Eritrea

Adulis and the Aksumite connection — ancient Eritrea's golden age

Eritrea's Red Sea coast (c. 400 BCE – 700 CE) was home to Adulis — one of the ancient world's most important ports, through which the Kingdom of Aksum exported ivory, gold, obsidian, and enslaved people to Rome, Byzantium, Arabia, and India, making the future Eritrean coast the commercial heart of the most powerful empire in sub-Saharan Africa.

Italian Eritrea — Africa's first Italian colony

Italian Eritrea (1890–1941 CE) — the first Italian colony in Africa, established when Italy bought the coastal strip from Egypt's successor state — was the base from which Italy launched the disastrous invasion of Ethiopia (defeated at Adwa, 1896), then the successful fascist conquest (1935–36), leaving a legacy of Italian infrastructure, art deco architecture in Asmara, and a trained Eritrean military that would later fight for independence.

Asmara — the modernist city on the African plateau

Asmara (elevation 2,325 metres), Eritrea's capital, is one of the world's most remarkably preserved modernist cities — its Italian art deco, futurist, rationalist, and expressionist buildings (1935–41, built during Italy's occupation) constitute a UNESCO World Heritage Site that draws architecture pilgrims to one of the world's most inaccessible capitals, where time seems stopped at 1941.

The independence struggle — Africa's longest liberation war

Eritrea's war of independence from Ethiopia (1961–1991 CE) — 30 years, the longest armed liberation struggle in African history — was fought by the Eritrean Liberation Front and then the Eritrean People's Liberation Front against first the US-backed Emperor Haile Selassie, then the Soviet-backed Derg military junta, achieving independence in 1991 and formal recognition in 1993.

Isaias Afwerki's Eritrea — Africa's most isolated state

Eritrea under President Isaias Afwerki (1993–present) has become the world's most repressive state by several measures — no constitution, no elections, no independent press, no civil society, indefinite national service (conscription for life in practice), and a refugee exodus (500,000 have fled) that produces proportionally more asylum-seekers per capita than Syria — a liberation movement that became a totalitarian state.

The Eritrea-Ethiopia border war — victory into catastrophe

The Eritrea-Ethiopia border war (1998–2000 CE) — fought over a strip of territory including the town of Badme, which the 2002 Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission awarded to Eritrea — was one of Africa's bloodiest modern conflicts (70,000–100,000 dead) and the turning point that converted Eritrea's liberation triumph into the world's most repressive state.