ABSTRACT
The Introduction briefly overviews the rise of modern Ethiopia at the turn of the 20th century in the context of the country’s vast imperial-style conquests in the south and southeast. The threefold enlargement of the territory and the threat of colonization posed by Italy made the Ethiopian elite to look into the possibility of preserving independence by ‘modernizing’ the country. Such modernization de facto meant Westernization – that is, the adoption of the European model of nation-state for Ethiopia. During the 20th century the Ethiopian government, first, adopted the model of centralized and ethnolinguistically homogenous nation-state from Japan and, subsequently, that of ethnolinguistic (ethnoterritorial) federation from the Soviet Union. In turn, Japan borrowed its own model of statehood from the German Empire, while the Soviet Union borrowed its from Austria-Hungary. Hence, both models of statehood, as implemented in modern Ethiopia during the 20th century, originally stem from Central Europe.
