Faculty and Staff

Donald Edward Crummey

Curriculum Vitae


Personal

Born 26 January, 1941, New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, Canada; married, three children.  I am a naturalized citizen of the United States.

Education

1958 - 62: B.A., Honours History, University of Toronto
1964 - 67: Ph.D., African History, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London

Professional History

1967 - 73: Lecturer, then Assistant Professor, History Department, Haile Sellassie I University
1973 - 2005: Faculty member, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, with attachments to the Center for African Studies and the Department of History; since 1983 with rank of Professor
1984 - 94 Director, Center for African Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Fellowships and Honors

1965 and 1966 Canada Council fellowship for postgraduate stud
1979-80 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for Independent Study and Research
1992-93 National Humanities Center, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, Residential Fellowship
1997 Fulbright African Regional Research Program fellowship for a nine month study of environmental history in Ethiopia

Principal Research Grants

1987-90: NEH Research Grant for “A History of Ethiopian Land Tenure and its Social Context,” $150,000;  renewed 1990-93 at $114,000
1993-96: John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Collaborative Research Competition, “The African Environment:  Experience and Control,” $750,750

Publications

Books

Priests and Politicians.  Protestant and Catholic Missions in Orthodox Ethiopia 1830 - 1868 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972)
Land and Society in the Christian Kingdom of Ethiopia:  From the Thirteenth to the Twentieth Century (University of Illinois Press, 2000)
Co-edited with T. Bassett, African Savannas:  Global Narratives and Local Knowledge of Environmental Change (James Currey Publisher, Oxford, 2003)
Guest editor, special issue Journal of Early Modern History, VIII, 3/4 (2004), “Ethiopia in the Early Modern Period”
Edited, Land, Literacy and the State in Sudanic Africa (Trenton, NJ:  Red Sea Press, 2005)

Selected Articles

“Abyssinian Feudalism,” Past and Present, No. 89 (1980), 115-38
“Imperial Legitimacy and the Creation of a Neo-Solomonic Ideology in 19th Century Ethiopia,” Cahiers d'Études africaines, 109, XXVIII, 1 (1988), 13-43
“Society, State and Nationality in the Recent Historiography of Ethiopia,” Journal of African History, XXXI, 1 (1990), 103-119
With Shumet Sishagne, “Land Tenure and the Social Accumulation of Wealth in Eighteenth Century Ethiopia:  Evidence from the Qwesqwam Land Register,”  International Journal of African Historical Studies XXIV, 2 (1991), 241-58
“The Politics of Modernization:  Protestant and Catholic Missionaries in Modern Ethiopia,” pp. 85-99 in Samuel Rubenson, Getatchew Haile and Aasulv Laude (eds.), The Missionary Factor in Ethiopia (Peter Lang Publishers, 1998)
“Personality and Political Culture in Ethiopian History:  The Case of Emperor Téwodros,” pp. 78-89 in Melvin E. Page et al (eds.), Personality and Political Culture in Modern Africa.  Studies Presented to Professor Harold G. Marcus (Boston:  African Studies Center, Boston University, 1998)
“Deforestation in Wällo:  Process or Illusion?” Journal of Ethiopian Studies, XXXVI, 1 (1998), 1-41
“Ambiente, carestia e non sviluppo in Etiopia in una prospettive storica:  il caso del Wollo,” Storia Urbana, XXV, 95 (2001), pp. 45-70
“Ethiopian Historiography in the Latter Half of the Twentieth Century:  A North American Perspective,”Journal of Ethiopian Studies, XXXIV, 1 (2001), pp. 7-24
“Family and Mobility in Wällo:  Tähulädäré Wärädä, 1941 to the present,” pp. 344-354 in volume I of Baye Yimam, et al (eds.), Ethiopian Studies at the End of the Second Millennium.  Proceedings of the XIVth International Conference of Ethiopian Studies, November 6-11, 2000, Addis Ababa (Addis Ababa:  Institute of Ethiopian Studies, Addis Ababa University, 3 vols., 2002)
with Alex Winter-Nelson, “Farmers’ Tree Planting in Wällo,” pp. 91-121 in Bassett and Crummey, African Savannas
With Getatchew Haile, “Abunä Sälama:  Metropolitan of Ethiopia, 1841-1867:  A New Ge’ez Biography,” Journal of Ethiopian Studies, XXXVII, 1 (June 2004), pp. 5-40