Plausability Check: Ethiopia pulls a Meji Restoration

What about a protectorate?

OTL, the british invited the italians to occupy Erythrea in 1886 to counter the possible french expansion in the area.
Let's suppose that instead the british goverment decide to help Ethiopia to gain a leading position in the area. The british help would be paid in concessions of any kind (mineral, infrastructures etc...), but Ethiopia would benefit from it in the long run.
 

yourworstnightmare

Banned
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Why not practice Amharicization, with residential schools as in Austrailia and Canada? You can make them Amhara in all but name within two generations, two at the most, as long as you teach strong convictions as for the kids to resist their parents..
If it was that simple. Today the Amharas constitute 26.89% of the entire Ethiopian population, during the 1800s they were more, over 30% of the entire pop. The Oromos that today have grown to become tha largest ethnic group in Ethiopia was already then large, and had a strong identity. And now we're talking about Christian groups. Then we have ethnic groups who follow either Islam or Traditional Afrcian religions. Traditionally these were considered "scum of the earth" and were raided by the Amharic army on a regular basis. These groups also constituted the base for Ethiopian slavery. Can you really get the Amharic army (which was unpaid by the way) to stop raiding and enslaving?? Especially since the non- Christian groups were barely considered human.
 
Why not practice Amharicization, with residential schools as in Austrailia and Canada? You can make them Amhara in all but name within two generations, two at the most, as long as you teach strong convictions as for the kids to resist their parents..
Right, and that worked SO WELL in Canada and Australia! Having to make reparations to abused kids, destroying the culture and not really replacing it with anything...

One of the more shameful episodes in our past, I must say.
 
Yourworstnightmare hits the nail on the head when he says that one of Ethiopia's major problems will be her multiculturalism. With modernisation comes majority nationalism, attempts to assimilate minorities, and the minority nationalist backlash. Unless the Emperor of Ethiopia can square that circle - one which better educated, more technologically advanced contemporary empires failed at - Ethiopia is going to have major problems going into the 20th century as anything more than an Amhara dictatorship.

Some sort of federalism *might* work to stop the worst minority aggitation I guess, but it would have to be pretty innovative and open.

But as I said earlier, this is predicated on Ethiopia having a successful industrial revolution. Which it can't, because it doesn't have coal.
 
Right, and that worked SO WELL in Canada and Australia! Having to make reparations to abused kids, destroying the culture and not really replacing it with anything...

One of the more shameful episodes in our past, I must say.
But we're not talking respect for culture, reparations, or shame here. We're talking autocracy. As was said before, there was very little regard for the non-Semitic speaking, non-Orthodox populations. Thusly the best attitude would be a "white man's burden", where the whites are the Ethiosemitic Amhara, Gurage, Tigrinya, and other groups, perhaps Christianized Oromo. The remainder are to be converted and their identities erased and replaced with a generic "Habesha/Ethiosemitic" one. Completely unkind, but a possible way to counter ethnic heterogeneity. "Meiji-Ethiopia" would not be liberal-democratic, at least not for the Ethiosemites, nor was Japan, unless you want to tell me liberal-democracy spawned the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere.
The idea would be to instill a sense of "Amharic" culture, an injera-eating, tej-drinking, ekista-dancing culture for those completely alien, and an Amharic-speaking, Ethiopian Orthodox mentality for those not so unfamiliar (i.e., Oromos). Following that, intermarriage might be encouraged as to make them less Ethiopanised aliens than part of the nation. By the time ethnic nationalism comes around, no one will be able to tell who is what, or who they are themselves, except the non-Amharic Ethiosemites. You'd get a Sneetches-like situation, where the elite group cannot tell themselves apart from those who followed their image.
The whole process would be very, very ugly, but in the end it would work, and there would be virtually nothing you could do about it, as everyone would be trying to be the majority rather than the minority.
As for essential natural resources, you have to realize that very, very, few of the possible natural resources in Ethiopia have been discovered. Real exploration has only started within the last decade. A recent study showed that there could possibly be 300 Mt. of coal reserves in the country. In the mid nineties, 140 million tonnes of potash were discovered in what was Welega Province (wikipedia states that,"Since the 14th century, potash was widely produced by Ethiopia. It was their number one export up until the 20th century; however after the Ethiopian War against Kenya it became irrelevant." There's never been an Ethio-Kenyan war, so the veracity of that statement is dubious). If it could be found, Ethiopia would have the coal necessary for industrialisation, and could export gold and potash, as well as salts and other minerals.
 
What about a protectorate?

OTL, the british invited the italians to occupy Erythrea in 1886 to counter the possible french expansion in the area.
Let's suppose that instead the british goverment decide to help Ethiopia to gain a leading position in the area. The british help would be paid in concessions of any kind (mineral, infrastructures etc...), but Ethiopia would benefit from it in the long run.

Help often means more concessions and more bullying unless there is a threat of another colonial power gobbling it up (France isn't in too great of a geographic situation). Besides, the UK would not be too threatened by Ethiopia seeing it surrounded by many British colonies.
 
Help often means more concessions and more bullying unless there is a threat of another colonial power gobbling it up (France isn't in too great of a geographic situation). Besides, the UK would not be too threatened by Ethiopia seeing it surrounded by many British colonies.

Still, the italian intervention was favoured by the british for keeping the french out from the area.
It's not a matter of being threatened or else, but the decision of having Ethiopia enter the british empire orbit or not. We can discuss its plausibility (or lack of it, it's just a suggestion), but if you want to modernize Ethiopia, as the OP requested, this is the easier way.
 
Still, the italian intervention was favoured by the british for keeping the french out from the area.
It's not a matter of being threatened or else, but the decision of having Ethiopia enter the british empire orbit or not. We can discuss its plausibility (or lack of it, it's just a suggestion), but if you want to modernize Ethiopia, as the OP requested, this is the easier way.
But that's kind of besides the point, right?
 
The idea would be to instill a sense of "Amharic" culture, an injera-eating, tej-drinking, ekista-dancing culture for those completely alien, and an Amharic-speaking, Ethiopian Orthodox mentality for those not so unfamiliar (i.e., Oromos). Following that, intermarriage might be encouraged as to make them less Ethiopanised aliens than part of the nation. By the time ethnic nationalism comes around, no one will be able to tell who is what, or who they are themselves, except the non-Amharic Ethiosemites. You'd get a Sneetches-like situation, where the elite group cannot tell themselves apart from those who followed their image.

Impossible in such a short timespan. Even after centuries of pro-assimilation policies, the world is still full of proud, defiant minorities who simply refuse to be assimilated. The Welsh have been ruled from England for the best part of a millennium and they're still Welsh. That's a situation where the state-cultured majority massively outnumbers the non-state cultured minority, and still the minority holds out. The Amhara only make up between 20 and 30% of the Ethiopian population: they're gong to find it much harder to assimilate their minorities.

Moreover, who is going to pay for this massive assimilationsit education programme? Could 19th century Ethiopia afford such a thing without getting into the same cycle of debt/European intervention that places like Tunisia and Mexico got themselves into?

As for essential natural resources, you have to realize that very, very, few of the possible natural resources in Ethiopia have been discovered. Real exploration has only started within the last decade. A recent study showed that there could possibly be 300 Mt. of coal reserves in the country. In the mid nineties, 140 million tonnes of potash were discovered in what was Welega Province (wikipedia states that,"Since the 14th century, potash was widely produced by Ethiopia. It was their number one export up until the 20th century; however after the Ethiopian War against Kenya it became irrelevant." There's never been an Ethio-Kenyan war, so the veracity of that statement is dubious). If it could be found, Ethiopia would have the coal necessary for industrialisation, and could export gold and potash, as well as salts and other minerals.

Weeeell, in the event that the coal is prospected and mined from the start of the 19th century, perhaps something approaching an industrial revolution could take place. Potash is also a valuable mineral which could be mined for export. The question is, how, when and who would discover and exploit these resources? If indigenous (presumably Western educated) Ethiopian businessmen can gather the capital neccessary for these ventures, then the country might have a chance of spawning a largely indigenous industrial revolution. If these resources are simply granted as concessions to foreign nations, then Ethiopia finds herself in the same position as so many third world countries with valuable resources.

Basically, I can see a modernising Ethiopia with roads, railways, a servicable military and the beginnings of an industrialised society by 1900. It's an Ethiopia which might be even bigger than at present, and might hold the entire Horn of Africa simply by being the only power with the ability to garrison the locale. It would be comparatively centralised, with an Amhara and Amharaised ruling class owing complete obedience to the emperor. But anything technologically or societally comparable to Meiji Japan is dreaming I'm afraid.
 
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