CELEBRATED SETS Ethiopia’s defiant definitives, 1919

Late 19th-century Ethiopia was still very much a feudal society: a redoubt of Christianity in a Moslem region, socially conservative and only recently re-unified after a period of battling warlords.

Change came with Menelik II, who introduced electricity, telephones and indoor plumbing, improved education and health and built a railway line from Addis Ababa to Djibouti; this boosted trade by connecting the country to the outside world.

Another part of modernisation was the introduction of a postal service along European lines; stamps appeared in 1894 and Ethiopia joined the UPU in 1908.

However, in 1908, Menelik suffered the first of a series of strokes which left him increasingly incapacitated and created a power vacuum at the heart of government. When he died in 1913, he was