@martinplaut With all due respect, strongly disagree with the framing that equates Emperor Menelik II’s unification campaigns with European colonial rule.

The expansion of the Ethiopian Empire in the late 19th century, though often forceful and undeniably painful for some of 1/n @martinplaut the incorporated peoples, was fundamentally an indigenous process of state formation and territorial consolidation. It occurred within an ancient African polity that had preserved its independence and sovereignty for over a millennium. Unlike European colonialism, 2/n