Much more than most parts of sub-Saharan Africa, the Horn is a region with a historical and cultural identity of its own, created by the interactions – and often the conflicts – between its indigenous peoples, rather than by the imposition of an external colonialism. The forces which so drastically affected Africa during the mid-twentieth century certainly had their impact on the Horn. But this impact was mediated through indigenous social and political systems which softened some of its effects, and adapted it to local forms.

THE SETTING

The geographical configurations and historical developments which endowed the Horn with its peculiar character have been examined in earlier volumes in this series. In summary, they comprise the tensions between the social and political systems derived from the central Ethiopian highlands and those derived from the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean littoral, with a buffer zone of greatly varying width between the two. Ethnically, these tensions divide the Amhara and Tigrean peoples of the highlands from the nomadic Afar and Somali of the littoral, with the Oromo (Galla) by far the most important of the intermediate peoples. In religion, an analogous though by no means identical division separates the Orthodox Christian highlands from its Muslim periphery. Politically the long-established Ethiopian state, with a strength founded on arable agriculture, has continuously attempted to impose itself on surrounding peoples with smaller or more decentralised political structures.