★ Must-know
📌 The Industrial Revolution replaced domestic production by the factory system and replaced wind and water power with new energy sources, especially coal and steam.
Further detail
Industrial Revolution → factories, classes, and capitalist expansion
★ Must-know
Further detail
Italy and Germany: fragmentation → wars → national states
★ Must-know
Further detail
Union versus Confederacy; Balkan nationalists versus imperial interests
★ Must-know
After the Atlantic slave trade ended, European-African relations shifted toward legitimate trade, in which African raw materials, especially cash crops, were exchanged for European goods.
The main motives were:
Further detail
Industrial demand and imperial rivalry → European colonization of Africa
★ Must-know
📌 Direct rule removed African indigenous rulers and replaced them with European personnel, whereas indirect rule governed through indigenous African rulers within the colonial administration.
Colonial rule caused Africans to lose independence, destroyed indigenous administrations, created artificial boundaries, and disrupted existing communities through forced relocation and land seizure.
Colonial economic policies made Africa a supplier of raw materials while Africans were discouraged from manufacturing, and European colonizers exploited African natural resources.
Further detail
Direct rule replaced African rulers; indirect rule used them
★ Must-know
The major markets included:
The principal commodities were:
Tewodros II sought to create a territorially united, militarily self-dependent, and stronger Ethiopia through unification and reforms in the military, administration, and socio-economic spheres.
Further detail
Trade routes → cottage industries → unification and reform
★ Must-know
📌 Yohannes IV pursued decentralized administration by granting regional rulers substantial autonomy, including recognizing Menilek as Nigus of Shewa through the 1878 Liche Agreement.
Further detail
Regional opposition → reform attempts → imperial downfall
★ Must-know
🔄 Menilek II’s expansion proceeded through three phases:
The Great Famine, or Kefu Qan, lasted from 1888 to 1892 and was immediately caused by a rinderpest epidemic triggered by infected cattle imported by Italy through Massawa.
Menilek II founded the Bank of Abyssinia in 1905, established Menilek II School in 1908, and introduced modern postal, electrical, telephone, telegraph and railway developments.
Further detail
Menilek II incorporated Tulama and eastern Macha Oromo territories in the 1870s, while Ras Gobana Dache played a major role in Shewan expansion.
Arsi resistance to Menilek II was suppressed at the Battle of Azule on 6 September 1886 after six campaigns from 1882 to 1886.
The boundary agreements were concluded with:
Shewa kingship → coronation → Adwa → boundary treaties
★ Must-know
Egyptian forces were defeated by Yohannes IV and Ras Alula at Gundat on 16 November 1875 and at Gura from 7 to 9 March 1876.
The Hewett Treaty of 1884 required Ethiopia to help evacuate Egyptian soldiers encircled in eastern Sudan in return for, among other concessions, Ethiopian use of Massawa.
📌 Article XVII of the Amharic Treaty of Wuchale stated that Ethiopia could use Italian diplomatic services, whereas the Italian version made such use obligatory.
Ethiopia defeated Italy at the Battle of Adwa on 1 March 1896, and the Treaty of Addis Ababa on 26 October 1896 secured Italy’s recognition of Ethiopian independence.
Italian forces invaded Ethiopia on 3 October 1935, captured Addis Ababa on 5 May 1936, and established Italian East Africa by merging Ethiopia with Eritrea and Somalia.
The Ethiopian patriotic resistance developed in two phases: traditional military resistance before the February 1937 Graziani assassination attempt and predominantly rural guerrilla warfare afterward.
Further detail
Adwa: Ethiopian sovereignty; 1936: Italian occupation
★ Must-know
The second phase of Ethiopian patriotic resistance took the form of guerrilla warfare led by nobles and local notables, concentrated mainly in Shewa, Gojjam, and Begemidir.
Yewust Arbegnoch, or “inner patriots,” lived and worked among the Italians while secretly transmitting intelligence and supplying weapons, medicine, food, and reports to resistance fighters.
📌 The patriotic resistance weakened the fascist forces, but Ethiopia’s final liberation resulted from the combined efforts of internal patriots, external forces, and British military intervention during the Second World War.
Further detail
Internal resistance plus British intervention → Ethiopia’s liberation in 1941
★ Must-know
📌 The First World War’s major underlying causes were mutual defense alliances, imperialism, militarism, and nationalism, while its immediate cause was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
The Triple Alliance originally comprised Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy, while the Triple Entente developed from agreements among France, Russia, and Great Britain; Italy left the Triple Alliance and joined the Triple Entente in 1915.
On 28 June 1914, Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, in Sarajevo.
Germany invaded France through Belgium in August 1914, was stopped at the Battle of the Marne in September 1914, and then fought a prolonged trench stalemate on the Western Front while Russia mobilized rapidly in the East.
The First World War caused about 8.5 million military deaths and 13 million civilian deaths, collapsed four imperial dynasties, redrew Europe’s map, and helped spread the Spanish influenza pandemic of 1918–19.
On 28 June 1919, the Treaty of Versailles created the League of Nations and imposed reparations, military restrictions, territorial losses, and sole responsibility for the war on Germany.
Further detail
Alliances → assassination → trench stalemate → wider war → postwar settlement
★ Must-know
📌 The February Revolution of 1917 overthrew Tsar Nicholas II and ended Romanov rule, whereas the October Revolution transferred political power to the Bolsheviks under Lenin.
📌 After taking power, the Bolsheviks nationalized industry, introduced an eight-hour working day, confiscated landlords’ estates for the peasants, and withdrew Russia from the First World War through the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in 1918.
The League of Nations was founded on 10 January 1920 to maintain peace through collective security, disarmament, negotiation, and arbitration, but the United States did not join.
The Great Depression began with the New York Wall Street stock-market crash of October 1929; international trade fell by more than 50%, unemployment in the United States reached 25%, and nearly half of American banks had failed by 1933.
📌 Fascism was established in Italy in 1922 under Benito Mussolini, whereas Nazism came to power in Germany in 1933 under Adolf Hitler; both promoted authoritarian one-party rule and aggressive nationalism.
Further detail
February removed the monarchy, whereas October transferred power to the Bolsheviks
★ Must-know
The major causes included: fascist expansionism, resentment of the Versailles Treaty, the Great Depression, Western appeasement, American isolationism, the failure of collective opposition to aggression
On 1 September 1939, Germany invaded Poland, marking the beginning of World War II.
The decisive Soviet victories at Stalingrad in 1942–1943 and Kursk in 1943 began the Allied counter-offensive in Europe.
The United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945, and Japan unconditionally surrendered on 2 September 1945.
World War II caused about 50 million deaths, accelerated decolonization in Asia and Africa, made the USA and USSR superpowers, initiated the Cold War, and led to the creation of the United Nations Organization.
Further detail
Germany’s early Polish campaign, called Blitzkrieg or “lightning war,” rapidly combined air and ground attacks to overrun Poland within three weeks.
The Soviet Union invaded German-occupied Poland’s eastern provinces and annexed Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Finland from 1939 to 1940.
Economic crisis and appeasement → fascist aggression → global war
★ Must-know
On 26 June 1945, representatives of 50 nations signed the United Nations Charter at San Francisco, and Poland’s signature brought the number of original signatories to 51.
The six main organs are:
📌 The United Nations Security Council has five permanent members—the United States, Britain, France, Russia, and China—and ten non-permanent members elected for two years; each permanent member can veto decisions.
Further detail
UN: Peace, Cooperation, Rights
★ Must-know
The principal differences were:
The main strategies were:
In March 1947, the Truman Doctrine committed the United States to using money, supplies, and technological knowledge to assist countries threatened by communism, initially requesting $400 million for Greece and Turkey.
The Marshall Plan provided $17 billion in economic and technical assistance to 16 European countries to contain communism, support European recovery, and create markets for American goods.
The Chinese Communist Party led by Mao Zedong won the Chinese Civil War from 1946 to 1949, established the People’s Republic of China in October 1949, and forced the Kuomintang government to flee to Taiwan.
Further detail
The Berlin Blockade lasted from 24 June 1948 to 12 May 1949, and the United States and other countries responded with an airlift supplying West Berlin.
NATO was founded in April 1949 by 12 nations, while the Warsaw Pact was formed in May 1955 by the Soviet Union and communist Eastern European states.
The Korean War began when North Korea invaded South Korea in June 1950 and ended with a peace treaty at Panmunjom in 1953.
USA: capitalism and free markets; USSR: communism and command economy
★ Must-know
The 1917 Balfour Declaration supported the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, despite an earlier British promise in 1915 to support the Arabs.
In 1947, the United Nations General Assembly decided to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states and to internationalize Jerusalem.
On May 14, 1948, Jewish leaders proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel.
The major wars described were:
Further detail
The 1967 Six-Day War resulted in Israel controlling the Golan Heights, Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Sinai.
The Palestinian liberation struggle continued under the leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization, whose chairman Yasir Arafat served from 1969 to 2004.
Mandate → Partition → Wars → Palestinian struggle
★ Must-know
Gorbachev’s reforms encouraged demands for rights and freedom, which contributed to protests, the collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europe, and the weakening of Soviet central power.
In 1991, fifteen sovereign states emerged from the collapse of the USSR: Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Belorussia, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia.
Further detail
Glasnost and perestroika → popular demands → Eastern European revolutions → Soviet disintegration
The 1942 Anglo-Ethiopian treaty recognized Ethiopia as independent but restricted its sovereignty through British control over advisers, communications, transport, finance, territory, and the official currency.
On 2 December 1950, the United Nations adopted Resolution 390V, which decided that Eritrea should be united with Ethiopia through a federation.
The 1953 Ethiopian-American treaty allowed the United States to operate Kagnew Station in Asmara, while the United States promised military assistance and established the Military Assistance Advisory Group.
In 1942, Ethiopia was reorganized into twelve governorate-generals, each subdivided into awrajas, weredas, and mikitil weredas under officials appointed by the Emperor.
The Woyyane revolt of 1943 united semi-pastoralists, highland peasants, and local feudal lords against centralization, feudal exploitation, and excessive state demands before being crushed with imperial and British air support.
The Bale uprising from 1963 to 1970 was driven by land alienation, taxation, religious discrimination, ethnic hostility, and corrupt administration, and it received support from Somalia.
On 14 December 1960, Mengistu Neway and Germame Neway proclaimed a new government during an attempted coup, but the coup failed because it lacked sufficient army support and organization.
The Ethiopian student movement demanded improved education facilities, a free press, the right to form a union, and the abolition of the feudal land-tenure system under the slogan “Meret Learashu” (“Land to the Tiller”).
The Ethiopian student movement emerged after the expansion of secondary and higher education, with the University College of Addis Ababa, founded in 1950 and later renamed Haile Selassie I University, as its nucleus.
Ethiopian students opposed the monarchy, feudal land relations, poor living conditions, inadequate educational services, restrictions on the press, and the prohibition of student unions.
In the mid-1960s, Ethiopian students demanded abolition of the feudal land-tenure system under the slogan “Meret Learashu,” meaning “Land to the Tiller,” and advocated Marxism-Leninism.
On December 28, 1969, student-union president Tilahun Gizaw was shot by security police near the Seddest Kilo campus in Addis Ababa, and his death pushed radical student activists toward revolution.
The Ethiopian Revolution of 1974 was preceded by famine, inflation, corruption, and widespread protests involving students, teachers, unemployed youth, civil servants, taxi drivers, workers, and soldiers.
On 12 September 1974, the Derg deposed Haile Selassie and transformed itself into the Provisional Military Administration Council, with Lieutenant General Aman Mikael Andom as its first chairman.
The Derg's major reforms included: literacy and rural-development campaigns, nationalization of banks and insurance companies, confiscation of private industrial and business companies, nationalization of rural land, creation of peasant associations
The Derg's Red Terror was a systematic campaign of mass killing, torture, imprisonment, and execution directed against the EPRP and other suspected opponents, especially in Addis Ababa and major provincial towns.
Foreign influence and centralization versus peasant and student opposition
| Dimension | Capitalist economy | Command economy |
|---|---|---|
| Ownership | Means of production are privately owned | The government controls the economy |
| Production and prices | Shaped by demand, supply, and competition | Determined by government planning |
| Labour and distribution | Goods and services are produced through market exchange | The government controls production volume and distribution |
| System | Main method | Documented consequence |
|---|---|---|
| Company rule | Private companies administered African territories | Failed because of financial shortages and African and missionary opposition |
| Direct rule and assimilation | European personnel replaced indigenous rulers | French language, institutions, laws, and customs were extended |
| Indirect rule | Indigenous rulers operated within colonial administration | Reduced resistance but aggravated ethnic differences |
| Settler rule | White settlers received African land | Africans became labourers and landless tenants |
Test your knowledge on Postwar Conflicts and Ethiopia with 11 multiple-choice questions with detailed corrections.
1. Regarding capitalism, which of the following propositions are correct?
2. The Industrial Revolution transformed production and energy use in which ways?
Memorize the key concepts of Postwar Conflicts and Ethiopia with 10 interactive flashcards.
What defines capitalism as an economic system?
Private ownership of most production means operated for profit.
Where and when did the Industrial Revolution begin?
In England during the 18th century.
What is nationalism as a feeling among people?
A feeling of belonging and loyalty leading to pride and support for their country.
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