Ethiopia is perhaps the least studied case of legal transformation under pressure from Western European powers during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its successful contest with the Italians at the Battle of Adwa in 1896 meant that Ethiopia escaped direct colonisation by European powers during what in African historiography is labelled as the “Scramble for Africa” (1884-1914). Nonetheless, it was a site of Western imperialism, and is often compared to Asian and African countries whose encounters with European empires were generally framed through such lenses as informal imperialism and semicolonialism.

A History of Reluctance

In Ethiopia, scholarly interest in the legal history of European legal imperialism and the attendant legal transformations – changes in the normative and institutional structures of the legal system, and shifts in the composition of elites with roles in the system – began only in the 1980s and remained low thereafter.¹ Seminal works on the legal history of imperial Ethiopia ignored juristic developments during the first third of the 20th century as well as later phases of legal transformations that were induced by Western legal imperialisms (1940s-1960s).² Furthermore, there has been no or little effort to situate Ethiopia’s encounter with Western legal imperialisms in broader comparative and/or global perspectives.

As a result, the only semicolonial encounter between the West and sub-Saharan Africa during the first half of the 20th century remained invisible in national, transnational and global histories of legal transformations. Ethiopians’ reluctance to examine the history of European legal imperialism in their country and global legal historians’ focus on well-known cases of informal legal imperialism in Asia and the Middle East explain the absence of Ethiopia in global historical studies of early 20th century legal transformations.³

In view of this history, the emerging conversation between students of Ethiopian and other non-Western legal transformations is encouraging. It offers an opportunity to reassess received and at times flawed understandings of “voluntary receptions of law”. This is particularly relevant in cases like Ethiopia, where non-reciprocal treaties of amity and commerce, such as the Franco-Ethiopian Treaty of Amity and Commerce of 1908 (“Klobukowski Treaty”), led to ambivalent yet consequential legal reform measures. These reforms have since been inflected by both postcolonial contests and neo-colonial continuities.

A Break with Past Trends

Over the last few years, I have been studying Western legal imperialism and its relationship with legal reform measures in imperial Ethiopia (1889-1974) using concepts that have traditionally been used for describing and analysing European legal imperialism in the few juridically independent Asian countries of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, such as extraterritoriality and mixed courts.⁴ I have been able to identify important markers of the Ethiopian experience in the relatively short,⁵ two-phased period of pressure for legal transformation from Western powers. That period saw weak Western legal imperialism and moderate legal transformation inflected by a strong “new traditionalism” during the first phase (1908-1936) and strong European legal imperialism and major legal transformation in the second phase (1942-1966). This was chased by a more left-oriented “modern universalism” that further complicated the permutations of the legal reform projects of the earlier period.

Aspects of these Ethiopian trajectories of legal transformations in the shadow of Western legal imperialism are discussed in detail elsewhere and are not repeated here.⁶ There is still much to be learnt about the legal transformations, resulting from Ethiopia’s interesting but not necessarily unique encounter with Western legal imperialism.

Placing Ethiopia within Broader Frameworks of Historical Research

As elsewhere, Ethiopia’s encounter with informal legal imperialism involved state transformation in pursuit of independence from informal colonisation (e.g., extraterritoriality) and strategic appropriation and redeployment of imported legal ideas and institutions in the service of Third World imperialism. As such, studying early 20th century Ethiopian legal transformations contributes to the comprehensiveness of global legal histories of non-western legal transformations that are often done through leading cases of “unconquered states” such as China.

Such conversations and collaborations are also important in challenging students of Ethiopian history and law to consider historical and contemporary developments in Ethiopia from broader perspectives and thereby deepen our knowledge of Ethiopian experiences of borrowing foreign legal ideas and institutions. Historical studies of modern Ethiopia have largely been undertaken based on outdated frameworks, the limitations of which have been identified by some since the 1990s.⁷

Besides, Ethiopians have not been that concerned about their legal history, and local interest in historical studies of legal developments in modern Ethiopia remains low. There is also a lack of progress in comparative legal scholarship on Ethiopia’s major legal reform projects (such as the famous 1931 Ethiopian Constitution and the 1960 Ethiopian Civil Code) despite the fact that emerging perspectives on legal transfer, imperialism, and the Ethiopian state strongly suggest a new way of talking about them.⁸

As someone who is concerned by the current state of historical and legal scholarship regarding Ethiopia’s past and contemporary legal reform projects, I welcome looking at histories of legal transformation (e.g. codification, constitution-making, and dispute settlement) in Ethiopia anew and in conversation and collaboration with students of legal transformation in “unconquered states”. Placing Ethiopia within broader frameworks of historical research not only offers richer insights into some of the “landmark” cases of 20th century legal transfer projects but also prepares the ground for more wide-ranging accounts of transformations of non-European legal systems that, inter alia, give attention to little considered entanglements and interconnectedness, e.g. the influences of the 1889 Meiji Constitution of the Empire of Japan on the 1931 constitution of the Ethiopian Empire.

1. See Heinrich Scholler, “The Special Court of Ethiopia 1922–1936: Mixed Jurisdiction as an Instrument of Legal Development,” in Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference of Ethiopian Studies, ed. Sven Rubenson (Institute of Ethiopian Studies, 1984), 381; Jon Edwards, “’…and the King Shall Judge’: Extraterritoriality in Ethiopia, 1908-1936,” in Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference of Ethiopian Studies, ed. Sven Rubenson (Berlings, 1984), 373. ↩︎
2. See, for example, Aberra Jembere, An Introduction to the Legal History of Ethiopia: 1434 1974 (Shama Books, 2012). See also Kenneth R. Redden, The Legal System of Ethiopia (Michie, 1968). ↩︎
3. For a critique of the sorry state of comparative and historical legal scholarship in the study of legal developments in 20^th century Ethiopia, see Hailegabriel Feyissa, “The Ethiopian Civil Code Project: Reading a ‘Landmark’ Legal Transfer Case Differently” (PhD diss., Melbourne Law School, 2017), chapter 2. ↩︎
4. See, e.g., Hailegabriel Feyissa, “European Extraterritoriality in Semicolonial Ethiopia,” Melbourne Journal of International Law 17, no. 1 (2017): 107-134; Hailegabriel Feyissa, “Mixed Courts of Ethiopia,” in Max Planck Encyclopedia of International Procedural Law, ed. Hélène Ruiz Fabri (Oxford University Press, 2019). ↩︎
5. Ethiopia’s experience with European legal imperialism (e.g., regimes of mixed courts) was comparatively shorter than some of the most notable cases of European extraterritoriality in the semicolonial world, such as Thailand, Egypt and China (see Turan Kayaoğlu, Legal Imperialism; Sovereignty and Extraterritoriality in Japan, the Ottoman Empire, and China (Cambridge University Press, 2010), 5). ↩︎
6. See, e.g., Aberra Jembere, An Introduction to the Legal History of Ethiopia: 1434-1974 (Shama Books, 2012); Kenneth R. Redden, The Legal System of Ethiopia (Michie, 1968); Norman J. Singer, “Modernization of Law in Ethiopia: A Study in Process and Personal Values,” Harvard International Law Journal 11, no. 1 (1970): 73; Robert Allen Sedler, “The Development of Legal Systems: The Ethiopian Experience,” Iowa Law Review 53 (1967): 562. ↩︎
7. See, e.g., Pietro Toggia, “History writing as a state ideological project in Ethiopia,” African Identities 6, (2008): 319-343; Christopher Clapham, “Rewriting Ethiopian History,” Annales d’Ethiopie XVIII, (2002): 37-54; Alessandro Triulzi, “Battling with the Past: New Frameworks for Ethiopian Historiography,” in Remapping Ethiopia; Socialism and After, ed. Wendy James et al.(James Currey, 2002), 276-288. See also Christopher Clapham, “Heinrich Scholler: The Special Court of Ethiopia 1920–1935. (Äthiopistische Forschungen, Bd. 15). 414 pp. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden GmbH, 1985,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 50, no. 1 (1987): 214; Pietro Toggia, “Aberra Jembere: An introduction to the legal history of Ethiopia, 1434–1974. Lit Verlag Münster, 2000,” African Identities 6, no. 4 (2008): 529-532. ↩︎
8. For more on this, see Hailegabriel Feyissa, “The Ethiopian Civil Code Project: Reading a ‘Landmark’ Legal Transfer Case Differently” (PhD diss., Melbourne Law School, 2017) ch. 2. ↩︎