Introduction

In this chapter conditions in both rural and urban Tigray in the period immediately prior to the launch of the TPLF's insurrection in 1975 will be examined. In addition, the Ethiopian student movement will be revisited to consider the origins of the TPLF. The lead-up to this tumultuous period can be characterised in Tigray as one of modernisation with little development, and of economic change that produced declining standards of living for most peasants. The forces at work included agricultural commercialisation, the breakdown of primordial loyalties and village isolation, a weakening of patron–client relations before the demands of state centralisation, and a far more intrusive part played by the central state in the lives of the peasants. Although these forces caused dislocation and growing rural poverty, they did not produce peasant rebellion. Even with the collapse of the old regime peasant civil disobedience was largely restricted to western Tigray and took the form of opposition to the new regime and support for the province's traditional nobility and way of life.

It is among the Tigrayan petit bourgeoisie in Addis Ababa and the towns of the province that dissent, largely of a nationalist character, first took form under the old regime, and then found political expression with the establishment of the TPLF after the Derg's rise to power. In spite of their destitution under the old regime and distrust of the incoming Derg, peasants took much longer than the urban petit bourgeoisie to be drawn into the revolutionary struggle.