This
response will address the main question submitted, which has to do with explaining why only
Liberia and Ethiopia existed as large independent states during Age of Imperialism in Africa.
Liberia's independence through this period had to do with its origins. It was founded by
expatriated free men of color from the United States. This was part of the efforts of the
American Colonization Society, which argued for emancipation and deportation of enslaved people.
As thousands of American expatriates moved to the region, they established, with the support of
the American and British governments, a nation-state, which the United States reluctantly
recognized in the 1860s. In the years that followed, the United States essentially guaranteed,
at least in principle, Liberian independence amid the "Scramble for Africa" among
European powers. For this reason, Liberia remained independent throughout the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries.
The nation-state of Ethiopia, on the other hand, was
not of colonial origins. Rather, a long power struggle between rival factions in that country
ended with efforts to create a centralized nation-state in response to the threat of European
incursion and colonialism. That said, the kingdom, which had ancient origins, was under threat
of colonization by Italy during much of the period. The European nation, desperate to stake a
claim alongside France, Great Britain, and Germany as a colonial power, declared a protectorate
over Ethiopia and attempted to establish military and political control over the kingdom in the
late nineteenth century. But in 1896, Ethiopian forces under Menelik II, the emperor of a
newly-unified nation-state, inflicted a humiliating defeat on Italian forces at the Battle of
Adowa. This Ethiopian victory preserved the independence of Ethiopia until 1935, when Benito
Mussolini, hoping to avenge this old affront to Italian national pride, ordered the invasion of
the kingdom.
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