The Horn of Africa
Subtitle: state formation and decay
By: Christopher Clapham
Published: 2017
Language: eng
Number of pages: 224
ISBN-13: 9780190680183
Subjects: Politics and government; History
Description: Why is the Horn such a distinctive part of Africa? This book, by one of the foremost scholars of the region, traces this question through its exceptional history and also probes the wildly divergent fates of the Horn's contemporary nation-states, despite the striking regional particularity inherited from the colonial past. Christopher Clapham explores how the Horn's peculiar topography gave rise to the Ethiopian empire, the sole African state not only to survive European colonialism, but also to participate in a colonial enterprise of its own. Its impact on its neighbors, present-day Djibouti, Eritrea, Somalia and Somaliland, created a region very different from that of post-colonial Africa. This dynamic has become all the more distinct since 1991, when Eritrea and Somaliland emerged from the break-up of both Ethiopia and Somalia. Yet this evolution has produced highly varied outcomes in the region's constituent countries, from state collapse (and deeply flawed reconstruction) in Somalia, through militarised isolation in Eritrea, to a still fragile 'developmental state' in Ethiopia. The tensions implicit in the process of state formation now drive the relationships between the once historically close nations of the Horn.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 195-212) and index.
Table of contents: title: List of Acronyms and Indigenous Words; title: Maps; title: Introduction : an African Anomaly; title: 1. The Power of Landscape; title: 2. Histories of State Creation and Collapse; title: 3. State Reconstruction in Ethiopia; title: 4. Eritrea : the Tragedy of the Post-Insurgent State; title: 5. Managing Somali States; title: 6. The Horn, the Continent and the World.