cultural revitalization and in establishing new and positive relations between Africans and the youth of Europe, Asia and the Americas.

The intellectuals of the nineteenth century succeeded in transforming biblical verses into an idea of liberation.  It is up to the intellectuals of the contemporary period to examine the notion of globality in the context of political and economic power in relation to the people of Africa and the African Diaspora.

Main Image: A young boy carrying an Ethiopian flag with an insignia of lion of Judah at a Rastafari festival in Alliance Ethio Française, Addis Ababa, March 2012. Ethiopia Observer

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