Empire and modernity: dynastic centralization and official nationalism in late imperial Ethiopia

Abstract

Conventional accounts of modern state-formation either underplay its contradictory and variegated character or neglect its international dimensions. Against these approaches, alternative theories of state-formation have emerged centred on the constitutive significance of intersocietal relations and differential temporalities. This article develops the latter approaches in relation to the Ethiopian state. Contrary to widespread assumptions of Ethiopia's political insularity, it suggests that at three crucial turning points geopolitical exigencies provided the critical impetus for the political and cultural reconstitution of the state. Late nineteenth century European colonial encroachment triggered a reaction in the form of an Ethiopian imperial expansion to rival them. And the political shock of Italian occupation 40 years later provoked a concurrent project of dynastic centralization and official nationalism in the post-restoration period. But precisely because divine monarchy and nationalism are antithetical orders by virtue of their opposed principles of sovereignty, the attempt to conjoin them generated deep social and cultural contradictions that erupted in two successive revolutions that were internationally overdetermined and resulted in a profound reconstitution of the Ethiopian state.