ABSTRACT
The evolution of American-Ethiopian relations was thwarted by the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935. The intense desire of the Roosevelt administration to push the Italo-Ethiopian belligerency to the backwoods of international relations notwithstanding, the United States soon found itself in a quandary, since the Ethiopian case represented far more than the fate of a single nation. The 1942 Anglo-Ethiopian treaty placed the security of Ethiopia under British military authority and bestowed extraterritorial rights on foreigners to the extent to which they could seek trials before courts where British judges sat. In March 1952, fears regarding Ethiopian intentions prompted Dean Acheson to request the Department of Defense to join him in recommending Ethiopia eligible for both grant and reimbursable military aid. The Ethiopians had hoped that the US would give them large sums of money in one fell swoop in order to jump-start the stagnant economy and to modernize the instruments of economic extraction.
