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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:In Defense of Ethiopia: A Comparative Assessment of Caribbean and African American Anti-Fascist Protests, 1935-1941
Author:Gebrekidan, FikruISNI
Year:1995
Periodical:Northeast African Studies
Volume:2
Issue:1
Pages:145-173
Language:English
Geographic term:Ethiopia
Subjects:Afro-Caribbeans
African Americans
attitudes
Italo-Ethiopian War
History and Exploration
colonialism
External link:http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/northeast_african_studies/v002/2.1.gebrekidan.pdf
Abstract:Few world events had ever aroused African American and Caribbean interest in Africa as did the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in October 1935. This paper examines the impact of the Italo-Ethiopian crisis on Caribbean and American blacks. At the grassroots level, the war triggered anticolonialist militancy throughout America's coloured masses. It came to be regarded as a racially driven European attack on the historic African kingdom, and diaspora blacks constituted an important pressure group in the effort to liberate Ethiopia. Ideologically, the Italo-Ethiopian war aroused various reactions among the black intellectuals of the USA and the West Indies. The war provided the black American left a historic opportunity to demonstrate its political sophistication and organizational skills. For the Caribbean intelligentsia the Italo-Ethiopian hostility was a transitional point from communism to pan-African nationalism. In the USA, however, the black left remained subservient to Moscow throughout the war, in spite of Russia's continuous supply of essential materials to the Italian war machine. Bibliogr., notes, ref.
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