Modern Nations, Ancient Roots

There is much in Ethiopia's cultural and political identity that contemporary audiences will find inspiring. For instance, while the colonial thesis argues that Africa is singularity the invention of European colonialism, the non-colonial thesis in Ethiopian scholarship sees Ethiopia through the lens of exceptionalism, that Ethiopia, which was never colonized, is in rather than of Africa. If African modernity and modernism are intimately linked with colonialism, certainly Ethiopia's inimitable historical condition merits fresh lines of inquiry to understand how Ethiopian negotiated their "independent" status quo through and against colonial arrangements that shaped the historical, cultural, and material realities of their African counterparts. One of this book's central contributions is, therefore, its conceptualization of how Ethiopia's singular colonial history can be analyzed in relation to the political thought that shaped African colonial history. Ethiopia's supposed singularity, as it particularly pertains to its modern history, cannot be conceived outside the broader colonial legacy and the complexity of meaning and making.