A comment on the the interview below says it all:
@EMEC-x9x
Thank you for the interview. In the interview, both Professor Hagai and you approached Alula and Yohannes within the framework of Eritrea and Ethiopia. However, I believe this perspective is mistaken, and inevitably leads to a flawed conclusion.
General Alula was one of the most remarkable generals ever produced by the Tigrinya nation. In his time, there was no 'Eritrea' or 'Ethiopia' — both are modern constructs forged by colonial powers. Eritrea was created by Italy in 1890, while Ethiopia emerged from a series of colonial agreements signed in 1889, 1897, and 1908 between Menelik II and European powers — Italy, Britain, and France. At first, it was known as Abyssinia, and the name 'Ethiopia' was formally adopted only in 1931 by Haile Selassie, gaining international recognition in the 1940s.
Yohannes IV and General Alula were leaders of the Tigrinya nation; the people of present-day Eritrea and Tigray in northern Ethiopia, a region historically known as Agaiazian. Yohannes and Alula were on the path to creating a nation-state for the Tigrinya people, just as Italy, Germany, and others did in Europe. But their vision was shattered by colonial intervention, and at the expense of the Tigrinya nation, the artificial states of Eritrea and Ethiopia were carved out by foreign powers.
Therefore, trying to interpret General Alula and King Yohannes within the framework of these colonially forged fake modern states does a great disservice to their legacy and to history itself. It overlooks the true context of the Tigrinya nation’s history before the establishment of Eritrea and Ethiopia as contemporary countries.
See the link below for more information:
https://jcpa.org/the-war-in-ethiopia-th ... overnable/
https://open.substack.com/pub/agaazian/ ... hare=false