Dal mar Nero all’Etiopia: mobilità, apolidia e diritti nell’affaire Garabédian (1922-1930)

This paper examines the “Garabédian affair” (1922–1930) as a case study in translocal microhistory, exploring the intersections of mobility, statelessness, and rights in late imperial Ethiopia. Drawing on multi-sited archival research, using unpublished archival sources, and a post-positivist approach, the study reconstructs the trajectory of the Armenian physician Alexandre Garabédian, whose legal dispute with Ethiopian authorities acquired international visibility within the League of Nations. From a methodological perspective, the article combines “along the grain” and “against the grain” readings of archival sources to illuminate both the logics of imperial and international power and the forms of agency exercised by a stateless individual operating within a multi-ethnic polity. The analysis highlights the structural limitations of the extraterritorial regime and of the interwar refugee protection system, as well as the ambiguities surrounding the legal status of allogenic populations in Ethiopia. The Garabédian affair thus emerges as a privileged vantage point from which to investigate tensions between state sovereignty, international law, and imperial humanitarianism, as well as the practices of inclusion and exclusion shaping the margins of the modern state.