This pioneering book, first published to wide acclaim in 1986, traces the way the Ethiopian center and the peripheral regions of the country affected each other. It looks specifically at the expansion of the highland Ethiopian state into the western and southern lowlands from the 1890s up to 1974.

Donald L. Donham is a professor of anthropology and the director of African Studies at Emory University.

Wendy James is a professor of social anthropology at the University of Oxford.