11092008 week 02

I stopped by the library today , and looked at some books on the subject of Ethiopia. I picked up a travel guide. I knew that it would certainly be one sided, and leave out the details concerning any events that would give Ethiopia a reason not to go.

I learned a significant amount of information on Haile Selassie and the Italian Occupation. Haile Selassie was the Ethiopian Emperor from 1930 - 1974. He was the son of a governor and had succeeded the throne after Iyasu had been overthrown. He called the first parliament in 1931 and made the Ethiopian constitution. There had been only one flaw at the time, which was that it had given almost no power or protection to Ethiopia. In 1955, years after the Italian "colonization" Selassie redrafted the constitution to include them.

The Italians had currently been occupying Somalia and Eritrea, and in October 1935, the Italians entered Tigray, the Northern region. The fighting started in 1936, which resulted in a few minor victories in the favor of Ethiopia. However, with the West's revolutionary warfare technology such as mustard gas soon entered the conflict, and after the Italians won the battle of Maychew, Haile Selassie was exiled, and Ethiopia fell to Italy. In 1941, the British finally became involved, and defeated Italy.

I learned a new piece of trivia. It turns out that Ethiopia uses the Julian calendar . This means that they are seven years and eight months behind the Gregorian calendar. The new year begins on September 11th.

You can really learn a lot out of travel guides.

Source: Ethiopia, Phillip Briggs