Eritrea's coastal location has long been important in its history and culture—a fact reflected in its name, which is an Italianized version of Mare Erythraeum, Latin for “Red Sea.” The Red Sea was the route along which Christianity and Islām reached the area and took firm hold among the people, and it was an important trade route that such powers as Turkey, Egypt, and Italy hoped to dominate by seizing control of ports on the Eritrean coast. Those ports promised access to the gold, coffee, and slaves sold by traders in the Ethiopian highlands to the south, and in the second half of the 20th century Ethiopia became the power from which the Eritrean people had to free themselves in order to create their own state. In 1993, after a war of independence that lasted nearly three decades, Eritrea became a sovereign country. During the long struggle, the people of Eritrea managed to forge a common national consciousness, but, with peace established, they now face the task of overcoming their ethnic and religious differences in order to raise the country from a poverty made worse by years of drought, neglect, and war.

Eritrea's (Eritrea) land is highly variegated. Running on a north-south axis through the middle of the country are the central highlands, a narrow strip of country some 6,500 feet (2,000 metres) above sea level that represents the northern reaches of the Ethiopian Plateau. Geologically, this plateau consists of a foundation of crystalline rock (e.g., granite, gneiss, micaschist) that is overlain by sedimentary rock (limestone and sandstone) and then capped by basalt (rock of volcanic origin). The upper layers have been highly dissected by deep gorges and river channels, forming small steep-sided, flat-topped tablelands known as ambas. The highest point in the plateau is Mount Soira, at 9,885 feet (3,013 metres).

In the north of Eritrea the highlands narrow and then end in a system of hills, where erosion has cut down to the basement rock. To the east the plateau drops abruptly into a coastal plain. North of the Gulf of Zula, the plain is only 10 to 50 miles wide, but to the south it widens to include the Denakil Plain. This barren region contains a depression known as the Kobar Sink (more than 300 feet below sea level), the northern end of which extends into Eritrea. The coastal plain and the Denakil Plain are part of the East African Rift System and are sharply delimited on the west by the eastern escarpment of the plateau, which, although deeply eroded, presents a formidable obstacle to travelers from the coast.

The western flank of the central highlands is a broken and undulating plain that slopes gradually toward the border with The Sudan. It lies at an average elevation of 1,500 feet. The vegetation is mostly savanna, consisting of scattered trees, shrubs, and seasonal grasses.

Off the coast in the Red Sea is the Dahlak Archipelago, a group of more than 100 small coral and reef-fringed islands. Only a few of these islands have a permanent population.

The Eritrean highlands are drained by four major rivers and numerous streams. Two of the rivers, the Gash (Gash River) and the Tekeze, flow westward into The Sudan. The Tekeze River (also known as the Satit) is a major tributary of the Atbara River, which eventually joins the Nile. The Gash River reaches the Atbara only during flood season. As it crosses the western lowlands, the Tekeze forms part of Eritrea's border with Ethiopia, while the upper course of the Gash, known as the Mereb River, forms the border on the plateau.

The other two major rivers that drain the highlands of Eritrea are the Barka and the Anseba. Both of these rivers flow northward into a marshy area on the eastern coast of The Sudan and do not reach the Red Sea. Several seasonal streams that flow eastward from the plateau reach the sea on the Eritrean coast.

Eritrea has a wide variety of climatic conditions, produced mainly by differences in altitude. The effects of elevation are seen most clearly in the wide range of temperatures experienced throughout the country. On the coast, Massawa (Mitsiwa) has one of the highest averages in the world (86° F, or 30° C), while Asmara, only 40 miles away yet more than 7,500 feet higher on the plateau, averages 62° F (17° C).

Mean annual rainfall on the plateau is 16 to 20 inches (400 to 500 millimetres), while on the western plain it is less than 16 inches. In both the highlands and the western lowlands, rainfall comes in summer, carried on a southwesterly airstream that decreases in amount of precipitation and length of rainy season as it proceeds toward the northeastern extremes of the plateau. The eastern edges of the plateau and, to a lesser extent, the coastal fringes receive much smaller quantities of rain from a northeasterly airstream that arrives in winter and spring. The interior regions of the Denakil Plain are practically rainless.

The environment is a determining factor in the distribution of Eritrea's population. Although the plateau represents only one-quarter of the total land area, it is home to approximately one-half of the population, most of them sedentary agriculturalists. The lowlands on the east and west support a population mainly of pastoralists, although most of them also cultivate crops when and where weather conditions permit. As a rule, pastoralists follow various patterns of movement set by the seasons. Only the Rashaida, a small group in the northern hills, is truly nomadic.

Under Italian colonial rule from 1889 to 1941, Eritrea's urban sector flourished with the establishment of Asmara as the capital city, Assab (Aseb) as a new port on the Red Sea, and a host of smaller towns on the plateau. In addition, Massawa, an old and cosmopolitan port with strong links to Arabia, was expanded considerably. By the end of the colonial period, Eritrea had by far the highest urbanization rate in the Horn of Africa—approximately 15 percent—although a large part of the urban population was Italian nationals who eventually left the country. Subsequently, a population drift from the countryside to the towns was offset by emigration of Eritreans abroad, so that at the time of independence in 1993 the relative size of the urban sector remained unchanged.

Eritrea's population consists of several ethnic groups, each with its own language and cultural tradition. The Eritrean highlands are an extension of the Ethiopian Plateau to the south, and the bulk of the peasantry on the plateau belong to the Tigray, a group that also occupies the adjacent Ethiopian province of Tigray. The Tigrayan language, called Tigrinya (Tigre), is spoken on both sides of the border and is the speech of nearly one-half of all Eritreans.

Inhabiting the northernmost part of the Eritrean plateau, as well as lowlands to the east and west, are people who speak the other major Eritrean language—Tigre. Tigre (Tigré language) and Tigrinya (Tigrinya language) are written in the same script and are descended from the same mother tongue (the ancient Semitic language of Geʿez), but they are mutually unintelligible.

Also occupying the northern plateau are Bilin speakers, whose language belongs to the Cushitic family. The Rashaida are a group of Arabic-speaking nomads who traverse the northern hills.

On the southern part of the coastal region live Afar nomads, whose relatives live across the borders in Djibouti and Ethiopia; they are also called the Denakil, after the region that they inhabit. The coastal strip south of Massawa, as well as the eastern flanks of the plateau, are occupied by Saho pastoralists. In the western plain, the dominant people are pastoralists of the Beja family, whose kin live across the border in The Sudan. Two small Nilotic groups, the Kunama and the Nara, also live in the west.

Historically, religion has been a prominent symbol of ethnic identity in the Horn of Africa. Christianity was established in the 4th century AD on the coast and appeared soon afterward in the plateau, where it was embraced by the Ethiopian highlanders. The monophysite creed of the Ethiopian Orthodox church remains the faith of about half of the population of Eritrea, including nearly all the Tigray. Following the rise of Islām (Islāmic world) in Arabia, Muslim power flowed over the Red Sea coast, forcing the Ethiopians to retreat deep into their mountain fastness. Islām displaced other creeds in the lowlands of the Horn, and it remains the faith of nearly all the people inhabiting the eastern coast and the western plain of Eritrea, as well as the northernmost part of the plateau. Thus, while Islām claims nearly all pastoralists, Christianity is dominant among the peasant cultivators. (Muslims are significantly represented also in all towns of Eritrea, where they are prominent in trade.) In the perennial competition between cultivators and pastoralists over land, water, control of trade, and access to ports, religion has played an ideological role, and it remains a potent political force.

During the colonial period, Catholic and Protestant European missionaries introduced their own version of Christianity into Eritrea. They had considerable success among the small Kunama group, and they also attracted a few townspeople with the offer of modern education.

Salt mining, based on deposits in the Kobar Sink, is a traditional activity in Eritrea. Deposits of gold, copper, potash, and iron have been exploited at times in a minor way, and numerous other minerals have been identified, including zinc, feldspar, gypsum, asbestos, mica, and sulfur.

The area of cultivation is limited by climate and the uneven surface of the plateau, so that, of the 8 million acres (3.2 million hectares) of land considered cultivable, only 5 percent is being worked. There is room for expansion, however, especially if the country's considerable water resources are harnessed for irrigation.

In normal times, livestock is a valuable resource, and it has the potential to play a role in Eritrea's foreign trade. During the long war of independence, however, livestock was severely depleted. The fishing potential of the Red Sea is another underutilized resource.

Soil erosion, an age-old process, is particularly severe on the plateau. Encouraged by the steady expansion of cultivation, it has left few wooded areas and has created a shortage of fuel. The proximity of the oil-rich Arabian basin has occasionally raised expectations of discovering petroleum in Eritrea, but intermittent exploration since the days of Italian rule has failed to produce results.

Agriculture is by far the most important sector of the country's economy, providing a livelihood for about 80 percent of the population and normally accounting for the bulk of Eritrea's exports. Peasant cultivation and traditional pastoralism are the main forms of agricultural activity. These are not mutually exclusive occupations, since most peasants also keep animals and most pastoralists cultivate grains when possible. Both peasants and pastoralists produce primarily for their own subsistence, and only small surpluses are available for trade.

The staple grain products are an indigenous cereal named teff (Eragostis abyssinica) as well as corn (maize), wheat, barley, sorghum, and millet. Vegetables and fruit also are produced. Under Italian rule, modern irrigated plantations produced vegetables, fruit, cotton, sisal, bananas, tobacco, and coffee for the growing urban markets. This sector continued to operate under Ethiopian rule until it was disrupted by the long period of warfare.

A generation of war also damaged Eritrea's modest manufacturing sector, which also appeared during the Italian colonial period and provided many Eritrean workers with skills that enabled them later to find work abroad. Industry was based largely on the processing of agricultural products. Asmara was the main industrial centre, concerned with food products, beer, tobacco, textiles, and leather.

A petroleum refinery in the Red Sea port of Assab (Asseb), built by the former Soviet Union for Ethiopia, is the prime industrial enterprise in Eritrea. Assab (Asseb) also has a salt works, and there are a salt works and a cement works near the port of Massawa.

Assab and Massawa have long been major ports of entry to Ethiopia, and that country, now landlocked, still has guarantees of access to the port facilities at Assab. As a result, the bulk of Eritrea's trade is in the transit of goods to Ethiopia. A paved road links Assab with Addis Ababa, and another paved road begins in Massawa, climbs the plateau to Asmara, and continues south to the Ethiopian town of Adigrat. A railway was built by the Italians from Massawa to Asmara, Keren, and Akordat, but it was rendered useless by the war of independence.

There are an international airport in Asmara and major airfields in Assab and Massawa.

After liberation from Ethiopia in May 1991, Eritrea was ruled by a provisional government that consisted essentially of the central committee of the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF (Eritrean People's Liberation Front)). On May 19, 1993, shortly after a national referendum, this body proclaimed the Transitional Government of Eritrea, which was to rule for four years until the promulgation of a constitution and the election of a permanent government. The transitional government's legislative body, called the National Assembly, consisted of the original 30-member central committee of the EPLF augmented by 60 new members. At least 20 seats were to be reserved for women.

The National Assembly sets the policies of the government and elects the president. The president is assisted in implementing the government's policies by a State Council, containing cabinet ministers and the governors of Eritrea's provinces. In order to discourage ethnic rivalry, seats on the State Council are divided equally between Muslims and Christians, and political parties based on language or religion are banned.

Chronic drought and decades of war have taken a toll on the health of Eritreans. The mortality rate at birth is 15 percent, and almost half of all infants die during their first year. The average life expectancy is about 50 years.

Only about 20 percent of Eritreans are literate, though the new government is intent on expanding education. Children are taught in their native languages, and in the higher grades they also are taught foreign languages, especially Arabic and English. There is a university in Asmara.

Beginning about 1000 BC, Semitic peoples from the South Arabian kingdom of Sabaʾ (or Sheba) migrated across the Red Sea and absorbed the Cushitic inhabitants of the Eritrean coast and adjacent highlands. These Semitic invaders, possessing a well-developed culture, established the kingdom of Aksum, which, by the end of the 4th century AD, ruled the northern stretches of the Ethiopian Plateau and the eastern lowlands. An important trade route led from the port of Adulis, near modern Zula, to the city of Aksum, the capital, located in what is now the Ethiopian province of Tigray.

After extending its power at times as far afield as modern Egypt and Yemen, Aksum began to decline into obscurity in the 6th century AD. Beginning in the 12th century, however, the Ethiopian Zagwe (Zagwe Dynasty) and Solomonid (Solomonid Dynasty) dynasties held sway to a fluctuating extent over the entire plateau and the Red Sea coast. Eritrea's central highlands, known as the mereb melash (“land beyond the Mereb River”), were the northern frontier region of the Ethiopian kingdoms and were ruled by a governor titled bahr negash (“lord of the sea”). The control exercised by the crown over this region was never firm, and it became even more tenuous as the centre of Ethiopian power moved steadily southward to Gonder and Shewa. Highland Eritrea became a vassal fiefdom of the lords of Tigray, who were seldom on good terms with the dominant Amhara branch of the Ethiopian family.

Off the plateau, the pastoralist peoples in the west and north knew no foreign master until the early 19th century, when the Egyptians invaded the Sudan and raided deep into the Eritrean lowlands. The Red Sea coast, owing to its strategic and commercial importance, was contested by many powers. In the 16th century the Turks (Ottoman Empire) occupied the Dahlak Archipelago and then Massawa, where they maintained, with occasional interruption, a garrison for more than three centuries. Also in the 16th century, Eritrea as well as Ethiopia were affected by the invasions of Aḥmad Grāñ, the Muslim leader of the sultanate of Adal. After the expulsion of Aḥmad's forces, the Turks temporarily occupied even more of Eritrea's coastal area. In 1865 the Egyptians obtained Massawa from the Ottoman Porte. From there they pushed inland to the plateau, until in 1875 an Egyptian force that reached the Mereb River was annihilated by Ethiopian forces.

Meanwhile, the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 had made the Red Sea a scene of rivalry among the world's most powerful states. Between 1869 and 1880 the Italian Rubattino Navigation company purchased from the local Afar sultan stretches of the Red Sea coast adjoining the village of Assab. In 1882 these acquisitions were transferred to the Italian state, and in 1885 Italian troops landed at Massawa, Assab, and other locations. There was no resistance by the Egyptians at Massawa, and protests made by the Turks and Ethiopians were ignored. Italian forces then systematically spread out from Massawa toward the highlands. This expansion onto the plateau was initially opposed by Emperor Yohannes IV, the only Tigray to wear the Ethiopian crown in modern times, but Yohannes's successor, Menilek II, in return for weapons that he needed to fight possible rivals, acquiesced to Italian occupation of the region north of the Mereb. In the Treaty of Wichale (Wichale, Treaty of), signed on May 2, 1889, Menilek recognized “Italian possessions in the Red Sea,” and on January 1, 1890, the Italian colony of Eritrea was officially proclaimed. From here, the Italians launched several incursions into Ethiopia, only to be decisively defeated by Menilek's army at the Battle of Adwa (Adwa, Battle of) on March 1, 1896. Menilek did not pursue the defeated enemy across the Mereb. Soon afterward he signed the Treaty of Addis Ababa, obtaining Italian recognition of Ethiopia's sovereignty in return for his recognition of Italian rule over Eritrea.

In precolonial times there were no towns on the Eritrean plateau, urban centres being limited to the Red Sea coast. Under Italian rule, however, Eritrea's urban sector flourished. Tens of thousands of Italians arrived, bringing with them modern skills and a new lifestyle. Asmara grew into a charming city in Mediterranean style, the port of Massawa was modernized and the port of Assab improved, and a number of smaller towns appeared on the plateau. Road and rail construction linked the various regions of the colony, and a modest manufacturing sector also appeared, so that Eritreans acquired industrial skills.

At the same time, a sizable portion of Eritrea's best agricultural land was reserved for Italian farmers (although only a few actually settled on the land), and a small plantation sector was established to grow produce for the urban market. Eritrea's population grew rapidly during this period. Combined with the appropriation of land for Italian use, population growth created a shortage of land for the peasantry. This in turn stimulated a drift to the cities, which further expanded the urban population and produced an Eritrean working class.

Still, Eritrea had no valuable resources for exploitation and was not a wealth-producing colony for Italy. In fact, the colony was subsidized by the Italians, an extraneous factor that gave the local economy an artificial glow. Investment in education for Eritreans was negligible. There were very few schools for them, and even these were limited to the primary level. Also, Eritreans were not employed in the colonial service except as labourers and soldiers. As preparations for the invasion of Ethiopia got under way in the mid-1930s, several thousand Eritreans were recruited to serve in the invading army.

The invasion and occupation of Ethiopia beginning in 1935 marked the last chapter in Italian colonial history—a chapter that came to an end with the eviction of Italy from the Horn of Africa by the British in 1941. The following decade, during which Eritrea remained under British administration, was a period of intense political and diplomatic activity that shaped the future of Eritrea. Landlocked Ethiopia, coveting Eritrea's two seaports, launched an early campaign to annex the former colony, claiming that it had always been part of Ethiopia's domain. Lobbying of the Allied powers was carried out, and within Eritrea support for annexation was mobilized on the basis of religious loyalty by utilizing the services of Ethiopian Orthodox clergy. In order to promote the union of Eritrea with Ethiopia, a Unionist Party was formed in 1946; it was financed and guided from Addis Ababa.

Eritrea's Muslims had every good reason to oppose union with Ethiopia, where Christianity was the official religion and Muslims suffered discrimination in many areas of life. In order to counter Christian mobilization for union, a Muslim League was founded in 1947 to campaign for Eritrean independence. Thus, although there were some Christians who favoured independence and a few Muslims who were favourable to union with Ethiopia, the political division was drawn largely along sectarian lines.

In 1950 the United Nations (UN), under the prompting of the United States, resolved to join Eritrea to Ethiopia within two years in a federation that would provide the former colony with autonomy under its own constitution and elected government. Elections to a new Eritrean Assembly in 1952 gave the Unionist Party the largest number of seats—but not a majority, so that it formed a government in coalition with a Muslim faction. The Eritrean constitution, prepared by the UN in consultation with Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia, was adopted by the Eritrean Assembly on July 10, 1952, and ratified by Haile Selassie on August 11. The act of federation was ratified by the emperor on September 11, and British authorities officially relinquished control on September 15.

The federal scheme was short-lived, mainly because the imperial government in Addis Ababa was unwilling to abide by its provisions. First, the Eritrean constitution sought to establish an equilibrium between ethnic and religious groups. It made Tigrinya and Arabic the official languages of Eritrea, and it allowed local communities to choose the language of education for their children. In the spirit of the constitution, the practice evolved of ensuring parity between Christians and Muslims in appointment to state office. This delicate balance was destroyed by Ethiopian interference, and Muslims were the initial losers, as Arabic was eliminated from state education and Muslims were squeezed out of public employment.

Furthermore, the Ethiopians were anxious to eliminate any traces of separatism in Eritrea, and to that end they harassed the leaders of the independence movement until many of them fled abroad. With the collaboration of their Unionist allies and in express violation of the constitution, they also suppressed all attempts to form autonomous Eritrean organizations. Political parties were banned in 1955, trade unions were banned in 1958, and in 1959 the name Eritrean Government was changed to “Eritrean Administration” and Ethiopian law was imposed. Eventually, even Ethiopia's Eritrean allies were alienated by crude intervention in the running of the Eritrean administration, financial disputes between Asmara and Addis Ababa, and mounting pressure on the Eritreans to renounce autonomy. The federation was already dead when, on November 14, 1962, the Ethiopian parliament and Eritrean Assembly voted unanimously for the abolition of Eritrea's federal status, making Eritrea a simple province of the Ethiopian empire. Soon afterward, Tigrinya was banned in education; it was replaced by Amharic, which at the time was the official language of Ethiopia.

Muslims had been the first to suffer from Ethiopia's intervention in Eritrea, and it was they who formed the first opposition movement. In 1960, leaders of the defunct independence movement who were then living in exile announced the formation of the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF). The founders, all Muslims, were led by Idris Mohammed Adam, a leading political figure in Eritrea in the 1940s. By the mid-1960s the ELF was able to field a small guerrilla force in the western plain of Eritrea, and thus began a war that was to last nearly three decades. In the early years, the ELF drew support from Muslim communities in the western and eastern lowlands as well as the northern hills. It also sought support from The Sudan, Syria, Iran, and other Islāmic states, used Arabic as its official language, and adopted Arab nomenclature in its organization. Ethiopian authorities portrayed the movement as an Arab tool and sought to rally Eritrean Christians to oppose it. Deteriorating economic and political conditions in Eritrea, however, combined to produce the opposite result.

During the 1930s and '40s the Eritrean economy had been stimulated by Italian colonial activity and by the special conditions created by World War II. After the war the local economy deflated, and it remained stagnant during the entire period of federation with Ethiopia. Many thousands of Eritreans were forced to emigrate to Ethiopia and the Middle East in search of employment. The suppression of the nascent trade-union movement further embittered this class, and many Eritrean workers—Muslims and Christians alike—rallied to the nationalist movement. In addition, the banning of Tigrinya in state education helped to turn an entire generation of Eritrean Christian students toward nationalism. Christians began to join the ELF in significant numbers at the end of the 1960s. Among them were students who had become politically radicalized in the Ethiopian student movement, which itself became a centre of opposition to the regime of Haile Selassie in the 1960s and '70s.

The ELF was now able to extend its operations to the central highlands of Eritrea—the home of the Tigray. However, the arrival of the radical students coincided with the emergence of a serious rift between the leadership of the ELF, which was permanently resident in Cairo, and the rank and file, which remained in the field. The newcomers joined the opposition to the leadership, and in 1972 several groups that had defected from the ELF joined forces to form the Eritrean Liberation Front–People's Liberation Forces (ELF–PLF). For several years the two rival organizations fought each other as well as the Ethiopians. After a series of splits and mergers, the ELF–PLF came under the control of former students, among whom Christians predominated, and was renamed the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF), a Marxist and secular organization.

The EPLF had made its presence felt by 1974, when the imperial regime in Ethiopia collapsed. While a power struggle for the succession was waged in Addis Ababa, the two Eritrean fronts liberated most of Eritrea. By 1977 the nationalist revolution seemed on the verge of victory. It was not to be. A military dictatorship emerged in Addis Ababa—also espousing Marxism—and, armed and assisted by the Soviet (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) bloc, the new Ethiopian regime was able to regain most of Eritrea in 1978. Warfare on a scale unprecedented in sub-Saharan Africa raged for the next two decades. The Ethiopians made enormous efforts with massive land attacks and heavy weaponry, but they had no success against the small and lightly armed guerrilla forces.

The violence of war and indiscriminate oppression in their homeland turned most Eritreans against Ethiopia, thereby producing a steady stream of young recruits for the nationalist movement. Throughout the 1980s the fighting was carried out by the EPLF, which by 1981 had succeeded in eliminating the ELF and had emerged as the unchallenged champion of Eritrean nationalism. In the latter part of the decade, the Soviet Union terminated its military aid to Ethiopia. Unable to find another patron and faced with armed rebellion in other parts of the country, the regime in Addis Ababa began to falter. The final act occurred in 1991, when a rebel military offensive, led by the Tigray People's Liberation Front, swept toward the capital. The Ethiopian army disintegrated, and in May the EPLF assumed complete control of Eritrea.

Three decades of war had produced among Eritreans a sense of unity and solidarity that they had not known before. Indeed, an entire generation had come of age during the struggle for independence, which was now to become a reality. The new regime in Ethiopia supported Eritrea's independence, so that a separation was effected amicably. In a referendum held two years after liberation, on April 23–25, 1993, the overwhelming majority of Eritreans voted for independence. On May 21 Isaias Afwerki (Afwerki, Isaias), the secretary-general of the EPLF, was made president of a transitional government, and on May 24 he proclaimed Eritrea officially independent.

Following independence, Eritrea enjoyed a thriving economy but, with the noteworthy exception of Ethiopia, maintained poor relations with neighbouring nations. Tension with The Sudan throughout the 1990s centred on mutual allegations that each had attempted to destabilize the other, and in late 1995 Eritrea engaged in a brief but violent conflict with Yemen over the Ḥanīsh Islands, an archipelago in the Red Sea claimed by both countries. Postindependence relations with Ethiopia, heretofore warm and supportive, deteriorated rapidly in 1998 and exploded into violence over the disputed hamlet of Badme. Following two years of bloodshed, a peace was negotiated in December 2000, but Eritrea's earlier economic and political progress had been shattered. Amid economic distress, loss of life, and a new flood of displaced persons, the first voices of discontent with government leadership were raised, and calls were made to promulgate the nation's constitution, which had been ratified in 1997.