How did it happen that Ethiopia alone of all the old states in Africa preserved its independence throughout the era of European colonization? Why did Ethiopia alone survive the scramble for Africa as a free nation?

In this book, Professor Rubenson has devoted his attention to this fundamental question in the modern history of the ancient kingdom. His analysis of nineteenth-century contacts between Ethiopians and foreigners is based wherever possible on contemporary Ethiopian documents. It demonstrates that it was neither physical inaccessibility nor lack of determination by imperial powers to subdue the country that saved it from colonization. This book has much to offer to those interested in the mechanisms by which the Europeans created dependence in Africa. However, its main objective is to provide the Ethiopian side of the story: the growing awareness of the issue involved, the birth of a conscious and active foreign policy, and the determination to resist foreign tutelage and conquest whatever the cost.

“Sven Rubenson’s The Survival of Ethiopian Independence, does considerably advance our knowledge. For foreign relations in the first three quarters of the 19th century, which are exhaustively treated in the bulk of the book (P.29-334), it will probably prove nearly definitive. It certainly will become the principle reference work for a very long time to come and is marvelously indexed and abundantly supplied with good maps. Above all the author has set a high standard for all future studies by meticulously removing the European veneer from documents and their interpretation.”

--The International Journal of African Historical Studies.

 â€œThe questions it raises about the material and psychological pre-conditions for colonial conquest represent a crucial contribution to African history as a whole.”

--West Africa

"Sven Rubenson’s The Survival of Ethiopian Independence still remains the most meticulously written analysis of Ethiopian history. No other scholarly work that tries to holistically cover this ancient country comes close to the detail, authority, and assiduous research that Sven Rubenson has put into the book. And at this time, when Ethiopian unity and territorial integrity is under constant assault, Tsehai Publishers has made a timely decision to reissue a work that valiantly celebrates the Ethiopian peoples’ stubborn resistance to colonialism and the almost mystical martyrdom of its sons and daughters to keep it independent during the last several hundred years."

--Dr. Paulos Milkias

“Professor Sven Rubenson’s The Survival of Ethiopian Independence exposes the colonialists’ duplicity towards Ethiopia and shows the Ethiopians’ unified resistance to the assault on their country’s territorial integrity.”

--Prof. Getachew Haile

Sven Rubenson was born in 1921 in Sweden and educated at the University of Lund where he submitted his L.Phil. dissertation on Ethiopian history in 1954. He has been a missionary, teacher, and educational administrator in Ethiopia since 1947 and was Headmaster of the Ethiopian Evangelical College, Debre Zeyt from 1953 to 1958. He also taught at what is now Addis Ababa University in the history department at the University College and Haile Sellasie I University in the 1960’s. Currently he resides in Sweden with his wife Britta, while working on Acta Aethiopica Vol. IV.

His publications include Wichale XVII: the attempt to establish a protectorate over Ethiopia (1964); King of Kings: Tewodros of Ethiopia (1966); Acta Aethiopica Vol. I: Correspondence and Treaties 1800-1854 (1987); Acta Aethiopica Vol. II: Tewodros and His Contemporaries 1855-1868 (1994), and Acta Aethiopica Vol. III: Internal Rivalries and Foreign Threats 1869-1879 (2000).