Question: The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
It’s not that modern historians of medieval Africa have been ignorant about contacts between Ethiopia and Europe; they just had the power dynamic reversed. The traditional narrative stressed Ethiopia as weak and in trouble in the face of aggression from external forces, so Ethiopia sought military assistance from their fellow Christians to the north. But the real story, buried in plain sight in medieval diplomatic texts, simply had not yet been put together by modern scholars. Recent research pushes scholars of medieval Europe to imagine a much more richly connected medieval world: at the beginning of the so-called Age of Exploration, there is evidence that the kings of Ethiopia were sponsoring their own missions of diplomacy, faith and commerce.
There was a narrative set that Ethiopia was weak and sougth military help from Europeans. But recent research shows that Ethiopia was actually a well-connected and outward-looking culture that engaged in missions of diplomacy, faith, and commerce with Europe.
Option (a): Historians were not under this illusion, they themselvses created this narrative.
Option (c) & (d) do not mention an important point that Ethiopia was an outward-looking culture.
Hence, option (b).