~The following is a partial list of names of towns and places that were changed from native to Amharic by the Ethiopians following their conquest of southern Ethiopia. The list also includes place names that were twisted or distorted and rendered meaningless. Original names are used in this book.

In a span of about a hundred years, between the 1880s and the middle of the 1970s, Ethiopia witnessed a series of developments that added a new chapter to the country’s history. Politically, rulers of Christian Abyssinia who were long entrenched in the northern part of the country conducted large-scale military campaigns, conquered vast territories to their south, and created what became the...

Lewis Mumford’s classical work on the origin and growth of towns in history~Lewis Mumford, The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its...

Ethiopia entered a new era of urbanization in the last quarter of the nineteenth century largely as a result of developments that changed the political and economic landscape of the entire region. Initially, these developments had more to do with the rise of Menilek II and the organization of the empire he created. First, the emperor ended centuries of warlordism in...

 

As a natural historical process towns are created by people of the area where they are located. Or, under normal circumstances, the indigenous people make the majority and dominant population of towns. With the expansion of trade and intensification of contacts between societies and depending on the attraction and opportunities that towns created, people would naturally migrate from one society to another. Such migrants would settle in towns originally created and dominated by a single ethnic or, most often, religious group. This would naturally result in the creation of diverse groups in towns.

Urbanization which reached an advanced level in the modern era has been a result of centuries of economic and political transformations and technological innovations; and the process always had “universal” characteristics. Only local factors—the availability and access to essential resources, the capacity to build sustainable economic, social, and political organizations accompanied by technology that persistently improved—made the difference over time.

~*A major confusion that readers and, especially researchers, may encounter is understanding bibliographical entries of Ethiopian authors. Ethiopians do not have last names. Galata Waaqayyo is addressed as Mr. Galata not Mr. Waaqayyo as is common in...

~Abba Boqa, 41

~Getahun Benti received his PhD in African history from Michigan State University in 2000 and joined the Department of History at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale. He specializes in African history focusing on the Horn and East Africa. He teaches courses in African and world history, including a comparative...