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Background
In 1916, a palace coup d'état led by the Shewan nobility brought to power Ras Taffari Mekonnen as the regent and heir apparent to the throne of the Ethiopian empire.1 Soon Taffari began to take measures to make himself the de facto ruler of the empire. In the 1920s, he focused on removing Menelik's stalwarts from office and cutting them off from their power base. After his accession to the throne in 1930 as Emperor Haile Sellassie, he embarked on a program of political centralization to end the limited autonomy of the regions that had maintained semi-independent status since their incorporation into Ethiopia. As he worked to concentrate power in his own hands, Haile Sellassie reversed the political arrangements of Emperor Menelik. The latter had ruled through a combination of coercion and consent, appointing military rulers where he encountered resistance and granting internal autonomy to hereditary rulers who agreed to accept his suzerainty peacefully and pay annual tributes.2 Haile Sellassie found his predecessor's administrative system incongruent with his vision of an empire ruled from the center by an allpowerful sovereign. He abolished the semi-independent status of such regions as Tigray, Gojjam, and Jimma, and appointed only Shewans to rule the subordinate regions. 3
When Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935, the deposed hereditary rulers felt that their time had come to settle scores. They defected to the Italian side in the hope of regaining their positions. Indeed, the Italians appointed them as governors of their former domains. In 1941, when Haile Sellassie returned to power, they were once again excluded from power. In response, they made common cause with the oppressed people in their regions and rebelled against an apparently "irreversible centralization under the hegemony of the Shewan Amhara nobility."4
In Oromo areas, grievances against the initial conquest and loss of autonomy ran deep. Ever since they had been conquered by Menelik, Oromos had expressed their rejection of Abyssinian rule through acts of defiance, ranging from embracing Islam to outright rebellion. When Italy invaded Abyssinia, Oromos seized the moment to reclaim their lost freedom and sovereign existence. In 1935, the Raya and Azeboo Oromos attacked the Abyssinian armies going to and returning from the Battle of Maichew. Even the fleeing emperor felt threatened enough to...