Book Reviews : Ethiopia: A New Political History. By RICHARD GREENFIELD. (New York: Fred erick A. Praeger, 1965. Pp. x, 515. $10.00.)

• Published date: 01 December 1966
• DOI: 10.1177/106591296601900424
• Date: 01 December 1966
• Author: Sheridan Johns
• Subject Matter: Articles

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viewpoint run to about a thousand pages each. It might also be assigned as reading
for students in undergraduate courses in Western Civilization. Scholars wishing to
pursue the subject more deeply will still have to read Godechot’s La Grande Nation
or, perhaps better yet, Palmer’s The Age of the Democratic Revolution (2 vols.,
1959-64). For historiography and bibliography, Godechot’s Les Révolutions
( 1963 ) is still essential.
TRUMAN DRIGGS
University of Minnesota, Morris
Ethiopia: A New Political History. By RICHARD GREENFIELD. (New York: Fred-
erick A. Praeger, 1965. Pp. x, 515. $10.00.)
The tumultuous history of Ethiopia, especially the events of the last thirty
years, receives a sympathetic, but critical, rendering in the book under review. The
author, an Englishman who served on the staff of Haile Selassie I University and
its predecessor, the University College of Addis Ababa, was an involved witness of
some of the more recent happenings; the account which he has written reveals his
continuing concern for the country in which he worked as well as his wide reading
in Ethiopian history, including Amharic sources.
Readers of this book will not find a systematic analysis of the government and
political system of Ethiopia. They will find, however, in accord with the second
half of the title of the book, a rich lode of information about the political history
of Ethiopia from earliest times to 1965. In particular, the book is most valuable
for its unique and extensive treatment of the unsuccessful coup d’6tat of 1960 and
its discussion of the significance of the coup for Ethiopian politics.
From written records and from his own experience in Ethiopia the author
has drawn a detailed account of the origin of the coup, an hour-by-hour report of
the coup and its defeat, and an estimation of the impact of these events on post-
1960 Ethiopia. Students of the politics of modernization will be most interested
in the chapters which he devotes to the two prominent...