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

EXTERNALITY AND INCORPORATION 190
permanent capital at Addis Ababa in 1893 which developed into a true urban center (Pankhurst
1961). Menelik more than doubled the size of Ethiopia through conquest to the south, though
European colonial powers continued to show interest in northern territory along the Red Sea
coast. Complete recognition of Ethiopia as a power sovereign from Europe came in 1895, when
Menelik’s army defeated Italian forces that had invaded the northern province of Tigray (Stevens
1981:23-24; Marcus 1994:91-103).
INCORPORATION, CONTEST PERIPHERIES AND ‘PROTOGLOBALIZATION’:
SUGGESTIONS AND CONCLUSIONS
At the beginning of the Scramble for Africa in 1885, 17
Ethiopia was already part of the
international community and a functioning element in the world-system. But this did not mean
that it was immune to the territorial predations of European nations. Rather, it merely meant that
it had a better position from which to withstand them. Much in the same manner that the
Ottoman Empire would be carved up, Ethiopia found itself being eaten away along the edges of
its territory. This is likely to be evidence of being a contest periphery: gradual and incremental
territory loss. Historically stretching to the Red Sea coast, Ethiopia was effectively landlocked by
the turn of the twentieth century. For an empire whose socio-political history was based on its
ability to exploit trade to and from the Red Sea ports, this was especially troubling. It was
precisely because Ethiopia was effectively cut off from outside arms supplies in 1935, when
Britain and France were cowed into refusing Ethiopia transport of arms across their colonial
frontiers, that Mussolini was finally able to invade Ethiopia and realize the long-held Italian
colonial aspirations. Improved firearms available to Italy but not Ethiopia, as well as the advent
of new weapons of warfare such as the tank, the airplane, and poison gas made the outcome
rather predictable (Pankhurst 1965:20).
So what type of preliminary conclusions can we come to regarding the sequencing of
Abyssinian incorporation? To begin to answer this, let us turn to a modified typography of
incorporation for Abyssinia.
In many ways the case of Abyssinia becoming incorporated is much more complex than
other cases of basic incorporation (cf., Hollis 2005, Carlson 2002). Abyssinia is less isolated, not
as “pristine”, and more closely tied to historic trading systems and ‘global’ forces. As such, this
is an added challenge when dealing with contest peripheries – the layers of interaction are longer
and more overwritten. Thus, the image of a palimpsest is fitting: the region was continuously
being renegotiated, pulsating in and out of contending systems, and gaining and losing territory.
Abyssinia’s relationship with the Red Sea trade – and by extension the larger network of the
Indian Ocean – is a defining characteristic. The health of the governing polity, from the time of
Axum to Menelik II, was directly tied to an ability to exploit these systemic interactions. In this
sense, Ethiopian incorporation is best conceived as contextually dependent on the Red Sea trade:
the Red Sea trading network is the grooming process for incorporation. This is evident in the rise
of the Golden Age of the Solomonic Dynasty up to 1500, not to mention the preceding rise and
17 As Pankhurst (1965:30) reminds us, the Scramble – as far as this part of the continent was concerned –
“may be said to have begun on February 5, 1885, when the Italians occupied the port of Massawa. Five
years later the Italian colony of Eritrea was proclaimed in what had hitherto been Northern Ethiopia.”