This article analyses the historicity of the process of state building at Ethiopia’s northwestern corner. The contemporary conflict for control of western Tigray is the by-product of a long-standing struggle for control of natural resources and trading flows between sub-regional centres of power that played a prominent role in the political arena of the Horn of Africa since the late nineteenth century. In turn, the outcome of this competition is critical to understand the making of Ethiopia’s foreign policy toward its neighbours since the second half of the twentieth century.