Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS 93 Medieval Ethiopian Kingship, Craft, and Diplomacy with Latin Europe, Verena Krebs, 2021, Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, xv + 308 pp., £79.99 (hardback), ISBN The history of Ethiopian contacts with fifteenth-century Europe has been examined several times over many decades, generally from the perspective of European plans for a joint crusade against the Mamlūks. As far back as 1902, Francesco Cerone devoted an important article to the relationship between Alfonso V of Aragon (r. 1416–1458), King of Naples (r. 1442–1458), and Ethiopia. The Romanian exile Constantin Marinescu devoted a valuable chapter of his monograph on Alfonso’s eastern policy (only published in 1994, after it was lost during the Spanish Civil War) to Aragonese attempts to make contact with Ethiopia. More recently, thanks to Samantha Kelly and others, non-Ethiopian medieval historians have shown greater willingness to probe into the history of Ethiopia, and not just its external relations, part of a wider trend in the study of medieval Africa also visible in recent books by Michael Gómez, Toby Green and others. But the rationale underlying diplomatic exchanges between Ethiopia and European powers has remained a puzzle. The enduring myth of Prester John is part of the story; with a