Death of a Giant: Richard Pankhurst (1927-2017)

On February 16 Richard Pankhurst, a British historian and economist, died at age 89 and one of the greatest investigators on Ethiopia who was still alive.

The son of Sylvia Pankhurst, the celebrated English suffragist, and the Italian anarchist Silvio Corio, was born in Woodford Green (London) on December 3, 1927. His passion for Ethiopia is closely related to his maternal figure, who in 1935 was an ardent advocate Of Abyssinian independence from the invasion of fascist Italy. After completing his doctorate at the London School of Economics , in 1956 he and his mother moved to Ethiopia, where they will maintain a friendly relationship with the emperor Haile Selassie. Sylvia passed away in 1960 in Addis Ababa, being buried in the cemetery located in front of the cathedral of the Trinity.

He was co-founder of the Ethiopian Studies Institute in 1962 and a professor at the University of Addis Ababa. In 1976, after the fall of Haile Selassie, exils to the United Kingdom fleeing from the regime of the Derg, where it will give classes in the School of Oriental and African Studies , among other institutions. He will not return to Ethiopia until 1986, when he resumed his position as a researcher at the Ethiopian Studies Institute.

In 2004, Queen Elizabeth II recognized her work by the Ethiopian History naming him official of the Order of the British Empire. His intervention was key to the return of the famous obelisk of Aksum (the misnamed Estela de Ezana ) to Ethiopia in 2008, after 71 years in the Roman square of Porta Capena, where he was taken by Mussolini as spoils of war.

Anyone who has wanted to delve into Ethiopian and Eritrean history has had to consult, at some point, any of his works. Its production was vast, focusing on the economic history of the country, but without neglecting many other aspects of the country's past. At times he cooperated with his wife, Rita. Among his works, we can highlight the following:

1966 - State and Land in Ethiopian History , Addis Ababa.

1967 - (ed.) The Ethiopian Royal Chronicles , Addis Ababa.

1982 - History of Ethiopian Towns from the Middle Ages to the Early Nineteenth Century Wiesbaden.

1983 - with G. Hancock and D. Willetts, Under Ethiopian Skies , London.

1984 - History of Ethiopian Towns from the Mid-Nineteenth Century to 1935 , Stuttgart.

1997 - T he Ethiopian Borderlands: Essays in Regional History, Lawrenceville.

2001 - The Ethiopians: a history , Hoboken.

A more exhaustive list can be found on his wife's blog .

The figure of Pankhurst can be compared with that of other great scholars who worked in Ethiopia in the twentieth century, and whose works are still of reference, such as Enno Littman, Enrico Cerulli, Carlo Conti Rosini, Wolf Leslau, George WB Huntingford, or Tadesse Tamrat, among others.

Fortunately, the Pankhurst family continues the work of Richard: his sons Helen and Alula have long been devoted researchers who have followed in the footsteps of their father.