Asafa Jaalata Podcasts

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    Prof. Asafa Jalata Department of Sociology, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, USA.

    Abstract
    In his book, Brian J. Yates (2020) overgeneralizes the experiences
    of a few Oromo collaborator individuals from the Tulama and
    Wallo Oromo to the affairs of these Oromo groups. It claims that
    the Tulama and Wallo Oromo participated in the construction of
    the modern Ethiopian state between 1855 and 1913 and, in the
    process, became Habasha by abandoning their Oromo culture and
    identity. If the colonization of peoples would transform the
    cultures and uniqueness of the conquered peoples, today, the
    entire world population would have become the English and the
    French by rejecting their respective cultures and identities. But
    colonialism only creates collaborative classes from the dominated
    population groups to use them as intermediaries to facilitate the
    exploitation and oppression of the subaltern groups. The Tulama
    and Wallo Oromo case is not different. The Oromo intermediaries
    from these Oromo groups were assimilated to the
    Amhara/Habasha culture and state to promote their interests and
    the interest of their colonial masters at the cost of the Oromo
    masses. By using the critical and political economy analytical
    approaches, this review essay debunks the claims that the author
    of the book makes by ignoring the history, culture, and identity of
    the Oromo people, which have been suffering
    under Habasha colonialism in general, and Amhara colonialism in
    particular, for more than a century.
    Keywords
    Tulama and Wallo Oromo, Oromia, Gobana and Menelik, Habasha, Competing
    Nationalisms, Oromo, Amhara-Tigray, The Manz/Shawa Kingdom, The Ethiopian
    Colonial State
    Share and Cite:
    Jalata, A. (2021) Review Essay: Are the Tulama and Wallo
    Oromo Habasha?. Sociology Mind, 11, 125-146. doi: 10.4236/sm.2021.114010.
    1. Introduction

    The author alleges that the Northern Oromo, namely the Tulama and Wallo
    Oromo, became Habasha through cultural and political interactions with the
    Amhara kingdom of Manz, northern Shawa, by abandoning their cultural norms
    and Oromo identity and formed the modern Ethiopian state between 1855 and
    1913. His specific objective is to liberate the Tulama and Wallo Oromo history
    from Oromo nationalism, which mobilizes the larger Oromo society. By including
    them in the Habasha peoplehood or community, Yates claims to reject ethno-racial
    categories that essentialize Oromo and Amhara histories and undermine the reality
    of “the multiethnic Habasha cultural community in creating modern Ethiopia.”
    The author criticizes Ethiopian studies for using ethno-racial categories and Oromo
    studies to silence “the Northern Oromo groups who played a role in creating
    modern Ethiopia.” By rejecting the concept of ethnonational or ethnic categories
    such as Oromo, Amhara, and Tigrayan, Yates defines the Habasha as a cultural
    community. However, Yates does not explain how the relationship between the
    indigenous Oromo and the expanding Amhara gradually emerged and evolved into
    conflict, series of wars, colonization, and contradictions. He considers the Tulama
    and Wallo Oromo as raw material from which the Habasha constructed their
    peoplehood, nation, and state. If, as he claims, both the Northern Oromo and the
    Amhara and Tigray ethnonational groups, which he calls the Habasha, jointly
    constructed the Ethiopian state, why has this state continued to entirely reflect the
    Amhara culture, identity, language, and religion? Or did the Oromo culture,
    identity, religion, and language lack the substance needed to construct a state?

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