1776 and 1961: Revisiting Revolutions of Independence of Old and New

In a small town in the early sixties of Ethiopia, a cartoon magazine about the American War of Independence was circulating among junior elementary school students. It came with the Peace Corps volunteers, we were told. Our reading skills being poor, the older boys had to render for us the entire story. Innocent and naïve, we had been fascinated with the rebels, the redcoats and the “Red Indians” as they were commonly called then. The simplistic explanation aside, it was our first exposure to the wonders of the Western world.

Little did we know that it was a much sanitized version of early American history. Nor did we envisage the trajectory of the armed struggle or the civil war that was in progress around the same period in Eritrea. This essay will attempt to revivify the past experience of America, its similarities with Eritrea and the extenuating circumstances that made America the ideal place for the “pursuit of happiness”, and not the “culture of sacrifice” that has become the hegemonic ethos in the former.

Why is America singled out for comparison?

These two countries have little in common. The still largest economy of the world, the United States’, has no resemblance to Eritrea’s, whose export income of around 50,000,000 dollars is the size of any small corporation in the West. Nor do measures of Quality of Life Index remotely approach the Unites States’. Juxtaposing both may be deemed improper except for this phenomenon: the history of the War of Independence. In both nations this historical event has remained sacred, allowing little discourse in the case of the United States and a complete intolerance in Eritrea.

More importantly, the regime in Eritrea and its elite backers in the Diaspora have at times found it convenient to identify the cause of their armed struggle and the caliber of their leader with those of America. They have “dropped” their past infatuation with the communist ideology, which with its incessant schisms and purges has less allure to the post communistic world. Hence, the concerted attempt to identify the cause for a separate nationhood, and the status quo now in Eritrea with that of America’s, whose rebellion against the Britons has until recent times remained untouchable. The purpose of their narration has been to give a positive gloss to the nationalist cause, and also to reap support for the state of Eritrea. That it was to no avail has to do some with the xenophobic and grandiose ambitions of the Eritrean regime. The paradox of it is that even the much sanctified history of 1776 was not the “noble” war it was.

Thanks to the enduring freedom of thought, America’s popular ideology, referencing to the war for nationhood has lately been subjected to deconstruction. The historian Richard singles out two uncomfortable truths: “the fact that it was a civil war (perhaps 100,000 loyalists fled abroad at its end), and that it was also a world war (the Americans could scarcely have won without French help-are often forgotten.” [1]

In the same vein two unpalatable truths have been written out of Eritrea’s history. A fratricide war with a magnitude bigger than the one in the American colonies was a phenomenon through most of the duration of the armed conflict in Eritrea. Likewise, the role of outside support was also a major factor in the successful end of the War of Independence in Eritrea as this writer has intimated in one of his articles at this website. [against all odds] Thus, Richard’s observations might not only apply to Eritrea’s modern history, but are also robust factors that any historian of revolutions past may neglect at his own risk.

Fratricide

Civil wars of particularly the ideological types such as those experienced in Russia and China of the twentieth century have been largely described as nasty and destructive, leaving a legacy of animosity and discord to the survivors and the future generation. On the other hand, those labeled as “wars of independence” have been until recently painted in a positive light, and were not introspected for what they are.

Historians were timid and reluctant to examine the veracity of the claims about the alleged broad popular support witnessed in “wars of independence” including the assumed “civilized” nature of their conflict. Notwithstanding this fact, the degree of the violence and destruction of that era does not rival the “class- war” types that much later made their appearance in some parts of Europe. This however would not save that chapter of history from some revision.

The recent foray into the history of the birth of the American republic is very revelatory. America’s 1776 civil war presages the other major, more harrowing and more popular “war of cousins” between the Union and the Confederacy memorialized in many books, films and more particularly in the great documentary The Civil War. Captivating though was this documentary film to million of Americans, its complete neglect of the war against the Britons compromised some aspects of U.S. history.

The rough sketch of the violent experience in both Eritrea and America and the fact that is has remained to be revered is a valid subject to be probed and examined. It is also particularly relevant for the Eritrean Diaspora who somehow inhabit both worlds. Incidentally, the orthodoxy on American history has lately been questioned by two scholars: Simon Schama, and Maya Jasanoff, who wrote Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slave and the American Revolution and Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World respectively.

By describing and focusing on the Black Americans who fought on the side of George III, Schama chronicled the fate that lead them all the way to Nova Scotia and overseas to Sierra Leone. What precipitated the mass flight of the Black Americans was the promise of freedom made to them by the British command. What triggered this policy was not some lofty principle but the need of sabotaging the American slave holding gentry. The painting about the African-American in the boat crossing the Delaware River with George Washington, though powerful, was not an accurate representation of the whole episode. What we get from his writings is that, claims to the contrary, the War of Independence was also a civil war that pitted a race against each other.

It had also little to do about “liberty”, argues Jasanoff, in her equally well researched book.

After the defeat of the Britons, close to 75,000 Americans loyal to the Britons chose exile than live in the nascent republic. [2] This is a smaller percentage of the pro-British in the American colonies estimated around ¼ of the population during the beginning of the conflict. It is a plausible fact for people on the losing side that often choose to weather out the fortunes of war. After all, travel and easy exit to other “greener pastures” was not easily available then. In other words, their world was not “flat”.

In similar fashion, scholars, writers and journalists were smitten with the War of Independence in Eritrea and consciously or otherwise lending the current regime an undeserved legitimacy. The few who chose to write about the “civil war” in Eritrea single out only the conflict between the recognized nation-state of Ethiopia and the insurgents, which was in many instances labeled as “Brothers at War” and, in other cases, the fratricide between the rival liberations fronts for alleged ideological differences. The layers of “civil wars” in Eritrea belied the real nature of the experience of diverse communities on the independence cause and assumed uniform support for the insurgent’s cause. Complex as it was, the havoc and toll of the thirty-year war in Eritrea on its mosaic-like inhabitants was nothing but a civil war.

The dearth of data in this corner of Africa certainly makes comparison attempts difficult, if not impossible. Though the two and half million population of the American colony of the time was roughly equal to the often quoted figure of three million of the conflict period in Eritrea, the percentage of people internally displaced or in exile was possibly higher. What remains is ascertaining, isolating and attributing the damage and the victims to the various perpetrators of the violence.

Ideas of independence

In the context of the civil war and mayhem in America, the call for a complete independence made by people such as Thomas Paine (famous for his pamphlet, Common Sense) and the Continental Congress was perhaps unnecessary. Except for the African slaves and the Indian tribes, the landed gentry, merchants and other less affluent whites had similar rights and privileges as their counterparts living in England. In other words, “liberty” had made its existence in both sides of the Atlantic. In Ethiopia, however, absolutist monarchy governed the body politic of the country for most of its modern history. The minimal reforms made by the old regime were too late to save it from its demise in the hands of the Derg.

Nor was “liberty” in existence in Eritrea, whose people had been living in an apartheid-like system until the arrival of the British, and the Federation that followed it. The relaxation of rights during the interlude before the complete annexation of Eritrea with Ethiopia was too weak and fragmented for the emergence of institutions to guarantee them. The thing is both the people in Ethiopia and Eritrea was nothing but docile subjects of the emperor. In essence, despotism straddled itself across both banks of the Mereb River.

For Jasanoff, America’s War of Independence was a “war of cousins” and in many instances also split families. William, the son of one the Founders of American revolution, Benjamin Franklin, fought on the side of the Red Coats. [3] And there is something more. The ordinary farmers, burgers, merchants and elite of the overseas colony of America and the British Isles shared common culture and values. Remarkably, the burden of tax was disproportionately carried by the English, notwithstanding the claim made by the radicals of the times. For every American who paid 6d per annum in taxation, his counterpart, the Briton, was taxed 25s. [4]

This is nothing but an extremely small fraction of the tax in the metropolis. And yet, the public and the rest of the world had been inordinately influenced by the episode widely known as the Boston “Tea Party. “ If the claim about being overtaxed was a fiction, stated the same author, the assertion that the British monarchy was a tyranny was equally a false construct.

The Yankees were not subjects of a tyrant-type regime that was not rare in the Old World: “As for genuine liberties, such as that of conscience, dissenters could operate in Britain without licenses, but not in some American colonies” said a book reviewer. [5] Paradoxically, it was he Britons who lived in a more liberal world and, unlike the Americans, were not victims of any witch-hunting and other superstitions that were rampant in their colonies. To the surprise of many, the “liberal” commonalities did not prevent the war for a separate nationhood. How did the “heroes of liberty” conduct themsleves during the course of the war? The property and lives of some of the loyalists were not spared, discovered Jasanoff.

Discord

Some of the anecdotes described here were by far more repulsive compared to the alleged torture that was inflicted on the people under “rendition” during the “war on terror” of our times. This long quote is, therefore, excusable.

A white gentleman from Georgia, Thomas Brown, “is tossed to the ground, his arms lashed around the trunks of a tree. He sees his bare legs splayed out in front of him, and he sees hot brown pitch poured over them, scalding, clinging to his skin. Under his feet the men pile up kindling and set it alight. The flame catches the tar, sears his flesh. His feet are on fire, two of his toes charred into stubs. The attackers seize his broken head by the hair and pull it out in clumps. Knives take the care of the rest, cutting off strips of scalp, making the blood run down over his ears, face and neck. Half scalped, skull fractured, lamed, slashed and battered.” A déjà vu experience, not unlike the “burning at the stake” during the Inquisition. [6]

Mercifully this cruel and horrible practice of violence occurred at the early stages of the revolution, and was later tamed by the “gentlemen of Virginia.” [7] Though without some blemishes, the enlightened gentry of the young republic were not the specimen of the cadre-type of the twentieth century that managed revolutions. “In almost every revolution, the plebian extremists, and torturers win control over the educated enlightened thinkers, but in the American Revolution exactly the opposite happened, thanks to the extraordinary concatenation of truly remarkable leaders.“ [8] How true!

The pros for Yankees

The redeeming quality in a revolution led by enlightened elite is in their outcomes: whereas plantocracy was gradually dismantled in America, in Eritrea, tyranny and serfdom have substituted the motley of less oppressive regimes. Whereas America continued to become the land of millions of emigrants even after it became a republic, people indigenous to Eritrea are leaving the country at a cataclysmic rate, endangering its very existence. A sizable percentage of the ones who fled Eritrea and made it to the West often choose to live in America, a republic that happens to be the creation of the War of Independence too. The irony of history!

The cons against ghedli

Contemplate this scenario in the Thirty-year armed struggle that transpired in a far less favorable environment of Eritrea: The fissures in the society were many and deep, primordial tribal identity was alive and strong leaving the concept of citizenship to the semi-literate “urbanites. “ Factor in also the fact that not all who did not embrace the nationalist cause were blind supporters of the monarchy. In the highlands of Eritrea, support for union with Ethiopia did not mean for some people a blind support for the emperor notwithstanding the demonizing propaganda that is still vibrant today. Having experienced the blatant racism in the hands of Italian Fascism, they were unlikely to lend support to another revolution and its needs for sacrifice. More poignantly, the Kunamas, the Afars, and the Tigrigna-Kohayen had their own different experience, limited to protecting their local identity, culture and resources. The frenzy about the nation-state of Ethiopia or Eritrea was not their least concern.

The “Age of Enlightenment” was not even rumored about in Eritrea. In short, the concatenation of the extraordinary factors that America blessed with was resoundingly absent in Eritrea. Chronicling the minutiae of the horrors in the “war of independence” and contemporary Eritrea is superfluous, for it has been addressed in the past, and is left out from this short essay. Plenty of stuff has been written by various writers that may possibly qualify for a “museum of horrors.” Eritrea’s civil war was calamitous because of some its distinctive characteristic.

The carnage during the Thirty-year war and its aftermath has been extraordinarily big and pervasive in Eritrea, because the public was uniquely under the sufferance from not only the common plebeian violence, but also from the elite‘s. And most regrettably, the adoption of Maoist ideology by these malformed elites compounded the rampant practice of terror never perceived in the past. Extrapolating the magnitude of the strife in Eritrea in exponential terms is, therefore, acceptable. The terror practice of the same regime adequately substantiates it.

Conclusion

Tragic as it was, the war between the American colonies and the Britons was fought around the fiction of “liberty” rights; nonetheless, it was followed by the rapid growth and prosperity of both countries. Incredible as it may say, the fortunes of the defeated British Empire was for the better. Switching its focus towards Asia, the British Isles acquired a huge swath of territory with its equally big population, its attendant resources, and markets. [9] Besides some other factors, the fact that both America and the British Empire were endowed with “liberty” and its corollary, freedom of trade, had to do with the rapid progress and recovery of both of their realms. Nobody had “lost” it.

In Eritrea, however, its resounding absence since its existence has left its people to live in a den of darkness and complete servitude. Platitude aside, “liberty” had never manifested itself in that region. The malaise has more to do with the phenomenon of “rising expectations” and “modernism” that has remained afflicting many diverse people of the world.

The paradox in this essay is that these two historical mythologies will remain to influence the significant Eritrean Diaspora in the United States. Addressing the subject as citizens of the U.S.A. or both is, therefore, essential.

Footnotes

1. Holmes, Richard. The American War of Independence: the Rebels and the Redcoats. BBC-History.
2. Jasanoff, Maya. Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World. 2011. P. 6
3. Ibid, P. 9
4. Roberts, Andrew. Review - The Daily Beast Liberty’s Exiles.
5. Ibid
6. Jasanoff, Maya. Ibid. 2011. PP. 22-23.
7. Roberts, Ibid.
8. Ibid
9. Jasanoff, Maya. Ibid.