Bargaining and the Territorial Expansion of the State: Lessons from Ethiopia

• In Event: Historical Political Institutions in Africa and Asia

Abstract

Theories of state-expansion offer competing narratives of how the center expands into the periphery: while many emphasize structural factors, such as geography and distance, others focus on the center’s strategic interests, such as the possibility of resource extraction. Employing the case of Ethiopian state expansion under Menilek II at the turn of the 19th century, we draw on novel historical sources and spatial data to map the expansion of Menilek’s empire over time. We focus on the political dynamics of Ethiopian state-building, which we show was dynamically responsive to conditions met on the ground. Rather than a unified logic, our data suggests a two-pronged approach to incorporation: while some areas were incorporated through bargains with local elites, others were violently coerced into submission. By linking variation in the creation of state infrastructure to the nature of strategies of incorporation, we are able to empirically map variation in the state-building process as it unfolds over time.

Authors

• Igor Kolesnikov

• Yosef Tadesse, UC Berkeley

• Martha Wilfahrt, University of California, Berkeley

• Leonardo R. Arriola, University of California, Berkeley