history of Eritrea

Prehistory and early kingdoms

Eritrea has been settled since prehistoric times. The inhabitants of the area had contact with other civilizations of the ancient world through trade. The kingdom of Aksum developed as a local power by 100 ce and, by the end of the 4th century, ruled the northern stretches of the Ethiopian Plateau and the eastern lowlands. An important trade route led from the port of Adulis, near modern Zula, to the city of Aksum, the capital, located in what is now the Ethiopian province of Tigray.

After extending its power at times as far afield as modern Egypt and Yemen, Aksum began to decline into obscurity in the 6th century ce. Beginning in the 12th century, however, the Ethiopian Zagwe and Solomonid dynasties held sway to a fluctuating extent over the entire plateau and the Red Sea coast. Eritrea’s central highlands, known as the mereb melash (“land beyond the Mereb River”), were the northern frontier region of the Ethiopian kingdoms and were ruled by a governor titled bahr negash (“lord of the sea”). The control exercised by the crown over this region was never firm, and it became even more tenuous as the centre of Ethiopian power moved steadily southward to Gonder and Shewa. Highland Eritrea became a vassal fiefdom of the lords of Tigray, who were seldom on good terms with the dominant Amhara branch of the Ethiopian family.

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Eritrea: History

Rule by regional powers and Italian expansion into Eritrea

Off the plateau, the pastoralist peoples in the west and north knew no foreign master until the early 19th century, when the Egyptians invaded Sudan and raided deep into the Eritrean lowlands. The Red Sea coast, having its strategic and commercial importance, was contested by many powers. In the 16th century the Ottomans occupied the Dahlak Archipelago and then Massawa, where they maintained with occasional interruption a garrison for more than three centuries. Also in the 16th century, Eritrea as well as Ethiopia was affected by the invasions of Aḥmad Grāñ, the Muslim leader of the sultanate of Adal. After the expulsion of Aḥmad’s forces, the Ottomans temporarily occupied even more of Eritrea’s coastal area. In 1865 the Egyptians obtained Massawa from the Ottomans. From there they pushed inland to the plateau, until in 1875 an Egyptian force that reached the Mereb River was annihilated by Ethiopian forces.

Meanwhile, the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 had made the Red Sea a scene of rivalry among the world’s most powerful states. Between 1869 and 1880 the Italian Rubattino Navigation Company purchased from the local Afar sultan stretches of the Red Sea coast adjoining the village of Asseb. In 1882 these acquisitions were transferred to the Italian state, and in 1885 Italian troops landed at Massawa, Asseb, and other locations. There was no resistance by the Egyptians at Massawa, and protests made by the Ethiopians were ignored. Italian forces then systematically spread out from Massawa toward the highlands.

The Italians’ expansion onto the plateau was initially opposed by Emperor Yohannes IV, the only Tigray to wear the Ethiopian crown in modern times, but Yohannes’s successor, Menilek II, in return for weapons that he needed to fight possible rivals, acquiesced to Italian occupation of the region north of the Mereb. In the Treaty of Wichale, signed on May 2, 1889, Menilek recognized “Italian possessions in the Red Sea,” and on January 1, 1890, the Italian colony of Eritrea was officially proclaimed. From Eritrea the Italians launched several incursions into Ethiopia, only to be decisively defeated by Menilek’s army at the Battle of Adwa on March 1, 1896. Menilek did not pursue the defeated enemy across the Mereb. Soon afterward he signed the Treaty of Addis Ababa, obtaining Italian recognition of Ethiopia’s sovereignty in return for his recognition of Italian rule over Eritrea.

Rule by Italy

In precolonial times there were no towns on the Eritrean plateau, urban centres being limited to the Red Sea coast. Under Italian rule, however, Eritrea’s urban sector flourished. Tens of thousands of Italians arrived, bringing with them modern skills and a new lifestyle. Asmara grew into a charming city in the Mediterranean style, the port of Massawa was modernized and the port of Asseb improved, and a number of smaller towns appeared on the plateau. Road and rail construction linked the various regions of the colony, and a modest manufacturing sector also appeared, in which Eritreans acquired industrial skills.

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At the same time, a sizable portion of Eritrea’s best agricultural land was reserved for Italian farmers (although only a few actually settled on the land), and a small plantation sector was established to grow produce for the urban market. Eritrea’s population grew rapidly during this period. Combined with the appropriation of land for Italian use, population growth created a shortage of land for Eritrean farmers. This in turn stimulated a drift to the cities, which further expanded the urban population and produced an Eritrean working class.

Still, Eritrea had no valuable resources for exploitation and was not a wealth-producing colony for Italy. In fact, the colony was subsidized by the Italians, an extraneous factor that gave the local economy an artificial glow. Investment in education for Eritreans was negligible. There were very few schools for them, and these were limited to the primary level. Also, Eritreans were not employed in the colonial service except as labourers and soldiers. As preparations for the Italian invasion of Ethiopia got underway in the mid-1930s, several thousand Eritreans were recruited to serve in the invading army.

From Italian to Ethiopian control

Italy’s invasion and occupation of Ethiopia beginning in 1935—including Ethiopia’s annexation and incorporation into Italian East Africa in 1936—marked the last chapter in Italian colonial history. The chapter came to an end with the eviction of Italy from the Horn of Africa by the British in 1941, during World War II. The following decade, during which Eritrea remained under British administration, was a period of intense political and diplomatic activity that shaped the future of Eritrea.

Landlocked Ethiopia, coveting Eritrea’s two seaports, launched an early campaign to annex the former colony, claiming that it had always been part of Ethiopia’s domain. Lobbying of the Allied powers was carried out, and within Eritrea, with the help of Ethiopian Orthodox clergy, support for annexation was mobilized on the basis of religious loyalty. In order to promote the union of Eritrea with Ethiopia, a Unionist Party was formed in 1946; it was financed and guided from the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.

Eritrea’s Muslims had every good reason to oppose union with Ethiopia, where Christianity was the official religion and Muslims suffered discrimination in many areas of life. In order to counter Christian mobilization for union, a Muslim League was founded in 1947 to campaign for Eritrean independence. Thus, although there were some Christians who favoured independence and a few Muslims who were favourable to union with Ethiopia, the political division was drawn largely along sectarian lines.

Adoption of the federal scheme

In 1950 the United Nations (UN), under the prompting of the United States, resolved to join Eritrea to Ethiopia within two years. The proposed federation would provide Eritrea with autonomy under its own constitution and elected government. Elections to a new Eritrean Assembly in 1952 gave the Unionist Party the largest number of seats but not a majority; the party thus formed a government in coalition with a Muslim faction. The Eritrean constitution, prepared by the UN in consultation with Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia, was adopted by the Eritrean Assembly on July 10, 1952, and ratified by Haile Selassie on August 11. The act of federation was ratified by the emperor on September 11, and British authorities officially relinquished control on September 15.

Failure of the federal scheme

The federal scheme was short-lived, mainly because the imperial government in Addis Ababa was unwilling to abide by its provisions. First, the Eritrean constitution sought to establish an equilibrium between ethnic and religious groups. It made Tigrinya and Arabic the official languages of Eritrea, and it allowed local communities to choose the language of education for their children. In the spirit of the constitution, it became a practice to ensure parity between Christians and Muslims in appointment to state office. This delicate balance was destroyed by Ethiopian interference, and Muslims were the initial losers, as Arabic was eliminated from state education and Muslims were squeezed out of public employment.

Furthermore, the Ethiopians were anxious to eliminate any traces of separatism in Eritrea, and to that end they harassed the leaders of the independence movement until many of them fled abroad. With the collaboration of their Unionist allies and in express violation of the constitution, they also suppressed all attempts to form autonomous Eritrean organizations. Political parties were banned in 1955, trade unions were banned in 1958, and in 1959 the name Eritrean Government was changed to “Eritrean Administration” and Ethiopian law was imposed. Eventually, even Ethiopia’s Eritrean allies were alienated—by crude intervention in the running of the Eritrean Administration, by financial disputes between Asmara and Addis Ababa, and by mounting pressure on the Eritreans to renounce autonomy. The federation was already dead when, on November 14, 1962, the Ethiopian parliament and Eritrean Assembly voted unanimously for the abolition of Eritrea’s federal status, making Eritrea a simple province of the Ethiopian empire. Soon afterward Tigrinya was banned in education; it was replaced by Amharic, which at the time was the official language of Ethiopia.

Beginning of armed revolt

Muslims had been the first to suffer from Ethiopia’s intervention in Eritrea, and it was they who formed the first opposition movement. In 1960, leaders of the defunct independence movement who were then living in exile announced the formation of the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF). The founders, all Muslims, were led by Idris Mohammed Adam, a leading political figure in Eritrea in the 1940s. By the mid-1960s the ELF was able to field a small guerrilla force in the western plain of Eritrea, and thus it began a war that was to last nearly three decades. In the early years the ELF drew support from Muslim communities in the western and eastern lowlands as well as the northern hills. It also sought support from Sudan, Syria, Iran, and other Islamic states; used Arabic as its official language; and adopted Arab nomenclature in its organization. Ethiopian authorities portrayed the movement as an Arab tool and sought to rally Eritrean Christians to oppose it. Deteriorating economic and political conditions in Eritrea, however, combined to produce the opposite result.

During the 1930s and ’40s the Eritrean economy had been stimulated by Italian colonial activity and by the special conditions created by World War II. After the war the local economy deflated, and it remained stagnant during the entire period of federation with Ethiopia. Many thousands of Eritreans were forced to emigrate to Ethiopia and the Middle East in search of employment. The suppression of the nascent trade-union movement further embittered this class, and many Eritrean workers—Muslims and Christians alike—rallied to the nationalist movement. In addition, the banning of Tigrinya in state education helped to turn an entire generation of Eritrean Christian students toward nationalism. Christians began to join the ELF in significant numbers at the end of the 1960s. Among them were students who had become politically radicalized in the Ethiopian student movement, which itself became a centre of opposition to the regime of Haile Selassie in the 1960s and ’70s.

The spreading ELF-PLF revolution

The ELF was now able to extend its operations to the central highlands of Eritrea—the home of the Tigray. However, the arrival of the radical students coincided with the emergence of a serious rift between the leadership of the ELF, which was permanently resident in Cairo, and the rank and file, which remained in the field. The newcomers joined the opposition to the leadership, and in 1972 several groups that had defected from the ELF joined forces to form the Eritrean Liberation Front–People’s Liberation Forces (ELF–PLF). For several years the two rival organizations fought each other as well as the Ethiopians. After a series of splits and mergers, the ELF–PLF came under the control of former students, among whom Christians predominated, and was renamed the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF), a Marxist and secular organization.

The EPLF had made its presence felt by 1974, when the imperial regime in Ethiopia collapsed. While a power struggle for the succession was waged in Addis Ababa, the two Eritrean fronts liberated most of Eritrea. By 1977 the nationalist revolution seemed on the verge of victory. Yet it was not to be. A military dictatorship—also espousing Marxism—emerged in Addis Ababa, and, armed and assisted by the Soviet bloc, the new Ethiopian regime was able to regain most of Eritrea in 1978. Warfare on a scale unprecedented in sub-Saharan Africa raged for the next two decades. The Ethiopians made enormous efforts with massive land attacks and heavy weaponry, but they had no success against the small and lightly armed guerrilla forces.

The violence of war and indiscriminate oppression in their homeland turned most Eritreans against Ethiopia, thereby producing a steady stream of young recruits for the nationalist movement. Throughout the 1980s the fighting was carried out by the EPLF, which by 1981 had succeeded in eliminating the ELF and had emerged as the unchallenged champion of Eritrean nationalism. In the latter part of the decade, the Soviet Union terminated its military aid to Ethiopia. Unable to find another patron and faced with armed rebellion in other parts of the country, the regime in Addis Ababa began to falter. The final act occurred in 1991, when a rebel military offensive, led by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (a group that had long been fighting for the autonomy of Tigray in Ethiopia), swept toward the capital. The Ethiopian army disintegrated, and in May the EPLF assumed complete control of Eritrea.

Three decades of war had produced among Eritreans a sense of unity and solidarity that they had not known before. Indeed, an entire generation had come of age during the struggle for independence, which was now to become a reality. The new regime in Ethiopia supported Eritrea’s independence, and a separation was effected amicably. In a referendum held two years after liberation, on April 23–25, 1993, the overwhelming majority of Eritreans voted for independence. On May 21 Isaias Afwerki, the secretary-general of the EPLF, was made president of a transitional government, and on May 24 he proclaimed Eritrea officially independent.