Focusing on the issue of the Oromo national struggle for liberation, statehood, and democracy, this book critically examines the dialectical relationship between Ethiopian colonialism and Oromo culture, epistemology, politics, and ideology in the context of the accumulated collective grievances of the Oromo nation. Specifically, the book identifies chains of sociological and historical factors that facilitated the development of Oromummaa (Oromo nationalism) and the Oromo national movement. It demonstrates how the Oromo national movement has been challenging and transforming Ethiopian imperial politics, tracks the different forms and phases of the movement, and maps out its future direction. Currently, the Oromo are the largest ethno-national group and political minority in the Ethiopian Empire. They were colonized and incorporated into Ethiopia as colonial subjects in the last decades of the 19th century through the alliance of Abyssinian/Ethiopian colonialism and European imperialism. Since their colonization, the Oromo people have been treated as second-class citizens and have been economically exploited and culturally and politically suppressed. Despite the fact that Oromo resistance to Ethiopian colonialism existed during the process of their colonization and subjugation, it was only in the 1960s and 1970s that Oromo nationalists initiated organized efforts to liberate their people. Presently, Oromo nationalism plays a central role in Ethiopian politics.

First full-length history of the Oromo 1300-1700; explains their key part in the medieval Christian kingdom and demonstrates their importance in shaping Ethiopian history.

In Locating Politics in Ethiopia's Irreecha Ritual Serawit Bekele Debele gives an account of politics and political processes in contemporary Ethiopia as manifested in the annual ritual performance. Mobilizing various sources such as archives, oral accounts, conversations, videos, newspapers, and personal observations, Debele critically analyses political processes and how they are experienced, made sense of and articulated across generational, educational, religious, gender and ethnic differences as well as political persuasions. Moreover, she engages Irreecha in relation to the hugely contested meaning making processes attached to the Thanksgiving ritual which has now become an integral part of Oromo national identity.

The book examines, compares, and contrasts the African American and Oromo movements by locating them in the global context, and by showing how life chances changed for the two peoples and their descendants as the modern world system became more complex and developed. Since the same global system that created racialized and exploitative structures in African American and Oromo societies also facilitated the struggles of these two peoples, this book demonstrates the dynamic interplay between social structures and human agencies in the system. African Americans in the United States of America and Oromos in the Ethiopian Empire developed their respective liberation movements in opposition to racial/ethnonational oppression, cultural and colonial domination, exploitation, and underdevelopment. By going beyond its focal point, the book also explores the structural limit of nationalism, and the potential of revolutionary nationalism in promoting a genuine multicultural democracy.