A number of studies have been undertaken since the 1960s on development in Africa, since during those years of African independence African Studies (AS) saw a marked shift from a framework permeated with colonialism to issues of development and modernization.1 However, those studies have hardly shown the nexus between development and heritages. One of the merits of Marie Huber’s book Developing Heritage-Developing Countries is therefore that it fills this glaring gap. The book analyses the context in which international organizations, mainly the United Nation Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), as well as national and local governments were drawn into developing and conserving heritages in “developing” countries. As a case study to examine this process, Huber has chosen Ethiopia. “Understanding the links between Ethiopia, UNESCO and the World Heritage Programme during its initial phase”, she rightly points out, “provides insights into the complex processes of knowledge production of nation states in the new international order shaping up during the ‘Global Sixtieth’” (p. 2). The book fulfils this aim and thus helps enhance our theoretical and empirical understanding of these organisations’ involvement in heritage management.
The book is organised into five major chapters, preceded by an introduction that discusses the background of the study and spells out its research problems. The first chapter focuses on some of the cultural and natural heritages located within the “Historic Route” in Ethiopia and efforts by UNESCO and the government of Ethiopia to conserve and develop those heritages. The book shows how heritage conservation and development efforts in Ethiopia was part of a global process. The second chapter discusses how in 1960s and 1970s the imperial and military governments of Ethiopia used selected heritages of the country to project Ethiopia’s image as “unique” and “exceptional”. This image originated from the “Great Tradition”, a specific historiographical framework drawing on the history of Ethiopia as an ancient empire and a legend that narrates how Ethiopians became God’s new chosen people. From the 1960s on, the “Great Tradition” played a crucial part in the construction of an Ethiopian national identity (pp. 56–63, 73). The third chapter shows how the task of state transformation towards a bureaucratic, constitutional monarchy carried out under Haile Selassie I resulted in a variety of institutions including those working on development and conservations of heritages. The fourth chapter addresses the roles of local actors in research and in conserving and developing heritages, arguing that local actors had a limited role in those activities partly due to a standardised approach of international organisations that believed that heritages have international/universal value. The last chapter highlights the way Ethiopia related to international organizations and experts and the benefits that resulted from those relations. The book finalises its discussion by making some insightful remarks challenging the existing studies that focus on either the intellectual background of world heritages or their impact on the ground alone. Instead, it argues that heritage was approached from a development perspective that was permeated by technocratic, resource-generating and problem-solving characteristics. Heritages were, hence, considered mainly as agents that would play an important role in constructing national identity of post-colonial societies within an international area (p. 169).
The book shows that conservation and development of heritages was a global process. Heritage conservation in Africa went hand in hand with an increase in the perceived importance of Africa and African countries in the world (p. 2). However, not all heritages were given equal priority. Huber argues that only a handful of cultural and natural resources, capable of creating a good image of Ethiopia and increasing its visibility, were identified, conserved, promoted and developed. Hence, her book offers an analysis of purposefully selected heritage sites.
The book discusses at length a range of factors that called for identification, conservation and development of national heritages and analyses the intentions behind both the international organizations and national governments in preserving and promoting heritages. Both the imperial government (collapsed in 1974) and the military government (1975–1991) of Ethiopia went to great lengths to develop national heritages that were believed to promote Ethiopia’s-nation building project. Hence, religious sites, particularly the rock-hewn churches of Lalibela, were selected and developed not really because they were part of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, but because they were supposed to advance the nation-building agenda (p. 3). This was only one of the motives. An aspiration for income and quest for foreign exchange earnings from tourism motivated national governments in developing countries to undertake heritage conservation. The belief in the importance of strengthening tourism was shared by UNESCO, which strongly hoped that tourism could play a critical role in addressing structural poverty in developing countries by drawing resources from developed nations. The author stresses that “the recommendations and policies [of international organisations] explicitly stated tourism to be a critical factor for challenging global inequality. In the official resolutions and statements, tourism was explained as a mechanism to redistribute the resources of rich societies to poor ones, contributing to the restructuring of the international economic system towards the New International Economic Order” (p. 22).
Like many national governments in developing countries, the imperial and military governments of Ethiopia prioritized national heritage conservation efforts. Huber’s work demonstrates the commonalities between the two political regimes, particularly in their understanding of national heritage as part of a state-building and modernisation process. However, it also argues that the two political regimes differed radically in the orientation of their political paradigm. The military regime, unlike the imperial regime, believed it unacceptable to subordinate culture to tourism and economic development (p. 39). Thus, the military government of Ethiopia intended to shift the central role of heritages from being agents of tourism to being sources of national pride and dignity.
Hence, one of the merits of the book is that it shows the changes that came as a result of the 1974 revolution, but it also points to the continuities that persisted. One of the changes that came after the revolution was that UNESCO and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) were “[…] to adapt the project guidelines to the new political directions and paradigms of a new administration” (p. 39). In other words, both UNESCO and UNDP had to accommodate the demands of the new government that emphasised how “for the preservation of cultural heritages, in this context a development of cultural identity would provide important guidelines for economic development, in which tourism components were not vital, but would be a result” (p. 39). This shift in the government’s priorities indicates that national and local actors have agency of their own with which they mediate, shape, and re-shape external interventions and structures.
The book has supported its arguments with two sets of sources. Tourism promotion materials and government publications that projected images of Ethiopia help analyse the imaginations, visual representations and ideas that elevated Ethiopia as a nation-state (p. 16). The book also bases its analysis on correspondences exchanged between different persons and organisations and mission reports that are extremely useful in understanding the making of heritage, concrete actions and the bureaucratic and legal processes, which significantly shape the actual outcome and production of heritage (p. 16).
Notwithstanding its theoretical as well as empirical contributions to the scholarly debates on the issues under review, the book has neglected to tap into oral sources, which could have added another dimension to the book. As shown in Conflicts, Narratives of Entitlement and Power Positions among Actors Contesting over Nech Sar National Park, Ethiopia2, national parks and natural reserves in Ethiopia in particular were developed at the expense of ordinary citizens who lived around those areas. Huber has tried to address issues pertaining to national parks as well as the contestation that came during and after their establishment (pp. 137–143), but ultimately glosses over the complications involved in conservation and development of heritages.
Although Marie Huber’s book failed to exploit oral sources, it certainly addresses fundamental issues that attest to the importance of the book. The first has to do with the way in which heritages were used by Africa’s nationalist historians. Nationalist historians used heritages produced during the pre-colonial period to reject the thesis that Africans had no history. Huber’s book shifts the central focus from using heritages as witnesses of creativity and civilisations to using heritage as an arena in which actors of different perspectives interact. Huber’s study is also a major contribution because it discusses Ethiopian heritages that undoubtedly emboldened the country’s engagement with the global community. This contribution of the book helps us understand that the agenda of heritage conservation and development saved Ethiopia’s interactions with the global community even during the ideological struggle that occurred during the military period (1975–1991). Hence, the study will serve as a lens through which we can have a partial view of Ethiopian’s foreign relations.
Notes:
1 Henry Bernstein, Underdevelopment and Development: the Third World today: Selected readings, Harmondsworth 1976.
2 Asebe Regasa, Wilderness or Home? Conflicts, Competing Perspectives and Claims of Entitlement over Nech Sar National Park, Ethiopia, Wien 2016.