Entire Volume 17 issue 1 - Journal of World-Systems Research ...

EXTERNALITY AND INCORPORATION 168
important features include Lake Tana – which appears on earlier maps as a possible source of the
Nile, and Gondar just to the north of the lake. This encroachment on Abyssinia’s borders
eventually leads to conflict with the colonial powers.
Figure 1: Rand McNally (1904). “Abyssinia and Surrounding Countries”, from Atlas of the
World. New York: Rand McNally & Co., pp. 151, author’s collection.
Even by 1904, there remained minor uncertainty regarding Abyssinia’s geography. For
instance, some of the rivers are only tenuously drawn as they transit between solid sections that
had been already mapped (e.g., the Blue Nile). More than fifty years later, even simple
geographic relationships taken for granted elsewhere in the modern world were still a point of