Ethiopia is Africa's oldest independent country. Apart from a five-year occupation by Mussolini's Italy, it has never been colonised.
But the nation is better known for its periodic droughts and famines, its long civil conflict and a border war with Eritrea.
In the first part of the 20th century Ethiopia forged strong links with Britain, whose troops helped evict the Italians in 1941 and put Emperor Haile Selassie back on his throne. From the 1960s British influence gave way to that of the US, which in turn was supplanted by the Soviet Union.
Although it has had fewer of the coups that have plagued other African countries, Ethiopia's turmoil has been no less devastating. Drought, famine, war and ill-conceived policies brought millions to the brink of starvation in the 1970s and 1980s.
In 1974 this helped topple Haile Selassie. His regime was replaced by a self-proclaimed Marxist junta led by Mengistu Haile Mariam under which many thousands of opponents were purged or killed, property was confiscated and defence spending spiralled.
The overthrow of the junta in 1991 saw political and economic conditions stabilise, to the extent that the country is regarded as one of Africa's most stable.
Eritrea gained independence in 1993 following a referendum. Poor border demarcation developed into military conflict and full-scale war in the late 1990s in which tens of thousands of people were killed.
A fragile truce has held, but the UN says ongoing disputes over the demarcation of the border threaten peace.
Ethiopia is one of Africa's poorest states. Almost two-thirds of its people are illiterate. The economy revolves around agriculture, which in turn relies on rainfall. The country is one of Africa's leading coffee producers.
Many Ethiopians depend on food aid from abroad. In 2004 the government began a drive to move more than two million people away from the arid highlands of the east in an attempt to provide a lasting solution to food shortages.
At the end of 2006 Ethiopia sent between 5,000 and 10,000 troops into Somalia to support forces of the weak transitional government there and helped to oust the Islamists who had controlled southern Somalia for six months.
But, despite initial successes, the Ethiopians were unable to break the power of the Islamists, who gradually began to win back lost territory.
Ethiopia's presence in Somalia formally ended in early 2009, when it pulled its troops under an agreement between the transitional Somali government and moderate Islamists.
President: Girma Woldegiorgis
Prime minister: Meles Zenawi
Meles Zenawi's Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) won a fourth term in elections in May 2010, bolstering its already large majority.
EU and US observers said the vote fell short of international standards, and the opposition refused to accept the result, alleging the election was not free and fair.
In 2009, Mr Meles hinted he might be ready to step down, but his party asked him to stay on and groom a successor.
The EPRDF's previous election win in May 2005 sparked a wave of violence, after opposition supporters took to the streets to protest against alleged vote-rigging. Around 36 people were killed and hundreds were arrested; 46 protesters died in further violence in November.
Mr Meles accused the opposition of planning to topple his government; his critics said a campaign against political dissent was under way. Senior opposition figures and journalists were among those detained and charged with treason in the wake of the 2005 protests.
The prime minister has won praise from Western donors for curbing Ethiopia's reliance on foreign aid and commitment to building up the country's economy. His opponents accuse the West of being blind to what they say is policy of political repression.
Meles Zenawi is a veteran of the guerrilla campaign against the Mengistu regime and was chosen as transitional head of state after the dictator was overthrown in 1991. Once a Marxist-Leninist, by the 1990s he had become a champion of the free market and parliamentary democracy.
He was one of the architects of the 1994 constitution, which provided for a federal republic with ethnically-based regions. In 1995 he became prime minister and won a second five-year term in 2000 in Ethiopia's first multi-party elections.
A chronology of key events:
2nd century AD - Kingdom of Axum becomes a regional trading power.
4th century - Coptic Christianity introduced from Egypt.
1530-31 - Muslim leader Ahmad Gran conquers much of Ethiopia.
1818-68 - Lij Kasa conquers Amhara, Gojjam, Tigray and Shoa.
1855 - Kasa becomes Emperor Tewodros II.
1868 - Tewodros defeated by a British expeditionary force and commits suicide to avoid capture.
1872 - Tigrayan chieftain becomes Yohannes IV.
1889 - Yohannes IV killed while fighting Mahdist forces and is succeeded by the king of Shoa, who becomes Emperor Menelik II.
1889 - Menelik signs a bilateral friendship treaty with Italy at Wuchale which Italy interprets as giving it a protectorate over Ethiopia. Ethiopia rejects this interpretation, later renounces the treaty and repays a loan.
1889 - Addis Ababa becomes Ethiopia's capital.
Italy invades
1895 - Italy invades Ethiopia.
1896 - Italian forces defeated by the Ethiopians at Adwa; treaty of Wuchale annulled; Italy recognises Ethiopia's independence but retains control over Eritrea.
1913 - Menelik dies and is succeeded by his grandson, Lij Iyasu.
1916 - Lij Iyasu deposed and is succeeded by Menelik's daughter, Zawditu, who rules through a regent, Ras Tafari Makonnen.
1930 - Zawditu dies and is succeeded by Ras Tafari Makonnen, who becomes Emperor Haile Selassie I.
1935 - Italy invades Ethiopia.
1936 - Italians capture Addis Ababa, Haile Selassie flees, king of Italy made emperor of Ethiopia; Ethiopia combined with Eritrea and Italian Somaliland to become Italian East Africa.
Haile Selassie's reign
1941 - British and Commonwealth troops, greatly aided by the Ethiopian resistance - the arbegnoch - defeat the Italians, and restore Haile Selassie to his throne.
1952 - United Nations federates Eritrea with Ethiopia.
1962 - Haile Selassie annexes Eritrea, which becomes an Ethiopian province.
1963 - First conference of the Organisation of African Unity held in Addis Ababa.
"Red Terror"
1973-74 - An estimated 200,000 people die in Wallo province as a result of famine.
1974 - Haile Selassie overthrown in military coup. General Teferi Benti becomes head of state.
1975 - Haile Selassie dies in mysterious circumstances while in custody.
1977 - Benti killed and replaced by Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam.
1977-79 - Thousands of government opponents die in "Red Terror" orchestrated by Mengistu; collectivisation of agriculture begins; Tigrayan People's Liberation Front launches war for regional autonomy.
1977 - Somalia invades Ethiopia's Ogaden region.
1978 - Somali forces defeated with massive help from the Soviet Union and Cuba.
1984-85 - Worst famine in a decade strikes; Western food aid sent; thousands forcibly resettled from Eritrea and Tigre.
1987 - Mengistu elected president under a new constitution.
1988 - Ethiopia and Somalia sign a peace treaty.
After Mengistu
1991 - Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front captures Addis Ababa, forcing Mengistu to flee the country; Eritrea establishes its own provisional government pending a referendum on independence.
1992 - Haile Selassie's remains discovered under a palace toilet.
1993 - Eritrea becomes independent following referendum.
1994 - New constitution divides Ethiopia into ethnically-based regions.
1995 - Negasso Gidada becomes titular president; Meles Zenawi assumes post of prime minister.
1998 - Ethiopian-Eritrean border dispute erupts into armed clashes.
War with Eritrea
1999 - Ethiopian- Eritrean border clashes turn into a full-scale war.
2000 June - Ethiopia and Eritrea sign a ceasefire agreement which provides for a UN observer force to monitor the truce and supervise the withdrawal of Ethiopian troops from Eritrean territory.
2000 November - Haile Selassie buried in Addis Ababa's Trinity Cathedral.
2000 December - Ethiopia and Eritrea sign a peace agreement in Algeria, ending two years of conflict. The agreement establishes commissions to delineate the disputed border and provides for the exchange of prisoners and the return of displaced people.
2001 24 February - Ethiopia says it has completed its troop withdrawal from Eritrea in accordance with UN-sponsored agreement.
2002 April - Ethiopia, Eritrea accept a new common border, drawn up by an independent commission, though both sides then lay claim to the town of Badme.
2003 April - Independent boundary commission rules that the disputed town of Badme lies in Eritrea. Ethiopia says the ruling is unacceptable.
2004 January-February - Nearly 200 killed in ethnic clashes in isolated western region of Gambella. Tens of thousands flee area.
2004 March - Start of resettlement programme to move more than two million people away from parched, over-worked highlands.
2004 November - Ethiopia says it accepts "in priniciple" a boundary commission's ruling on its border with Eritrea. But a protracted stalemate over the disputed town of Badme continues.
2005 March - US-based Human Rights Watch accuses army of "widespread murder, rape and torture" against Gambella region's ethnic Anuak people. Military angrily rejects charge.
2005 April - First section of Axum obelisk, looted by Italy in 1937, is returned to Ethiopia from Rome.
Disputed poll
2005 May - Disputed multi-party elections lead to violent protests over months.
2005 August-September - Election re-runs in more than 30 seats: Officials say the ruling party gains enough seats to form a government.
2005 December - International commission, based in The Hague, rules that Eritrea broke international law when it attacked Ethiopia in 1998.
More than 80 people, including journalists and many opposition leaders, are charged with treason and genocide over November's deadly clashes.
2006 May - Six political parties and armed groups form an opposition alliance, the Alliance for Freedom and Democracy, at a meeting in the Netherlands.
Several bomb blasts hit Addis Ababa. No organisation claims responsibility.
2006 August - Several hundred people are feared to have died and thousands are left homeless as floods hits the north, south and east.
Somalia tensions
2006 September - Ethiopia denies that its troops have crossed into Somalia to support the transitional government in Baidoa.
2006 October - UN Secretary General Kofi Annan urges Eritrea to pull back the troops it has moved into the buffer zone on the Ethiopian border. The UN says the incursion is a major ceasefire violation.
War of words between Ethiopia and Islamists controlling much of Somalia. Prime Minister Meles says Ethiopia was "technically" at war with the Islamists because they had declared holy war on his country.
2006 November - UN report says several countries - including Ethiopia - have been violating a 1992 arms embargo on Somalia by supplying arms to the interim government there. Ethiopia's arch enemy Eritrea is accused of supplying the rival Islamist administration.
Ethiopia and Eritrea reject a proposal put forward by an independent boundary commission as a way around a four-year impasse over the demarcation of their shared border.
Ethiopian troops enter Somalia, engage in fierce fighting with Islamist controlling large parts of the country and capital. The Islamists disperse.
Somalia invasion
2006 December - Exiled former dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam is convicted, in absentia, of genocide at the end of a 12-year trial. He is later sentenced to death.
2007 February - Around 50,000 Somalis have crossed into Ethiopia in the past six months to flee instability at home, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reports.
2007 March - A group of British embassy workers and their Ethiopian guides are kidnapped in the northern Afar region bordering on Eritrea. They are eventually released in Eritrea.
2007 April - Gunmen attack a Chinese-owned oil facility in the south-east Somali region, killing 74 people working there.
2007 June - Opposition leaders are given life sentences over mass protests that followed elections in 2005, but are later pardoned.
2007 September - Ethiopia celebrates the start of a new millennium according to the calendar of the Coptic Orthodox Church.
2007 November - Ethiopia rejects border line demarcated by international boundary commission. Eritrea accepts it.
2008 June - Peace agreement signed between Somali government and rebels provides for withdrawal of Ethiopian troops within 120 days.
2008 July - UN Security Council votes unanimously to end UN peacekeeping mission monitoring disputed border between Ethiopia and Eritrea.
2008 September - Celebrations held to mark completion of reassembly of 1700-year-old Axum Obelisk, looted in 1937 during the Italian conquest and returned by Italy in three parts after 2005.
2008 December - Police re-arrest key opposition leader Birtukan Medeksa, who was jailed for her role in the opposition protests after the 2005 polls, and freed under a government pardon in 2007.
Somalia pullout
2009 January - Parliament passes bill banning foreign agencies from work related to human rights or conflict resolution, as well as severely restricting foreign funding for local agencies, in move seen as effort to clamp down on unwanted foreign interference.
Ethiopia formally withdraws forces from Somalia.
2009 June - Ethiopia admits to "reconnaissance missions" in Somalia, but denies re-deploying troops there.
2009 August - Ethiopia, Eritrea ordered to pay each other compensation for their 1998-2000 border war.
2009 September - Chinese firms secure deal to build several hydro-power dams and wind farms.
2009 October - Government says 6 million need food aid, mainly because of drought.
2009 November - Twenty-six found guilty of coup plot.
2009 December - Rebels of the Ogaden National Liberation Front claim capture of several towns in the east in a month of heavy fighting.
2010 May - Ruling Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) wins huge majority in parliamentary elections, handing PM Meles Zenawi a fourth term. EU observes say the vote "fell short". Opposition leaders demand a rerun.
2010 June - Countries sharing the River Nile fail to resolve their differences on how to use the waters during a meeting in Addis Ababa.
2010 October - Ongoing reports of clashes between government forces and rebels of Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF).
Human Rights Watch accuses government of using development aid to suppress political opposition.
