TITLE:
Review Essay: Are the Tulama and Wallo Oromo Habasha?
AUTHORS:
Asafa Jalata
KEYWORDS:
Tulama and Wallo Oromo, Oromia, Gobana and Menelik, Habasha, Competing Nationalisms, Oromo, Amhara-Tigray, The Manz/Shawa Kingdom, The Ethiopian Colonial State
JOURNAL NAME:
Sociology Mind,
Vol.11 No.4,
October
12,
2021
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.