FAITH OVER COLOR: ETHIO-EUROPEAN ENCOUNTERS AND DISCOURSES IN THE EARLY-MODERN ERA

Abstract

This dissertation explores multiple episodes of interaction between Ethiopians and Europeans throughout the early modern era. After overviewing the Ethiopian exploration of Europe in the 15th century and the first Catholic attempts to reconnect to the Ethiopian Church at the turn of the 16th century, it focuses on the Ethio-Lusophone encounter by considering the emergence of Ethiopian studies in early modern Lisbon, the Portuguese military intervention in the Ethiopian-Adal War (1529-1543) and the Jesuit mission to Ethiopia (1555-1632). This dissertation argues that in the context of the early-modern Ethio-European encounter, faith trumped skin color in the discourse on sameness and otherness: throughout the 15th and 16th centuries Europeans and Ethiopians perceived each other as belonging to the same Christian world and collaborated to defy the perceived Muslim threat. Starting in the late 16th century however, Counter-Reformation Catholicism and Jesuit proselytism transformed Ethiopians into others, and--in Ethiopian eyes--Europeans became a threat. The Jesuit mission engendered an era of turmoil that crippled both the Ethio-European encounter and the Ethiopian monarchy: in its aftermath, the Ethiopian elites maintained a policy of isolation from Europe, barred Europeans from entering their country and redirected their attention to the Muslim societies of the Red Sea and Indian Ocean basins.