Study On Ethnic Identity Of Oromo In Ethiopia

As a country with an ancient civilization, Ethiopia has three thousand years of history.However,its modern boundaries were confirmed by Menelik Ⅱ through a serious of war at the end of 19th century and during this time a large number of ethnics and clans, including the Oromo people, were conquered by the Abyssinian. Clans of Oromo people,the largest ethnic group of Ethiopia, of Oromia had experienced a period of history of humiliation together. With the development of the revolutionary movement in Ethiopia, Oromo people aroused their own ethnic consciousness and took part in the wave of revolutions with armed struggle. As a result, the rule of the Mengistu regime were overthrew in 1991.From then on,after four years of transitional government rule, a new federal regime were built. But certain of Oromo revolutionists continue to the Oromo independent path, and become one of the main anti-government forces in Ethiopia.Ethnic identity is an important aspect of Ethiopia ethnic research. primordialism and Utilitarianism, two kind of mainstream theory perspectives about ethnicity in the western academic world, show us the differences of ideas about ethnic identity among scholars. Based on the understanding of the above two theoretical perspectives, this paper will choose Oromo people, the largest ethnic group in Ethiopia, as the study object. By analyzing the representative factors of ethnic identity in different historical periods, it will try to find out the way of interaction between the primitive elements, such as language, customs, blood relationship etc., and people’s tactical choice in reality circumstances in the case of Oromo people, and by this presents the ideas of my own about the primordialism and Utilitarianism.This paper has five parts. The introduction will introduce the research objectives, Research Background and theoretical basis of this paper. The second part will simply show us the basic situation of Ethiopia’s ethnic groups and Oromo people. And then, the other three parts, including the most important three phases of the development of Ethiopia’s politics, are the core of this paper. The modern history of Ethiopia can be divided in three phases. The first phase, from Menelik Ⅱ to 1974,in which the emperor Haile Selassie was chucked out, can be seen as the age of empires in Ethiopia. During this time, some Oromo nobles who has been influenced by the rulers’ discriminatory assimilation policy started to be aware of that their identity may be different from their rulers. And then, with the help of Italians, they tried to organize the WOC. During the later period of the empire, the intellectuals started to take part in the construction of Oromo ethnic identity. The second phase, from 1974 to 1991, when the Mengistu regime was overthrown, can be seen as the period of Derg. During this period, influenced by the Marxism-Leninism, the ethnic cultural movement gradually turned to ethnic political movement. In this setting, with the help of TPLF, Oromo intellectuals established their own military and political organization-the Oromo Liberation Front, and Participate in the revolutionary movement of overthrowing the Mengistu regime. The third phase is just since 1991, which can be seen as the period of the ethnic federalism. During this phase, the contradictions between ethnics has been easing, and the identity of Oromo people has been fully expressed with the implementation of the policy of multiculturalism and democratization.