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Arbegnoch
The Arbegnoch () were Ethiopian resistance fighters in Italian East Africa from 1936 until 1941. They were known to the Italians as shifta. Organisation The Patriot movement was mostly based in the rural Shewa, Gondar and Gojjam provinces, though it drew support from all over occupied Ethiopia. Several hundred Eritreans also participated. Small cells operated in Addis Ababa and other towns, known as ''Wust Arbagna'' (Insider Patriots). The Black Lions took part in the movement. In 1937/1938, there were an estimated 25,000 active Patriots in Ethiopia. The average band of resistance fighters was estimated in 1938 to have included 400 to 500 members, depending on the agricultural season. Christians The Patriots had the near-total support of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. The majority of participants were Christian highlanders. Ethiopian Muslims were less involved in the Italo-Ethiopian conflict and sometimes considered the Christians as much their enemies as the Italians. Relat ...
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Second Italo-Ethiopian War
The Second Italo-Ethiopian War, also referred to as the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, was a war of aggression which was fought between Italy and Ethiopia from October 1935 to February 1937. In Ethiopia it is often referred to simply as the Italian Invasion ( am, ጣልያን ወረራ), and in Italy as the Ethiopian War ( it, Guerra d'Etiopia). It is seen as an example of the expansionist policy that characterized the Axis powers and the ineffectiveness of the League of Nations before the outbreak of the Second World War. On 3 October 1935, two hundred thousand soldiers of the Italian Army commanded by Marshal Emilio De Bono attacked from Eritrea (then an Italian colonial possession) without prior declaration of war. At the same time a minor force under General Rodolfo Graziani attacked from Italian Somalia. On 6 October, Adwa was conquered, a symbolic place for the Italian army because of the defeat at the Battle of Adwa by the Ethiopian army during the First Italo-Ethiopian War ...
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Abebe Aregai
''Ras'' Abebe Aregai (18 August 1903 – 17 December 1960) was an Ethiopian military commander who, during the Italian occupation, led a group of resistance fighters (collectively known as the ''Arbegnoch'' or "Patriots") that operated in Menz and Shewa. The British IWM labeled Abebe “one of the bravest men in the modern world.” He later served as Prime Minister of Ethiopia from 27 November 1957 until his death. He was a victim of the unsuccessful 1960 Ethiopian coup. Abebe was the grandchild of Ras Gobana Dacche, whose 1880s military expeditions led to the expansion of Ethiopia’s modern borders. Early life Abebe was born on 18 August 1903 in the village of Woira Amba-Jirru in northern Shewa. His father was Aregai Bechere, an ethnic Amhara, and his mother was Askale Gobena, an ethnic Oromo and the daughter of ''Ras'' Gobena Dacche. He served in the ''Kebur Zabagna'', rising to the rank of Major before transferring to the police, and by 1935 had been granted the t ...
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Haile Mariam Mammo
Haile Mariam Mammo (1904 – 6 June 1938), alternatively known as Lej Hayla Maryam Mammo, was an Ethiopian soldier and a leader of the Patriot movement (''Arbegnoch'') during the Italian occupation of Ethiopia. He fought in the Second Italo-Ethiopian War in 1936 before becoming a resistance leader in his native province of Shewa. He was mortally wounded in battle with the Italians. Biography Haile Mariam Mammo was born in 1904 in the village of Ya-Ya Quecama, Selale district, Shewa, Ethiopia. He was educated at a traditional church school in his village before attending the Tafari Makonnen School in Addis Ababa. Haile Mariam worked as a farmer in adulthood. He later fathered a son, Zewdie. Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935, initiating the Second Italo-Ethiopian War. Haile Mariam was wounded on 31 March 1936 during the Battle of Maychew. After the Italian victory there, he withdrew to his native region and managed to recruit about 500 locals to his cause. He orchestrated an ambush on ...
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Italian East Africa
Italian East Africa ( it, Africa Orientale Italiana, AOI) was an Italian colony in the Horn of Africa. It was formed in 1936 through the merger of Italian Somalia, Italian Eritrea, and the newly occupied Ethiopian Empire, conquered in the Second Italo-Ethiopian War. Italian East Africa was divided into six governorates. Eritrea and Somalia, Italian possessions since the 1880s, were enlarged with captured Ethiopian territory and became the Eritrea and Somalia Governorates. The remainder of "Italian Ethiopia" consisted the Harar, Galla-Sidamo, Amhara, and Scioa Governorates. Fascist colonial policy had a divide and conquer characteristic, and favoured the Oromos, the Somalis and other Muslims in an attempt to weaken their ties to the Amharas who had been the ruling ethnic group in the Ethiopian Empire. During the Second World War, Italian East Africa was occupied by a British-led force including colonial units and Ethiopian guerrillas in November 1941. After the war, I ...
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Shifta
Shifta is a term used in East Africa meaning ''rebel'', ''outlaw'', or ''bandit''. The Swahili word was loaned from the Somali shufta during the Shifta War, which is in turn derived from Amharic ሽፍታ (šəfta). Historically, the shifta served as a local militia in particularly remote, rural and often lawless parts of the Horn of Africa. The word shifta can be translated as "bandit" or "outlaw", but can include anyone who rebels against an authority or an institution that is seen as illegitimate, like the Arbegnoch guerillas during the Italian occupation of Ethiopia. Concept The term shifta has positive and negative connotations, that of a common bandit and that of a revolutionary; both concepts being distinct, but not necessarily mutually exclusive. They are often considered as highly respected, politically minded outlaws struggling for social order or a political cause. When applied in this context, ''shiftinnet'' (being a shifta) in its diverse forms has a social function ...
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Resistance During World War II
Resistance movements during World War II occurred in every occupied country by a variety of means, ranging from non-cooperation to propaganda, hiding crashed pilots and even to outright warfare and the recapturing of towns. In many countries, resistance movements were sometimes also referred to as The Underground. The resistance movements in World War II can be broken down into two primary politically polarized camps: the internationalist and usually Communist Party-led anti-fascist resistance that existed in nearly every country in the world; and the various fascist/anti-communist nationalist resistance groups in Nazi- or Soviet-occupied countries that opposed the foreign fascists and the communists, often switching sides depending on the vicissitudes of the war and which side of the ever-moving military front lines they found themselves on. Among the most notable resistance movements were the Polish resistance movement in World War II, Polish Resistance (including the Polish ...
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Ankober
Ankober (), formerly known as Ankobar, is a town in central Ethiopia. Located in the North Shewa Zone of the Amhara Region, it's perched on the eastern escarpment of the Ethiopian Highlands at an elevation of about . It is to the east of Debre Birhan and about northeast of Addis Ababa. Ankober was formerly the capital of the Ethiopian kingdom of Shewa founded by Yekuno Amlak in the thirteenth century. Buildings that survive from the Shewa period include the Kidus Mikael Church, built by Sahle Selassie. According to Philip Briggs, all that survives of Menelik's palace, which he had built on the site of his father's palace, is "one long stone-and-mortar wall measuring some 1.5m high." Briggs comments that it is "difficult to say why this one wall should have survived virtually intact when the rest of the palace crumbled into virtual oblivion." Ankober is also known as where the endemic Ankober serin was first observed by ornithologists in 1979. History Ankober may have forme ...
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Oromo People
The Oromo (pron. Oromo language, Oromo: ''Oromoo'') are a Cushitic people, Cushitic ethnic group native to the Oromia region of Ethiopia and parts of Northern Kenya, who speak the Oromo language (also called ''Afaan Oromoo'' or ''Oromiffa''), which is part of the Cushitic languages, Cushitic branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are the largest List of ethnic groups in Ethiopia, ethnic group in Ethiopia and represent a large portion of Ethiopia's population. The Oromo people traditionally used the ''gadaa'' system as the primary form of governance.Harold G. MarcuA History of Ethiopia University of California Press (1994) pp. 55 Google Books A leader is elected by the ''gadaa'' system and their term lasts eight years, with an election taking place at the end of those eight years. Although most modern Oromos are Muslims and Christians, about 3% practice Waaqeffanna, the native ancient monotheistic religion of Oromos. Origins and nomenclature The Oromo people are one o ...
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Amharic
Amharic ( or ; (Amharic: ), ', ) is an Ethiopian Semitic language, which is a subgrouping within the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic languages. It is spoken as a first language by the Amharas, and also serves as a lingua franca for all other populations residing in major cities and towns of Ethiopia. The language serves as the official working language of the Ethiopian federal government, and is also the official or working language of several of Ethiopia's federal regions. It has over 31,800,000 mother-tongue speakers, with more than 25,100,000 second language speakers. Amharic is the most widely spoken language in Ethiopia, and the second most spoken mother-tongue in Ethiopia (after Oromo). Amharic is also the second largest Semitic language in the world (after Arabic). Amharic is written left-to-right using a system that grew out of the Geʽez script. The segmental writing system in which consonant-vowel sequences are written as units is called an ''abugida'' (). The ...
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Reappropriation
In linguistics, reappropriation, reclamation, or resignification is the cultural process by which a group reclaims words or artifacts that were previously used in a way disparaging of that group. It is a specific form of a semantic change (i.e. change in a word's meaning). Linguistic reclamation can have wider implications in the fields of discourse and has been described in terms of personal or sociopolitical empowerment. Characteristics A ''reclaimed'' or ''reappropriated'' word is a word that was at one time pejorative but has been brought back into acceptable usage, usually starting within its original target, i.e. the communities that were pejoratively described by that word, and later spreading to the general populace as well. Some of the terms being reclaimed have originated as non-pejorative terms that over time became pejorative. Reclaiming them can be seen as restoring their original intent. This, however, does not apply to all such words as some were used in a der ...
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Ethiopian Patriots In 1941 Crossing The Omo
Ethiopians are the native inhabitants of Ethiopia, as well as the global diaspora of Ethiopia. Ethiopians constitute several component ethnic groups, many of which are closely related to ethnic groups in neighboring Eritrea and other parts of the Horn of Africa. The first documented use of the name "Ethiopia" from Greek name "Αἰθίοψ" (Ethiopian) was in the 4th century during the reign of Aksumite king Ezana. There were three ethnolinguistic groups in the Kingdom of Aksum; Semitic, Cushitic, and Nilo-Saharan (ancestors of the modern-day Kunama and Nara). The Kingdom of Aksum remained a geopolitically influential entity until the pillage of its capital — also named Axum — in the 10th century by Queen Gudit. Nevertheless, the core Aksumite civilization was preserved and continued into the successive Zagwe dynasty. By this time, new ethnic groups emerged – the Tigrayans and Amharas. During the Solomonic period, the latter established major political and cultural in ...
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Debre Berhan
Debre Birhan () is a city in central Ethiopia. Located in the Semien Shewa Zone of Amhara Region, about 120 kilometers north east of Addis Ababa on Ethiopian highway 2, the town has an elevation of 2,840 meters, which makes it the highest town of this size in Africa. It was an early capital of Ethiopia and afterwards, with Ankober and Angolalla, was one of the capitals of the kingdom of Shewa. Today, it is the administrative center of the Semien Shewa Zone of the Amhara Region. History Origins Debre Birhan was founded by Emperor Zara Yaqob, in response to a miraculous light that was seen in the sky at the time. Believing this was a sign from God showing his approval for the death by stoning of a group of heretics 38 days before, the emperor ordered a church built on the site, and later constructed an extensive palace nearby, and a second church, dedicated to Saint Cyriacus. Zara Yaqob spent 12 of the last 14 years of his life in Debre Birhan. Historian Richard Pankhur ...
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