Almost unnoticed, in the wake of the overthrow of Emperor Haile-Selassie, the coming to power of the military, and the ongoing independence struggle in Eritrea, a band of students launched an insurrection from the northern Ethiopian province of Tigray. Calling themselves the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), they built close relations with Tigray's poverty-stricken peasants and on this basis liberated the province in 1989, and formed an ethnic-based coalition of opposition forces that assumed state power in 1991. This book chronicles that history and focuses in particular on the relationship of the revolutionaries with Ethiopia's peasants.

Revolution, civil wars, and guerilla warfare wracked Ethiopia during three turbulent decades at the end of the 20th century. Here, Tareke brings to life the leading personalities in the domestic political struggles, strategies of the warring parties international actors, and key battles.

Between the years 1964 and 1974, Ethiopian post-secondary students studying at home, in Europe, and in North America produced a number of journals. In these they explored the relationship between social theory and social change within the project of building a socialist Ethiopia. Ethiopia in Theory examines the literature of this student movement, together with the movement’s afterlife in Ethiopian politics and society, in order to ask: what does it mean to write today about the appropriation and indigenisation of Marxist and mainstream social science ideas in an Ethiopian and African context; and, importantly, what does the archive of revolutionary thought in Africa teach us about the practice of critical theory more generally?

This is a cultural history of the Ethiopian revolution that highlights the role of modernist Marxist ideas as they interacted with local, mostly rural, traditions.

A penetrating analysis, written with a rare combination of passion and balanced assessment...Gebru's interpretation is subtle and persuasive and his arguments break new ground' - Times Higher Education Supplement This highly praised study of popular protest and resistance in Ethiopia focuses on three important peasant-based rebellions that occurred between 1941 and 1970.'

Field study of post-revolutionary agrarian reform and social change in rural area Ethiopia - looks at the agrarian structure and social classes prior to 1975; comments on land reform legislation adopted up to 1982, land nationalization and land allotment, impact on use of agricultural technology, agricultural price, agricultural taxation, and emerging trends in agricultural development: discusses role, structure and leadership of farmers associations, etc. Bibliography and statistical tables.