Book Description
Since 1896, the year in which Ethiopia scored a major victory against an invading European army, occidental blacks had been fascinated with East Africa, the land whose history resonated a racial golden age. Through subsequent decades Ethiopia remained a powerful signifier in modern black thought, while Ethiopianism became the catalyst of twentieth-century nationalist expressions. Modern Ethiopianism is, however, much more than a quest for an idyllic past. Given the state-of-the-art means of communication, Ethiopia is no longer a far off abstraction. Modern Ethio-Atlantic racial ties are articulated by tangible historical events. The manifestation of Ethiopian art in Reggae, the Rastafarian deification of Haile Selassie, and the transplantation of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church in the Western Hemisphere, are but a few examples of Ethiopian cultural crossovers in the New World. Inversely, black American Soul and Jamaican Reggae have spiced up Ethiopian urban culture, as have their political heroes and sports icons. Bond without Blood constructs the narrative of the Ethio-Atlantic ties with three interwoven themes in mind: pan-African nationalism, repatriation, and cultural cross-fertilization. The overall thesis that holds this book together is that contemporary Ethiopian and New World black relations are more than a mere psychological preoccupation. East Africa and the black Atlantic, despite great physical distances, continue to impact on each other's awareness through migration, religion, secular culture, as well as through a shared history of anticolonial activism. Book jacket.
