European Extraterritoriality in Semicolonial Ethiopia

Abstract

Scholarly discussions regarding European legal imperialism in semicolonial nations of the modern era have not considered Ethiopia. China, Japan and other Middle and Far Eastern nations have been the dominant, if not exclusive, objects of historical studies in European extraterritoriality. Furthermore, there appears to be a consensus that both the rise and decline of European extraterritoriality in the semicolonial world (effected through ‘mixed courts’) only form part of the history of the pre-Second World War international law system. Nonetheless, a forgotten strand of European extraterritoriality overstayed the Second World War in semicolonial Ethiopia. Apart from aiming to restore visibility to Ethiopia’s unknown experience with European extraterritoriality, this study tries to explain the late arrival, the gradual resurgence and the post-Second World War decline of European extraterritoriality in Ethiopia. It argues that European extraterritoriality in Ethiopia, which was weak during the first third of the 20th century, reached its zenith in the post-Second World War period, but was miscast as a modernisation project, rather than a colonial one.