Episode 162: Medieval Ethiopian Kingship, Craft, and Diplomacy with Latin Europe
My guest is Verena Krebs, author of Medieval Ethiopian Kingship, Craft, and Diplomacy with Latin Europe.
Her book explores why Ethiopian kings pursued long-distance diplomatic contacts with Latin Europe in the late Middle Ages. It challenges conventional narratives of African-European encounters on the eve of the so-called ‘Age of Exploration that Ethiopia sent missions to Latin Europe in search of military and technology assistance. Describing those interpretations in our interview as bluntly racist, Krebs writes that the Ethiopian initiation of contacts appears to have been intimately…
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