Anybody familiar with ancient Egypt is pretty
well aware that the Nile River is easily one of the most OP water features in History. But head a little further down and you’ll
quickly find that there’s a lot more to East Africa than our old pyramid-bois. East of where the Nile forks between its White
and Blue streams is where we’ll find Ethiopia. Consistently one of the most intriguing and
puzzling civilizations in African History, Ethiopia is an outlier in all kinds of ways,
like having a native Christian tradition as old as Constantine, and being the only African
country to dodge colonization. That is quite the combo! So, to find out how it happened, Let’s do
some History! This Video is Brought to you by our amazing
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Patreon.com/OSP Ethiopian “History” in a neatly traceable
form starts with the Kingdom of Aksum in the first century AD, but Human activity in Ethiopia
in general is… way the hell older, because the first people in Ethiopia also have the
distinction of being the first people. It’s here that researchers discovered the
famous Australopithecus Afarensis skeleton “Lucy”, and we have records of a Kingdom
of D’mt starting sometime in the 10th century BC, probably, but the archaeology is slim
so our knowledge of them is slimmer. Whether D’mt evolved into early Aksum or
whether it collapsed and the Aksumites rose out of it is honestly anyone’s guess. According to Ethiopian legend, which isn’t
the same as history, but is still extremely valuable, the first proper Ethiopian emperor
has his origins in Biblical times. Specifically, the Queen of Sheba had traveled
up the Red Sea to the court of King Solomon in Israel, and their son Menelik became the
first king of Ethiopia. This origin story is essentially The cultural
backbone of Ethiopia. Now, the timing of Menelik’s reign is hard
to quantify, and geography is also a bit of a question mark. Back in the day, the label of “Ethiopia”
basically meant “The Not-Egypt part of Africa”, and while context clues imply it’s coastal
and probably near the Nile, that’s still not super helpful. But point stands, and with a couple exceptions,
the Solomonic dynasty would rule in Ethiopia from its very start up to the 1970s. Now not to get technical on you but we in
the historical community would refer to that as a long-ass time. As for Aksum, it had the advantage of sitting
at the cross of two major trade arteries — the Nile provided access up through Egypt and
into the Mediterranean, and the adjacent Red Sea opened the door for the entire East African
Coast all the way to India. And coinage backs this up, as we’ve found
Aksumite coins all along the trade routes that linked Classical India to the Roman Empire. Some of our best sources for coastal Aksumite
cities came from accounts by Greek and Roman merchants. And as with all trade relations, cultural
exchange followed swiftly after. In particular, early Roman Christians made
their way to Ethiopia and converted King Ezana in the 4th century. Ethiopia had previously worshipped the Sun,
Moon, and Stars. But now, the newly Christianized Ethiopia
was tied with Armenia as the first Christian kingdom, even quicker on the draw than Rome. Though Aksum did away with practices like
the construction of giant obelisks, they soon developed a strong biblical literary culture
in their native Ge’ez language. Now, in addition to arranging a massive religious
transformation, King Ezana was also a notable conqueror, as he expanded Aksum’s territory
up the Nile to yoink the entire Kushite Kingdom, and he also hopped across the Red Sea to Yemen. Two centuries later, the empire reached its
greatest height under King Kaleb, who significantly strengthened Aksum’s hold on the southern
Arabian Peninsula, and effectively monopolized Red Sea trade between Rome and Asia. Unfortunately, while geography had been one
of Ethiopia’s greatest strengths, it soon became its most tragic flaw. The lightning-fast spread of Islam completely
isolated Ethiopia from their nearest Christian neighbors, and with a commanding hold on both
major coasts, the Muslim caliphates had several ways to circumvent Aksum’s ports on the
Red Sea. Unsurprisingly, sources for this period are
basically zilch, but it seems like this pressure from the Muslim north and an inability to
effectively govern the pastoralists to the southeast hastened Aksum’s decline into
a very tiny pocket of land around the capital. By the mid 900s, the Aksumites were beaten
for good, and in the 11 and early 1200s, the Zagwe Dynasty ruled the land east of lake
Tana. By this point, a half century of Islam had
left its mark on Africa, as even the Coptic Orthodox Church of Egypt right next door was
a fraction of its former size — But despite its isolation, Ethiopia was still as Christian
as ever, and at the turn of the 1200s, while the rest of Christendom was busy crusading
their way to financial and moral bankruptcy, Ethiopia took a more productive approach. In response to the loss of Jerusalem, King
Lalibella constructed 11 new churches across the Zagwe kingdom. Though, “Constructed” is probably the
wrong word, because these churches were each actually carved out of a single stone monolith. How Do You Even DO That? With the Holy Land gone, the king basically
said “alright fine, we’ll build our own” and that’s the kind of positive thinking
we need more of! For all their success, the Zagwe’s one sticking
point was that they didn’t have that same sweet Solomon lineage, and they were overthrown
in 1270 in a Solomonic restoration. Among the first orders of business for this
new dynasty was asserting its ancestral legitimacy, so they got to work on a book called the Kebra
Nagast, or “The Glory of Kings”, which is a codified collection of old Ethiopian
legends. It mainly gives an account of the ancient
Solomon story, among snippets of later Ethiopian history like their conversion to Christianity. The book ends with a curious prophesy that
the power of Ethiopia will eclipse the might of the Roman Empire — and hold that thought,
because we’re gonna double back to that juicy little prediction several centuries
down the line. With the New Dynasty set, the kingdom began
expanding in all directions, down to the Blue Nile, up to the Red Sea coast, and southeast
across the Great Rift Valley. These borders didn’t stay put for very long,
however, because the kingdom faced constant conflict from coastal Muslim sultanates to
the East. At its diciest, the Ottoman-backed Adal Sultanate
almost conquered all of Ethiopia in the mid 1500s. Luckily, a Deus Ex Portugal arrived at the
last minute to offer their fellow Christians a buttload of muskets. This swiftly turned the war around, but the
Ottomans kept propping up rival sultanates for the next 300 years. So while territory stayed more or less as
it was, several internal factors were at play over the next two centuries. In particular, northward migrations of the
Oromo people and the growing presence of Portuguese Catholic missionaries led Ethiopia to become
less centralized than it already was. So despite all the awesome trade and cultural
production going on in the new capital at Gondar, provincial lords steadily became less
and less pleased about having to support the king. And in 1769, they killed him about it. The following century is called “the Age
of Princes” because the monarchy was surrounded by rival lords and able to do exactly nothing
about it. Meanwhile, everybody was fighting for power
and resources and the farmers were playing a weekly game of spin-the-wheel to see which
prince was going to come steal their crops this time. This century of constant peril was finally
ended by Tewodros II, whose banditry funded an army that then conquered the rival princes
and united Ethiopia. Well Played. But Tewodros had less success in foreign policy,
as a diplomatic spat with the British Empire in 1868 ended with a teeny tiny invasion,
whereafter the royal treasury was looted and Tewodros killed himself. This was a dire turn of events, but subsequent
Ethiopian Kings rapidly learned how to handle these outside threats. Just a few years later, Ethiopia wiped the
floor with an Ottoman-backed Egyptian invasion. And it’s here at the tail end of the 1800s
that the European Scramble for Africa made life a constant hell for an entire continent
in basically no time flat. It’s impressive how terrible it was. By 1887, the Kingdom of Italy had conquered
the Eritrean and Somali coasts, and they signed a treaty with Ethiopia recognizing their claims
— or at least, that’s what the Ethiopian version of the treaty said in their native
Amharic. The Italian translation was… different,
I have a copy here, lessee, “Tutta la tua base sono appartiene a noi”… Okay I think I see the problem here. Italy basically wrote it in that Ethiopia
was an Italian vassal state. So when King Menelik II realized this and
immediately tore up the treaty, Italy declared war. Now, Italy thought that Ethiopia was going
to be a stompfest, and technically they were right, but they mixed up which side would
be doing the stomping. See, Menelik was a smartboi, and he had leveraged
Ethiopia’s Orthodox Christian heritage to acquire modern firearms from fellow Orthodox
Russia. In 1896, Italy marched into Ethiopia with
more hubris than sense, and Menelik’s army just obliterated them. The new treaty was properly translated, and
recognized full Ethiopian independence, making it the only country to avoid European colonization. Bravo. With his state secured, Menelik II rapidly
modernized Ethiopia, introducing rail networks, communication infrastructure, more complex
financial institutions, and a booming coffee export business. 4 decades later, Mussolini’s Bargain-Bin
Roman Empire returned with half a million soldiers to avenge their earlier embarrassment. Though fascist propaganda claimed that Italy’s
occupation was a triumph of colonization, the reality was that Ethiopian resistance
made it impossible for the army to exert any significant control, and the Ethiopian campaign
became a massive drain on the Italian military. So it may have taken a couple millennia, but
true to the ancient prophesy, Ethiopia did end up eclipsing the might of Rome, if not
by force then at least by sheer humiliation, so I say job well done. In a very belated apology from Britain, their
army helped Ethiopia kick out the Italians and restore the Solomonic monarchy. Unfortunately, the Cold War soon found its
way to Ethiopia, as Haile Selassie’s government was overthrown in 1974 and replaced with a
series of socialist-leaning states over the next 20 years, whose reforms led to infighting,
famines, and a lot of forced relocation. And you can’t have a Cold War without a
good Proxy War so America and the USSR took turns funding insurgents to either support
or topple the standing government. This constant mess mercifully came to an end
in 1991 when unified rebel groups captured the capital of Addis Ababa and created a transitional
government, leading to the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia in 1995. And far from the overbearing soviets, the
modern Ethiopian state went out of its way to protect its diversity ensure regional autonomy,
so all provinces have the option to leave at any point they’d like, which coastal
Eritrea immediately took them up on. So, that’s a very zoomed-out look at the
history of Ethiopia. It certainly wasn’t without hardship, and
that continues to the present, but it’s just so extraordinary in countless ways. From its most ancient of origins to its wildly
unique relationship with biblical history and Christian culture, up through its remarkable
independence amid the single biggest land-grab in history — Ethiopians have a lot to be
proud about. Now, I never give homework for these videos,
but this time is different: because your assignment is to go to your nearest Ethiopian restaurant
and order some Injera bread, and then eat as much of it as you possibly can, because
that stuff is borderline magic oh my god it’s so delicious. Thank you so much for watching. I always have fun when I get to take a really
really long perspective on the history of a place. And If you’d like to see more videos like
this, as well as more videos on African history, please let me know in the comments! And as always, let’s hear it for these lovely
patrons who make this channel possible. You guys are the best, and I’ll see you
all in the next video!
Wait, who's Indigo?
This was an amazing video! I had no idea their royal line traced itself back to the time of Solomon, which is pretty badass. And the fact that they built all those beautiful churches and avoided the pitfall of the Crusades is really interesting to me, especially when the rest of the Christian world seemed to be losing their minds around that whole time.
Also, their art looked really beautiful. Like, the illustrations in their books seem really impressive and vibrant.
I love learning about nations like this, because we don't often hear their story!
Shit yes!