Would you mind typing out the exact passage or if it is shown in a table, taking a photo? I'd be interested to see exactly how he phrases it. I notice that the full title is The Pursuit of Power: Europe 1815-1914 and so I wonder if he is simply talking about regions that had not been directly controlled up to 1914, when the period he studies ends.

But yes, you are correct that Italy did conquer Ethiopia in 1936 and occupied until 1941. Now, it is fair to say that Ethiopian freedom fighters continued to wage guerrilla campaigns to resist occupation during that whole period, and you can question how complete Italian control was. On the other hand, that opens up a whole can of worms over what sort of resistance other colonized peoples employed.

I think the claims you keep hearing come out of the place Abyssinia/Ethiopia held in the popular memory of people in the African diaspora in the Americas. Between 1896 when Ethiopia wins the battle of Adwa to 1936, Ethiopia becomes representative of "the last refuge from colonialism" to folks like Marcus Garvey.

So, it's not that surprising that this period of occupation gets minimized or edited out of popular memory, and the narrative of "Unconquered Ethiopia" perpetuates itself.

As a minor point, it's a little inaccurate to say that they were conquered in 1936. Italy declared themselves to be in control of Ethiopia in 1936 when they took the capital, but most of the rest of the country was still independent. It was only 1939 when large scale fighting ended, but there were still parts of the country fighting in 1940 when the British arrived.