The Emperor, the intellectuals, and the press: Print culture and class formation in Ethiopia (1940s-1960s)

TY - CHAP

T1 - The Emperor, the intellectuals, and the press: Print culture and class formation in Ethiopia (1940s-1960s)

AU - Marzagora, Sara

PY - 2023

Y1 - 2023

N2 - The chapter analyses the political and economic context that shaped Ethiopian print culture from the 1940s to the 1960s, with a particular focus on the relationship between the Ethiopian government’s investment in cultural infrastructures and the emergence of a new social class of intellectuals. The liberation from Italian rule in 1941 marked in Ethiopia a flourishing of new publications. Keen to reassert his power, Emperor Haile Selassie rapidly established printing presses, schools, and other cultural institutions. The objective was to create a class of intellectuals loyal to the throne, who would consolidate and promote Haile Selassie’s brand of nationalism. The new intellectual elite that emerged out of these policies had to contend with an authoritarian political environment, which included systematic censorship. The chapter describes how the intellectuals politically positioned themselves vis-à-vis the imperial court, and the textual strategies some of them employed to circumvent state censorship.

AB - The chapter analyses the political and economic context that shaped Ethiopian print culture from the 1940s to the 1960s, with a particular focus on the relationship between the Ethiopian government’s investment in cultural infrastructures and the emergence of a new social class of intellectuals. The liberation from Italian rule in 1941 marked in Ethiopia a flourishing of new publications. Keen to reassert his power, Emperor Haile Selassie rapidly established printing presses, schools, and other cultural institutions. The objective was to create a class of intellectuals loyal to the throne, who would consolidate and promote Haile Selassie’s brand of nationalism. The new intellectual elite that emerged out of these policies had to contend with an authoritarian political environment, which included systematic censorship. The chapter describes how the intellectuals politically positioned themselves vis-à-vis the imperial court, and the textual strategies some of them employed to circumvent state censorship.

M3 - Chapter

SP - 167

EP - 182

BT - Handbook of Postcolonial Print Cultures

A2 - Srivastava, Neelam

A2 - Sunder Rajan, Rajeswari

A2 - Webb, Jack

PB - Bloomsbury

ER -