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Households, Peasants, and Rural History
in Lasta, Northern Ethiopia
1900—35

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James McCann

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HOUSEHOLDS, PEASANTS. AND RURAL HISTORY
IN LASTA. NORTHERN ETHIOPIA 1900-35

By

James McCann

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of History

1984

© Copyright by
James McCann

1984

ii

ABSTRACT

HOUSEHOLDS, PEASANTS, AND RURAL HISTORY
IN LASTA, NORTHERN ETHIOPIA 1900-35

By

James McCann

Since Ethiopia's 1974 revolution and the decade which has followed,
historians and social scientists have come to view Ethiopia in a new light. Far
from being a "hidden empire" with a quaint and static brand of feudalism, Ethiopia
has proved to be a poorly understood social formation composed of many peoples,
each with their own historical experiences. The foundation of modern Ethiopia, in
fact, can be traced to several key decades in the early twentieth century when an
imperial state centered in Addis Ababa extended its fiscal and administrative power
into rural society at the expense of local and regional oligarchs. This period,
1900-1935, coincided with the key years of colonial Africa's incorporation into the
world economy under the direction of European colonial states.

This study looks at the process of adaptation in the Lasta region of
northern Ethiopia as an example of how a fairly isolated rural society and economy
coped with changes in its physical, political, and economic environment in the
1900-1935 period. The area proves an important case study as well since it is in
the geographic and cultural heartland of the Amhara people who dominated the
process of state expansion. As a means of determining changes at the grassroots
level, the study uses the rural household, rural institutions of distribution, and the
concept of "moral economy” as its primary foci of analysis. Political events are
seen in the context of local relations of production, ideology, and the structure of

the household economy.

A major finding of this study concerns the household production equation
and, in particular, the key role of capital and institutions of its distribution in
determining patterns of land and labor allocation. The reliance on exchange with
other regions to obtain capital (primarily oxen) has been a primary factor linking
Lasta households and the region as a whole to the larger Ethiopian social
formation. This finding is a substantial departure from previous assumptions which
held that land was the key unit of production in northern Ethiopia.

Another important theme of this study examines the relative roles of
environmental change and imperial state policy in bringing about changes in local
institutions of distribution (taxation, cooperative and corvee labor, land tenure,
etc.) and the impoverization of rural producers. In the period 1916-1935 in
particular, agents and edicts of the central government in Addis Ababa directly
affected rural life in Lasta and initiated a keen competition for scarce resources
with members of the local elite. The dissertation evaluates a series of rural
rebellions in 1917-19 and 1928-30 in terms of this competition and in light of the
structure of the rural household economy. Finally, the study places the experience
of Lastans and other northern Ethiopians in a comparative setting with other rural
producers in colonial Africa. The work thus serves partly as a "control" study
which contrasts the role of a non-colonial state administration with the development

of colonial state elsewhere in Africa.

For Sandi and Dorleen

iii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This dissertation has been the result of over 21 months of research carried
out in Ethiopia, Sudan, Britain, and Italy with the support of many colleagues,
friends, and loved ones who have contributed professional, material, and personal
support. They and many others deserve recognition and my sincere gratitude.

My thanks go first to those who provided the financial means to carry out
this project. I conducted my research with the help of grants from the Social
Science Research Council and American Council of Learned Societies and the
Fulbright-Hays' Doctoral Dissertation Abroad Program. Martha Gephart of SSRC
deserves very special thanks for believing in the project and its researcher when
obstacles to work in Ethiopia appeared insurmountable. Her constant personal and
professional expressions of support were an outstanding example of the ideals of
cooperation possible between foundations and researchers in the field.

During my graduate training and the writing of this dissertation I have
enjoyed the guidance of a thoughtful and talented committee. Professors Gordon
Stewart and Harry Reed provided sound advice, friendship, and encouragement. Dr.
John Hinnant supervised my training in anthropology and kept an open mind about
whether an historian might learn and use anthropology after all. David Robinson
took more of his time and gave more of his remarkable insights into African history
than I could rightfully have asked. His calm, caring letters in the field and
insightful reading of chapter drafts exhibited professionalism and collegial concern

in its best possible forms. From the African Studies Center, Dr. David Wiley's

iv

late-night phone calls, telexes, and interest in a young graduate student's career
kept the possibility of working in Ethiopia within our grasp even in the darkest
moments. Our friends at the the African Studies Center maintained a steady stream
of morale-raising correspondence and made sure the checks arrived on time. I owe
many thanks also to the wise tutelage of my graduate student forbears Charlie
McClellan and Terry Elkiss who provided the best that peer education had to
offer.

Research for this study took place in four countries and in a wide variety
of circumstances. In each setting I found individuals who generously took time and
expended energy on my behalf. I would like to thank the staffs of the Central
Records Office and the Sudan Collection of the University of Khartoum. the Public
Records Office and the British Museum Library in London, the Ministero delle
Affari Esteri's Archivo Storico delle Ministero Africana Italiana and the Istituto
Italo-Africano in Rome. Special thanks go to my friends and colleagues of the
Institute of Ethiopian Studies and the History Department of Addis Ababa
University who had the courage to sponsor and support an American researcher
with an abiding commitment to their country. Special recognition should be made of
Dr. Merid Wolde Aregay's honesty and interest, Ato Tesema Ta'a's wit and
enthusiasm, and the ready cooperation of the Institute of Ethiopian Studies library
staff. The Scottish connection of Innis Marshall and Dr. Ian Watt provided office
space, intellectual vigor, and "shai currenti.” Essayas Sahalu of the Addis Ababa
University's Department of Geography drew the maps. Others whose advice and help
were essential were El Amin Abdel Karim, Asnaqa Ali, David Appleyard, Tefera
Berhe, Richard Caulk, Donald Crummey, Peter Garretson, Patrick Gilkes, Richard
and Rita Pankhurst, Norman Singer, Jan and Peter Shetler, and Dr. Kinafe Rigb
Zeleke. Michigan State's N.I.H. Sudan Project allowed us to stay in their flat in

Khartoum.

My work in Ethiopia could not have been successful without the help of able
and hard-working research assistants. Ato Mengeste Fenta and Ato Mesfin Fenta
helped with interviews and contacts in the early stages. Dagnachew Teferra who
served as my assistant during most of the interviews contributed interest, energy,
and a willingness to extend his efforts far beyond his prescribed duties. The
willingness of many Ethiopians to open their homes and lives to us was a tribute
to Dagnachew's ability to project honesty and sincerity. More than that, he and his
warm-hearted family freely provided insights into an Ethiopia different than the one
I had known seven years before as a Peace Corps volunteer. The value of their
contribution of friendship and hospitality is immeasureable.

Most special thanks belong to Dr. Harold Marcus who was my graduate
advisor, who became my friend, and who has done more than anyone I know to
keep Ethiopian studies alive in the United States over the past decade. Without his
committment to scholarship, dedication to the human side of graduate education,
and jgi_e 519 21.332 this study could not have taken place, nor could it have been
such an enjoyable experience.

Finally, I must properly acknowledge the role of my wife Sandi who was and
is my full partner in the many joys and the few trying moments of this work. Her

love, support, and hard work are an indelible part of the end result.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter
Introduction
One The Human and Physcial Setting of Production in Lasta
Two Ershé Balahu: Structures of Production and
Distribution in Lasta
Three Historical Charter, Moral Economy,
and Political Tradition: The Zagwé Heritage
Four Politics on the Northern Periphery:
Lasta in the Empire State 1900-20
Five The Dymanics of Rural Rebellion: Lasta and Northern
Resistance to the New Imperial Polity, 1920-35
Six The State and Rural Society:
Lasta Households and the Imperial Order
Seven The Impoverization of the Household Economy
Eight Conclusion: Northern Ethiopian Households
in Regional and World Systems
Appendices
Appendix A: Glossary and Political Personalities
Appendix B: Selected Administrative Documentation
Appendix C: Principal Informants

Bibliography

vii

Page

21

68

111

138

173

210

236

265

277
284
292

297

LIST OF TABLES
Page

Table 1 Comparative Effect of Proportional and Fixed
Assessments on Peasant Income and Subsistence 228

viii

Figure
Figure
Figure
Figure

Figure

LIST OF FIGURES

Locational Map

Contour Map of Lasta and Environs

Lasta District and Sub-district Place Names
Trade Routes and Church Lands in Lasta

Genealogy of Lasta Ruling Families

ix

Page
23
24
25
29

125

SYSTEM OF TRANSLITERATION

The transliteration system used throughout this dissertation is based on the

principle that interested readers should be able accurately to reproduce the names

of persons, places, and words, but also that it be readable for non-specialists I

have tried to render the Amharic words as rigorously as possible with a minimun of

diacritics. Vowels have been rendered in the following manner:

Order in Ethiopic script Transcription Pronunciation
First order a as in _e_ver
Second order u as in crude
Third order i as in elite
Fourth order a as in father
Fifth order é as in bait
Sixth order e as in fit
Seventh order 0 as in vote

In the transcription of consonants, a dot under (i.e. t, 9;, ch) indicates an

explosive; q represents the explosive k. The palatalized n (as in canyon) is written

with ny. Double consonants indicate gemination.

X

Ethiopian names consist of a given name and one's father's name. In the
text the name cited after the first usage is the person's first name. I have
transcribed names according to the above system, unless the person's name has
appeared in print in English with a preferred spelling. In the interests of
consistency with US. library convention, I have alphabetized Ethiopian names by
the father's name. The locational map in Chapter One is the only exception; it
follows the Ethiopian Mapping Commissions transliteration system. In the text the
Tigray people and the name of the region is written Tigré in accordance with

the pronunciation of most of my Lasta informants.

Introduction

Ethiopia's 1974 revolution and the decade which has followed changed the
way Ethiopia's peoples live and how we perceive their history. In purely scholarly
terms, the effects have been positive since they have enlivened a field which had
fallen behind much of the theoretical and methodological progress evident in other
areas of African studies. As events in the revolution unfolded, historians and social
scientists discovered that Ethiopia had been far more than a "hidden empire" with
a quaint brand of feudalism; it was in fact a rather poorly understood social
formation composed of many peoples, each with their own historical experiences.
Moreover, it has also become evident that modern Ethiopia is a substantially
different social formation than others which existed in the Ethiopian region in the
nineteenth century and before. Unfortunately, the enriched understanding of the
country is only now yielding the empirically based scholarship necessary to
appreciate the historical processes which formed the modern imperial state.1 This
study contributes to these new directions by offering a description of one region
of the old empire and how it accommodated itself to incorporation in the modern
Ethiopian state system during 1900-35.

The revolution was not simply the toppling of an age-old conservatism by a
new proletarian class; it was a response to the more recent events of the first
three decades of this century when a modern empire-state emerged to replace the
loose association of regions which shared a commom political culture and
aetiological tradition. This key period of Ethiopian history in the early twentieth
century also coincided with the most critical years of colonial Africa's

incorporation into the world economy. Ethiopia's modern imperial state, therefore,

2

developed at precisely the same time as cotonial states elsewhere on the continent.
With the revolution has come a willingness on the part of historians to move
beyond the study of the imperial court and its dominant political culture. In the
new context. historians can and should view Ethiopia in comparison with other
African histories and see the country as the composite experiences of those
societies which were incorporated by coercion. assimilation. or by virtue of their
domination by Addis Ababa's modern state apparatus.

The Lasta region of Ethiopia's northeast highlands provides ample evidence
that not all areas and all peoples of northern Ethiopia benefited from the process
of modern state formation; nor was Lasta's position at the geographic heart of the
highland political tradition a guarantee of a privileged place in the new political
economy. Despite their homeland's being the locus for the 13th century Zagwe
dynasty, some of Orthodox Christianity's oldest rock churches. and an annual
Christmas pilgrimage which brought thousands to worship at its venerable shrines.
Lastans entered the post-World War II period as one of the most impoverished of
Ethiopia's populations. In this century. the name Lasta has become synonymous with
images of exhausted land. depleted livestock resources. and a population of indigent
migrants.2 A few days' trek on Lasta's steeply sloped ravines reveals deforestation,
the absence of pasturage, exhausted topsoil and a population existing on the
margins of subsistence. The contrast between an area rich in the traditions which
dominated Ethiopia's political culture and the impoverished material conditions in
which Lastans have come to live invites serious investigation into the material and
ideological processes of adaptation. especially in those institutions which have long
sustained production and reproduction in rural Lasta.

The primary concern of this dissertation is to reconstruct history of the
Lasta region and its position in the modern empire-state by examining the changing

circumstances in which its rural population produced and adapted to a new

3
environment and political economy. In the course of telling the story of Lasta's
rural producers and the social and physical environment in which they lived. I have
attempted to balance the needs of an empirical account of events in one area of
northern Ethiopia with a much broader consideration of the methods and theories of
rural history in the context of African historiography in general. Finally, my method
blends the use of an "emic” viewpoint derived from Lastans own descriptions of
their society and an "etic" perspective from archives and recent studies of the

technical and economic constraints on Lasta's farming and social systems.

Theoretical Context

The concepts of household and social formation dominate the methods and
styles of analyis in this study. In northern Ethiopia and in Lasta in particular. the
farming household was the dominant unit of production. consumption, socialization,
and micro-economic decision-making. At the outset, however. it is essential to draw
a distinction between the notion of household used in this study and the concept
as it has evolved in anthropological literature of the last decade. For
anthropologists and sociologists "household" has often appeared as synonymous with
family, or compound (i.e. extended family), a patriliny. matriliny. or as any other
unit convenient to a particular study. Studies using the term for theoretical or
heuristic purposes have, in fact, rarely arrived at a satisfactory definition which
allows for the idiosyncracies of particular societies while still satisfying the needs
of comparative studies.3

My use of the term household in this study is "society specific" and refers
to both an objective description of the functional unit of production and
consumption in northern Ethiopia and the emic use of the term in Lasta.

Households in Lasta in this period may be described in specific terms as a

corporate small-holding farm unit whose members have pooled their individual labor,

4
rights to land. and property. Kinship was a common. but not necessary element
determining membership. Residence within the homestead was. in fact. a more.
relevant factor determining membership than kinship. Although decisions made about
the use of household economic resources were made largely by senior members.
they were made on the basis on the collective interests of all members.

The term household in this context is, in fact, a direct rendering of the
Amharic term bétfzi seb which translates most clearly as "the collection of those in
one house." Although often rendered as "family." the term does not denote kinship.
The notion of kinship in Lasta stems from an entirely different word (mag) which
has no necessary implication of residence or relationship in a production unit; in
the Lasta milieu it had surprisingly little to do with economic or social obligation.
In this regard, a study using the household as a prime unit of analysis should not
confuse itself with the discrete consideration of "family history," except
coincidentally.4

It is also important to note that the use of household in this study does not
isolate these units from the process of distribution or the social reproduction of
the rural society. These processes and their relationship to household production
were evident in a range of rural institutions which linked producing households to
the state, the church, and local administrative elites through taxes, labor
obligations, normative patterns of deference behavior. and patterns of household
property inheritance. Institutions of distribution and their ideological justification
provided the basis for social stratification and social reprduction as a whole. The
household in this study is therefore understood within a particular institutional and
historical setting. Indeed, the study seeks to understand change in the rural
household economy not by examining the household itself, but by determining the
effects of ecological patterns and imperial state expansion on institutions of

distribution.5

o

Fortunately for the historian working on households and institutional change
in rural Lasta. social anthropologists and at least one historian have already
carried out some valuable ground-breaking work on the structure and internal
dynamics of the northern Ethiopian household.6 These studies sought to understand
the nature of the "web of kinship" in northern Ethiopia's distinctive cognatic
(ambilineal) descent system. In the process, they raised a series of questions about
an African society which functioned without kinship as the primary cement of its
production units. Unfortunately, their research agenda did not include questions
regarding what kind of changes might be possible through time, or suggest how
these units might have reacted to the new set of circumstances facing them in the
twentieth century.

Allan Hoben's work in rural Gojjam remains the foundation of our current
understanding of the dynamics of land tenure in the ambilineal system which
dominates Lasta and northern Ethiopia. His subsequent interpretation of his Gojjam
data also allowed him to draw clear distinctions between northern Ethiopian
systems of tenure and inheritance and the prototypic ”feudal" types of northwest
Europe.7 Dan Bauer followed Hoben's work with a complementary study in Tigré
which pointed out the essential role of environment in determining the nature of
the rules of life in the northern Ethiopian household economy. Far more than
Hoben, Bauer focused on and defined the concept of "household" in northern
Ethiopia. His work also initiated the study of the relationship between kinship,
household economy, household development cycles. and political behavior.8

Together, Hoben and Bauer described the essential character of northern
Ethiopia's households as political and economic units not driven primarily by the
social requirements of kinship bonds (see chapters three and eight). Their work
drew an basic contrast between the European concept of an enduring family

property and northern Ethiopia's single-generation family. In the social systems they

6

found in Gojjam and Tigré (and what I have found for Lasta) the household
development cycle included both expansion and dispersal phases which began and
ended the land and property holdings of each household unit. Since young Lastans
did not inherit a patrimonial estate. they sought as soon as possible to leave their
natal household and establish their own independent production unit. Bauer in
particular has described the tension of household heads' desires to maintain their
household labor force intact and the younger members' need to found their own
unit. This pattern has direct relevance to the historical situation described here.
Lastans rarely achieved the ideal type described by Bauer and found it difficult to
sustain when they did, except for those households of the administrative elite. But
the process of household segmentation and the conflict inherent in this ambilineal
property system created a society with a fair amount of social mobility across
generations, and one which put great pressure on land resources. The limitations of
this anthropological work stem from the basic constraints of the paradigms of
structural/functional anthropology which emphasize the orderliness of social systems
at equilibrium and a preference for working towards studies of comparative kinship
systems rather than concentrating on the dynamics of structural change in a
specific historical situation.

The pioneering work on "Abyssinian" social and family history by Donald
Crummey follows a similar pattern. Working with marginalia in church documents.
chronicles, and displaying an impressive command of comparative materials,
Crummey has assembled a patchwork quilt of land sales and transfers around the
eighteenth-century imperial court at Gond'ar. More recently. he has produced an
erudite study of family and property among the elite of the Christian kingdom from
the seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century. Crummey's work amply shows the
potential for developing sources for social history in the region. but equally

confirms the data's severe limitations by his need to extrapolate material from the

7
twentieth-century dictionaries and ethnographies. The end result has been good
social history. but of a type which duplicates the limitations of structural/
functionalism: there is no clear time frame nor a sense of how or why changes
over time might have taken place. Again. his studies generally speak to a
comparative audience and do not address a historically specific situation.9

The least recognized contributor to the basic understanding of
Amhara/Tigréan household dynamics has been Vinigi Grottanelli, who conducted an
impressive study of the rural population living around the Lake Tana area in
1937.10 In his surveys of production, consumption. and demographic patterns,
Grottanelli demonstrated a firm grasp of the role of the household as an
economic/ political unit and the conditions under which it operated. He charted and
quantified average household consumption. household size. livestock holdings. and
patterns of settlement. More importantly. he sought to understand the process of
change in the rural economy of the region in the midst of a defined historical
epoch.11 The conception of this study owes much to Grottanelli's work.

The idea of social formation is also an important concept in this study.
Derived from Marx and his French structuralist interpreters. the materialist ideas
comprising social formation allow analysis to go beyond the more simplistic
typologies of naming modes of production. In a general sense, I have defined social
formation as a collection of modes of production linked together through exchange.
socio-political forces, or economic dependency. In any given situation, one mode of
production usually dominates the political economy and ”colors" relations of
production within the social formation. The particular modes of production need not
be labeled or placed in a rigid typology; indeed, trying to separate out and classify
the constituent modes of production tends to obscure the links between them.12

This concept of social formation. as against a more dogmatic materialist

taxonomy, more readily accounts for the social and economic complexity that

8
confronts the historian or anthropologist attempting to understand Ethiopia. To
apply the rather blunt conceptual instruments of feudal. slave. or tributary modes
of production to the intricate sets of economic and ecological arrangements in
Lasta and northern Ethiopia would do a major disservice to the empirical needs of
a dissertation and to the integrity of Lasta's historical situation.

In the early twentieth century, Lasta. as now, formed part of an intricate
web of productive systems which made up the Ethiopian social formation after the
expansion of the Shawan state in the late-nineteenth century. The plow-based.
agrarian household economy of Lasta was not a part of a self-contained "feudal"
system, but was intimatebt linked by exchange and political ties to lowland pastoral
neighbors and also to small-scale societies in Ethiopia's south which produced
cattle, slaves, and goods marketable in the world economy. Without the oxen
obtained from the influx of cattle and the movement of trade in the southwest to
northeast direction, northeast Ethiopia's households could not have successfully
reproduced themselves nor sustained the complex administrative and ecclesiastical
establishment which bound them into a social unit. As it was, during the period of
this study the social and physical reproduction of Lasta's rural society was
problematic. Yet, the relations between Ethiopia's regions were not simply based on
exchange, but were part of a new political and economic order dominated by an
emerging state centered in Addis Ababa and based on nascent capitalist values and
relations of production. Control over coercive power and its interaction with the
world economy allowed the emerging imperial state to intervene in local affairs
where earlier imperial governments had had difficulty sustaining themselves. By
1935, the economic and political circumstances in which Lasta households lived and
produced had changed dramatically.

Nor was the imperial state the only link to the world economy and the

forces of change. For northern Ethiopia, the presence of Eritrea and the

9
Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, each with expanding economies, exerted important economic
and political influences on trade and local politics. Indeed much of imperial policy
in northern Ethiopia reacted not to the need to integrate the relatively poor
northern rural society into the national economy. but to forestall the extention of
European influence in the strategically important north.13

This study will describe and analyze a rural economic and social
transformation in Lasta during the three and a half decades 1900-35. While politics.
both imperial and local, have a place in this study, my overriding goal has been to
understand the nature of historical change at the level of rural social institutions
and the household economy. I have carefully tried to work outside of the set of
assumptions about Ethiopia which have thus far impeded its full integration into
Africanist scholarship. These assumptions include the opinion that northern
Ethiopians almost by definition benefited from the conquest and oppression of the
country's southern provinces. that Amharic-speakers in their home areas necessarily
enjoyed better material conditions of life. and that those in the north controlled
the circumstances by which the central state incorporated their home regions into
the modern imperial system.

A corollary assumption to these held by many foreign scholars (but not most
Ethiopians) is that Amhara-speakers practiced a homogeneous culture and spoke a
homogeneous language. As I knew from previous experience of living in northern
Ethiopia and as I quickly rediscovered on my return in 1982. considerable
differences exist in the terminology of social and political institutions of the
various regions of northern Ethiopia. Conclusions drawn from the well studied areas
around Addis Ababa, Gojjam, or Tigré require careful examination before they can
be applied to Lasta or other regions. Rural institutions reflect the dynamics of
local history and environment. This study of Lasta therefore contributes a lexicon

of new terminology to the history of northern Ethiopia. I have chosen to regard

10
Lasta, therefore. as a discrete portion of the Ethiopian social formation with its
own set of historical and ideological traditions, production relations. and economic
needs. Nonetheless, my descriptive analysis of Lasta's experience should be
instructive about the nature of change in northern Ethiopia as a whole and should
contribute to a fuller understanding of post-war rural Ethiopia.

On a broader scale, this study offers contrastive perspective for work on
the same period in colonial Africa. Most studies of rural change in colonial Africa
focus on regions linked directly to the world economy through cash crop production
or labor migration. Few historical studies have examined areas physically and
economically removed from direct links to the metropole.14 By focusing on a region
with few direct ties to the world economy my study may raise questions about
research agenda for colonial Africa. Interestingly, many of the social and economic
effects often attributed to the effect of the metropole on the colonial state also
appear in the policies of the Ethiopian imperial state as it expanded to its
northern periphery. With this evidence in hand, scholars may be able to re-examine
the relative effects of the world economy on rural society in Africa.

I have divided this dissertation into two major sections: part one falls under
the general rubric of "land, society, and production," while part two, chapters four
through seven, covers ”Lasta in the imperial system.” Chapter one provides baseline
information on Lasta's geographic, ecological. and demographic characteristics which
have historically affected its systems of production, especially the complex role of
trade and oxen in the household economy. Chapter two details Lasta's social and
economic institutions of distribution; how they functioned in the late nineteenth
century and the directions of change. Chapter three discusses historical tradition
and ideology in Lasta and in particular the contrast between the "great tradition”
of politics and the ”moral economy" of production which governed the perceptions

and economic decisions of Lasta's producers.

11

Part two of the dissertation begins with chapter four, a discussion of the
first phase of Lasta's integration into the imperial whole, the role of the state.
and the backgrounds of political actors involved. This chapter also introduces
Wagshum K'abb'ada and Ras Kassa. Lasta's two governors who occupied key
positions in regional and imperial politics. Chapter five describes the interaction
of politics and ecology and nature of rural rebellion in northern Ethiopia in light
of the events surrounding the 1928-30 crisis which brought Hayla' Sellasé to the
throne and ended northern pretentions to national power. Chapter six offers a
detailed account of the penetration of the imperial state and national policies into
Lasta's rural economy and administration. Chapter seven. the concluding section.
analyzes the effects of economic, political, and ecological change on the farming
household as well as the consequences of Lasta's incorporation into the political
economy of the new Ethiopian social formation. The dissertation ends with a
conclusion which summarizes the nature of rural change in northern Ethiopia and

the basic transformation of the household as an economic unit.

Sources and Methods of Data Collection

Despite northern Ethiopia's millennium-old literary tradition and the depth of
Semiticist scholarship on the area's Ethiopic (Ge'ez language) literature, the history
of Lasta remains very poorly documented in both primary and secondary sources.
Archival sources on Lasta are notably scarce and few colleagues I consulted could
offer much encouragement about finding large caches of data. Because Lasta fell
outside of the major economic and political interests of the tripartite powers
(Britain, France, and Italy) and was distant from the economic hinterlands of Sudan
or Eritrea, European observers carried out little concerted information-gathering
on the area. One has to glean references to Lasta from annual reports, the odd

mission which passed through to view the rock churches at Lalibala, or bits of

12
intelligence gathered on the Sudanese or Eritréan border by colonial officials and
passed on to Khartoum, Asmara. or Rome.

In the process of sifting through reports and files, one learns a great deal
about the political structure of early twentieth century northern Ethiopia and about
the extent of its integration with adjacent colonial economies. The relative dearth
of material on Lasta provides a strong indication of the extent to which the
regional and world economy had bypassed the area. Nevertheless, information did
exist on the region, particularly on its declining political fortunes; by 1900 Lasta
had fallen to an area of tertiary importance to the central government.15

One major exception to the dearth of documentation can be found in the
consular records of the Archive Storico delle Ministero de Affari Esteri in Rome. A
commercial treaty signed in 1906 between the Italian government and Emperor
Menilek gave Rome the right to place "commercial” agents at economically
strategic spots in northern Ethiopia to supervise Italian trade interests. In effect.
the succession of political agents, doctors. telegraphers, and trade specialists
comprised a comprehensive and well informed espionage network which reported to
officials of the Ministero delle Colonie on a regular, sometimes daily, basis between
1906 and 1935. Not only did these agents receive data from their local
”informatore" but also from the Ethiopian state itself which relied on Italian-
controlled telegraph lines to communicate with local officials and regional
governors. Italian telegraphers easily broke the Ethiopian code and duly reported
all wire traffic to their superiors in Asmara, Addis Ababa, and Rome.16

Lasta was too removed from the export economy to merit a consulate, but
the region did fall between the agencies of Da'sé (in W'allo to the southeast),
Miiq'a'lé and Adwa (in Tigré to the north), and in Gond'ar (to the west). Their

reports yielded a remarkably detailed picture of Lasta politics, trade, environmental

conditions, and rural institutions. Moreover, several of the agents later published

13
memoirs and scholarly accounts of politics and social institutions.17 These volumes
usually included material on Lasta and offered valuable comparative material to
corroborate or question interview data or more contemporary anthropological
studies.

Recent anthropological literature, development survey materials, and technical
materials on northern Ethiopian farming systems make up another category of
sources outside of the scope of fieldwork. Because of Lasta's recent history of
famine, a number of reports by the Institute of Development Research at Addis
Ababa University, the Relief and Rehabilitation Commission, and development
agencies like the International Livestock Commission for Africa (ILCA) offer
invaluable information on the effects of drought and disease on production systems,
patterns of land use, demography. and peasant behavior under environmental stress.
Especially valuable to me were recent studies on the techno-environmental
constraints on plow-based agriculture in the highland environment. While many
survey and development reports need careful use to avoid the pitfalls of historicism
(the false placing of current conditions and concerns on past events), technical
reports on the limitations of Lasta's forces of production, the plow and the ox,
contributed to my understanding of the structure of Lasta's household economy and
rural institutions. Moreover, much of the pains-taking research on production and
demographics in the post-war north by government and international agencies merely
confirmed the data which were the conventional wisdom of Lastans.

Despite the availability of documentary and published sources, competent
rural history requires access to local documentation and interviews with those who
have participated in the production cycle and in related rural social and economic
institutions. Moreover, Lasta's political and cultural traditions are not available

from the "royal” chronicles or other imperial accounts. The task of putting together

14
a genuine regional history therefore required access to sources free of the
influence of the imperial court and the political culture of the center.

Although I had lived for two years in northern Ethiopia (1973-75) and
traveled in Lasta in December and January of 1974, Lasta's unsettled political
condition in 1982 precluded my travel there. I therefore concentrated my efforts on
two major communities of Lasta migrants in Addis Ababa and the town of Nazrét
(south of the capital). which made available to me a remarkable cross-section of

Lasta's population. I also located. inter alia, informants living in the capital,

.—

 

especialb' Wagshum Wess'a'n, last of the Lasta's traditional ruling house. I also met
with two retired governors and a number of others with first-hand knowledge of the
region. Best of all was the community of Lasta migrants who had clustered around
the former residence of Leul Ras Kassa Haylu at the foot of Entoto mountain
overlooking the capital.

Known as "Ras Kassa S'af'ar" (literally "Ras Kassa's camp"), the three church
compounds which make up the core of the neighborhood have attracted a unique
mixture of Lastans who grew up in the milieu of Lasta's rural economy and culture
during the 1900-35 period. They included a good cross section of rural Lasta
society; nearly all of my informants had worked the land in Lasta, and they
included soldiers of fortune, priests, monks, officials of the state, members of the
local ruling family, unsuccessful farmers, and members of the governor's household
(see bibliograplw). I could hardly have found a better sample in Lasta itself. In
terms of methodology, my work among these open and generous people surpassed
what might have been possible in Lasta, since most of my informants left Lasta
before or just after the Italian occupation. They therefore described to me the
society and institutions as they had existed in the period of study without the

confusion of intervening changes or the pressures of justifying current

15
institutions.18 Their Lasta was precisely the Lasta of the 19205 and 19303 I
wanted to know.

Interviews yielded a mixture of oral tradition and living memory accounts.
each of which I carefully separated and corroborated through subsequent interviews
with the same informant and cross-checked with others. Wherever possible I sought
corroboration with archival and published accounts. Life histories, the foundation of
my interview method. served two primary purposes: first, they revealed the life
cycle of young Lastans in the period and provided an excellent source of personal
vignettes. Second, they served as a guide to subsequent interviews by suggesting
what informants were likely to know and what they were not. In this regard. I
found the principle of multiple interviews to be vastly preferable to maximizing
numbers of interviewees through single interviews. The veracity and accuracy of
some of my best informants emerged only after their testimony could be proved to
be consistent from interview to interview and after a rapport had developed.
Personalities and intuition play an inevitable, if methodologically untidy. role as
well.

Finally, I must acknowledge the value of "small talk." the procedure by
which I cautiously led conversations and pleasantries in the church compounds. in
the informant's home, or the neighborhood's tea house to the topic of life in Lasta,
neighborhood politics, or the relative value of oral versus written records. Such
conversations showed why individuals retained certain events while forgetting
others, what they thought about me and my purpose for being there. and what
information they might have considered worth suppressing. My informants proved to
have a clear sense of history and its role. Even if they did not fully understand
my own disciplinary credo, the drift of my questions and interests gave them a
sense of it and yielded information and insights which they would not otherwise

have volunteered.

16

One final vein of source material resulted from my work in Ras Kassa safar.
During an interview, Fitawrari Nabiy'aleul, Ras Kassa's secretary and confidant of
many years, referred to a register in which the {as had kept accounts of his
letters, proclamations, petitions, tax regulations, and appointments to office. Once
we had established rapport, the fitawrari brought the 300-page ledger forward and
allowed me to photocopy it and deposit a copy with the Institute of Ethiopian
Studies for safekeeping. On closer examination the value of the document became
clear: the register contains over four hundred separate entries ranging from a
paragraph in length to several notebook pages; entries date from 1919 (two years
after Kassa took Lasta's governorship) until 1935 and cover Lasta and other of
Kassa's governates.19 Because of the lack of an archival tradition outside of the
church and the fact that most administrative orders before 1935 were oral and not
written, this collection of documents represents a unique contribution to the
administrative history of Lasta and Ethiopia as a whole. After carefully determining
its process of compilation. reproduction, and preservation in subsequent interviews.
Dagnachew Tefera, my assistant. and I compiled an index and used it to
cross-check interview materials for chronology, regional terminology, and accuracy
of detail. The documents have been of greatest value in framing my conceptions of
the interaction of local institutions, the state, and the class of administrators
which interpreted imperial decrees. Beyond its obvious value to my study of Lasta
rural history, this collection of documents represents probably the single richest
source now available on public administration in Ethiopia, particularly for the the
early twentieth century.20

My method, my theoretical perspectives, and my sources have been directed
to create a comprehensive view of the circumstances in which rural Lastans lived
during 1900-35. I have combined, when possible. the notion of "moral economy” with

Lasta's political traditions to depict an "emic," insider's view of institutional.

17
economic, and demographic change. How Lastans perceived the changes around them
obviously conditioned their responses. A historian's inherent caution and the tenets
of materialist theory, however, both argue that an emic perspective of ideology and
self-perception be balanced with a careful consideration of what European sources
tell us about politics, what recent research says about the technical constraints on
Lasta's production system, and how far ideology can govern action in the face of
the economic imperatives of household production and distribution. This study
attempts to blend both perspectives. At its heart, my history of Lasta and its
constituent households documents the extent to which the cultural and political
traditions of a region and its economic organization have succumbed to realities of

life in a small part of Ethiopia's modern imperial state system.

18

Notes to Introduction

1. Some of the most promising recent work is coming out in the form of
BA. and M.A. theses from the History Department of Addis Ababa University.
While not yet widely available, these studies of regional history and political
economy will be the basis for the next generation of historiography in Ethiopia.

2. The term Laliba'loch, derived from the Lasta town of Lalib'ala, has come
to mean any beggar in Ethiopia, especially those lepers who sing for alms house to
house in the early morning. The designation has become an embarrassment for many
Lastans who are sensitive about always being associated with famine and its
destitute migrants. Although a well known urban phenomenon. the only extant work
on the Lalibeloch is Kay Kaufman Shelemay, "The Music of the Lalibeloc: Musical
Medicants in Ethiopia,” Journal of African Studies (Fall 1982), pp. 128-38.

 

3. The most comprehensive survey of this literature to date has been Jane
Guyer, "Household and Community in African Studies," African Studies Review, 24
(1981), pp. 87-137. The most critical discussion of the use of households as a unit
of analysis has been Frederick Cooper, "Peasants, Capitalists, and Historians: A
Review Article.” Journal of Southern African Studies, 7 (1981), pp. 284-314. For
studies of the European Household see, Peter Laslett, assisted by Richard Wall, ed.
Household and Fami in Past Time (Cambridge, 1972). Also see the special issue of
the Journal of African History, 24 (1983), especially Megan Vaughn, "Which Family?
Problems in the Reconstruction of the History of the Family as an Economic and
Cultural Unit," pp. 275-284. At the 1981 African Studies Association meetings in
Bloomington, the Social Science Research Council sponsored a panel on the
household. The most sweeping consideration of "household" so far has been
Immanuel Wallerstein, William G. Martin, and Torry Dickinson, "Household
Structures and Production Processes: Preliminary Theses and Findings,” Review, 3
(1982). pp. 437-58.

4. See also Crummey who notes that the term beg gel; normally refers to
family but "primarily covers the meaning of 'household'." He does not, however,
clarify the relationship between household and family. Donald Crummey, "Family and
Property amongst the Amhara Nobility," Journal of African History, 24 (1983). p.

208.

5. Cooper, "Peasants," pp. 309-10 argues for understanding households in
terms of overall relations of production. He makes the point that "...labour and
agriculture must be studies together, and both must be understood in terms of
household structure. class power, and changing forms of production, domination. and
resistence in small farms and big industries.”

6. See especially Allan Hoben. Land Tenure am the Amhara of Ethiopia,
(Berkeley, 1973); idem. "Land Tenure and Social Mobility among the Damot
Amhara," Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Ethiopian Studies,
(Addis Ababa, 1966); Dan F. Bauer, Household and Society in Ethiopia, (East
Lansing, 1977); idem. "For Want of an Ox...: Land, Capital, and Social Stratification
in Tigre," Proceedings of the First United State's Conference on Ethiopian Studies,
Harold Marcus, ed., (East Lansing, 1975): Donald Crummey, "Family and Property,";
idem. ”Gondarine Rim Land Sales: An Introductory Description and Analysis,"

19

Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Ethiopian Studies, Part B,
(Chicago, 1978).

7. Allan Hoben, "Family, Land, and Class in Northwest Europe and Northern
Highland Ethiopia,” Proceedings of the First International Conference on Ethiopian
Studies (East Lansing, 1975). VL-i

8. Dan F. Bauer, ”Land, Leadership, and Legitimacy among the Inderta Tigre
of Ethiopia," Ph.D. dissertation, University of Rochester, 1972; idem. ”Ox." Bauer's
work on the local manipulation of land tenure rules did, in fact, note the
possibilities for change within the rural property system.

9. My comments here on limitations of Crummey's work in the social history
of northern Ethiopia should not be construed as criticism. Indeed, his work has
been inspirational in defining what is possible from limited documentation.

10. Vinigi Grottanelli, Richerche geografiche ed economiche sulle populazione.
Missione de studio a1 Lago Tana. vol. 2 (Rome, 1939).

11. For Grottanelli's discussion of the Amhara household economy see
Missione. pp. 124-37.

12. A good example of the use of Marx to build a rigid typology of ”modes
of production" see J.B. Webster, ”Towards a New Typology of Pre-Colonial Social
Formations,” Paper presented at the 13th Annual Conference of the Canadian
Association of African Studies, Quebec, 1983. Under the influence of Morgan, Marx
himself tended to identify specific types and stages, a tendency rejected by many
of his later interpreters. See Marvin Harris, The Rise of Anthropolgical Theory
(New York, 1968). pp. 213, 236.

13. Accounts of Italian activities in wooing the north away from Addis
Ababa are found throughout the Italian archives (see note 12). In 1904 Martini. the
Italian governor of Eritrea noted in his diary that the colony could not survive
without extending its influence over most of the north, including Lasta. See
Martini, Il Diario Eritrea di Ferdinando Martini (Florence. 1946), vol. 3, p. 488. For
a description of the Italian role in a particular issue in northern politics see James
McCann, "Ethiopia, Britain, and Negotiations for the Lake Tana Dam 1922-35,"
Interggtional Journal of African Historical Studies, 14 (1981), pp. 667-99.

14. The seminal work in this area was Robin Palmer and Neil Parsons, eds.,
The Roots of Rural Poverty in Central and Southern Africa (Berkeley, 1977). For
an influencial discussion of labor, migration, and proletarianization see Giovanni
Arrighi, "Labour Supplies in Historical Perspective: A Study of the
Proletarianizationof the African Peasantry in Rhodesia," in Arrighi and John Saul,
_E_s_s_ays on the Political Economy of Africa (New York, 1973). An excellent review
of this literature is Frederick Cooper, "Africa in the World Economy," African
Studies Review 24 (1981). PP. 1-86.

15. For Menilek's state in 1900 the key areas of the country were the rich
southwest, Hara'r which offered access to the sea and commerce, and the environs
of Addis Ababa which provided important political support. In the north the Lake
Tana region, mum, and Tigre for political reasons received much more attention
than did Lasta.

20

16. The Italian Archivo Storico delle Ministero Africana Italiana will
hereafter be listed as ASMAI. For a description of the 1906 treaty see Carlo
Annaratone, In Abissinia (Rome, 1914), introduction, passim. For an example of

Italian control of telegraphic communication, see Colli to Governor, Asmara, 25
January 1918. ASMAI 54/36.

 

17. See, for example, Domenico Brielli, "Ricordi storici dei Uollo," in Studi
Etiopiche, edited by Carlo Conti Rossini (Rome, 1945); Mario Corigliano, Soste
nell'impero: il territorio della residenza del Lago Haik, (Cosenza, 1939); Giotto
Dainelli, "Del commercio tra l'Eritrea e l'Etiopia nell'anno 1905," Bollettino Societa
Africana Italiana, 25 (1906), pp. 137-46; Alberto Pollera, L'Abissinia di ieri:
osservazioni e ricordi (Rome, 1940). See others in chapter notes.

 

18. On the role of oral accounts for justifying existing social institutions,
see the methodological discussion in Joseph Miller, _K_ings and Kinsmen: Early
Mbundu States in Angola (Oxford, 1976). ‘Living memory accounts face the same
problem when informants are still immersed in the social and political context they
describe. This was not the case in Ras Kassa safer and in post-revolutionary
Ethiopia. Informants freely discussed the personalities and institutions which were
not longer on the scene.

19. The document "Ya Ras Kassa Asta'dada'r Damb" (lit. "Ras Kassa's
administrative procedures,") contains 492 documents and 340 pages. In addition to
using the document itself, I conducted interviews with the r_‘_a_s_' personal staff who
could offer precise information on how the volume had been compiled and
preserved. Scribes recorded the written and oral proclamations of the {as during
his court proceedings. Proclamations sent to the regions were first recorded in the
register and then sent either orally or in written form. Kassa himself regularly
checked the register for accuracy. During the Italian occupation Kassa's local
scribes had buried the register near Fiché for safekeeping. I am grateful to my
colleague Tesema Ta’a and to my research assistant Dagnachew Teffera who helped
with indexing and translation of these documents. I checked and edited translations
in all cases. See Appendix B for sample documents from this register.

20. Other valuable materials of this sort are Mahetma Sellasé W'alda
Masqal, Zekra Naga'r (Addis Ababa, 1959) and for the nineteenth century Richard
Pankhurst, ed. and trans. Tax Records and Inventories of Emperor Tewodros of
Ethiopia (1855-1868) (London, 1979). While important collections of documentation,
neither of these two were collected and preserved as an integrated unit within the
political and social context which created the individual documents. Both were
edited and then compiled as published source material. Ras Kassa's register has
historical value because of the 492 constituent documents, but it has additional
value as an integrated whole, collated and preserved entirely within the context it
describes.

Part One:

Land, Society, and Production in Lasta

Chapter One

The Human and Physical Setting of Production in Lasta

...the country of Lasta where the roads are twisted and the
paths narrow. How many kings and dignitiaries have been
vanquished by the state of this country!

Chronicler of Emperor Eyasu II 1746

The further into Lasta. the drier was the climate and the more
barren the mountains. The process of deforestation seems
complete. The sides of the hills are prepared for sowing. One

sees reddish-brown and reddish-grey fields...there is little sign
of livestock and wild animals.

Haile Gabriel Dagne, "The Famine Situation in Lasta. 19741

The ability of the Lasta peasant farmers to survive the challenges of their
difficult environment «even in the face of relations of production which pushed
households towards economic dependency. pauperization. and dissolution-- can best
be understood through careful analysis of the complex interaction of Lastans with
their physical and economic environment. Relations of production in Lasta evolved
slowly from the possibilities and constraints suggested by the physical
environment, technical forces of production, and the particular forms of
interaction with complementary modes of production in the larger Ethiopian social
formation.

In addition to a basic geographic and ethnographic description, the purpose
of this chapter is to set down the ecological and economic infrastructure of Lasta

society as it entered the 1900-35 period. This chapter describes the ecological

22
environment of the Lasta peasant household as well as its links to the wider
Ethiopian economy. Its major theme suggests that, far from being self-sufficient
units. Lasta households relied on external inputs essential to their social and
economic reproduction. In so analyzing the system. I will set out the forms of
interaction which held Ethiopia together as a social formation before the growth
of the strong central state and at the same time illustrate the geographic
background to Lasta's political incorporation into the modern Ethiopian state

system in the twentieth century.

The Physical Setting

Lasta lies well north of the rift valley in the central highland massif of
Ethiopia where it is circumscribed by the great arc of the Takkazé river. This
river rises in Lasta at 2400 meters: ten kilometers from its source the river has
worn a gorge six hundred meters deep which widens and deepens along its course
and forms an effective barrier first between Lasta and the region of W'allo to the
south and then B'ag'amder to the west (see figures 1 and 2). On the north the
Zamra. a Takkazé tributary, separates Lasta from the Tigre region. On the east.
beyond the interstitial zones of Cherci;er and Zobul. lies the physical and ethnic
frontier of the Danakil lowlands occupied by the Eastern Cushitic-speaking and
pastoralist Afar (see figure 3).

Three other major river systems drain the area as well. The Méri flows
east to west into the Takkazé and forms the border between Lasta's two major
divisions, Wag to the north and Lasta-proper to the south?‘ The Terari springs
from near the source of the Méri in southeastern Wag and flows north to join
the Zamra where it forms the area's northeastern frontier. The Golima. which

delimits the Lasta-Y'a'jju border. drains Lasta's southeastern highlands and then

23

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Lasta District and Sub-district Place Names

 

26
disappears eastward into the desert of southern Zobul, providing important dry
season watering sources for the lowland livestock population.

These rivers and their tributaries have cut deeply into the area's vulcanites
(primarily basalt and tufa) revealing a crystalline granite base and producing a
distinctive landscape. The alternation of basalt with the more easily eroded
adesitic tufa together with the rivers' corrosive action has formed the fissure-like
ravines and canyons (glidaj) which criss-cross the landscape and confound travel
and communication.3 The visual effect is striking: viewing Lasta from a vantage
point in the north. the nineteenth century traveller Johan Krapf described the
scene as resembling "a raging and stormy sea. presenting numerous hills of waves.

-

with a large space between each wave." The range of elevation is considerable,
running from mountains of over 4000 meters to lowland valleys of less than 1500
meters. with an overall slope declining east'to west which directs the area's
ground water and eroded top-soil into the Nile system.

River valleys as well add a seasonal rhythm to life in the area since they
rise and fall in time with the seasonal rains. Heavy rains sweep in from the
southwest at the end of June and last until late September. With the rising of
the rivers and seasonal torrents. trade slows to a virtual halt. Additional rains in
the spring, though unpredictable, often allow an extra crop of barley, sorghum, or

pulses. Annual rainfall patterns. like soil fertility and elevation. vary considerably

between Lasta's various districts and sub-districts.

Human Geography
Lasta can be considered a part of the Amhara-Tigréan mixed farming
complex which occupies the zone between 2000 and 4000 meters extends across
the central highlands from northern Sh'awa up to and including much of Eritréa.

Lastans. for the most part. were and are sedentary. cereal-growing agriculturalists

27
who supplement their diet. income. and capital supply by small-scale animal
husbandry and trade. They cultivate almost exclusively by means of a single-tine,
ox-drawn plow. The peasant household was the primary unit of production and
consumption and usually consisted of the nuclear family, adolescent and elderly
members of the extended family, and. before the early 19403. perhaps a slave or
two.

Typically, rural households in Lasta were clustered into small hamlets
(mgfigg) consisting of 30-40 households. A fence made of acacia branches.
euphorbia, or perhaps stone surrounded each compound within the mepdeg. Hamlets
were made up almost entirely of members of the same land-holding descent
"corporation" which, prior to the land reform of 1975. divided the surrounding land
between them in theoretically equal shares. Each household then cultivated a
number of the fragmented and scattered plots in the vicinity and communally
shared what limited pasturage might remain. Beyond the hamlet, the parish is the
next largest organizational unit. Based on current data on parish size in Lasta.
one could estimate that 10-20 mender made up a parish --or more in the case of a
major d’a’bflep (a church-administered district. see chapter two).5 While this general
pattern held, there were exceptions. In particularly fertile areas individual family
compounds were sometimes the rule.6

In addition to these nucleated villages, Lastans lived in a number of
populated market centers and at least two well-established urban areas. As has
been the pattern elsewhere in Amhara-settled regions. those market centers
coincided with major church-administered districts which concentrate administrative
personnel around a monastery (or major church) and its lands.7 Lalib'ala, the area's
largest and most fully elaborated of these, included ten individual churches. a
population of merchants and artisans, as well as comprising a major market center

connected to long and middle-distance trade. Other major church/market centers

28
are Garagara Giyorgis. Belbala Giyorgis. Amda W'arq Ch‘arqos. and Wayla Maryam
(see figure 4).

Since the seventeenth century. the town of S'aqota has been the most
significant urban center in Lasta, boasting a highly differentiated population of
artisans, merchants, and administrators. The buildings in the town itself date from
the mid-seventeenth century and its two-story circular stone houses and walled
streets were distinctive. In 1911 Carlo Annaratone put the population at 4000 and
reported it as the capital of Lastaa The place had long been the seat of the
Wagshums, the traditional ruling line of Wag and, at times. all of Lasta. S'aqota,
however, owed its growth and stability to its market function, not to its
administrative role, since it was a key way-station for local, middle, and
long-distance trade passing along Ethiopia's north-south trade axis (see figure 4).

Settlement patterns in Lasta appear to be of long standing. Intensive
cultivation may have been taking place there for as long as 1500 years since
available evidence indicates that Lasta has been an integral part of the highland
political and economic system since early in the first millennium AD.9 The area's
relationship with the Axumite empire remains unclear. but in the latter stages of
that state system, Lastans made up an important part of the Axumite military and
was well integrated into the empire's extensive trade network.10 Local written
and oral tradition concerning the twelfth and thirteenth century Zagwé dynasty.
which was centered in Lasta, posit that the dynasty's founder Mara T'a'kl'a'
Haymanot had served in the army of the post-Axumite state. Indeed, considerable
agricultural surplus in the area must have existed as a necessary ingredient to
support the work force for Lasta's impressive rock-hewn churches attributed to

the Zagwé period.

29

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Figure 4
Trade Routes and Church Lands in Lasta

30
The antiquity of Lasta's churches themselves suggests ancient patterns of
settlement because Ethiopian Orthodox churches have always followed rather than

11 According to data from the Orthodox

preceeded a settled agricultural presence.
church archives. the foundation dates of Lasta's churches are among the very
oldest in Ethiopia. Of the 399 dated churches in Lasta, ninety percent have
foundation dates from the seventeenth century or earlier, while only six percent
are attributable to the post-1900 period.12 Among the oldest are the well-known
rock churches of Lalibala which date from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
The population density and size of parishes also gives a sense of the
intensity and duration of settlement. Lasta-proper alone has 476 churches and an

13 Figures on this scale and the

average parish size of 10.72 square kilometers.
antiquity of church foundation dates compare most closely with areas of Tigre
and northern Shawa that have supported plow-based agriculture since at least the
first millennium A.D.

The exact pattern of settlement before the nineteenth century remains a
matter for conjecture. The scraps of evidence from contemporary records and
extrapolation backwards from current trends suggest that the majority of the
pre-modern population occupied the 2000-3000 meter range. avoiding the less
productive areas above 3500 meters and the more fertile. but malarial lowland
valleys. Since then. population pressure and soil exhaustion must have contributed
to the expansion of settlement up and down the slopes, thus beginning the
destructive process of farming the sides of the canyons and reducing pasturage.

Lasta's canyons and gorges have played an important role in the economic
and spatial organization of agriculture in the region. As in other areas of highland
Ethiopia. Lastans distinguish three altitude zones: qgllg (lowlands below 1500
meters), we dégg (a middle zone, 1500-2500 meters), and déga (highland,

above 2500 meters). These designations describe more than elevation: Lastans

31

perceive them as relating to climate, crop potential. and even temperament:5
Because gorges and sharply descending slopes are such a regular feature of the
Lasta landscape, many Lasta households have access to all three zones. Therefore,
whereas most highland Ethiopian cultivation systems allocate land by a balance
between ta: (unfertile or uncleared land). Lam (fertile land), and lam t'a'f
(semi-fertile), Lasta households sought to divide their holdings between the three
elevation zones. The distribution of plots between altitudes permitted the growing
of a mixture of crops suited to each zone. Wheat and barley grew best at higher
elevations, sorghum in the middle and low zones, and téf in the heavily
populated middle zones. Since rainfall, temperature, and crop diseases varied with
altitude, the variety of crops and their locations created an important hedge
against calamity.16

Because of its strong Orthodox Christian traditions and association with the
Amhara-dominated central highlands. Lasta's population gives the impression of
homogeneity. But as is the case with its Amharic-speaking neighbors to the south
and west, closer examination reveals a significant diversity linked directly to the
area's past. While Amharic-speaking Christian agriculturalists dominate the high
and middle altitude zones of southern Lasta. historically important
Cushitic-speaking populations exist in Wag and along the eastern margins of the
highland escarpment.

Muslim Oromo-speaking farmers and pastoralists populate Lasta's eastern
edges bordering on the Danakil depression. Drawn from the Raya and Azébo
branches of the Oromo complex. these groups add an ethnographic and religious
dimension to the ecological frontier which separated Lasta from the hot coastal
plains and the small salt flats located opposite the market center at Wajja.

Tigrinya is spoken by the highlanders in northern Wag. and Tigrinya speakers have

also penetrated south in the market towns along the trade route which follows the

32

highland's eastern fringes. In the W'a'fla area around the important market center
of Kora'm, Christian Oromo have mixed with the area's Tigrinya-speaking population
and have adopted both their language and the predominent sedentarism of the
highlands. These Oromo groups have never effectively penetrated Lasta's
highlands, but they do represent the remnants of the northern edge of the
sixteenth-century Oromo migrations. In 1900-35 they occupied a continuous
ecological zone extending from northern Shawa to Endarta in Tigre. Further to
the east lived the Afar pastoralists who comprise yet another ethnic frontier on
Lasta's eastern margins. Contacts along this interface between farmer and
pastoralist, Christian and Muslim. as well as Amhara. Oromo. and Afar have
conditioned regional historical patterns and provided a focus for some of the
major political/military confrontations of the 1900-35 period.

Lasta's Muslim population has always been extremely small when compared to
the neighboring areas of Gojjam. Ya'jju, Bag'a'mder, and Tigré. In Lasta-proper,
only a handful of Muslim families made their living, primarily as weavers
(shamané)--there were none in Lalib'ala itself. The only Muslim enclave of any
size was the merchant community living in S'a'qotan

The absence of a visible Islamic presence in Lasta may have resulted, in
varying degrees, from the particularly intense and insular character of Lasta's
Christianity, the relatively poor penetration of merchant capital. and the failure of
Ahmad ibn Ibrahim's sixteenth-century jihad effectively to convert the area. A
number of Lasta church traditions refer to ”miracles" performed against his
soldiers. People around the church of Wayla Maryam, for example, relate an oral
tradition that when the Muslim soldiers tried to enter the church to sack it. a

1
swarm of bees emerged from within and drove off their horses.‘8

Historically,
Christian-Muslim interaction in Lasta has taken place almost exclusively in the

context of highland-lowland relations along the eastern escarpment. Relations

33
between the populations of these interstitial zones ranged from peaceful trade and
progeny sharing of cattle to violent raiding and blood feuds. The increasing
violence of the 1900-35 period in this region reflected the social and cultural
distance between the highlands and eastern lowland zones.

The most significant, and historically puzzling, non-Semitic language group in
Lasta is the Agaw-speaking group which inhabits the Wag sub-districts of Zekwala.
Jarba, Séiqota Zuriya. and Sagebgi. They exist as well in Gojjam, Eritrea. and
in Ba'g'a'mder.19 Beyond the purely linguistic differences, the Agaw of Wag
resemble their Amhara neighbors in social organization, economic base, and even
housing style. Most also speak either Amharic or Tigrinya and they intermarry
freely with the dominant population.20

While linguistic and historical research on the Agaw remains scanty,
sufficient evidence exists to argue that Lasta's Agaw population represents the
remnants of an autochthonous population which has actively participated in the
formation of contemporary Lasta society. Lasta would also appear to be the Agaw
heartland from which the present-day diaspora hived off since there are more
dialects spoken in the Takkazé-Lasta region than elsewhere. The Zagwé dynasty
was almost certainly of Agaw origin. although written and oral sources on it have
been heavily Amharicized.21 Further evidence of Lasta's strong Cushitic
underpinnings stems from Agaw placenames and the prevalence of rock and cave
churches often associated with water sources. Carlo Conti-Rossini mentions Agaw
rites practices at Gish Abbay in Gojjam which were similar to those found at
D'ansa near Lalibieila.22 The Agaw-speaking Bilen and Agaw speakers in Abarg'alé
(in southwestern Tigré) have strong oral traditions of origin in Lasta, claiming to
have migrated from there in the aftermath of Zagwé's fall in the late thirteenth
century. Lastans of S'tiqota themselves preserve the tradition of the migration.

The wife of the current Wagshum is of Bilen descent. Moreover. both

34
Conti-Rossini and my informants agree that the Bilen and Wag dialects of Agaw
are closer to each other than to any other Agaw groups.23
Another historically problematic group is the Hayla (or Khayla) who inhabit
S'aqota and environs. They are a traditionally landless caste of potterers and
artisans described by foreign observers variously as "Falasha" or "Abyssinian

24 Like the Beta Israél (Falasha) of the Gond'a'r area, they claim

Gypsies."
descent from early Israeli migrations, while local Lastans associate them with
budget (evil eye) and sinister religious rites. According to Lastans I have talked
to, they speak the dominant language of the area in which they live (Amharic,
Tigrinya, or Agaw) as well as their own language, probably an argot. They also
claim to have come more recently from Lasta-proper.25 Unlike the land-holding
Agaw, the Hayla live separately from the Amhara population in individual

homesteads and are completely endogamous. Together with the small Muslim

population, they comprise the only traditionally landless population in Lasta.

Environmental Patterns

Despite Lasta's economic diversity on its geographic and ethnic frontiers and
the presence of market centers, the peasant household is and was the primary
unit of production. Analysis of the factors affecting it social reproduction,
relations with extra-household institutions, and ecological context, therefore. are
of primary importance. These factors include population pressure on land
resources, exhaustion of overtaxed soils, deforestation, and' changing patterns of
weather. Ecological considerations and their demographic effect, in fact.
constitute a major input into historical developments. Rhythms of agriculture and
ecology can be discerned particularly in the 1900-35 period when Lasta peasant
households found difficult environmental conditions were worsened by increased

exactions by non-producing elites and impositions of the central state.

35

Lasta households lived and produced in direct correspondence with a
non-producing military and administrative elite who siphoned off surplus production
for their support. Lasta peasants traditionally supported military and ecclesiastical
aristocracies through the supply of surplus food, labor, and taxation in cash and
kind. In good production years, households retained enough of their own production
for the physical and social reproduction of the production unit --the household.
After taxes and other payments to the elite. however, little surplus remained to
cover hard times. As detailed in chapter two, cooperative institutions between
households in northern Ethiopia were notoriously weak.26 Thus, relations of
production created a chronic "vulnerability," which in areas like Lasta with
declining ecological conditions, frequently caused periodic crises. In this sense
famine and shortfalls in household food resources were political and economic
processes and not entirely environmental ones.27

Major recurrent environmental problems affecting production and reproduction
in Lasta were animal and human disease, crop-destroying pests, and the adverse
weather conditions. While I have studied the nature and general impact of these
problems by examining contemporary phenomena, past conditions may also be
pieced together from scattered Italian consular archives, travelers' descriptions,
and living memory accounts from Lastans themselves.28 Oral sources are
particularly rewarding in reconstructing the human aspects of ecological history.
Lasta informants could not always attach a specific time frame to ecological
events, but the more serious ones are well remembered in life histories, anecdotes,
and oral poetry. Events recorded from oral sources can often be dated by Lastans
because of their close proximity to well-known political events or by corroborating
European accounts. Since my informants perceived many ecological problems to be
cyclical, they often do not recount them as single events, but they could and did

recall a particularly bad year or a combination of them. Localized effects also

36
produce difficulties in interpretation. Residents of eastern Lasta reported heavy
locust invasions in the years 1927-29 while Lastans to the west had excellent
harvests.29

Both human and livestock diseases have significantly affected production in
Lasta. The major homeopathic disease was malaria which is still endemic in
lowland areas: its presence rendered permanent habitation in those areas risky and
significantly lowered the life expenctancy of those who chose to live there.30
Water-borne diarreheal diseases were endemic as well. The epidemic diseases
cholera, influenza, smallpox, and meningitis visited the area in cycles.

Animal diseases, particularly in cattle, had an even more serious effect on
production than the loss of household labor supplies through human disease
because of the essential role of oxen in cultivation and mules, horses. and
donkeys in transport and exchange. Moreover. livestock comprised the major form
of household investment (see below). Major epizootic diseases affecting cattle were
rinderpest, bovine pleuropneumonia, and anthrax. Lymphatages endangered the
horse and mule population. While most of these diseases were episodic, they never
completely disappeared and intermittent livestock loss, especially in oxen,
significantly determined the economic viability of the peasant household.

Agricultural pests were yet another source of decreased productivity. The
most destructive were locusts (Ma) and army worms (ml which often
attacked in the same agricultural cycle. In many years locusts invaded twice, once
in the spring and again in the fall. Swarms generally began in the Sudanese
lowlands far to the west of Lasta and then moved in a southeasterly direction
following the river valleys into the central highlands, arriving in Lasta in the
early fall. There they deposited their eggs and continued into the desert to the

east.31 When they arrived in the early fall, locusts ate the young shoots which

usually regenerated with little damage to the overall crop yield. A later arrival

37
during the ripening process, though. spelled disaster with most or all of the cereal
crop of a district in jeopardy. Peasants then had little recourse other than to
throw dust into the air or swing clothing over their heads in the hope of driving
the swarms off their own crops and on to their neighbors'.

Italian sources reported three separate major locust invasions in northern
Ethiopia in the 1900-35 period. The first came in 1905 when the insects destroyed
nearly all of the harvest; in 1906 and 1907 half was lost. but less in 1908. The
second invasion came in 1911 and 1912 and continued through to 1917. Reported
damage was less serious than in the first infestation. The third wave followed in
1926. In 1927-28 and the years up to 1931, the damage was "truly disastrous,” but
less so in the later years.32 To the devastation of the locusts and army worms
must also be added the damage caused by birds, rodents. and roving troops of
baboons.

Based on archival reports and interviews, its seems that Lasta suffered as
well from a capricious micro-climate. Lasta lies in a zone extending from Eritréa
south through Tigré and continuing further into the Ogaden region of Harargé
which suffered from periodic failures of rains. The reason would seem to be a
rainfall shadow effect which appeared in those years when sub-normal amounts of
moisture pass into the Ethiopian highlands from the southwest during the

33 In those years Lasta, Tigre, and parts of W'allo

June-September rains.
experienced late or truncated rains which put severe strains on the areas'
productive capacities and disrupted the rhythm of life.

Evidence accumulated from oral and archival sources permits a tentative
ecological chronology for Lasta in the 1900-35 period. Such an outline gives
important insights into the context in which Lasta's households and rural

institutions developed. Although it began eleven years before the turn of the

century, the 1889-92 famine represents a clear watershed in Ethiopian ecological

38

history. Called "the cruel days" in Lasta. it is the benchmark against which
Lastans measured all subsequent environmental disasters. The famine began with a
rinderpest epizootic which swept in from Eritrea and Tigre. followed in
successive years by failure of the rains, locusts. and army worms. Cholera
appeared in the wake of the early disasters and debilitated the already weakened
population. The entire production base of Lasta and much of northern Ethiopia
collapsed. Rural capital accumulated in the form of oxen disappeared virtually
overnight in lowland and middle altitude areas. One rich Lastan interviewed by
Augustus Wylde in 1899 claimed during that time to have lost 56 of his 57 oxen
in ten days; others lost the only pair they had and either left the area in search
of replacements or indebted themselves to the more fortunate few whose surplus
head had been kept in the highlands where the rinderpest was not so virulent.34
Lastans who had no surplus had to purchase new stock at highly inflated prices.
trade labor obligations for use of their richer neighbors' oxen, or migrate out in
the hopes of attaching themselves to relatives or an influencial landowner in new
areas being opened up in the south.

Over a decade of recovery and social reconstruction followed the 1889-92
famine. In 1905 the cycle of drought returned and coincided with a major locust
invasion. Little evidence remains of the immediate effect in rural areas like Lasta,
but in 1906 large numbers of humans and livestock on Lasta's eastern escarpment
succumbed to cholera and dysentery --consistent companions of famine-- causing
Emperor Menilek to cancel a trip there.35 Less than a decade later, another
major epidemic of dysentery and intestinal infection swept through the area from
Tigré south into W‘cillo. Archival sources do not adequately identify the disease.
but its effects were felt by both men and livestock. On a 1914 expedition to
Tigré, Negus W'alda Giyorgis lost over 2,000 men and 3,000 mules to disease

alone.36 The same year, a grain shortage, caused by a general failure of the rains

39
in the north. forced troop concentrations on the northern edge of Lasta to be
broken up for lack of provisions. Original fears in Rome of an Ethiopian offensive
against Eritrea were assuaged by an Italian agent at Asmara who argued that
the ”virtual famine condition" of the north would not support any aggression

against the Italian colony.37

While few direct reports emanate from Lasta for this
particular crisis, its geographic proximity and ecological affinity for the affected
regions suggests that it must have been affected as well.

The years 1917-18 brought ecological disruption to Lasta on almost the scale
of 1889. Shortly after the rise of Ras T'af'ari Mekonnan after the battle of
sagalé. the Wag area --and probably Lasta as a whole-- suffered through an
attack of army worms followed by the century's second major locust invasion.
This insect innundation coincided with the controversial appointment of Kabb'a'd'a
T'afa’ri to the position of Wagshum and contributed to a major uprising against him
(see chapter four). Memories of locust invasions in this period were especially
vivid among my informants. For their parents the 1917-18 invasion awakened fears
of a repeat of 1889-92. A common verse from the period expressed their feelings:

Bay'ar bayar silut yihédal anb'ata

Yak‘a'fu naw enji yatashala aym'ata

In the air, in the air. the locusts fly;

They are cruel and nothing good can come.

Later that same year, Italian sources reported cattle plague (rinderpest) in the
area.

The next year brought the Ethiopian version of the world-wide influenza
epidemic known locally as "Y'aHadar bashata" (the disease of Hadar, an Ethiopian
month) or "Y'a'n'afas bash‘a'ta" (the disease of the wind). While observers in Addis
Ababa reported that the severity of the disease was not as great in the

countryside (40,000 reportedly died in the capital), Lasta, in fact, endured

40
tremendous losses. Tens of thousands must have died or been debilitated. Striking
late in 1918, the influenza remained in Lasta for over a year and severely
affected production. In December 1918, A. Pollera reported from Adwa that:

In Y'ajju and Lasta there continues a fierce epidemic which

seems of a type of typhoid which is hindering the harvest

there. Livestock aband<§t§ed to pasture without custodians have

severely damaged crops.

The situation in Wag seems to have been as bad. D'aj'azmach Haylu K'abb'ada.
son of the Wagshum, withdrew his men from his post at Koram for lack of
provisions in the area. Medical treatment for the disease in Lasta was
non-existent and D'ajach Haylu asked the Italian consulate at Adwa for
vaccinations for his men who had fallen sick around him. D'ajach Betul, one of his
chief rivals. had already fallen to influenza and died at Mujja. Hunger followed
inevitably; one Lastan who grew up in Lalibala recalls hearing of hungry people
stripping the flesh off dried hides and skins.40

The years 1920-26 were a time for relief and recovery. But after seven
years of ecological stability, a new crisis ensued which stretched from 1927
through to the end of the Italian occupation. Lack of rain. human disease and
pests combined with the man-made devastation of a major rural rebellion (see
chapter five) and the 1935 Italian invasion to reduce Lasta and other areas of
northern Ethiopia to new levels of poverty and vulnerability. Lasta's condition at
the end of this period is particularly relevant to its overall position in the modern
Ethiopian social formation which emerged after liberation in 1941. As will be
discussed in later chapters, environmental conditions had a direct relevance to
rural rebellion, regional challenge to imperial authority, and to the break-up of
rural households.

Evidence for the exact spatial distribution and timing of hard times in the

1927-41 period allows only general statements. but Italian consular reports from

41
D'asé and Adwa make it clear that beginning in 1927, eastern zones ranging from
northern wallo to Tigré experienced serious harvest and livestock losses. The
1927-28 harvest season coincided with the third great locust invasion of the
twentieth century and a failure of the summer rains in the eastern regions of the
central plateau.41 The effects of grain losses in the north reached as far as
Addis Ababa where food shortages prompted the Heir Apparent, Ras T'a'fa'ri, to
import large quantities of grain from India for distribution by the government. In
a related move he also issued a proclamation in September 1928 waiving tax

42 While little

collection in the northeast in recognition of the failed harvest.
direct evidence for the 1928-29 harvest exists. a June 1929 request to the
Eritrean government for 10,000 quintals of sorghum would suggest that the
harvest of the previous December had been insufficient to see the northeastern
population through to the following year. The timing of the request would also
suggest that the 12.4.1.8 (small spring rains) plantings had failed as well. In 1929,
the lowlands of southeast Lasta endured yet another locust invasion which caused
"great damage" and a promising crop in the highlands suffered an estimated 20%
loss because of unseasonal rains and fog before harvest.43

Understandably enough. these years produced extreme political unrest in the
area which resulted in major cattle-raiding expeditions. numerous 911g}, (calls to
arms) of the central plateau's peasant soldiers. and the quartering of imperial
troops in Lasta households (the course of this rebellion is covered in chapter
five). Grain prices in area markets fell dramatically during the 1928-30 period, not
because of surplus production, but because peasants took more of their produce to
market than usual to avoid confiscation by soldiers or raiders, thus effectively

reducing household income, dangerously lowering household food supplies, and

dipping into critically important seed stocks.

42

In the years of the Italian occupation (1935-41) production in the region
suffered continued devastation; disrupted production cycles, huge livestock off-take
during mobilization and occupation, and forced acceptance of the Italian lire drove
produce prices up and up and thus stifled the intraregional exchange of even
basic foodstuffs and livestock.44 Many Lastans starved and others found their
economic base so eroded that migration out proved the only alternative. Most of
my informants recall this period as second only to the 1889-92 famine in its
intensity and devastation.

From these ecological disasters to the present day, clear trends have
emerged. Lasta has faced at least two major famines in the last two decades. One
came with the failure of the rains in western Lasta (Bugna) in 1965-66 and the
most recent was in 1972-74 when two years of drought preceded epidemics of

43 In both cases. previous patterns of reaction and

typhoid and ergotism.
adaptation occured which included the strengthening of "capital dependency," the
pauperization of middle peasants, out-migration to southern areas of commodity
production, and movement to areas of traditional refuge like B'ag'a'mder and Y'ajju
(see chapter seven).

In many respects one could argue that ecological conditions in Lasta and
environs are cyclical in nature; patterns of drought and disease, it might be
argued, are episodic rather than cumulative. On the other hand, Lasta's recent
history of famine and the contemporary evidence of soil erosion and deforestation
indicate that Lasta's overall ecological balance has been in a serious state of
decline for some time, perhaps since the mid-nineteenth century. Even if the
ecological patterns are cyclical, their social and economic effects during 1900-35

proved cumulative. Pressure on the land of warfare and demographic change

changed the character of the land on which Lastans produced.

43

Both my Lasta informants and recent demographic surveys in areas adjacent
to Lasta agree that soil exhaustion and population pressure have contributed to a
gradual movement to the cultivation of higher, less viable, land in the highest
habitable zones and to a ”transhumant" agriculture on more fertile, but
disease-ridden lowland valleys.46 A 1978 study of a 20-year period carried out in
the Simén mountains just across the Takkazé from Lasta has noted that
movement up the slopes had quickly exhausted available land up to the frost point
and that considerable migration had then taken place to lower lying valleys which
had previously been avoided because of the danger of flood and disease. With
pressure on land. fallow periods have been shortened or abandoned altogether.
Poor yields and the lack of land has fostered immigration as well to other areas
of Ethiopia.47 Moreover, the expansion of cultivation to previously virgin land has
reduced forested areas and pasturage, thus contributing to further erosion and
reducing the region's livestock carrying capacity. The process of deforestation in
Lasta begun early in this century is now virtually complete with the sole
exception of the sacred trees within church compounds.48 Deforestation has
progressively reduced manuring of fields since cow dung has come to serve as the
only source of fuel in most of Lasta.

The gradual breakdown of Lasta's ecological balance cannot be easily dated,
although it would appear that there has been an intensification of decline in the
past two or three decades. The changes in the physical environment can be traced
in part to changes in rural relations of production in the 1900-35 period which
intensified expansion to virgin and fallow lands and the abuse of previously
abundant resources. Population growth and the exhaustion of soils cultivated for
over a millennium are clearly causal as well. But the intensity of the decline
since 1900 suggests as well that human settlement in Lasta underwent serious

changes which can be linked to changing institutions of land and rural relations of

44
production. The downward spiral of ecological events and the political/economic
process of Lasta's incorporation into the modern empire-state is treated more fully

in part two of this study.

Trade and Production

As it emerged into the twentieth century, Lasta's political and economic
system, like other areas of highland Ethiopia, fits neatly into the complementary
paradigms of feudalism and the "peasant mode of production."49 These
characterizations have tended to emphasize the internal make-up of the rural
household or, in the case of the feudal paradigm, the dyadic relationship between
the peasant as producer and the aristocratic, non-farming elite which existed on
household production. Both approaches contribute to an ahistorical image of rural
highland production relations as static and to rural units of production (whether
households or the household-elite dyad) as self-contained. These notions are both
theoretically and historically misleading since analysis of social relations of
production must include relations between the various units of production and
distribution, classes, and the links to other modes of production in the social
formation. Analyses of the relations of production should also deal with the social
reproduction of the production units by analyzing the historically specific
circumstances of the factors of production (land, labor, and capital).50

The purpose of this section is to demonstrate in both structural and
historical terms that Lasta peasant production and social reproduction depended on
complementary modes of production in the adjacent lowlands as well as on
interregional exchange with other areas of the "feudal” central highlands. Indeed,
far from being self-sufficient, the Lasta farming household relied at its most basic
level on the flow of middle and long-distance trade which enticed capital, in the

form of plow oxen, into Lasta's capital deficient production system and provided

45
important sources of household income to compensate for decreasing agricultural
productivity. Even if Lasta's geographic and topographical settings have
contributed to isolation and a distinct historical identity, economic necessity has
linked it to its neighbors.
The specific relationship between trade and production has never been
seriously addressed by Ethiopianist scholarship, although it has long been a bone

51 Examination of

of contention in Africanist historiography and anthropology.
highland society within the various conceptions of feudalism have contributed to
the de-emphasis on exchange and other forms of linkages within the larger
Ethiopian social formation. Allan Hoben's work on Gojjam associates the Amhara
rural community directly with Marc Bloch's classic definition of feudal, the key
trait being the dyadic, vertical social and economic relationship between a peasant
and a non-producing class. Other writers like Addis Hiwet and Gebru Tareke apply
a Marxist view of the feudal mode of production and therefore emphasize purely
the relations of production between these two classes. Donald Crummey goes
further to describe all of northern Ethiopia --"Abyssinia"-- as essentially feudal in
both the Blochian social sense and in terms of production relations as well. The
upshot of both schools is the insular nature of Ethiopian highland production
relations and a deemphasis on the role of exchange within the social formation.
Gabru concludes that:

the long distance trade which [Samir] Amin includes as one of

the distinctive features of the "African formation" does not

seem to have played .a pgé‘ticularly significant role. as it did in

East and Central Africa.
Crummey seems to agree with this assessment while M. Abir's study of
long-distance trade in Ethiopia draws no connection whatsoever between local
production and the long and middle-distance trade which passed through central

Ethiopia.53

46

The notion of an insular, self-sufficient highland society in structuralist
anthropological field studies and in some materialist historical works conflicts
directly with Lasta's historical experience. Indeed. since at least Axumite times
there has always been a basic imbalance in the relationship between the locus of
state power and regions which have been the sources of goods offered into world
trade. This historical condition has given an important role to trade in the north
and provided an opportunity for northern households to engage in trade to
supplement agricultural income. The dominant state apparatus has never been
purely a product of a single mode of production (either feudal or ”tributary") but
itself has resulted from the interaction of the various elements in the social
formation, whether Axumite, Abyssinian, or the modern Ethiopian version. Thus
state revenues and support for the administrative elite have derived from both the
tax/rents and corvee labor of a peasant population and revenue from the control
of trade. Recognizing these connections, one must then go on to identify the
types of connections between highland peasant production systems in places like
Lasta, and other areas through trade. tribute, or plunder. Highland-lowland
relations are a case in point. Virtually every region of highland Ethiopia has
maintained an essential relationship with an adjacent lowland area. The
relationship between the two ecological zones has always been multifarious. From
at least the early nineteenth century, and doubtless well before, and into the
1900-35 period, Lasta has looked to the eastern lowlands beyond Zobul and
Chercher for tribute in livestock, currency, and other goods. Tigré could make
similar claims to its adjacent salt flats as well as to Zobul and its western
marches with Sudan; Gond'ar to its portion of the Sudanese frontier; and Shawa to
Awsa. Lowland tribute comprised an essential part of elite income well into the

twentieth century, and, as I will suggest in chapter six, the ability to extract

47

surplus from non-Lastan lowlanders substantially reduced the tax burden on Lasta
peasant households.54

Formal tributary relations represented only a part of the links between
highlands and lowlands. More decentralized contacts existed as well in the form of
small-scale raiding, hunting, and livestock progeny sharing. Until recently, hunting
in the lowlands was an important rite of passage for young highland males; but
the depletion of game and stricter government control reduced the activity
considerably by the 19303.55 Cooperation between ecological zones was also
common. One form consisted of the sharing of livestock progeny (especially cattle).
Poor highland households loaned their female livestock to lowlanders for grazing
during the rains; the owner and the caretaker would then divide the offspring
equally.56

In the early twentieth century raiding into the lowlands was a common.
almost annual feature of interregional relations along the eastern escarpment
extending from northeast Shawa to the Eritréan border. In normal circumstances
raids, like hunting, were a dry season activity designed to appropriate livestock or
to retaliate for an attack previously suffered. Italian records for the 1900-35
period also indicate that raids increased in frequency and intensity during periods
of drought or famine.57

Sometimes thinly disguised as tax collection or punitive expeditions, raids
generated considerable numbers of livestock and booty later distributed by the
expedition's organizer, usually a local military officer. Raids were often, but not
always, organized on a large-scale to punish non-payment of tribute; there were
also smaller-scale forays from the eastern highland zones organized on the parish
or sub-district level as well.58 These local raids, like petty trade and crafts,

served as an important means of supplementing household income during the dry

season or production shortfalls. Raided livestock could be used for food for

48
household consumption, as dried meat to be sold to merchant caravans, or to
replenish plow oxen or dairy herds after a drought or epidemic.59 For @313
$333 peasants on the eastern escarpment, raided cattle or oxen might make the
difference between household self-sufficiency and forced dependence on a patron.
During the 1928-30 northern famine/rebellion. raiding accounted for the transfer of
well over 100.000 head of livestock (mostly cattle, some camels, sheep, and goats)

60 Indeed, as will be

from the eastern lowland to adjacent highland areas.
discussed later, one of the most significant policies of the central imperial
government after 1916 was the systematic removal of income-generating lowland
areas from the control of local authority, the suppression of raiding, and the
regularization of income flow into central government, not local. coffers.

Besides the exchange and forceable extraction of goods along Lasta's
eastern escarpment, considerable exchange also took place between adjacent
highland areas. The areas major and local markets (see figure 4) facilitated the
exchange of foodstuffs, crafts, and livestock locally as well as connecting major
market centers in Ethiopia's long-distance trade network. While major routes
connecting the growing captial at Addis Ababa and its major entrepets by-passed
Lasta, the area's markets nevertheless played a major role in linking interregional
trade and the basic factors of production in northeast Ethiopia.

Northern Ethiopian markets have usually been described as "dualistic" with
two separate elements. V. Grottanelli, writing in the late 19303 offered a typical
analysis:

In Amhara markets it is always possible to observe two quite

distinct sections: the first is composed of the true and proper

market in which money is offered against goods from other

areas; the second and more numerous is comprised of the great

mass of local products which are exchanged by barter...the

goods 81 primary necessity are exchanged in the second
section.

49
In this view, the local exchange of grains and pulses between déga and
middle-altitude regions existed alongside. but did not affect, the exchange of
interregional and middle-distance goods like cloth. iron products, glassware, and
salt. This substantivist image of a bifurcated trade is more apparent than real
because of the essential nature of salt and its trade to both exchange and local
production.

Ethiopia's highlands in general are poorly endowed with salt. Blocks of the
substance cut out of Tigré's Danakil plain has been the major source. That these
salt blocks lie at the foundation of Ethiopia's trade and interregional connections
is supported by the fact that the trade has been in progress since at least the
sixth century A.D. and the trade is still an essential feature of the Tigréan
economy. The production and trade in salt has likely existed alongside settled
agriculture and animal husbandry as it developed on the highlands over the past
three millennias‘2

The basic demand for salt in all areas of Ethiopia has necessarily stimulated
its flow from north to south and thus fostered a complementary movement in the
opposite direction of primary products of the south and southwest. After 1889,
manufactured goods imported through Eritrea (including the film, a type of iron
plow tip preferred in Lasta) supplemented salt as the north's primary means of
obtaining first slaves, ivory, gold, and civet and then coffee --in addition to a
flow of more perishable middle-distance goods like honey, spices, butter, and
livestock, out of the central highlands to the ports of Massawa and Assab, and
into the relatively poor areas of Lasta and Tigré.

The critical role of salt in both exchange and production lies in its dual
function. First, it was consumed by both human and livestock populations for both
dietary and medicinal purposes. Mules, donkeys, and cattle require a constant

source of salt in their diet; oxen in Lasta are fed crushed salt mixed with straw

50
and chaff during the strenuous season of plowing from May through July. Second,
salt acted as a commodity useful in exchange to supplement Maria Teresa talers,
cloth, and cartridges. Salt bars and pieces of them were particularly important as
currency in small transactions with low value-per-unit costs, thus contributing one
link between long distance trade and local exchange. Salt, when preserved, also
served as a means of accumulating wealth. While prices of the Maria Teresa taler
fluctuated during the nineteenth and early twentieth century, salt rose in value
relative to other goods well into the 1900-35 period.63

In recent times, Lasta has never had much to offer interregional trade, but
it was a key intermediate link in the movement of salt to the south, west, and
southwest.64 Seqota market in Wag occupied a central position on the diagonal
route between M'a'q'alé, Gondar, Gojjam. Simén, Bag'amder, Lasta itself, and
further south into We'l'a'ga. Laliba'la was also an important node on the trade route
south and was a center for the cutting of the large salt blocks into the more
manageable chunks called argyle}.

S'Eiqota as a town and center for interregional exchange probably dates from
the late seventeenth century, reflecting the growth of trade and contacts from
eastern Tigre southwest to the newly important Lake Tana basin. By the
mid-nineteenth century, the British traveler C.T. Beke was able to write that:

Séqota is a place of considerable size, but it is so very

straggling that it is not easy to form a definite idea on the

subject. It has a large market held on Tuesday and Wednesday

weekly, .which is frequented by merchants of the soutg5 and

west, this place being the grand center of the salt trade.

The place thrived until the late 18703 when its population seems to have
shrunk from the 5-6000 in 1870 to only 1500 in 1881, although it seems to have
revived by the early twentieth century.66 In 1900 Wylde noticed that SJa'qota had

eclipsed its former rival Samré which had slipped from a daily to a weekly

market; Annaratone in 1914 referred to Séiqota as one of the major commercial

51

centers of the north.67

80. well into the 1900-35 period S'a'qota's position in
interregional commerce linked Lasta to the wider movements of goods between
Ethiopia and entrepats further north. thus keeping the flow of salt, manufactured
goods from Eritréa, and livestock moving through the area.

There was, moreover, a very direct link between the overall flow of trade
and the requirements of household production and reproduction in northeast
Ethiopia, since it is capital and not land which is the key unit of production in
that region. One anthropologist, Dan Bauer, has argued for capital as the key
component of production for his study area in End'arta, Tigre, but he limits his
argument to a contemporary analysis of one community. My examination of Lasta's
historical environment and institutions expands upon his important small-scale
study.68 Evidence in written and oral form. plus contemporary studies of rural
conditions in the area, lead me to the conclusion that for Lasta as a whole (and
probably Tigré as well), the key unit of production was neither land nor labor,
but capital in the form of plow oxen. Far more than the acquisition of land
«which was readily available to the vast majority of Lastans--the breeding, buying,
borrowing, and maintaining of rural capital determined household strategies of land
allocation as well as cemented vertical patterns of dependency and stratification.
Lastans I have interviewed unanimously named oxen (over land or labor) as the
key factor of production. Whereas "rights in persons" were critical in

labor-oriented rural economies,69

these were supplanted in Lasta with either
ownership of or "rights in” oxen which allowed particular households and elites to
increase their hold over land and labor (see chapter 2). In Lasta, the household
which controlled the former could always obtain the other two on favorable terms.

Oxen were key to production in Lasta for a number of reasons. They were

simply the most effective available means of cultivation in Lasta. Other forms of

animal traction --donkeys, mules, cows, or horses-- did not have the work capacity

52

or adaptability of a team of well-matched oxen. Some, like mules and horses, were
too scarce to be practicable; others could not cope with the onerous work
required on the cliffsides and difficult slopes of Lasta's terrain. In dire straits
Lastans pressed cows or even donkeys into service, but these have at least 50%
less work capacity than oxen. Moreover, oxen were capable of working efficiently
at all three altitude levels. Human labor using a digging stick, except in very
small areas, simply cannot turn over sufficient soil to put adequate land into
production «particularly given the limited number of work days available in
Christian Ethiopia.70 That one day's use of a team of oxen was often exchanged
for four to five days of human labor suggests the scale of difference in the two
forms. No where in highland Ethiopia is another form of animal traction preferred.

Not surprisingly, therefore, livestock, and oxen in particular, were the major
form of investment for rural households in Lasta, far surpassing the more sterile
accumulation of arms, salt, or silver. Sheep and goats were a form of investment
available for liquidation during difficult times in trade or for household
consumption. In most areas of Lasta, especially in Wag, sheep and goats were

71 During times of forage shortages or

milked to supplement household nutrition.
when calving takes place. like September through November, goats are the only
source of milk. Cows were a source of milk but were primarily kept as breeders
of oxen. But Lastans preferred oxen as investments over these small ruminants or
donkeys, mules, and horses (although these had useful roles as well) simply
because the labor power of oxen could be transferred directly into access to land
and control over human labor and hence could contribute to the goal of household
independence.72 The possession of oxen was the single most important factor
determining the viability of a Lasta peasant household.

Assessing the household's investment in oxen in emic terms proves difficult,

but one can perhaps make a judgement by looking at the investment of household

53

resources made in its oxen. While other livestock (sheep, goats, cows, and pack
animals) made their own way on the meager pickings available outside the family
compound, oxen always received special hand feedings of carefully hoarded fodder
mixed with salt which helped them get through the strenuous plowing season from
May to July. During the rest of the year Lastans fed cattle, and oxen especially.
by a labor-intensive method known as "lopping browse" whereby plowmen took oxen
out in to scrub bush, cut off high branches and hand fed them to the animals.73
Otherwise unproductive young bulls were fed in this way and trained until their
castration at about four years. Lastans castrated bulls by skillfully crushing sperm
ducts in the scrotum between two sticks, although accepting a certain rate of
mortality."4 The time, labor, and resources involved in keeping a household's oxen
fit and productive suggests the importance they had in regional agriculture as a
whole and in the social reproduction of the individual Lasta household.

Oxen were and are valued in all areas of highland Ethiopia, but in Lasta it
was their scarcity relative to other factors of production that made them of
critical importance. This situation can be compared. for example, to the more lush
environment of Gojjam where land seems still to have been the key link in
production. Evidence accumulated from oral and written sources indicates that
now, and for the past century at least. Lasta has been in a weak position to
reproduce the oxen sufficient to support the needs of its rural population. Far
from being self-sufficient at either the regional or household level, Lasta's peasant
production depended on obtaining a net-inflow of oxen or cattle (potential oxen)
from better endowed areas to the west and south, and from its adjacent lowlands.

Sustaining evidence comes from two sources, an examination of the
conditions of the household economy in the 1900-35 period and data which
indicates that Lasta was on the receiving end of a flow of cattle and oxen from

its neighbors. The overall picture confirms the existence of a vital relationship

54
between agricultural and the movement of trade across Ethiopia's central highlands
which linked northeast Ethiopia with other modes of production in the social
formation.

My informants' reports on pre-1935 conditions and my own extrapolations
from recent land-use studies suggest that the region was in a poor position, over
time, to maintain its own cattle population on either the household or regional
level. Pasturage in most of Lasta has been in desperately short supply since
perhaps the mid-nineteenth century when population pressure on land brought
former pasturage under cultivation and forced the cattle population to subsist on
stubble and straw preserved from the previous year's harvest?5 Lastans whose
testimony suggested these land-use patterns to me added that in years with crop
shortfalls oxen routinely died or had their work capacity greatly reduced by
malnourishment.76 Diseases also periodically thinned cattle populations and the loss
of even one ox could easily have eroded a household's. production base and
threatened its viability as a production unit.

A major weakness in individual households was the low number of oxen which
each could support. The small pasturage available to each mender (shared among
constituent households) and the preferential treatment given to working and
"apprentice" oxen made it difficult for the average household to maintain or
reproduce its own herd. My informants agreed that. at least for the pre-1935
period, an average family rarely had more than one pair of oxen and often less. A
household which controlled three pair would have been viewed as rich and
influencial, and a household with more than five would have been rare.77 This is
not to deny evidence that certain members of the rural elite owned or controlled
large herds of cattle and oxen of fifty or more. But these concentrations of
cattle further reduced the resources available for supporting poor and middle

peasants' herds.

55

Lasta's terrain of steep-sloped gorges and rocky soils also limited
possibilities for herd reproduction. Highland conditions like those in Lasta produce
limited longevity and caused a high age of first calving as compared to lowland
areas. Zones above 3000 meters have, in recent studies, been shown to be net
importers of cattle.78 In addition, as the chief means of savings, oxen and cattle
might be sold for profit to markets further north in order to see the household
through difficult times. There was no shortage of such times in the first three
decades of this century.

The above argument, I believe, establishes the overall dependence of Lasta
on sources other than its own herds for its capital inputs. Reasonable historical
evidence from the early nineteenth to the twentieth century supports this view
and points to the important link between Lasta's household production and
Ethiopia's long-distance trade network. The movement of salt into long-distance,
middle-distance and local trade networks and Lasta's intermediary role drew oxen
and cattle out of high production areas like Gojjam, Fog'ara, Bagamder, and Y'ajju
into the oxen poor regions of Lasta and Tigré. The salt trade and early forms of
local commercial capitalism therefore helped sustain Lasta's production base.

The antiquity of Lasta's oxen dependence remains murky; historical sources
like chronicles, travel accounts, and oral tradition rarely comment on the
"unnewsworthy" flow of middle-distance and local trade. This would be especially
true since the movement of oxen would not have been a steady, easily discernible
flow, but rather a localized percolation ebbing and flowing with episodic demand.
However, particular areas like Bugna and D'a'hana bordering on the Takkazé valley
were better off in terms of pasturage, population pressure. and terrain. These
areas probably did manage to reproduce their own oxen supply and, in good years.

sent surplus head to regional markets together with grain destined for active

56

markets in Eritrea. Yet even these relatively prosperous areas of Lasta have
experienced severe famine in this century.79

The origins of Lasta's "capital poor" production base lay in the changing
pattern of ecology, climate, and population pressure. Given what we know about
twentieth-century conditions, it is most likely that Tigré preceeded Lasta in its
dependence on external capital since the erosion of surface soil and loss of
pasturage was further advanced there.

The first solid indication of cattle trade into Lasta comes from CT. Beke
who followed the Ebenat (Bag'amder) route into Lasta in the early 18403:

Ebenat market is where Gojjam merchants meet those who

come from S'éiqota bringing salt, for which they give cloths.
coffee, and a large number of cattle. oxen, and heifers brought
from Gudera [W'ala'ga].

That Séqota was a major oxen distribution point has been attested by Alamanni
who reported that in 1890 its weekly market handled 21,000 head. In 1917
Talamonti, the veteran Italian consul at Adwa. noted that cattle trade out of
354093 and attributed an outbreak of rinderpest in Tigre to it. To the south,
Wylde noted a surfeit of cattle in Yajju which probably found its way into Lasta
and Tigré markets. On the southwest, the important middle-distance route from
B'ag'amder to Lasta through Chech'aho Ber also probably carried cattle from the
rich Lake Tana basin.81
Lastans themselves who worked the land before 1935 readily argue that oxen
were the weak link in the production equation and stress the household's frequent
need to replenish their supply by borrowing and purchase. Many of my Lasta
informants claim that new supplies were readily available at larger markets in the
area, and many of these would have been the product of local husbandry. In

further discussion they admitted that the low quality and high price of locally

produced cattle and oxen fostered a market for imports. One informant described

57

the size of Lasta's undernourished cattle as "like goats" and stated that they had
to import good ones from Gojjam, Bagamder, and Y'ajju. Beke's description of the
Ebenat trade was confirmed to me by Abba Gétu Endasaw who served as a
soldier at Ebenat in the 19303. All agreed that the price and quality of oxen
obtained from "oxen-rich" areas to the west and south far surpassed the local
variety. Overall, one can see that the structure of prices stimulated a general
movement of the livestock to the north and east.82 Thus Lasta was not only a
market in itself, but also derived some profit from passing on oxen and cattle to
their northern neighbors.

Serving in a middle position therefore created a tension in the household
economy between keeping valuable oxen for the household's own production needs,
or selling them at the good market prices offered further north. Households had
to balance the needs of long-term subsistence with the more immediate
requirement of food. revenue for paying taxes. and contributions to local feast
cycles. A wrong decision in this regard could pull a household out of a stable
cycle of subsistence into dependency, out-migration or starvation.

In addition to trade. raiding could, and did before 1941, bring considerable
numbers of livestock out of Lasta's adjacent lowlands. But Lasta probably did not
rely heavily on raided cattle to supplement the numbers obtained through trade.
Indeed though raiders drove huge numbers out of the Afar and Oromo herds in the
1900-35 period, Lastans disagree about these animals' suitability as oxen. While
the lowland Sanga breed were highly prized for their exceptionally long horns
(used for drinking vessels) and their usefulness as plow oxen in lowland and middle
zones, highlanders claimed that they cannot survive without open pasturage; they
therefore preferred the hardier Highland Zebu bred in highland zones of Gojjam,

Baga'mder, and Ya'jju.83

58

Lasta's historical relationship between trade and its key unit of production
cannot necessarily be read as applying to other areas of northern Ethiopia, with
the possible exception of areas to the northeast. Nor should Lasta's oxen
dependence be extrapolated into the indefinite past. It is a direct product of
local environmental conditions as they interacted with rural relations of
production. Lasta's case was therefore demonstrably different from what
Grottanelli described for the cattle-rich Lake Tana region in 1937;

As for the livestock «the primary capital of the Amhara

population-- ...considering that that property is diffused and

uniformly distributed, it is preferable to regard them not as

wealth but as a natural good for which use is free. This is

the rule: the exception is represented by the non-possessor of

livestock who becomes submitted to determined costs (in labor

and other goods) to provide their direct benefit (dairy

productsg4 or instrumentality (work) which the livestock

perform.
Thus, agrarian households in Lasta depended on an active interregional exchange
system to supply capital and income to compensate for their vulnerable production
base. Lasta's capital dependency and capricious environment rested at the

foundation of its weak position vis a vis the central state emerging in Addis

Ababa.

59

Notes to Chapter One

1. Ignazio Guidi, Annales Regum Iyasu II et Iyo'as (Roma, 1922), p. 142.
Haile Gabriel Dagne and Getachew Aweke, "The Famine Situation in Lasta,"
unpublished mimeograph, Famine Relief Commitee, Haile Sellassie I University,
Addis Ababa, 1974, p. 3.

 

2. While this distinction can be debated, I have chosen to refer to the
entire region as Lasta and to its inhabitants as Lastans. I shall refer to Wag and
Lasta-proper specifically when a distinction is appropriate. Though all of my
interviewees recognized the historical affinity of the two regions, there was some
disagreement about whether Wag should be considered as sub-region of Lasta or
vice versa. For nineteenth-century support for my approach, see Charles Beke,
"Abyssinia--being a continuation of Routes in that country," Journal of the Royal
Geographic Society, 14 (1844), p. 59.

 

3. Sandro Angelini, "Lalibela Churches Preliminary Report of Restoration,"
unpublished report submitted to the International Fund for Monuments, 1966, pp.
3-4.

4. C.W. Isenberg and J.L. Krapf, The Journals of the Rev. Mssrs. Isenberg
and Krapf (London, 1968), p. 464.

 

5. Alamu Chakol’a', interview #1, 28 February 1982; Abba Gétu Enda'saw.
interview #14, 7 July 1982. For parish size, I have made my own calculations from

data found in Volker Stitz, "Distribution and Foundation of Churches in Ethiopia,”
Journal of Ethiopian Studies, 13 (1975), p. 36.

6. Noel Cossins, "The Day of the Poor Man," unpublished mimeograph,
Drought Relief and Rehabilitation Commission, 1975, p.89; Abba Gétu, interview
#14, 7 July 1982. Compare this settlement pattern with the more dispersed one in
Gojjam described in Allan Hoben, "The Role of Ambilineal Descent Groups in
Gojjam Amhara Social Organization," unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of
California, Berkeley, 1963, p. 14.

7. Vinigi Grottanelli, Missione, p. 46. Grottanelli notes that this urban
growth was possible especially where rim lands were available which allowed for
de facto alienation of the land; such a process was not possible on rest land.

8. Annaratone, In Abissinia, p. 115. The political capital of Lasta-proper at
that time was Mujja, to the northeast of Laliba'la.

9. Lasta also is in the center of the area which Christopher Ehret claims
developed cereal cultivation as early as 7000 years ago. This independent
innovation may have provided the material basis for the expansion of
proto-Afroasiatic out of the Horn. See Christopher Ehret, "On the Antiquity of
Agriculture in Ethiopia," Journal of African History, 20 (1979), pp. 161-78.

10. Taddesse Tamrat, Church and State in Ethiopia (Oxford, 1972),pp. 26,
54-55. Dr. Taddesse argues persuasively that Lasta was already an important part
of the Axum empire by the time of Kaleb's expedition to south Arabia in the sixth
century A.D.

60

11. Taddesse, Church and State, p. 156; also see Stitz, "Distribution," pp.
12-13.

 

12. These are my own calculations based on the lists in the Amharic
typescript prepared by the beta kahen'at (central administration) of the Ethiopian
Orthodox church and deposited in the National Library in Addis Ababa. A copy of
the sections on Wag and Lasta-proper has been transcribed by Sandra McCann and
deposited in the Institute of Ethiopian Studies (hereafter IES). Figures for Wag
are incomplete; the calculations mentioned in the text are therefore for
Lasta-proper only.

 

13. Ibid.; Stitz, "Distribution," p. 36.

14.The Chronicler of Emperor Yohannes III in 1680 EC. (1687-88 A.D.)
claimed that during a battle that "those of Lasta forgot their good advice and
descended from the mountains to a plain." Ignazio Guidi, Annales Iohannis, Iyasu I,
Bakaffa (Paris, 1903), p. 47. For a description of highland settlement patterns in a
more contemporary setting see, B. Messerli and K. Aerni, ed. Simen
Mountains--Ethiopia Volume 1: Cartography and Its Application for Geographical
and Ecological Problems (Bern, 1978).

 

15. Abba G'a'bra Masq'al T'asfayé, interview #2, 28 March 1982; also see
Donald Levine, Wax and Gold: Tradition and Innovation in Ethiopian Culture
(Chicago, 1965), pp.77-78. Many Lastans remarked to me about the links between
altitude and temperament.

16. Ch'akola Lamm'a, interview #1, 10 March 1982; also see Haile Gabriel,
"Famine," p. 21. The designation tag and lim tijf are not used in Wag. Séiqotans
refer to POCRY. unfertile SOil as ghencha. They have no term for the middle-grade
soil. T'afarra Berhé, informal communication.

17. Annaratone, Abissinia, p. 116; Déb'akullu zawdé, interview #3, 13
March 1982. Grottanelli, Missione, pp. 150-52, speaks effectively about the
position of Muslims in northern Ethiopian society. See also Talamonte to Asmara,
20 February 1933, ASMAI 54/9.

18. Chakola, interview #1, 10 March 1982. This same tradition reports similar
results when the Italians tried to enter the church during the 1935-41 occupation.

19. Agaw is a Central Cushitic language spoken in scattered areas of
northern Ethiopia. There are four basic branches: Awiya of Agawma'der, Gojjam;
Bilen of the Karen area of Eritréa; Khamir/Khamta of Lasta and Ab'arg'alé; and
Q'amant of Dambiyain B'agamder. To this list might be added Kunfal, spoken in the
lowland west of Lake Tana, and an additional dialect spoken in the Takkazé
valley between Wag and Simen. See Teqebba Birru and Zena Adal with Roger
Cowley, "The Kunfal People and Their Language," Journal of Ethiopian Studies 9
(1971), pp. 99-106; and Frederick Simoons, Northwest Ethiopia: Peoples and
Economy (Madison, 1960), p. 20. My interviewees agreed that the Takkazé valley
Agaw dialect is quite close to that of Wag. I am grateful to Dr. David Appleyard
for his advice on this material.

20. Isenberg and Krapf, Journals, p.488; Chakola, interview #2, 17 March
1982; Abba Gétu, interview #11, 8 June 1982; Wagshum W'a'ssan Haylu, interview
(42, 22 August 1982. While my interviewees attested to the smooth relations

61

between Amhara and Agaw, a hint of mystery still surrounds the Agaw, thus the
Amharic couplet:

Agaw lebu z'ategn
S'am'ant dab'aq'a'w
Andu achw'at'an

An Agaw has nine hearts
Eight he hides
And he chats with one

21. Carlo Conti-Rossini, "Appunti ed osservazioni sopra i re Zégué,"
Rendiconti della Reale Accademia dei Lincei Classe di Scienze, Morali, Storiche,
Filologiche, serie 5, vol. 4 (1895), p. 355. The oldest sources on Zagwé list its
founder as Murara, while later Amharic and Ge'ez texts refer to him as Mara
T'a'kl'a Haymanot. I am grateful to my colleague Adhana Mengestab of the IES for
pointing this out to me.

22. Carlo Conti-Rossini, Storia d'Etiopia (Bergamo, 1928), pp. 78-79. One
could argue that many or most Orthodox Christian sites are marked by water
sources, sacred trees, etc. which reflect syncretic traditions with pre-Christian
cosmology, but the cave and rock churches of Lasta are especially so. Many of
Lasta's churches have subterranean water supplies and the daber church of Nakuto
Laab has holy water which seeps from the cave ceiling. Many placenames are of
Agaw origin, such as the sub-district of Kwara (Amharic: Qwara) which means
”sun" in Agaw. Ato Adhana has pointed out a number of these to me.

 

23. Conti-Rossini, Storia, pp. 286-87; Annaratone, Abissinia, p.118; Almaz
Mulat, interview #2, 27 June 1982. Ato Adhana's interviews with Agaw speakers
confirms this view. Joseph Tubiana seems to agree with theories of closeness
between Wag and Bilan Agaw, but he offers no substantial evidence for his
position. See J. Tubiana, "Note sur la Distribution Geographique des Dialectes
Agaw," Mer rouge -Afrique orientale. Cahiers de l'Afrique et de Asie 5 (1959), p.
306.

24. Augustus Wylde, Modern Abyssinia (London, 1901), p. 339; Diana Spencer,
"Trip to Wag and Northern Wollo," Journal of Ethiopian Studies 5, 1 (1967), p. 96.

 

 

25. Abba Gétu, group interview with other Lastans, 8 June 1982; Almaz
Mulat, interview #2, 27 June, 1982. If the Hayla are of Agaw origin, as some
have suggested for the Beta Israel of Gondar, then one would have to account
for why they developed into a landless caste in the presence of a free,
landholding Agaw population in Wag. Some linguistic work in the Siiqota area
would help clarify this question.

26. For a discussion of the "replacement fund" in peasant households see
Eric Wolf, Peasants, (Englewood Cliffs, 1966), p.4. For statements about the
weakness of horizontal links between peasant households in northern Ethiopia, see
Allan Hoben, "Land Tenure and Social Mobility among the Damot Amhara,”
Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Ethiopian Studies (Addis
Ababa: 1966), pp. 69-86; Dan F. Bauer, Household, p.4.

62

27. This relationship between environment and relations of production has
been explored by Prof. Mesfin Wolde Mariam in a forthcoming publication and in a
seminar at the Institute of Development Research given in March of 1982.

28. Italian consular records for Dasé, Gondar, Adwa, Ma'q'alé, and Debra
Marqos can be found in the Archivo Storico delle Ministero Italiano Africano
(hereafter ASMAI). For secondary sources on ecological phenomena in Ethiopia see
Richard Pankhurst, "The Great Ethiopian Famine of 1888-1892: A New Assessment,"
Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 21 (1966), pp.95-124,
271-94; idem.,"The History and Traditional Treatment of Smallpox in Ethiopia,"
Medical History, 9 (1965), pp. 343-55; and idem., ”The History of Famine and
Pestilence in Ethiopia prior to the Founding of Gondar," Journal of Ethiopian
Studies 10 (1972), pp. 37-64. More recent background reports on drought and
famine conditions in Tigré and W’allo have been prepared by Ashanafi Mogas of
the Relief and Rehabilitation Commission. See Food and Nutrition Surveillance and
Disaster Preparedness Planning Program. "Food Shortage Survey Report on Tigrai,"
unpublished mimeograph, 1979; idem.,"Food Shortage Survey Report on Wello,"
unpublished mimeograph, 1979.

 

29. See for example Talamonte to Addis Ababa, 30 September 1918, ASMAI
54/36.

30. Long-standing folk diagnoses for malaria in Lasta have been reported to
me by Dr. Charles Douglas of the Save the Children Fund who has run several
clinics in Lasta. One Lastan responded to my questions about land availability in
the fertile lowland valleys by remarking that, even though fertile, land in these
areas was always available because no one there lived very long. Abba Gabra
M'asqal, interview (#4, 31 March 1982. In 1981 huge numbers (0. 50%) of the
population of lowland areas of Dinno sub-district died of malaria, typhus, or
meningitis. Personal communication by Woudt Soer and Jonny Polly of the Dutch
Tekul‘a‘sh project.

31. A. Chiaromonte, "Il problema delle cavalette nell'A.O.I.." Agricultura e
Impero (Roma, 1937); also see the locust migration map in National Atlas of
Ethiopia (Addis Ababa, 1981). p. 71.

 

 

32. Chiaromonte, "Il problema." These general data were also confirmed by
ASMAI records and interviews.

33. See Daniel Gamachu, Aspects of Climate and Water Budget in Ethiopia
(Addis Ababa, 1977).

 

34. Wylde, Modern Abyssinia, P. 339. The famine in Ethiopia as a whole is
fairly well documented and is outside the scope of this dissertation. See Pankhurst
"The Great Famine," and Ashanafi Mog'a's' sections in "Food Shortage". My
interviews confirmed this overall effect and Lastans tended to associate the
disaster with the death of Emperor Yohannes IV in battle at Gallabat in 1889.

 

35. Martini, diario,IV, p. 360. The epidemic seems not to have affected the
highlands but may have increased shifta (bandit) activity in the area.

 

36. Armbruster to A.D.I., 10 December 1914, Intel 2/18/152, CRO. The 1914
epidemic might also have included influenza. See DeMartini to Minister of
Colonies, 8 February 1915, ASMAI 54/3.

63

37. Cerrina-Ferroni to Minister of Colonies, 8 July 1914, ASMAI 34/6; also
see Cerrina-Ferroni to Minister of Colonies, 21 July 1914, ASMAI 37/6. The

ASMAI 34/6 file as a whole emphasizes the general environmental breakdown in
1914 in the north.

38. Al'amu Wa‘rqn'ah, interview #6, 10 June, 1982.

39. Pollera to Addis Ababa, 12 December 1919, ASMAI 54/8; also Pollera to
Governor of Eritrea, 30 November 1918, ASMAI 54/36. Pankhurst relies on
observers in the capital who claimed fewer losses outside of Addis Ababa. The
evidence from Lasta contradicts his conclusion. The most extensive report on

conditions in Addis Ababa during the influenza epidemic can be found in Campbell
to Foreign Office (hereafter F.O.),1919, F.O. 371/3494.

40. Pollera to Addis Ababa, 9 July 1919, ASMAI 54/8; Pollera to Addis
Ababa, 26 August 1919, ASMAI 54/8. This evidence certainly refutes McNeill's
comment that people did not generally remember the 1919-20 epidemic. See William
McNeill, "The Plague of Plagues" New York Review of Books, 30 (1983), pp. 28-29.

 

41. Talamonti to Gasparini, 8 August 1926, ASMAI 54/26. The British
traveler L.M. Nesbitt while traveling through an adjacent area of the Danakil
reported meeting groups coming from the west who claimed to be escaping a
drought which had killed their cattle. See L.M. Nesbitt, Desert and Forest: The
Exploration of the Abyssinian Danakil (London, 1937), p. 313. By contrast, the
Gonda'r area had "very good" harvests. See Frangipani to Addis Ababa, 23
February 1928, ASMAI 54/ 10.

 

42. M'a'rsaé Haz'an W'alda Qirqos, "Y'azaman tarik tezetayé b'anegéta
ZE-iwditu zamana Mangest," unpublished typescript at School of Oriental and
African Studies library, University of London, n.d., p. 407. For the tax-exemption
proclamation see Berhanna S'alam, 26 September 1929.

43. For grain imports see Zoli to Minister of Colonies, 12 June 1929, ASMAI
54/9. For locusts and crop losses see Annaratone reports for 15 October and 15
December 1929, ASMAI 54/26.

44. Grottanelli, Missione, p. 133; Attilio Teruzzi, L'Africa Italiana nel
secondofianno dell'impero, (Roma, 1938), p. 12. For a discussion of the effect of

the 1928-30 rebellion on grain prices see Corrado Zoli, Cronache Etiopiche, (Roma,
1930), p. 329.

 

 

45. See "Food Shortage, Wello." No written reports on the 1965-66 famine
are available although presumably many exist in the closed files of the Ministry of
the Interior. My sources were the then governor of Lasta awraja, Fitawrari Ababa
Siyum, interview #2, 9 March 1982, and other Lastans who were on the spot.

46. Assefa Bekele, Yitateku Negge, Tewolde Gebre Egziabher, ”Zobul: An
Experiment in Relief and Rehabilitation," unpublished mimeograph, University
Famine Relief and Rehabilitation Committee, 1974, pp. 12, 20; also Cossins, "Poor
Man,” p. 6; Haile Gabriel, "Famine," pp. 4-5. Grottanelli, Missione, p. 91 describes
a type of "transhumant" agriculture on the Fog'ara plain near Lake Tana.

47. Messerli and Aerni, Simen p. 69.

64

48. David Buxton, Travels in Ethiopia (London, 1951), p. 179; Assefa Bekele,
et. al., "Zobul," p.20. The former state of forestation can be seen in the
protected forested land above the cave church of Yamarhan’a Kristos in D'a'ngobat
sub-district. Indigenous species included juniper, wayra, zigba, wild fig, and now
eucalyptus.

49. See, for example, Donald Crummey, "Abyssinian Feudalism," Past and
Present, 89 (1980), pp. 115-138; Hoben, Land Tenure; Frederick Gamst, "Peasantries
and Elites without Urbanism: The Civilization of Ethiopia," Comparative Studies in
Society and History, 7 (1970), pp. 373-92.

 

 

 

50. For elaboration on this point, see Henry Bernstein, "African Peasantries:
A Theoretical Framework," Journal of Peasant Studies, 6, 4 (1979), pp. 421-44.

 

51. This issue was first raised at the substantivist level by Polanyi but later
in a Marxist vein by Coquery-Vidrovitch, Terray, Rey, and others.

52. Gebru Tareke, "Rural Protest in Ethiopia, 1941-1970: A Study in Three
Rebellions," unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Syracuse University, 1977, p. 66.

53. Crummey, "Abyssinian," p. 126, states: "However, long-distance trade was
never fundamental to the interests of the nobility, and the social order was not
basically modified by its fluctuation." Also see Hoben, Land Tenure, p.1. Crummey,
"Abyssinian," pp. 115-16, does argue that the northern Ethiopian peasant's access
to land distinguished him from his European counterpart. Mordechai Abir, Ethiopia:
The Era of the Princes (New York, 1968).

54. According to my interviews, the lowland areas of Chercher and Zobul
paid a tithe to the Wagshum at S'aqota. While tribute did likely flow in from that
direction, the amount paid must have varied considerably with the strength of
highland forces and the tractability of the lowland pastoralists and cultivators.
The fluctuation in lowland tribute to the governor of Wallo's court at Dasé
reported by the Italian consul in the 19303 indicates this point. Chakola', interview
#2, 17 March 1982; Wagshum W'assan, interview #2, 22 August 1982; D536.
consulate bi-monthly reports, ASMAI 54/6.

55. Tsehai Berhane Sellassie has discussed the role of hunting in highland
society as a means for young men to pass beyond childhood. Tsehai Berhane
Selassie, "The Political and Military Traditions of the Ethiopian Peasantry
(1890-1941), unpublished D. Phil. thesis, St. Anne's College, Oxford, 1980, pp. A2;
119-148. Annaratone, Abissinia, p. 125, claimed that Ras W'alé, then governor of
Lasta and Ya'jju, organized a special lowland raid for his son D'ajach Amdé to
allow him to make a kill in battle. Declining stocks of game animals affected the
special privileges of the hunter as well. Rosita Forbes, From Red Sea to Blue
Nile, (New York, 1925), p. 255 saw a man displaying himself in a leopard skin with
his hair coated with butter. Her guide informed her that standards had declined
since in former years only the killing of a lion would have permitted such a
display.

 

56. Cossins, "Poor Man," p. 83; Fit. Aba'b'a, interview #2, 9 March, 1982.

65

57. See Zoli, Cronache, ff. 291 for descriptions of raiding from 1928-30 along
the eastern escarpment. His original sources are the consular reports found in
ASMAI 54/5.

58. Ch'a'kola, interview #1, 10 March 1982. The W'ajjarat of southeastern
Tigré were perhaps the most inveterate small-scale raiders. See Carlo

Conti-Rossini, "Uoggerat, Raia Galla, e Zobul," Africa: Societa Africana d'Italia
(Naples), 16 (1938), pp. 81-103.

59. I am grateful to my colleague Ato Asnaqa Ali of the History Department,
Addis Ababa University for sharing his research with me on this point.

60. Italian consular reports also claim that Ras Gugsa Araya alone drove
100,000 head back with him to Tigre at the end of hostilities. See Zoli,
Cronache p. 331.

61. Grottanelli, Missione, p. 122. This view brings to mind other dualist

characterizations of African market systems, see Karl Polanyi, Dahomey and the
Slave Trade (Seattle, 1966).

62. The large slabs cut from the salt flats were called 39151 or limédo,
depending on their exact dimensions. When further out into smaller pieces, they
were called amolé, the generic name for salt bars in most of Ethiopia. See n.a.
"Sui mercati e sui prezzi del sale in Abissinia," Bolletino della societajeografica
Italiana, 44 (1907), p. 40. For additional work on the salt trade see A.M.
Tancredi, "Nel piano de sale," Bollettino della societa geografica Italiana 48
(1911), pp. 57-84; 150-78; and Werner Munzinger, "Narrative of a Journey through
Afar Country," Journal of the Royal Geographical Socim, 39 (1869), pp. 188-232.

 

 

63. See Richard Pankhurst, Economic History of Ethiopia, (Addis Ababa,
1968). Pp. 460-63.

64. "prezzi," p. 41.
65. Beke, "continuation of routes," p. 58.
66. Pankhurst, Economic History, p. 692. One reason for the decrease may

have been Emperor Yohannes' campaigns in the area and the reorientation of
trade along more westerly routes.

 

67. Wylde, Modern Abyssinia, p. 321; Annaratone, Abissinia, p. 117.

 

68. See Bauer, "Ox," pp. 242-43.

69. See introduction to Suzanne Miers and Igor Kopytoff, ed., Slavery in
Africa: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives (Madison, 1977), pp. 7-12.

70. One of my interviewees, Sagayé Setagn, migrated to Addis Ababa in
the early 19403 after failing in his attempt to cultivate his land by hoe. Bauer
has discussed the effect of saint's days «days when church doctrine forbids
cultivation-- on the number of total work days available per agricultural cycle.
Bauer, "Land, Leadership, and Legitimacy," pp. 195-220. For recent work on animal
traction see Michael Goe and Robert E. McDowell, Animal Traction: Guidelines for
Utilization, (Ithaca, 1980).

66

71. Noel Cossins and Bekele Yemerou, "Still Sleep the Highlands: A Study of
Farm and Livestock Systems in the Central Highlands of Ethiopia," unpublished

report prepared for the Provisional Military Government of Ethiopia Livestock and
Meat Board, 1974, p. 13.

72. A 1970 survey in the Zekwala sub-district of Wag yielded an average
household cattle holding as 4.0 animals. 40% of the households owned no cattle.
Cossins, "Still Sleeps," p. 14.

73. Cossins, "Still Sleeps," p. 24; T'af'arra Berhé, a S'a'qotan, confirmed the
use of this method elsewhere in Wag.

74. Joint interview with several Lasta migrants at Maryam church, Ras Kassa
safer, Addis Ababa, 8 June 1982. None of the group would venture a figure for a
death rate among castrated bulls. An overall loss rate for cattle and oxen would
have to include disease, accident, wild animal attacks, and theft.

75. Assefa Bekele, et.al., "Zobul," p. 13; Haile Gabriel, ”Famine," p. 3. This
factor has restricted the expansion of tef as a cash crop in the area since
sorghum stubble provides better forage than téf straw.

76. S_'a'gayé Set'agn, interviews #1 and #2, 13 and 26 April, 1982;
Déb'akullu Z'awdé, interview #2, 6 March 1982. Empirical data on the effect of
nutrition on work capacity of oxen are now being collected by Michael Goe at the
D‘a'br'a B'arhan research station of the International Livestock Centre for Africa.

77. Abba G'eibr'a Ma'sqal, interview #5, 3 April, 1982; Déba'kullu, interview
#3, 13 March 1982; Abba Gétu, interview #7, 31 May 1982. Compare these
estimates with Grottanelli, Missione, p. 132, who gives figures for 1937 of 6.25
head of cattle per household for the relatively rich regions of "leana, Densa,
and Durbete" near Lake Tana. A 1982 survey of the Dinno area of Lasta yielded
1.9 oxen per household. My calculations based on the Swiss figures for Simen
district across the Takkazé are 1.5 oxen per household and 3.03 cattle. See
Messerli and Aerni, Simen, p. 58. These figures and the factors cited in the text
would suggest that herd size has declined gradually through the century.

78. Recent studies in Yajju with breeds and conditions similar to Lasta
indicated first calving ages of 5.4 for the highlands and 4.2 for the lowlands;
highland oxen have a working life expectancy of 7 years while for the lowlands
the figure is 11. Cossins, "Poor Man," pp. 83-85. Insemination in highland areas
could only take place in the late fall when there is sufficient forage. The more
general availability of browse and grazing in lowland areas to the east meant that
breeding can take place more frequently.

79. Cossins, "Still Sleeps,” p.93-94. Based on a three-week survey of S'aqota
market and the relatively rich Zekwala sub-district in 1974, Cossins argues that
these regions export cattle and surplus grains north into the lucrative Tigré
markets. As opposed to Beke's 1844 description of the movement of oxen from
Ebenat t0 S‘a’qota, Cossins claims that the flow is in the opposite direction. I
believe this reversal of the flow to be a periodic phenomenon, but one which runs
against the overall historical trend of cattle and oxen being traded north and
east. This aberration, like present salt routes, may be a product of post-war
developments in transportation and the development of urban markets.

67

80. Beke, "continuation of routes," p. 51. He also reported the transshipment
of cattle to Tigré through S'a'qota,

81. Alamanni cited in Pankhurst, Economic History, p. 210. By contrast, only
2,000 cows were sold. Also see Wylde, Modern Abyssinia, p. 360. For a discussion
of the Ch'ach'aho route into Lasta see Donald Crummey, "Chachaho and the
Politics of the Wallo-B'ag'amder Border," Journal of Ethiopian Studies, 8 (1975), pp.
1-9.

 

82. My informants were unanimous on this point.

83. My informants expressed this prejudice strongly although recent work at
the ILCA research station in northern Sh'a'wa indicates that cross-breeding between
Highland Zebu and lowland Borana Zebu has been successful and the off-spring
have been well accepted by the M'a'nz peasant population. For the most recent
typology of Ethiopian cattle see M. Alberro and S. Hails-Mariam, "The Indigenous
Cattle of Ethiopia," World Animal Review, 41 (1982), pp. 2-10.

84. Grottanelli, Missione, p. 132.

 

Chapter Two

Ershé Balahu":

Structures of Production and Distribution in Rural Lasta

Chapter one has dealt with the baseline geographic, ecological, and technical
limits of production in Lasta. Authority and the exercise of power in this setting
derived from the ability of certain members of the rural society to control and
manipulate these productive resources. Relations of production and distribution of
the social product in early twentieth-century Lasta were rooted in the basic rural
institutions which tied individual households to their local community, to local
representatives of the elite administrative class. and to a regional exchange
network. Conditioned by ecological constraints on the forces of production
discussed in chapter one, Lasta's rural relations of production involved local
factors of land, labor, and capital and their interaction with the larger social
formation through taxation, exactions of labor, and market exchange.

This chapter seeks to provide a framework for later chapters by describing
the structure of Lasta's basic institutions as they functioned at the beginning of
the period of study. I therefore intend to set a theoretical reconstruction against
which to measure changes resulting from Lasta's incorporation into the
twentieth-century Ethiopian state. While my data is historical, and necessarily
involves some regional variation between sources, the description itself is
structuralist, partly because the examination of institutional structures at
equilibrium serves as a heuristic device. On the other hand, the ideal forms

presented here accurately reflect the "emic" view of Lastans who, in the first

69

instance, described to me their former system of production, distribution, and
redistribution as they felt it was supposed to have worked.1 In this regard, the
present chapter complements chapters six and seven which assess changes in rural
institutions and the impact on the household of new rural relations of production
--particularly after 1917 when new leadership took over in Wag, Lasta-proper, and
in Addis Ababa. Given the important new role of imperial politics and decisions
during 1900-35, the definition of the state in the rural context constitutes an
important part of this analysis.

My reconstruction in this chapter relies primarily on the testimony of
Lastans who lived and worked in the area prior to 1935 and manuscript documents
from the administrative records of Leul Ras Kassa Haylu, governor of Lasta-proper
from 1917-35; where appropriate I have added corroborative material from archival
records, travel literature, Amharic-language documentation, and recent
anthropological work on adjacent areas. Comparative materials from Gojjam, Tigre,
or contrastive data from southern Ethiopia have also been added when
appropriate.2

Understanding the state of Lasta's rural society depends on an appreciation
of the historical context. By the beginning of the present century, I would argue,
Ethiopia's political and economic system was demonstrably different than what had
existed in the previous hundred years. Lasta had joined a new Ethiopian social
formation which was quickly replacing the older more insulated Abyssinian one
which had been confined largely to the northern highlands as well as others on a
smaller scale which had operated independently of it.3 By the first decade of the
twentieth century, the center of power had shifted from the war-torn, aging, and
badly eroded production base of the north to the more vibrant frontier society of
Shfiwa which had consolidated its control of its southern periphery after the 1882

Battle of Embabo. Because of the new relations with areas to the south and west

70

and the stimulation of commodity production there, coffee as well as hides and
skins began to replace the older extractive trade in ivory, slaves, and gold as the
mainstay of the export sector. Primitive accumulation in the form of land
measurement and foreign economic concessions in the south and southwest were all
well advanced by 1910. As well, the episodic and phlegmatic relations between
Ethiopia and the outside world under Emperors Tewodros and Yohannes had given
way to the more systematic, pragmatic foreign policy of Menilek II, particularly
after the 1896 Battle of Adwa. By 1908, the French-built railroad from Jibouti had
reached the work-camp at DiréDawa, and nine years later it reached the capital.4
Addis Ababa had become the nexus for trade, administration, and political intrigue.
Peripheral capitalism (i.e. a type based upon the organization of commodity exports)
was quietly emerging as the dominant mode in the social formation.

The late years of Menilek's rule also brought to the northern countryside a
more systematized set of rural institutions than could have existed in the turbulent
nineteenth century. The emperor had long since come to terms with his northern
regional antagonists and molded alliances which created a "federal" system with

5 The

accepted borders and a hierarchy of authority focused on Addis Ababa.
relative tranquility that ensued allowed the penetration of state policies down to
new levels. These included the shifting of the tithe in kind (asrat b'akurat) from a
church revenue to a government tax used to support traveling armies previously
quartered on and fed by the peasantry. He introduced a new court system which
reduced and standardized fines throughout the empire, and he encouraged the
opening of trade relations with the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan and the Italian colony of
Eritréa which yielded new customs revenues and stimulated the limited exchange

of northern agricultural commodities and imported manufactured items.6 In terms of

the organization of production, these policies broke little new ground, but they did

71
considerably strengthen the state apparatus of the new empire nation and helped
create a new context in which rural production took place.
For Lasta, the period between the 1896 Battle of Adwa and 1910 was one

of relative political stability. Conflicts Involvmg Tigre in 1898 and 1909 took

place only on Lasta's periphery; troops going to and from the Adwa battlefield
moved around the area, sparing Lasta from their ravenous forays. Political changes
on the regional level were peaceful and orchestrated, for the most part, from Addis
Ababa (see chapter four).7 Thus in the 1896-1910 period, Lasta's rural institutions
had the opportunity to develop in peaceful surroundings and in a reasonably
tranquil physical environment. It was the repeated ecological disasters and
economic changes of the following two decades together with state policy at the
local level which upset the pattern of equilibrium built into Lasta's rural production

system.

Land and Its Distribution

Landholding and the process of its periodic re-distribution constituted the
major rural institution in northern Ethiopia since the system of property and kinship
reflected therein permeated almost every aspect of secular and religious life. The
dominant position probably indicates as well its historical importance as one of the
key institutions of the Amhara cultural complex which from a modest territorial
base in northern Shows in the thirteenth century had managed to reproduce itself
by the present century over an area encompassing much of the present land area
of Ethiopia. The imposition of the ideology and structure of the northern
landholding system on southern peoples accounted more than any other factor in
the assimilation and incorporation of southern areas into the modern nation-state.8

In its most basic form, Lasta's land tenure system revolved around the

concept of rest, a cognatic inheritance system which allowed individuals to claim

72
land through ancestors of either the male or female line who were linked to the
original settler of a particular area of land. The claimants constituted what Allan
Hoben has called a "descent corporation," for the particular land division associated
with the founder. In Lasta, land divisions cultivated by such a group surrounded a

hamlet which was populated by resterrya (rest-holders). The descent corporation

 

included not only those actually tilling the plots around the hamlet, but also those
living in other areas who could potentially claim the right to do 30. Thus any
Lastan could hold land in a number of Lasta's patchwork of land divisions provided
he could trace his ancestry to the founder. In theory, a land division should be
divided equally and no land was to be alienated from the collective community.9

In effect, though, it was not the individual who claimed and held pes_t, but a
household, one of whose members could claim a share of a land division. A male
household head could demand land through his parents' lineage or indirectly through
his children (i.e. his wife's line). The strength and viability of the particular
household as a production unit often determined whether a theoretical claim to land
could be turned into or maintained as an actual land share. Moreover, the system
allowed a household to reside in one land division but to make claims and cultivate
in others. Obviously, the logarithmic increase in claims over time created
considerable fragmentation and scattering of holdings, thus the common expression:
Meserenna _I_._a_s_t_a _a_r_i_d £6)! (Lasta and lentils are the same) which expressed the
image of small, scattered bits, but also Lastan's pride in the uniformity of holdings
which contrasted with the large estates and freehold land systems which they
believed were common elsewhere in Ethiopia.10 The peasants' belief in the £913.
land system and their real as well as potential interests in it provided a horizontal
link which bound Lasta's peasants together as a class and separated them from
soldiers and administrators whose sustenance derived from rights of collection

rather than from the land itself.

73

The r_e__s_§ system accounted for the basic apportionment of land to farming
households, but in itself did not provide for the administrative apparatus of
allocation and organization of surplus produced by the household's labor on the
land. Nor did it ultimately bring about the equal division of wealth or the means of
production. The rural ruling class did not derive the preponderance of its revenues
from participation in agricultural production, but from the control of incomes
extracted from producing households.

Basic administration of the land itself took place within each land division.
Two officials drawn from each descent corporation oversaw internal organization of
each land division and represented it in external affairs. The chigashum was the
lowest level administrator in the rural land system. He took and executed orders
from higher officials, assisted with the assessment and collection of taxes,
adjudicated minor disputes, and organized corvee labor. The office exempted its
holder from taxes and rotated between adult male land holders of a given land
division on an annual basis.12 Above the chiqashum, although occupying perhaps a
less formal role, was the balabat. This official, usually an elder member of a
prestigious household, represented the land division in outside disputes and served
as an informal arbitor in internal affairs. The office tended to be hereditary and

passed through the male line.13

Both the chiqashum and the balabat existed as
products of the rest system and emerged from the class which drew its livelihood
directly from the land. The overall institutional environment of the peasant

household, however, included other supra-household institutions of both a secular

and religious nature which determined the conditions of distribution in Lasta.

The State, Elite, and Land in Rural Lasta
The "state" in the context of the rural economy and administration of Lasta

is equally as complex a concept as the recent general debate in Marxist theory

74
implies.14 Moreover, the particular distinctions between the representatives of the
state in rural Lasta and the local elite have added a further dimension to the
consideration of the state's role. Cohen and Weintraub have, for example,
distinguished tax from tribute in the rural economy by arguing that peasants paid

15 For the purposes of this

tax to the state while they rendered tribute to elite.
study, however, the state may be defined as the imperial court and those agents
which it appointed locally to collect its dues and implement its policies. State
agents, in theory, distinguished themselves from members of the local elite since
the latter relied entirely on local legitimacy and economic power to maintain their
right to collect revenues.

Lastans clearly understood certain offices and privileges to be the
prerogative of the state and others to be more purely the province of local elite.
Each system had its own contribution to the administration of fiscal policy, justice,
and public security which sometimes competed and often cooperated in the
administration of rural society. A great deal of ambiguity existed in the two
systems, however, since the imperial court regularly appointed members of the local
elite to be its representatives. Prior to 1900, however, the imperial court (and thus
the state) could do little more than try and appoint a sympathetic governor at the
regional level (i.e. for Lasta-proper and Wag); the governors and local strongman
appointed their own supporters to military titles and issued land grants. Land was a
key and control of it rested to a great degree on local legitimacy and to military
power over which the imperial court had very little control. The competition
between the local elite and the imperial state was a major theme of the political
and economic history of Lasta during 1900-35.

The presence of independent military and ecclesiastical classes effectively
removed the state from direct contact with the land, the peasant producers, and

incomes generated from them. Common soldiers who enjoyed exemptions from most

75

taxation and a hereditary officer class (b‘a'l'a'q'amis lit. "those with shirts") who
received their income directly from peasant populations of designated areas existed
between the imperial state and peasant landholders. Church officials (k'a'hena't)
shared similar privileges as well and the two sections of the rural elite competed
with each other actively, not for land, but for the right to expand the area over
which they could partake of the fruits of peasant production. In Lasta, as in most
areas of northern Ethiopia by the late nineteenth century, land available for church
endowments or grants to military officers had long since been apportioned. By the
early twentieth century the only way church or military officials could hope to
expand the areas allotted to their class was at the expense of the other. Although
hidden in the sources behind state-level politics, rural competition between military
and ecclesiastical classes grew intense during the period of study, particularly as
rural populations grew and productivity faltered.

Two types of administrative structures in Lasta reflected this competition
and operated above the universal gag-based allocation of land. These were 1)
parish (gig) zones under the secular authority of a landed and hereditary military
class, and 2) _dfibeg areas administered by locally elected ecclesiastical officials.
The distinction between these two types has never been made clear in the
literature, but was quite important historically for Lasta's peasant households and
administrative developments in the entire region.16 The state stood above both
structures and, in theory, had the right to alter, apportion, or reapportion the right
of either type to extract income from a resident peasant population.

Parish areas were those administered directly by secular officials nominally
appointed by the state at the level of regional governor --for Wag in the 1900-35
period this meant the reigning Wagshum, and in Lasta-proper it would have been a
member of the region's elite appointed by the emperor. During times of weak

imperial power, the imperial court merely acknowledged the realities of local power

76
by naming the area's most militarily powerful figure. These appointments, in theory,
did not in any way compromise the local allocation of r_e_s_t land to farming
households; they did, however, bestow the rights of "gplt" which constituted the
primary basis of rural class in pre-1935 Lasta.

In simple terms, M was the "bundle" of rights given by the state to an
individual in recognition of loyal military service. G_ul_t could be granted on a
temporary basis (mad'ariya), or in perpetuity (fit-gilt) to the descendants of a
prominent officer. In practice, although the state tried to exercise control over
assignments of Kili- g_u_lt-holders (or gult-shum) formed a strong hereditary class
whose interests challenged the state's and which stood between the producing
population and officials of the state.”

Rights enjoyed by the gult-shum underwrote his role as a point of
articulation between the extractions of peasant surplus and the over-arching state.
More than anything else, gu_lt entitled its holder to derive income in goods, cash,
and labor services from the land-holding population of a designated area as well as
the privilege of serving in an informal judicial capacity. Alberto Pollera, who
observed rural life in northern Ethiopia for over forty years, summarized the
prerogatives of the gult-shum as including:

a) political, administrative, military, and judicial authority over

the assigned area;

b) rights to take for himself 1/3 of the income from the royal

tribute collected;

c) rights to exercise control over hudad (corvee labor on state
land);

d) rights to keep tribute in livestock;

e) rights to collect income in kind or in cash from butter,
honey, cloth, etc.;

f) rights to receive personal presents or to have material
furnished for the construction and maintenance of his house;

g) access to food and drink for special occasions;

h) rights to bribes;

i) rights,1é'n varying degrees, to collect customs and market
revenues.

77
Pollera based his description on his observations in Tigré but they approximate
the situation in Lasta as well. The gult-shum was thus the primary means by which
peasant-produced surpluses reached both the state and the largely non-producing
military elite.

Neither was control of the land entirely exempt from the influence of the
rural elite. While in theory the gult-shum retained only supervisory rights over
"corporate" landholders in his area, the privileges of office invariably extended to
land rights as well. Few, if any, gult-shums (especially those holding the hereditary
type) lacked ancestral ties to the region in which they served and their position of
power allowed them to press strong claims for [_e_gt holdings through the normal
land tenure channels of the peg; system. They could also claim temporary use of
land abandoned by farming households. Moreover, gult-shums could and did use their
economic power to consolidate those patchwork holdings into larger, more viable
plots. These large holdings, although technically claimed as get, often came to be
identified as hudad, a type of imperial land more common outside of Lasta. Rights
to corvee labor could then be used to have local land-holders plow and harvest the
official's land. Lasta peasants viewed glided in this form as illegitimate and sought
to minimize its occurrence by avoiding work obligations, bringing petitions to higher
authorities, and engaging in litigation in appellate courts above the level of the
local gult-shum.19

In return for their rights, the gult-shum accepted a number of important
obligations toward their direct overlord and, less directly, to the emperor as well.
These duties included serving a month's turn as guard at the regional capital
(Séqota or Mujja) three times a year, remittance of the collected tithe to regional
granaries, the obligation to organize food and lodging for visiting dignitaries, and
the duty to follow the regional governor in times of war or insurrection. In a real

sense also, the gult-shum bore responsibility for the physical and spiritual well-being

78
of his restenya through the maintenance of churches, support of the destitute,
provision of security, and the proper redistribution of the fruits of his office.20

To carry out his role, the gult-shum relied on other members of his class.
Farmer/soldiers who cultivated their r_e_gt in his vicinity but paid only the tithe,
had service obligations to him. Appointed from among these, an official called the
dambanya supervised collection of the tithe and drew income from labor services,
provisions of food during the harvest, and bribes paid by peasants for lax
assessment.21 Both in peacetime and in war, soldiers and soldier/functionaries
reported to their local officers and not to imperial authority. The army's autonomy
in places like Lasta accounted for the fragmentation of authority and relative
independence from the central state.

The state did not fully relinquish all of its fiscal and judicial role in rural
society. State functionaries drawn from among the rural elite supervised the
collection of taxes, the adjudication of disputes, and punishment of crimes. The
meslané (fig. ”one who appears like me") was a local arm of the governor who
supervised the dambanya in their work, sat in judgement on some court cases, and

implemented administrative edicts coming from the regional and imperial courts.

Judges called w'anb'ar (lit. "bench") also came from the regional level and heard

 

cases of murder, slave trading (after 1931), and appeals coming out of local courts.
Courts in Lasta-proper and Wag conformed to the standards set down by Menilek
and observed throughout the empire.22

In general and over time, a delicate balance existed between rural elites,
the peasant class, and the state. All of my Lasta informants emphasized the small
size of flip, the relative scarcity of hudad land, and the overall accessibility of
land to peasant households. They pointed with great pride to the absence of

imperial land in the region. The basic balance was conditioned as well during the

post-1935 governorship of Leul Ras Kassa Haylu whose policies reflected, to a large

79

degree, the overall interests of the central state. The [as himself claimed little
re_st land in Lasta, despite his family ties there. In Lasta-proper I have found
evidence of only one official government Meg, a small one located near the
important _d_'a'_l_>_e_r of Gann'ata Maryam at a place called warka Mashag'ariya, and
even this land had been given in usufruct to church officials. In his role as
ultimate arbitor of gplt and church lands, the gag seems to have regularly accepted
requests for expansion of church-administered areas at the expense of the military
class. This reduced the overall power of the military officer class and increased
their dependence on him. In Wag, by contrast, the Wagshum had more direct
control over local military and used them to his own advantage.23 The state also
maintained a workable position vis a vis the producing population by acting to
curtail the worst abuses of the land system by gult-shums and military.

Lasta's tenuous equilibrium derived from a balance of class forces but also
from a shared responsibility by the peasant and elite classes for maintaining the
spiritual well-being of the community through support of the local church. Churches
within parish areas had relatively small endowments of land and income and
therefore relied on the redistributive largesse of the gult-shum and inputs of labor
and food by the local population.

The Church and Rural Distribution

The Ethiopian Orthodox church, and local rural churches in particular,
provided Lastans with their most important territorial and spiritual base of
identification. The church in Lasta comprised a coincidence of spiritual and
material resources for the local community. Churches and their ecclesiastical
personnel provided peasants and elite alike with access to God through the saying
of mass, performing funerals, supervising christenings, and interpreting scriptures
for the predominately illiterate population. Local churches, whether of the ga'tg or

daber variety, controlled key economic resources like land, rights to labor, and

80
food stores. The elderly and poor clustered in church compounds to receive
offerings of food while the wealthy donated food or rebuilt church buildings as a
way of winning support from their neighbors and the clergy. Notwithstanding the
role of theology in Lasta society, the economic role of the church was critical to
grassroots economic organization.

Two types of land supported churches in parish areas: 1) yamasqal marét

 

(lit. "land of the cross") was allocated to local households by the church through
the peg system in return for a portion of the harvest; 2) Elm (sometimes called
y'a'tabot hudad --lit. the ark's Md) which was a permanent patrimony of the
church bequeathed in the indefinite past for the support of the church. Although
less common in Lasta than in neighboring B'agamder, the latter form allowed the
church to rent the land to rich farmers or landless castes or even to cultivate the
areas themselves using volunteer peasant labor and oxen.24 In addition to receipts
from land, churches received an annual payment from the peasantry called m,
usually about four liters of grain per household, over and above secular tax and
labor obligations25

_D__'a_be_r_ areas offered a somewhat different fiscal and institutional environment
for the household than did the parish zones described above. The differences
comprised a great deal more than their common definition as "ecclesiastical guLt."26
Lastans themselves define flex; as land "untouched by soldiers" and emphasize its
independence from the rural military class and the state.27 DEM- in theory, and
to a great degree in practice, controlled their own tax collection and assessment,
judicial procedures, and imposition of fines; their procedures and decisions answered

only to control at the regional level, or even to the emperor himself. In this

regard, peasants living in daber largely avoided the continual intrusions by agents

 

of the state «mesli-inés and judges-- and the military endured by the parish

residents.

81

Because of its ecclesiastical hierarchy, Lasta d'aber administration resembled

 

parish church administration writ large. But the dings role in the secular domain
made it functionally a different unit altogether. The chief official of the _dfibeg.
the member, was a clergyman (priest or monk) responsible for the overall secular
administration as well as the religious organization of the community. Beneath him
were functionaries who oversaw day to day affairs of the glam; the AE Memher
(lit. "mouth of the member"), the Agafari (Chamberlain or chief of protocol), and a
number of marigéta (leaders) responsible for designated duties in maintaining
church buildings and activities. These officials cooperated with secular officials of
the local land divisions--i.e. chiqashums and balabats. Each dips; also had a
mahabar, or welfare association, which represented it in outside affairs and which
could petition higher authorities for redress of grievances or unpopular state
policies.

Prominent _d§_b_ei_‘ residents annually elected the member by agreement with
church elders and representatives of the local land divisions. While the member had
to be approved in his office by the regional governor (or by the imperial court
itself in the case of Lalib'ala), my informants indicated that they could recall no
time when there was direct interference from outside. Ras Kassa acknowledged the
long-standing principle of local control in a 1923 edict regarding the local
administration of justice. Under the terms of the edict, Lalibala continued to
control all judicial proceedings up to the district level of Qagnazmach Rate, the
judge of Gidan district:

Regulation regarding the Lalib'ala memher: they [Lalib'ala]

comprise their own judgeship, carry out justice, and bring the

verdicts and fines to Gidan. If there is an appeal, the case is

to be seen by Q'agnamach Rata. They should bring their

advocate and the senégnce, like former times, will be given by
the Gidan judgeship...

82
Thus through the relative independence of the locally selected memher an autonomy
existed in STEEL? which did not occur in parish areas.

Grassroots landholding within Lasta fiber; in the early twentieth century
paralleled the system found in parish areas. Local chiqashums and hereditary
balabats supervised the allocation of plots within land divisions. In addition, the
original land charter of each land division had set aside specific lands for the
support of the age; and its personnel. The founder(s) ear-marked certain plots for
the support of particular functions within the galley, i.e. mes £13133; (priests's

land), y'a'diyaqpn m'arét (deacon's land), and yag‘a'baz m'arét (lay advisor's land). In

 

 

the original charter, these lands had been granted to individuals serving in the
positions named, but the land had then passed into the pe_s_t system. Peasants
claiming those plots in later generations had either to perform those described
duties themselves or pay a portion of their harvest for the support of those who
did.29 M churches also controlled plots of {im- which they could rent directly to
wealthier peasant households.30

Besides access to the above revenues attached directly to church support,
d;a'__b__e_i_‘ officials also controlled incomes normally accruing to secular gglt-shums or
even the state. These included a land tax, all or a portion (usually 1/3) of the
tithe, fereq, and fines collected from judicial and criminal procedures. A 1925
document relating to the important zam'adu Maryam dfibeg located near the
headwaters of the Méri suggests the disposition of the d'a_b_eg's income and also
indicates that the place had acquired a portion of the local customs revenues as
well:

About Ziimadu Maryam, Yakatit 11, 1917 (1925 A.D.). The

following is a statement of Member Welda' Maryam when asked

about their income: he said that he was dividing the tithe

coming to the d'aber into three sections; one to the hand of

the memher, one to the ma'habar and one to the remaining

priests; and also taking the fines collected at court for the
memher...from the tax collected at the customs gates of Wajja

 

83

and Metbar Barua, except for the portion for the collector, let

one-tent)!1 of the remaining two-thirds be given to D'abr'a

Zamadu.

Corvee labor could also be used for the cultivation of church lands, the building or
repair of church buildings, and for the preparation of feasts. Tax rates, assessment
procedures, and the levying of special taxes were also within the province of the
memher and his functionaries.

_D_'a'_b_e§ incomes supported all church personnel and activities including church
education in literacy, oral poetry (12mg), and scriptures. Lasta rock-hewn churches
made it an important center for such activity and it attracted large numbers of
students and pilgrims. Over the course of the 1900-35 period, however, church
staffs and student groups grew; _djcibir administrators frequently petitioned regional
authority to expand their territory at the expense of military holdings. Documents
covering the period 1917-35 suggest that @132! administrators were largely
successful in expanding their territory at the expense of military elite holdings.32

While the above outline generally describes Lasta's @2- there were a
number of exceptions. Size varied considerably: the relatively modest-sized
Y'a'marhan'a' Kristos, for example, contained nine land divisions whereas Laliba'la, the
largest, had over thirty. Moreover, important M retained all of their collected
tithe while smaller ones kept only one-third and had to allow outside assessment
officials to help in collecting the government's share. They also passed on certain
court cases on to state-appointed mesl'a'né and BEETS-33

The My overall impact on landholding and redistribution in Lasta was a
function of their large number. Central church records state that by 1900 there

34 Other

were over 170 separate daber in Lasta--120 in Lasta-proper and 50 in Wag.
evidence from local documents suggests that the size and population of Lasta's

déiber increased, and that this increase outstripped similar growth in the parish

84
areas. Migration of households from these areas into gape; land divisions seems a
likely cause.
For the Lasta peasant household, the difference between parish and gang;
administration was no esoteric issue, but involved important material considerations.

Households within d'aber enjoyed distinct advantages and my informants suggested

 

that demand for locating within flex; was great. The local perception of the
spiritual of worldly advantages is clear from the well-known couplet:

Daru Esat

Mahalu G'a'nnat

Inside is heaven;

Outside the fires [of hell]
One can easily appreciate why residence within a fiber proved popular. Labor
within the gage; was usually voluntary and involved some spiritual remuneration;
parish corvee, on the other hand, was simply corvee labor. gale; residents
quartered troops and paid Lats; (provision of food and drink for important
travelers), those of the 149.62 did not. Officials within the dfibfl served with the
consent of residents (at least some of them), while gult-shum in gate;- lands were
hereditary lords or appointees of the regional governor. Although the formal
structure of taxation was similar in both zones, parish areas suffered more from
the imposition of special taxes which increased often after 1900 (see chapter 6).

Overall, Lasta's system of land tenure displayed a number of tendencies
which affected production relations and the social reproduction of household units
in the early twentieth century. The Bat. system, as the underlying principle of land
distribution, made land available to all but a few Lasta households. Members of the
rural elite did not enjoy access to land, except as claimants through the r_e_s_t_
system. The peasants' ability to hold land independently of elite control was

significant and differentiated them from peasant counterparts in medieval Europe.35

85

Lastans uniformly agree that they were able readily to obtain land sufficient for
the support of a household, even for those returning after several years'
absence.36 Non-land-holders, outsiders, or artisan castes, in effect, had access to
land as well since they could become tenants on church land, parcels rented out by
gult-shum, or on land too distant for the r_e_s_t_-holder to cultivate himself. No
reliable measure exists for determining the size, number, or fertility of the average
household's land holdings. For the most part, though, they must have routinely
exceeded the 1.8 hectares per household required for fulfilling the nutritional needs
of an average highland household.37

In normal years, the expected yields from land available to peasant
households proved able to absorb the cost of reproduction and the labor force and
to provide surplus to support the spiritual and secular administration of rural Lasta.
The competition which existed between church, military, and state for the incomes
derived from peasant production was considerable. Yet this competition was for
income and not for land per se, and seems not to have put land out of the reach
of peasant households. One must examine further the other factors of production to

discover the weak link in the Lasta household's chances for survivial.

The Rural Labor Force

Lasta's households monopolized the area's organization and reproduction of
labor. Lasta's distribution networks cannot be understood without a clear view of
the household's internal functioning and the vertical relationships of labor
dependency which were common. The relatively minor role of cooperative labor and
kinship and the consequent instability of rural households as units of labor
conditioned the distribution of the rural work force.

Household members in Lasta divided the tasks involved in agricultural

production and part-time trade on the basis of sex and age. Women and young girls

86

monopolized food preparation and carrying water, while men and boys worked at
plowing and tending livestock. Men and women shared the tasks of weeding and
harvesting, although men finished the cycle with threshing and winnowing. Both
sexes supplemented household agricultural income: men and women could sell surplus
goods like grain, butter, honey, hides, or livestock in the local market (although
men usually dealt with the last two). Mature males most often undertook more
ambitious trips to Siiqota, Lalib‘a‘la, or even Tigré. Women produced handicrafts
(pottery 01‘ baskets) and grills (barley beer), for exchange locally. Men carried out
labor obligations to the state, local g_u_lt-shums, or church unless it involved the
food preparation. The important role of litigant in land cases brought to local
court fell to men who argued for the collective claims of the entire household.

Equalbr important as the labor devoted to production within the household
was the horizontal exchange of labor between neighboring households and the
vertical flow of labor obligations from weak to powerful households. Lastans
sometimes worked cooperatively, exchanging equal days of work for house-repair,
fence-building, or agricultural work. Called m or dibg in Lasta, this form of
cooperative labor usually took place between neighbors of equal economic and
political stature.38

The movement of labor outside of the household production regime mostly
occurred, however, in the vertical flow of labor from poor households to those with
greater resources. As observed for Tigre in the late 1960s by Dan Bauer, the net
outflow of work commitments from poor to rich households corresponded to an
overall influx of food, capital (see below), and security. Labor provided to rich
households under these terms would have taken the form of day labor during some
part of the agricultural cycle, preparation for a feast, house-repair, or the
accompanying of the richer household head on a trip. These types of relations were

most common between gult-shums and land-holders under them, but also regularly

87

took place between economic strata within the peg-holding class. Dependent labor
relations of this sort might last for one season or be a permanent link between
distant kin.

Labor and its unequal flow between households was a fluid process because
Lasta households were dynamic, ever-changing units. Like their northern
counterparts in Gojjam and Tigré, Lasta households functioned primarily as
political/economic enterprises and less so as kinship units. Families, both in
nomenclature and in residence patterns, did not exist beyond one generation; family
estates of land of the European type could not exist in the Lasta land system
since property relations redistributed land holdings after the death or departure of

the household head.39

Lasta households included a nuclear family, but also members
from outside recruited or attracted by economic or political means. These
additional members included distant relatives, young spouses of family members,
slaves. or young men and women absorbed from unsuccessful households which had
broken up. Households which had not managed to collect adequate resources in
land, capital, or labor or which had suffered some ecological calamity broke up
with members starting afresh or seeking to attach themselves to more viable units.
Thus households in Lasta were always in a state of flux with some growing, others
dispersing, and the majority maintaining a tenuous stability.

Beyond purely economic factors, the household's size and strength in labor
power depended on their stage in the household "development cycle." Cycles of this
type have been described by Bauer for Tigre, but also in general terms by Fortes
and Lenin.40 The cycle was especially significant in Lasta given the lack of a
permanent family "estate" and the consequent need for young family members to
seek their own land holdings independent of their parents. The typical cycle in

Lasta would have consisted of a young couple who staked their land claims,

established an independent homestead, and began raising a family. Growth in the

88

household's labor power could increase as outsiders joined the labor pool and
children matured into workers (Chayanov has described this phase as the lowering
of the household's consumer to worker ratio). In the dispersal phase of this cycle,
mature children leave, the male and female head of household may divorce or die,
and other household members abandon the homestead for more stable employment
elsewhere. The final phase takes place with the death, debility, or desertion of the
founding members of the household. Thus there was a constant shifting of labor
power in the establishing of new households, the expansion of successful ones, and
the exchange of labor for the essential resources (food or capital) to sustain the
more marginal ones.

Slaves owned by the rural household were an important exception to the
free movement of labor in Lasta society; oral as well as documentary evidence
suggest there were a lot of them around by the opening of the twentieth century.
Traveling through Wag in 1910, the Italian political agent Carlo Annaratone
observed an "enormous number" of slaves at S‘a‘qota --perhaps as many as one
quarter of the population-- and Augustus Wylde reported the same a decade
earlier.41 My informants could not offer reliable aggregate numbers, but one man
from Maqét claimed that his father, a soldier, had always kept two or three;
another, from Sedeb in Wag, said his uncle, a retainer of Ras Ga'br’a Hiywot, had
six. Wagshum Kabb'ad'a' had forty or fifty living around his compound in sa'qota.
Overall, Lastans I have talked to argued that anyone with the means owned slaves,
suggesting that ownership was by no means an exclusive privilege of the elite.
Although never challenging the dominant role of family labor, slaves formed an
important part of the Lasta work force in the period of study and well before.

Slaves had long been a part of Lasta's labor pool, although their points of
origin have shifted along with the changing frontiers of the central state. Very

early on, perhaps from the first millennium, Lasta's slave population derived from

89
the ethnic frontiers of the post-Axumite state in the southwest of Eritrea and
along Bagamder's western marches with the Nile Valley.42 This pattern of supply
continued at least until the mid-nineteenth century; Wylde met a slave woman from
Darfur at Saqota and he reported that he noticed others speaking Eastern
Sudanese languages.43

By the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth century, however, the slave supply
pattern had changed. The expanding frontiers of Emperor Menilek's Shawan state
sent a steady stream of southwestern captives into northern rural society and the
small, but flourishing Red Sea trade. One Lastan who had spent time at the
southwestern frontier in the early 19303 told me that slaves reaching Lasta had
come from Kullo, Walamo, Gimira, Gamu Gofa, and Kaffa.44 Merchants also brought
slaves to Lasta through the well-known slave markets of Gindabarét, Dangla, and
Boru. Most, however, came as property of Lasta soldiers, officials, and adventurers
returning home with human booty from southern wars of expansion. Once home, the
slaveholders would sell or exchange slaves to obtain their means of livelihood or
keep them to augment the personal prestige and their household labor force. These
fresh increments to the Lasta labor pool supplemented already existing second and
third generation slaves and a marginal population of manumitted captives.

From all descriptions, slaves in the Lasta farming household performed the
same duties as other household members, ate similar food, and slept in family
quarters. Much depended, however, on the slave's level of linguistic and cultural
assimilation which, in turn, depended on how long the slave had lived in the
northern millieu. New arrivals might have done simple, but arduous tasks like
graining spices or grain, carrying water, or weeding. One slave-owner described
slaves newly inserted into the Lasta labor force as g‘algajja (clumsy). More
experienced captives and second-generation slaves would plow, sow, and harvest

alongside other family members. In more prosperous families, slaves might free the

90
male or female head of house for other activities like land litigation or trade.
Members of the hereditary elite class valued slaves as retainers, household
servants, and agricultural laborers.

Given the lack of a clear division of labor between slaves and other
household members, and the reputedly high prices offered for slaves in the Red Sea
trade, one could easily ask why Lasta households preferred slave-owning over, say,
recruiting a distant relative from a less viable household. The simple answer was
that slaves were a permanent addition to a household whereas free Lastans were
"labor entrepreneurs," liable to seek better conditions and opportunities elsewhere
as well as possessing the ultimate aim of establishing their own independent
households. Obligations to the church and to the gult-shum fell on the land, not on
individuals who were "free," not bound to the soil, and in control of their own
labor.45 This concept of freedom extends to bonds of kinship as well and created
considerable instability in the household labor supply. Lastans operated within the
"moral economy" of subsistence which preferred the security of a stable household
production unit to a more risky return involved in transporting a slave to a distant
market center (see chapter three).46

A slave's value as a permanent household member lay in his/her marginality
to Lasta society which deprived them of rights over land, and their inability to
move freely within society. They were game: Lei (lit. "children of the house) and,
although always baptized as Christians, their physical traits and lack of kin kept
them outside of the set of rights associated with y;a_sa_w lej (lit. "children of a
man").47 Through assimilation, a slave could reduce his marginality and even obtain
legal freedom on the death of his master, but physical appearances of most slaves
from southern Ethiopia (especially Nilotic or Omotic-speaking groups) made it

difficult, if not impossible, to enter the domain of yasaw lej within one generation.

91

By the opening of the twentieth century, Lasta had a fluid and numerous
labor force consisting of family members, slaves, and a free flow of individuals
seeking to attach themselves to a strong or promising household. Unlike the
stereotypic situations in the lineage-based Guro society described by Meillassoux,
Lasta's elders did not control the means of social reproduction at the expense of a
"class" of young cadets.48 Lasta's marriage and property institutions encouraged
households to grow, break-up, and reconstitute themselves according to their
success as production units. Labor could be a contributing factor to a household's
ability to control land obtained through the land tenure system, but, overall,
Lastans did not experience labor shortage as a serious constraint on productive
capacity.49 In fact, as seen below, the ability of poorer households to loan labor
to successful households in exchange for food and capital cemented Lasta's rural

relations of production at its most basic household to household level.

Rural Capital: Oxen and Society in Lasta
Capital in Lasta meant seed, perhaps cash used as merchant capital, and
above all, draft animals.50 Whereas Lasta households found land and labor available
in varying degrees, capital was subject to the vagaries of environment and
mal-distribution by the existing rural relations of production and property. Over the
long run, supplies of oxen fell short of demand in Lasta; having seed depended on
the success of the previous year's crop, and using merchant capital in the form of
loans from rural userers was, at best, a gamble. If land comprised the primary
metaphor of Lasta ideology, it was capital which actually dominated the production
base. More than any other factor of production, Lasta's supply of capital molded

the framework of rural society in the early twentieth century.
Not all capital moved vertically. The equal exchange of capital goods in

Lasta did occur between households of equal economic standing. The circumstances

92

for such cooperation, though, appears to have been limited to households sharing
the use of their single ox with another in similar straits. The Ethiopian yoke and
single-tine plow depended on the pulling power of two well-matched draft animals,
almost always oxen. Therefore, households possessing only one ox often sought
another family in a similar situation. Farmers arranged to borrow an oxen for an
agreed length of time and in turn lent their own for an equal period calculated in
plowing days. A specific vocabulary in the local dialect referred to the loan of
oxen indicating the importance of the transaction. Lastans called the borrowing of
a neighbor's ox m'allaf'an and the borrowed ox ganja. No similar form of exchange
existed for the borrowing of other forms of capital.

The unequal movement of capital or capital goods between wealthy
households and poorer ones involved the movement of all three factors of
production between economic and social strata. Overall, it was the possessor of
capital who ultimately derived advantage from the transaction. Capital in Lasta
moved in a variety of ways, but the institution of mg and its many

51 It was a system whereby a

permutations was the most widespread form.
rest-holder could turn over seasonal rights to a plot of land in return for a portion
of the produce. The basic form provided a means of support for the elderbt or
handicapped who could claim 91319, or one-fourth of the produce after taxes.
Another may; form resulted from the fragmentation and scattering of plots within
land divisions and the holding of pe_s§ lands far from one's own residence. A
household with a plot too distant from his residence to attend properly could lease
that plot to a tenant and try to rent a replacement closeby.52

On one level maga_Z9_ would appear to belong under the rubric of land
allocation. On close examination, it can be seen as less related to land than to the

movement of loaned capital from rich to poor households and land and labor in the

other direction. This trend becomes more evident when one examines magazo's other

93

permutations. In these forms, the primary purpose was for households lending
capital to gain either a portion of the crop, labor services, or direct access to the
land. The type and quantity of the remuneration varied with the nature of the
transaction. An oxenless household which borrowed only oxen paid one-fourth of the
harvest to the oxen's owner or agreed to supply a set number of work days based,
usually, on the ratio of four days of human labor to one day's use of the oxen. If
the lender provided seed as well as oxen, he could take back the seed at harvest
and then claim §i_s_g, or one-third, of the harvest after taxation. The provision of
seed, oxen and labor yielded only one-fourth of the harvest to the legal land-holder
and in effect amounted to a rental agreement which offered the rest-holder not
much more than an agricultural laborer might have received.53 In times of hardship,
a poor household might have only its pest-holdings to offer. The meager percentage
provided by magazp to a capital-poor family could not have supported a household
and it would likely have dispersed, leaving the land in the hands of the capital-rich
tenant who might then claim it as lgdad or even {$3.54

Rural credit took other forms as well. Cash in the form of Maria Teresa
talers was available for the purchase of livestock, the payment of a fine or
bloodmoney, or for the financing of a profit-seeking trip to a distant market.
Lastans in the 1900-35 period borrowed money on a six-month basis; for every four
talers borrowed in July, the borrower paid back five in February «thus an annual
rate of 50%.55 Repayment was always in cash. Usurers were merchants, rich
officials, and even churchmen «anyone with a means of stockpiling currency. The
high rates of interest and the uncertainty of agricultural endeavors restricted most
loans to the domain of part-time merchant-capitalists.

Farmers from Wag in particular generated extra income by taking advantage
of the price differentials in livestock, hides and skins, and even grain in the

markets of Tigré to the north. Part-time traders borrowed money to buy mules,

94

oxen, or hides for transport to Samré, Maq'alé, or even Asmara. They returned
with salt, cloth, or manufactured goods for sale in local markets or for household
consumption. Successful traders made handsome profits for themselves and their
underwriters, but those whose animals died or were waylaid by shifta (highwaymen)
faced debt.56

Rural capital and its forms of distribution in Lasta served as the foundation
of rural stratification there. In times of ecological and economic equilibrium when
most households produced sufficient surplus to generate their own capital and oxen
supply, few labor obligations or letting of land through magagg need have taken
place. But in the difficult circumstances of the period being considered here, the
control of capital by certain elite households strengthened ties of debt and
dependency (see chapters six and seven). Capital shortages, especially oxen and
seed, in poor households led to the effective expansion of landholding by richer
households, quite the opposite case to what Allan Hoben has described for the
richer and ecologically more tranquil Gojjam region.57'

Taxes and Elite Incomes

Taxes were the primary means of extracting surplus value from Lasta's
peasant producers and therefore the basic means of support for the rural elite. By
examining the structure and practice of tax collection one can observe relations of
production directly since the revenues collected in cash or in kind provided basic
support for the military and ecclesiastic elite as well as local vestiges of the
imperial state. Because elites did not have rights over lend itself, the revenues
owed by pat-holders to them was tribute, or tax, rather than rent --a key factor
separating Lasta's mode of production from other putative peasant-based modes.58

Taxation in Lasta in the period was largely a closed system where little

revenue seeped out of the region. Taxes paid by producers supported elite

95

non-producers locally, but also ended up being redistributed locally as largesse to
shore up support among the peasantry. Northern migrant soldier/peasants had
formed the flesh and sinew of Emperor Menilek's armies of expansion in to the
south and west, but revenues from northern peasant farms had ceased by 1910 to
be a significant source of revenue for Ethiopia's growth into a modern state.59
The small amounts of high quality honey and butter and the trickle of talers
coming out of Lasta were more symbolic tribute than substantial inputs into the
imperial treasury. During the period of this study, virtualht none of Lasta's tax
revenues reached government coffers in Addis Ababa; before 1900 even less did
so.60 On the contrary, they circulated within the Lasta rural economy and served
to strengthen local elites vis a vis the imperial state.

By the opening of the twentieth century, government officals and rural elite
derived their income from a fairly fragmented set of taxes, duties, and special
exactions. Some uniformity resulted from a number of late-nineteenth century
reforms and the strong influence of Ras W‘alé of Y'ajju during that period. The
most important of these reforms was the reallocation of the asrat ba'kurat (tithe)
from the support of the church to the rural militia, thus creating a foundation for

61 Instead of delivering their

greater imperial control of the rural military class.
tithe to a local church as in the time of Emperor Yohannes IV and previously,
peasants had to carry their contributions much longer distances to regional
government granaries (M) from which soldiers, officials, and privileged (it-gig
received their allocation. Each harvest, teams of assessors made up of dambanya,
the local chiqashum, and perhaps the gult-shum himself went to the fields to
supervise the tithe's collection. On livestock --i.e. sheep and goats» households paid
a tithe as well called melmel. Conceived as a measure to support a rural militia

during campaigns, the tithe quickly became the most important source of revenue

for the government and elite. Lastans considered it the foundation of the tax

96
system and the most legitimate form of tax, even though officials and producers
might bicker over its assessment.
In addition to the tithes on grain and livestock production, Lastans paid a
number of fixed and ad hoc taxes, due both in cash and in kind, to local officials.

The most important of these was y'aich‘a‘w geber (lit. "the salt tax"), a land tax

 

payable in salt by each land division. Officials assessed each unit a lump sum
which had to be collected from the component households of the areas, excluding
those with tax-free status like the chiqashum and members of the hereditary
military class. M'ahetm‘a' S'a'llasé W'ald'a' Masq‘al has estimated the average pre-war

household assessment at 2-18 amolé, but the amount would have been subject to

enormous fluctuation. An overall assessment of 100 amole, for example, might fall
on a land division of fifty households. If the gult-shum claimed twenty of these as
belonging to the exempt class, then the remaining thirty peg-holders would have to
divide the total payment between them.62 The number of exempt might vary from
place to place and from year to year.

Other fixed taxes included yachiqa my, an amount of honey owed annually
by the chiqashum of each land division to the district governor in recognition of
the chiqashum's otherwise exempt status. On designated holidays, especially Masqal
(the finding of the True Cross, 27 September), each district would contribute thirty
talers for the ox to be slaughtered by the district governor. The amount collected,
obviously, bore little relation to the actual cost of the animal. To these fixed
payments should be added labor obligations owed by each household for the building
of roads, work on M, and the repair of officials' houses, or construction of
granaries. Beyond the proportional tithe and the annual fixed taxes, Lasta's
peasantry paid a mixed bag of "special" taxes whose frequency, amount, and

description was completely ad hoc (see chapter six).

97
A third type of income, though not directly obtained from peasant
production, was those duties imposed on exchange at market places and at customs
gates located at key points along major trade routes. Prior to administrative
reforms of the early twentieth century, local military officials, and gult-shum

regularly set up their own kélla (customs gates) to collect, or coerce, duties from

 

passing caravans and travelers. They drew revenues from the passage of long and
middle-distance trade items and also, at times, on mules, horses, and cattle being
transshipped to northern markets. Major Mills in Lasta were at Qobbo, Alamata,
and Koram on the eastern escarpment, and at saqota, Lalib'ala, Barqo Gabraél,
Afafa Maydon, and Amda W'a'rq on the internal routes. Many more existed where
local officials sought to share in some of the lucrative revenues. 'a'ra'ch, or
customs collectors, levied duties by type of animal and type of load. Revenues
were considerable; in 1906 Ferdinando Martini, then governor of Eritrea, estimated
an annual income per kélla at 4000 talers.63 Customs were therefore an important
income supplement for local officials.

By the early twentieth century, the proliferation of customs gates set up by
district and sub-district governors had stultified trade. During his 1906 trip along
Lasta's eastern districts and south to Addis Ababa, Ferdinando Martini passed
eleven customs posts between Dasé and the Eritréan border. Consolidating these
posts and controlling the income generated by them became one of the major goals
of the central government and foreign economic interests in the 1900-35 period.

A final source of income for highland elites consisted of a range of tribute,
gifts, and booty obtained from the lowlands along Lasta's eastern margins. Lasta's
share of these revenues fluctuated over time since it competed for control of
Zobul, Chercher, and the Y'ajju lowlands with rivals from Tigre, W'allo, and Yé'ijju.
Moreover, in the post-1917 period, the central government tended to restrict

raiding to its own formal expeditions. Nevertheless, the net collections of

98
small-scale raids, tribute in livestock, and gifts to officials on Lasta's eastern edge
added a considerable amount to Lasta's elite income over and above the direct
rights of taxation they enjoyed over farming households.

Viewed from the perspective of the Lasta producing household, the structure
of elite incomes cut two ways. On the one hand, payments exacted from producers,
excepting the tithe, often came in the form of fixed sums paid in kind, salt, or in
talers. The annual payment of fixed sums, as opposed to payments in percentage of
harvest, significantly increased risk of famine in poor production years.64 The need
to obtain salt bars or talers for payment of taxes in a fluctuating market
compounded the risks. The tax most favored by the peasant, the tithe, was
proportional (i.e. 10% of total yield) and offered less risk even though actual
payments were higher in good years. Moreover, the capricious requests for special
taxes which increased in the period of stucht (see chapter six) added a further
element of uncertainty which reduced predictability and challenged the security of
peasant households' subsistence.

On the other hand, elite incomes did not rely entirely on revenues drawn
directly from peasant production. Taxes on exchange as well a lowland tribute had
supplemented tax revenues and thereby provided a partial "subsidy" for the farming
household. The margin between the cost of subsistence --the minimum required for
the reproduction of the household labor force-- and actual production, in theory,
left enough surplus as a hedge against hard times. Threats to this surplus and even
to the subsistence of Lasta's peasant households did develop in the 1900-35 period

and will be discussed in part two.

Redistribution and Class Formation
The above discussion indicates, I believe, the presence of a clear system of

classes built into Lasta rural society.65 At its simplest level, an administrative

99

class of military and ecclesiastical officials enjoyed the right to collect and
distribute the surplus product of a class of landholding peasant cultivators. Further,
rights exercised by Lasta's elites gave them access to capital, land, and labor
services of peasant households. Institutions of production and distribution,
nevertheless, acted to keep class relations in a fair state of balance wherein the
peasant stratum retained enough of its own production to reproduce its own labor
supply. Social institutions within strata (eg. cooperative labor) were weak, as was
kinship. Elite classes depended on peasant households for support, labor, and
acquiescence to their demands for revenue; these links in turn depended on the
reciprocal flow of largesse, protection, and the reasonableness of the exercise of
authority.

Office-holding and membership in the rural elite structure was only partially
a matter of economics. Access to rights over peasant produce depended for the
most part on hereditary privilege. The office of gult-shum was a hereditary one as
was the tax-exempt status of the rural military class. Both privileges normally
passed to sons or to male members of a collateral line.66 At the level of the land
division, the balabat was always a direct descendant of a special "noble" house
linked directly to the founder. Ecclesiastical leadership in the parish or the M
could be more fluid; more commonly, though, church officials came from military or

""7 Nagadrases usually originated from among the relatives of the

68

church families.
regional governor, members of his court, or wealthy merchants.

Hereditary classes were an enduring part of rural life, but there were other,
less rigid class relations as well. At any one time, relations of dependence also
existed between Lasta households based on their relative control of the means of
production. Oxen-rich households controlled the land and labor of poorer families
and could also demand a portion of their harvest. These relations were, however,

temporary and changed in individual cases according to the households' ability to

100
marshall their own resources, their stage in the development cycle, and their ability
to withstand the assaults of the environment. Below the level of the hereditary
elite, Lastans evinced a clear folk taxonomy which differentiated between the $1311.19.
(poor) peasant, the m (rich) one, and also acknowledged the middle peasant
along the classical lines described by Chayanov and Lenin.69

In good times, stratifying forces would have been relatively weak because
more households could maintain the means for their own reproduction. During
periods of economic or ecological stress or during a military crisis, vertical
relations of dependence would have tended to intensify and thus strengthen rural
class structures.

The flow of power and resources to elite classes had limits since the
exaction of taxes and enlisting of peasant support depended to a great degree on
the tractability of the r_es_t-holders and their recognition of the legitimacy of fiscal
and political claims upon them. Lastans had a clear sense of which rights could
legitimately be exercised over them and exactly who had the right to do so. The
1900-35 period witnessed a number of examples of peasant rebellion and petitions
against illegitimate claims upon them (see chapters four and five).

Legitimacy depended partially on the upper stratum's linking itself to
political and religious charter of Lasta's past (see chapter three), but also to more
concrete considerations like the local redistribution of tax revenues. Lastans
anticipated paying particular taxes and to donate certain types of labor. But they
expected as well to be the beneficiaries of the redistribution of the wealth they
had paid into the system.

Redistribution started at the highest level and continued into the humblest
level of society. The form and style of redistribution was a function of the skill of

individual donors and must, therefore, have varied considerably. We can get a

101
glimpse of the structure of pre-1900 allocations by examining Ras Kassa's 1918
attempt to codify the process:

When the amount in the [Lasta] treasury reaches one hundred:

lst--10 of the 100 is given to Lalib'ala. This is called the

tithe's tithe;

2nd--the district mesl‘a’né receives 5 of 100;

3rd--the sub-district meslané receives 3 of 100;

4th--the assessor and the receipt giver and recorder receive 2;

5th--the military representative [yator end'a'rasél receives

ten;

6th--the regional governor receives 60.

Of the 60 portions for the governor, there are six parts:

13t--to the soldiers, nobility, people, and clergy for the giving

of feasts;

2nd--awards for the service of the region;

3rd--for household salaries;

4th--for charity [for the destitute];

5th--to the military0 leadership;

6th--as a reserve.

The patterns of redistribution of state revenues spelled out here continued
downward at each level of administration and within the local gult and daber as
well, no doubt reflecting local and personal variations.

Local largesse took many forms such as the giving of feasts on holidays of
locally revered saints or in commemoration of a rite of passage of a loyal retainer.
Lastans judged gult-shums and other patrons on the frequency and sumptuousness of
the feasts they gave, the churches they built or repaired, and their successes in
organizing military expeditions which gave peasant soldiers the opportunity to
collect booty. Conspicuous generosity at the top of the social pyramid had
repercussions all the way to the bottom and enhanced the "big man's" image and
legitimacy among the people.71

Prestige derived from these factors and the building of strong vertical links

of dependence down to the grassroots level contributed to an official's ability to

continue official prerogatives of tax collection and receiving labor services.

102
Conclusion

In its ideal state, Lasta's system of rural institutions provided for the
balanced organization and allocation of the means of production and for the
distribution of goods and services, the total social product. A clear stratification
existed based on a class of military and ecclesiastic administrators who held
largely hereditary rights over income from peasant production, labor power, and
capital. Peasant households balanced the demands made on them by accepting food,
loaned capital, security, and spiritual guidance from their social superiors. In
addition, wealthy peasant households which controlled capital established their own
hierarchies of dependence with poorer neighbors through the use of institutions
which yielded land and labor in exchange for capital. Capital was the key
ingredient of production since Lasta institutions for its loan and use allowed
capital-rich households to control the other, relatively more abundant, factors of
production. Even if many producing Lastans chafed under the rigid social and
political system which supported a non-producing elite, they at least valued the
system as one which protected their valued social and religious institutions,
protected subsistence, and allowed for the reproduction of the society.

Whatever the ideal visions of Lastans, however, Lasta's household economy
in the 1900-35 period functioned within a rapidly changing environment. This setting
included a weak and declining ecological base, interregional trade increasingly tied
to world market forces, and an evolving political system centered in Addis Ababa.
In these circumstances, Lasta's rural institutions underwent change, thus affecting
a transformation in the position of rural households vis a vis each other and their

role in the larger Ethiopian social formation.

103
Notes to Chapter Two

*This Amharic expression, lit. "having plowed, I ate," connotes the idea of
agricultural subsistence.

1. My interviewees almost invariably described a rural system which operated
smoothly and was accepted by all. Only after secondary, problem-oriented questions
did they respond about "dissonance." They tended, I believe, to differentiate the
"system" from its abuse by officials and peasants who sought the cracks and flaws
in institutions to develop their own avenues of opportunity. It was these local,
household level politics which contributed to adaptation to new environmental and
economic conditions. For a discussion of this latter point, see Dan F. Bauer, "Land
and Leadership," pp. 280-81.

2. My analysis of distribution within the rural system (as opposed to overall
interregional trade) is subsumed under the discussion of production since the
command of the social production of surplus goods «hence distribution» began in
the production process itself. For an excellent discussion of this question, see
Stephan Gudeman, The Demise of a Rural Economy: From Subsistence to Capitalism
imp Latin American Village (Boston, 1978), p. 3.

3. Addis Hiwet, among others, has described modern Ethiopia as purely a
product of the late-nineteenth century. Addis Hiwet, Ethiopia: From Autocr_a_cy to
Revolution (London, 1975), pp. 1-3. For a recent argument for the use of the term
"Abyssinia" to describe the cultural and political complex of the northern highlands,
see Crummey, "Abyssinian Feudalism," pp. 118-20.

4. The first round of land measurement had been completed by 1901.
Qagnazmach Ta'fara Siyum, interview #1, 31 August 1982. For information on
foreign concessions and foreign policy in the period, see Marcus, The Life and
Times of Menelik II: Ethiopia 1844-1913 (Oxford: 1975), passim. The most recent
work on the railroad is Shiferaw Bekele, "The Railway, Trade, and Politics: A
Historical Survey," unpublished M.A. Thesis, Addis Ababa University, 1982.

5. This is not to say, however, that some conflicts and power shifts in the
north did not occur, particularly after Menilek suffered a series of strokes from
1906 until his death in 1913. The 1898 rebellion of Ras Manga'sha of Tigré was
the last major resistance to Menilek's rule. See Marcus, Life and Times pp. 215-17.

6. For a discussion of the role of asrat in the nineteenth century and the
shifts in its use, see Alberto Pollera, ism, pp. 72-3; Ala'mu Wfirqndh, interview #4,
4 May 1982. The court procedures colloquially known as b'aqa'lo sgt," were
originally introduced by Ras Kassa in 1909, but later adapted by Menilek. Fitawrari
N'a'biyaleul Takla Sadeq, interview #1, 1 April 1982; also see Andalem Mulaw,
"Bagemdir and Simien (1910-1930)," unpublished B.A. Thesis, Haile Sellassie I
University, 1971, p. 48.

7. See Wylde, Modern Abyssinia, p. 322. For information on the background
to the 1909 Battle of Kor'am, see chapter four.

8. For a general discussion of the Abyssinian land system and its role in the
modern state, see Joanna Mantel-Niecko, The Role of Land Tenure in the Systepi
9f; the Ethiopian Imperial Government in Modern Times (Warszawa, 1980), pp. 1-25;
a more specific field-based study of the south is Charles McClellan, "Reaction to

104

Ethiopian Expansionism: The Case of Darasa 1895-1935," unpublished Ph.D.
Dissertation, Michigan State University, 1978. McClellan discusses the importance
of assimilation of concepts of landholding as part of the process which allowed the
conquered Darasa [Gedeo] to integrate themselves into the national political and

economic structure. This process is also described in Taddesse Tamrat, Church a_n_d_
State, pp. 156-205.

9. I prefer Allan Hoben's term "descent corporation" to Mantel-Niecko's
"clan." See Hoben, Land Tenure, pp. 14-17. The state could, however, alienate
land in the event of treason or abandonment. Ala'mu wa'rqn'a’h, interview #4, 14 May
1982 and Mantel-Niecko, Role of Land Tenure, p. 152.

10. Fitawrari Ab'ab'a, interview #2, 9 March 1982. The current Wagshum
repeated this expression to me but substituted Wag for Lasta.

11. Abba G'abr'a M'asq'a'l used the absence of government land (yam'angest
m'arét) as a key criterion in his definition of what it meant to be Lastan.
Interview #2, 28 March 1982. When Haile Gabriel Dagne asked Lasta famine victims
in 1974 if they would accept resettlement in more fertile lands outside of Lasta,
they responded that "no one would leave the hob; land willingly." Haile Gabriel,
"Famine," p. 22.

12. For a comparative description of the office of chiqashum outside of
Lasta, see Hoben, Land Tenure, p. 77-78; and Mantel-Niecko, Role of Land Tenure,
p. 72-73.

13. Débakullu, interviews #1 and #3, 22 February and 13 March 1982. This
office seems to coincide with the title f'a'j as used in Gojjam. Hoben, Land Tenure,
pp. 125-29. I conducted interviews in another area of Gojjam in 1974 which confirm
Hoben's definition. Balabat had two meanings: one simply denoted a landholding
restenya (lit. "one with a father"); the second meaning designated the richest and
most influencial landholder in a hamlet or land division. Lastans often used the
second rendering as a title for the representative of a land division. The Lasta
term balabat should not be confused with its usage in southern Ethiopia where it
means an indigenous landlord. See Mantel-Niecko, Role of Land Tenure, p. 69.

 

 

14. The debate over the nature and autonomy of the state as well as the
discussion of the colonial state have been a major theme in the work of
Poulantzas, Skocpol, Berman, Lonsdale, Bloch, and others.

15. See John Cohen and Dov Weintraub, Land and Peasants in Imperial
Ethiopia: The Social Background to a Revolution (Assen: 1975) p. 64.

 

16. Neither Crummey in his historical work, nor Hoben and Bauer in their
anthropological studies focus on the important administrative and fiscal distinctions
between these two types of systems. Pollera, _I_m~_i, p. 70, refers to d‘a’ber as "gulti
ecclesiastici."

17. _Gu_lt is a vague term with many variations in meaning, both in different
regions and in different periods of time. Lastans I interviewed used the term
reluctantly since they did not want me to confuse the institution in Lasta with the
different relations which "mm" implied in southern Ethiopia. Mantel-Niecko, Role of
Land Tenure, p. 90, suggests that gth was originally a grant of ecclesiastical land
and only later came to include the granting of income from certain lands to a lay

105

person. Crummey, "Abyssinian Feudalism," p. 123, defines it as "fief." gult-shum (one
who is appointed to gult rights) was the term used in my Lasta documents.
Elsewhere one finds the term gultenya" or "gult'a'gej.

18. Pollera, 15ml, p. 66. These general tenets hold for Lasta, although some
regional variations existed. Early twentieth century gu_lt rights also differed
considerably from those in use in previous centuries. For example, Leul Ras Kassa
forbade his gult-shum in Lasta-proper to collect market and customs dues directly
as they had done previously. Under Ras Kassa they received a share apportioned to
them by state collection officials. See "Ya Ras Kassa Ast'a'dad'ar D'amb," unpublished
MSS, IES, document #48.

19. Débakullu, interview #3, 13 March 1982; Ch'akol'a, interview #3, 6 May
1982.

20. See, for example, "Y'a Ras Kassa Ast'adad'ar," documents #49 and #93.

21. Ala'mu W'arqna'h, a one-time dambanya in western Lasta, told me that he
regularly received bribes in cash and had his land plowed in exchange for lenient
assessments, Interview #3, 4 May 1982. Mantel-Niecko, Role of Land Tenure, p. 77,
equates the office of dambanya with that of the farasenya in B'agamder --which
Crummey, "Abyssinian Feudalism," p. 123, argues bore some equivalence to the
medievel European knight. In terms of the twentieth-century context, this analogy
has little meaning.

22. Fit. Nabiy'aleul, interview #1, 1 April 1982; Abba G'aibr'a' Ma'sqa'l, interview
#2, 28 March 1982; Ch'akol'a, interview #1, 10 March 1982.

23. This contrast between twentieth-century administration in Wag and
Lasta-proper is further developed in chapter five.

24. Abba Gabra' Masq'al, interview #4, 31 March 1982. For a description of
mm land in imperial Gondar, see Donald Crummey, "Gondarine Rim Land Sales: An
Introductory Description and Analysis," Proceedings of the Fifth International
Conference on Ethiopian Studies (Chicago, 1978), pp. 469-80.

25. Sagayé Sia'tegn, interview #2, 26 April 1982. My friend T‘af'arra Berhé
tells me that fereg was still collected around saqota in the early 19703

26. Pollera, [_e_ri, p. 70; Hoben, Land Tenure, p. 75. G'a'dam, or monasteries,
were structurally similar in their administration and landholding to the d'aber,
except that the g'adam head had to be a monk. See also Mantel-Niecko, Role of
Land Tenure, p. 167.

27. Abba Gebr'a Masqa’l, interview #2, 28 March 1982.

28. "Ya' Ras Kassa Astiidad'ar," document #80.

29. These designations for church-allocated lands often have little normative
value. One type found in Wag was yademmet marét (lit. "the cat's land),

supposedly set aside for the support of cats who hunted rats among the church
granaries.

106

30. Grottanelli, Missione, p. 112; Abba Gabra' Masqal, interview #4, 31 March
1982.

31. "Yd Ras Kassa Ast'adadar," document #146.
32. Ibid., document #5.

33. Débakullu, interview #2, 6 March 1982. After the Italian occupation and
the subsequent reorganization of the imperial government, eight da'ber in Lasta

retained their autonomous status. Fit. Ababa, interviews #1 and #2, 2 March and 9
March 1982.

34. Beta K'ahenat, "B'a Ityopya."
35. Crummey, "Abyssinian Feudalism," p. 128.

36. Al‘a’mu W'arqn'ah, returned to his home area in 1924 after three years
absence and began plowing his own plots in the following agricultural year.

37. This figure is the average of the 2.175 hectares/household estimated for
low yield soil and the 1.418 for high yield soil given in a 1974 survey of Yajju.
See Noel Cossins, "The Day of the Poor Man," mimeograph, Drought Relief and
Rehabilitation Commission, 1975, p. 6. Postnikov estimated a much higher figure of
45-50 acres per household; see Lenin, Development p. 72.

 

38. All landholding households, of course, also shared ties to their local
church and to their descent corporation, although these links rarely involved
cooperation in productive activities. 121529 is still the term used in much of
Ethiopia for cooperative labor.

39. For an excellent discussion comparing European and Ethiopian family
types, see Allan Hoben, "Family, Land, and Class," pp. 157-70. Another
anthropologist has termed the political nature of the northern Ethiopia household
"oikos." See Wolfgang Weissleder, "The Political Ecology of Amhara Domination,"
unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Chicago, 1965, p. 233. Weissleder
describes the relationship between politics and the household: "The recurrent
structural configuration within this political unit [the Amhara state] is the
household which accounts for the operation and continuity of its small components
by the same mechanism which explains the workings of the dominant establishment."

40. Bauer distinguishes four household types and describes their movement
through expansion and dispersal phases. Bauer, Household, pp. 79-149. Also see
Meyer Fortes, "Introduction," in Jack Goody, ed., The Deveflment Cycle in
Domestic Groups (Cambridge, 1958); and Jairus Banaji, "Chayanov, Kautsky, Lenin:
Considerations towards a Synthesis," Economic and Political Weekly, 11, 40 (1976),
pp. 1594-1607.

 

41. Annaratone, Abissinia, p. 116; Wylde, Modern Abyssinia, p. 332.

42. Axumite inscriptions refer to "black" people on their western border who
were taken captive. Richard Pankhurst, "The History of the Bareya, Sanqella, and
Other Ethiopian Slaves from the Borderlands of the Sudan," unpublished paper
presented to the conference on Ethiopian feudalism, Addis Ababa, 1976, p. 2.

107

43. Wylde, Modern Abyssinia, pp. 332, 328. Wylde had spent a number of
years in Sudan prior to the Mahadiya and therefore was in a position to identify
the slave's places of origin.

 

44. Ch'akol'a, interviews #1 and #3, 10 March and 6 May 1982. Ato Chakol’a'
participated in raids in southern and western W'al'aga in the early 19303. For
locations of placenames, see Werner Lange, "Gimira (Remnants of a Vanishing
Culture)," unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, Johan Wolfgang Goethe Universit'at, 1975,
p. 5.

45. See Crummey, "Abyssinian Feudalism," p. 130. He offers a very important
gloss on a Ge'ez saying which Dr. Merid Wolde Aregay has translated as "Man is
free and land is the tributary." Thus, Lasta restenya were not serfs and could
move relatively freely in a subsistence-oriented labor market.

46. For a cogent discussion of the moral economy argument see chapter
three and James Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasantry: Rebellion and
Subsistence in Southeast Asia (New Haven. 1976), pp. 1-13. No important slave
markets existed in Lasta, although the British legation in Addis Ababa alleged that
Qobbo was a collection point for the trade across the desert to the Red Sea. See
Zaphiro memo enclosed in Barton to Foreign Office, 8 July, 1930, F.O. 371/14588
and Admiralty to F.O., 16 December, 1930, F.O. 371/14590.

47. When asked about slaves' land rights one Lastan asked me sarcastically
"barya men za'ma'd all'a'w?" ("what kin does a slave have?). Hair texture and skin
color were mentioned most often as features distinguishing yabét lei from y‘a‘sa‘w
lei. This issue sparked considerable debate during group interviews. For a slightly
different view of the meaning of yas'aw lej, see Tsehai, "Political and Military
Traditions," p. 42.

48. The classic statement on relations of production in lineage-based
societies can be found in Claude Meillassoux, "essai d'interpretation du phenomene
économique dan les sociétés traditionelles d'auto-subsistence," Cahiers d'études
Africaines, 1, 38 (1960), pp. 38-67.

49. This conclusion, based on my interviews with Lasté, agrees with the
main thrust of Bauer, Household. Compare the Lasta labor situation with the
chronic labor shortage in other African production systems as described in Jack
Goody. Production and Reproduction: A Comparative Study of the Domestic Domain
(New York, 1976).

 

50. Marx has defined capital as "input into production which is not
consumed, but retained as investent toward further production. See Karl Marx,
A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (Moscow: 1970), p. 213.

 

51. Magazo is the gerundive form of the noun form magzat, to have
something governed or bought which in turn derives from the noun form magza't, to
govern or buy.

52. Thus the Lasta expression:
Y'aruqun agazo kaqarubu t'dgazo

Let the far one be rented and rent the one nearby.50

108

Haile Gabriel, "Famine," p. 20. For additional information on magazo,
Débakullu Z'a'wdé, interview #3, 13 March, 1982; S'a'gayé. interviews #1 and #2,
13 April and 26 April 1982; Abba Gabr'a M'a'sqal, interview #5, 3 April 1982.

53. For a description of the hiring of agricultural laborers in northern
Ethiopia in the 1903s see Marcel Griaule, "Le travail sur l'aire au Wollo
(Abyssinie)," Journal de la société des Africanistes, 12 (1942), pp. 81-86. Rural wage
labor was not common in Lasta until after World War Two. See chapter six.

54. Mantel-Niecko, Role of Land Tenure, pp. 150-52, notes that
late-nineteenth century military elites retained the right to occupy and farm plots
abandoned by peasant households.

55. These rates were given to me by Asr‘cis W'alda Mikael, former keeper of
Leul Ras Kassa's treasury, Lasta meslané, and a well-known userer. Alamu
W'arqn'ah confirmed these figures. Grottanelli, Missione, pp. 147-48, cites the figure
of 10% per month for the Lake Tana area prior to the Italian occupation.

56. Part-time trade as a critical portion of household income has been
underemphasized in the literature. Rural households in Tigré and Lasta,
particularly in Wag, regularly supplemented income during bad agricultural years by
participating in the intraregional trade in salt, livestock, grain, and hides. The
reliance on trade has probably become more pronounced in recent years. See Bauer,
"Land and Leadership," p. 15.

57. Bauer, "For Want of An Ox...," p. 245.
58. Crummey, "Abyssinian Feudalism," p. 127.
59. Mantel-Niecko, Role of Land Tenure, pp. 216-17.

60. Both Leul Ras Kassa's treasurer, a Lastan, and his personal secretary
argued that little, if any, goods or cash reached his treasury in Addis Ababa from
Lasta.

61. Mantel-Niecko, The Role of Land Tenure, pp. 208-09; Pollera, lepi, p. 72;
Al'amu warqna'h, interview #6, 10 June 1982.

62. Mahetma Sellasé, Zekr'a N'a'g'ar, p. 160. Unlike Gojjam and B'ag'amder,
Lasta never had a "head" tax.

 

63. Martini, Diario, p. 406. He also cites rates. Ato Alamu W‘a'rqna'h recalls
in 1924 paying one taler per two donkey loads and one taler per single mule load.
Interview #2, 28 April, 1982.

 

64. See table 1, chapter six.

65. For another statement about rural class structure see Crummey,
"Abyssinian Feudalism," p. 137.

66. Abba Gétu, interview #14, 7 July 1982. Ras Kassa's proclamation
specifically excluded common peasant war veterans from receiving part of the
livestock tithe which he reserved for the elite class. "Ya Ras Kassa Ast'adad'ar,"
document #133. Many examples exist in Lasta and elsewhere of individuals rising
through the ranks in one generation, but such cases were nevertheless exceptional.

109

For a discussion of gult appointments and class, see Allan Hoben, "Social Mobility,"
p. 75.

 

67. Selections for church offices within d'a'ber were made by a consensus of
influencial members of the community, the clergy, and local balabats.

68. General Abata' B'azza, interview #1, 7 March 1982.

69. Banaji, "Chayanov," p. 1604; Cossins, "Still Sleeps," p. 14; interviews,
passim.

70. Fit. N'abiy'aleul excerpted this document for me in his own hand from his
copy of Ras Kassa's administrative records.

71. Wagshum K'abbada had a reputation for giving lavish feasts and rebuilt

an important church in S'aqota. Ras Kassa, on the other hand, was a reputed
sesetam (miser) renowned for the meager fare at his feasts.

He compensated for
this negative image by cultivating a reputation for piety.

Chapter Three

Historical Charter, Moral Economy, and Political Tradition:

The Zagwé Heritage

...a portion of lands in Lasta should be given to Naacueto
Laab and his heirs in absolute property, irrevocably and
irredeemably; that he should preserve, as marks of sovereignty,
two silver kettle-drums or nagareets; that the points of the
spears of his guards, the globes that surmounted his sendick
(that is the pole upon which the colors are carried) should be
silver; and that he should sit upon a golden stool or chair, in
form of that used by the king of Abyssinia; that both he and
his descendants should be absolutely free from all homage,
services, taxes, or public burdens forever, and styled kings of
Zagwe or the Lasta kings.

Lasta tradition reported by James Bruce 1776

Yonatan washed in the datan [basin], in a golden datan in
which the kings wash their hands....Yonatan washed his hands
in the datan and for that reason the title of the Wagshum

became honorable.

Lasta oral tradition recorded 17 March, 1982

Lastans are northern Ethiopians par exellence. In their own traditions and in
those of the central state, they were heirs to the "great tradition" of politics and
religion of northern Ethiopia. Lasta's traditional ruler, the Wagshum or "appointee
of Wag," by virtue of his putative descent from the 13th-century Zagwé dynasty,
enjoyed a special status equal to that of the Solomonic sovereign himself and had
his rank recognized in the symbols of the Wagshumate, his silver M (drum) and
his golden (_ieLem (hand basin). Lastans, therefore, whether peasants, clerics, or

officials allowed themselves a measure of arrogance since they knew themselves to

111
be standard bearers for the oldest religious and political institutions in the
empire-state. Lasta's political traditions appear in some of the earliest European
accounts of Ethiopia and local traditions of independence imperial authority have

survived over half a century of centralism.1 . . .
Is is misleading, however, to

concentrating only on the "great tradition" of Zagwe. Lasta's ideology and
tradition also included basic ideological structures of production which linked its
rural population to the state and to their local overlords. This chapter describes
the various levels of Lasta's ideology which affected their actions and perceptions
of events during 1900-35. While a complete analysis of "ideology" may never be
possible for a rural population in past time, I believe that the basic tenets
described here provide a viable framework for discussing how Lastans viewed their
changing circumstances.

Examining Lasta's political traditions, myths of origin, and ideology of
production provides a number of useful insights into the region's place within the
wider historical and cultural framework of northern Ethiopia as well as suggesting
the historical and cultural environment in which Lastans have seen themselves.
These historical charters, their religious symbols, and political implications had real
meaning since they legitimized local elite and therefore facilitated their control of
local economic resources. Lastans' ideas about who they were and where they had
come from affected who they accepted as leaders and what economic institutions
they viewed as legitimate. Political traditions and grassroots ideologies of
production channeled behavior in particular directions and helped determine the
nature of reactions to crises; these traditions made up an important part of the
cultural baggage which Lastans took with them after 1900 when they abandoned
their overcrowded land and joined the modern political economy in lands to the

south.

112

lyly purpose here is to understand two levels of ideology: one which
preserved the core political and religious symbols which gave Lasta society its
identity within the larger Ethiopian cultural system, and another which represented
the mechanisms by which class conflict and disruptions in the social organization of
production were minimized. With regard to the latter, I the "moral economy"
argument developed by James Scott which holds that much of the ideology
surrounding production results from the need to protect subsistence and manange
risks to household reproduction. I shall therefore investigate the nature of political
tradition in the area, how it has been preserved, its limitations as a coercive tool
of the administrative class, and to what extent producing classes accepted it.
Finally, as a part of the discussion of political tradition, I trace Lasta's early
relations with the imperial state and its 19th-century incorporation into the imperial

system.

The Structure of Tradition in Lasta

Political ideology in a rural society like Lasta consisted of a balance
between the great tradition of religious and political culture represented in the
literature and dogma of the administrative classes, a more fluid local oral tradition
preserved locally, and the "ideology of subsistence" which governed households'
decisions and survival strategies from day to day. None of these alone should be
regarded as the operative world view. Lastans self-image derived to a large degree
from their special place in northern Ethiopia's core cultural symbols embodied in
the Kebre Nag‘a'st, but also from household-level decision making which reflected a
rigid dogma dedicated to protecting the subsistence and social reproduction of
producing units. The "great tradition" of politics "worked" for Lasta's producers
because it linked their local traditons of independence with the larger northern

Ethiopian political charter and a universal order. The class which nurtured and

113
preserved these traditions (officials and clerics) therefore commanded respect and a
measure of obedience, but rarely to a point which threatened the economic
well-being of the producers. The overall structure worked over time despite the
presence of dissonant elements within it.

Analysis of historical tradition and ideology in northern Ethiopia's
Amhara-Tigréan cultural complex requires a much different analytic framework
than do traditions found elsewhere in Africa. The presence of an indigenous
literary tradition, long-standing contact with Red Sea and Mediterranean cultural
traditions, and the strong ideological influence of the Ethiopian Orthodox church
have created tricky cross-currents between the customary oppositions of written
versus oral, religious versus secular, and local versus national. The process of
"feedback" described by David Henige as a negative factor whereby external
written sources, usually European, corrupt "traditional" oral narratives, had an
entirely different character in the Ethiopian context.2 In Lasta and northern
Ethiopia in general, an active dialogue has always existed between secular,
vernacular oral narratives and written, religiously motivated traditions preserved in
the Ge'ez language.3 Similarly, an interplay took place between local traditions and
the larger national epic which legitimized the role of church and state in both
national and local affairs. Traditions of local politics in Lasta's rural society were
divided between the great traditions of church and imperial politics in written form
and local traditions preserved orally. The latter allowed for non-literate Lastans to
express own versions of traditions on their own terms and allowed for dissent
among producers who ultimately decided who they would support and on what
terms.

Forms of transmission of historical traditions in Lasta differ considerably in
their purpose, symbolic referents, and historical depth. Oral testimony which

recounts historical events or personalities tends to be limited to a period of no

114

more than one or two generations before the oldest living Lastan. Those I
interviewed consistently became confused when asked to recount members of their
ruling house beyond six generations --the early nineteenth century.4 Beyond the
range of 150 years, Lastan quickly telescoped their narrative to include the
resistance to the Muslim jihad of the sixteenth century or, more commonly,
accounts of rock-church building during the Zagwe period. The shift from a
nineteenth-century focus to an earlier period also usually included a switch from
specific to symbolic information and from a secular to a religious motif. Oral
sources also often expressed opposition to the great tradition while adapting
elements of it.

By contrast, written sources normally recount events beyond the scope of
oral testimony and invariably couch their descriptions in religious metaphor. Written
sources for northern Ethiopia include hagiographies and their local redactions, royal
chronicles produced at court and available from the fourteenth century on, and
marginalia included with local liturgical documents. Unfortunately, few documents of
these types have surfaced for Lasta beyond the external perspectives available in
the royal chronicles produced at Gond'ar from the seventeenth to the nineteenth
centuries. I had access to an Amharic translation of a hagiography of the
canonized Zagwé monarch Lalibala from the Lasta d'aber of zama'du Maryam, but
even it appears to be a redacted edition of an original composed at Lake Hayq (in
Wiillo) in the fifteenth century, two centuries after the events it describes.
Nevertheless, the Lasta copy seems to have a number of additions which may
reflect Lasta oral tradition, particularly concerning the origins of Zagwé (see
below) and the Wagshumate.5

Written sources, whether royal chronicles from outside Lasta or local
materials, tend to offer a narrow perspective since literacy in pre-modern Ethiopia

was the exclusive province of the ecclesiastical class. Written narrative, therefore,

115
usually reflected religious themes and sought to legitimize the church's or a
specific political sponsor's role in political and economic life. Control of the great
traditions rested with the elite classes which preserved it and interpreted it for
the non-literate producing class. Oral traditions were one means of rebuttal.

The structure and function of Lasta's traditions represented commonly held
beliefs about Lasta's origins, its aetiological charter, and how it blended with
northern Ethiopia's own epic charter. Political legitimacy in northern Ethiopia was
predicated upon the political and cultural symbols embodied in the Heme _lfiigjjet,
which antedated all extant manuscript sources and traced the origins of the
Ethiopian state back to the union of Solomon and Mak'ada, queen of Saba. Although
this document first appeared in Ge'ez in the fourteenth century, E. Cerulli and I.
Shahid suggest that its origins as a written document go back much further, while
Levine ascribes it to oral tradition.6 As northern Ethiopia's aetiological charter,

the Kebra' Nagast depicted the foundation of northern Ethiopia's political and

 

religious life as well as defining criteria for political legitimacy in that society.

Levine argues that the Kebr'a Nag'a'st constituted a "body of symbols that provides

 

specialized cultural legitimation for both the societal enterprise as a whole and for
privileged positions within that society."7

Lasta's connection to this set of symbols is particularly significant. The
emergence of the Keb_r'e‘ M, at least in the Ge'ez form, coincided with the
shift of power after the thirteenth-century fall of the Lasta-based Zagwe dynasty
and may well have been a direct response to the need of a group with a narrow

geographic base (i.e. northern Shawa) to establish a larger and more far-reaching

legitimacy.8 Lastans did not produce the Kebre Nfighst, nor did they hold imperial

 

power, but they adapted their local traditons to the new circumstances. When the
new group of Shawans took power in the 13th century with their own set of

political and religious symbols, Lasta occupied a less central position vis a vis the

116
imperial state and developed a set of traditions which reconciled its shift away

from the political and cultural heart of the social formation.

The Zagwe Legacy in Oral and Written Tradition

Lasta's image of itself and Lastans' feelings about who they were relative to
other Ethiopians have derived from the shadowy history of Zagwe and its three
centuries of rule over northern Ethiopia which ended in 1268 A.D. Unfortunately,
little reliable documentation exists to clarify the nature of the Zagwe state, its
origins, or its demise, beyond the names of monarchs who reigned from the tenth
to the thirteenth centuries. Available evidence suggests that Zagwé undoubtedly
existed, was most certainly based on a Cushitic, Agaw-speaking population, and
most likely had its center in an area contiguous with present-day Lasta.9 Zagwé's
ascendancy represented the political center's movement from Tigre to the
relatively more salubrious but isolated headwaters of the Takkazé. Taddesse
Tamrat has argued that Zagwé grew out of Agaw participation in the military,
political, and religious life of the late-Axumite state.10

Despite the sketchy details of its history, Zagwe looms very large in
Lasta's self-image and in the national historical epic as well. Accounts of Zagwé's
origin vary considerably from the oral narratives reported by eighteenth and
nineteenth-century European travelers, to Ge'ez written texts, and colorful
contemporary narratives. Some accounts reflect attempts to link Zagwe directly to
images from the Kebr‘ci Nagast A popular oral tradition in Lasta claims that the
dynasty descended from the union of Solomon and a maidservant who had
accompanied Queen Makada (Sheba) to Jeruselem.11 Another argues that Zagwé
originated with Yitraham, a son of King David, who was given a portion of Ethiopia
12 In

to rule alongside his cousin Menilek I (the progeny of Solomon and Mak'ada).

a written version of this tradition attributed to the important daber of Zii'm'adu

117
Maryam in Lasta, a certain soldier named M'ar'ai T'akl'a Haymanot (the first of the
Zagwé line), received a visitation from the archangel Gabriel who promised him
and his heirs the kingdom for 333 years. He thereupon acceded to the throne by

virtue of his marriage to the daughter of Dil Naod, the last of the pre-Zagwé

kings who, tradition claims, had Israelite ancestry.13

Charles Beke, while in Lasta in the early 18403, recorded another version
which linked Zagwé and its final ruler Nakuto Laab to Solomon and to a

succeeding line of independent Lasta rulers, the Wagshums:

The tradition of Lasta which differs widely from that of the
rest of Abyssinia given in the histories of the country says
that Menelik, the son of Solomon, King of Israel, accompanied
by his sister Salomea and her son Sirak, entered Abyssinia
from the east beyond the country of the Raia or Azabo Gallas
(i.e. from Azab or Saba) and that his original settlement was in
Zobul before Ambasel (Amba Israel) was made the seat of
government; and further that Zobul is the country in which
King Tewodros [a legendery messianic king] is to reign. This
king is no other than Nakweto Laab, the last reigning monarch
of the native dynasty of Lasta (claiming descent from Sirak
and known in the histories as the house of Zague) who, after
ruling Abyssinia for 36 years, resigned the throne to Icon
Amlac, the progenitor of the present imperial family, and who
is said to be alive and wandering about between Jerusalem and
Zobul in expectation of the time when his second reign--which
is to be a sort of millenniumnis to commence. According to the
same tradition, the appropriation of one third of the Ethiopian
empire to the family of Nakweto Leab was not made by the
monk Tekla Haimanot, as stated in the histories (see Bruce
vol. i p. 533) but by King Solomon himself, who divided the
empire between his son and daughter, giving 2/3 to Menelik,
who he made king, and one third to Sirak, Salomeé's son, who
he appointed Waagshum (i.e chief of Waag) with the promise
that on the failure of male issue of Menelik, the male issue of
Sirak should succeed to the imperial throne. The state of the
two princes was to be similar, and their rank equal; which is
expressed in the Ethiopian proverb:-
Waagshum la wanbar
Negus la manbar

i.e. the Waagshum to the wanbar and the king to the manbar,
the title words being synonymous and meaning chair or
throne.

118
Beke's Lasta-based account contrasts with another recorded by James Bruce
at Gondar in the 17703 which detailed the political agreement transfering power

from Zagwé to the Shawan Solomonic line:

The first was that Naaceuto Laab, prince of the House of
Zagué, should forthwith resign the kingdom of Abyssinia to
Icon Amlac, reigning prince of the line of Solomon, then in
Shoe.

The second that a portion of lands in Lasta should be given to
Naacueto Laab and his heirs in absolute property, irrevocably
and irredeemably; that he should preserve, as marks of
sovereignty, two silver kettle-drums or nagareets; that the
points of the spears of his guards, the globes that surmounted
his sendick (that is the pole upon which the colours are
carried) should be absolutely free from all homage, services,
taxes, or public burdens forever, and styled kings of Zagué, or
Lasta kings

The third article was, that one third of the kingdom should be
appropriated and ceded absolutely to the Abuna [patriarch]
himself, for the maintenance of his own state and support of
the clergy, convents, and churches in the kingdom; and this
afterwards became an era, 0 epoch, in Abyssinian history
called the Era of the Partition.

A number of other versions of the end of Zagwe and the granting of
special privileges to the rulers of Lasta exist, but four basic elements of the story
remain fairly constant: 1) the last of the Zagwé kings agrees to hand over power
to a young Shawan named Yakuno Amlak, rightful heir to a suppressed Solomonic
tradition; 2) a smooth transition of power is engineered by the intervention of the
monk T'a'kla' Haymanot, who secured one-third of the empire's land for the church;
3) the granting of an independent, tribute-free status for the descendants of the
Zagwé ruling house who could rule Lasta in perpetuity; 4) the acknowlegment of a
number of special privileges or rights for the Lasta ruler, especially the right to
be ritually equal to the emperor at feasts and to use a golden detep" (small
hand-basin).

Beke's mid-nineteenth century account noted special status attributed to the

Wagshum:

119

Even at the present day, when the empire of Abyssinia exists
only in a name, the Waagshum, although in a great measure
subjected by the Ras, is not looked upon as a dependent chief
bound to pay tribute; whilst the king of Shoa, although
virtually an independent sovereign, is considered to be the
governor _o_f e province, who does not render tribute simply
because the Negus (or his representative, the Ras) has not the
power to enforce its payment, but who, if the empire were
reinstated, would do so as formerly which the Waagshum never
did and never would...

He also noted specific privileges associated with Lasta's ruler:

They might enter the inner court of the palace with their
drums beating; might come before the emperor without
uncovering the upper part of their body and rolling their robe
around their waist [a ritual sign of deference]; might be
seated at meals before the tables are served (all the other
persons standing);16and might occupy a chair at the side of the
emperor's throne.

By the twentieth century, the tradition of a privileged Wagshum whose ancestry
dated to Zagwe had become part of a new vein of Amharic historical literature.17

Considerable evidence exists that privileges attributed to the Wagshum in
written and oral accounts actually did form a part of court procedure, at least by
the late nineteenth century. Emperor Menilek's chronicler recounts an 1896 meeting
between the emperor and Wagshum Berru:

...at dawn Wagshum Berru came...he pitched his tent at the

camping place. The Agaw and the Amhara were many. Wagshum

Berru sent a message to the emperor saying that just as he

[Menilek] sat on the throne of his father, he [Berru], begs

like his father, like the Wagshums, to be given permission to

enter beating the nagarits. The emperor agrleaed and he entered

the public square having his n'agarit beaten.
Wagshum Wess'a'n Haylu recalled to me that his grandfather, Wagshum K'abbada, at
the time of Hayld Sellasé's coronation demanded to be allowed to enter the
palace compound on mule back while having his drums beaten. After some heated

debate regarding proper palace protocol, he was allowed to do 30.19 Marsaé

Ha'zan W'alda Qirqos in his memoirs recalled that the Wagshum sat at Ras Tafari's

120
right at zawditu's coronation in 1917 and was allowed to beat his new in the
imperial presence.20 Wagshum W'ass'a'n also claimed to me that he owned a golden
handbasin prior to the 1974 revolution.

Existing alongside the strong religious and imperial themes which dominate
written traditions about Zagwé and the Wagshum, there are independent oral
traditions preserved in Lasta itself. These tend to emphasize the special status of
Lasta in the imperial tradition, but eschew the religious themes which dominate
written versions. One version of the oral version was recited for me by Ato
Ch'a'kola Lamina, a native of Sedeb in Wag. He attributes the narrative to his
father and his uncles who were farmers serving part-time at the court of Wagshum
G'abr'a Madhen. His account differs substantially from the external structure of

written accounts, but the deeper structures remain intact:

Its beginning was in respect to a feast ceremony you see. The
Wagshumate, its line of descent started from the reign of
Ass Tewodros, it is said. Even though it came to the time

of Menilek the Second following the reigns of Asé Téwodros
and Asé Yohannes, the cause was in respect to a feast
ceremony.

"Prepare a feast and let us see what they are," and the feast
commenced. The feast began and everybody joined. The ones
from our region were Wagshums. At the beginning it was
Wagshum G'abra M'ahhen and it descends from him--and the
feast took place.

Here, like this, just the way we sit here, the food basket
(ma'sob), the drinking flask (berlé), the pot (de_st), and cup
(nanha) were brought and everything was in place. Then they
locked they locked the room from outside and left them. It
was the Chamberlain (agafari) and giver of orders (a_zej) who
did this purposely.

Everybody finished eating and drinking. Everyone ate and
drank and those locked in the room ate and drank. When they
opened it and went in, the others had eaten and drank well,
like commoners. Now, the Wagshums who came from Qwara [in
Wag] and our region, Sedeb, were determined not to eat and
stayed the whole day and night leaving the food untouched.
They were six.

121

"Why didn't they eat? Is it because they are angry?" the
emperor said. They told him the food was left uneaten and the
food basket and one pot were still there.

"Didn't they eat?"
"N o."

"What kind of pride is it that they do not eat what we serve?
These bastards! O.K. go. I will burn what they wore," he said.
The things they wore, the woolen cape (bérnos) and cloak
(gem) were taken off and put in the fire. They simply sat as
if nothing had happened.

"Oh my lord, this is serious. They took off their capes and put
them down and they were burned. They are now also taking
off their cloaks. What is this?"

"O.K., leave it, leave it. After all [of this], they deserve
respect. Now it doesn't matter; after all it was only the capes
which were burned," he said. "Starting from now, I swear I

want them to be near me and I want them to eat what I eat
and drink what I drink."

Yonatan washed in the datan (a basin), in a golden datan in
which the king washed his hands. It is remembered that
Yonatan washed his hands in a datan...

Then you see, the Wagshum finally came to be the person who

used the king's mule trappings which were of gold and the

king's horse trappings and also the king's clothes. When we

talk of the Wagshum, whether he went to M’aq'alé during the

reign of Yohannes or came to Addis at the time of Menilek it

was all the same.

Yonatan washed in the datan aél for that reason the title of

the Wagshum became honorable.

Notably, this tradition sees the Wagshumate and its special status as
stemming from a feast ceremony, one of the most important ritual occasions in

rural society for reaffirming status and rank and one clearly understood by the

producer class. The essential elements are the washing in the golden datan, and

 

the right to sit next to the emperor. The selection of the feasting metaphor is
particularly interesting since the protocol of rank and "status-honor" at formal

banquets (gebber) formed an essential part of the symbolizing of rural social

22

structure. While recast in the context of the early nineteenth century, this

122
narrative and others I have examined exhibit common themes. None of the oral
versions connect Lasta's special position to the religious themes which dominate

23 These local oral variants are a part of a larger set of ideas

written versions.
maintained independently of Lasta's written tradition which remained th province of

the administrative and ecclesiastical elite.

Lasta in the Northern Ethiopian Political Tradition 1600-1899

Lasta's political traditions were products of a complex historical
relationship between that region and imperial authority. A good deal of evidence
points to the fact that Lasta's traditions of an independent line descended from
Zagwé derived not from the 13th century, but from Lasta's interaction with the
imperial state beginning in the mid-18th century.‘24 Throughout the 17th century
and half of the 18th Lasta enjoyed almost complete political independence from the
imperial court. Very little evidence exists about Lasta in this period, although we
know that the Raya and Azébo Oromo penetrated Lasta's eastern escarpment
during the period, possibly disrupting trade along Lasta's major north-south route.
the resulting isolation may have allowed Lasta's local leadership to establish
adegree of independence from outside influence.

A major watershed in northern Ethiopian and Lasta history began in the
early 17th century with the establishment of imperial courts in the Lake Tana
basin. The area's fertility and relative ease of transportation stimulated the growth
of several urban centers which captured trade as well as political power. This shift
in the political and economic center of the empire had important effects on Lasta
which increasingly joined the new political economy centered around the permanent
imperial capital at Gond'a'r.

Gondar's power and role as a cultural center depended to a large degree on

its control of trade. that trade's access to the Red Sea through Massawa, and to

123
the Tigréan salt fields which supported highland exchange and linked it to peasant
production. Gond'a'r's growth necessarily involved Lasta since it controlled key salt
routes from Endarta to Gondar and Gojjam. Lasta's commercial center at S'a'qota
grew in direct correspondence to the fortunes of Gender and the Lake Tana

basin.‘25

Given Lasta's significant position in trade, it was important that Gond'ar
control the region and Lasta's long-standing independence came to an end.

The royal chronicles describe three separate expeditions to subdue Lasta in
the 18th century; the final one, under one of Emperor Eyasu II's generals,
succeeded in 1748. The emperor received the news of Lasta's submission "with
great pleasure" and thereupon added that province to his realm."6 Three invasions
and a forceable submission must have generated an atmosphere of considerable
crisis within Lasta and gave local leadership ample motivation to begin to defend
their own legitimacy vis a vis the new imperial power imposed over them.27

It was at this point of conflict, defeat, and reconciliation that I believe
twentieth-century historical traditions of Lasta emerged. Threats to Lasta's
independence brought out local traditions of autonomy and resistance.28 Many of
these must have linked local leaders to memories of the suppressed Zagwé
dynasty, particularly in areas where Agaw influence was strongest. There is no
direct evidence for such a renaissance, but it is interesting to note that one Lasta
leader mentioned in the chronicles for 1746 not only styled himself "Wagshum", but
also took the name Nakuto Laab, a direct reference to Zagwé ties.29 As
suggested by the Bruce and Beke versions, the traditions emphasized Lasta's
independence, but within the basic symbolic referents of the national political and
religious charter.

In the years following Lasta's submission to Gond'ar authority, many Lasta

soldiers, clergy, and minor officials found their way to the capital to pay homage

to the court there and to have their local land claims and gult rights reaffirmed by

124
imperial authority. Lasta priests, monks, and scribes also arrived and influenced
religious debate and the transcribing of political traditions. Eventually, marriage
alliances cemented links between the ruling dynasties of Gond'ar and Lasta (see
genealogy of Ras Kassa, figure 5).

The cohesive political tradition of Zagwe and special status within the
imperial state only partially obscures strong sub-regional feelings among Lastans.
Perceptions about what Lasta was among Lastans and outside observers changed
over time according to economic factors at the grassroots level, temporary political
convenience, and the strength of forces of unity within the region. Much depended
as well on the point of view of the observer. Royal chronicles sometimes referred
to Lasta as all the land within the encircling arm of the Takkazé river and at
other times meant only the region south of the Méri (see map, figure 2). Wag
sometimes appears as a term describing the region north of the Méri and at other
times includes Lasta-proper as well. Sixteenth-century Portuguese observers referred
to all of Lasta as Bugna, a district of Lasta. Fortunes and affiliations altered
continually between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. A clear and permanent
administrative separation took place only after the 1916 coup d'etat when separate
constituencies for Wag and Lasta-proper established themselves at court in Addis
Ababa. By that time, Lasta's shift from an autonomous region to a peripheral part
of a centralized state was almost complete; legitimacy in local terms counted less
to Lasta's leadership than did the ability to draw on the resources of the central
state.

Descriptions in the literature about the meaning of Lasta have been
conflicting. Writing from Lasta in the 18403, the missionary Krapf commented on

Lasta's geographic limits:

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Lasta is bordered on the south by Angot, Yechoo, and Wadela,
in the west by Begemder, and in the north by Wag; and in the
east by Angot and Raia trigebs...Lasta was formerly in the
hands of the governor of Wag.
Only a few years later Beke remarked that:

In order to prevent misunderstanding it is proper to remark
here that Waag is the name of the northern portion of Lasta,
the southern portion being known as Lasta-proper. In Waag
itself they repudiate the designation of Lasta, but throughout

the rest of Abyss' 'a both Waag and Lasta pass under the
general appellation.

Pearce, on the other hand, described the major Wag market of S'aqota as the
"capital of Lasta."32

These sub-regional ambiguities were not superficial, but represented
grassroots ties which manifested themselves in the late eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries as political alliances. Although linked to Lasta in historical tradition,
Wag's population of Agaw and Tigré speakers looked north to their linguistic
counterparts in Abarg‘alé, Endarta (districts of Tigre), and even Eritrea. Even
for Wag's Amharic-speaking majority, Seqota's key commercial interests in the salt
trade and Eritrean markets reinforced these leanings. The population of
Lasta-proper, on the other hand, felt linguistic, trade, and cultural affinities with
the Lake Tana basin and Yajju regions to the west and southwest, as well as with
Wadla, Dalanta, and Sh’a’daho-Maqét across the Takkazé to the south.

Political history bears out the north-south bifurcation, particularly during the

Z'ama'na Masafent (Era of the Princes) between 1769 and 1855 when Lasta's

 

districts aligned themselves in opposite camps during the struggles for control of
the imperial court.33 During this period, the ruling family of Y'ajju, the W'arra'shék,
dominated Gondaré puppet-emperors and competed for overall influence with rivals
from Tigré. Y'ajju's political connections with Lasta began in the mid-eighteenth
century with the marriage of a certain Gwangul of Yajju to Wayz'aro Gal'abu, sister

of Ras Fares, the chief of Salowa and Lasta.34 On Gwangul's death, his son, Ali

127
Gwangul, became the most powerful lord of the empire and appointed his brother,

35 Their ability to usurp the

Aligaz Gwangul, as Wagshum and governor of Lasta.
Wagshum title suggests the political dominance Y'ajju enjoyed over Lasta. The fact
that Ali, on his death in 1788, was interred at Lalib'ala indicates the strength of
cultural ties as well. Aligaz then replaced his brother as the de facto ruler of the
empire, retained his control of Lasta and Yajju and added W'allo. Ras Gugsa,
Aligaz's nephew, succeeded him and dominated central Ethiopia from his base at
Dabr'a Tabor until his death in 1825. Gugsa effectively broadened his family's
narrow geographic power base and forged strong alliances with regional powers
from Gojjam, B'ag'amder, and W'allo who opposed Tigréan attempts to control the
imperial court. He exercised influence in Lasta in particular through the effective
redistribution of state revenues, church-building, and the extension of daliep land.36
A countervailing "northern factor" in Lasta history came from the strong
economic, cultural, and political ties between Wag and Tigre. With the rise of the
Tigréan Mikael Sehul in the mid-eighteenth century, Wag paid a regular tribute
to Tigre and joined its side in the struggle against Yajju hegemony. In 1770, a
certain Wagshum Gijar helped Mikaél invade Lasta-proper and later Wagshum

3" Although Wagshum

Kenfu defeated Y‘ajju forces in Lasta with Mikaél's blessing.
Kenfu never succeeded in more than maintaining his position within Wag, his
independence from the Y'ajju-Gond'ar domination of Lasta-proper set the foundations
for an independent Wagshum lineage in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

In the mid-nineteenth century, Lasta enjoyed a brief moment of ascendancy
and unity under the leadership of Wagshum Gob'a'zé, Kenfu's great-grandson, who
proclaimed himself Emperor Takl'a Giyorgis in 1868. During the turbulent reign of
Emperor Tewodros (1855-68), Gobazé had led an effective resistance in Lasta and

had managed to ally himself with discontented forces in Gojjam, Bag‘amder, and

walla, thus garnering enough support to take the throne on Téwodros' death in

128
1868, at the hands of the Napier expedition, and to occupy it until his military
defeat by his Tigréan brother-in-law, D'ajach Kassa Marcha (Emperor Yohannes IV)

in 1871.38

Lasta's first emperor since Zagwé ruled for only three years before
falling to the military strength of Tigre. Lasta proved a better base for
resistance than it did a platform from which to control an unwieldy imperial
coalition. Lasta could not match a well-equipped and united Tigréan army.
Goba'zé's We'llo Oromo allies remained inactive, and he never managed to bluff
young Menilek of Shawa into joining him.39
Wagshum Gob'azé's brief turn at the throne was more an interregnum than a
reign. His crowning as T'akl'a' Giyorgis at D'abra labit in August 1868 had been an
ad hoc affair with no Orthodox patriarch present to consecrate the coronation.
Gob'azé's reign offers little evidence of the use of local tradition in Lasta
politics. Neither his chronicler nor contemporary accounts from European sources
indicate that Gob'azé claimed legitimacy based on his title of Wagshum and
therefore heir to Zagwe. He chose instead to identify himself with the Gondaré
line and took the regnal name Takl‘a Giyorgis. thus linking himself though his
mother's side to the last of the independent Gondaré monarchs. One cannot judge

4'" He died a

whether he simply felt the Solomonic claim was the stronger one.
captive of his successor.

Despite his lack of success as a pretender to the throne, Wagshum
Gobazé's tenure as a dominant force in Lasta had a significance for later political
developments in the region. Gobazé united Lasta; he carried the title Wagshum
and based himself in the southeast of Lasta-proper where he created a successful
coalition of the descendants of Wagshum Kenfu and the Gondaré governors «Haylu
and W'and Wessanu descended from Emperor T'akla Giyorgis (1779-84). Gob'azé was

the product of several generations of political marriages and a decade of guerrilla

resistance to imperial authority. On his mother's side he could claim ties to

129
former governors of Lasta; his step-father, Magabi W'a'ld'a Kiros was the grandfather
of Leul Ras Kassa Haylu who was to be governor of Lasta-proper from 1917-1935.
Under Emperors Yohannes and Menilek in the late-nineteenth century, Lasta's
position at the geopolitical center of the empire had eroded. Those two monarchs
preferred to separate the region into its constituent sub-regions of Lasta-proper

and Wag, and to attempt to relegate both to the political periphery.

Traditions of Dissonance: Class and Moral Economy in Lasta Ideology

This section attempts to go beyond the concepts of the "great tradition" and
investigate an alternative political and economic ideology which dominated the
world view of Lasta's producers. This ideology was a set of ideas, values, and
assumptions which governed their actions and how they viewed the society in which
they lived. The two most salient features of this ideology were socio-economic
class and the subsistence ethic. Together with the political and religious values
built into the great tradition. these factors explain how Lasta's households
responded to changes in their physical, political, and economic environments during
1900-35. The precepts of' this ideology helped determine how and when Lasta
householders accepted the moral and political guidelines of the great tradition and
when they did not.

The notion of class in rural Lasta was not simply an economic phenomenon,

but an ideological one as well. The basic themes of the Kebr'e Na'g'ast and the

 

moral order implicit in Orthodox Christian theology emphasize status and rank
descending from God through the emperor, the ecclesiastical and military nobilty

41 The sense of class and rank extended also into

down to the peasant stratum.
day-to-day language and the norms of elaborate deference behavior still evident

among the Lastan I interviewed. To date, Donald Crummey and Aleme Eshete have

offered the most developed argument for the importance of class as a continuing

130

42 The point out the importance of certain

feature of northern Ethiopian society.
sumptuary laws which restricted the consumption and production of honey-wine,
certain foods, and particular styles of dress to the non-producing class. Lastans
observed most of these; they served to reinforce the more concrete economic
privileges over gult, hudad, and rights to labor enjoyed by the upper class.
Frederick Gamst has applied to northern Ethiopia the classic Redford idea that the
peasant class can be defined in terms of their living in relation to a wealthy,
literate class which maintains their status through their superior access to the
"great tradition."43

Beyond the more obvious idea of social rank, Lasta peasants exhibited a
sense of a fatalistic relationship between rich and poor which viewed the two
positions as interdependent. In Lasta oral poetry the image of the hard-working and
poor peasant as against the wealthy aristocrat or successful peasant farmer is
clear. For the most part, this genre of oral literature is the province of the poor
and represents their sense of their own role in the social and economic order. A
Lasta monk allowed me to record an original oral verse which encapsulates the
strong idea of class and poverty which existed in Lasta:

The rich man [does it] with his wealth; the poor man with his

knowledge. They complement each other.

The rich with gold; and the poor with rags.

The rich with oxen; the poor with labor.

The rich man winks to the rich; the poor to the poor.

The rich man feasts; the poor man toils.

The rich man counts his money; the poor man counts the days.

The rich are never without the poor; the poor do not eat

without [before] the rich.

The rich man takes pride in his money; the poor man has the

weight of what he knows. 44

The rich man is proud; the poor lives with shame.
The ideas imparted here and in Lasta oral tradition in general express the enduring

nature of rich and poor, that each has a particular place in the social order and a

certain set of rights. Nor was this ideology one-sided; it recognized the inevitability

131
of social and economic inequality, but also basic sacrosanct rights of the poor.45
One of these was the access to the mercy of the diety through charity despensed
in the church and another was a deep respect for the vows of poverty taken by
Lasta's large population of Orthodox monks. Even if peasants in Lasta were not
literate and depended on ecclesiastics to interpret church doctrine, they
nonetheless felt they had a right to the sacraments and access to the pantheon of
Orthodox saints through prayer and prestation. Most of all, Lasta's producers
maintained their "rights to subsistence" which put real limits on the actions of
elites classes.

Some ideas about rural ideology in Lasta can gleaned from oral poetry (see
above), interviews, or peasants' petitions which Ras Kassa noted in his

k.46 Like most questions of ideology, however, the world

administrative record boo
view of Lasta's peasants in the early twentieth century proves difficult to
determine in any comprehensive way. Rather, my primary concern has been to argue
that a general set of political traditions and moral values contributed to the
particular ways in which Lasta's rural population reacted to conditions during
1900-35. In this regard I have chosen an approach to rural ideology which the
political scientist James Scott has termed "the moral economy of the peasantry."
The theory of moral economy generally rejects abstract notions of
exploitation and injustice in favor of a phenomenological approach. Its emphasizes
the values of real historical actors and therefore links particular actions to the
feelings of the exploited rather than to abstract notions of exploitation. Scott's
main argument, and the one adopted here, states that most peasants accepted
claims made on their surplus product by elites provided that these claims do not
jeopardize the basic "rights to subsistence," which usually meant sufficient produce

to provide for the physical and social reproduction of a household unit. In terms of

describing behavior, one should keep in mind that the "right to subsistence" is not

132
an economic or legal issue as much as a moral claim guaranteed under the social
and religious contract which bound rural classes together. As such, it was a
critical part of the rural producers' ideology and one which partially governed
Lasta peasants' behavior toward the changing politial economy and environment
during 1900-35.

An important ideological corollary to the "right of subsistence" is the idea of
a subsistence ethic or "safety first" principle. In most conditions, and especially
those in Lasta, peasant households operate very close to a break-even point beyond
which nutritional value of their produce will not support the households membership,
social obligations, and meet the demands of an administrative class. Economic
decisions were therefore made on the basis of which strategies are most likely to
maintain a margin above subsistence on a year to year basis. Decisions about crop
choice, methods of cultivation, allocation of labor and capital, etc. were made
conservatively. The basic economic decisions of Lasta households involved less the
maximization of profit than the management of potential risks. Long-term yields and
cash profits proved less important than provisions for the present harvest, or the
next.

Risk management and the subsistence ethic as a whole provided a special set
of household economics first described for Russia by Chayanov, similar ones were
played out in early twentieth century Lasta as well. Maintenance of the means of
production for most households in Russia and Lasta proved more important than
profit measured in cash. There is good evidence for this argument in Lasta. In
1917 Ras Kassa offered his subject peasants the chance to substitute cash
payments for their labor and oxen obligations on state lands (l_i_u_d_a__d). Despite the
difficulty of obtaining cash, peasants in overwhelming numbers opted to pay cash
rather than donate their time, labor, and oxen to state requirements which removed

47

them from their household plots. More recently, agricultural economists have

133
noted that farmers in Lasta have retained sorghum a3 a primary crop rather than
the more easily marketable téf; sorghum stubble, it turns out, makes better cattle
fodder and therefore underwrites household subsistence far better than cash

48 The moral economy of subsistence in such a situation is not only an

profits.
important ideology of production, but also rational micro-economic behavior as well.

The ideas of rights to subsistence, risk management, and even the basic
tenets of Lasta's political/religious charter helped define class relationships in the
rural economy. They also determined the ways in which Lasta's peasants responded
to the changing role of elites and the state during 1900-35. In basic terms, in the
moral economy of subsistence Lasta peasants preferred subsistence crops over
non-edible cash crops (see above) and also forms of taxation which minimized risks
to household subsistence during poor harvest years (see chapter six). Lastans
accepted the rights of elites to collect taxes, tribute, and labor obligations up to a
point where the amount or method of collection imposed risks to that subsistence.
Chapter six deals with the types of collections which Lastans resisted and why.

During my interviews with Lastans who worked the land during 1900-35,
informants showed clearly how the concept of land in Lasta fit into the overall
ideology of moral economy. They consistently emphasized th small amount of
government land in the region, and the fact that r_e_s_t land was inalienable (despite
some evidence to the contrary in this century). The major contrast was with the
yield. lands in southern Ethiopia which could be "bought, sold, or exchanged." For
Lasta's producing classes the universal land rights embodied in the r_e_s_t_ system
symbolized their right of subsistence. Every free-born Lastan had the right to claim
an equal share of land.

In the first decades of this century, violations of the rules of reset by elites
or state intervention and the commoditization of that resource raised Lastan's

sense of injustice and formed the ideological basis for rebellion. To the extent that

134
environmental and political conditions put strains on the land system, Lastans felt
an increasing sense of disquietude. The particular ways in which they responded
reflected the ideological dissonance between the ideal society and reality. To a
large degree, understanding the behavior of rich and poor households in Lasta
requires an appreciation of the ideological balance between those who controlled
the "great tradition" and those governed by it --especially when the ideology of
production and reproduction overrode the norms of political behavior. The excercise
of authority in rural society required an understanding of where the points of

friction lay.

Conclusion

To a large extent, Lasta's political traditions have never accepted the
region's fall away from political significance. The stubbornness has contributed to
the region's reluctance to accept fully the imposition of imperial authority in the
twentieth century. Moreover, the exegencies of the changing environment and
strongly embedded moral economy of subsistence production have added new
elements of conservatism at the level of household and community. This particular
ideology of conservatism helps explain how and why Lasta's houeholds reacted to
the political circumstances of the 1900-35 period. Resistance to change and
political subordination contrasted significantly with the conditions of Lasta's
incorporation into the modern imperial state after 1900 when many of Lasta's

farmers joined the ranks of the rural poor or abandoned their homeland altogether.

135

Notes to Chapter Three

1. References to Zagwe and the Wagshum tradition can be found in Bruce,
Beke (see below). Ludolphus, and Markham.

2. David Henige, The Chronology of Oral Tradition: Quest for a Chimera
(Oxford, 1974), p. 96. Henige defines feedback as the "coopting of extraneous
printed or written material into previously oral accounts.

3. For a further discussion of the interplay between written and oral sources
in Ethiopian sources. see James McCann, "The Ethiopian Chronicles: An African
Documentary Tradition." Northeast African Studies, 1, 2 (1979), pp. 47-61: for a
related discussion outside of the Ethiopian context see Norman P. Ziegler, "The
Seventeenth Century Chronicles of Maravara: A Study in the Evolution and Use of
Oral Tradition in Western India," Histm in Africa. 3 (1976), pp. 127-53.

 

4. The most common error in chronology was to refer to Wagshum Gob'azé
as the father of Wagshum Gabra' Madhen when the opposite was the case. Even
the current Wagshum made this error. Hoben's work in Gojjam suggests a similar
time depth to historical memory among rural Gojjamé. Hoben, Land Tenure, p. 82.
Local traditions may extend back further with some accuracy, particularly for
events like the founding of certain churches or the granting of particular local
land rights.

 

5. This document is "G'adl Lalil'a'la" translated from the original Ge'ez by
Abba Gabra M'a'sq'al T'asfayé, Institute of Ethiopian Studies, Addis Ababa
(hereafter IES), MSS #298. The translator, a native of Lalibala and former resident
of Belbala Giyorgis and Wayla Maryam daber in Lasta, claims to have obtained the
manuscript from a monk of the monastery of zam'adu Maryam. The original Ge'ez
manuscript's whereabouts are unknown. For further discussion of the effect of a
time gap between events and their writing down and the accuracy of the account,
see McCann, "Ethiopian Chronicles," pp. 54-56.

6. W.A. Budge, The Queen of Sheba and Her Only Son Menylik (London,
1922), pp. vii-viii; Enrico Cerulli, La letteratura Etiopica (Firenze, 1968), pp. 37-38;
I. Shahid, "The Kebra Nagast in the Light of Recent Research," Le Museon, 89
(1976), p. 138; Donald Levine, Greater Ethiopia: The Evolution of a Multi-ethnic
Society (Chicago, 1974), p. 100.

7. Levine, Greater Ethiopia, p. 101.

8. Conti Rossini, Storia, p. 319; Cerulli, _Letteratura pp. 37; Budge. Menylik,
p. x; Shahid, "Kebra Nagast," pp. 138-45.

 

9. Conti Rossini, "Appunti," p. 335; Sergew Hable Sellassie, Ancient and
Medieval Ethiopian History to 1270 (Addis Ababa, 1972), pp. 239-88; Taddesse,
Church and State, pp. 53-66; IES M33 #298.

 

10. Taddesse, Church and State, p. 55. James Bruce, Travels to Discover
the Source of the Nile in the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, AND 1773, 7
vols., (Edinburgh, 1804), vol. 2, p. 457.

 

 

136

11. The most elaborate description of this version can be found in B'a’rhana
M'a'sq'a'l Da'sta, Zéna Lal Yib'alal (Addis Ababa, 1951 E.C.), pp. 15-18. This
particular tradition has carried through to paintings on sale in the streets of Addis
Ababa which depict Sheba and her maidservant each with a child on their knee.

12. Abba G'abr‘a' Masq'al T'asfayé, interview #10, 2 July, 1982; Wagshum
W'assa'n Haylu, interview #1, 20 June, 1982; also see B'aban'a M'asqa'l, Zéna pp.
15-18.

13. IES M33 #295.

14. Beke, "continuation of routes," p. 55.

15. Bruce, Travels, vol. 2, p. 458.

 

16. Beke, "continuation of routes," pp. 51- 60; Idem., memorandum enclosed in
Beke to Stanley, 12 April, 1867, Foreign Office (hereafter F. O.) 401/2.

17. See Heruy Welda Sellasé, Y'a'Ityopya Tarik, n.d., photocopied document
#9208, Amharic Section, IES. This was also the version of the story offered to me
by Wayz'aro waists Israel Siyum, great-granddaughter of Emperor Yohannes IV and
former wife of Crown Prince Assafa wassan. She is also a recognized historian in
her own right. Interview #1, 22 May, 1982. Also see Mahetm'a Sellasé waida
M'asq'al, Zekr'a Nagar, (Addis Ababa, 1950 E.C.), p. 788; T'akl'a Sadeq M'akuriya,
Yalgyopya Tarik Ka'Asé Yakuno Amlak eska' Asé Lebna Dengel (Addis Ababa,
1958 E.C.), pp. 14-15.

 

 

 

18. G'a'brfi Sellasé, Tarik Z'a'm'an Z'aDagmawi Menilek Negus Z'a'Ityopya (Addis
Ababa, 1959 E.C.), p. 216.

 

19. Wagshum W'ass'an Haylu, interviews #1 and #2, 20 June and 22 August,
1982; Ch'a'kola, interview #1, 10 March 1982.

20. Marsaé Hazan, "Z'awditu," p. 118.

21. Cba'kola, interivew #1, 10 March 1982.

22. Dan F. Bauer, Household (East Lansing, 1977), p. 22.

23. Another oral account recorded by Dajach Barbana Masq'al attributed the
special privileges to Lasta's effective resistance to the Muslim jihad of the 16th

century. His collection includes a couplet:

Lakebra mangestu biwaga Yonatan
Gimja suri tateqo tata'ba ba'datan

He fought for the honored government, Yonatan
and was bestowed with the robes and washed in the datan.

B'arban'a M'asq'al, Zena, pp. 116-118.

 

24. See section later in this chapter. My view that Lasta's political tradition
of independence originated in the 18th century differs considerably from
conventional interpretations.

137

25. Wylde, Modern Abyssinia, p. 330, claimed that the Wagshums' house was
250 years old, placing its construction in the same period as the growth of Gond'ar
and the Tana region. Other market centers, like Bure in Gojjam, can also be
attributed to the same period.

 

26. Pankhurst, "Wag and Lasta," pp. 38-39; Bruce, Travels, vol. 2, p. 253;
Guidi, Iyasu II, p. 165.

27. See Guidi, Iyasu II, p. 153. The chronicler reported that Iyasu's troops
"pillaged" the towns of Lasta.

28. These would include Agaw in Wag and the allegiance of Lasta's
Christians to the heretical Otibat (unction) doctrine then in disfavor in Gondar. The
chroniclers of Emperor Yohannes in the seventeenth century refers to Lastans as
"heretics." I. Guidi, Iobannes, p. 23.

29. Guidi, Iyasu II, p. 117.

30. Isenberg and Krapf, Journals, p. 468.

31. Beke, "continuation of routes," p. 59.

32. Henry Salt, A Voyage to Abyssinia and Travels to the Interior of that
County (London, 1864), p. 277.

33. See Abir, Era of the Princes, passim.

 

34. Domenico Brielli, "Ricordi," p. 99, footnote #43. Gwangul's influence on
Lasta is reflected in the Lasta sub-district of YaS'aru Qam'as (that which [Abba]
S'aru tasted). Abba Sam was Gwangul's nickname.

35. H. Weld-Blundell, The Royal Chronicles of Abyssinia 1769-1840
(Cambridge, 1922), p. 356; Brielli, "Ricordi," p. 99, footnote #43.

36. He is particularly remembered for his setting Lalib‘ala up as a
self-supporting da'ber and the extension of its land-holdings. Fitawrari Ab'a'b'a Siyum,
interview #1. 2 March 1982; Abba Gétu Enda'sa'w, interview #2, 17 May 1982.
Gugsa's allies included D'ajacb W'andwass‘a'n and his son Haylu who be appointed as
governors of Lasta.

37. Brielli, "Ricordi," p. 99, footnote #43.

38. Goba'zé had married Dajach Kassa's sister Denqna'sh. A full account of
Gob'azé's career is inappropriate here. For more thorough coverage see Zewde
GabreSellasse, Yohannes IV of Ethiopia: A Political Biography (Oxford, 1975), pp.
21-24; Harold Marcus, Life and Times, pp. 33-37; Laml'a'm, "YaAsé T'a'kl'a Giyorgis
Tarik, IES M33 #846.

39. Apparently Gob'azé managed to forge an alliance with the W'allo Oromo
against Téwodros in which they agreed to pay tribute to Gob'a'zé, but retained
their internal autonomy. See Blanc to Meriwether, 18 July 1867, F.O. 401/2. Also
see Marcus, Life and Times, p. 37.

 

138

40. Marcus, Life and Times, p. 33 cites M'a'ngestu L'ammé'i, M'a'shafa Tazz‘at‘a
Zal'aqa Lamina HaLlLi (Addis Ababa, 1959 E.C.), p. 45. Gobazé could indeed claim
ties to the Gondaré line through either his great-grandfather Wagshum Kenfu or
his mother Aychasb Tadla (see genealogical chart, table 1). Beke argued in 1867
that Gob'azé's claim to the throne was the best of any of the actors on the scene
since Beke's version of the Zagwé contract stated that the Wagshum should
accede to the throne in the absence of a male Solomonic pretender. Beke to
Stanley, 12 April 1867, EC. 401/2.

 

 

41. See Taddesse Tamrat, "Feudalism on Heaven and Earth." Paper presented
at the Seventh International Conference on Ethiopian Studies, Lund, April 1982.

42. Crummey, "Abyssinian Feudalism," pp. 133-36; Aleme Eshete, "General
Examination of Ethiopian Feudalism," Paper presented to the Conference on
Ethiopian Feudalism, Addis Ababa, 1976; Bauer, "Land and Leadership," pp. 113-14.

43. Frederick Gamst, "Peasantries and Elites,".

44. Abba G'abra Masqa'l, interview #6, 5 April 1982. Also see Crummey
"Abyssinian Feudalism," p. 135.

45. Ras Kassa often spoke and wrote about the special place of the poor.
See Ras Kassa's Fenota Ayemro Yawek'at Gudana quoted in Aleme Eshete, "General
Examination."

46. "Ya Ras Kassa Asta'dad'ar," documents #83, 95, 101-102.

47. Ibid. #151.

48. See Assefa Bekele, "Zobel," p. 13.

Part Two:

Lasta in the Imperial System

Chapter Four

Politics on the Northern Periphery: Lasta in the Empire-state 1900-20

Part two of this dissertation places the social and economic institutions of
Lasta and its constituent households in a precise historical setting. Only by
assessing the particular historical context of change in the Ethiopian social
formation is it possible fully to appreciate the adaptive processes at work during
1900-35. In this period, the modern Ethiopian social formation took definitive shape;
state policies penetrated into the local rural economy and effectively challenged
the power base of local elites. Change and adaptation in Lasta and northern
Ethiopia to these conditions took place on a variety of levels, from regional
political appointments to the policies of local tax collection, and including the
basic strategies of household survival. Part two documents these changes and
provides an empirical basis for understanding the political and economic history of
Lasta in the period. It also therefore offers the foundation for a larger comparison
between the growth of the imperial Ethiopian state and the colonial states which
developed elsewhere in Africa during the same period.

The purpose of chapter four is to document the political history of the
imperial state's expansion into northern Ethiopia during 1900-20 and the relationship
between the struggle for control of the central state and conflicts at the level of
local politics. The key events in this period were the struggle for control over the
imperial court in Menilek's final years, the emergence of Ras T'af'ari M'akonn'an as
head of state, and a major rural rebellion in northern Lasta. Also important was

the appointment in 1917 of governors in Wag and Lasta-proper, Wagshum K'abb'a'd'a

140
and Ras Kassa Haylu respectively, who were dependent on the power of the
imperial state. Their political biographies illustrate the new relationship between
local politics and state authority. A major theme of this chapter is to examine th
extent to which access to power and office in rural Lasta rested with the central
state.

Lasta in this period never emerged as a strong regional entity and often was
dismembered in the struggle for personal power among Ethiopia's oligarchs.
Consequently, this regional political history necessarily focuses on the northeast
region, including Tigré, W'allo, and areas adjacent to Lasta where local leadership
sought to forstall central government intervention in their affairs.

Lasta's role in politics of the 1900-20 period reflected its minor position in
the emerging national economy and its eroding production potential. Whether
governed by the product of a local lineage, as in the case of Wag, or by an
absentee governor. like Lasta-proper, Lasta never really determined its own political
fate after 1900. Lacking a strong military or economic foundation, Lasta could not
hope to form a regional power base in its own right, but rather participated in
imperial politics as a part of more viable (and visible) political units like Tigré,
Wallo, or Y'ajju. Political decisions about Lasta increasingly eminated not from
Lasta's own needs or internal processes, but from the exigencies of events and
personalities in Addis Ababa. Local leadership in Lasta-proper and Wag received
state sanction less from the successful manipulation of local legitimacy than by the
ability of particular personalities to draw on alliances and armaments controlled by
Addis Ababa. In fact, far from drawing on its historical traditions of unity, Lasta
began the twentieth-century as two separate political units, Wag and Lasta-proper,

which embarked on paths of separate political development.

141
Life on the Political Margin: Wag and Lasta in Court Politics

The opening of the twentieth century was the apogee of Emperor Menilek's
rule. By the time of his first debilitating strokes in 1906, the emperor had
established full control of a state within its present boundaries. In the "Abyssinian"
north, Tigré had submitted to Addis Ababa and been split between rival factions;
Menilek's brother-in-law and two sons-in-law controlled Yajju. wallo, and B'ag'amder
respectively; a trusted boyhood companion ruled the strategic Lake Tana region.1
After 1906, politics changed considerably and more important struggles took place
at court than on regional battlefields. In the capital, courtiers, elite detainees, and
favorites from Tigre, Y'ajju, W'a'llo, and Shawa intrigued and vied for position in
anticipation of the emperor's death which finally came in 1913.

Lasta's role in imperial politics by then was minimal. The Lastan Wagshum
Gobazé's three-year tenure as emperor (1868-71) had produced few lasting results.
His Tigréan successor Yohannes had effectively reduced the power of the
Wagshum's descendants and local elites by recognizing a collateral ruling line and
expanding the already extensive church land holdings, thus reducing the local
influence of Lasta's military classes.2 In Lasta-proper, Yohannes forcibly retired
Gobazé's half-brother Haylu W'a'ldi-i Kiros, who had served as governor from his
capital at Mujja, and installing his own appointee there.3

The decline of Lasta's political position continued after Yohannes. Upon his
accession to the throne in 1889, Menilek sought to tie Lasta to his own sphere of
influence. He quickly broke down the links between Lasta and Tigré by appointing
Gobazé's brother Berru as Wagshum but denied him Lasta-proper which the
emperor turned over to his own brother-in-law Ras W'alé Betul.4 In 1895, just
prior to the battle of Adwa, Menilek reacted to rumors of Italian collusion with
northern lords by deposing Berru and appointing the Wagshum's more loyal son

Gwangul in his place.5 Unlike his father, Gwangul served as an effective instrument

142
of imperial authority, fighting at Adwa and taking a strong role in putting down
the Tigréan uprising on 1898-99.

Even though Wagshums after Gob'azé enjoyed little influence outside of
their newly truncated Wag governate, court-life at Wag's major town of saqota
was, if not elegant, at least decorous. S'a'qota was a relatively cosmopolitan
mercantile center with a social and political life which centered on the Wagshum
compound. In 1900 Wylde visited Wagshum Gwangul whom he described in
impressive terms. The Wagshum's house and compound made a favorable impression
on the outsider:

The buildings which he (the Wag Cboum) occupies cover an

immense extent, and they and the courtyards are kept very

clean and neat; quite a superior place and more order shown

than in any other establishment that I have yet seen in

Abyssinia....The principle building is one of three stories high,

of square shape, and longer than it is broad. It was built 250

years ago and evidently designed by one who had serve under

the Portuguese or who had travelled in other countries...

Equally as notable to Wylde as the physical structure of the Wagshum's

court was the quality of the reception committee which entertained him amidst silk

curtains and Persian carpets:

...the party assembled consisted of the cboum, his brother, a

cousin, a priest that had been to Jerusalem and talked the

Arabic language very well; another who acted as the cboum's

secretary who had been across the border [to Sudan]: they

were perhaps as enlightened and intelligent a lot as could be

found amrwhere in Abyssinia.

Despite their awareness of the wider world, available evidence suggests that
Wagshum Berru's line followed tried and true strategies of maintaining favor locally
while creating marriage alliances with influencial neighbors. Berru himself had

married Man'an Tadla, a cousin of Emperor Yohannes. While we have little direct

evidence, Berru must have worked closely with local elite and officials to maintain

143

a delicate balance between the consumption and redistribution of the fruits of rural
production. He provided lavish feasts for his supporters, built and repaired
churches, and made it a point of pride to conduct court in the Amharic, Tigré,
and Agau languages. That he holds a very prominent place in almost all
contemporary genealogies attests to his success at manipulating local prerogatives
and winning favor among his rural constituents.8

Berru's actions and subsequent events raise the important question of how
elites in rural society established legitimacy in the face of the growing role of the
central state. Berru's "local" strategy can be contrasted to the approach taken by
Wagshum K‘abb'ad'a of a collateral line descended from the male issue of Wagshum
Kenfu (see figure 5). Kabbada had grown up during the turbulent mid-nineteenth
century when his father, Wagshum T‘afa'ri, spent his time slipping in and out of the
favor of Emperors Yohannes and Tewodros. K'abb'ad'a probably spent his early
years at the court of Téwodros where he learned statecraft and the importance
of personal politics. He may even have known the young Shawan captive Menilek
who Tewodros kept near him at court. K'abb'a'da' first assumed the title Wagshum
by succeeding his father briefly during the reign of Yohannes. When Menilek
selected his rival Berru as Wagshum, K'abb‘a'd'a chose a diplomatic retreat to
Menilek's court. His formative experience at Téwodros' court probably told him
the imperial setting was a more appropriate place for a local pretender than the
local one. Rather than challenge Berru and his family on their own turf, he opted
to invest his time and skill winning favor among the powerful at Addis Ababa.

Kabb'ad'a's strategy proved effective. By 1900 he was one of the best-known
notables at court and a popular raconteur because of his rich experience at three
different imperial courts.9 Tall, thin, and light-skinned, Kabb'ad'a cut a striking
figure. He supported himself and his retainers on income derived from a

"piccolisimo" land grant in southern Shiiwa near the garrison town of Maki. He

144
lived, though, always close to the center of action in Addis Ababa and built a
house a few kilometers beyond Menilek's palace near the church of Qa'chana
Madhana Alain, which be surrounded with the houses of retainers, slaves, and
well-wishers. 10

Among the best placed of Kabbada's friends at court was Ras M'akonn'an,
cousin and confidant of Menilek and father of T'af'ari Makonnan (later heir
apparent and Emperor Hayla Sellasé). What Berru and his line invested locally in
Wag, Kabb'a'd'a' lavished on decision-makers in the capital. Rumors claimed that he
had secretly plied Ras M'akonnan with gifts --on one occasion over 2000 talers and
some 15 Persian rugs-- to gain favor with Menilek.11 The investment appears to
have paid off. In the fall of 1905 when Gwangul Berru died, Menilek appointed
Kabba'd'a as Wagshum, despite a local rebellion in Wag in favor of the Berru line.
When Martini traveled south from Eritréa in the spring of 1906, Kabb'a'd'a had
already taken control of his spoils and greeted him at Kor'am. By that time the
Wagshum had already shown his economic aplomb by negotiating a hides and skins
monopoly agreement with an Indian merchant in the capital.12 Like others, Martini
found his manners and demeanor impressive:

Uagh Scium Chebbede is a man of 50 that much resembles our

Commandatore Capece. He greeted me with much dignity, not

without aloofness. He was dressed in a rich black bournous

embroidered with gold [a sign of the Wagshum (igficeluhis

camp was surrounded by the tents of his sub-chiefs.

Kabb'ada's success was short-lived; his sponsor, Ras M'a'konn'an, died
unexpectedly in 1906 and K'abb'a'da found himself back in Addis Ababa shortly
thereafter. In 1908 Wag and the title Wagshum was given to Gwangul Z'agayy'a', a
Y'ajju native who had married Wagshum Berru's daughter B'a'rbané. The

appointment, however, bore little relevance to Wag politics. It was rather a move

against Empress Taytu and her brother Wale who belonged to a rival Y'a'jju line.

145
Wagshum Gwangul Z'ag'ayy'a' occupied his office for an even shorter time than
Kabbada had. On 25 May 1909, an imperial edict deposed Gwangul and appointed
the Russian-educated and Shawan-born Abat‘a’ Bwayalaw --a favorite of Menilek-- as

. . . . . . - 1
Wagshum With Jurisdiction over Wag and Tigre.‘4

Abat‘a's appointment was
significant, not just because an outsider had received the ancient title. The
imperial government had charged Abatéi with cowing a still recalcitrant Tigre and
taking control of customs revenues .and the salt trade, reflecting the political
center's overall interest in the empire's fiscal structure.

Why Abata received or accepted the title of Wagshum remains unclear and a
point for debate among students of Ethiopian political history. He had no family
ties in the area, nor could he gain much influence as governor of an area so
distant from the capital. Moreover, Menilek's health and mental competency were
then in serious question. Marcus claims that the Shawan faction. at court pushed
for his appointment to the north to neutralize the power of Empress T aytu's Yajju
faction there and to prevent them from solidifying a pan-northern alliance with
Tigre.15 Oral sources, including the present Wagshum, argue that the empress
appointed Abata as a cat's paw to rid the capital of the hot-beaded Shawan and to
eliminate Tigre as a rival to Y'a'jju in imperial politics.16 Subsequent events
support the oral evidence.

In October 1909 Wag became directly involved in the machinations of the
imperial court. As Wagshum Abata marched north to Wag and Tigré, Dajach
Abraha Araya, an Italian-educated grandson of Emperor Yohannes, raised a rebellion
in Tigré to resist what he doubtlessly perceived as a Shawan takeover of his
hereditary prerogatives. As governor of Endarta, Abraha bad controlled salt
resources and important customs stations; he therefore had much to lose if the
central government succeeded in controlling trade. With him were his cousin D'ajach

Siyum, Dajach Dasta, his son-in-law and son of Wagshum Gwangul Berru, as well as

146

another son—in-law Dajach Haylu, the son of Wagshum Kabb'a'da. These latter two
had marriage ties to Abraha, but also must have felt the affront of having a
Sh'awan appointed Wagshum. Abraha had failed to get the support of his fellow
Tigréans Da'jach G'abra Sellasé and Ras Sebhat, but nevertheless marched south
on 30 September 1909 with 3000 soldiers and peasant militia. Wag did not take a
passive role; Italian reports from the scene reported that almost all of the Wag
officials, gult-shum, and peasant soldiers supported Abraha},7

The two armies met at Koram on 9 October 1909. Abat'a's well-armed troops
had been joined by Tigréan followers of Abraha's rival Ras Sebhat and by Yajju
soldiers sent as reinforcements by the empress. Abata had also reinforced his 3300
troops with some 1500 peasant/soldiers from eastern Wag who foresaw the outcome
and took the opportunity to join the winning side and to partake in the booty
likely to follow victory. They had judged the military situation correctly; after an
initial set-back, Abata's better-armed and supplied troops routed the Tigréan army
and captured Abraha and about 800 of his followers.18

Abat'a's victory considerably strengthened his own and the Sh'awan position
at court. He therefore offered a serious threat to the empress who had increased
her own personal influence after Menilek's October 25th stroke and paralysis. She
therefore arranged to reduce Abat'a's appointment by taking away western Tigré
and Wag. On 26 December 1909 she removed him from Tigré altogether. Abata
returned to Shawa with his troops for the requisite victory parade and celebration,
a certain boon to the fortunes of Taytu's Sh'awan opponents and to the young
grandson ‘of Menilek, Lej Eyasu, who had been dubbed alga m (heir apparent)
the year' before.

Taytu still hoped that her nephew, Ras Gugsa walé, married to Menilek's
daughter Zia'wditu, could accede to the throne. Foreseeing the problems of a

victorious Sh'a'wan army marching through the streets of the capital at a moment of

147
crisis when control of the court hung in the balance, the empress pressured the
imperial ministers into issuing a proclamation ordering Abata to halt his march at
Jerru in northern Shame and to turn his arms over to her brother Ras W'alé.
While she had bullied her Shawan enemies into agreeing to halt Abata, she had
clearly gone too far. Five months later in March 1910, forces supporting Lej Eyasu
and his Shawan regent Ras Tas'amma surrounded her residence with armed guards

19 In that same year the Y'a'jju

and removed her from governmental decision-making.
faction's power base collapsed completely. The Sh'awan forces who supported the
regent and Eyasu's father Ras Mikael of W'allo, deposed both Ras W'alé from
Y'ajju and his son Ras Gugsa from Bagamder. These events had important
implications for the northern political economy. They weakened northern influence
in the empire and contributed to the further shift of power away from Lasta and
toward Addis Ababa.

The resulting array of new appointments made in the capital strengthened
the Sh'awan position at court and probably greatly pleased Ras Mikaél in W'allo
who had eliminated W'alé, his northern rival. In April, the coalition at court had
carefully divided Tigré between rival descendants of Yohannes and given part of
Y‘cijju, Wello, and some important lowland zones to Ras Mikael. In May, the Shwan
governor of the rich southern province of Kaffa, Ras W'alda Giyorgis, moved his
large army. grown fat on the rich revenues of the south, to Bézig'aimder.20

Events at the center, once again, had local repercussions in Lasta. One of
Taytu's moves against Abata' had been to appoint Wagshum Berru's son Germay as
Wagshum in February 1910, the fourth appointment there since 1900. Lasta-proper,
which had been in control of Ras W'alé and Yajju since Menilek's accession,
became part of the political spoils. So as not to allow Mikaél to profit overly

from the deposition of his rival, the government of Ras T'aisamma appointed

Wagshum Gwangul Z'a'g'ayy'a to Lasta-proper and the half of Y'ajju not occupied by

148

Mikael. For the government, Gwangul had the dual advantage of not belonging to
a family with national ambitions and the ability to draw on his Y'ajju heritage and
marriage to the Wagshum's daughter to aid in establishing his legitimacy locally.

Gwangul faced an uphill battle in assuming his new position. When Ras
Wia’lé had turned himself in to the central government he had left his son Amdé
in charge of Yajju with a substantial army. Like a number of northern dignitaries,
Gwangul had remained in Addis Ababa since his 1909 deposition. He therefore relied
completely on imperial backing. In July of 1911 he set out with Dajach Siyum of
Tigré to rendezvous with Mikael before the rains made river beds impassable. In
the first week of August, the height of the rains, the combined imperial forces
under Gwangul, Mikael, and Siyum faced Amdé in a four-hour battle at Téf
Wuha. north of Weldiya on the road to Lasta. Gwangul took Amdé prisoner,
occupied the Y‘cijju capital at Marto. and declared himself governor of Y'a'jju and
Lasta-proper.21

Kassa Haylu and the Fortunes of Lasta-Proper

Even with the defeat of the empress, affairs in Addis Ababa remained fairly
murky. The forces backing Lej Eyasu gradually obtained support from increasingly
powerful southern governors over the Shawan forces and their allies. A partial
resolution to the impasse came when Lej Eyasu's forces moved against Abata', now
r_as, and imprisoned him in wane, thus silencing Sh'awan critics. Perhaps as a last
gasp of Sh'awan influence before Eyasu took complete control, during the 1912
celebration of the Orthodox Christmas, the imperial government named a young
Shawan, Dajach Kassa Haylu, as the governor of Lasta-proper. His appointment
there complemented his holdings in Siilalé, a rich region between Addis Ababa and
the Blue Nile.

As governor of Lasta-proper, Kassa brought a number of useful advantages to

the central government. He had strong affective links to members of the Sh'a'wan

149
court because of his long-time association with Menilek's powerful uncle Ras
Dargé, and yet he also traced his ancestry to Lasta and the Gond'ar emperors (see
figure 5). He was a religiously pious, conservative reformer who had proven himself
during the conquest of Arsi and the administration of Loyya, a small district in
southern Shawa.

Kassa was the progeny of a nineteenth-century political marriage between
the ruling houses of Shawa and Lasta. On taking the throne as Emperor T'a'kl'a
Giyorgis, Wagshum Gob'azé had requested his nominal vassal Menilek to send a
female member of the royal house to marry his half-brother D'a'jach Haylu walda
Kiros, then governor of Lasta-proper. Menilek sent Wayzaro Tesamé, daughter of
his uncle Ras Dargé. D'a’jach Haylu was the son of the influencial Lasta cleric
M'agabi waldé Kiros and Aycljfash T'a'dla of the Lasta and Gond'a'r ruling houses.
The marriage between Haylu and Tesamé was apparently not a happy one; the
birth of their first child, Kassa, was long delayed, and the couple divorced soon
afterward. Separated from his parents, Kassa spent his first eight years with his
paternal grandfather in Lasta where he learned to read and write in both Ge'ez
and Amharic, impressing his teachers with his ability and motivation.

In 1889 Menilek summoned the eight-year old Kassa to Sh’a’wa and put him in
the care of his maternal grandfather, Ras Dargé who schooled him in the
scriptures, the arts of warfare, and government affairs. As a young man, Kassa
participated in the conquest of Arsi and accompanied Menilek on the campaigns to
Zeway and Walayta. He received some 200 g_a_sl_i_a_§ (c. 8000 hectares) of land in
Arsi as reward for his services; he distributed this land as usufruct to his loyal
retainers.

Kassa therefore had an excellent vantage point on the changes taking place
in Ethiopia. Having witnessed the expansion of Sh'awan interests south, Kassa was

well aware of the economic and political processes which formed the foundation of

150
modern Ethiopia. His administrative practices showed the effect of this formative
experience. Kassa also participated in northern campaigns which affirmed
government control of Tigre (1898-99), Wallo (1894), and of the entire north at
the battle of Adwa (1896). Having participated in the founding processes of the
modern empire-state, Kassa accepted the governorship of Loyya in 1901 and began
his successful administrative career, taking the title of Dajazmach and his
grandfather's territory of S'alalé in 1909. In that year he served as Ethiopia's
representative at the coronation in London and later visited Jerusalem. He
apparently made a good impression on Europeans he met and the Italian minister
Cora described the young Kassa as "serious, intelligent, and quite modern."22

The 1912 appointment to Lasta-proper, therefore, came as no surprise. Kassa
had served his apprenticeship and even though he had not been home to Lasta
since the age of eight, his nomination nevertheless was a natural one. It took into
account Lasta's local sensibilities as well as putting it in the hands of a trusted
member of the central government.

However logical the appointment, it was short-lived. By mid-1913 Ras Mikael
and Lej Eyasu had effectively removed decision-making from Shawan interests and
began a steady expansion of their northern holdings. On the 3rd of April, Wagshum
Gwangul died at Marto in Y'ajju. Mikael moved quickly and appointed his son
Hayla Maryam to Y'ajju, passing over Gwangul's brothers and sons. That same
month Wagshum Germay and Kassa lost their governates to Mikaél's other son
Ga'br'a Hiywot who took the title Wagshum. Kassa retained his southern territories
while Germay retired south to join the growing pool of dismissed and disgruntled
notables in Addis Ababa.23

In early 1914, the political make-up of northern Ethiopia underwent another
serious shock which further limited its role in empire-wide politics. In February

Tigréan rivalries over tax collection rights, salt customs, and the mantle of

151

Emperor Yohannes erupted into hostilities. D'a'jach Gabr'a' Sellasé, the ambitious
and pro-Italian governor of Adwa, had been accused by his rival Ras Sebhat of
conspiring with the Eritrean government. While responding to a convocation to
Addis Ababa, Gabra Sellasé received word that Sebhat had moved to occupy
Adwa. He turned his army on his rival; in the ensuing battle Ras Sebhat and two
of his sons died. The third Tigréan leader, D'ajach Siyum, responded by mobilizing
his troops at M'aq'alé. Rather than face Siyum and the wrath of Eyasu's
government, G‘a'br'ei Sellasé retreated towards Eritrea and the protection of his
Italian patrons.24

A crisis in internal politics and international relations followed. Northern
Ethiopia mobilized; calls went out in market places for soldier/peasants to collect
provisions for the march to Tigré. Ras W'ald'a' Giyorgis collected 30,000 men from
among his Shawan garrison and Gondar constituents and marched on Adwa. In the
east, Ras Mikael ordered his close advisor Ras Yimer to collect troops from
Lasta, Zobul, and Yajju. Five thousand Lastans responded to the call.25 From
February through March, northern Ethiopia remained in a state of readiness with
concentrations of mobilized and armed peasant soldiers in Tigré and on Lasta's
northeastern frontier.26

The crisis quickly abated, however, in the face of realities on the ground in

27 Environmental conditions in northern Ethiopia would not have

northern Ethiopia.
permitted a war, a fact which partially determined northern Ethiopia's political
configuration for the following two years. Ras W‘alda' Giyorgis' largely Sh'a'wan army
had marched north from Gonda'r into a virulent epidemic of dystentery which
quickly infected his troops. An estimated 2000 men died along with 5000 mules.
Whatever plans he might have had to occupy Tigré permanently for Sh'a'wan

28

interests quickly vanished and he withdrew his forces to Bag'amder. On Tigré's

eastern flank, D'ajach Yimer also reacted to the epidemic and lack of provisions by

152
dispersing his Yajju and Lasta troops.29 The conditions in Tigre, possibly more
than assurances from Addis Ababa, convinced the Eritréan authorities that no real
threat existed.

W'alda’ Giyorgis' withdrawal gave a free hand to Mikael and Eyasu who
quietly asserted their advantage. On 31 May 1914 at Dasé, the Orthodox patriarch
crowned Mikaél as n,e_g_u_s of Wéillo and Tigre. Immediately after his coronation,
the new nggus consolidated his position by naming D‘cijach Siyum as his governor in
Tigre and promoting his own son Wagshum G'abra Hiywot to r_a_s_ in charge of Wag
and Lasta.30 With Mikaél's northern suzerainty assured, Eyasu and his supporters
controlled all of Menilek's empire but the southeastern edge which remained in the
hands of the young T'af'ari Makonn'a'n.

Lasta formed only a peripheral part of Mikaél's northern domain. But far
from being an absentee administrator, his son G'a'bra Hiywot spent his three years
in office playing an active role in the governing the region. He resided at S'aqota
and Kor'am and attempted to establish local legitimacy by tracing his descent
--through his mother's side-- to the Wagshum line.31 Moreover, he seems to have
relied on existing local officials to govern under him rather than importing officials
from his father’s court in W'allo. Mikaél's effect on Lasta affairs, however,
consisted of more than his son's appointment there. He actively controlled virtually
all of the lowlands to the east and channeled their tribute directly to his court at
D'asé. These areas had been significant to Lasta's rural economy since they were
sources for tribute in salt, cattle, and firearms, as a locus for raiding. The loss of
these lowland connections to Lasta was a significant blow to local elite income.
Mikaél's promptness in putting these zones under his direct control suggests their
importance to the financial structure of authority in northern Ethiopia.32 By the

end of 1914 Lasta's political identity had merged with the administratively larger

153
unit controlled by Mikael whose control of the northeast, in turn, formed the

foundation of Eyasu's Ethiopia.

Lasta and the Rise of Ras T'af'ari's Ethiopia

By the autumn of 1916, Lej Eyasu's enigmatic policies and willingness to
treat with Muslim elements in the east and southeast spurred the opposition party
to action.33 On 27 September 1916 at the celebration for the feast of M'a'sq'a'l, the
Ethiopian Orthodox patriarch Abuna Takla' Haymanot released the populace from
their oath of allegiance to Eyasu and excommunicated him. A thirteen-point
declaration addressed by Echagé W'alda' Giyorgis to the patriarch outlined the
evidence against Eyasu and accused him of converting to Islam.34

Replacing Eyasu was not an easy task and the Sh'awan oligarchs who had
agreed on the need for change had to compromise on a structure which diffused
power/between three figures. Menilek's daughter Zéwditu emerged as the choice for
the throne, Ras Taf'ari Ma'konnan stepped forward as the heir to the throne and
actual head of government, and a council of ministers led by the defense minister
Fitawrari Habt'a Giyorgis shared decision-making. The military aspect of the coup
ended on 22 October 1916 when a Sh'awan army drawn from its support base of
southern landlords defeated the assembled forces of Mikael at S'a’galé in northern
Shawa. The Sh'awan army captured Mikaél and brought him in chains to Addis
Ababa. Eyasu, however, had avoided capture by slipping out of Har'ar shortly before
his deposition and heading north where he spent the next five years at-large.35

The coup was a compromise between progressive and conservative elements
in the capital, but a clear success for Sh'awans at court and those oligarchs whose
future lay in the control of land and commodity production in southern Ethiopia.

From the Lasta perspective, the coup revealed the north's economic and political

weakness. With the unpopular Mikael gone, the north, and Lasta in particular,

154
retained only a fragmented leadership in no position to challenge Sh‘a’wan
suzerainty. The change removed Mikaél from the scene, but left only a fragmented
structure of leadership in his place.

Yet, northern Ethiopia had chafed under Mikaél's rule and had, for the
most part, joined in the military forces Opposing him. Dajach Siyum brought his
Tigre forces against his rear and joined the formidable army of Ras W'alda
Giyorgis. D'ajach Kassa Haylu, the deposed governor of Lasta-proper, also
maneuvered to Mikaél's rear with his S'alalé cavalry. The sextogenarian Wagshum
Kabb'ada allied with the Sh'awa group he had long cultivated. He had virtually no
military contribution to make but undoubtedly viewed Mikaél's defeat as a means
of regaining his prerogatives and perquisites in Wag.

The reshuffling of power in Addis Ababa had almost immediate repercussions
in Lasta. When Ras G'a'br'a Hiywot left Wag to join his father's forces at Dasé,
his Wag constituents refused to follow him, revolted, and cut the road to the
south. D'ajach Kassa Berru, son of Wagshum Berru, had remained quiescent for
years in his small sub-district south of Séqota, suddenly declared himself heir to
his father's title, collected his local soldiery, and marched north. On 26 October
«four days after Mikaél's defeat-- he attacked Koram, killed the _r_a_s's
representative there and burned both the r_a_s' compound and the Italian telegraph
office. He then marched on Séqota where he pronounced himself chief of the
region.36 Kassa obviously felt that his local service and possession of S'a'qota
would persuade the new imperial government to acknowledge in the old way his
claim to the Wagshumship. But the politics of the empire-state had already begun
moving in new directions.

In the series of appointments which followed the battle of Segalé, a new
array of leadership emerged. In November Ras walé, though old, nearly blind, and

in poor health, received his old governates of Lasta-proper and Yajju. This

155

appointment was only a temporary measure. Nine months later and shortly before
W'a'lé's death, Taf'a'ri withdrew Lasta-proper from Yajju control and gave it to the

newly promoted Ras Kassa Haylu.37 In March 1917, Wagshum Kabb'ad'a's long-term
strategies paid off once more and he received his appointment to a rebellious Wag
under Kassa Berru's de facto control.38 The ways in which the new governors of
Lasta established themselves in their new territories, linked themselves to the
politics of the center, and organized the material basis for their rule illustrates

Lasta's position in the emerging Ethiopian social formation.

Imperial Politics and Rebellion in the New Periphery

In the aftermath of Taf'ari's rise to power and the battery of new
appointments which followed, the directions of change in the political economy of
Lasta and the modern Ethiopian state began to emerge slowly. Northern Ethiopia
had a much less influencial role in the new economic and political reality than did
the transplanted elites who controlled regions to the south and southwest. Imperial
control of the process of allocation and utilization of conquered southern areas
with recently alienated lands made cash revenues readily available and the loyalty
of soldier/settlers more predictable than their northern counterparts. Lasta, Tigré,
and Ya'jju were significantly less productive than newly opened southern areas. The
fragmented land holdings and localized loyalties of northern soldiers and lower-level
officials made their attachment to imperial authority rather fragile and capricious.
Predictably, the central government began a slow, but calculated policy of relying
on the support of southern-based revenues and soldiery while working gradually to
erode the traditional independence of the north by appointing officials loyal to the
imperial court and by weakening the local elite's economic base (see chapter six).

Lasta was the first of the traditional polities on the northern periphery to

be put directly under the control of agents of the central government. Ras Kassa's

156

appointment to Lasta-proper in 1917 pulled that region directly into the sphere of
the central state. Despite his Lasta family ties, Kassa was purely a Shawan,
trusted at court, and economically dependent on his lands in Shawa and Arsi. In
1917, in addition to receiving Lasta, he was given responsiblity by Taf'a'ri for
pacifying wane and capturing the elusive Eyasu.39

Lasta-proper in 1917 was an economically insignificant part of Kassa's
administrative responsiblities, which included S'a'lalé, part of Arsi, M'ar'abété, and
Borana (in wallo).40 Although interested in Lasta's churches and religious life, his
reformist policies responded to the overall needs of his governates from the
perspective of his administrative capital of Fiché in S'alalé and, after 1930, from
Addis Ababa. Although connected to Lasta and willing to use his family ties there
to establish legitimacy, Ras Kassa was an absentee administrator. From the time he
left Lalibala at age eight until the Italian occupation, Kassa visited Lasta only
twice, once in 1912 shortly after his appointment there and again in 1936 during
his retreat from the Italian army.‘11

Kassa appointed resident governors to Lasta, almost always from among his
relatives from among the Lasta line. These officials served at Mujja, then the
capital of Lasta-proper. His first governor there was, in fact, his father Dajach
Haylu who had served in that role under Wagshum Gobazé. On Haylu's death in
1920, Kassa appointed a Sh'a'wan, a certain Fitawrari warqnah Mulat, but quickly
replaced him with Fitawrari W'arranya, a distant Lasta relative. Fitawrari Yifat, a
rehabilitated rebel and former retainer of Ras Ga'bra Hiywot, followed after the
death of W'arr'anya; Kassa's cousin Fitawrari B'a'zza accepted the post in 1928, but
died shortly thereafter in the Raya-Azébo rebellion of 1928-30 (see chapter five).

These governors supervised tax collection and distribution, acted as appellate

judges, and appointed some local state representatives. They were not autonomous,

157
but reported directly to Kassa and none had a power base independent of the
imperial sanction.

In 1919, Kassa added another level of administration above these resident
governors when he turned over responsibility for all his northern holdings to his
son W'andb'awass'a'n who supervised Lasta's resident governors from his base in
Borana in southwestern W'a'llo. After the 1930 rebellion when Bagamder joined
Kassa's territory, Wia'ndb'aw'ass'a'n moved to D'abréi Tabor, but retained control of
Lasta-proper.42

The structure and functioning of Kassa's court and his administrative system
offers important insights into the development of modern administrative techniques
and how the central state managed to usurp the power of the local elite. The
register of proclamations, appointments, and procedures kept by Ras Kassa from
1919-35 provides an excellent empirical base for evaluating these procedures.
Despite the layering of the state apparatus through the appointments of his sons
and resident administrators, Kassa took a fairly active role in determining policies
and procedures in his areas, including Lasta. The gas was a conservative reformer
who sought to standardize administrative procedures, introduce record-keeping, and
to instill his own sense of Christian austerity on his subordinates. According to
those who served at his court at Fiche and later at Addis Ababa, Kassa took an
active role in appointing state officials down to the local level. He provided
written administrative guidelines which he issued to each of his governors, judges,
and mesl'ané on their taking office. The [as employed a staff of some 60 full-time
scribes to copy administrative ledgers, record his proclamations for general
distribution, and to redact religious tracts, all important administrative innovations.
He advocated similar procedures for each of the governors who served under him.
This central control over regional administrators contrasted sharply with the

practice during Menilek's rule.43

158

Nevertheless, the gas differentiated between his various territories in
significant ways. Criteria for appointment to office emphasized merit, but also
previous experience in office; sons often followed fathers where local family ties
were entrenched. Densely settled areas such as Lasta-proper certainly allowed less
flexibility in merit-based appointments than did newly conquered areas in the south
or where more land was available for settlement. Moreover, Lastans seem to have
enjoyed special privileges at court. At Fiché, Lastans who arrived with an appeal
or to deliver messages were received by their own Chamberlain, a fellow Lastan.
and accommodated in a special section of town inhabited exclusively by Lasta
migrants. Many of the officers in Kassa's army were Lastans and many others

46 Lasta's

served as judges, and administrators elsewhere in Kassa's holdings.
special treatment from the r_a_s_ derived from his interest in its churches, not its
economic value.

Lasta-proper also enjoyed another advantage, since rich areas like S'alalé,
Gul'alé, and Arsi provided more than enough income for the maintenance of Kassa's
army and court. Kassa therefore did not personally claim much land in Lasta, nor
did he require an ostentatious flow of income from there to support his activities
in the capital. Lasta produced little tribute anyway because its increasingly
unproducive land barely supported the military and ecclesiastical classes resident
there. Moreover, Kassa constantly increased the size of church-administered lands
at the expense of lands supporting the military class, thus reducing the income
available for civilian personnel in Lasta and for transfer to Addis Ababa.47 This
factor cut both ways, though, for while Lasta received a ”subsidy" by not having
to support its elite at the capital, it enjoyed little consideration when decisions
were made on the basis of the needs of the more important revenue-generating

zones. Kassa's personal ties to the Lasta did not hinder pragmatic decision-making

when it came to the economic basis of his rule.

159

The circumstances in which Lasta-proper found itself after 1917 can be
usefully contrasted with the situation in Wag in 1917 where Wagshum Kabb'ad'a
assumed command. Both areas had experienced political instability at higher levels
during the 1900-17 period which had essentially left local elites in strong control
of grassroots affairs.46 Both Kassa’s and the Wagshum's appointments had relied on
the favor they had won in Sh'awan politics rather than in legitimacy established
through local criteria. Unlike Lasta-proper, however, Wag under K'abbada' was not
part of a larger administrative unit, but was the sole holding of its governor thus
requiring Wag producers to bear the entire burden of supporting the Wagshum's
court in Wag and in Addis Ababa.

The smooth administrative transfer of power made in Lasta-proper under
Kassa also contrasts with Wagshum K'abb'a'da's serious problems in establishing
himself in Wag. Beginning in early 1917, the entire eastern zone of Ethiopia from
W‘allo north to Eritrea broke out in a series of raids launched from highland areas
into lowland agricultural and pastoral zones. Raiding activity around northern Wag
and Lake Ashangi was especially fierce with Christian highlanders attacking Muslim
Oromo. A cycle of raids and reprisals ensued. That these raids took place during
normal harvest months suggests the seriousness of the damage done to crops by
pests and drought in highland zones (see chapter two).47 As argued below, crises in
Wag household economics stimulated this form of resistance to the state as much
as any political consideration involved. Those local elite who sought to resist state
control understood the relationship and used it to advantage.

In February of 1917, one month before Kabbad'a's formal appointment, the
central government had already committed itself to removing the popular and
self-styled ruler of Wag, Kassa Berru. W‘ald‘a' Giyorgis (crowned new in 1917), then
at Dasé, sent a number of Wagshum K'a'bb'ad'a's collateral kin with troops to

Séqota to pry Kassa loose from his strong position there. On 17 February, Kassa

160
marched to meet them at Béla, three hours south of Séqota. At eight in the
morning the two armies of 1000 men met. Kassa Berru was the aggressor and won
an initial skirmish. The battle turned quickly against him, though, when his cousin
Dajach D'a'sta Gwangul, who had joined the government's side, attacked his right
flank with three hundred men. The encounter ended at noon with the capture of
Kassa and his son walda Gabraél.

The violence of the battlefield spilled over into the surrounding area and the
victorious soldiers --many were peasants whose harvests had failed-- raided nearby
villages. Raids south 0f S'dqota continued for four days; victims included caravans
which yielded cash and weapons. and peasant compounds which offered grain and
livestock. Escaping the scene, D'ajach D'a'sta retired to a neighboring village,
perhaps expecting that his cooperation with state-appointed forces would lead to
his appointment as Wagshum.48 He was disappointed.

Three weeks after Kassa Berru's defeat, the central government officially
named K'abb'ada' as governor of Wag. He quickly appointed the victors at Béla,
Dajachs Takkué and M'asgé, as his representatives at S'aqota and Korém
respectively. Kassa Berru's support remained strong though, especially around
Koram where the Italian telegrapher reported that the "paesani" refused to accept
any of K'abbad'a's proclamations. On 11 March, Kassa's supporters around S'a'qota
took revenge on D'ajach Dasta, attacking him and killing almost all of his men.49

Throughout May the unrest continued amidst poor "small rains" harvests and
swarms of locust in the fields. Kassa Berru, ostensibly the cause of peasant
disaffection, remained imprisoned on a mountain top in Wag. Kabbad'a's
representatives resisted demands for his release, and in late May cattle merchants
arriving in Tigré reported that peasants had attacked D'a'jach Masgé and his ally
D‘cijach Wiild‘a' Ta'kl'a near S‘dqota. Two sons of the latter were taken prisoner and

some 100 died. The fighting closed the direct route from Wag to M'a'qa’lé.50

161

On 30 June, Wagshum Kabb'ad'a' finally arrived at saqota with his son Haylu,
the prisoner Kassa, and D'ajach Masgé. As an act of conciliation he promised to
release Kassa and began issuing his first proclamations. He ordered that all goods
and livestock taken in the February raids be returned and that peasants should
collect provisions (£131,531) and bring them to Koram where the Wagshum planned to
meet Ras Siyum on his return to Tigre from Addis Ababa.51

The Wagshum's arrival and the advent of the rains did not dampen the
general unrest among the rural population. In mid-July, lowland Oromo attacked
Zobul and killed the government's representative there. Highland raiding parties in
turn moved south and attacked the Qobbo area, rendering the Qobbo-Y'ajju route
unsafe for travel. Again this general discontent coalesced into opposition to
Kabbada. On 21 July the local notables of W'afla held a meeting in the Kora'm
marketplace; they agreed not to allow the Wagshum to enter the town and
exhorted the local population to oppose him. No one had yet returned any of the
booty from the February incidents, nor had K'a'bbad'a' received the customary tribute
due to him on taking office.52

Sometime during the summer of 1917 the Wagshum released Kassa, perhaps
to mollify the population. The tactic proved extremely ill-advised, since Kassa
immediately moved east to wafla and raised a strong following. In October,
Kabbada' issued a proclamation to the populace to come to arms at Kor'am. It fell
on deaf ears --most of the W'afla population had already committed themselves to
Kassa. Without a local support base, the Wagshum drew on his real strength and
called on the central government for help. Troops arrived from Negus W'ald‘a'
Giyorgis, the central government's closest ally in the north, and Ras Siyum of
Tigre. The Wagshum's support from the central state clearly outweighed Kassa

Berru's local strength.53

162

Italian sources on the 1917 rebellion in Wag, while fairly detailed, provide
very little sense of the ideological or economic foundations of the apparently
deep-seated resistance to Kabb'ad'a's authority. Yet political ideology must have
played an important part in local decisions about whose authority to accept and
what constituted legitimate exercise of power. Kassa Berru's harangues to
supporters and claims to his father's title together with his acquired knowledge of
local genealogies and sensibilities were probably sprinkled with derisive comments
about Kabb'ad'a's urbane tastes and long-standing residence outside of Wag.
Kabb'ad'a's supporters could have countered that a Wagshum's authority ultimately
derived from imperial sanction; the fact that K'abb'a'd'a was unable easily to recount
his local ancestry was therefore irrelevant.54

At the local level the two rivals did not engage in a direct dialogue with
the peasant population. Rather, the two sides vied for influence among the local
gult-shums, dambanya, and balabats who controlled the military service obligations
of peasant militia and who directly held the rights of income collection. With a
potential change in regional-level leadership, these rights of access to
peasant-produced resources, customs, and tribute hung in the balance. Kabb'ada's
arrival threatened the economic and social privilege of local elite attached to
Kassa Berru and his family who had maintained their local positions during
Mikaél's rule. It was the concern over class privilege at the local level which was
the economic and political basis for rural rebellion in northern Ethiopia. The local
evidence from written and oral sources indicates that peasant soldiers did not rebel
along class lines, but rather responded to stress by attaching themselves to local
notables who had promised them a part of the redistributed rewards of victories
and offices won.

One must recall as well that the 1917-18 period was one of extreme

environmental dislocation in Tigré and Lasta. Generalized conditions of drought,

163
insect invasions, and influenza created severe economic strains locally until well
into 1920. These conditions threatened peasant subsistence and increased the
willingness to resort to violence to provide the means for the survival of household
economies at the local level.

There is good circumstantial evidence which links the Wag rebellion in 1917
to ecological stress. First, the rebellion coincided with the second great locust
invasion of northeast Ethiopia in the twentieth century and an equally damaging
infestation of army worms. Second, the rebellion and intensive raiding continued
through planting and harvest seasons which normally would have kept peasant
soldiers close to their own fields and those of their local churches or gult-shums.
Raiding and looting were a means of making up for short rains, crops lost to
insects, and the consequent harvest shortfalls. Indeed, ideology was important in
this context as well, since threats to production in Wag prompted producers to
associate the coming of new political leadership with environmental challenges to
their subsistence ethic. A song popular among cynical Wag peasants indicated their
feelings about K'a'bb'ad'a's arrival:

Fitawrari déyri d'aj'a'né anbata

Mennaw endabata'h atent'ah bam'ata

First came the army worm with the locust right behind [and

then you”

Why didn't you assess the situation before coming like your

father before you?”

The rebellion continued throughout Wag into the spring of 1918, well after
Kassa Berru's capture. In April, the population of W'afla rebelled and imprisoned
the three administrators sent by Kabb'ada. While Ras Siyum moved south to
reconcile the wafla people to the Wagshum, D'a'jach Haylu, Ras Kassa's governor in
Lasta-proper, reported rebellion as well. Appealing to regional loyalites, the

Wagshum contacted Ras Gugsa Araya in Tigré with an appeal that "if you help me

164
I will not appeal directly to Addis Ababa."56 Wag's neighbors to the north were
anxious to avoid the presence of imperial troops on their border, but their attempts
at conciliation did not find immediate results.
By summer, the situation in all of Lasta was worse; D'ajach Haylu at Mujja
found himself surrounded by rebels, and the Wagshum pleaded for military
intervention by the Tigréan governor Gugsa Araya who ordered his troops to

h.57 In August the central government

prepare their provisions for the march sout
stepped in and ordered Ras Siyum to aid Gugsa in reconciling K'abb'ada to his
people. By the end of the month an agreement emerged by which the Wagshum's
son, Haylu, took control over Wa'fla. Italian observers speculated that local rebels
preferred submission to having to quarter Shawan troops.58

After the rains, K'abbada used the newly won peace in the northeast to
strengthen his position. He gathered troops and moved south across the Méri river
to Bugna, Wag's richest and most fertile district. Control of Bugna had long been
a Wag prerogative and since 1910 it had been in the hands of D'a'jach Bazz'ab'ah,
brother-in-law of Kassa Berru, who kept himself out of the earlier squabbles
--probably because the area's greater productivity had put less stress on the area's
peasant population. Kabb'a'd‘a' nevertheless considered him a threat and also wanted
to control the rich prizes of gult and customs which he preferred to distribute
among his own followers.59 Events which followed suggest the extent to which
central government power had reduced local prerogative.

On 20 October, the Wagshum's troops attacked Dajach B'a'zz'abah's Bugna
levies and those of his cousin D'ajach Betul. The Wagshum won the day; the Bugna
ruler retired to Lalib'ala and put himself under the protection of Ras Kassa's
representative there.60 By the end of November, accounts of the conflict had

reached Addis Ababa and compelled the empress to summon both the Wagshum and

B'azz'abah to the capital to account for their actions. The resolution of the Bugna

165

question waited until 1919. Meanwhile Tigréan forces helped put down another
rebellion in eastern Wag.

The result of the imperial adjudication could not have pleased the Wagshum.
Far from giving control of the district to Ka'bba'da', the empress took it completely
out of his control and awarded it to Ras Kassa as a part of his Lasta-proper
governate. The r_a_§ rubbed further salt in the wound by reinstating B'azz'abah as his
representative there. Moreover, the imperial decree appointed Dajach K'abbad'a
Gwangul, Kassa Berru's cousin, to Wéifla. Bugna's shift into the hands of Ras Kassa
considerably weakened Wag's economic base while strengthening the central state's
hand in the northeast.61

With the return of the seasonal rains in 1919, the ending of the influenza
epidemic, and the extension of central government power over the affairs of the
northeast, the next eight years were politically stable and Lasta dropped out of
European reports on local politics in the north. Oral sources indicate that Wag and
Lasta-proper in the 1920-28 period enjoyed a political calm which the previous two
decades had not afforded. Political stability paralleled ecological stability, an
additional argument for the relationship between rebellion and ecology. As the
administrations of Ras Kassa and Wagshum Kabb'a'd'a settled in and attempted to
reproduce a stable relationship between rural producers and administrators, they did
so under new circumstances which in turn brought on subtle, but significant

changes in rural society.

Conclusion: Fiscalism and Imperial Policy in Northern Ethiopia
Imperial government attempts to control the political affairs of northern
Ethiopia extended well beyond the desire for internal peace and the protection of
sensitive relations with limitrophe powers. From the beginning of Emperor Menilek's

reign in 1889, the center of the empire-state in Shawa had attempted to regularize

166
state income by controlling customs, frontier tributes, and the flow of commodities
from newly absorbed southern provinces. After 1900 the cost of modernity
compelled the imperial government to pursue policies of "fiscalism" «the increasing
of revenue through more efficient control of tax revenues. This policy meant a
growing role for the state in the collection of tax revenue and their direct
transfer to the capital.

In northern Ethiopia the possibilities for generating income convertible to
international tender were few. Most surplus, either in cash or in kind, was tied up
in the support of the rural elite. Of these, only customs revenues from the salt
trade and lowland tribute yielded cash or goods easily convertible to cash. The
desire to obtain this revenue and to control its collection was one of the major
central government policies in northern Ethiopia in the first third of the twentieth
century.

Early attempts directly to control the revenue from the salt trade has mixed
results. In 1909 when D'ajach Abat'a took the title Wagshum and marched to Tigré,
Italian observers remarked less on the political ramifications than the fact that
Abat'a had been charged with collecting two-thirds of the customs revenue on salt,

62 During his brief

an income which they estimated at 100,000 talers per year.
period of hegemony in the north, Ras Mikaél's first priority had been to
consolidate lowland zones under his own authority and to monoploize the income
derived from them.

After the 1916 accession of Ras T‘af'ari's government the financial
imperatives of modernity became even more clear. While much of his effort focused
on the south and southwest, the heir apparent also began a systematic policy of
appointing Sh'awan officals to customs posts and placing loyal appointees in control

of the eastern frontier zones which had always provided tribute (see chapter six).63

167

These measures, even if halting in their early stages, hit hard at the
economic base of elites in northeast Ethiopia. The relative political peace of
1920-28 allowed the penetration of these measures in Lasta as well as elsewhere in
the north and challenged the basic structure of rural incomes and relations of
production.

By 1920 state intervention in the regional administration of Wag and
Lasta-proper was underway. Lasta's two state-appointed governors, Wagshum
Kabb'ada and Ras Kassa Haylu, maintained close ties to Addis Ababa and proved
responsive to directives laid out by the central government. Other areas of the
north had not yet accepted central government suzerainty. Ras Gugsa W'alé in
Bag'a'mder, Ras Haylu in Gojjam, and Ras Siyum in Tigré each retained their own
prerogatives and deeply resented central authority. By 1928, the process of
reducing their power involved Lasta's elites and peasant producers in a major

rebellion which effectively diminished the north's role in regional politics.

168
Notes to Chapter Four

1. For a discussion of the 1898-99 Tigréan revolt see Martini, Diario, vol.
1, pp. 405-09. Menilek's appointee for northern Gojjam and Tana was Ras
M'ang'asha Ateqem, a Gojjamé who had been raised at Menilek's court. Also see
Marcus, Life and Times, pp. 174-213.

 

2. For a discussion of the rivalry in Wag see F.O. 1/28 which contains
letters from Emperor Takla Giyorgis letters to Queen Victoria and Lord Napier.
Material on Yohannes' land policies in Lasta was the subject of several interviews.

3. Abba Gétu, interview #12, 16 June 1982. Yohannes further cut ties
between Lasta and the south by sending Wagshum Tafari to put down a rebellion
in Yajju which resulted in the death of the warrashék ruler and caused a
long-standing blood-feud between the two areas.

4. The names of W'alé's appointees in Lasta have not been well preserved
in either tradition or living memory accounts. Two mentioned to me were D'a'jach
Liben and D'EijaCh Kassa Mariyé. Abba Gétu, interviews #12 and #13, 19 March
and 16 June 1982.

5. Menilek had deposed'Berru for intriguing with Italian agents just prior to
the battle of Adwa. Count Augusto Salimbeni visited Berru at Séqota in 1892 and
reported that he was playing a delicate balancing act between Menilek and Ras
Mangasha of Tigre. Carlo Zaghi, ed., Crispi e Menelich nel diario inedito del
Conte Augusto Salembini (Torino, 1956), pp. 98-101.

 

6. Wylde, Modern Abyssinia, pp. 328-30. A similar house built by Italian
workers was underway at Koram where Wagshum Ka'bb’ada feted Martini on his
1906 journey to Addis Ababa.

7. Ibid. p. 331; Ferdinando Martini, untitled article in Bollettino Ufficiale
delle Colonie, no. 20, 19 May 1906. Later in 1906 a major fire in S'a'qota
destroyed the Wagshums' house and much of the town. Gwangul and his father
Berru had regularly entertained foreign guests at their court and, it seems,
accepted "loans" from the Italian government. Martini, Diario, vol. 4, p. 338.

 

 

8. Abba Gétu, interview #3, 19 May 1982; Wagshum W’a'ss'a'n, interviews #1
and #2, 20 June and 22 August 1982; wal'ata Israel, interview #1, 22 May, 1982.

Most of these marriages were between members of the Wagshum line and the ruling
house of Tigre.

9. M'arsaé H'az'an, "Menilek," p. 27; Ch‘a’kol'a, interview #2, 17 March 1982.

10. Colli to Ministero Affari Esteri, 2 December 1911, ASMAI 37/4; Chakola,
interview #1, 10 March 1982.

11. Martini, Diario, vol. 4, pp. 407-08. Martini's source was D'ajach Gabr'a
Sellasé of Tigre. Oral sources agreed that the Wagshum had an aggressive and
manipulative personality.

12. Ibid., vol. 4, pp. 407-08.

169

13. Martini, Diario, vol. 4, p. 355. For the rebellion which followed the news
of his appointment, see Martini, Diario, vol 4. p. 29. This short term of office
proved fairly inconsequential. None of my informants remembered it, not even the
Wagshum's grandson, but Martini's description of the events is detailed.

14. See the personality profile of Gwangul and Abat'a by G'abra' Hiywot
Baykedagn'a, then a translator in the Sudan Intelligence Department, in A.D.I. to
Civil Secretary, 1 February 1910, CRO Intel 2/19/154. Also see Colli to Addis
Ababa, 19 May 1909, ASMAI 37/3. The removal of Wagshum Gwangul Z'ag'ayy'a', a
rival to the empress's brother, was an added inducement to Taytu since it
increased the chances that Ras W'alé might be able eventually to control Wag as
well as Lasta-proper.

15. Marcus, Life and Times, p. 238. These events are purely a matter for
conjecture, since diplomatic sources on the spot were confused as to the real
status of the emperor's health, a 1908 poisoning attempt, and the role of Taytu.

16. Wagshum W'ass'an, interview #1, 20 June 1982; Marsaé Hazan, ”Menilek,"
p. 42.

17. Salvago-Raggi to Ministero Affari Esteri, 8 October 1909, ASMAI 37/3;
Annaratone to Asmara, 15 October 1909, ASMAI 37/3. Dr. Annaratone was at the
battlefield tending the wounded and filed reports via the Kor'am telegraph station.

18. The battle's cost was high: Abat'a lost nearly 1000 men with another
700-800 wounded, many of whom died the next day. About 600 of Abraha's men had
fallen, with another 200-300 lost to lowland Oromo who picked off stragglers that
had escaped into the lowlands east of Kora’m. Annaratone Report, 15 October 1909
ASMAI 37/3; Abba Gétu, interview #13, 2 July 1982; Ch‘cikol'a, interview #1, 10
March 1982.

19. The major secondary account is Marcus, Life and Times, pp. 24245; but
also see F.O. Annual Report for 1910, F.O. 371/1043; and Marsaé H'az'an,
"Menilek", pp. 51-59.

 

20. See Colli to Asmara, 10 May 1911, ASMAI 54/35; Marcus, Life and
Times, pp. 246-48.

21. Colli to Ministero Affari Esteri, 31 August 1911, ASMAI 54/35;
Salvago-Raggi to Ministero Affari Esteri, 6 August 1911. For the appointment of
Germay as Wagshum, see Colli to Ministero Affari Esteri, 2 December 1911, ASMAI
54/35; Doughty-Wylie to Grey, 7 July 1911, F.O. 371/1043.

22. Cora to Addis Ababa, 19 November 1914, ASMAI 54/35. Information on
Kassa's life has been collected from a variety of primary written and oral sources.
See anon. Leul Ras Kassa Sel'a Arbacha'w M'atas'abiya Bat'a'laya' Y'at'as'a'nada 301352.12
Y'aHiywot Tarik (Addis Ababa, 1949 EC). This commemorative volume was authored
by Fitawrari Na'biy'aleul T‘cikl'éi Sadeq. Also see Abebech Afework, "A Biography of
Dajjazmach Abarra Kassa 1906-1936,” unpublished B.A. thesis, Haile Sellassie I
University, 1973. Formal interviews and "small talk" with residents in Y5 Ras Kassa
safer were the major source on Kassa.

23. "Commandi territoriali e capi d'oltre Mareb," 15 March 1914, ASMAI
37/5.

170

24. See, for example, Dodds to Grey, 1 March 1914, F.O. 371/1878 as well
as Sudan Intelligence Reports for 1914 which summarize correspondence from the
frontier as well as reports from Addis Ababa.

25. See Salvago~Raggi to Ministero delle Colonie, 1 April and 3 April 1914,
ASMAI 37/6.

26. See the file ASMAI 37/6 passim; Salvago-Raggi to Rome, 31 March and
20 April 1914, ASMAI 37/6.

27. Colli argued persuasively to his superiors that Ethiopia's problems in the
north were internal and not aggressively directed towards Eritrea. He maintained
that Italian policy should support the overall territorial integrity of Ethiopia and
work for Italian interests in that context. Rome and Asmara seem to have
acquiesced to his guidelines. They debated two alternative conciliatory moves: 1) to
return G'a‘br‘a' Sellasé (who, in fact, had spent most of his time sequestered in
Tigre); 2) to offer a cash payment to W'alda Giyorgis in exchange for his
withdrawal. Colli Report, 10 January 1914, ASMAI 37/6. For Italian policy debate
see Salvago-Raggi to Ministero delle Colonie, 31 March 1914, ASMAI 37/6 and
ASMAI 37/6 passim. Italian authorities felt sure Gabra Sellasé would cooperate,
since he had left his family in Eritrea for safekeeping. The Eritrean government
was willing to pay 398,000 lire (50,000 talers) to walda Giyorgis in return for his
withdrawal from Tigre. Lej Eyasu's government did not want such a large sum
transferred to one who sympathized with their rival party so, after much
negotiation, the central government turned down the offer.

28. The gas withdrew from Tigre in May. See Armbruster to A.D.I., 10 June
1914, CRO Intel 2/18/152; Salvago-Raggi to Ministero delle Colonie, 4 May 1914,
ASMAI 37/6. W'ald'a Giyorgis' army and officer corps was overwhelmingly Shawan.
See Cerrina-Ferroni to Ministero delle Colonie, 13 July 1914, ASMAI 37/6 for a
listing of his officers and places of origin.

29. Cerrina-Ferroni to Ministero delle Colonie, 8 July 1914, ASMAI 37/6.

30. He also appointed D'ajach Siyum to Tigré. See Doughty-Wylie to Grey, 1
June 1915, F.O. 371/1880; Martini to Governor of Somalia, 24 August 1914, ASMAI
37/5; "Abissinia-~Notizie sui grande comandi,” 1916 typescript in ASMAI 37/5;
Ch'akol‘a' Lamina, interview #1, 10 March 1982.

31. F.O. materials incorrectly reported that Lasta had been given to
Mikaél's other son Hayl'a Maryam instead of G‘a'br'a Hiywot. Well corroborated oral
sources make a clear case for G'a'br'a Hiywot. See Doughty-Wylie to Grey, 2 May
1914, ”Summary of Recent Events in the North of Abyssinia," F.O.371/1878.
Relatives of some of the _r_as' retainers have told me that G'abr'a Hiywot spent a
great deal of time at M'aq'a'lé "consulting" with his neighbor. DeMartini to
Ministero delle Colonie, 6 April 1917, ASMAI 37/6; Chakola' Lamina and Gabra'
Madhen Lamm'a, interivew #1, 10 March 1982. Although he collected a large
following in Wag, G'a'bra Hiywot never really established his claims to legitimacy.
That he accepted the honor of being named pg when it was offered and gave up
the Wagshum title provided further evidence to Lastans who considered their local
title superior to that of ras. Also see Military Report to Governor of Eritrea, 21
May 1914, ASMAI 54/35. G’a'br'a Hiywot's relations with his father were cool,
possibly explaining one reason for his desire to live away from Wéillo.

171

32. Mikaél's appointments were D'ajach Shib'ashi (Zobul), N‘a'gadras Yoséf
(Qobbo), Dajach Yimer (Aussa), and an unidentified representative to the Sultanate
of Beru. Marrazani to Addis Ababa, 28 June 1913, ASMAI 54/35. Lej Eyasu
organized a number of campaigns to bring about submission of eastern lowland
zones. See M'arsaé Haz'an, "Menilek," pp. 103-05.

33. For a fuller account of the politics of the 1914-16 period and Eyasu's
actions see Marcus, Life and Times, pp. 266-81. The most extensive Italian archival
report on the situation as of 1914 is Colli to Ministero delle Colonie, 29 June
1914, ASMAI 37/8.

34. See Marsaé Haz'an, "Z'awditu," pp. 29-33; Thesiger to Grey, 28
September 1916, F.O. 371/2594. For a copy of the letter to the Ech'agé, see
Mahetm‘a‘ Sellasé, Zekr‘a’ N'ag‘cir, pp. 520-25.

 

35. For a fuller account of the battle see Naval Staff Intelligence Division,
A Handbook of Abyssinia, vol. 1, (London, 1917), pp. 356-59; Marcus, Life and
Times, pp. 278-80.

36. See DeMartini to Ministero delle Colonie, 6 April 1917, ASMAI 37/13;
Thesiger to Grey, 16 October 1916, F.O. 371/2594. Also see DeCamillis to Addis
Ababa, 27 October 1917, ASMAI 54/35; Amharic language telegram (transliterated)
enclosed in Talamonti to Addis Ababa, 16 November 1917, ASMAI 54/35.

37. See Thesiger to Grey, 30 November 1916, F.O. 371/2594; Abba Gétu,
interview #12, 16 June 1982. walé's appointment was only a nominal one. Kassa's
administration effectively followed G'a'bra Hiywot's.

38. DeMartini to Ministero delle Colonie, 6 April 1917, ASMAI 37/13; oral
sources passim.

39. See Cora to Addis Ababa, 19 November 1917, ASMAI 54/35; Sudan
Intelligence Report (hereafter S.I.R.), #270, January 1917. For Kassa's demotion
from governorship of W‘a'llo see Pollera to Asmara, 10 May 1918, ASMAI 54/36.

40. For a full list of the territories controlled by Kassa see Fitawrari
N'a'biy'aleul, interview #1, 1 April 1982. Kassa became gas and was named governor
of W'allo in 1917. He proved unable to capture Eyasu and pacify the lowlands
around Bati and lost his position to Ras K'abbt—ida Mangasha in 1918. He later
regained areas in western W'allo like Borana and Amara Saynt. Pollera to Asmara,
10 May 1918, ASMAI 54/36.

41. See Marrazani to Addis Ababa, 27 March 1912, ASMAI 54/35; Fitawrari
Nabiya'leul, interviews passim; report on northern campaign by Col. Konovaloff
enclosed in Roberts to F.O., 22 June 1936, F.O. 371/20167.

42. Information on Kassa's governors in Lasta-proper comes from a variety of
sources including "Ya Ras Kassa Asta'dadar," and living relatives like General Abata
Bazza', son of a governor, and Abba Gétu Endas'aw, nephew of Fitawrari Yifat,
who grew up at the court in Mujja. No one source, however, could name all of the
governors. See also Blanchard, Ethiopia Its Culture and Its Birds (San Antonio:
1969), pp. 134-35.

172

43. Marcus, Life and Times, p. 194. Evidence suggests that such procedures
only partially filtered into regional administrations. During court sessions each day,
Kassa received verbal and written appeals from his territories. He issued responses
and proclamations verbally to a secretary who wrote them down and presented a
copy for Kassa's inspection in the evening. The scribe would then dispatch a copy
to the official concerned and, if important enough, record it in an administrative
record book. This process is the basis for the "Ya Ras Kassa Astadad'a'r"
manuscript. See Fitawrari Nabiyaleul T'a'kl'a Sadeq, interviews #1, #4, and #5; 1
April, 17 July, and 23 August 1982.

 

44. The neighborhood in Fiché is still called "ya Lasta safar" ("the Lasta
camp"). The number of officers from Lasta serving with Kassa's army was
disproportionately high, especially given the fact that the strength of his forces
was in the Sélalé cavalry. See Fitawrari N'abiyaleul, interview #3, 10 July 1982;
Abba Gétu, interview #12, 16 June 1983.

45. Fitawrari Na'biy'eileul, interview #3, 10 July 1982; Fitawrari Abebe,
interview #1, 2 March 1982; Asr'as, interview #1, 14 April 1982. While not a
grasping proto-capitalist, Kassa was wealthy. In addition to supporting his large
courts in Fiché and Addis Ababa with receipts of tribute and tax in kind, he
maintained an account in a London Barclay's bank. Two-thirds of the interest
payments he ear-marked for his children and one-third for the support of the
Ethiopian monastery in Jerusalem. During the Italian occupation he used his
savings to begin building a house for his family in Jerusalem.

46. In that period Lasta-proper had had the resident governors of Ras
W'alé, Ras Kassa, and G'abr'a Hiywot. Wag had seen Wagshum Gwangul Berru,
Wagshum Kabbad'a, Wagshum Gwangul Z'agayya, Wagshum Abata', Wagshum Girmay,
and G‘a'br'a' Hiywot.

47. See, for example, Talamonti to Addis Ababa, 16 January, 17 February,
and 4 March 1917, ASMAI 54/35. In August of 1918 Ras Kassa, then at D'asé,
used Shawan troops to try and control peasants who had gone in great numbers to
raid lowland areas around Azébo, Zobul, and Chercher. Pollera to Asmara, 6
August 1918, ASMAI 54/36.

48. Talamonti to Addis Ababa, 22 February, 26 February, and 4 March 1917,
ASMAI 54/35. Informants also discussed this battle but with less detail than the
Italian accounts which used local informants and telegraph relay.

49. Talamonti to Addis Ababa, 11 March and 13 March 1917, ASMAI 54/35.
50. Talamonti to Addis Ababa, 25 May 1917, ASMAI 54/35.
51. Talamonti to Addis Ababa, 30 June and 11 July 1917, ASMAI 54/35.

52. Talamonti to Addis Ababa, 13 July, 22 July, and 30 July 1917, ASMAI
54/35.

53. DeCamillis to Addis Ababa, 15 October 1917, ASMAI 54/35; Talamonti to
Addis Ababa, 19 November, 24 November, and 26 November 1917, ASMAI 54/35. In
January of 1918, Italian sources reported that Kassa Berru's son, still at large, had
raided the Zekwala district and carried off livestock. DeCamillis to Asmara, 7

January 1918, ASMAI 54/36.

173

54. Kabb'ada certainly had good ancestral ties to Wag, but his absence from
the scene made it difficult for him to activate his local claims. Chakola Lamina
told me that K'a'bb‘a’da' could not even recount his full genealogical line in the land
litigation cases in which he was involved in Wag.

55. Ch'akol'a, interview #1, 10 March 1982.

56. Talamonti to Addis Ababa, 22 April 1918, ASMAI 54/36; Pollera to Addis
Ababa, 13 April 1918, ASMAI 54/36.

57. Talamonti to Pollera, 30 June 1918, ASMAI 54/36; Pollera to Addis
Ababa, 25 July 1918, ASMAI 54/36; and Governor of Eritrea to Addis Ababa, 30
June 1918, ASMAI 54/36.

58. Talamonti to Addis Ababa, 1 August 1918, ASMAI 54/36; Pollera to
Addis Ababa, 13 August 1918, ASMAI 54/36; and DeMartini to Addis Ababa, 25
September 1918, ASMAI 54/36.

59. The extent to which gult privileges were basic to regional rivalries can
be seen in Tigré. See ASMAI 54/36 passim.

50. Abba Gétu, interview #3, 19 March 1982; Asr'as, interview #2, 21 April
1982; Talamonti to Addis Ababa, 30 November 1918, ASMAI 54/36. B'azzabah had
married Wagshum Berru's daughter Barhané.

61. Abba Gétu, interview #3, 19 March 1982; Fitawrari Nabiy'aleul,
interview #3, 10 July 1982; Pollera to Addis Ababa, 22 August and 11 September
1919, ASMAI 54/8.

62. Salvago-Raggi to Ministero Affari Esteri, 14 July 1909, ASMAI 37/3.

63. Soon after defeating Negus Mikael, Ras Ta'f'ari began a gradual policy
of appointing Sh‘awan tax collectors to Tigre empowered to collect two-thirds of
the salt customs. Records of these appointments and the bitter Tigréan protests
can be found for the 1918-22 period in ASMAI 54/36 fascicolo #146. While he
relaxed the policy a bit during the early 1920s, Taf'ari once again pushed for
fiscalism in the north beginning with his coronation as negus in 1928.

Chapter Five

The Dynamics of Rural Rebellion:

Lasta and Northern Resistance to the New Imperial Polity, 1920-35

In the autumn of 1928, the relative political calm of the previous eight
years ended abruptly. In late August, the Raya and Azébo Oromo population of the
eastern borders of Tigré and Lasta organized a massive raid on the adjacent
lowland's Afar population, carrying off hundreds of head of livestock and killing
those Afar who resisted. By mid-October, a kaleidoscopic pattern of raiding broke
out along a belt extending from the Awash valley north to the Eritrean border.
Retaliation, punitive sorties by local officials, several imperial army expeditions,
and a direct military challenge to the central state produced an eighteen-month
cycle of violence before the imperial state's full-scale mobilization in early 1930
forcibly put down resistance.

The 1928-30 rebellion in northeast Ethiopia had consequences well beyond
the local and regional conditions which had spawned it. Imperial politics provided
an important framework: the rebellion began shortly after a virtual palace coup in
Addis Ababa in 1928 and its end dovetailed with the death in 1930 of Empress
Z'a'wditu and the coronation of Negus Ta'fa'ri M'akonnan as Emperor Hayla" Sellasé.
Moreover, the crushing of rural unrest in northeast Ethiopia and the defeat of Ras
Gugsa Wile, whose own rebellion became the political symbol of the larger
pattern of violence, brought an end to any pretentions northern Ethiopia's elite
might have had about dominating the emerging Ethiopian polity. Examining the

nature of the rebellion as well as the method of its suppression is instructive

175
about the state of the politics and economy of Lasta, and northern Ethiopia, in the
period 1920-35.

Despite the importance of the series of events which took place in and
around Lasta in 1928-30, no serious study of the "rebellion" has been made, nor did
contemporary European or Ethiopian observers understand the full meaning of
events as they unfolded.1 The purpose of this chapter is to examine the
connections between events at the level of imperial politics in terms of the rural
producing households which took part in the rural unrest of the period 1928-35, as
well as the relationship between household economy and political action in the local
community. With the aid of new data, I intend to follow the course of events and
to relate these to the basic question of production and reproduction at the
community and household level.

A careful examination of the available evidence reveals the nature of rural
rebellion in Ethiopia. The rebellion was not, as some have argued, a single
phenomenon, --or even a rebellion at all-- but a series of localized reactions to
specific conditions. Nor was ethnicity its most salient characteristic, although it is
commonly referred to in the literature as the "Raya-Azébo rebellion.” But neither
was it a class-based movement determined to alter rural relations of production.
The rural unrest was, however, clearly rooted in local environmental and economic
conditions; the political issues that led to Ras Gugsa Walé's challenge to imperial
authority were clearly epiphenomona. Ras Gugsa's defeat was a blow symbolic of a
whole range of losses to northern Ethiopia and its future role in the modern
empire-state. After 1930 northern Ethiopia mounted no more serious challenges to
Addis Ababa's supremacy. Lasta. like its neighbors to the north, slipped further into

political and economic insignificance.

176
The Political Context of Northern Discontent 1920-28

In the period between the 1916 coronation of Empress Ziaiwditu and the
eventful year of 1928, significant changes had taken place in the organization of
the central state and the balance of forces within it. Power-sharing between the
northern conservatives who backed the empress, the post-Menilek neoconservatives
led by the Minister of War Fitawrari Habta' Giyorgis, and the progressives of heir
apparent Ras Tiifa'ri had provided a stable, if at times phlegmatic government.
Movement did take place within this structure, however, as the increasingly mature
and adept Tafiiri maneuvered to enlist the support of foreign legations in building
a strong base of support among the tiny class of educated Ethiopians in Addis
Ababa. As well, he campaigned to control governorships in the rich southern and
western provinces which produced coffee, the key to Ethiopia's links to the world
economy. By contrast, conservative forces in the government and in the provinces
sought consistently to forestall foreign involvement in the economy and to resist
policies like the abolition of slavery, Ethiopia's membership in the League of
Nations, and the policing of unstable frontier zones.

During the 19203 Ta'f'a'ri's aggressive policies of centralization and
modernization hardened political alignments between those who stood to benefit
from reform and those who preferred the political and economic norms of Menilek's
rough and tumble frontier state. The fundamental difference between conservative
and progressive elements in the central government derived from their economic
base and on the visions they had of Ethiopia's future. It is possible to identify
three basic groups: neoconservatives who pursued Menilek' vision of a loosely
federated oligarchic state, conservatives --primarily northern elite families-- who
sought to maintain regional autonomy, and a ”progressive" party led by Ras T'afa'ri
which hoped to build a centralized fiscal and political structure dominated by

decisions taken in Addis Ababa. Neoconservatives at court tended to rely on the

177

tribute and military strength of regional governors engaged in extractive activities
in the south and southwest like slave raiding, ivory hunting, and the rapacious
collection of tribute from the population of frontier zones. Their aggressive
soldiery, usually first and second generation migrants from Sh'awa and the north,
were a military entrepreneurial class which had grown wealthy on the booty and
land available in the wake of Menilek's conquest of his southern frontier. The
wealth and prestige of these frontiersmen derived from the presence of undelimited
frontier zones which allowed them to raid for slaves, to hunt, and to draw tribute
from small-scale societies on Ethiopia's southern and western peripheries.2

In the north, conservative support came from the Empress' estranged
husband Ras Gugsa walé, Ras Haylu of Gojjam, most Tigréan leaders, and the
rural military and ecclesiastical classes which wished to retain their direct control
over local customs and incomes from alt. The power of northern conservatives
derived from their ability to retain wealth within their governates by minimizing
tribute transfers to the central government. Money and payments in-kind retained
locally were used to build constituencies. For local elites, the stakes were high.
Their position at the top of the social and political hierarchy depended to a large
degree on their retaining a consistent income from the perquisites which they in
turn redistributed to loyal supporters.

Over the course of the 19203, Ta'fari and his supporters who favored fiscal
and administrative reforms proved a clear threat to both conservative and
neoconservative groups. T‘afari's party preferred to build state power by the
consolidation of resources at the center for the building of a modern army
equipped with imported trappings, a state and provincial bureaucracy maintained by
regular allowances «if not salaries-- and the state control of customs and courts.

T‘a’fari's ideas about reforms were no secret: they had been previewed by his

178

administration of Har'ar and the beginnings of imperial administration in W'allo after
1928.3

In his capacity as overseer of foreign affairs, Tafa'ri appeared ready to open
Ethiopia to foreign investment and to monopolize profits and fees for the central
government.4 He also acted, albeit slowly, against extractive frontiersmen by
cooperating with limitrophe colonial powers to prosecute frontier raiding along the
Sudan, Somali, and British East African borders, and by suppressing the more
obvious aspects of slavery and the slave trade, thus shifting the central
government's fiscal foundations away from irregular tribute.5 Whether as a vision
of the future or a pragmatic means of reducing his rival's economic base, Tafari
and his party encouraged the shift to cash-cropping, commoditization, and a rural
proletariat. In the mid-19203, under Tafari's direction, the former soldier/serf
relations in the south and west effective after Menilek's conquest had evolved into
a more rational, and profitable, landlord/tenant relationship based on the production

6 In the north, this process emerged more slowly

for regional and world markets.
and along different lines. It took the form of the regularization of taxation, the
control of customs by state officials, and the reduction of the financial
prerogatives of the rural military class (see chapter six).7

Over the course of the 19203, Tafari's supporters pursued a policy of
stabilizing a production base for southern Ethiopia based on cash and commodities
and placing his own loyalists in provincial governorships there. Ta'fari's control over
southern appointments not only removed his enemies, but gave him direct access to
a loyal military force. Far more than his much-touted modern personal bodyguard,
southern provinical levies became the foundation of his power. The 1926 death of
the minister of war, Fitawrari Habta Giyorgis, also helped the progressive cause.

On the old man's death, Taf'ari immediately took control of his 17,000 men army as

well as his Borana governate on the border with British East Africa. Progress in

179

the north was considerably slower, but by 1928, Taf'ari felt secure enough to
assume direct control over W‘a’llo province and to negotiate a treaty of friendship
and cooperation with Italy which called for the building of a motor road from
wallo's capital at Base to the Italian Red Sea port of Assab. In response, already
badly outmaneuvered conservative forces rallied for a series of poorly orchestrated
challenges.8

In September 1928, the empress and her neoconservative backers finally
managed a response to Tafari's provocations and attempted a coup d'etat against
the heir apparent. It began with the march of the conservative governor of Sidamo,
Dajach Balcha, on Addis Ababa and ended with an abortive attempt by the empress'
palace guards to take T'af'ari prisoner. Neither move was well conceived: Balcha
surrendered without a shot after his troops deserted to the heir apparent's side
and T'af'ari used his own loyal troops to stand off the imperial guard. Tafari's
supporters subsequently demanded that he receive the title of m (king). Ras
Kassa, the last hope of the conservatives in the capital threw his support behind
the progressive forces. On the 22nd of September, before a festive gathering of
Ethiopian and foreign dignitaries, the empress crowned Ta'fari as negu_3. The new
rank itself meant little, but it served to signal Taf'airi's ascendency.9

Few of the powerful in Ethiopia missed the significance of events in the
capital and European observers quickly tried to assess the reaction countrywide.
Corrado Zoli, governor of Eritrea, speculated that the news of the coronation
was:

received in Wollo with enthusiasim, in Harar and northern

Amhara zones under Dej. Ayalew [a son-in-law of Kassa] it

met with open favor; silent diffidence in Tigre and in

Begemder under Ras Gugsa, direct hostility. Yejju and its

dependents of Wadla and Delanta on the eastern plateau had

given undoubted signs of ill-humor. Gojjam, as always, was

reserved. Shoa could be considfired 2/3 favorable, like Lasta,
and 1/3 discontented, like Wag.

180
Zoli here refers to opinion among the political leadership and to the rural military
elite. Rural cultivators and householders would respond to different criteria. Events
over the next year and a half reflected both the interaction of imperial politics
and the contradictions in local factors of production and reproduction in Lasta and

its neighboring regions.

The Course of Events in the Northeastern Rebellion 1928-30

The first indicators heralding the 1928-30 crisis in northeast Ethiopia were
the result of the area's capricious micro-climate and its impact on the area's
productive capacity. Lasta was in the center of this regional crisis. In 1927 after
a hiatus of nearly eight years, swarms of locusts appeared in the northeast and
seriously damaged food crops in the major river valleys and especially along
eastern lowland zones from Wello to Eritrea. Eastern Lasta, as always, took the
full brunt of the swarms. Rains were also spotty in that year and ended early in
some areas. Poor harvests and locust damage meant reduced forage for livestock;
off-take rates increased as households tried to reduce herd size by selling off
capital to obtain food and seed for the next season. Rural households which sought
to recoup losses by selling hides and skins from butchered livestock found little
succor; prices in the world market were at a low ebb.11

The raids which began in August of 1928 --normally the height of the rains.-
first involved Oromo forays into the fringes of the desert to the east. The raiders'
main object appears to have been livestock and stocks of sorghum available in
some of the more fertile lowland river valleys.12 Young men who in good times
might have engaged in the ritual jousting of wayyane took up arms in earnest to
provide their means of survival. In mid-October, a group of 2000 armed men from
northeast of Wag captured some 8000 head of livestock (cattle and camels) before

encountering the soldiers of Da'jach Abarra Ta'dla, governor of the area. A violent

181
skirmish followed with some five hundred casualties, but the raiders managed to
steal off with most of their booty intact.13 Emboldened, small groups of raiders
continued to replenish their diminished herds by attacks on poorly armed lowland
pastoralists.

This instability along the eastern caravan routes disrupted the flow of trade
and the excavation of salt in the salt plains at Taltal in Tigre and at Wajja in
eastern Lasta. The interruption of trade prompted the newly crowned Negus Tafiiri
to take action. In mid-November, he ordered a close aide, Kagnazmach Fiqre
Maryam to form an expedition at Base to quell the violence and restore security.
The i_1_e_g_g§' fears were justified. The day before the expedition departed Dase,
raiders attacked a large caravan nearby, killing three merchants and making off
with a cache of arms.14 By now the groups of raiders included Amhara and
Tigrean highlanders, especially from eastern Wag. Nor were the raids purely
peasant undertakings. Regional chiefs blamed local officials for collusion in
organizing the raids.

By the end of the year, Fiqre Maryam's expedition failed, and Taf'ari
commissioned another, this time under the command of his son-in—law, Dajach Dasta
Damtaw. Dasta acted on the assumption that the raids were politically motivated.
After marching through Willo, eastern Wag, and southeastern Tigre, be arrested
D'a'jach Belay, the grandson of Wagshum Berru, for complicity in the raids. Violence
nevertheless continued throughout the winter and spring. To avoid raids from the
highlands Afar pastoralists in the arid regions to the east of Lasta, Tigre, and
wallo gradually abandoned their pastures and fled toward the Eritrean border to
the north and into the Awash valley to the south. By early April, all of eastern
Tigre was embroiled in rebellion against their regional rulers. Ta'fari seems to
have viewed the disturbances as primarily political and convoked Dajachs Kabbad'a'

Gwangul, Abarra Tadla, and Ras Ka'bba'da Miing'asha, governors of northeastern

182
contituencies, to Addis Ababa. Only the beginning of the rains in June ended the
pattern of raids. On 18 June Dasta returned to the capital having accomplished
little more than antagonizing local peasants by forcibly requisitioning food for his
army.15

By the end of the rains Ta'f'ari took a different tack and adopted a two-tier
policy which addressed local conditions as well as larger political considerations.
Perhaps he recognized the crisis in the northeast as more deep-seated than he had
originally thought. During the celebration of the feast of Ma'sqal in late September,
he issued a proclamation suspending for three years the collection of taxes in the
northeastern areas affected by drought. At the political level, he removed the
ailing Ras Kabbad'a Mangasha' from Wéillo and gave it to his eldest son Assa'fa
Wfissan. As governor, he appointed his trusted and able cousin Ras Emru.16 In
Ya'jju, he named Ras Gugsa walé, a descendant of that area's ruling house. He no
doubt expected that these new appointments plus three months of normal rains
would end the raids which had disrupted trade and been the source of some
embarrassment for him with the foreign legations.

The political dimensions of the 1928-30 rebellion and Ras Gugsa's role
specifically have long been problematic in Ethiopian historiography. The sequence
of events, much less the motivation for Gugsa's challenge to T’afari have never
been delineated. Ras Gugsa's appointment to his father's old dominion of Yajju
signalled a final phase on the political level of events. Why Taf'ari would have
named Gugsa or accepted his nomination by others remains something of a mystery.
Gugsa was clearly one of Tafa'ri's most dangerous enemies both on the level of
factional politics and personal emnity. Gugsa could rightly blame Taffiri for
separating him from his wife, Empress Z'awditu, in 1918 and for her gradual

estrangement from power at the imperial court.17 Moreover, after Ras wale's

death, T'a'f'ari had gone to the trouble of maneuvering Yajju out of the hands of

183

the local line and into the control of Shawan loyalists. While little direct evidence
exists, most Ethiopians believed, then as now, that Gugsa aspired to the imperial
throne. Therefore each move at the capital which strengthend T'a'fari's progressive
party impeded Gugsa's own ambition. Gugsa must have been aware of his impotence
in the north at considerable distance from the capital and decisions that mattered.
Bag'amder had come to him after Negus W‘a‘lda' Giyorgis' death, before Taf'ari had
had a chance to begin his own program of appointments.18 As of 1929, the n_eg_i_1_s_
had had no cause to dismiss him.

Gugsa's actions in his own governate and in nearby Lasta are instructive
about how local elites built support among the rural population. Despite his
distance from the geographic and political center of Ethiopia, Gugsa worked hard
from his political capital at Dabra Tabor to build his base of support in Bagamder.
Well trained in the exercise of local prerogatives, Gugsa carefully cultivated the
image of an ascetic by the scrupulous observance of religious holidays, the
refurbishing of churches, and by allowing B'aga'mder's local elite to maintain control
over gul_t lands and customs revenues. His Ya'jju family connections and relations
with influencial clergy helped him extend his influence far beyond Ba'gamder; he
was a popular figure in Lasta and northern Wh’llo as well.19

Notwithstanding the sincerity of his religious beliefs, Gugsa also operated
shrewdly in the modern political economy. He maintained a close accounting of the
customs revenues which accrued from the Gallabat post on the Sudan border,
exploited his rights over Elli. M lands, and corvee labor to build a following
among the local clergy and soldiery, and used public lands to produce oxen for
local distribution and for sale into the lucrative northern livestock trade network.20
Moreover, he ingratiated himself to conservatives in Bagamder and at court by
appearing to oppose foreign penetration of the north. In particular, he made known

his disapproval of Tafari's attempts to negotiate a treaty for the British

184

construction of a water storage dam on Lake Tana which had promised handsome
profits for the central government. In 1929, he detained a lake survey party which
included the German minister to Addis Ababa causing extreme embarrassment to
Tafari.21 Despite this public xenophobia, however, Gugsa readily accepted gifts
from European visitors, agreed to accept secret payments to accede to the dam
question, and regularly used the Italian consulate at Gonda'r to transfer payments
to his bank accounts in Asmara and Addis Ababa.22

Gugsa's local fiscal and administrative policies also belied his image as the
ascetic conservative. Peasant cultivators under Gugsa including some in western
Lasta, paid a number of unique taxes which generated considerable wealth for
himself and his military elite. In 1921 he introduced a hut tax to be paid in cash
and designed to supplement payments to his loyal soldiers. Money and arms were

23

both stockpiled in his palace treasury in Dabr'a Tabor. Despite these financial

and military preparations, by 1929 Gugsa was in a weak position to offer a real
threat to Addis Ababa or the heir apparent. T'afari's ability to manipulate events
and personalities at the capital had clearly eclipsed him.

In view of these factors, it is difficult to explain why T'af'ari chose to
expand Gugsa's territory in the midst of a crisis by appointing him to Yajju. Oral
sources suggest that Gugsa received his appointment as a test of his loyalty.
Correspondence between the nefls and Gugsa seems to support this view. In his
retrospective autobiography, Hayla Sellase defended his decision:

...since We knew that Ya'jju was the district in which Ras

Gugsa had grown up and because of its proximity to B‘ag'amder,

We transmitted orders to him to go to Yajju making amicable

appeals to the Wajjerat and Azébo Galla and offering them

friendly advice as well as urging them to abandon their evil

works; but if they refuse, he was to fight them by military

force. We thought, incidentally, that if he now tarried with his

mission to Yiijju it would thereby prove that everything of

which he had beeéi4 accused, i.e. being in consultation with the
Italians was true.

185

With the cessation of the rains in early September of 1929 the cycle of violence
and raiding began anew and the central government responded almost immediately.
On 17 September, Tafari ordered Gugsa to mobilize and march to Yajju, whose
eastern regions were among the most seriously affected. The gas responded quickly
by summoning his rural soldiery and the Yajju elite which he had settled on gait in
Begemder. He crossed friendly territory and arrived at Ya'jju's capital at Marto by
the end of the month. From there he moved on to the raiders' stronghold at Zobul.
On 1 October, the government ordered Gugsa Araya of Tigre to move southeast to
maintain order on the Tigre-Lasta border, it asked Dajach AyaIa'w to advance on
Lasta from northern Ba'gamder, and charged Wagshum Kabba'da with policing the
central plain of eastern Lasta. From Lasta-proper, Ras Kassa's cousin and resident
Lasta governor, Fitawrari Bazza, marched with his army of highland Lastans on
Wajja on the main Addis Ababa-Asmara road, where he expected to recapture
raided livestock.25

On 16 October, Fitawrari 8522a and his Lasta troops arrived at Wajja. There
they encountered some small bands of raiders returning north with captured
livestock. Bazza captured the rebels, disarmed them, and confiscated the captured
cattle which he proposed to distribute among his followers in the highlands. The
fitawrari apparently then considered his duty to the state concluded and
reascended the escarpment with his soldiers and booty in tow. On their ascent
above the market town of Qobbo, Bazza's force met a large group of well armed
raiders from northeast Lasta and Tigre. In two days of fighting on 22 and 23 of
October, the rebels surrounded and annihilated the Lastans. The rebels, heavily
reinforced by local peasant opportunists, killed 8522a and emasculated the bodies of
the men who had fallen with him. Over 2000 rifles and 22,000 catridges fell into

the hands of the rebels.26 The magnitude of this defeat of troops acting for the

186
central government and the loss of captured arms promoted the further breakdown
of state authority in the region.

Gugsa's forces in nearby Zobul took no part in helping Bazza's hapless party.
In fact, published and archival accounts shed very little light on Gugsa's activities
at this time. Italian sources claim he retreated from the area for lack of water
while French accounts argue that he suffered several military setbacks at the
hands of rebel forces; Hayla' Sellase subsequently claimed that Gugsa callously led
his men into dangerous and disease-ridden lowlands against imperial orders.27 Yet,
what took place in late October at Zobul was none of these. What happened
determined much of the character of the rebellion as it intensified.

An eyewitness account from one of Gugsa's soldiers states that, far from
confronting stiff resistance and poor conditions at Zobul, Gugsa and his men
enjoyed a warm and festive reception. Three days of feasting «no doubt on pilfered
beef and mutton-- and entertainment followed while Gugsa held discussion with

28 The exact agenda discussed by Gugsa and the leadership of the

rebel leaders.
rebel parties at Zobul remains unclear, but certainly they reached some sort of
understanding. Many Lastans claim that Gugsa masterminded the attack on Bazza,
although others claim merely that he stood by while it happened. Whatever the
specifics of Gugsa's negotiations with rebel leaders, raiding from Zobul stopped
immediately after Gugsa's mission there, causing some sources in the capital to
conclude that he had defeated them militarily. Gugsa himself seems to have argued
that he left the area because of a shortage of water for his men.29

By December and January, the crisis attained its fullest proportions and
state authority was at its lowest ebb. The long campaign of raids and calls to
arms in the northeast had disrupted the rhythm of rural life. In those months as

well the promising harvests in areas like Y'ajju, Wiillo, and southeastern Lasta

rotted in the fields because of unseasonable rain and fog. Italian reports indicated

187
a 20% loss in the téf crop, a disaster considering the small margin of safety on

d.30 Quite clearly at this point, the

which northeastern peasant households depende
sporadic raiding which had begun among Oromo lowlanders had broadened into a
generalized rural revolt in which even forces representing the state participated in
the requisitioning of spoils. Raids and resistance to government authority now
covered an area of 15,000 square kilometers from southern Eritrea to the Awash
valley and included most of Lasta, southern Tigre, and northern W'allo.31
In Addis Ababa, Negus T'afari saw political implications in the expanding
revolt and began yet another campaign to put down the rebels using his northern
surrogates. To fill the void left by Fitawrari B'azza's death, he ordered Da'jach
Ayalaw of northern B'agamder to position his B'agamder troops in eastern Lasta to
prevent raiding from there. He also recalled Ras Gugsa from Yiijju and demanded
that he meet him at W'arrailu in northern Wello. Predictably, Gugsa ignored the
order and announced his return to Dabra Tabor.32
Gugsa's refusal signaled to Tafari that rural discontent had taken the form
of a direct political challenge. For the first time since the 1916 Battle of sagale’,
an imperial call to arms went out in all the provinces and an imperial army began
assembling. The new charged the Minister of War, Ras Mulugeta, with leading
the force to the north. The army which departed from Addis Ababa on 23 January
1930 consisted primarily of troops loyal to Ta'fari's own cadre of southern
governors and indicated the success of the m' southern strategy.33 As well,
T'a'fa'ri drew on his mastery of external sources of support and sent north his small
air command «two Potez and a Junkers-- which he had wrangled out of his
European suitors. These served the imperial army well by shuttling messages and
personnel between the capital, Dase, and the imperial army camp as well as

providing invaluable intelligence on the movements of rebel troops.34

188

On 15th January, Tafari had issued orders to his northern surrogates, Ras
Gugsa Araya, Wagshum Kabb'ad'a, and D'ajach Ayalaw to assemble their troops and
march east into the troubled lowland zones. That few peasant soldiers responded to
the government's new mobilization call was indicative of the generalized nature of
the revolt. Many had already joined small-scale raiding parties or the more organizd
rebel army of Ras Gugsa.35

Meanwhile, Gugsa had commited himself to a direct confrontation with the
central government and had begun a campaign to win the hearts and minds of
northern Ethiopians. To accomplish this task, he drew heavily on the ideological
and material weapons at his disposal. In the churches of Bag'a'mder, Lasta, and
northern Wello sermons took a decidedly political theme as priests loyal to Gugsa
spread the word that Negus T'afa'ri had sold out to the foreigners and was on the
verge of conversion to Catholicism. Large numbers of Lasta clergy whose education
Gugsa had sponsored at Dabra‘ Tabor's important liturgical center returned to their
home parishes and passed on the gs' message.36 Gugsa also bid for the support of
the peasant population by suspending the collection of tithe and substituting the
payment of one jar of grain for each pair of oxen owned. This collection was to
be made by local chiqashums and not the state agents who the rural population
often resented.3'7 Gugsa clearly expected this policy to win over the lower ranks
of the peasantry and undermine those middle-rank officials who had maintained
loyalty to the Shawan state.

These efforts appear to have had good initial success. On the 12th of
January «in the midst of harvest« local officials, M3, and priests from Wadla,
Dalanta, and Y'ajju (and probably Lasta) came together and agreed not to pay taxes
to the imperial collectors appointed for their area by Ras Emru. They vowed in the

name of Ras Gugsa to fight any agents who attempted to collect revenues from the

189

harvest. A similar group assembled at D'abr'a Tabor on 26 January to take oaths of
loyalty to Gugsa.38

Gugsa also maintained an active secret correspondence with his potential
allies in the north, r_ases Gugsa Araya and Siyum of Tigre and Ras Haylu of
Gojjam. Their discontent with events at the capital probably led Gugsa to believe
that he could count on their support when he chose to move against the
government. Some foreign observers at the capital had already concluded that the

39 Direct

raiding constituted sufficient evidence of collusion at the highest levels.
evidence of a conspiracy did, in fact, exist. In late 1929, an agent of Ras Kassa
in Lasta had intercepted a message from Gugsa to Ras Siyum calling on the

40 Italian agents with

Tigrean to join a united northern front against T'a'fari.
Haylu reported that the Gojjame was in constant communication with Gugsa.

At the same time as he drummed up support for his imperial ambitions in the
north, Gugsa maintained a conciliatory tone with Addis Ababa. In a series of
letters to T'afari and Z'a'wditu between June 1929 and March 1930, later published
in the national press, Gugsa offered reconciliation, but expressed the fear that he
might be imprisoned for his disobedience. On 25 February, Gugsa telegraphed a set
of conditions which he demanded in return for agreeing to meet Taftiri.41 Neither
side, however, had any intention of accepting a reconciliation: Gugsa had probably
decided after reaching Zobul in September of 1929 to mobilize his support and
challenge the central government. He must have realized that he already gone too
far for the central government to allow him to retain his governorship of
Bagfimder, much less allow him to extend his holdings to include Ya'jju. From
Tafari's point of view, a reconciliation would serve no useful purpose as it would

only have sustained an enemy that the nexus wanted eliminated. The imperial army

had mobilized and marched and there was no reason not to use the opportunity to

190

gain permanent control of the north. For his part, Gugsa's efforts to raise an army
and to enlist the support of his northern compatriots had continued unabated.42

Meanwhile, through February and March raiding activities continued; Lastans
and others refused to obey the imperial calls to arms, prompting an intensification
of the campaign against them. On 3 February, Wagshum Kabbada's loyal troops met
a group of rebels near Dayo in northeast Wag. The Wagshum's soldiers put the
raiders to flight and burned five local villages, taking prisoners and recapturing
some 500 head of livestock.43 Ras Gugsa Araya pursued a similarly aggressive
policy in eastern Tigre while Da'jach Ayalaw had moved on Wajja where be burned
alleged rebel villages and killed bands of raiders he encountered. These forays
allowed Ay'aliiw to avenge the death of Fitawrari B'azza, but also to provision his

45 In most ways that

troops on the livestock and grain stores of eastern Lasta.
mattered to rural Lastans, punitive expeditions had the same effect as raids.
Wandering soldiers requisitioned food, animals, and labor. Despite this form of
repression and the approach of an imperial army from Addis Ababa, rebels
continued to Operate. As late as 17 March, Oromo raiders attacked and burned
Dildi, an important trade settlement on the Lasta~Yajju road.45
On 22 February. Ras Muluséta's army arrived in Dase. His forces

numbered some 2000 men with seven machine guns and five artillery pieces. A few
days later, Mlllllséta joined two other similar imperial forces under Dajach Berru

of Sidamo and D'a'jach Wh‘ndbiiw'a’ssa'n, Ras Kassa's son.46 As these troops massed
in northern Wiillo, the m' two airplanes shuttled information about rebel
movements to the imperial army camp and to Base. Sometime between 22 and 25

March, Gugsa broke off his negotiations with Ras Mulugeta and marched out of

Dabra Tabor towards the left bank of the Takkazé.47

The events and motivations of the last few weeks of Gugsa's rebellion are

vague. Despite his best efforts, Gugsa seems to have been unable to turn local

191
movements of resistance into a coordinated action against the central state.
Lastans and northern Ethiopians cared less who was emperor than they did about
preserving the socio-economic fabric of the local community and household.
Moreover, Negus Ta'fari's own campaign of counter-propaganda in Bagamder, Lasta,
and northern W’allo seems to have been effective in the last month or so and none
of Gugsa's natural allies chose to join him. The Tigrean leaders waited and
watched from afar. Ras Siyum from his position in western Tigre took a very
small role in the prosecution of raiding. Gugsa Araya, on the other hand, had
already gained considerable wealth in livestock by playing the role of defender of
the central state. Gugsa wale's closest and most opportunistic colleague, Ras
Haylu, wavered until the last moment before prudently bowing out. In March the
Gojjame signalled his feelings to his putative ally. Having heard that Gugsa had
lost many mules «an essential part of a military force-- in the Zobul campaign,
Haylu sent a message with his warmest regards saying that he had sent
replacements. When the herd of gangly yearlings arrived at Gugsa's camp, Haylu's
message was immediately clear: the time was not yet right and Gugsa could expect

48 When he marched against the imperial army at the end of

no help from Haylu.
March Gugsa did so badly outgunned and outnumbered.

On 30 March Gugsa finally confronted the imperial forces under Ras
Mulugeta at Aynchem, near the town of Dabr'a Z'abit in western Lasta. A
reconnaisance by the imperial airplanes showed his troops outnumbered three to
one. Even though he was aware of the odds through his own sources, Gugsa had
three days earlier rejected an offer of mediation made by the priests of Laliba'la.
In the battle that followed, Gugsa's troops lost heavily. The gas himself died in a

hail of rifle fire as he led a desperate charge on the Shfiwan lines well after the

battle had been lost. Victorious imperial forces moved quickly to Gugsa's capital at

192

D'abr'a Tabor, where they uncovered huge caches of arms and money as well as
correspondence between the Gugsa and his northern colleagues.49

Why Gugsa chose to confront such overwhelming forces remains an enigma.
That he desperately wanted the throne was clear to his soldiery, but he had been
aware well before the battle that his allies had abandoned him. Gugsa's act was
therefore one of pure desperation; it symbolized the impotence of the once-powerful
north in resisting the power of the modern central state. Gugsa's soldiers had their
own explanation for their leader's actions. The lament sung as they left the
battlefield was classic Amharic double entendre:

Abba Da'ldel Gugsa ant'a bechahen n'ah Sha'wochu bezu nachaw:

Yiradugn belah naw ya‘ta'dabalaqa'hacha'w

Father of D'aldel [his horse] Gugsa, you are alone and the

Shawans are many;

You fought them and pleaded for help.

[You fought them and pleaded to be slaughtered]
The song plays upon the homonym infinitive "m'a'rdat," to help or to slaughter, and
clearly suggests the idea of a death wish.50

Whatever Gugsa's motives may have been, or the final outcome of that
particular battle, the northern Ethiopian elite lacked the wherewithall to resist
control from the center. Lacking direct access to the Red Sea, the north could not
obtain modern arms in sufficient quantity to challenge the imperial army. Nor did
the northern economy of Lasta, Tigre, or Ba'gamder produce enough marketable
commodities to pay for them. The guerilla warfare of raiding and harrassment was
counterproductive; supporting soldiers, absorbing reprisals, and having men away
from their homesteads for long periods disrupted the equilibrium of trade and

agriculture. The rhythms of production and trade never returned to the areas of

the central highlands which had borne the brunt of the fighting.

193

The battle of Aynchem triggered a new round of violence, but this time in
the central highlands and with the blessing of the central government. Immediately
after the fighting, the minister of war ordered the rebels to be punished, especially
those in western Yajju and Lasta which had supported Gugsa. Indiscriminate looting
started immediately by soldiers of the imperial army searching for the spoils of
war. Many of the raiders were highland Lastans who had crossed the Takkazé in
search of livestock.51 After eighteen months of quartering troops, responding to
calls to arms, and fighting off locust swarms, Lastans were eager to replenish
herds and to participate in the booty taking. The raiders stripped bare areas like

Wadla, Dalanta, Maqet, and Shadaho before recrossing the T'a’kkaze.

Rural Rebellion at the Grassroots

Taken as a whole, the events in northeast Ethiopia in the period 1928-30
and in the following half decade represent more than a reaction to political events
at the capital. Just as in the 1917-19 rebellion in Wag, environmental conditions
were responsible for disrupting the agricultural cycle which in better years would
have tied young men to plowing, harvesting, land litigation, or the business of
setting up an independent household. In the spring of 1927, when drought and
locusts hit eastern zones of Lasta and environs, reduced herds and poor prospects
for harvests "released" young men from agricultural tasks to engage in raids
against the neighboring lowlands. Oromo and Amhara played their games of
wayyane in earnest as they ranged into adjacent lowland areas in search of
livestock, grain, and prestige. Taxes in arrears in these zones had already put some
tension on the relationship between rural producers and elite. The delicate
household economy of rural producers in Lasta could not have withstood the dual

pressures of taxation and low productivity.

194

In these circumstances, politics first intervened at a sub-regional level when
ambitious balabats or military elite sought to channel producer anxiety into the
opportunity to exercise power. Organizing raiding parties became a way to obtain a
following which might later be parlayed into the privileges of rural elite, as bandit
leaders have shown throughout recent Ethiopian history.52 Those leaders of raiding
parties which are clearly identified in the sources were, in fact, already members
of the rural elite. Far from being an early manifestation of class consciousness,
raiding parties consisted of vertically based coalitions of rural strata. Desperate
producers left their homesteads and followed their balabat, local military officers,
and subdistrict chiefs in raids to enhance their prestige in the local community and
to obtain the means of livelihood. Conditions had indeed increased the vulnerability
of rural households, but the rural population expressed discontent along lines which
were culturally defined. In the northern Ethiopian political culture one sought allies
in positions of power greater than one's own, not within one's own stratums'3
Peasants did not intend to react in new ways; they preferred to conform to earlier
patterns of rebellion more likely to protect household subsistence. Institutional links
between rural producers were too weak to support a class-based up-rising «at least
at that point in Lasta's historical development. Political maneuverings by Ras
Gugsa, local agents of the state, and the leadership of the local raiding parties
were therefore responding to the severe disruption of the cycle of production at
the household and regional level.

The end results of the cycle of violence, raiding, and repression affected
rural classes in Lasta in different ways; effects bore little relation to whether or
not one supported the central state or joined a rebel group. Peasants who remained
on the land suffered the depletion of capital «seed stocks, forage, and livestock.
At the top of the social system, rural elites who either led raids or punitive

expeditions and the military class which accompanied them gained significant

195
advantages by being able to redistribute raided or recaptured goods among their
followers. There is little evidence of any direct punishment of raiders and few of
the imperial forces or the raiders returned the goods, livestock, or grain taken
during the fighting.

The process of mobilization in the countryside put a great deal of stress on
the organization of production and distribution. Lastans underwent at least three
calls to arms during the 1928-30 period. Orders to gather arms and provsions for a
campaign originated with state officials and filtered down through the rural strata
to the household level. Officers and titled officals gathered their retainers around
them and called on those peasant soldiers who enjoyed tax-free status. Chigashums
organized the call-up at the local level and collected food from those not eligible
for service. About one third of rural males had military obligations, another third
performed labor services, and the remaining group remained on the land for
agricultural work.54 Raiding or hunting parties were organized along similar lines.
Rural households not only provided manpower for the troops or raiding parties
raised from their community, but also bore responsibility for feeding other troops
passing through their area. The peculiar nature of the 1928-30 crisis in the
northeast is that household heads and young men remained mobilized throughout the
planting and harvesting seasons and also supported large bands of roving soldiers.

Between November 1929 and April 1930, the army of D'ajach Ayalaw occupied
Lasta-proper. During that half year which included the key harvest months of
December and January, Ayalaw's troops subsisted on the grain and livestock of the
area's peasant population. Lasta households also provided fodder for pack animals,
as well as wood and dung for fuel «two scarce commodities in Lasta.55 Given the
poor harvests reported for that year in eastern Lasta, much of the grain consumed
by the soldiers must have been intended for the following year's planting.

Paradoxically, grain prices in northeastern markets dropped during the period of the

196

crisis. Peasants rushed what grain they had to market at a low price to avoid its
being requisitioned.56

In the end, those who chose to fight fared better than those who remained
on the land. Herds and stocks of grain taken by raiders were a net loss to
producers. Even the herds which government-appointed forces recaptured never
returned to their original owners. When Ras Gugsa Araya returned to Tigre at the
end of hostilities, he took over 100,000 head of recaptured cattle with him for
redistribution among his followers. Wagshum Kabba'd'a' as well collected hundreds of
head during his reprisal raids into the lowlands opposite Wag. In fact many of the
soldiers who accompanied these two loyal agents of the central government had

57 Rural elites who controlled the

themselves begun the hostilities a3 raiders.
distribution of this booty, in effect, were able to influence a significant portion of
rural society; those who returned with livestock could rebuild while those who had
lost theirs fell into capital dependency to wealthy households.

The southern-based soldiery which made up the bulk of the imperial army
made out even better than their northern counterparts. In April of 1930, the
Italian agent at Dase reported that the troops returning south after the Battle of
Anychem were well fed and equipped, having looted caches of grain, arms, donkeys,
and horses as booty. The raided livestock temporarily flooded the market at Dase
where returning imperial soldiers sold cattle at 1 per taler and exchanged five
sheep for one rifle cartridge «1/15th of the normal price.58

In these conditions, the real losers were rural farming households who had
lost much of their means of livelihood. Migration out of the area accelerated in
following years and the ecological situation did not significantly recover. If the
political end result of the 1928-30 events was the formal and of northern political

pretentions, the process of rebellion and its suppression had severely weekend the

viability of the rural economy of Lasta and other affected regions. Environmental

197
conditions which had helped bring about disaffection in the north now prevented
full recovery and the growth of the imperial state created a new, largely disruptive

political environment for production.

Political Aftermath: The State Expands North

Gugsa's death removed the last major obstacle to Negus Ta'fari's empire-wide
consolidation of political power. That Empress Z'awditu died a day after her
husband of a case of aggravated diabetes was a stroke of luck. The new turned
this peculiar piece of good fortune into political capital and was crowned Emperor
Hayla' Sellase I with full powers of government in November of 1930.59

The process of putting down the 1928-30 revolt in the northeastern provinces
proved as useful to the central government as the final result. The imperial army
had put down the rebellion in the old way and in the style common to the frontier
zones of the south. Soldiers supplemented their food allowances by taking cattle,
grain, and even women from the resident population. When they returned south with
their booty, they left Lasta and its neighbors less able to cope with their
capricous environment.

The army which had marched with the minister of war and grown fat on
booty was not the modern force built by Ta'fa'ri to protect his own interests in the
capital, that force had remained with him in the capital. Rather it was a
Menilek-style irregular army consisting of soldier/settlers from southern provinces
over whom Tafa'ri had extended his influence. By mobilizing this force and sending
them north, the nexus had stood Ethiopian history on its head by employing first
and second-generation northern migrants to pacify their former home areas. By
using these soldier/settlers, Tafari had also preserved his own European-trained
force and tested the loyalty of his southern governors who he had asked to

contribute to the effort. The expedition's success was an affirmation of his

198
decade-long strategy of building a southern-base of support. The entire process
confirmed northern Ethiopia's shift out of the political limelight.

The circumstances of the revolt in the northeast and subsequent
maneuverings by the emperor had allowed the central government to extend its
political control over a large portion of the old empire and consolidate its program
of fiscal and economic control begun a decade earlier. Ta'fari's first move had
come early in the campaign when he put Wh’llo under the official control of his son
and named his trusted cousin Ras Emru as governor. Immediately upon Gugsa's
defeat, Ras Kassa «now promoted to legl gas «expanded his holdings to include
Bagamder and northern W'allo. Kassa thus had an imperial mandate to extend his
policies tried out in Lasta-proper on much more important regions.60 Kassa named
his eldest son wandb'awassa'n as his representative in Ba'gamder with his capital at
Da'bra Tabor. Another son, Assa'fa' W'assa'n, took responsiblity for Kassa's territories
in western Wello and those on the left bank of the Takkazé. Lasta-proper fell
under the jurisdiction of Debra Tabor and an absentee governor again governed the
area.

Wagshum Kabbad'a, as always, had backed the right side in the rebellion and
retained control of a much truncated Wag. In his seventies, the Wagshum spent
most of his time in the capital and turned effective control of Wag over to his
son, Da‘jach Haylu, who was a trusted associate of the emperor. Another effect of
the new political order in the post-rebellion north was the removal of lowland zones
from highland control. Wag, Lasta-proper, Tigre, and Y'ajju lost their eastern
peripheries to agents of the central government: in each of these cases state
judges and revenue officials appeared and siphoned off their important tributes to
serve the needs of Addis Ababa.61

The clear show of government strength in the final days of the rebellion in

1930 delivered Gojjam and western Tigre into the emperor's hands. On hearing of

199

Gugsa's defeat, Ras Haylu and Ras Siyum had departed post-haste for Addis Ababa
to offer their submission and to test the political waters there. The emperor, well
aware of their clandestine support for Gugsa, used his new powers to detain them
in the capital after his coronation in November 1930. Since personal political power
in northern Ethiopia was an active process of supervising the redistribution of
tribute collections and reinforcing personal ties, their control over their governates
diminished. Living away from his Gojjam sources of revenue, Haylu began liquidating
his large capital assets in Addis Ababa and even invested in the emperor's pet
schemes in the south «probably against his will. By June 1932, Haylu had had
enough and attempted a poorly conceived coup which landed him in prison and
allowed the government to conficate his assets both in Gojjam and in the capital.
Ras Emru transferred from his successful model province in Walla to Gojjam where
he began institituting central government policy. That same year the emperor
allowed a contrite Siyum to return to Tigre where he ruled cautiously and shared
the province with his cousin Gugsa Araya until the latter's death in 1933. Dajach
Ayalaw retained northern Begemder completing the cadre of state-controlled
officials in the north.62

With loyal and submissive governors in place in the north, the emperor
reinvigorated his program of fiscalism and administrative reform designed to
standardize administrative practice and generate cash income to fuel modernization
at the center. Most of the changes made by the central government in the north
between 1930 and 1935 paralleled those which Ras Kassa had introduced into Lasta
in the previous decade. Their main thrust was the extension of state control over
perquisites formerly in the hands of rural elite. Policies included the attempt at
uniform taxation which maximized cash income, state-controlled granaries, the
control of customs collection, and the use of some new criminal procedures like

afarsata (see chapters two and seven).63 For the most part, these policies did not

200
grow out of specific needs and conditions in the north, but derived from the
experiences of Kassa, Emru, and T'a'f'a’ri himself in Shawa and the south. They were
designed to break the power of the rural elite and provide a financial and
administrative base for the central government's modernization policy.

Italian weekly consular reports from Base and Ras Kassa's valuable
administrative register provide an in-depth view of state intervention in local
administration and economics. Fiscal policies which Ras Emru instituted on his
arrival in W'allo in 1930 foreshadowed the changes which Ras Kassa and the central
government sought to implement throughout the north in the years 1930 to 1935.
We know about the changes in Lasta-proper from proclamations made by Ras Kassa
and recorded in his administrative diary. Fixed stipends for soldiers and state
functionaries were a first priority. Instead of the traditional method of assigning
each official gig; or, in Wello, a complement of serfs, Kassa and Emru collected
fixed amounts of grain from each sub-district and apportioned a fixed amount to
officials. In W'a'llo, soldiers received five talers per month and an allotment of
clothing. Kassa's program in Lasta had been similar except that his reforms had to
be adapted to the local land system which differed from wane (see chapter two).64
Paying soldiers by salary and fixed allotment made the rural soldiery directly
dependent on the state, a situation similar to that of the southern provinces where
imperial control over land allocations had cemented authority. At the same time,
this policy reduced the power of the independent rural officer class by eliminating
their intermediary role in the redistribution of revenues.

In Lasta in particular, there is good evidence of the state's attempt to
control the local soldiery by controlling their sources of income. As early as 1919
Kassa had begun the task of removing local soldiers' control over collection of the

tithe and providing them with a regular allottment of grain from state reserves. In

201

1923, for example, Kassa sent the following orders to Fitawrari Asfaw a military
officer who he had appointed as mesl'ane:

Regarding the meslane's work: accept the orders of Dajach

Wh’ndbawassan. Whomever he sends as an appointee with his

signature is responsible to collect revenues and the soldier's

ration. Concerning the salary of the customs collector: as we

have said to you earlier, after Fitawrari Mangasha and

Qagnazmach Gobana get their shares, send the rest to the

treasury at Lalib'ala. A3 mesl‘a’ne you are responsible for the

mistakes and evil deeds done by your soldiers. We have

assigned Qa‘gnazmach Gobena for tithe collection of Dengobat

and Gelesot. As the head of the soldiers under Qa'gnazmach

Zh’ma'na, we have assigned Balambaras Embibel R'a'ta. In these

areas you must not intervene in the collection of the tithe.

Repair the government offices there. Come and see us in a

month's time.
This type of strict control over military income in Lasta may well have spurred the
local soldiery to participate in raiding and anti-government actions. After 1930,
controls of this type increased in Lasta and spread to Kassa's new regions in

B‘agamder and Wh‘llo.65

Despite fragile household production in this period, the intervention of the
state yielded considerable amounts of revenue in kind. Through its direct collection
of grain, by 1935 Italian sources estimated that the government controlled 25,000
metric tons of grain in its northern storehouses.66 Lasta and then Wiillo had been
the models for this set of policies, but Baga'mder and Gojjam followed similar lines
after 1930 and 1932 respectively.

Revenues from grain notwithstanding, payments of salaries in cash created
major problems. From the beginning, serious cash shortages in imperials treasuries
had hampered the extension of the money economy in general and a salaried rural
bureaucracy in particular. The lack of cash circulating in the rural economy had
been one of the primary reasons why Kassa's earlier policies in Lasta had been

slow taking effect.

202

The northern rural economy in general had functioned largely through barter
or the exchange of food and capital for labor services. What cash did percolate
through rural areas of the north did so as part of long and middle-distance trade.
The movement of salt out of the northeast and cattle from the south, east, and
west into that area had long stimulated the limited use of currency, but had not
been sufficient to generate a commodity based economy (see chapter two). This
situation contrasts with the south where coffee production, land alienation, and the
commoditization of food crops had produced an active cash economy. By the 19203
in the north, the marketing of hides and skins had become one of the few direct
links between household production and the world economy. Hides and skins which
had long been part of the use value production of the household had shifted to an
item of exchange value which allowed most households access to the cash economy.
The retail or wholesale movement of hides and skins into the regional economy had
been an added feature of the northern rural economy in the 1900-35 period, and
one which had attracted the attention of Addis Ababa officials. Indeed the severe
depression in hides prices had helped precipitate the economic crisis of 1928-30.
Peasant households were often unable to obtain the cash to pay the taxes
increasingly demanded in talers.67

Because long and middle-distance trade was virtually the only source of cash
income in the north, the central government since 1916 had sought to control it.68
By 1930, the effort had only been partially successful. Not having direct control
over Gojjam and B'ag'amder made the task difficult, and the entrenched Tigrean
leadership resented Ta'fari's attempts to install Shawan agents there. Lasta
controlled too little of the overall trade to have much effect on the whole, even

though Ras Kassa had begun customs reforms in earnest there in 1917 and

continued the policy into the 19203.

203

After his military successes of 1930, Hayla Sellase moved quickly to set up
the state's direct supervision of customs. By May of 1931 he had taken control of
all customs posts in Tigre and W'allo and had begun the task of consolidating
them into instruments of fiscal policy. In December 1931 the central government
extended itself into the eastern desert by taking direct control of customs
collection in the Sultanate of Aussa. Control of the nortnern desert sultanates of
Beru and Chercher followed soon after. State agents, usually assigned the title of
nagadra , supervised customs posts along Lasta's eastern escarpment from Ya'jju to
Tigre.69

With state control over a major source of cash in the rural economy, Hayla
Sellase's government was now in a position to intervene directly in rural relations
of production. Instead of direct access to customs fees, local elite now received a
specified allocation from state coffers. In Tigre the figure was 20% for local use
and 80% for support of the central government's local administration. Ras Kassa
had already accomplished this division in Lasta five years earlier.70 Indeed, these
policies had been an underlying cause of the rebellion (see chapter seven).

The control of customs did more than squeeze revenue for Addis Ababa out
of the cash-poor north. It allowed the central government to influence the direction
of trade. By the manipulation of customs rates, government agents could and did
affect the direction of trade. Through the early 19303, trade centers at Addis
Ababa and Diise gradually captured the hides and skins trade out of Lasta, Yiijju.
and W'allo, thus redirecting the small export economy of the area to the new

political center and away from Eritrean markets.71

Conclusion
The politics of Ras Ta'fari's rise to power in the 19203 and his consolidation

of the position of the central government in the 1930-35 period as Emperor Hayla'

204
Sellase created a new environment for the political economy of northern Ethiopia
and Lasta in particular. By bringing the political and economic structure of the
north more directly under the purview of the central state, Addis Ababa profoundly
affected circumstances under which the rural household and institutions of
distribution operated. Taken as a whole, the rural rebellion of 1928-30 was a
frenetic last-ditch effort to resist these incursions at both the level of politics
«Gugsa's rebellion« and at the grassroots level «the campaign of localized raids.
Nor did the chronic problems of population pressure on the land, poor weather
conditions, or capital dependency subside. No longer the political force it had once
been in Ethiopian history, northern Ethiopia fell to a position on the periphery of
the modern political economy. The effect of this at the level of the household

economy is the subject of the final two chapters.

205
Notes to Chapter Five

1. For contemporary diplomatic interpretations of events see Zaphiro memo
enclosed in Barton to F.O., 14 January 1930, F.O. 371/14589; Barton to Henderson,
7 January 1930, F.O. 401/28; Graham to Murray, 16 January 1930, F.O. 371/14587;
Zoli, Cronache, p. 237; Park to Secretary of State, 3 April 1930, Records of the
Department of State Regarding the Internal Affairs of Ethiopia 1930-1949
(hereafter Records), 884.00/191. For the emperor's hindsight on events see Edward
Ullendorff, ed. and trans., The Autobiography of Emperor Haile Sellassie: My Life
and Ethiopia's Progress (Oxford, 1976), pp. 161-63. For historians' views, see
Margery Perham, The Governggnt of Ethiopia (London, 1969), pp. 202-03; Patrick
Gilkes, The Dying Lion (London, 1975), pp. 207-10. The only Ethiopian historian to
touch on the issue in terms of its regional implications has been Andalem Mulaw
who simply remarks that his sources are unclear, Andalem, ”Begemdir," p. 29. The
best overall account to date has been the three paragraphs in Addis Hiwet,
Ethiopia, pp. 65-66, which emphasize that the "Raya-Azabo" ethnic label has
obscured the economic nature of the uprising. Unfortunately, the author offers no
specific detail. My informants tended to treat the Gugsa revolt and the raiding
activity as two separate issues.

2. For examples of anthropological literature on these societies, see Lange,
"Gemira;" Wendy James, KwaniL Pa: The Making of the Uduk People (Oxford,
1979).

3. For a description of T'af'ari's policies in Harar see Plowman to Bentinck,
29 June 1925, F.O. 371/10877; for W'allo see Brielli bi-weekly reports in ASMAI
54/6, passim. Ras Kassa's policies in Shawa and Lasta also reflected a smiliar
administrative philosophy; see Fit. Nabiy'aleul interviews, passim, and "Ya Ras Kassa
Astadadar, passim.

4. Over the course of the 19203, T'afari and the central government
negotiated a significant number of agreements with foreign interests, including a
dam on Lake Tana, a British-initiated Abyssinia Corporation, and an Italian-built
road from the port of Assab to Wello. See McCann, "Lake Tana;" Marcus,
”The Infrastructure of the Italo-Ethiopian Crisis: Haile Sellassie, the Solomonic
Empire, and the World Economy 1916-1936,” Proceedings of the Fifth International
Conference on Ethiopian Studies, (Chicago, 1979); Dodds to F.O., 30 August 1920,
F.O. 371/4399; Rey memos to F.O., 8 November and 1 December 1920, F.O.
371/4400.

5. Issues concerning the suppression of slavery and the exact effect of
imperial interdiction of the trade are controversial. Edwards argues on the basis of
published travel accounts and European archival materials that prices rose and the
institution diminished in the 19203 because of decreased numbers of slaves available
in the south and less so because of imperial edicts. My information on the Lasta
case from local documents and informants who held slaves and witnessed the trade
holds that administrative decrees were fairly effective in cutting off the
north-south trade in slaves. The trade continued clandestinely, but on a rather
small scale. Reduction of supplies from the south was certainly a factor as well.
See Edwards, "Slavery,” and James McCann, "Children of the House: Slavery, Its
Suppression, and the Rural Household in Northern Ethiopia 1900-75," forthcoming in
Suzanne Miers, ed., The Suppression of Slavery in Africa. For an example of
Kassa's concern for the slave trade and treatment of slaves see "Ya Ras Kassa
Ast'a'adar," document #144.

206

6. The most thorough account of these relations to date has been Charles
McClellan, "Perspectives on the Neftenya-Gabbar System-The Case of Darasa,"
Africa (Rome), 33 (1978), pp. 426-440.

7. In terms of the processes of rural reform, Ras Kassa clearly acted in the
interests of Tafari and the central state. In Tigre and W'allo the negus used his
own agents as customs officials and tax collectors. See "Ya' Ras Kassa Asta'dad'ar,"
passim. and Gasparini to Ministero delle Colonie, 16 December 1927, ASMAI 54/26.

8. For a summary of Ta'fari's appointments between 1924 and 1928 and
factional politics in the capital, see Annual Report for 1929, F.O. 371/14598. Also
see M'a'rsae Hazan, "zawditu," where there are detailed accounts of each sham
31g; [appointment/demotion proclamations] which often contradict those in British
records.

9. See, for example, M'eirsae Hazan, "Z'awditu," pp. 392, 415-32. Kassa's role
as "kingmaker" was pivotal. Many historians and Ethiopians have viewed his
personal conservatism as evidence that he shared the empress' opposition on
modernization and administrative reform. On the contrary, most of his own policies
had presaged those of T'afari, and this factor, rather than the religious question,
probably determined his support for the progressive party.

10. Zoli, Cronache, p. 253.

11. For effect of low hides prices see Ufficio dell'Addeto Militare to Rome,
10 December 1930, ASMAI 54/36. While the low prices were largely the result of
world market factors, some downward pressure on prices of hides and meat
invariably occur during prolonged drought when lack of fodder and pasturage
increases the rate at which livestock are brought to market. I observed such a
process at work in Lasta and Wh‘llo in 1974.

12. Abba Getu, Interview #7, 31 May 1982; M'arsae H'az'an, "Z'awditu,"
p. 407.

13. Zoli, Cronache, p. 256. Zoli is a particularly good secondary source for
material on this period since, as governor of Eritrea, he had access to all of the
on-the-spot reports of Italian agents in the north. When possible, I have used the
agent reports from the ASMAI files.

14. Ibid., p. 257.

15. Ibid.. p. 273.

16. Marsae Ha'za'n, "Zhwditu," p. 407; Notiziario Politico,
Luglio-Agosto-Settembre 1929-VII, p. 3, ASMAI 54/26; Zoli, Cronache. PP. 293-94.

17. For a discussion of Gugsa's 1912 problems with the central government
and his removal from Ba’g‘amder see CRO 2/ 19/ 155 and 219/154.

18. Andalem, "Bagemdir," pp. 20-28.

19. As part of an agreement between the central government and the
Anglo-Egyptian government of Sudan, Gugsa retained one half of the customs

207

revenues from the border post at Gallabat. See, for example, Sudan Intelligence
Report, #175, February 1909. For his policies in Bagamder, see Andalem,
"Begemdir," pp. 41-61; Alamu Wiirqnah, interview #3, 4 May 1983.

20. Ala'mu W'arqnah, interview #3, 4 May 1982.

21. Southard to Secretary of State, 6 February 1929, Records,
884.6461/Tsana dam/76; Dunbar to F.O., 3 April 1929, F.O. 371/13831.

22. Southard to Secretary of State, 12 April 1929, Records, 884.00/158.
Italian agents at Gond'ar later performed similar services for Ras Kassa and his
son.

23. Andalem Mulaw, "Begemdir," p. 28; Alamu W'a'rqna'h and Abba Getu,
interviews, passim; Annaratone to Addis Ababa, 4 April 1930, ASMAI 54/6.

24. Haile Sellassie, Autobiography, p.161.
25. Zoli, Cronache, pp. 295-97.

26. Annaratone Report for 15-30 October 1929, ASMAI 54/26; Zoli, Cronache,
p. 297; General Abat'a Bazza, interview #1, 7 March 1982.

27. Mutanelli to Direzione Generale Affari Orientale, 8 November 1929,
ASMAI 54/37; Ullendorff, Autobiography. 9. 161-62. I am grateful to Dr. Harold
Marcus for sharing his notes from the French archives with me on this point.

28. Alamu warqna'h, interview #6, 10 June 1982.

29. Mutanelli to Direzione Generale Affari Orientale, 8 November 1929,
ASMAI 54/37.

30. Annaratone Report for 15-31 December 1929 and 1-15 January 1930,
ASMAI 54/26. Studies at the Institute of Development Research at Addis Ababa
University indicate that northern Ethiopian peasants market approximatey 15% of
their total grain production. This figure may be used as a rough guide to the
amount of surplus production over and above the cost of the social and physical
reproduction of the average household.

31. Zoli, Cronache, pp. 304-05.

32. Della Stufa Report, 16-31 December 1929, ASMAI 54/26; Annaratone
Report, 1-15 December 1929, ASMAI 54/26.

33. See Notiziario Politico, 1o Trimestro 1930, ASMAI 54/4; Barhanna Salem
2 Miazia 1922 E.C.

34. Annaratone Report, 1-15 December 1929, ASMAI 54/26. Tiifari had also
requested additional airpower to put down the uprisings from the British legation
which denied his application. See Barton to F.O., 28 March 1930, F.O. 371/14592.

35. Notiziario Politico, 1° Trimestro 1930, p. 6, ASMAI 54/4.

208

36. Ibid., p. 7; Pollera to Addis Ababa, 5 March 1930, ASMAI 54/10;
Marsae Hazan Ababa, interview #1, 25 March 1982. According to all my
informants, Lasta's sympathies were with Gugsa although Kassa appointees in the
area were certainly loyal to the Shaw'an cause.

37. Pollera to Addis Ababa, 28 January 1930, ASMAI 54/ 10.
38. Ibid; Zoli, Cronache, p. 316.

39. Zoli, Cronache. p. 262; Ras Emru probably reflected the feelings of the
central government when he accused both British interests and Ras Haylu for

active participation in the rebellion. See Bergman letter enclosed in Southard to
Secretary of State, 28 January 1930, Records, 884/00/178.

40. De Bono to Ministero Affari Esteri, 12 March 1930, ASMAI 54/36;
Annaratone to Addis Ababa, 21 April 1930, ASMAI 54/36; Ayala'w Zhllala'w,
interview #1, 10 June 1982. Ato Ayalaw claims to have been present at Mujja when
Kassa's agent intercepted the message for Siyum.

41. Berhanna salam, 2 Miazia 1922 E.C.

 

42. Gugsa's soldiers at this point had a clear understanding that their leader

had decided to take the imperial throne. Alh’mu warqnah, interview #6, 10 June
1982.

43. Zoli to Ministero delle Colonie, 7 February 1930, ASMAI 54/26; Astuto
to Ministero Affari Esteri, 26 February 1930, ASMAI 54/26.

44. Zoli to Ministero delle Colonie, 27 February 1930, ASMAI 54/26; Abba
Getu, interivew #7, 31 May 1982.

45. Zoli, Cronache, p. 338; Annaratone to Addis Ababa, 17 March 1930,
ASMAI 54/4.

46. Notiziario Politico, 1° Trimestro 1930, p. s, ASMAI 54/4.
47. Berhanna Salem, 2 Miazia 1922 E.C.

48. Pollera to Addis Ababa, 20 March 1930, ASMAI 54/10; Notiziario
Politico, 1o Trimestro 1930, p. 9, ASMAI 54/4.

49. Alamu Wiirqn'ah and Ayalaw Zhllala'w, joint interview, 10 June 1982; Zoli,
Cronache, pp. 355-62; Notiziario Politico, 10 Trimestro 1930, p. 3, ASMAI 54/4.
Despite some fanciful accounts to the contrary, my eyewitness informants claim the
negus' airplanes played no real part in the battle. Both sides knew the inaccuracy
of their bombing and scattered when they appeared overhead. The battle was
fought along traditional patterns of highland warfare.

50. Alamu W'a'rqnfih, interview #6, 10 June 1982.

51. Abba Gétu, interview #7, 31 May 1982; Ala'mu W'arqn'ah, interview #6,
10 June 1982.

209

52. The question of banditry and class in northern Ethiopia has been raised
by Donald Crummey and Timothy Fernyhough in recent work. Both conclude that
bandit activity in the north was less an avenue of social mobility or social protest
than a way for disaffected elites to regain access to political office. See Timothy
Fernyhough, "Bandits and Banditry in Northern Ethiopia in the Nineteenth Century,"
Northeast African Studies (forthcoming); and Donald Crummey, "Noble and Peasant:
Banditry and Resistence in Nineteenth Century Ethiopia," in Banditry, Rebellion,
_and Protest in Africa (forthcoming).

 

 

53. For discussions of this issue, see Weissleder, "Political Ecology;" Allan
Hoben, ”Social Stratification in Traditional Amhara Society," in A. Tuden and L.
Plotnicov, Social Stratification in Africa (London, 1970). The emphasis on vertical
ties was one raised again and again by my informants.

 

54. See War Office memo, 10 March 1936, F.O. 371/20165. Raids and hunting
parties were raised in a somewhat similar fashion. For a description of the
organization of a hunting expedition northern Ethiopia, see Abdulsamad Hajj Ahmad,
”Burie--A Study of Long-Distance Trade 1900-35," unpublished B.A. Thesis, Addis
Ababa University, 1975, p. 22.

55. Abba Getu, interview #7, 31 May 1982.

56. Zoli, Cronache, p. 329.

57. Ibid., p. 296; Zoli to Addis Ababa, 8 April 1930, ASMAI 54/9.
58. Ministero delle Colonie, Asmara to Rome, 4 April 1930.

59. Rumors that the empress had been poisoned were rife, but there is little
evidence to support such a claim. It appears that her death was, for Tafari,
merely a piece of extraordinary luck. Marsae H'a'z‘an Abiibae, interview #1, 25
March 1982. For European accounts of her death see Barton to Henderson, 2 April
1930, F.O. 371/14595; Zoli, Cronache, p. 379 ff.

60. Kassa received his northern Whllo territories on the left bank of the
T'a'kkaze in 1932. Barton to Henderson, 25 April 1930, F.O. 371/14595; n.a. Leul
Ras Kassa, p. 12. For a compete listing of Kassa's territories and sub-chiefs, see
Governor of Eritrea to Ministero delle Colonie, 17 September 1930, ASMAI 54/38.

61. See ASMAI 54/6 and 54/37 passim.

62. For information on Haylu and Siyum see Southard to Secretary of State,
27 October 1931, Records, 884.00/226; Troutbeck to Henderson, 16 May 1930, F.O.
371/14595; and Berhanna S'alam, 25 June 1932.

63. For Lasta and Ras Kassa's governates see "Ya Ras Kassa Astadada'r,”
passim; for Ta'fari's policies see Brielli bi-weekly reports from walla in ASMAI
54/6, passim. Also see chapter seven.

64. Annaratone Report for 1-15 January 1930, ASMAI 54/26. wallo's land
system allowed serfs (gabbar) to be allocated to soldiers in a way similar to the
gt_1_1_t_ rights given in Lasta. The W'allo system was known as Ya'Galla maret (Oromo
land) and was ended by the emperor in 1935. For descriptions of this system see
Mario Corigliano, Soste nell'impero: il territorio della residenze del Lago Haik

210

(Consenza, 1939); and Mahetm'a Sellase, Zekra' N’agiir, pp. 153-54; Brielli Report,
1-15 February 1934, ASMAI 54/6.

 

65. "Y'a Ras Kassa Ast'a'dad'ar," #62. Also see, for example, #49, #89, and
#93.

66. France to Alto Commissions per l'Africa Orientale, 28 March 1935,
ASMAI 54/9.

67. For a discussion of the effect of depressed hides prices see Ufficio
dell'Addeto Militare to Rome, 10 December 1930, ASMAI 54/36.

68. See chapter five and 1929 Cora Report on Ethiopian government
finances, 14 September 1929, ASMAI 54/36.. Abata's appointment to Wag and
Tigre in 1909 had been partially intended to extend Menilek's control of the
Tigre customs. Salvago-Raggi to Minstero Affari Esteri, 14 July 1909, ASMAI
37/3; Pollera to Asm'a'ra, 25 August 1921, ASMAI 54/36.

69. Ministero Affari Esteri to Ministero delle Colonie, 1 May 1931, ASMAI
54/36; Brielli to Addis Ababa, 13 January 1932, ASMAI 54/6; Scammacca to
Ministero Affari Esteri, 19 December 1931, 54/9; Brielli to Addis Ababa, 19 April
1932, ASMAI 54/6. In 1932 central government agents also imposed a 40% ad
valorem tax on alcohol in Tigre.

70. De Bono to Directors Generale, 15 June 1933, ASMAI 54/37; "Ya' Ras
Kassa Asta'dadar," document #49 and passim.

71. Brielli to Addis Ababa, 28 April 1932, ASMAI 54/6; de Halpert Report
enclosed in Barton to Simon, 14 December 1934, F.O. 371/19175. Italian consuls in
Gond'ar expressed similar concerns about the flow of trade out of the northwest
and Gojjam. Tigre did, however, manage to keep its strong trade ties to the
north, as did Wag. Rome's appreciation of the central government's success at

attracting trade away from Eritrea probably figured into willingness to invade in
1935.

Chapter Six

The State and Rural Society: Lasta Households and the Imperial Order

The effects of Lasta's incorporation into the modern imperial nation were
not confined to the level of state politics or even to local political events.
Changes in rural life and production in the 1900-35 period and in particular the
expanding presence of the imperial state affected Lasta society at the household
level, by altering basic rural institutions of taxation and the distribution of the
factors of production themselves. The processes which brought on these
institutional tranformations were complex ones, including the imperial state's
intervention in local political and economic life, the state's competition with local
hereditary elite, and the cumulative effect of environmental decline. Not only were
the material conditions of life declining, but Lasta's rural producers perceived them
to be. While Lasta is the primary focus, data from many areas of northern Ethiopia
indicate that the effects were widespread.

This chapter complements the previous two chapters' political focus by
describing the ways in which state policy, local elite reaction, and demographics
affected production and distribution in northern Ethiopia. The role of the state in
changing rural relations of production is particularly critical since the scope of its
intervention in rural institutions of distribution far exceeded anything attempted by
Menelik or his predecessors. Moreover, during 1900-35 the central state adopted
policies which increasingly sought to exclude local elites from participation in the
process of economic distribution. Through its attempts to establish direct control of

tax assessment and collection, access to corvee labor, and judicial practice, the

212

state altered the circumstances in which households made production decisions. The
shift in the rural household's institutional environment stimulated important
qualitative changes in taxation procedures, labor requirements and land distribution
as well as quantitative changes in the demands placed on local producers. Overall,
the process of the state's intervention in the local economy invites comparison with
the interaction between the colonial state and peasant agriculture elsewhere in
Africa during the same period.1

With the accession of Ras Taf'a'ri to the position of head of government in
1916, the symbiosis which had existed between the imperial government and local
hereditary elites altered significantly. Although the process of central state
penetration into the northern political economy had been in progress since 1900,
the Sh'a'wan victory over Eyasu in 1916 accelerated its pace. From that point the
development of state authority grew in stages culminating in the 1928-30 rebellion
and the coronation of Hayla Sellase. While the timing and details of each
northern administrative unit's case needs careful investigation, the basic policies
were clear: first, the imperial state sought a more effective control over revenues,
especially those payable in cash, to fund its local and national needs; second, it
strived to break the economic and political base of the regional and local elites in
the north. The two goals were complementary. By intervening in the relationship
between local producers and elites in taxation and judicial domains, the state
undercut the power of the local elite to act independently of imperial direction.
Much of the institutional change evident in this period was a product of the
intense competition between the local elite and the state over scarce resources.2

In both Wag and Lasta-proper, the regional governors appointed in 1917
acted for the central state and began the slow, difficult process of reducing the
power and prerogatives of local elites. Reforms and appointments decreed by Ras

Kassa and the Wagshum generally reflected national policies and represented

213

attempts to regularize procedures and to create political and economic stability. As
detailed in chapters four and five, the result was often the opposite partially
because the government intervened in the conduct of local government in fits and
starts and faced consistent opposition to the reduction of local and regional
prerogatives. The death of the empress and Addis Ababa's military victory in 1930
constituted a major watershed in the breakdown of regional opposition to the
imperial state in the north.

Chief among the state strategies was the control of customs which had
always been one of the few sources of cash revenues in the northern economy. As
a corollary to this policy, the central government began systematically to prosecute
raiding and collect taxes in the interstitial lowland zones which had been an
important source of tribute revenue for highland elites. With central government
agents in place, trade from these areas, often in goods marketable in urban and
international markets, shifted to the political center at Addis Ababa. By 1933, for
example, the state-appointed governor of Zobul, Fitawrari Baya'na, sent the lowland
district's traditional tribute of cattle and butter to the Crown Prince in Da'se and
not to its historical overlords in Lasta and Tigre. The important cash revenues
from court fines followed the same route.3 Addis Ababa also captured the trade in
hides and skins and some of the salt trade which had sustained Lasta and the
economy of the northeast.

These were national policies, but by carefully examining Lasta's own
documentation, it is possible to see the extent to which imperial state policies
penetrated into the local political structure, thereby beginning to break down
relations between producers and local elites. The evidence from Wag is spotty, but
the situation in Lasta is clear from the documents available from Ras Kassa's
administrative register. From the beginning of his governorship, Ras Kassa Haylu

railed against inefficient rural administration, sought to regularize it, and to put in

214
place a loyal cadre of state administrators. Those who disobeyed his direct orders
were to receive severe punishment of their "soul and body."4 In March of 1919 he
issued a written proclamation to his administrators in Lasta, Dera, Mida, Bor'a'na,
and S'alale to improve the efficiency of their work.

Although often couched in religious metaphor, his proclamations' clear
purpose was to break down the economic base of the local elite. As with the
national government, control of customs and market revenues was the first order of
business. By 1924, and probably long before, he ordered his na'gadrases (market
heads) to take over the collection of market levies and customs on the cararvan
routes. He specifically excluded local elites from the process of collection, although
they were allocated a small fixed portion of the revenue.5 That same year, Kassa
ordered a new standardized procedure for tax collection which provided for grains
to be delivered directly to government granaries by peasants, eliminating the role
of local elites as middlemen.6

As significant as the control of cash revenues, was the state's determination
to control the distribution of tax income derived from local production, the control
of which had previously rested almost entirely in the hands of local gult-shum and
quasi-state officials. One of the earliest recorded proclamations of Ras Kassa's
Lasta administration codified the process of redistribution which local elite had
previously controlled as a means of building local support and prestige. Their
methods were obviously idiosyncratic and involved great variations even within
districts. By contrast, Kassa's edict prescribed the exact apportionment of the tax
revenues in kind which reached Lasta's regional treasury at Lalibala:

Firstly, divide all the grains collected from every region into

three sections. Then one-third for the mad-bet [kitchen],

receiving guests, and for the ‘woman's ration. Second, after

dividing the remaining two-thirds into four sections;

three-fourths will be soldiers rations and the rest will be for

charity and daily meals for the poor. This is to be told to all
officials.

215

Even though an affirmation of conventional procedures, the edict and others like it
established the state's right to control such matters. Under Kassa's administration,
tax collectors and assessors were direct appointees of the state as represented by
Kassa's court in Shawa. Local elites received a portion from the surplus product of
Lasta agriculture, but participated less in its assessment and collection.8

Beginning in 1917 and continuing through the twenties and early thirties, Ras
Kassa and Wagshum Kabba‘da, his counterpart in Wag, appointed or reappointed
officals at the local level who were loyal and willing to accept the authority of
the state as represented by the regional governor. Grants of land «an increasingly
limited resource in Lasta-- favored official state appointees or those of the landed
elite who had demonstrated their loyalty to the regional government.9 In 1924 Ras
Kassa granted additional land and collection rights to his son who served as
Lasta's governor. The state's power increased accordingly at the grassroots level
as those incomes were redistributed among loyal followers at descending levels in
the administrative structure.

In the case of K'abb'ada and Wag, state power had been required to put
down challenges to his legitimacy and his authority had survived the crisis only
because of his ability to call on imperial military sanction. The Wagshum's ability
to stay in power in 1917 had depended almost entirely on his ability to call on the
state's coercive power when local sentiments appeared to be against him. Lacking a
political or economic base independent of his appointment to Wag, Kabb'a'd'a
administered his district in the shadow of Kassa and the central state. He dared
not deviate too significantly from the basic lines of imperial policy.

State authority intervened in other domains of the rural elite as well,
especially in their juridicial prerogatives which in the form of fines and bribes had

provided supplementary income and allowed those holding judgeships to garner

216

considerable power in local politics and the distribution of factors of production,
especially land. Kassa, for example, began his governorship in 1917 by appointing
judges to sub-district courts only after they had taken a firm oath to abide by a
rigid set of procedures designed to reduce corruption. In 1924, Ras Kassa issued a
four page proclamation providing explicit instructions to Lasta judges on how to
conduct court.10 Together with the regulations on taxation, these controls severely
circumscribed the traditional rights of local elite and effected a transformation in
the relationship between those elite and rural producers. The historical terms under
which these relations sorted themselves out did much to increase the risk factor to
peasant household economies.

State intervention in the process of customs collection, lowland tribute and
raiding, and the redistribution of tax revenues created some rather immediate
effects on the relations between rural classes «peasant producers and their local
administrative elite. With the state control of customs and the regulation of
raiding, the rural elite lost the income which had made up an important portion of
their resources, and the peasant population had lost the protection from elite
demands which these revenues had always provided. Peasants also lost the
opportunity to engage in raiding «an important dry season supplement to household
income. Both elites and peasant households adjusted their survival strategies
accordinghr as rural institutions of distribution and relations of production shifted

to accommodate state actions on the local political scene.

Changing Demands on Rural Producers
As a result of the new role of the state in the system of rural
redistribution, new patterns of surplus transfer and taxation emerged. With major
reductions in basic catagories of income such as the proceeds from customs and

lowland tribute, circumstantial evidence suggests that rural elite sought to recoup

217
their losses by exploring new ways of deriving revenue from producers. Total
collections per household increased and changed in type. Based on evidence from
interviews, archives, and comparative data it is possible to trace qualitative and
some quantitative changes in the sorts of demands made on peasant producers by
the state and rural elite, and therefore comment on the political and economic
climate in which peasant households sought to survive.

As the basic forms of taxation in northern Ethiopia, the egg; (tithe) and
may! ge_bg (the salt or land tax) constituted the ideals against which producers
judged other forms of taxation. The following features were most prominent: first,
the local official assessed the land tax on community units and not on the
individual or the household. The descent corporation on which they levied a given
tax had the responsibility to distribute the tax load within the unit. Even though
military officers and the hereditary soldier class were exempt from the land tax
and therefore added to the burden on producers, there was nonetheless a common
and expected accommodation between producers and local administrators. Individual
households could be assessed according to the size and quality of their holdings
and the exigencies of individual circumstance might be taken into account on a
year to year basis.11 The second important feature of taxation belonged to the
collection of asrat. As a tithe, this tax was proportional to the annual net yield
and not a fixed assessment. During interviews covering taxation, Lastans regularly
named age; as the foremost and most legitimate levy. Labor obligations which
formed a part of the dues owed to the landed elite usually took place in the local
community where they benefited the collective spiritual well-being through
church-building or work on local Mad land whose produce served partially for
local feasting. Finally, peasants paid these taxes in kind or at least in salt bars
readily available locally. The flexibility of these proportionately based taxes proved

a critical feature in household risk management.

218

In the early twentieth century, a plethora of new taxes and assessments on
produce and labor emerged. Some of these new demands were one-time requests and
others constituted new taxes collected in new forms; some emanated from the state
and others from local elites attempting to maintain their relative advantage and
economic power. Most importantly, the new assessments, whether temporary or
permanent, tended to be £9ng assessments which therefore overturned the
fundamental principles of taxation in the rural north. Moreover, new labor
obligations to support the expanded state administration took Lasta householders
away from the local community and collectors demanded many obligations in cash.
The nature of the source material available on early twentieth century Ethiopia
makes the exact amount of demand on each household impossible to determine, nor
can the historian accurately assess the fluctuations from locality to locality or
from year to year. The essential point, however, is that the fixed rate tax
considerably increased the risk facing each household, both in material terms (food,
seed, and livestock) and in the ”emic view" of the household itself.

The shifting pattern of rural taxation in northern Ethiopia emerged in the
late-nineteenth century as Menilek attempted to modernize the fiscal structure of
his new empire-state. Shortly after the 1889-92 famine, the emperor ordered that
the tithe paid to support the local church be transfered to state granaries for the
support of the army.12 Menilek's decree was empire-wide and seems to have taken
immediate effect in Lasta where important churches retained their rights over
incomes of church lands, although smaller parish churches likely suffered a loss of
income.

By the end of Menilek's reign, other demands made on peasant production
had begun to change. Tax rates which had once been set at low levels underwent
a process of inflation as local and state officials competed for revenues. Salt

customs rates in Tigre and Wag which had been 1 salt bar per camel load of

219
goods in the 18803 had increased eight-fold by 1911 despite the overall increase of

the price of salt relative to silver.13

By the early 19203, the imperial government
had taken control of salt revenues; local officials who had lost all or part of this
income passed along the loss to peasants by increasing their demands upon them.
Over the course of the next two decades, competition over rural revenues between
the state and local elites intensified and caught peasant households in Lasta and in
northern Ethiopia as a whole in a precarious squeeze which threatened the margin
of surplus needed for social and physical reproduction of rural society. I believe
that these pressures, combined with the difficult environmental conditions of the
period, spurred the frequent rebellions in the north.

New exactions demanded from northern Ethiopia households in the early
twentieth century were a mixed bag of formal and temporary taxes, labor
obligations, and judicial fines. These demands fell on households which still were
required to pay the more traditional «and accepted« tithe and land tax. The first
of these new taxes was a national one. In 1907, Menilek proclaimed that all
households in the empire were to pay a one taler ”telephone” tax to help absorb
the expense of implementing the first phase of the line linking the empire to the
new capital.14 Unlike the existing set of taxes, this assessment was to be paid in
cash and on the spot.

Despite these nominal efforts to garner cash from the reluctant north,
Menilek still financed his infrastructure development largely by revenue from
imperial control of extractive trade in the south. At first these consisted of the
imperial duties levied on slaves, and state monopolies on ivory and gold. By
Menilek's death in 1913, imperial sources of revenue had begun the gradual shift to
coffee, hides, and marketable foodstuffs. Northern Ethiopia contributed little to the
imperial coffers and continued to pay their local taxes in kind. By 1919, however,

Da'jach Haylu of Wag was demanding that his peasants pay the telephone tax

220

regularly and that the local communities pay fines when Wag's single telephone link
was damaged or vandalized.15 That this exaction coincided with a major grassroots
rebellion in Wag should not be surprising. Peasants must have wondered what in
the world they were paying for.

Tax assessments in cash in northern Ethiopia proliferated in the late teens
and early twenties. Ras Gugsa, whose lands bordered Lasta, in 1921 announced a
new tax called mfg gebgr (lit. "smoke tax") of one taler to be paid by each
household. Ostensibly the tax was to be used to purchase oxen for his soldiers,
although Italian consular records claim it was to obtain arms to underwrite his

16 In the same year, Ras Haylu of Gojjam proclaimed a similar

independent status.
tax under the same name. In Lasta, Ras Kassa did not impose a similar tax until
the 1935 mobilization against the Italians when each Lasta household paid 1 taler
to support the costs of mobilization.17 He did, however, innovate head taxes in his
other governates in the early 19203. Remarkably, the imposition of what amounted
to a head tax, or hut tax, by Gugsa, Haylu, and Kassa in northern Ethiopia
followed shortly after the same procedure in colonial Africa in places like Sierra
Leone (1896), South Africa (1905), Nigeria (1906, 1918, and 1928), and Malawi
(1896).18 Northern Ethiopians felt no better about this form of taxation than did

their counterparts under colonial domination. They refered to fixed, per household

assessments like the telephone and head tax as Y'akulla geber (lit. ”penis” tax).

 

Lastans did not pay such a tax until 1935, probably a reflection of the fact that
Ras Kassa had his major revenue sources in the cash-rich south. Hostility to head
taxes can be contrasted to the near unanimous acceptance of the principle of the
tithe.

In addition to fixed taxes, northern Ethiopia's peasant producers paid an
increasing number of ad hoc payments to their administrative elite. Some of these

were traditional ones paid in kind for the celebration of feasts on important saints'

221
days or to fete the local gult-shum's family during a rite of passage. Although
these placed burdens on local producers, they took place within the local
redistributive process. Labor and payments in kind were compensated by invitations
to feasts, help to a loyal household during an off-year, or protection under fictive
kinship relations as godparents.

Ostensibly similar demands of the 19203, however, had a different character.
Collectors demanded payment in cash and they often lavished the benefits on their
own or state interests outside of the locality. The trappings of modernity «rifles,
Scotch, high quality cloth, and bribes to higher officials« had become expensive
and officials needed cash if they were to participate in the opulent life-style
expected of the political elite. In 1922, for example, Wagshum Ka'bba'da' announced
his intention to travel to Addis Ababa and issued a proclamation calling for the
peasantry around his capital to contribute to the trip's cost in talers, honey, and
other portable, non-perishable commodities. He demanded a total of 3000 talers, a
huge sum for cash-poor Wag peasants to provide.19 Other, lower officials in Wag
and Lasta-proper made similar demands when they chose to travel to Addis Ababa
to pay homage to Kassa, K'abbad'a, or the imperial court. By the 19303, Lasta's
administrative decision-making took place increasingly in the capital and Kassa and
the Wagshum remained close to the imperial court. The elites of Lasta who built
houses around Kassa's and Kabbada's compounds in the 203 and 303 supported
themselves through collections made back in Lasta and transferred to the capital.20

Given state-level efforts to systematize the collection and distribution of tax
revenues, local officials who wanted to maintain or increase their own portion of
peasant produce and unscrupulous state functionaries engaged in a range of
unprecedented activites best described under the rubric of "corruption." During the
19203 and 19303, evidence suggests that pressures on institutions for the

assessment, collection, and distribution of taxes as well as the judicial process

222
became a field for the clandestine accumulation of wealth by rural classes who
controlled political office. At all levels, officials who participated in the political,
juridicial, and fiscal roles of government squeezed extra revenue out the the
already overburdened producer population.

This corruption took many forms and it often transformed the nature of
particular institutions as well. Just as the designation gult-shum had entitled one to
rights of collection in a particular fief, the holding of political office entitled one
to the spoils of that position. The process began at the lowest levels where
chiqashums and dambanya accepted payments in grain or even in cash for lower
assessments. Ato Al'amu W'a'rqna'h, a d'amb'agya in western Lasta in the late 19203,
reported bribes and ”considerations" as a regular and expected part of his
income.21 The process of obtaining an office itself was subject to the payment of
unofficial fees called mashumiya [lit. "that which brings an appointment to office"]
which by the 19203 were payable in cash and pro-rated based on the potential
income of the office involved.22

The tax collection process itself was a major source of corruption and
supplementary income for local elite. One informant described collection procedures
at the local state granary where non-state collection officials (the chiqashum and
damba'gya) conspired to collect grain beyond the amount of the tithe:

For tax payments, the delegate would come, delegated by the

Wagshum. The dambagya would come to the area, or if this

one was not around, the chiqashum. When the fence was

finished and the granaries made [by peasant labor], the chief

of the salt would be there to watch it. It was once in many

seasons the grazmach or ganyazmach [state-appointed officials]

were going there. Otherwise it was the chief of the district.

It was there that the engeb [earthenware jar] was filled. The

engeb would be filled up to its month. After pushing down on

the grain like this and giving a hard kick with the foot, it

goes down. He would then say fill it! Again it would be filled.

With a good measure he would add two more measures of

grain. The rest of the grain that was spilled over would be
kept by the grain storekeeper. This grain would not be less

223

that ten gunna [c. 20 litres]. This one, the chiqashum, who

keeps the granaries was the one who took it. He would take

from every type. This man was rich and he was a lord.
This informant, as many others, perceived that the problem was not with high state
officials who lived off regular incomes, but lower officials who had lost their
prerogatives in the reform process:

Of course, there were some who complained when they were

oppressed too much. Those who lived on farming had to take

honey, butter, etc. and pay the tax, one out of ten of every

produce. There were some who complained and some who did

not. But it was those under the lord who made them

complain...those who take the honey and butter in the name of

the lord....All the areas were under them. Everything was

according to their wish. They could put you in jail, or whip

you.23 They demanded money, grain, sheep, and everything else

too!

The process of extralegal collections went well beyond the collection of the
formal taxes. Office-holding itself was part of the means of accumulating revenue.
The practice of collecting mashumiya contributed greatly to the incomes of those
who controlled the power to appoint. In theory the institution was not new.
Accounts previous to the twentieth century report the presence of a prestation to
one's superior in recognition of an appointment, usually a head of livestock or
gundo of honey. The remnants of that tradition carried into the twentieth century
in the form 0f £21,139 mar, the payment made by the local bailif on his
assumption of duties. By the 19203 in northern Ethiopia, however, offices often
went to the bidder offering the highest mashumiya payment. Payment came to be
expected in silver and the rights to collect it from one's subordinates became an
accepted prerogative of local office. Predictably, an inflationary spiral in fees
followed and those with access to cash held the inside track to local office24

In the competition between state-appointed and local officials (many

appointees enjoyed both designations), new avenues for extorting cash and income

224
from local communities proliferated. Judges from the local to the regional level
were in the best position to benefit; Ras Kassa's attempts to codify judicial
procedure sought, largely in vain it seems, to prevent the abuse of privilege. Cash
payments, or at least gifts of livestock or honey, were expected if a litigant were
to be successful in land disputes or civil hearings. Crimes like murder,
slave-trading, or failure to appear in court carried cash fines of from 9 to 80
talers. Fines and confiscation of a felon's property could reach up to the fourth
genealogical line. Distant relations could be asked by the court to pay one taler
each on behalf of their kin.25 Supplicants to local officials had to make payments
in cash or kind to receive a hearing. Northern Ethiopians returning from military
service in Tripoli, trade expeditions to Eritrea, or target labor in Sudan regularly
paid cash to local officials for the right pass through their territory or to resume
their place in the local land division. To a large degree, the Italian, French, and
British reports of brigandage along the eastern trade routes to Eritrea were ad
hoc collections of duties by local officials.26

Legitimate court proceedings had also shifted into the cash economy.
Verdicts in all types of criminal cases increasingly required cash payment of fines
and constituted an important source of revenue for state coffers and official
incomes. In 1933, for example, a bloody border skirmish between a Lasta village
and one Yajju resulted in a seven taler per capita fine on all of the villages
involved.27 According to both oral and documentary sources, cash fines increased in
frequency and in the amount of payment during the 19203 and early thirties.

A useful example of the expansion of judicial procedures designed to
generate money for state purposes was the institution of afarsata. In this
procedure, a village harboring a felon could be held accountable for producing the
criminal on pain of a large fine levied on the community as a whole.

State-appointed meslane conducted the proceedings and received a portion of the

225

fine in payment as well as food and drink from the local population for the
duration of the procedure. Major crimes punishable through afarsata were animal
theft, slave raiding, cutting the tendons of a slave, robbery, murder, house-burnings,
and assault. Fines claimed by a plaintiff or assessed by the court for a particular
infraction were often considerably less than the total fine assessed on a community
which was unable or unwilling to produce a culprit; the state and its local
representatives kept the difference.

While recognized in traditional jurisprudence in Lasta and other areas of the
north, the use of afarsata in the 203 shifted from criminal prosecution to revenue
generation. Over the course of the decade and a half from 1920-35, officials
invoked the method to prosecute lesser crimes and the frequency of occurrence
increased dramatically. This was partially because the total amount of fine paid
was always greater in cases where the community could or would not produce the
criminal. The procedure was an extremely popular one in imperial circles and
formed a major part of the judicial program of Ras Kassa in Lasta and Ras Emru,
the imperial representative in W'allo (1928-32) and Gojjam (1932-35). The institution
proved particularly effective at squeezing currency out of cash poor areas in the
north which otherwise yielded tax revenues only in kind. There is good evidence
that the use of afarsata had become not just a judicial procedure, but also a
source of revenue for local representatives of the state. In 1924, Ras Kassa issued
a proclamation which effectively reduced the number of officials legally empowered
to initiate the procedure. In the proclamation he cited the need to reduce the
frequency of the procedure. Oral sources would suggest that his edict was
ineffective and afarsata continued as a means for local officials to supplement
income over and above their state-granted allowances.28 With institutions of this
type as regular fare of the local state administration, peasant households obviously

felt the threat of sudden demands on their household resources.

226

For a cash-poor imperial government, peasant corvee labor also provided an
important resource which provided concrete results at a minimal cost to the state.
In addition to payments of tax, tribute, and fines, the labor power of the rural
population was also a source of competition between local requirements and state
demands. As described in chapter two, peasant households in Lasta and northern
Ethiopia fulfilled a number of labor obligations to the local community including the
building and repair of churches, the cultivation of church land, the building and
repair of houses for local elite, and the clearing of local roads for special
occasions. There is good evidence that the imperial state and its representatives
expanded these obligations to the local community by involving peasant labor in
building a permanent infrastructure designed to support the political economy of a
modernizing state. Much of this process concentrated in areas producing directly
for the world market. In Lasta and environs the demands were modest, but
nevertheless impinged upon the limited pool of labor time available outside of the
agricultural cycle. Households along major trade arteries felt most of the effect as
they were called upon to repair and maintain the roads already existing and to
build new ones designated by imperial planners in the capital. Between 1928 and
1935, peasant labor built roads from Addis Ababa to Dasé, from there to Koram
and from Yajju to Lalib'aila.29

Building roads was a complete social process which involved household
resources in labor from male and female members as well as food reserves to feed
the supervising officials. Ato Chakola Lamina recalled the process along the rocky
canyons between Sa'qota and Kor'am:

The wood and stone would be placed in a proper way and the

bumps would be filled by soil and the area cleared. It was

said that the road was cleared when the Wagshum came, when

he was going from Siqota to Koram or Koram to Squta, the
road would be cleared. Although it was not like today with
well chopped stones and wooden poles and cement, it was fine.

227

It was the rural people who were working. The army never

lifted a finger. The soldiers only followed their officers, it was

the people who worked. While [the men] cleared, [the women]

baked bread. Honey would be taken, butter would be taken;

sheep, beer38nd many other things when the Wagshum's arrival

was known.
The organization of road-building to some extent replicated the work involved in
the cultivation of mg or state lands in Lasta. Here the work of plowing,
cultivating, weeding, and feeding the workforce involved the labor of all members
of the household. The timing of both of these factors was critical since each
household was keenly aware that their own productivity depended on the timeliness
of plowing and sowing. Whether owed to the state or to local notables, corvee
labor for agriculture created a tension between a household's needs to tend its
own plots during the critical weeks of plowing, sowing, or harvesting and their
obligations to perform these tasks for others.

Thus by the late 19203 and early 1930s, the fiscal demands on the peasant
household had altered considerably from a few decades before. Not only had taxes,
demands on labor, and extra-legal drains on cash supply increased, but they had
done so in ways which considerably increased the risks to the household economy.
As a result of the struggle between the state and local elites the overall rate of
taxation and tribute collection had increased. More importantly, the types of new
exactions had changed; the proportional asrat tax made up a smaller portion of the
overall drain on household income. Fixed taxes, payable in cash, and unpredictable
fines and levies now dominated the revenue transferred from peasant producer to
administrative elite (whether local elite or the state, Lasta's peasant population
could hardly have noted much of a distinction). This shift in the type of
tax/tribute, independent of the overall increase of assessment, seriously affected

the stability of the household economy as well as challenging the ideology of

subsistence and risk management which dominated the rural population.

228

Table 1 suggests the effects of a shift from proportional to fixed
assessments.31 In agricultural systems dominated by unstable production conditions
(weather, pests, access to means of production) like Lasta, fixed taxes considerably
increased the chances of a production unit falling below the amount of production
required to reproduce its labor supply and to fulfill social obligations to the
community. Under a system of fixed taxes, high levels of production provide a
higher level of after-tax surplus than under a proportional tax system like the
ism. At lower yields, however, a fixed tax cuts more quickly into surplus.
Proportional taxes, by contrast, require higher payments during good years, but are
less likely to produce deficits after a poor harvest, and produce less severe
shortfalls when they do. Thus while the total after-tax surplus of a household in a
random five year cycle of production yields may be higher under a system of fixed
taxes, the risk in any one year would be considerably greater than under a system
of proportional taxes. The risk to a single household of not producing sufficient
surplus to reproduce itself therefore increased significantly under a tax system
which emphasized fixed payments. The weakness of institutions of horizontal sharing
in Lasta meant that a household which could not meet its tax or food requirements
dispersed, leaving their land and labor resources to more productive units or local
officials.

Increased special demands for payments of taxes, fines, and gifts in cash
exacerbated the risks already evident from fixed taxation. Cash in the form of salt
bars, rifle cartridges, or talers circulated very sluggishly in the Lasta rural
economy and peasant households had only limited access to it. Talers were in
increasing demand and they entered the Lasta economy in the 1920s primarily
through Lasta's limited trade in grain, honey, butter, hides and skins which trickled
into Eritrean markets and to Addis Ababa. Although these items had long been in

limited local circulation, they quickly became Lasta's only access to regional and

229

Table 1

Comparative Effect of Proportional and Fixed Assessments

on Peasant Income and Subsistence

As_ra_t (10% proportional
tax)

Remainder after taxes
Surplus or deficit based

on subsistence rate of 30"

Fixed tax of 5 madejja
Remainder after taxes
Surplus or deficit based

on subsistence rate of 30

Mixed tax of age; plus
fixed rate of 5 madejja
Remainder

Surplus or deficit based on

subsistence rate of 30

Net Yield (in madejja’)

50.0

5.0

45.0

5.0
45.0

+15.0

10.0
40.0

+10.0

40.0

4.0

36.0

+6.0

5.0

35.0

+5.0

9.0
31.0

+1.0

35.0

3.5

31.5

+1.5

5.0

30.0

0.0

8.5
26.5

-3.5

30.0

3.0

27.0

-3.0

5.0
25.0

8.0
22.0

-8.0

25.0

2.5

22.5

-7.5

5.0

20.0

-10.0

7.5
17.5

-12.5

‘Ma'dejja is a unit of grain measurement equivalent to c. 32 liters.

"Subsistence rate of 30 madejja per household is based on 1937 calculation by

Vinigi Grottanelli in the Lake Tana district southwest of Lasta.

230

world markets. The shift from use to exchange value in items like hides and skins
comprised one of the first forms of systematic commoditization in the rural
economy.32 Hides once used in bedding, for grain storage, as clothing, and baby
carriers had to be sold to local merchants at depressed prices to obtain cash for
taxes or bribes. Money in circulation in Lasta also fluctuated in its rate of
exchange in tune with world silver markets, thus creating additional problems for
Lasta householders trying to level out the peaks and valleys of demands made on
them.

By the 1920s, Lasta households could not count on a predictable cycle of
production, much less on consistently high yields. Environmental and demographic
conditions acted to lower production consistently while demands upon households
steadily increased. As yields decreased and taxes, fines, and labor demands
increased, the peasants' sense of risk to susbsistence also heightened. In fact,
Table 1 indicates less the actual condition of a model household economy than it
does the household's view of what was at stake with the new system of taxes
being evolved as a result of the competition between the state and local elites.
Producers in Lasta were keenly aware of the declining conditions of production and
that a fixed tax or a series of special fines and gifts considerabhr increased their
risk of low yields driving them below the level of subsistence.

The best evidence for Lasta's peasants' perception of new tax policy comes
from the series of rural protests and rebellions which characterized the period
1917-35. Earlier chapters have already detailed the major northern rebellions of
1917-19 in Wag and 1928-30 throughout Lasta. These two major rebellions had
political consequences but had at their foundations the facts of declining
productivity, increased exactions, and consequent risk to subsistence. Peasants were
willing to take up arms and challenge state or local authority out of a sense of

desperation. In some cases, this protest took the form of resistance to

231
state-appointed leaders like Wagshum K'abb'ada or to local authority. These large
scale rebellions, however, offer only indirect evidence of local sensibilities.

For Lasta, reasonable data exists to document local concerns in the form of
petitions of protest sent from local communities to authorities at Addis Ababa. In
the case of Lasta, the petitions responded directly to the institutional reforms
imposed by state-agents appointed by Ras Kassa. In 1924, some seven years after
Kassa's reforms began, he received a petition from "big and little" supplicants to
halt his reforms and to carry out judicial process in the "former" way. Later that
same year, another petition arrived at his court at Fiché also requesting an end
to his reforms.33 The signators of the latter petition were "the people of Lasta"
who asked to be ruled "as in the time of Ras While and Negus Mikael.” These
petitions were often, but not always, in written form, and usually arrived at court
in the care of priests from either a local parish or a major monastery. The
petitions themselves have not survived, but we get a good sense of them and who
presented them in the written responses of Ras Kassa. Those petitions we know
about were probably only a small portion of those presented at the local level or
those presented orally by those who were sufficiently aggrieved or wealthy to make
the trip to Addis Ababa themselves.

Nor were Lastans the only ones to protest rural conditions. In 1921
Gondaré peasants who resisted Ras Gugsa's head tax circulated a petition and
presented it to Ras Tafari at Addis Ababa. Tax payers on Lake Tana did the same
for Ras Haylu of Gojjam in 1929.34 In 1932, the Amharic language newspaper
Berhanna _S_'a'_l_a1_n carried an article authored by a certain priest Abba Hagos who
lamented the conditions of life in rural Tigré:

The province of Agamé [in eastern Tigre] is in a state of

humiliation and misery. The primary cause is grasshoppers, the

second the oppressive tribute, and finally the absence of

judicial authority. This state of thinggsmotivates the constant
wars and migration of the population...

232

Abba Hagos' description approximated conditions in Lasta which had brought on
resistance to reform.

Some serious questions exist about the exact nature and motivation of
protests against fiscal and judicial reform. Were these petitions and rebellions
indications of innate peasant conservatism? Were they an early form of class
consciousness? Or were they indeed reflections of peasant opinions at all? To
answer these questions, one must look rather carefully into the circumstances
surrounding the actions and the structure of rural ideology.

I believe that the evidence strongly supports the position that rural
cultivators in Lasta and the north did not neccessarily oppose reform or change,
but they did vigorously oppose the kinds of changes in fiscal and administrative
policy which they perceived as increasing their risk of falling below a minimum
level of subsistence. Lasta's rural population was fully aware of weakening
conditions of production, with less land available, fewer draught animals to till, and
more labor required in providing water and wood. The kinds of fixed rate and
special payments imposed by the administrative class and the imperial state itself
exacerbated these problems and put the household economy in jeopardy. Petitions
requesting redress of grievances and the return to the policies of Ras Wfilé were
collective expressions of unease and even anguish over existing circumstances and
a desire to return to a time where the state had intervened less and the structure
of taxation had been more conducive to maintaining subsistence. In a declining
spiral of hostile environment, population pressure, and dwindling capital resources,
state interventon increased demands on rural producers and pushed household

economies to the edge of bankruptcy.

233

Notes to Chapter Six

1. For the most cogent discussion of the role of the colonial state in local
affairs see Lonsdale and Berman, ”Coping," passim.

2. See Marcus, ”Infrastructure," passim. In my interviews with Wagshum
W'a'ss‘an he pointed out a number of subtle ways in which the emporer had
attempted to undermine the status and economic position of the north's traditional
elite. A thorough treatment of the process is not appropriate here, but needs
further investigation by historians.

3. Wylde, Modern Absyssinia, pp. 337, 340. When he passed through the area
in 1899 Emperor Menilek made a much more traditional request on local resources

at Koram when he ordered Wagshum Gwangul to "build me a house and bring me
the tithel." Martini. Diario p. 359.

 

 

4. Document #256 of "Y5 Ras Kassa Ast'a'dad'ar" admonishes his local officials
for their inefficiencies.

5. Ibid., documents #94 and #49. Asr'as, interview #2, 21 April 1982. Trends
in central government taxation reform policy can be seen in the taxation data
found in the Frank de Halpert papers at Rhodes House, Oxford.

6. "Ya Ras Kassa Asta'dada'r,” document # 99. Fit. N'a'biya'leul, interview #5,
23 August 1982. Among other procedures, Kassa ordered all tax pmlers to use
notched sticks which kept a record of assessments and payments understandable to
illiterate, thus making overassessment by local officials more difficult. The r_a_s also
maximized state market receipts by forbidding the selling of livestock outside of
designated market places covered by state assessors. See "Ya Ras Kassa
Astadadar," document #236.

7. "Ya Ras Kassa Astadad'ar, " document #35.

8. See, for example, "Ya Ras Kassa Ast'a'dad'a’r, " documents #221, #102, and
#102b.

9. Ibid., documents #113, #89, #91.
10. Ibid., document #151.

11. If such accommodation did not often happen, it was at least the
perception among producers that it could and should.

12. Abba Gétu, interview #4, 25 May 1982. Mahetma Sellase Wald'a Masq’al,
"The Land System of Ethiopia," Ethiopian Observer (1957), p 294.

13. A.M. Tancredi, ”piano del sale,” p. 170. For figures on prices of silver
relative to salt, see Pankhurst, Economic History. P. 463.

14. Mahetma Sellase, ”Land,” p. 291.

15. Pollera to Addis Ababa, 20 August 1919, ASMAI 54/8.

234

16. Andalem Mulaw, "Bagemdir," p. 28. Paulicelli to Addis Ababa, 24 October
1921, ASMAI 54/36.

17. Ch'akol'a, interview #3, 6 May 1982. Abba Gétu, interview #4, 25 May
1982. Kassa's delay in imposing such a tax probably derived from the fact that he
had other revenue-generating governates to the south--Haylu and Gugsa did not.
Wagshum K'abbada's failure to do so may have been because of his lack of imperial
ambition.

18. The timing and coincidence of but or head taxes in colonial Africa and
their imposition in Ethiopia remains an interesting question. I have seen no
evidence which suggests that Gugsa or Haylu were aware of colonial policies
elsewhere in Africa, but the possibility should not be ruled out. Both were astute
observers of British policy in Sudan. For information on but taxes elsewhere in
Africa in the period, see Shula Marks, Reluctant Rebellion: The 1906-8 Natal
Disturbances (Oxford, 1970), p. 133, passim; R. Rotberg, The Rise of Nationalism
in British Africa (Cambridge, 1965), pp. 39-40; and O. Ekudare, An Economic History
of Nigeria (New York, 1973), pp. 108, 109, 236.

 

19. Pollera Report, 8 February 1922, ASMAI 54/36.

20. Abba Ala‘m'ara'w, interview #2, 14 June 1982. Asr'as W'alda Mikaél was
one of these. He lived at Ras Kassa's court in Addis Ababa and served as
treasurer while holding the title and privileges or meslané. Ras Haylu of Gojjam
invested a great deal of his revenues from Gojjam's taxes and trade in the capital

where he reputed owned over 250 houses, a bunna bét, and several taxis. See
Zoli to Ministero delle Colonie, 11 April 1930, ASMAI 54/4.

21. Alamu W'arqna'h, interview #2, 22 April 1982; Abba Gétu, interview #4,
25 May 1982; Cha'kola', interview #1, 10 March 1983.

22. Mashumiya was an increasingly common practice during 1900-35 and a
number of my informants commented on it. For nineteenth-century citations, see
Crummey, ”Abyssinian Feudalism," p. 127 when the requirement was simply a gift
and not a cash payment for office.

23. Chakol‘a', interview #1, 10 March 1982.

24. Chakola', interview #1, 10 March 1982; Asras, interview #2, 21 April
1982.

25. "Yd Ras Kassa Asta'dada'r,” passim. Al'a‘mu Wa'rqnah, interview #4, 14 May
1982. Brielli Report, 16-30 September 1933, ASMAI 54/6. In 1928, the newly
appointed Negus Taf‘ciri issued a proclamation forbidding the confiscation of land by
rural elites. See Berhanna S'alam, 15 Tekemt 1921 E.C.

26. This was true for Gojjam, Ba'gamder, Lasta, and Tigré. Chakola',
interview #1, 10 March 1983; Al'a'mu wa'rqnah, interview #1, 22 April 1982; Della
Stufa Report, 16-31 December 1929, ASMAI 54/26; Pollera Report, January 1930,
ASMAI 54/26.

27. Brielli Report, 22 June - 20 July 1933, ASMAI 54/6. The Italian report
mentions a per capita assessment of taler, but one taler per household would be

235

more likely. Also see Notiziario Politico, 3 May 1928, ASMAI 54/5 for example of
similar fine imposed by the Wagshum for an attack on mail carriers.

28. "Yd Ras Kassa Astadada'r,” document #151; Abba Gétu, interview #14, 7
July 1982. The American traveler Blanchard witnessed an afarsata at Lalibala in
1933. For the increasing use of this institution in Gojjam and W'allo after 1930, see
ASMAI 54/6 and 54/7 passim. The increase in frequency of afarsata was a major
peasant grievance and it was successfully suppressed by Italian authorities after
1935.

29. See, for example, Brielli Report, 16-31 December 1933, ASMAI 54/6;
Sudan Military Intelligence Report, #61, 30 November 1937, enclosed in
F.O.371/20930.

30. Cha'kol'a, interview #1, 10 March 1982.

31. Table 1 is has been adapted from Scott, Moral Economy, p. 53 with the
addition of materials relevant to the Ethiopian case.

 

32. For information on the increasing export of hides and skins out of the
northeast, see the twice-monthly reports from Brielli's Dasé consulate in ASMAI
54/6 and Cora to Governor of Eritréa, 29 April 1929, ASMAI 54/4.

33. "Yd Ras Kassa Astadadar,” documents #83, #101. These documents are
not the petitions themselves, but responses dictated by Ras Kassa to his court
secretary.

34. Andalem Mulaw, "Bagemdir," p. 28.

35. Notiziario Politico, June 1932, ASMAI 54/36.

Chapter Seven
The Impoverization of the Household Economy

...we have every reason to maintain that in the last century,

the Amhara estate [patrimony], rather than increasing, was

declining....lt leaves one to think. of a .progressiile secular

destruction of wealth, to a gradual impoverishment...

Vinigi Grottanelli's observation about the state of rural economy around Lake
Tana in 1937 rings true for Lasta, perhaps even more so. It is the argument of
this chapter and this dissertation that the material conditions of life in rural
northeastern Ethiopia declined precipitously during 1900-35, and especially in the
final decade and a half of that period. The declining state of the environment,
population pressure on land, and new demands on rural producers pushed a great
many Lasta and northern Ethiopian households past the break-even point in the
household production/consumption equation. The economic formulae within the rural
household economy which had sustained Lasta's social and economic fabric for so
long, proved unable to deal adequately with the new set of demands placed on it.
Patterns of land-holding, labor allocation, and institutions of economic distribution
changed and new strata emerged in the society. Major results were the squeezing
out of independent middle peasants, the growth of a new class of impoverished,
dependent peasants, the emergence of a capital-rich administrative class, and the
beginnings of commoditization of both land and labor.

The available evidence suggests strongly that agricultural productivity in
Lasta decreased during 1920-35 --in some years and in some areas at an alarming

rate. While we have no quantified data, the conditions for production makes a

237

clear case or this position. The decline can be seen in terms of produce per unit
of land, in output per unit of labor, and in output per production unit (the
household).

A primary cause for declining productivity was the population pressure on
land which pushed cultivation onto new, previously uncultivated land above 3000
meters, areas in lowland valleys below 2000 meters, and on to the precarious
slopes of Lasta's ubiquitous canyons. Land in these areas simply did not produce as
much as had the ideal zones of first occupation. The danger of frost higher up and
floods in the lowland valleys made them high risk investments of labor and seed.
Moreover, the crops grown in the new zones such as barley in the highland areas
and sorghum in the lowland valleys were less desirable than those grown in the
ideal 2500-3000 meter zone.2

Increasing demand for land in the ideal middle zone and the nature of the
land distribution system meant an increasing fragmentation and scattering of plots.3
The pressure on fertile land also prompted Lasta farmers to reduce fallow periods;
while Lastans knew its value, fallowing came to be viewed as an unaffordable

4 In the rush to till all available land, including forested areas, land-poor

luxury.
farmers put forest and scrub areas under the plow, thus reducing firewood sources,
eliminating forage for livestock, and inducing erosion of the unterraced hillsides.
These factors of environmental damage were cumulative and lowered yields as well
as optimism about the future.

Testimony to the difficult state of agricultural productivity in northeast
Ethiopia comes from several documentary sources. In September 1921, the veteran
Italian observer Alberto Pollera commented that economic conditions in the
northeast had made it difficult to maintain families and that local officials had not

reacted to provocative state edicts because the were waiting for better economic

times. Four years earlier, Talamonti, the Italian agent at Adwa, had argued that

238

Italian interests in Eritréa were safe since northern Ethiopia lacked the surplus
to sustain a large mobilization. Some years later in 1926, he repeated that thesis
and pointed out that grain production had fallen even further.5

These conditions had the immediate effect of intensifying the labor demands
on the household economy in Lasta and the long-term effect of bringing about
further stratification among rural producers. New demands on household labor
included the arduous additional labor required to break ground in areas which were
difficult to cultivate not only because of elevation, but also because of the steep
slopes which imperiled the plowman and his oxen. Proper preparation of the soil for
planting téf, for example, required at least five passes to prepare the soil for
sowing. If a farmer tried to spare his oxen he risked poor yields. On the other
hand, by exhausting oxen on breaking new soils, a cultivator sacrificed efficiency
in tilling his remaining plots, since tired and malnourished oxen perform
significantly less well than fresh and well fed ones.6

Needless to say, poor and middle peasants felt this strain more than capital
rich ones. New plots located on the periphery of settled zones as well as nearby
fragmented plots each required additional time and effort spent in transporting
equipment, seed, and oxen to the site. Distant plots could not be easily protected
except by having younger household members encamped nearby. At harvest, crops
had to be brought to a central point for threshing and winnowing and then carried
to regional granaries. Labor required per unit of land increased significantly:
decreased fallowing and the poor soil quality of newly cultivated areas required
much more labor than larger, well rested ground, and weeding time increased on
poorly prepared soil. With more and more pasturage put under the plow, households

"if they could-- invested significantly more labor in maintaining livestock herds,

especially oxen.

239

New workloads would not have been evenly distributed to household members.
As settlement moved further from ideal homestead sites, women spent more time
away from home carrying water and searching for scarce firewood. The use of
sorghum and barley flour instead of the preferred téf must also have increased
as land availability in the middle zones decreased. Livestock also required
additional care. Young members of the household fed livestock by the
labor-intensive "lopping browse," which meant ranging far from the homestead in
search of bush and foliage which was then chopped and hand fed to livestock.

Labor costs to the Lasta household in this period therefore grew sharply,
and the ratio of household workers to consumers (young children and older infirm
members were primarily consumers) became a critical factor. With a decreasing
quality and quantity of land available, households with a low worker to consumer
ratio either had to intensify the work of able members or cease to be an
economically viable unit of production. Nor would Lasta households have been
affected uniformly by these demands. Their ability to contribute the additional
labor would have depended on their stage in the household development cycle.
Households early in the cycle with an infant or young children may not have been
able to cope, while those late in the cycle may already have lost mature offspring.
An overall effect may have been to create pressure on young men and women to
remain in their parents' households longer. While not the ideal or expected form,
households with mature adult children may have increased in number.7

The situation paralleled what Chayanov described for peasant farm
organization in Russia:

The peasant, restrained by its land area, forces up its labor

intensity...however, this is achieved at the cost of reducing

the payment per labor unit which requires that the 8farm's
equilibrium be established at a lower level of well being.

240
In Lasta, population pressure and the decreasing land productivity brought on
precisely this type of intensification of labor and decrease in material welfare.
Households faced with this squeeze in Lasta had either to expand their land
holdings or accept the conditions of more labor and less food. Obviously, most
households ended up accepting the latter condition. The case of those who were
able to expand their land holdings will be taken up later.

The increasing amount of labor required to maintain Lasta households
accounts in great measure for the continued demand for slaves in the northern
rural economy. Unlike family labor kin or Amhara itinerants who might claim land
through marriage into the local property distribution system, slaves had few
opportunities for establishing themselves in an independent production unit. They
were thus a more reliable source of labor. Central government prosecution of the
slave trade and closing of the southern frontiers in the 19203 and 19303 had cut
off the supply of slaves to Lasta and the north, raising their price and forcing
Lasta's workforce to rely on those already present in the workforce. With
increasing prices and the worsening of labor conditions on small-scale peasant
holdings, many slaves took advantage of the new anti-slavery regulations and left
their masters. Many attached themselves to wealthy households which could provide
protection from their former masters' claims and which offered better conditions
for their labor. Still others who left their homes took refuge at the compound of
the anti-slavery court at Dabra' Tabor set up by Ras Kassa after 1930. After
experiencing the poor conditions and inadequate food supplies there, many escaped
slaves chose to join local governors and state officials as "contract" laborers
referred to locally as YaSar Barya (lit. "grass slaves"). Many slaves did remain
with their masters, but the shift of large numbers of slaves from middle peasant
households to those of the rich and powerful followed the movement of other

means of production in the same direction.9

241

The question of labor, however, was a part of a larger production equation.
It was capital and not land or labor per se in northeast Ethiopia which determined
the ability of the individual household to amass the means of short-term survival
and the reproduction of its labor in the long run (see chapter one). Oxen were the
scarcest factor of production in Lasta and northeast Ethiopia. Without owning oxen
or having access to them, land had little meaning; land claims not plowed quickly
reverted to those with sufficient draft power to put it into production. Both in the
ideological taxonomy of local cultivators and in terms of the actual control of the
means of production, ownership of oxen determined economic status: a poor peasant
was one with less than a yoke of oxen, a middle peasant had at least one yoke,
and a rich peasant or member of the elite would have had several pair or even
more.10

Ownership of the limited supply of rural capital determined social and
economic stratification in the Lasta case, and similar agricultural systems based on
the plow. In Lasta and elsewhere, oxenless households usually obtained access to
the animals through elaborate networks of borrowing and exchange involving
balanced reciprocity, the direct transfer of the means of production (labor, use of
land, or seed), and the ceding of a portion of the product itself. In northern
Ethiopia, the institution of m allowed households without oxen to borrow them
in exchange for from one-third to three-quarters of the harvest after taxes
depending on who supplied labor and seed. At times this institution also provided
for the transfer of labor from the borrowing household to the donor and even the
de facto transfer of usufructory rights over land.

Similar institutions involving the exchange of draft power can be seen
elsewhere. Hoyt Alverson has described the Tswana institution of mafigg which
served to redistribute wealth and cement patron-client loyalties. In Botswana, the

transfer of draft power took place predominantly between kin and in-laws.11

242
Alverson describes 3191339. as an economic and social leveling device which
effectively redistributed draught power, milk, and dung through rural Tswana
society. Magazo, on the other hand, was purely a transaction between households in
different economic strata, although these economic relations might be solidified
through fictive ”godparent” relationships. Lasta did have a similar institution called
mallafan (see chapter two) which also resembled the institution of "yoking"
practiced in the Russian peasant households described by Lenin. Far from being an
example of rural redistribution of wealth and capital, yoking according to Lenin
was an arrangement between "tottering farms."12 The Lasta case bears out this
evidence. Magaz , on the other hand, tied indigent households to powerful ones and
promoted stratification in the rural economy.

The evidence from Lasta during the 19203, 1930s, and into the post-war
period suggests that the practice of m grew in importance to the rural system
of distribution. The effect, though, was not to balance control of capital among
and between strata, but to exacerbate class differences and allow richer strata to
accumulate land and labor through their control of capital. At the foundation of
this process was the fact that ownership of oxen proved a far more efficient
means of cultivation than access through borrowing. Borrowers could not be
choosers, and owners of oxen invariably made sure that their oxen worked prime
plowing days on their own land. Plowing and sowing too late reduced yields and
required more time of exhausted animals. Recent research in northern Ethiopian
farming systems has shown the direct correspondence between the number of oxen
actually owned, and the number of plowing days available per household. Evidence

13 In the Russian case, Postnikov found

from Botswana corroborates this finding.
that in households which relied on yoking, efficiency was half that of households

that owned their own animals.14 A simple corollary to this evidence would argue

243
that the lower the number of oxen actually owned rather than borrowed, the less
land cultivated.
In Lasta where conditions for the household reproduction of cattle were
difficult because of topography and vanishing pasturage, the opportunity costs of
engaging in agriculture grew considerably as oxen became more time consuming to

15 The overall effect of

feed and maintain and the cost of borrowing more dear.
the decreasing quality and nourishment of oxen owned by Lasta peasant households
and the difficulty of access to alternative means of plowing parallels conditions
described in Russian empirical studies:

...if there is a deterioration in the type [or quality] of

draught animals used, there cannot be the slightest doubt that

the general maintenance of the animals and the treatment of

the soil, as well as the food and living conditions of the

farmer have likewise deteriorated...the harder the animals are

worked and the worse they 35% fed, the harder the peasant

works and the worse he is fed.

There is no question that with fragmentation of plots, unproductive new land
brought under cultivation, and the shortage of forage, the conditions for Lasta's
oxen population and production in general deteriorated. The conditions which
promoted the cycle of impoverization cited above also stimulated a reciprocal, but
much smaller, cycle of enrichment whereby wealthy peasants and office holders
expanded their control over the means of production through the manipulation of
changing rural institutions. The two cycles complemented one another: capital-poor
households sought to maintain themselves by ceding land use rights and labor in
exchange for oxen from richer households. Even in years with poor harvests
wealtlw peasants and the administrative elite could obtain surplus food through
loaning their draft animals. Office holders, a class which included the state, the

church, and local elite, insulated themselves from the effects of declining

productivity by living off fixed assessments of labor, food, and cash. Even when

244
their own animals succumbed to epizootic disease, state officials and local elite
enjoyed "rights in draft power" which allowed them to use peasant animals on their
1mg lands. Through access to the judicial and tax assessment systems, the elite
effectively controlled the distribution of the means of production in the rural
political economy.

One could argue that two systems of agriculture evolved in Lasta during the
environmental and economic crises of the 1920-35 period and beyond. One set of
peasants, relatively wealthy in the means of production and fallowing properly,
relied on its own draught power, attracted free and slave labor, and even engaged
in rudimentary cash-crOpping of cereals and pulses.17 Another system depended to
an increasing degree on the use of borrowed capital, lent out its land through
m, and subsisted on low yields of grain from poorly cultivated and seldom
fallowed plots. This latter group worked harder and were in a poor position to
recruit labor. Peasant households at the lower end of the spectrum had difficult
choices to make; they could choose either to intensify their own labor to maintain
subsistence with decreasing productivity, or seek additional income outside of
household-based agriculture. This situation was by no means a socio-economic
structure at equilibrium, but rather one in a downward spiral where the means of
production fell increasingly into the hands of the rural elite and the well-to-do
peasant households.18

Understanding the cycle of enrichment which emerged in the midst of general
economic decline requires a careful scrutiny of the process by which the
administrative class accumulated productive resources. If the basis of rural
stratification in Lasta was control of oxen and their labor power, the control of
land nevertheless serves as a useful indicator of the distribution of factors of
production. While the equal distribution of land was an important tenet of the land

tenure system, and one of the core symbols of Lasta's moral economy, changes in

245
the system took place in patterns of land-holding during 1900-35 which directly

benefited the upper class.19

Land could be alienated from a r_e_st holder only in certain specific
circumstances, the most important of these were treason, non-payment of taxes, and
abandonment of land. In the case of the latter, members of the rural military class
retained a long-standing right to occupy land which restenya households had
abandoned. Through the use of m, capital-rich tenants also had a means to
alienate land by claiming its use through their superior capability of cultivating
it.20

On the basis of available qualitative data from interviews and local
documentation,’I have concluded that during 1920-35 rural elites in Lasta and
northern Ethiopia significantly expanded their control of land resources. The
process took place partially because of their control of land courts, the need of
the state to settle its new representatives on the land, and the need for poor and
middle peasants to transfer their traditional land rights in exchange for access to
oxen, seed, and food. Perhaps the most significant source of land transfer in the
period was the ability of the military and administrative elite to take over land
abandoned by Lasta households which had failed as viable production units and had

).21

left the area (see below The episodic political and economic crises of the

period, in fact, sped up the transfer of land from poor and middle peasants to rich
ones and to the administrative elite.22

The imperial state was aware of the trends in land holding and even
participated in it. Administrative reforms emanating from the central government or
Ras Kassa's court required new personnel to implement them. New officials
invariably received grants and rights of collection which lent added pressure to

already overcrowded districts. Some even received lands outside of Lasta. In 1924,

for example, Kassa granted 10 gasha of land (c. 400 hectares) to a minor official

246

"in addition to what you already have in Lasta." D'ajach Wiindb'aw'assan received a
similar amount in Lasta when he took the governorship.23 These officials and the
ones they replaced pressed their official prerogatives and expanded land holdings.24
In fact, the enlargement of their own land holdings through the manipulation of
local privilege appears to have formed part of the way in which non-state elite
resisted attempts by the central government to undermine their economic base,
since they still held positions as gult-shum, balabbat, and influencial clergy.

Yet state representatives such as Wagshum Ka‘bbiida' engaged in it also. One
informant reported that his father had taken the Wagshum to court in Siiqota,
D’asé, and Addis Ababa to fight confiscation of his land. He described the local
reaction to the Wagshum's attempts to extend his land holdings and that official's
poor knowledge of local procedures for claiming land:

My father had made him [the Wagshum] come to Base two

times and to Addis Ababa two times, because unless he showed

his birthright, unless he recounted his descent, he could not

take the land by force.

”You [Wagshum] won't cultivate the land unless you have

counted your lineage! Whose son was your father Wagshum

Tafari? Whose son was Tafari? Taf'ari was the father of

Kabba'd'a, Haylu was the son of Kabba'da, Sehayna'sh was the

daughter of Haylu. How were they descended from ancient

time?"

He [the Wagshum] did not know because he had been living in

Addis Ababa, W'allaga, Gama Gofa and other places. Because of

this he had no case and was worried....When he refused [to

answer], and wanted to take it by force, the people would

refuse. Hezgvas made to come [to the capital] once, twice,

three times!

Most rural cultivators did not have the means to mount such a challenge,
but enough petitions and complaints reached the imperial court to prompt action. In
1928 the newly crowned Negus Tafari issued orders to restrict the confiscation of

rest land to cases of treason against the royal family.26 There is little evidence,

however, that the decree altered the accumulation of land by the rural elite.

247

As a result of manipulation by actors in the rural economy and the
opportunities presented by the weakened production base, significant changes had
taken place in the institutional infrastructure of rural production in Lasta. The
first of these was m. Originally an institution for the support of the infirm or
aged, mg evolved into a system by which capital-rich tenants rented r_e_s_t land
from destitute households who needed food, seed, or the use of oxen. By the end
of the 1920-35 period much of the land let out as M had been claimed as
abandoned by the leasor. At this point, magazg dovetailed with another institution,
wfiljd aged, which had previously existed only in areas of southern Ethiopia where
land could be alienated, bought, and sold. m aged provided for the seasonal
renting of land rights on a cash basis, although many transactions were more or
less permanent.27 The notion of land's saleability was anathema to Lasta peasant
ideology: more than any other factor, the intrusion of the commoditization of land
signaled a warning to Lasta's households that the terms under which they produced
and consumed had changed for the worse.28

Similar signs could be discerned in the uses of labor as well. Traditional
rights of corvee labor underwent a transformation as both local officials and the
state made demands on the peasant labor pool (see above). Households living on the
margins of solvency not only had to fulfill normal corvee obligations and to
transport their own taxes to government granaries, but they also regularbr
exchanged labor in return for access to oxen, seed, or food. Such labor could have
been agricultural work on a wealthy neighbors' plots, or shegela (lit. "to carry")
«demeaning day labor previously the province of slaves. Increasingly, destitute
farmers competed with landless ex-slaves, the other component of the free labor
pool. By the post-war period, new sections in markets had appeared where poor
highland farmers offered their labor in exchange for food or, to an increasing

degree after 1941, cash. Some households managed to avoid shegela labor by taking

248

up petty trade or simply by tightening their belts and accepting life closer to the

edge of penury.29

Evidence of disequilibrium in Lasta's rural society was already evident by
1917 when bad harvests prompted banditry and the resistance to Wagshum
Kabba'd'a's appointment. During that same period Ras Kassa received complaints

from Lasta churches which asked for additional land allotments to feed to

30

increasing numbers of residents dependent of church charity. In 1924 the r_a_s

took action against the growing numbers of indigent peasants who endangered trade

and public security. On 12 September 1924 he issued a proclamation:

It has been the rule [in Lasta] not to allow aay person in the
territory who is a stranger to live without a guarantor. In
recent years it has become known that the number of thieves
and bandits had increased. This condition has given rise to
gatherings which have disrupted trade and farming. Thieves and
robbers are usually jobless or idle persons. Therefore a
complete census should be taken and the population should be
recorded in the judges' register. Peasants who do not farm,
traders who do not trade, soldiers who are not known by their
commanders, priests who do not preach or teach, and artisans
who do not engage in their work are considered idle. Anyone
who allows such idle persons to live on his land is considered
to be harboring the bandits and therefore is responsible for
the property lost [during robberies or raids]. Nevertheless, if
anyone hands over idle people to the judge, he 3'13 entitled to
receive half of the fine assessed to the criminal.

The "idle" persons Kassa acted against and those who converged on the church

compounds asking for ecclesiastical largesse were products of a rural economy

unable to absorb an increasing population.

Epilogue:

Household Choices and the Formation of Empire:
Rebellion, Pauperization, and Emigration

The economic and political conditions described in the previous chapters

offered a series of unpleasant choices for Lasta's peasant households. The demands

249
of the state and new strategies of the local elite together with the difficult
conditions for production pushed them close to or beyond the threshhold of
subsistence. In 1917-19 and 1928-30 many Lastans and northern Ethiopians opted
for rebellion, the results of which only intensified the level of state intervention.
For others, especially those operating closest to the margins of subsistence, the
only path was to enter into a relation of direct dependence on the largesse and
capital resources of the small wealthy class.

Neither of these strategies worked very effectively for the vast majority of
Lasta households. Rebellion profited only those few of the military class who
retained booty from raids or government reprisals. The new class of wealthy
administrators was much too small to absorb all the households tottering on the
margins of economic viability. In these circumstances, it is not surprising that many
young Lastans and northern Ethiopians turned to labor migration or emigration as
solutions to the economic decline of their homeland.

By 1920, Lasta was not a closed system but existed as a part of a larger
imperial whole and a regional economy which offered the population some new
options for coping with the weakness of the rural household economy --choices
which presented themselves to the well off and destitute alike. The north-south
migration which took place in Ethiopia between c. 1890 and the post-war years was
perhaps the most significant single process in the foundation of the modern
Ethiopian social formation. Menilek's conquests meant little without a ready
population of soldier/settlers willing to leave the cycle of subsistence production in
the north and settle into the huge tracts of alienated land offered in the wake of
the imperial conquests. Primitive accumulation in the form of saleable
land, labor from slaves and serfs, and the support of state power each brought on
a rapid growth of commodity production in coffee, hides and skins, foodstuffs, and

labor.32 The inexorable movement of men, sometimes women, and even entire

250
households out of northern rural society and into national economic and political
life provided the bone and sinew of the imperial presence in southern Ethiopia and
therefore the foundation of the modern Ethiopian empire-state. For Lasta, the
relocation of a large part of its population into the southern economy represented
its most important contribution to modern Ethiopia.

The basic outlines of north-south migration in early twentieth century
Ethiopia are becoming fairly well known, particularly from the perspective of
southern land systems.33 What has remained unexamined in the literature is the
exact nature of the "push" factors out of the north, the effect on those who
remained behind, and the relative size of the southern movement as against internal
migration, target labor, and the movement into adjacent colonial economies. The
latter point is especially relevant since northern Ethiopians, including many from
Lasta, chose a whole range of avenues to try to flee permanently or at least to
ameliorate their circumstances through short-term wage labor.

Migration was by no means an entirely new process in Lasta or in the
northern Ethiopian household economy. In fact, the Amhara/Tigréan landholding
and property systems promoted the breaking up of family land and property estates
upon the death of the household head or the economic collapse of the household
unit. In the natural, and expected, development cycle of a rural Lasta household,
young men and women left their natal households and sought to establish their own
independent production unit through marriage, procreation, and labor recruitment.
Moreover, the nature of the rest land system encouraged new land claimants to
move away from the homestead and parish of their parents in order to activate
land claims in other areas not yet exploited by other members of their cognatic
descent group.34 Lasta peasants, like their Amhara/Tigréan counterparts elsewhere
in the north, were not legally bound to the land, nor to local administrative elites.

Tax and labor obligations belonged to the land itself and to those who occupied it

251
at any given time. As Donald Crummey has pointed out in his insightful work on
early nineteenth century rural society, man was free and land the taxpayer.35 The
movement of the rural population within Lasta was therefore an anticipated part of
the normal life cycle of a young person and of the household unit itself.

The timing of household development cycles varied according to the
ecological, economic, and even political climate in which they produced. In ideal
conditions, young people routinely left their homes to improve their status and
prospects for setting up an independent household of their own. For young men the
attractions were hunting, raiding, or attaching themselves to the household and
fortunes of a wealthy official. Young women had fewer options, although they did
have the option of joining a successful household where conditions for their labor
might be better. Criminals, those falsely accused of crimes, and even those who
had suffered the loss of prestige in a northern community often resorted to flight
rather than facing the consequences of their deeds locally. Since relatives up to
the fourth collateral line could be held liable for fines, close kin often
accompanied the escapee to a new life on the frontier where a man or woman's
past mattered less than their adaptability to a new situation. During 1900-35, the
nature of these options changed.

In his research on a southeastern Tigre village in the 19603, Bauer noted six
reasons why a household might decrease in wealth and face dispersal:

1) crop failure requiring borrowing

2) death of an ox

3) theft of oxen

4) losses in trade

5) destruction of stored grain, eg. fire or vermin

6) loss of a court case [or confiscation by political authority].

When household control of the means of production, especially capital and land, fell
too low, the unit broke up and members dispersed.36 Even in the most economically

viable of households a tension existed between the household head who sought to

252

keep the younger members within the unit and the young people's desires to
establish their own independent households as soon as they managed to accumulate
the means of production. Many of these conditions occured even in the best of
times and were expected eventualities in the normal course of rural life; rural
institutions grew up around the principle of avoiding the risks involved. Political
conditions such as warfare and heavy tax assessments potentially increased risks as
did the deterioration of the environment.

There is good historical evidence that the deterioration of political
conditions and the environment had already created difficult circumstances in
northeast Ethiopia before the opening of the twentieth century. The major trend,
though not the only one, was for northern migrants to move south into the
emerging center of Sh'awa. In the early years of Menilek's reign as negus of
Sh'awa, a key cadre of his troops consisted of the remnants of Emperor Téwodros'
Gondar army which had fled south after the Tigréan Yohannes had taken the

37 Some of these were certainly Lastans. Nor did the north-south movement

throne.
necessarily end up as far south as Shawa. During the violence and disruption of
the war with Egypt in Eritrea and Tigré, peasants from Hamasén moved south

into Wag and fought with the population there before settling down on the land.38
The movement out of Tigré into Wag, Lasta-proper, Gond'ar, and further south
accelerated in the late nineteenth century as a result of the shift of the political
center but also because of the advanced state of erosion, deforestation, and
capital shortages in the aging northern production system. By 1900, Tigréan
migrants had pushed their language and political influence deeply into Wag and had
penetrated even further south along the southern caravan route toward Shawa.
That many of the Tigréan migrants came as petty merchants and entrepreneurs

indicated the extent to which their environment had driven them from reliance on

agriculture.39 During and after the great famine of 1889-92, huge numbers of

253

northern Ethiopian migrants made their way to the coast or the western border
area in search of food, better land, and opportunities to generate income outside
of agriculture.40

Although part of an on-going process, the emigration of Lastans during
1900-35 accelerated precipitously as a direct result of the political, economic, and
environmental circumstances already described. As fewer households managed to
weather the pressures on land and the demands on their income, they sought to
supplement agricultural production by engaging in petty trade. A destitute farmer
might offer his labor to a neighbor in exchange for seed or the use of a yoke of
oxen. Others raised capital from local usurers and went to Tigré to buy salt or
manufactured goods to trade locally. Still others collected hides and skins for sale
to the depressed markets in Asmara, Wa'ldiya, or Diisé. While Tigre remained
unattractive for agriculture, it did possess the rudiments of a cash-based economy
based on its role in the salt trade and proximity to the colonial economy of
Eritrea. Cash, when returned to Lasta, could buy scarce commodities: seed, oxen,

d.41 Wag farmers in particular relied on the income derived

or even access to Ian
from trade to augment the meager produce of the land.42 More fertile areas of
Lasta like Bugna and Dahana adjacent to the Takkazé valley absorbed new
populations seeking arable land. Documents from the region suggest that many
destitute householders sought refuge in one of the only rural institutions capable of
providing support in times of abject need, the Orthodox church. During 1920-35,
evidence indicates that the population of church lands grew and demands for
support from the church patrimonies increased dramatically. Local churches
responded by petitioning the governor for additional lands and grain allocations.42
Available documents suggest that these requests met with some success and

churches, monasteries, and their administrators increased their lands, thus reducing

the area available to support civil and military authority and ultimately requiring

254
the peasant population to produce more. Although less easy to document, one can
speculate that elite households expanded also, as the weakest of the household
economies failed and desperate peasant farmers sought succor with their local
elite.

By the 19203, the opportunities for migration expanded, just as the intensity
of "push” factors increased. Besides the opportunities to join the developing
political economy of the new empire-state in the south, northern Ethiopians also
were able to participate in the growing colonial economies of Sudan and Eritréa
which afforded opportunities for trade and wage labor paid in cash which the
northern Ethiopia's sluggish rural economy did not.

To date, historians have not investigated the extent to which large numbers
of northern Ethiopians migrated into adjacent colonial economies for wage labor.
Most of this movement constituted "target labor" since those who left home did not
intend to emigrate on a permanent basis, but did so as a means of obtaining the
wherewithall to reinvest their earnings in their local rural economy through the
purchase of oxen, seed, or even land. In this regard, however, the nature of
property, kinship, and the rural household development cycle meant that the process
of emigration and labor migration differed considerably from examples available
elsewhere in Africa during this period. Unlike migrants in southern Africa or
Nigeria whose labor income served a part of a rural household income, northern
Ethiopians left their natal households before marriage and without financial
obligations to the household or local community. Emigrants left the area as
individuals and not primarily as members of a rural household.44

Given the nature of the sources, it is often difficult to determine the points
of origin of the ”Abyssinian" labor which presented itself in Eritrean or Sudanese
development schemes. Certainly a preponderance must have originated in adjacent

zones like Tigré and Gondar, but Lastans and Gojjamés participated as well. As

255

early as 1911 Sudan intelligence sources reported that the dom nut forests around
Kassala were filled with day-laborers--mostly ”Abyssinians"--who earned as much as
ten piastres a day for their collections.45 Labor migration from northern Ethiopia
was also considerable around the eastern Sudanese town of Gedaref which by 1935
had a permanent ”Abyssinian” population of 1000 who lived in the quarter called
"medina al Habash" (lit. the Ethiopian city). Women also joined the emigration; many
of Gedaref's and Khartoum/Omdurman's Ethiopian population were Amhara and
Tigréan prostitutes popular in Sudan. In addition to this permanent population, an
annual influx of northern Ethiopians occurred during the time of the dura (sorghum)
harvest.46

A similar movement took place towards Eritréa where Italian efforts to
develop cash and food crop production required a skilled agricultural labor force.
Major centers for agricultural wage labor were at the Gash river project in the
west and at the experimental agricultural station at Fagrena where cotton and

47 Similarly, "Abyssinian” labor engaged in

coffee projects were underway.
road-building, housing construction, and especially the military activities which
sustained the coercive power of the colonial state. In 1912, an official British
delegation estimated the annual influx of northern Ethiopian labor into Eritrea at
12,000, few of whom remained permanently.48

Probably the single most important form of "target labor" of northern
Ethiopians in Eritéa was service in Libya with the Eritrean and Italian armies
where they made up well over half of the troops used to pacify rebellions in
Cyranaeca and the Fezzan between 1911 and 1931. Between those years, over a
quarter of a million northern Ethiopians served in Libya. In 1918 alone, Count
Colli, the Italian legation in Addis Ababa, reported that 18,000 ”Abyssinians" were

serving in the Eritréan army and another 30,000 had joined the Italian army in

Tripoli.49 Many of these "Abyssinians" were Tigréan or Gojjamé, but a fair

256

number came from Wag, Lasta-proper, and other areas of the north. Italian agents
working in Tigré without the consent of the central government recruited large

numbers of young men. Piacentini claimed to have signed up 5-6000 during one trip
in 1922. But many, or most, arrived in Asmara on their own volition, attracted by
the prospects of earning a salary, obtaining clothing, and acquiring arms just for
fighting the "Arabs" of "Trimboli."50

The motivations of the young men who traveled to Eritrea and later to

Tripoli varied considerably, but it is clear from extant evidence and interviews that
few planned to or did remain. Certainly the adventure of traveling to a distant
land to fight Muslims enticed many highlanders. But the major motivation would
seem to have been the desire to collect the means to survive and reproduce in the
rural economy which increasingly required outside income and start-up capital. A
case history of one Lasta soldier provides a good sense of the process. In 1921,
Ato Alamu W'arqnah from Maqét in southwest Lasta together with nine other

young men from the area left home for Eritrea to volunteer for Tripoli service.

After brief training in Italian drill commands, Aliimu embarked on the trip to Libya
up the Red Sea and through the Suez canal. He spent three years fighting in Libya
where he saved over 500 talers for his return home in 1924.. On arrival back in
Asmara, Al'amu collected his bulky cash payment in a trunk. He immediately bought
a rifle and a donkey for the trip home. In S'a'qota, where prices were more
reasonable than further north, he bought mules, oxen, cattle, donkeys, clothing, and
gifts for his family. After braving the bandit-infested route from 96qu to
Lalibala, Ala'mu arrived at his home parish where he paid a bribe in cash to a local
official and received an appointment by Ras Gugsa (who ruled that section of far
southwest Lasta) as damba'nya responsible for tax assessments. His oxen and mules
served him well; by loaning them out and collecting on the resultant labor fees, he

managed to farm his land without investing his own labor. His relative prosperity,

257
like that of so many others, lasted only until his oxen died in the aftermath of the
Ras Gugsa rebellion. Having lost both his political sponsor and leverage in the local
economy, Al'amu left Lasta, moving south of Addis Ababa where he obtained land in
Arsi.51

Al'amu's case appears to have been fairly typical. Attracted by the stories of
those who had successfully returned, young men from all over the north left the
rural economy for what amounted to target labor. Those that escaped the high rate
of death from dystentery, seasickness, and Sannusi attacks returned home with
cash, arms, the means of production, and an important skill. Returnees from Libya
occupied important places in both local and state administration. Moreover, their
cash income ended up back in the rural economy in the form of bribes, taxes, and
extortions by local officials. Ras Haylu of Gojjam, Ras Siyum of Tigré, and the
local officials of Lasta demanded fees from those who returned from Tripoli
service.52 In the declining conditions of production in the north, and in Lasta and
Tigré in particular, however, this source of capital and income was only a
temporary palliative.

For most Lastans who chose to or were forced to leave Lasta's rural
society, however, southern Ethiopia provided the greatest attraction. There, the
Shawan conquest had made productive land available for those who were willing to
leave the subsistence cycle and attach themselves to the extended household (or
court) of the military officials who governed southern regions. One generation
earlier, the Sh'awan and northern Ethiopia soldiers who had followed Menilek had
obtained their reward in the form of huge tracts of land and the labor of
indigenous cultivators and slaves. During the 1920-35 period when many Lasta
farmers found life in their home regions untenable, the coffee economy of the
south was flourishing. In the south, a few years of service usually yielded a land

grant, a title, and a status far beyond what would have been possible in the north

258
where stratification had become more and more rigid. Lastans claimed to me that
the same amount of labor on virgin southern land as had been invested in the
depleted soils of Lasta yielded many times the produce. Few mentioned that the
availability of gibbag (serf) labor made a huge difference as well.

Lastans who emigrated south in the 1920-35 period found a previous
generation of Lastans already well established, willing to accept their services, and
able to provide them with land, labor, and access to the coercive power of the
state. Merely being Amharic-speaking and Christian, Lastans elevated their social
status far beyond what would have been possible in Lasta itself. Lasta landlords,
while perhaps fewer than other groups, were spread over much of the south. One
of Wagshum Berru's aides had established himself in Wallaga, a large branch of
Lasta nobility was in Harar, and Ras Kassa had huge tracts of land in Arsi and
southern Sh'awa. The rural population in Lasta seems to have been well aware of
which of their compatriots had successfully moved south, providing opportunity for
others to do the same.53

As each succeeding ecological or political crisis unfolded, more Lastans
chose to abandon the rural cycle of subsistence or at least to try and supplement
it with an outside source of income in wage labor, petty trade, or dependency on a
richer neighbor. At the base of the breakdown of the rural economy was the
inability of individual households in poor and middle ranks successfully to reproduce
themselves. Informants who had been a part of the process accounted for their
emigration by describing both the attractions of the emerging commodity production
of the south and the difficulty of conditions in places like Lasta. Certainly the
former played an important role in feeding Lastans into the national economy, but,
overall, the decline of conditions in Lasta must have been decisive.

The life history 0f Sagayé Setegn illustrates concretely the survival

strategies of rural households in the period before the Italian occupation. Sagayé

259

was born into a relatively wealthy household near the important d'aber of G'annata
Maryam. His father was a priest who owned several oxen and also enjoyed
supplementary income from church land attached to the dibfl. Sagayé was still a
child when the Gugsa rebellion reprisals and the Italian occupation devastated the
area. By the time his father died early in the occupation, the family had lost all
of its cattle to disease and army requisitions. Very few oxen remained in the
entire district. As the male head of household, Sagayé attempted to hold the
family together by borrowing oxen and cultivating with a digging stick. Oxen were
unobtainable at any price and hand cultivation proved impossible. He abandoned his
land and traveled to Tigre where he hoped to obtain support from his mother's
relatives. Conditions in Tigré were as bad if not worse than Lasta. By 1951
Sagayé left the north for Addis Ababa where he had heard that a relative
worked at the court of Ras Kassa. There he made contact with the community of
Lasta migrants and received an appointment as servant in the r_a_s's house. Although
Sagayé came from a wealthy peasant household, his case represents a broadly
based process whereby a great many Lastan left their homeland and traveled south
to opportunities in the growing national economy.

The evidence available on rural society in Lasta during 1900-35 points
directly to the impoverishment of the household economy and the erosion of a rural
production system whose technical base, systems of resource allocation, and social
structure had proved extremely resilient over a number of centuries. By 1935, well
before the ecological calamities of the 19603 and 19703, the Lasta rural economy
had proven incapable of supporting a population of independent and self-reproducing
peasant households. In these conditions, Lasta's contribution to the growth of the
modern Ethiopian nation has been primarily a steady flow of emigrants hoping to
find a place in a new national economic and political structure. To a large degree

many of them succeeded in parlaying their cultural heritage and linguistic affinity

260
to the holders of power in the central state into a more viable life in the center
and south of the country.

What remained behind in Lasta, however, bore little substantive resemblance
to the social and economic structure which had begun the century. The balance of
power between classes in rural Lasta had shifted to the distinct advantage of
those elites and wealthy householders who controlled the limited supplies of capital
and who had used this advantage to accumulate land and labor obligations. That
some Lastans in 1935 sold their labor and rented their land to wealtlw neighbors in
exchange for the means of survival represented a major change in both the
economic and ideological structure of rural society. Most rural producers, male,
female, young, and old, worked demonstrably harder for fewer results. The margin
of safety between economic independence, pauperism, and survival had narrowed.
The once viable and productive class of middle peasants had shrunk, many having
left the area or fallen into dependence. A new class of laborers emerged in the
19203 and 19303 consisting of ex-slaves, down-on-their-luck drifters, and destitute
farmers trying to subsidize their farm holdings by selling their labor in local
markets, asking for charity in Lasta's church compounds, or traveling outside of
Lasta for target labor.

Lasta's rich cultural heritage remained, altered for those who remained
behind by a sense that the difficulty of life in the area could be compensated by
firm adherence to the tenets of the church and a staunch resistance to more

changes which might further erode the family's ability to survive another year.

 

261
Notes to Chapter Seven
1. Grottanelli, Missione, p. 135.

2. Cultivation on the steep and rocky slopes of Lasta's canyons was simply
hard, dangerous work. Oxen could easily be injured, killed, or debilitated in
breaking new ground there. Above 3000 meters, frost was always a danger to
seedlings and mature crops. In lowland valleys, flooding posed comparable dangers.
Liver flukes which infested lowland swamps often killed or debilitated the cattle
and oxen grazed there. The barley and wheat most acclimatized to high elevations
were less productive and less valuable as commodities than the téf favored in the
middle elevation zones.

3. These conditions were reported generally in interviews. Haile Gabriel
Dagne "Famine," p. 21, reported that in 1974 Lasta farmers tilled up to 30
separate plots. Dr. Fassil Gebre Kiros of the Institute of Development Research of
Addis Ababa University has told me that similar conditions exist in Marha‘bété in
northern Shawa. The social impact of the process needs empirical study by both
developmentalists and historians.

4. S'agayé, interviews #1 and #2, 13 and 26 April 1982. Lasta's cultivators
were aware of the need for fallowing but simply had no choice. The decrease in
fallowing no doubt contributed to the loss of a sense of well being.

5. Pollera to Addis Ababa, 1 September 1921, ASMAI 54/36; Talamonti to
Addis Ababa, ASMAI 37/6 and 8 August 1926, ASMAI 54/36.

6. The quantification of oxen strength and nutrition has been the subject of
research by Michael Goe of Cornell University. I am grateful to Michael for
sharing his findings with me. Producer cooperatives in contemporary Ethiopia face
similar problems since farmers prefer to use their oxen first on their private plots
and to work them less strenuously on communal plots.

7. While quantifiable evidence for this pattern is thin, Dan Bauer has told
me that his evidence from Tigré in the 19603 would seem to corroborate the
trend.

8. A.V. Chayanov, ”Peasant Farm Organization,” in D.Thorner, B. Kerblay,
R.E.F. Smith, eds. The Theory of Peasant Economy (Urbana, 1966), p. 113.

9. For a more complete argument on the place of slaves, see interviews and
chapter two, passim, and my ”Slavery and Its Demise during the Reign of Haile
Selassie 1923-1936." Paper presented at the 13th Annual Conference of the
Canadian Association of African Studies. For a view from archival sources on a
more national scale, see Edward, "Slavery,” passim.

10. Abba G‘abra Masqal, interview #5, 3 April 1982; interviews passim. Lenin
offered a similar typology based on Zemstvo statistics. V.I. Lenin, Development of

Capitalism, p. 87.

11. Alverson, "Arable Agriculture in Botswana: Some contributions of the
Traditional Social Formation,” Rural Africana, 4-5 (1979), p. 42, defines mafiso as
"a contractual agreement entered into between two individuals, one who loans out

262

cattle for husbanding and the other who husbands the cattle in return for
usufructory rights in draft power, dung, milk, or heifers.”

12. Lenin, Development of Capitalism, p. 80.

 

13. Cossins, ”Poor Man," p. 44; Alverson, ”Arable Agriculture," p. 36.

14. Lenin, Development of Capitalism, p. 80.

 

15. No documentary evidence of the inflation of rates for magazo exists, but
it would seem likely. Further research needs to be done on this point. See chapter
two for a discussion of the increasing household investments of labor in livestock
raising in northeast Ethiopia.

16. V.I. Lenin, "The Agrarian Question and the 'Critics of Marx'," Collected
Works, vol. 5 (Moscow: 1961), pp. 194-205.

17. A small-scale trade in grain and red pepper grew in response to demand
in Tigré and Eritrea, areas chronically short of foodstuffs, in the early twentieth
century. This trade to the north brought salt, plow tips, and ”Amerikani" cloth into
Lasta. For the important Eritrea demand for grain, see the annual reports of the
Sudanese Central Economics Board at the University of Khartoum's Sudan
collection.

18. Lenin describes an analogous process in rural Russia which he describes
as the development of the "home market." Lenin, Development of Capitalism, p. 73.

19. For an excellent description of this process in a rural Tigréan village,
see Bauer, "Land and Legitimacy," p. 195.

20. Alamu W'arqn'a'h, interview #4, 14 Ma 1982; interviews, passim.
21. Abba Gabra M'asq'al, interview #7, 14 May 1983.
22. This trend has been noted as well in more recent periods of famine. See

Assefa Bekele, ”Zobul," p. 5 and Martin Meredith, "A Famine that Left the Rich
Richer and the Poor Dead," The Sunday Times, 25 November 1973, p. 8.

 

23. "Ya Ras Kassa Astadada'r,” #91.

24. Although the statistics reflect national and not Lasta figures, it is
nevertheless interesting to note that since the Italian occupation 95% of the
registered and 75% of the unregistered government land grants have gone to
members of the civil service, military, and police. See Cohen and Weintraub, _Ime
and Peasants, p. 61. Evidence from Ras Kassa's administrative documents would
suggest that this trend existed in Lasta for the pre-war period as well.

25. Ch‘cikol'a, interview #3, 6 May 1982.

26. See Marsaé H'az'an, "Ziiwditu," p. 434; Berhanna S'alam, 15 Tekemt 1921

 

E.C.

263

27. See Assefa Bekele, ”Zobul," p. 5; Haile Gabriel Dagne, "Famine," p. 20;
and Al'amu Wiirqnah, passim.

28. The essential differences between capital relations of production and
pre-capitalist land and labor forms are often clearly perceived in folk typologies.
See, for example, Michael Taussig, "The Genesis of Capitalism amongst a South
American Peasantry: Devil's Labor and the Baptism of Money." gmiparative Studies
in Society and History, 19 (1977), pp. 130-149.

 

29. See Haile Gabriel Dagne, "Famine," p. 8. Tefera Berhe attributes the
new agricultural labor force to lack of sufficient land, and the general infertility
of the highland zones recently brought under cultivation above 3500 meters.

30. "Yd Ras Kassa Ast'adad'ar," #98, #333.

31. Ibid. #151.

32. The best description of the development of the southern coffee economy,
northern migrants, and their effect on the nation-state can be found in Charles
McClellan, "Reaction.”

33. The most notable recent work is the Cambridge/Stanford working group
which held conferences on the topic. Proceedings of those conferences are
currently being edited for publication by Donald Donham and Peter Garretson.

34. Life histories of my informants collected during interviews support this
generalization. Also see Hoben, Land Tenure, passim.

35. Crummey, "Abyssinian Feudalism," p. 130.
36. Bauer, "Land and Legitimacy," p. 172.
37. T'a'far'a Siyum, interview #1, 31 August 1982.

38. Sven Rubenson, The Survival of Ethiopian Independence (Addis Ababa:
1976). P. 378.

39. Wagshum W'ass'a'n, interview #1, 22 August 1982. The presence and
activities of Tigre-speaking people in northern Lasta are common knowledge.
A more general theory of the reasons for movement out of agriculture and into
outside sources of income like trade and petty commodity production can be found
in Lenin, Development of Capitali_sm p. 96.

40. Pankhurst, Economic History p. 277.

41. Alamu W'a'rqnah, interview #6, 10 June 1982. In 1900, Wylde reported
immigration from the north into Y‘cijju. Wylde, Modern Abyssinia, p. 263.

42. Ch'akola' Lamina reported that his uncle owned a number of camels which
he rented out for farmers engaging in part-time salt trading. For a description of
similar phenomona in the 19603, see Bauer, "Land and Legitimacy,” p. 15.

43. See, for example, "Y5 Ras Kassa Astadada'r,” documents #333, #98. I am
grateful to my colleague Tesema Ta'a who pointed out to me the relevance of

 

 

264

church complaints of their expanded staff. Some processes at work today in ”Ras
Kassa safar” suggest the importance of the church in distributing food to the
destitute and infirm.

44. The question of the links between migrants, their obligations towards
their natal social units, and property relations with their local communities remains
an essential difference between the situation of migrants in most of southern
Africa and those young people who left Lasta and northern Ethiopia in the period
before 1935. Young men who left Lasta generally did so before incurring martial
obligations. They held property rights over land independent of elders or even local
elite. They therefore did not emigrate as members of an established household, but
as individuals. This is not to say that those who returned did not share their
wealth with relatives. Ala'mu warqn‘cih presented his sisters and brothers with gifts
of clothing on his return from Libya. Al‘a’mu warqnah interview #4, 14 May 1982.
The best summary of southern African research on economic change in this period
is Frederick Cooper's review article "Peasants,” which asseses the work of Colin
Bundy, Gervais Clarence-Smith, and William Beinart.

45. S.I.R., #203, June 1911. Here the term "Abyssinian" distinguishes northern
Ethiopians from Eritréans. The same report indicated that the dom nut collection
had made labor expensive in nearby Kassala town, an indication that the town also
relied on ”Abyssinian" labor. Dom nuts were exported to Eritréa for the
manufacture of buttons.

46. CRO Kassala 1/26/207, D.C. Gedaref to Deputy Public Secretary, 21
February 1938. Also see Abd Al-Rahman Ahmed Al-Bashir, ”Problems of Settlement
of Immigrants and Refugees in Sudanese Society.” D. Phil. Thesis, Oxford
University, 1978, p. 301, 379.

47. See, for example, Bollettino dell'Istituto Coloniale Fascista, 15 July 1933
and files on the Gash river project in the Central Records Office in Khartoum.
Alamu Wiirqn'ah, interview #6, 14 May 1982.

 

48. Doughty-Wylie Report, 31 August 1912, F0 371/1294.

49. Campbell Telegram to F.O., 8 November 1918, F0 371/79730. Overall
figures are my calculations based on average length of service and numbers of
years in the entire Libyan campaign.

50. Addis Ababa Intelligence Report, 30 April 1922, F.O. 371/7152. Al'amu
warqnah left his birthplace in southwest Lasta in 1921 with nine others to enlist
in the Italian army in Eritrea. Although Tigréans and Gojjamé were most
numerous, young men of Lasta were also present in good number.

51. Al'amu Wirqnah, interview #1, 22 April 1983. Lly Gojjamé neighbor in
1973-75, Ato Wiirqn'ah Messeker, had also served in the Libyan campaign. Ethiopian
recruits served in one-year stints with the option to re-enlist. Salary in cash was
payable at Asmara at the end of service and many recruits also received furlough
in Italy as a reward for service.

52. The skills brought back by Libyan veterans proved important resources
for the state. Diijach Aya'l'aw of B'aga'mder employed a veteran of Libya service to
train his troops in the Italian method; the Imperial police and bodyguard also
regularly used these troops in command positions. See, for example, Cheesman

265

Report enclosed in Barton to Addis Ababa, 8 June 1927, F.O. 371/ 12339; Cheesman
letter of 20 September enclosed in Waterlow to Dunbar, 2 December 1928, F.O.
371/13103. Brielli Report 4-22 March 1933, ASMAI 54/6.

53. Abba Getu, interview #13, 2 July 1982. Abba Getu provided me with
a long list of names of Lastans who had served as titled officials with Ras Kassa
in Sh'awa and further south.

Chapter Eight

Conclusion:

Northern Ethiopian Households in Regional and World Systems

In previous chapters this dissertation has examined, in some detail, a number
of aspects of the politics, economy, and ecology of northern Ethiopia during
1900-35. Part One pointed out the character of the land and its settlement, the
important link between middle and long-distance exchange and household production,
and the critical role played by capital (i.e. oxen) in the household and regional
production equation. It also provided a description of rural institutions in Lasta and
argued that a moral economy ideology existed alongside the highland historical
charter in Lasta. Part two of the dissertation sought to relate the expansion of
the imperial state's administrative and fiscal functions to the historical dynamics of
the local situation in the northeast and Lasta in particular.

Having examined Lasta's households and their economic and political setting,
it is necessary to return to central questions about how rural life changed in the
period under discussion, who and what were the agents of these changes, and what
comparative value these findings have for the broader context of African
historiography. Finally, the question should be addressed as to whether or not the
rural household has provided a useful unit of analysis in this study and if it
provides a valid framework for with other African societies in the same period.

Overall, rural society in Lasta underwent profound changes during 1900-35.
At a very basic level, rural households found the factors of production to be

scarcer than they had been at the opening of the century. Oxen were harder to

267

obtain, more expensive, and required more labor to maintain. Land was in
increasingly short supply with population pressure and competition between local
elites and state officials further decreasing the supply available to peasant
producers. Taxation policies which favored fixed rather than proportional
assessments and, by 1935, payments in cash, significantly increased the risk of
households having to dip into seed stocks or borrow to meet their physical and
social needs. Moreover, the cycle of drought, insects, and disease hit especially
hard in the northeast's peculiar micro-climate. Population pressure and imperial
policies tended to make the effects cumulative.

An almost necessary concomitent of the cycle of poverty was the parallel
cycle of enrichment by which state officials, local elite, and members of the
wealthy stratum of peasants accumulated the means of production. The need of
young households, or unlucky ones, to offer their labor or land in exchange for
seed or the use of oxen in the difficult times of the period tied them to relations
of dependence not easily broken. As young people left the land to emigrate or to
join more successful units, the prevailing property system allowed land to fall into
the hands of those with the means to cultivate it. State officials could join in the
local production system by claiming state lands, marrying locally, or pressing their
judicial prerogatives. They also received fixed salaries and rights to incomes from
fines and levies which insulated them from the vagaries of production shortfalls. On
a political level, Lasta and northern Ethiopia lost a voice in determining policy.
State officials were increasingly urban and tied to events in the capital.

The data gathered in this study have a great deal of relevance for northern
Ethiopia as a whole. Indeed some material used here to argue the Lasta case
derived from studies done in adjacent areas or in ecologically similar zones.1 The
discussions of political alliances, appointments, and imperial policies necessarily

included an area of the north much wider that Lasta. Moreover, there are great

268
similarities in the organization of production, use of technology, language, political
tradition, and exchange links between Lasta and other regions of the north, and
the northeast in particular. The overall intent of imperial policy in the north,
namely the break-up of local elite authority, was also a factor dictating consistent
imperial policy throughout the north.

By the same token, one must be careful not to overgeneralize from the data
on Lasta. Clearly, the ecological situation of Lasta and the northeast differed from
that of Gojjam, the Lake Tana basin, or even the eastern Cape or the Niger delta.
Even given the similarities of forces of production and farming techniques, the
lower population pressure on land, soil fertility, and proximity to Nile valley trade
may have contributed to a slightly different cast to the household economy.
Certainly we should be careful about broad generalizations until additional regional
histories are available. The comparative data I have on hand, however, would tend
to argue that the basic directions of change throughout northern Ethiopia were and
are similar, even if the process of impoverization in areas like Lasta have
proceeded at a faster pace than neighboring zones.

An important point to understand with respect to these factors of
impoverization and enrichment is that they suggest the possibilities for change in
the north's supposedly "feudal” social and political structure. That change took
place in the north's conservative and tradition-bound society is significant, but
discovering the directions and agents of that change may be more so. Some of the
tranformation, such as demographic factors or environmental events, can be traced
within the region. Others are more easily attributable to the increasing power of
the imperial state and its desire to penetrate into the rural political economy of
the north. Evidence from Lasta and the north clearly shows that the state injected
itself into rural life at a very basic level in the period after 1916. Lastans who

had rarely seen Menilek's agents regularly met state officials after 1916 in the

269
courts, at the threshing place at tax time, in marketplaces, and at local
government granaries. They even met them at the most sacred Orthodox shrines
where the governor's representatives sought to regularize church incomes.

Rural relations of production in Lasta did not change, however, solebr
because imperial officials wanted them to, or because of rebellions, wars, or the
greed of particular individuals, nor even because of rural producers' initiatives.
New rural production relations changed because a new set of institutions emerged
after 1916 which subtantially altered the environment in which the production and
reproduction of rural households took place. These new institutions -- fixed taxation
in cash, magazo, afarsata, precise judicial codes-- were not necessarily imperial
mandates, nor were they necessarily policy at all. They were the collective product
of existing institutions performing new functions, the imperial government's desires
to impose new mechanisms of fiscal control, the shortage of tillable land and
pasturage, and the technical constraints of highland farming systems. Above all,
they were the results of the combined survival strategies of peasants, elites, and
the state. That these processes eventually contributed to the process of
pauperization was a function of the strength of the state's coercive power and the
increasing weakness of the productive capacity of the small-holder farm in Lasta.

The decline in the viability of the single peasant household as a productive
unit is fairly clear, given the increasing emigration of young men who otherwise
would have served as household heads, the growth in agricultural day labor, and
the development of new rural institutions which promoted dependence between
small-holders and captial-rich elite and peasants. The central question of historical
interpretation, however, concerns the real causes of this decline. Based on the
evidence presented in this study, the chief causal agents would appear to be
political factors, such as state fiscal policy and the competition for resources

between local elite and the state; ecological factors in the form of droughts,

270

insects, or decreasing soil fertility; and demographic considerations like the
reduction in land per household, loss of pasturage, or fragmentation of plots. The
most recent interpreter of this evidence, albeit for the contemporary period, has
been the geographer Mesfin Wolde Mariam. Prof. Mesfin holds that the decisive
factor is the political one, since taxation policies and the demands made on the
rural population by oppressive relations of production creates "vulnerability."
Climatic or ecological crisis has had its devastating impact because rural producers
are already overly susceptible to food supply shortfalls.2

Although viewing the political factor as determinate is tempting both in
terms of method and ideology, it is difficult to accept in either real or theoretical
terms. The primary source of vulnerability of the household economy in northeast
Ethiopia in the early twentieth century was its increasing difficulty in obtaining or
maintaining capital, the lack of which forced many households into dependence on
wealthier households or on sources of income outside of agriculture. The cycle of
impoverization began at that point and continued with capital-rich households (the
economic and political elite) taking advantange of the curcumstances to amass the
other means of production. The imperial state exacerbated these effects by adding
to the demands on household food, cash, and labor supplies. Under these conditions
ecological factors which might have remained cyclical in their effect became
cumulative. Droughts turned into famines because of small food reserves; the loss
of one oxen or one pair to disease or malnourishment could reduce a marginal
household to penury and dispersal; overgrazing or failure to fallow promoted the
quick erosion of the land's carrying capacity. The relations of production which
grew out of these conditions and northern Ethiopia's particular political culture
developed because of the coincidence of demographic effects, ecological trends, and

the social and economic institutions which resulted.

271

Nevertheless, the role of the imperial state in these changing conditions of
production and distribution remains an essential element. Unlike the factors of
environment, demography, or local relations between elites and producers, state
policy was not a product of local conditions. Ras Kassa's and Wagshum K'abbada's
edicts on taxes, the judiciary, and the organization of trade reflected the needs of
the imperial government to consolidate its control of a diverse empire in which the
local needs of northern peasant producers were not paramount. Moreover, state
fiscal and administrative policies also derived from the central government's need
to interact with a world capitalist economy to obtain arms and the trappings of a
modern state apparatus. As had been proven in 1917-19 and again in 1928-30, the
imperial state under Ras Taf‘ari's direction had the means to enforce its programs
if necessary. The officials placed in Lasta and the north during the 19203 and
19303 received their appointments based on their loyalty to Addis Ababa, or at
least to the governor, and not to a local constituency. Despite attempts by Menilek
and Yohannes in the nineteenth century, this was the first time such a policy had
been carried out so effectively at such a localized level.

In the end, the immediate presence of the imperial state and the basic shift
in the conditions of production in Lasta worked together to weaken the rural
economy in areas like Lasta from 1916 on. State policies, whether from an imperial
government or a short-lived Italian colonial administration, were designed to
minimize administrative costs and to generate revenue and not accommodate to

local needs and sensibilities.

272
Households and Rural History

What then has been the value in focusing on rural households as the key
unit of analysis in this study? What does it reveal about Ethiopia's social or
economic history, and does it have comparative value for African historiography? I
believe that it clearly does. This is true first of all for the simple reason that as
the smallest social unit in society and the one most closely tied to the material
welfare and socialization of the individual of both sexes; the structure of the
household, demands on its labor and property, and changes in its economy provide
the best indicators of material life and conditions at the grass roots level.
Understanding how the household functioned in relation to key historical changes
suggests that people in this period probably worked harder, for less result, and
probably ate less food or poorer quality. Moreover, the notion of moral econonw
would suggest that rural producers £th that conditions were worse than they had
been in the past and they responded accordingly through rebellion and emigration.

Next, focusing on the household allows us to perceive a fundamental change
in rural life which took place during 1900-35 which might other not have been
appreciated. By 1935, the Lasta household had undergone a fundamental change as
a social unit. Previously, and in the conception of Lastans themselves, the
household had been the primary locus for the organization of means of production
and the production process itself. By 1935 the nature of the household had
changed along with the social and economic institutions which tied it to the
society and the national economy as a whole. Emigration, the growth of a part-time
agricultural labor force, and the early commoditization of land by the 19303
indicate that a great many households had ceased to be economically autonomous
units and that they increasingly depended on outside inputs of capital, cash, and
food. Agriculture still dominated the household economy; but to sustain that

activity, household members bartered labor and their rights to land. Shortages in

273
the means of production also meant that the expected segmentation of the unit
could not easily take place. Young adult members either remained in their parent's
household longer, sought employment outside of an independent household setting,
or left the region. One would also expect changes in the average age of marriage,
effects on rates of fertility, and some alterations in patterns of inheritance.
Conclusions on these factors await further research, but the conclusion that rural

society had experienced a fundamental change seems appropriate.

Some Comparative Conclusions

Finally, one should ask whether the peculiar nature of the northern Ethiopian
household and the development of events in a non-colonial setting will allow these
findings to be of comparative value to the writing of African history as a whole.
In the final section of this study I will suggest some ways in which this evidence
for the rural history of northern Ethiopia contributes to the overall understanding
of African history in general and to the history of colonial Africa in particular.

A major theme of recent African historiography has been the study of the
effects of the world economy and colonial administration on African societies. The
research foci have been those areas and societies involved directly in cash crop
production, labor migration, or the process of "peasantization" usually described as
small-scale producers beginning to produce food and cash crops for markets which
developed out of a colonial presence.3 As a corollary, other studies have taken up
the discussion of the role of the colonial state as the local agent of the
metropolitan economy. My work in Lasta therefore contributes an empirical
response to the "Roots of Rural Poverty" school by looking at the effect of state
expansion on grassroots institutions of production, the political processes in the
formation of an ethnically diverse social formation, and the nature of rural

responses to these processes.4

274

The situation of Lasta in the first three and a half decades of this century,
a period which Catherine Coquery Vidrovitch has called the "mise en dependence"
of colonial Africa, therefore has comparative value since Lasta remained largely
out of the direct influence of the world economy and it related to a state
structure which developed outside of the immediate control of a European
metropole.5 Moreover, the process of "peasantization," as described in some of the
recent literature was irrelevant since Lasta's households had long contributed a
portion of their production to the support of a non-producing administrative class
which preserved the ”great traditions" of their religion and political culture. New
relations on the local level and a new presence of an overarching state, therefore,
built upon pre-existing social and economic relations. Nevertheless, the
transformation of rural institutions described in this study and the effective
penetration of a powerful state apparatus from Addis Ababa would suggest that
rural Ethiopians shared common experiences with Africans under colonial rule.

The actions of the imperial state should therefore be relevant for
understanding to what degree the imperatives of the world economy affected the
autonomy of state administrations in Africa. The imperial state in Lasta and
elsewhere in the north sought to use the rural labor pool to develop and maintain
infrastructure at the lowest cost possible. In fact, the Ethiopian state may have
proved more effective at this that its colonial counterparts since it could draw on
existing institutions of corvee labor and an ideology which prescribed work for the
emperor and the state as an acceptable demand. Overall though, the amount of
modern infrastructure developed in Lasta was almost nil since the region's produce
did not have value much of a world market value and therefore did not warrant
investment. Relations of production in the north as a whole did not allow elites or
local entreprenuers to accumulate sufficient land and labor to develop economies of

scale in agriculture, nor to force crop choices on rural producers. Despite the

275
changes evident by 1935, the circuit of exchange involved primarily food crops and
livestock, few of Lasta's goods found their way out of middle-distance networks.
Innovations in administrative techniques and collection procedures solidified power
in the hands of the state, but did not significantly alter the region's economic
relations to the center.

Administrative changes locally did, however, affect the distribution of wealth
locally. The Ethiopian state and its regional rivals responded quickly to ideas which
generated cash from the local economy. They borrowed the idea of head or hut
taxes from their colonial neighbors as a means of generating revenues in kind.
Interestingly, the primary innovators were not state officials, but regional elite like
Haylu of Gojjam and Ras Gugsa who sought cash revenues to gain access to
adjacent colonial economies. Their acquisitions of arms and items of conspicuous
consumption never contributed, however, to regional development; Lasta and the
north did not join the cash economy which burgeoned in the south during this
period. The north's exports to the world market remained minimal, while the south's
production of coffee and commodities made it the locus for state investment in
road-building, banking, agricultural projects. Relations of of production there and
the quick access to world markets which coffee enjoyed stimulted a rapid
transformation to a cash economy. By the 19703 peasants in the rural north still
distained paper money and often relied on barter.6

Despite the possibilities for useful comparison, Lasta's rural producers lived
through a different set of circumstances than their counterparts in colonial African
who have been described in the literature thus far. Although the imperial state
wanted to maximize revenue and minimize cost, at no time did the state or an elite
class attempt to impose cash crops or even a particular style of production
organization on Lasta's population. Early attempts to do so failed quickly.7 The

changes in rural relations of production which came, did so willy nilly. Colonial

276

governments also tended to favor working with traditional elements of rural
societies or at least to educate new ones to act in their stead. The Ethiopian
government of the 19203 and 19303 clearly attempted and succeeded with such a
policy in its southern provinces, but not in the north and certainly not in Lasta.
While many local elite were appointed as state officials, they were required to
renounce most of the prerogatives formerly associated with office and had to
conform to a new set of political criteria.

In the final analysis, though, Lasta's case bore some similarity to its
counterparts in colonial Africa since its consituent households and economic
institutions keenly felt the impact of a state administration which reacted directly
to the demands of the world economy. The reforms instituted by Ras Kassa in
Lasta and those imposed by Haile Selassé's government, such as customs reform,
new taxes, judicial reform, suppression of slavery, etc, were products of an attempt
to conform to world standards. In this sense there was a significant expansion of
scale in northern Ethiopian society which linked them to a new social formation,
helped reduce the economic viablility of rural households, and contributed to the

impoverization of rural life.

Notes to Chapter Eight

1. The most important of these comparative studies have been Hoben, Land
Tenure; Bauer, Household; Messerli, Simen; and Cossins, ”Poor Man."

 

2. I have not seen a copy of Prof. Mesfin's work. My comments are based
on his presentation to the Institute of Development Studies seminar in March 1982
and other conversations with him.

3. The seminal works on this area are Palmer and Parsons, Roots of Rural
Poverty and Colin Bundy, The Rise and Fall of the South African Peasantry
(London, 1979). Important contributions have also been made by Arrighi and Saul,
Van Onselan, and Boeder.

 

4. This description of northern Ethiopia's rural producers as peasants easily
falls within the two primary schools of peasant studies, i.e. the classical Redford
definition and the more materialist Shanin view. See T. Shanin, "Peasantry as a
Political Factor," in Shanin, ed. Peasants and Peasant Societies (Baltimore, 1971);

277

and Gamst, "Peasanties and Elites." Elias Mandala in his dissertation, "Capitalism,
Ecology, and Society: The Lower Tchiri (Shire) Valley of Malawi, 1860-1940," Ph.D.
thesis, University of Minnesota, 1982 argues that peasants had existed in the Shire
valley well before the European presence.

5. Coquery-Vidrovitch, "Périodization," passim.

6. In 1973 a friend of mine living in Lalib'a'la had to pay for his E3150
horse entirely in ten-cent pieces because the local population mistrusted currency
in larger demoninations. While governor of Lasta in the early 19603, Fitawrari
Ababa Siyum experienced great difficulty in tax collection in cash because

currency circulated so poorly in the region. Fit. Ab'ab'a', interview #2, 9 March
1982.

7. Annaratone Abissinia, p. 125. Ras W'alé had attmepted to stimulate
coffee production in Yajju by requiring new immigrants from the north to plant part
of their land in coffee. Conditions appeared to have been suitable, but the
experiment never expanded into neighboring districts.

Appendices

Appendix A

Glossary and Political Personalities
Part I: Glossary

afarsata. A judicial procedure whereby a state official could confine an entire
village or community to force them to reveal a criminal. Also refers
generally to a process of collective decision-making. In the 19203, afarsata
became predominantly a procedure of revenue generation for the state and
its local representative.

asrat. A tithe paid in kind to the state or its local representatives.

balambaras. A military title meaning "commander of a fort." This title ranks just
below that of grazmach.

b'al'ag'amis. Literally, "those with shirts," this term refers to officers of the rural
military class.

chiqashum. Literally "mud chief,” this local offical was elected locally from among
the elders of each land division. The chiqashum acted as a direct
intermediary between the state, the mglt-shum, and the local land-holders in
judicial matters, tax collection and assessment, military mobilization, and
other local affairs. He was usually elected to serve a one-year term.

d'aber. A church-administered district responsible for its own tax collection, judicial
procedures, and election of local officials. It has been defined in some
sources as ”ecclesiastical gmlt." D'aber districts can be contrasted with
Site; zones which were under the jurisdiction of secular officials. Daber
lands were usually associated with major churches or monasteries, although
the term d’a’ber denoted a specific type of ecclesiastical unit.

 

datan. A golden hand basin reserved, in tradition, for the use of the Wagshum as
symbol of his equality with the emperor.

dajach. Abbreviated form of d'a'jazmach.

da'j zmach. A military title usually given to a district or provincial governor.
Literally "commander of the gate," this title ranks just below that of £13 and
above that of fitawrari.

d'a’mbanya. A local level office, usually held by a soldier, involved in the
supervision of tax assessment in conjunction with the chiqashum.

end'a'rasé. A representative of the governor, especially an absentee governor. In
Lasta the term Y'ator endarasé meant the governor's military representative
and Yagar end'a'rasé referred to the representative responsible for civil
affairs.

 

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fereg. a tax paid in support of a local church.

fitawrari. A military title literally meaning "commander of the vanguard." Although
below d'ajazmach in rank, the title was often retained by those directly
involved in military affairs. Imperial ministers of war, for example, often
retained the title even though they merited a higher rank.

gad'al. Steep sloped canyons common in Lasta and Tigré.
gasha. A unit of land measure roughly equivalent to 40 hectares or 98.84 acres.

3mg; Lands under the direct jurisdiction of secular administrators (as opposed to
d'a'ber). Also glossed as "parish," i.e. a unit of geographic reference. In some
regions of Ethiopia the term also implies "countryside."

gult. The "bundle" of rights in income and labor obligations granted to locally
prominent military officials (gult-shum). Involved rights of collection and
juridicial privilege rather than direct control over land.

hudad. State lands provided for the use of officials as a part of the privilege of
office. Hudad usually also included the rights to labor and use of oxen from
the surrounding zones. Elsewhere in Ethiopia hudad sometimes connoted the
idea of corvee labor.

mada'jja. A unit of measure for grain roughly equivalent to 32 liters.

magazo. An institution of distribution whereby poor land-holders could exchange use
of land for use of oxen, seed, or labor.

memher. The head ecclesiastical administrator of a d'eiber. In the case of some of
the more important d'aber, this official had to be a monk.

mender. A hamlet usually consisting of the members of one land division.

mesl'ané. A state-appointed local representative responsible for tax assessment and
some judicial proceedings.

negus. King, a title held by a select few of the most powerful provincial governors.

gagyazmach. A military title below that of fitawrari and above that of grazmach.
gunna. A unit of measurement roughly equivalent to 2 liters.

§a_s_. A title above that of d'ajazmach and below that of negus. Usually reserved for
provincial governors or special favorites of the emperor.

rest. The dominant land tenure system in Lasta and northern Ethiopia and based on
a cognatic descent system which guaranteed all free persons the rights to
access to land. Sometimes used to mean the actual claimed land itself.

shal'aga. Literally "major," this term referred in general to the upper ranks of the
rural military class.

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shagela. Literally "to carry," referred to demeaning day labor for wages or payment
in kind.

téf. An endemic grain cultivated in northern Ethiopia and the preferred ingredient
in enjera, the flat, spongy, staple bread of northern Ethiopia.

Wagshum. The traditional title of the ruler of Wag and sometimes Lasta as a
whole. Tied in tradition to the last of the Zagwe dynasty of the thirteenth
century.

wal'ad ag'a'd. An institution whereby poor land-holders could sell seasonal rights to
land in exchange for cash. This institution emerged in Lasta only after the
19203.

w'anb'ar. Literally "bench," the term for official state-appointed judges.

Part II: Political Personalities

Ras Abata Bwayal'aw. A Shawan favorite of Emperor Menilek who was appointed
Wagshum in 1909 and given control of Tigré and Wag. His imperial forces
defeated the Tigréan pretender D'ajach Abraha at the Battle of Koram in
1909. He was later removed from his Tigre governate by Empress Taytu
and imprisoned by Eyasu.

D'a'jach Abraha Araya. A grandson of Emperor Yohannes IV and governor of eastern
Tigre until his defeat by imperial forces at Kora'm in 1909.

D'ajach Ayalaw Berru. Governor of northwest B'agamder and loyal supporter of
Taf'ari Ma'konnan. Ay'a'la'w occupied Lasta on behalf of the imperial
government in 1929 and 1930. He later married Ras Kassa's daughter
Manyahela’shal.

Fitawrari Bazza Taw. Governor of Lasta-proper from 1928 until his death in 1929
at the hands of lowland rebels. He was a cousin of Ras Kassa.

D'ajach Ba'zzab'ah. Son-in-law of Wagshum Berru and governor of the Bugna district
of Lasta. He lost his area to Wagshum K'abb'ada in 1919 and regained it
later when the region was turned over to Ras Kassa, who reappointed him.

Wagshum Berru Ga'bra M‘a‘dhen. Son of Wagshum Gabr'a' M'a'dhen and brother of
Wagshum Goba'zé (later Emperor Tiikla' Giyorgis (1868-71)). Although popular
locally, Berru was deposed by Menilek for intrigue with the Italians just
prior to the battle of Adwa.

Wagshum Girmay Berru. Son of Wagshum Berru, Girmay was appointed as governor

of Wag by Empress Taytu in 1910 and ruled there until 1913 when he was
removed by Ras Mikael.

Ras Gabra Hiywot Mikaél. Illegitimate son of Ras Mikaél of W'allo. Gabrii Hiywot
served as governor of Wag from 1914-1916. He was replaced by Wagshum
Ka'bba'da after Mikaél's defeat at the Battle of S'agalé.

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Ras Gugsa Araya. Grandson of Emperor Yohannes IV and governor of eastern
Tigré. Although generally loyal to the central government, Gugsa Araya
played an important role in regional politics in Tigre. In 1917 and 1919 he
acted as an agent of the central government in putting down several
rebellions in Wag. He also fought on the side of the central government
during the 1928-30 rebellion.

Ras Gugsa Wélé. Son of Ras W'alé and nephew of Empress Taytu. Gugsa served
as governor of B'ag'amder from 1909 to 1912 and from 1918-1930. Married to
but separated from Empress Z‘a’wditu, Gugsa was a major northern rival to
Ras Taf'a'ri until his death during the 1928-30 rebellion. Gugsa was a popular
figure in Lasta and ruled parts of southwestern Lasta during his tenure as
governor of Ba'gamder.

Wagshum Gwangul Berru. Son of Wagshum Berru who took over from his father in
1895 prior to the Battle of Adwa. Ruled Wag until his death in 1904.

Wagshum Gwangul Z'ag'ayy'a. Member of the Y'a'jju ruling house of warrashék and
married to the daughter of Wagshum Berru. Gwangul served as governor of
Wag from 1907 until Abata's appointment as Wagshum in 1909.

Ras Haylu Ta'kl‘a Haymanot. Important rival of Ras Taf'ari and the central
government and governor of Gojjam from c. 1909-1932. Together with Ras
Gugsa W'alé and Ras Siyum Mangasha, Haylu made up an important part of
the opposition to the expansion of central government authority to the north.
He conspired actively with Gugsa prior to the 1928-30 rebellion. After
Gugsa's defeat, Haylu was held in Addis Ababa until be staged an abortive
attempt to release the imprisoned Lej Eyasu in 1932.

Wagshum Kabbada T'af'ari. Son of Wagshum T'afari wassa'n, Ka'bbad'a' governed Wag
at three separate times, 1874-77, 1904-1907, and 1917-35. His last tenure as
governor was important since be supervised the extension of central
government policies there. He was a close ally of Ras M'akonn'a'n and then
the m' son T'af'ari M'a'konn'an.

D'ajach Kassa Berru. Son of Wagshum Berru. Kassa Berru led a major rebellion in
1917-19 against the appointment of Wagshum Kabbada'. His efforts failed,
however, as he was unable to win the support of the central government
which preferred the more manipulable Kabb'ada.

Ras Kassa Haylu. Grandson of Menilek's uncle Ras Dargé, Kassa had family ties in
Shawa as well as in Lasta. He served as governor of Lasta-proper in 1913
and from 1917-1935. His major role in the central government was as advisor
to Ras Ta’fari, friend of the Orthodox church, and administrative reformer.

Ras Mikaél (later negus). Father of Lej Eyasu and powerful governor of W'allo.
Mikael governed Lasta-proper and Wag from 1913-16 through his sons Gabra'
Hiywot and Hayla' Maryam. He exerted great influence in the northeast until
his capture and imprisonment after the Battle of sagalé in 1916. He and
his party were major rivals to the empress' wano faction and the Shawans
led by Tafari M'akonn'a'n.

Ras Siyum Mangasha. Governor of western Tigré grandson of Emperor Yohannes
IV. Siyum was a major figure in Tigré politics and a potential rival to

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T'af'ari for the throne. He passively supported the central government during
the 1928-30 rebellion and was held in the capital from 1930-32.

Ras W'alé Betul. Brother of Empress Taytu and father of Gugsa W513. Wéil was
a major figure in the politics of northeast Ethiopia from the late nineteenth
through the early twentieth century. He governed Lasta-proper as well as his
native region of Y'ajju from the period of Menilek's accession until 1913. He
was imprisoned during the reign of Eyasu and died shortly after Mikaél's
deposition.

 

Appendix B

Selected Administrative Documentation
The following eleven documents are a sampling of materials from the
administrative register "Ya Ras Kassa Asta'dad'ar Damb." Each document is
preceded by its number in the registry as well as a short description of its

subject. Words and titles from the glossary have not been translated.

Document #13
Subject: New procedures for collecting and registering asrat (tithe).

According to the government regulation for tithe registration officials, when
someone who has harvested his grain comes with a letter signed by the chiqashum
bringing his grain to the government's granary, the scribe should follow these
procedures:

1) copy the name of the farmer and the name of the landowner from the
receipt; 2) register the amount of the grain; 3) return the signed receipt to the
asrat payer; 4) when the scribe takes his portion from the granary he should do it
in the presence of a government representative (mesl'ané), it is forbidden to take
a portion alone or only in the absence of the chiqashum; 5) grain income as well
as any expenditure from the government's store should be carefully recorded in
ink-~the use of pencil is expressly forbidden; 6) when income or expenditure is
recorded it should always be in the presence of local authorities; 7) the amount
of the expenditure should bear an official seal and be preserved; 8) to make the
work more efficient and avoid inconvenience, the scribe should make sure that
income and expenditure records are recorded in the military official's register
every two months and from there into the government's register every four
months; 9) according to the asrat regulation, Farada Negash and one other man
are assigned as supervisors to Qola Mujja Giyorgis with Fekré Egzi as the scribe.
For Dengobat and G'a'l‘a'set the registration center is Lalibala Libanos and
supervisors are Shaleqa Tesemma and one other person appointed by the
d'a'jazmach and the scribe is Ato Ayala. For the area beyond Jibara, the center
for registration is S'abro Amba Maryam. Supervisors are the da'jazmach appointee,
Ga'damu Gwangul [is the scribe] Grazmach walda Mikael and K'abb'ad‘a‘ should
assemble the chiqashums and the d'ambanya on Sundays and collect the grain in
turn every 15 days except on St. Mikaél's and God's holy day when they should
not record.

No date

Document #80

Subject: New judicial procedures revising those of 1919

284

1. In order to appeal court cases which have been decided at the district
level, or to get a litigation paper from a higher level, the peasants need not come
regularly during the year. They can come once a year for such appeals. For
peasants living in Giden, M‘a’sq'arem and Teqemt [September and October] use for
their appeals. Peasants living beyond Jibara should appeal in Ter and Y'aqatit
[January and February] and those living below S'alayesh can do so in Megabit and
Miazia [March and April]. The rest of the time they are supposed to work in the
fields. If the matter is urgent, the one who wants to bring the case can pay the
scribe about 1/4 [of a taler] and get the first decision copied, and get the
scribe and the judge to sign, he can appeal to the higher court anytime. If the
scribe and the judge refuse to give the appeal paper within three days they are
liable to pay him 1/4 for each day for those three days.

2. Concerning matters of peg: taxation: if cases arise and are decided by the
lower judge unsatisfactorily, the peasants living below Sélaynesh and beyond
Jibara should not go as far as far as Stilayn'ash, but should appeal to Dajach
wandbawassan.

3. When military officials are summoned to court, their cases should be seen
by the lower judge, but they should not give a final decision. They should send
the entire report of the case to the higher court for a final decision.

4. When orders are given out for the whole of Lasta it should be under the
signature of Fitawrari warenya [the governor] or his vice-governor Qanyazmach
Mersha. The rest should obey them for efficiency of the government's work.

5. If the representative [endarasé] of Giden himself is accused of
maladministration, the judge shouild immediately report the case to higher
authority.

6. Justice supervisors are Grazmach Eshete for Giden, Grazmach Balaw for
the area below S'alayn'ash, Q‘cignamach Kabaabu Kassa and Y‘asmé G'a’rad for the
country beyond Jibara, Balambaras Shumiyé Habtna and Q'a'gnazmach Ejigu
F'a'ntaw. These should supervise in turn two months at their homes and two months
at court. Three of them at a time should be at Q'agnazmach Admasu and Grazmach
Kassu T'a'maru's court. They should keep a record of court cases and decisions
very neatly and carefully. Depending on the distance of the court from their
residence they should be paid 1/ 10 to 1/5 [of total proceeds from fines].

7. Q'al'alet'a procedure [paper of litigation]: if orders sent from our office
are not obeyed by the judge of Giden and this affects poor peasants whose cases
are suspended because of the inefficiency of the judge, the judge should be sent
to us.

8. Procedures for Lalibala areas: they should appoint their own judges.
Decisions, however, should be reported to Giden. But if the poor peasants appeal
for justice against their decisions, they should do it with Qiignazmach Réta at
Giden where they may obtain a final decision.

Written Yekatit 14, 1915 E.C.

Document #82
Subject: the granting of asrat revenues to the Lalib'ala d'aber

Asrat was granted to this church because it deals with holy matters of God,
the sole creator.

1. The foundation and honor of the Lasta government is the monthly prayer
ceremony performed by the clergy. For this honor and greatness the father is
Saint Lalib'ala and this is why we have granted the full asrat.

2. Believers come from distant places on pilgrimage to see, pray, and seek
salvation from the land blessed by St. Lalib'ala. These believers used to suffer

285

from lack of food, clothing, and shelter in this area. Therefore, to provide them
with all necessities --food, clothing, and shelter-- we have granted special asrat to
the church.

3. Since other churches with new tabot (arks) were set up besides Lalibala,
they have faced the problem of a shortage of money to buy church equipment
(cloth, inscense, etc.) as the senior churches have been able.

4. For the number of churches that were increased we felt the need to raise
the number of priests and the clergy to give spiritual guidance to the public.

5. Because of their religion, the old, the disabled, and the poor gather
around the church waiting for the day of their death, we felt it was necessary to
supply food, clothing, and shelter for these devote Christians.

6. The reason why the head priest was given an additional income of 1/8th
of the total is that he is visited by a number of guests and at the same time he
is responsible for all the coordination of church services.

7. The place [the church] is where many people meet to make decisions and
above all it is the center for teaching and learning. Therefore, there should not
be a problem of a shortage of food. The seven reasons discussed above are what
made us grant a special asrat income for the Lalibala churches and monasteries.

Written Y'akatit 14, 1915 E.C.

According to St; Laliba'la congregation administrative procedures:

1. Among the ten [churches], one is Abba Libanos church. It belongs
exclusively to monks. Food preparation should be handled by one man elected by
the head priest and other monks. Unless those who elected him find his work
unsatisfactory or he himself wants to retire, the elected man should continue to
serve.

2. For all asrat income and for matters connected to church land, the
organization should have one appointee elected by the monks and approved by the
head priest. The elected person should not be deposed unless he is found to be
inefficient.

3. In order to organize the priests for regular prayers and thanksgiving to
God, there should be one coordinator from among the priests and elected by them.
He is supposed to coordinate the other nine churches [of Lalibala] with his own.

4. The same coordinator should also be responsible for the income in cash
from the believers. He should at the same time accept those who want to give
labor services to the church because of the lack of cash. Whenever he does this,
he has to obtain the permission of the head priest. The administration of the
tabot [i.e. church administration] should get 1/ 10 of the money at Laliba'la on the
basis of equal distribution.

Written Ya'katit 8, 1915 E.C.

Document #83
Subject: response to peasant complaints regarding court procedures

Orders sent to the representatives [end'arasél of Lasta: The Lasta peasants
have appealed to us for big and small matters complaining that they have been
maladministered and ill-treated. The distance of the court of appeal has become
the main source of discontent. Therefore, we have decided that the following
procedures should be adopted. Matters connected with land (r_e_s_g), cattle, or
ordinary quarrels should be taken to the court of Giden as before. But for
matters connected with court cases, they should come to us in turn. Keeping the
rules and regulations given to you at war‘ailu intact and taking the ones we are
now sending you as an amendment, work smoothly in cooperation.

286
Written Y'aqatit 17, 1915 E.C.
Document #85
Subject: rules and guidelines for state revenue inspectors

Procedures given to an inspector are as follows:

1. Count the number of registers, put them in a box and keep them in Abba
Ma'konnan's compound to be with the scribe overnight.

2. Notify all the other scribes to submit the registers within 3 days of his
arrival with the help of the chief scribe.

3. Go through each register to see whether omissions, cancellations, or
misrecordings have been made.

4. Separate the income registers, add the total income and obtain the
signatures and seals of the local official and his scribe.

5. Counter-check the receipts given to the peasants with those originals in
the treasury.

6. Take the expenditure register and closely examine the hand-writing to see
if it corresponds with the hand-writing of the first scribe. '

7. Counter-check the expenses made under the signature and seal of the
state representative with the expenditures register.

8. Counter-check the letters made from our office with those letters given
by the state representative.

9. Give orders to present him with the judicial register and audit the amount
of money the court collected in its cases.

10. Ask for the reasons why the money which should have been collected
has not been obtained in each of the cases and record the reasons.

11. After examining all the registers and finding the amount of money
reduced from the normal income of the government because of the action of local
officials, the inspector should not disclose the figure to anyone. It is also
completely forbidden for the auditor to stay at the home of local officials or the
scribes in the course of his investigation. He should stay in our house wherever
one exists. In the areas where there is no government house, he should stay with
the judge to complete his work.

12. Keep the account of the money deposited in the treasury --write down
the actual income and the money lost.

13. If the local officials refuse to cooperate with the auditors, they should
pay the auditors at the rate of SMT 2 per day under the order of the judge. The
judges should also give the auditors a written testimony explaining the reluctance
of the local officials to cooperate.

14. Before they leave, the auditors should carry a written order to the local
officials as well as the judges so that all should cooperate in their work.

15. They should be given three guards at every station who should help them
with any problem of security. When they move from one country to another, the
local official of the area they are leaving should escort them until they reach
their destination.

16. The auditors should also inspect the market tax income as well as
customs duties from the traders and record all their findings in their special
register.

17. They should sign and put their seal on their register book, together with
the carefully added total amount and submit it to their lord [Kassa] and receive
their pay according to their work from the Fiché treasury. They should also
record it in the main registry.

287

18. When they go to counter-check the receipts they should stay with the
state representative at his house who shall present to him all the documents he
asks for. If the state representative fails to help him he must provide food for
his dinner.

Written in 1915 E.C.

Document #95
Subject: orders to Qagnazmach Godana, local representative in Lasta

The poor peasants have appealed that the seat of the judge is very far from
them and that if the representative [mgslgmé] does not administer properly they
do not have anyone to appeal to. Therefore we have given the following orders:

1. In matters of advice and judiciary work in collaboration with Dajach
Wéindbawassa'n, who will consider the genuine appeals of the peasantry.

2. Examine the cases between the local representatives and the peasants. If
you find a representative guilty send both the peasant and the representative
under your signature with the history of the case to us in the hands of the
peasant. Concerning financial matters, you should handle them as before without
the involvement of the representative. We have ordered the representative not to
give orders to you. As you have been doing before, accept the orders of
Q'agnazmach Ambayé and carry out your duties.

Written in 1915 E.C.

Document #101-102
Subject: The organization of office-holding and tax collection

Since the people of Lasta prefer to be administered according to the old
practice of Ras W513 and Negus Mikael, we have made the following rules and
regulations:

1. The country beyond Jibara should remain with the administrative
procedures under Negus Mikael. The country up to Jibara --from the middle of
Giden and below Siilay'ashu should be under the gmlt judiciary as it was during the
time of Ras walé. There should not be any misunderstanding between the d‘ajach
and the tax collectors on the question of revenue. Its has been established that
in the country below S‘a’lay‘cish for the collectors to be given an allotment for the
kitchen, chiga m_a_t_‘, sheep tax for holy days, tithe, as well as 1/3 of the income.
the governor should not interfere except in judiciary matters.

2. The income from Qobbo, Asrahulet Ta'kula, M‘a’wat Lasta Manga'd,
wafcham, and Tenesh M'a'wat, including what is to be paid to the collector and
the dajazmach, should be sent to us.

3. Crimes such as murder and slave dealing should be referred to the judges;
the meslané should not punish these decisions on his own.

4. For the country beyond Jibara, in the frontier region, the nagadras is
responsible for collecting customs duties and should pay salaries as ordered. The
da"jazmach should also take his share. The scribes should record financial income
and expenditure. All the work should be done as it used to be in the time of
Negus Mikaél. Nevertheless, it should be kept in mind that the collection of
customs duties is the sole responsibility of the nagadras, the governor should not
interfere in taxing the traders.

5. 1/3 of the revenue collected from the 12 parishes [g'ater] around the
town of Giden should belong to the governor. The chief collector should not claim

 

288

any share except in judiciary matters concerning murder, slavery, and smuggling of
arms.

6. In the country beyond Jibara the income is divided between the governor
and the revenue collectors as follows: the taxes from Arbat, Dinno, M‘cikd'ala
forest beyond the Amdé river should go to the governor through his appointee.
The collector should in no way interfere except in matters of slavery, murder, and
arms smuggling.

7. According to the military officials and the governor, what Ras Wale used
to practice in tax collection was discontinued by Negus Mikal. Therefore, instead
of Yachiqa may the gult-shum and the appointee should receive 1/2 of wayyan',
gate customs duties, and 1/2 of 1/3 of the livestock tithe. The appointee and the
gult-shum responsible for the order and security of the frontier region. They
should assign guards who will receive 1/3 of the [customs] revenue depending on
their service.

8. Appointment of mesl'anés: one chief mesla'né, one district mesl'ané, and
one supervisor are assigned. The supervisor himself should accomplish the work
rather than assigning another in his place. The chief mesl'ané orders the district
mesl'a'né who in turn orders the chiqashum. If the mesl'anés assign others to do
their job they will be punished as violators of the law. The chief mesla'né should
pay the salaries of the military representative. The district mesl'a'né should not
send the soldiers to the countryside unless the rural people are reluctant to obey
orders. Even them he has to get the permission from the chief mesl'ane to do so.
When the authorities go to the rural areas to enforce the laws with soldiers they
should not demand provisions other than food and drink. They should not order the
peasants to slaughter sheep or goats for them against their will.

9. Rules for the collection of revenue by the mesl'ané: food revenues should
be collected by giving official receipts to the payers. The mesl'ané should collect
money legally. This money should be recorded and deposited in the treasury.

10. Without including the governor's salary, when the money from the
collectors' revenue reaches $100, the appointees should give 10 out of the 100 to
the Lalib'eila church, $5 to the chief mesl'ané, $3 to the district meslané, $2 to
the supervisor, and $10 to the military representative. In this manner when we
receive $70, those who are entitled to get a salary would receive $30 out of
every $100. The expenditure of the market and customs duties should also follow
the same procedures.

11. Rules for the gult-shum: if the number of people in one parish is many,
they should be allowed to chose one person as their representative. But if they
cannot reach an agreement, they should be under the chiqashum and they should
not appoint a meslané of their own.

Written Tahasas 11, 1916 E.C. (1923)

Document #110
Subject: Amendments to military and judicial regulations

1916 amendment to old rules and regulations:

1. The scattered soldiers should be brought together for orders or calls to
arms.

2. Anyone possessing arms should obey or accept orders from the military
representative. For the supply of rations and salary the military representative is
responsible. He can appoint minor officials who can organize arms under local
military officials. He has the permission to punish rebels.

 

289

3. When the officials quarrel among themselves, the military representative
should settle the matter according to the law. If he cannot find certain
procedures in the law he should sent the litigants to me.

4. When royal feasts are given or meetings held, the military representative
can pass orders to bring the people together.

5. For good or bad he is permitted to call meetings of the soldiers.

6. If soldiers quarrel about their rights of collection [madariya] he should
refer the matter to us without taking those rights as his own.

7. If an appeal is made to him because of injustice, he can force the enemy
of the applicant to come but he cannot override the first decision.

8. When he gives such orders he should send a copy of the orders to us. It
should be noted that such papers must be issued at the court during the day, not
at night.

9. Order papers are to issued Tuesday and Thursday from 7 to 9 am. in the
presence of the military representative and the judge. The representative should
never examine the cases at his home, but at the court.

10. The mesl'ané should avoid corruption. He should examine the words of
the accusor as well as the accused and make decisions according to the law
without being partial to avoid repression of the poor. The representative should
not make unnecessary interference in the decision of the mesl'ané because we
have found of that such interference has complicated matters.

11. When the military representative performs his duties, the mesl'ané and
the judge should examine cases on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays and give
decisions.

12. It is the duty of the mesl'ané to enforce punishment immediately or
through time against whomever the decision is made.

13. The rights and duties of administering the country «passing orders for
war, passing information on edicts, discovering criminals, thiefs-- the military
end'arasé is responsible and he can give orders to this effect.

14. Instead of accepting bribes the end‘arasé is allowed to make use of
taxes in kind and judiciary revenue, 1/10 of it being given to the appointee in
charge [of the collection].

15. The endarase should not demand any other extra pay other than what is
lawfully due to him. He should not force the mesl‘ciné to do anything unless
ordered by us.

16. The end'arasé is entitiled to to send anyone who he finds as a criminal
or who plots against the government to us with enough evidence.

17. He should call meetings of an advisory council made up of the
appointees every month to help him make decisions on important matters.

18. He can hear any matter concerning quarrels among local officials or
ordinary people until cases are referred to us.

Anyone who does not follow the above laws, rules, or regulations: for the
first offence they lose their cattle, for the 2nd offense they lose their salary,
and for the 3rd offense they lose their appointment. The endaarasé can send
soldiers to areas in his domain who resist orders.

Written Yekatit 10, 1916 EC (1924)

Document #111
Subject: Duties of the End‘cirasé
1. As of 1916 [E.C.] all the end'a'rasé in the region are entitled to 2/100

fo the general income tax from honey, grain, corvee, cattle tax, tithe etc.
provided that they deliver the taxes collected on time to the Fiche treasury.

 

290

They should not take bribes from the general public since they are compensated
with the above income from the tax.

2. If any end‘a’rasé fails to deliver the tax on time the 2 of 100 payment
should be withdrawn.

3. The 2 of 100 payment is made in addition to the end'arasé's regular
salary in lieu of the abolition of bribery. Therefore, any end'arasé should not
demand money from the peasants except items for consumption such as wood,
grass, food, and drink.

4. Any endarasé should not examine cases of appeal at his home compound
in the evening or at night. He should avoid anyone who wants to appeal cases at
his home. Every case must be examined at the court in front of the public.

5. Every enda'rasé should talk about home affairs from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m.
From 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. he should examine court cases. From 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. will
be lunch hour. From 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. ge will issue letters of appeal. This
schedule is to be followed Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. The rest of the
time he should work with the military enda'rasé.

6. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. in the morning he shall
issue letters of appeal. From 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. he shall supervise whether the
appointees have done their jobs. From 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. wil be lunch. From 2 p.m.
to 6 p.m. he shall check the letters and orders from us to see if the orders are
carried out properly.

7. Saturdays from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. he shall examine the account registers in
the treasury. From 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. lunch, and from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. he shall give
out appeal papers. From 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. he will check the proclamation letters to
know if they have been carried out and what remains to be done. Sundays are for
rest.

8. Appointees should be given orders in written form, not orally; the scribe
must write out the orders.

9. When the appointees make mistakes or commit crimes they should be
punished according to the law.

10. If the punishment is in the form of a cash fine, the victims should be
given a grace period of 15 days to pay.

11. The appointees who do not work properly i.e. people of words but not
deeds should be sent to us with a proof in writing of their laziness.

12. The lowest fine is $1.

13. When the poor make mistakes, the local judges have the authority to
punish them with a fine of $5 and not more.

14. Any appointee who violates the rules and regulations should be punished
according to the law.

15. For the three holy days (New Year's, Masqa'l, and Easter), the military
endarasé shall give feasts.

16. Any urgent matter not mentioned in the above clauses can be taken care
of by getting the advice of the military endarasé whose presence is equal to
three officials.

17. Division of authority between the endarasé of war and the end'arasé of
the country [i.e. "civil"] is as follows:

The end‘cirasé of war is responsible for giving orders on

matters concerning the peasants' property (cattle and land),

security, public gatherings, mobilization for war, weeding out of

thieves and outlaws, and the preservation of territorial

integrity. Whereas the civilian end'arasé is responsible for all

kinds of dues and taxation, judgements, punishments etc.

 

291

18. If the poor complain of maladministration and want to appeal to higher
authorities on matters of taxation or other similar cases, they should be permitted
to do so and should not be hindered by the end'arasé.

19. Anyone violating the above rules and regulations will be punished first
by confiscation of his cattle, second by imprisonment, and third the loss of his
office.

Written Y'akatit 10, 1916 E.C. (1924)

Document #131
Subject: Rules concerning the conduct of afarsata

The following provisions are to be made for the afarsata chairman by the
community:

1. For the official in charge, 10 enjera [bread], 2 pots of beer, 2 dishes of
stew, 3 gunna of grain, 1 bundle of grass [for his horse or mule].

2. For his scribe, 10 enjera, 1 dish of stew, 1 jar of beer, 1 qunna of grain,
1 bundle of grass.

3. For two of his soldiers, 10 enjera, 1 dish of stew, 1 jar of beer, and 1
bundle of grass.

Additional cash payments of $1 for the official in charge, $.25 for each of
the two soldiers, and $.50 each for the scribe and the official's escort.

Written in 1916 E.C. (1924)

Document #135
Subject: Regulations for judicial appeals

Regulations given to Lasta judiciary on appeal procedures. The main reason
for these regulations is to avoid injustice in the 18 divisions of Lasta.

1. Decisions should be made on the basis of a strong witnesss. any judge
should look into cases in line with the law book Fetha Nagast. If any decision or
witness is given outside the spirit of this book, the judgement or decision is
subject to reversal.

2. Any witness or argument by a defendant should be presented in the
presence of Qagnazmach Réta, the chief judge, or to the military end'a'rasé
Fitawrari W'arenya and the end'arasé Grazmach Al'amé. These three judges should
investigate judiciary registers and see to it that decisions are made in the proper
order. If necessary they are fully authorized to call upon the local judges,
officials, etc. and interogate them. Nevertheless, by considiring the votes of
Q'a'gnazmach Réta as five men, the military endarasé as four men, the end'a'rasé
as three men, the right judge as two men, and the left judge as one man, the
decision with the highest number of votes should be adopted. All processes of
decisions and arguments should be carefully recorded and kept. In our opinion, the
Fetha Nagast judiciary committee is what is called majalis in Europe. members of
this committee should not make unnecessary arguments to enforce their own
individual opinion.

Concerning the investigation and verification of court cases, the judges
should obey the following procedures:

1. For a certain number of days they should go through all the appeal
documents and write them down in order.

2. They should examine each case and determine whether it should be
reconsidered.

 

 

 

292

3. The military enda'rasé and the end'arasé with the scribe should get the
exact words of the applicant written down in the court register. If the latter is
still dissatisfied with the decision and still wants to appeal, they should let him
do so.

4. If they find a peculiar case not resembling others they should send both
the accused and the accusor to us.

5. The order of seats for the judges should be according to the Feth'a
Nagast the memher, then the right judge in the middle of the bench, next to that
the military end'arasé, then the end'arasé, and finally on the left, the left judge.

6. Procedures for recording each page of the register should bear the seal
of the end'arasé. Copies of the documents should be sent to us each month and
put in a box. Both the accused and the accusor should have copies of the
decisions made.

7. The assistants to the judges are: Memhir wald'ai Mikaél of Lalib'eila,
Memher walda Maryam of zamadu Maryam, Memher G'abra Kidan of Nakutolaab,
Memher W'ald'a Gabraél of Yemerha, Memher walda Kidan of G'ann'at'a Maryam,
and walda Gabraél of Abuna Yoséf. These assistants shall act as advisors for
any decision and orders for two months of each year when they are to reside at
Mujja.

8. Salary rules: the Feth'a' Nagast, Q'agnazmach Réta, should be given 1/10
of the income, 3 out of the remaining 9 for lawmakers, 4 for the right judge, 2
for the left judge, and the assistant. The end'arasé is respoinsible for the
distribution. One of the keys of the appeal income treasury should be in the hands
of the end'a’rasé, and the other in the hands of the left judge. If the employees
have not done their job properly, the endarasé should punish them the taking a
certain portion of their salary.

9. All other types of judgements are handled by the end'arasé except appeal
cases. These should be investigated by the concerned judge and sent to us under
their witness to be decised here.

10. Issuing letters of appeal: the letters of appeal should be issued by the
military end'a'rasé and the end'a’rasé for two hours in the morning and two hours
in the afternoon.

11. All letters of appeal should be issued at the court except converning
urgent cases like murder in which cased documents should be issued anywhere at
any time. In issuing documents, both the responsible persons should meet together.
They are not to take bribes which is the tendency when documents are issued
individually. Do not accept money from the poor, even small amounts.

12. The chilot [high court] schedule: from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., from 2 p.m.
onwards is lunch time.

13. Punishment rules: If the crime requires a great punishment such as the
confiscation of property and position, it should be referred to us.

14. If the crime is minor, the criminal should be punished by paying money
at least twice. If he commits the same crime a third time, the case should be
referred to us.

15. Procedures for punishment: If a person violates regulation number 12
(bribery) the first punishment is $10, and the second is $20.

16. If a person fails to respect working hours he should be penalized 1/4 of
his salary per hour, unless it is something beyond his control like death of a
relative or illness.

17. Rules for preventing bribery: If a person violates regulation #11, first
$40 penalty, second $80 penalty with advice. If a person violates regultions
number 1-2, first $20 penalty, second $40.

Written Miazia 29, 1916 E.C. (1924)

 

 

 

Appendix C

Principal Informants

Interviews with the following informants were conducted between January
and September of 1982 at Ras Kassa S'afar, Nazrét, and in various points around
Addis Ababa. The list below does not include discussions with professional
colleagues at Addis Ababa University, contacts in the ministries, discussions with
friends from the area, or "small talk" with Ethiopians encountered on a day-to-day
basis and which contributed to the formation of ideas and the corroboration of
hunches. Notes, tapes, and transcriptions from formal interviews with the following
informants have been deposited at the Institute of Ethiopian Studies of Addis
Ababa University.

The following data include, in order of listing, name, date and place of

birth, place of interview, and biographical information relevant to their testimony.

General Abata Bazza; born c. 1920, Lalibala, Lasta; place of interview: Addis
Ababa. General Abata' is a retired territorial police officer and the son of
Fitawrari Abat'a, governor of Lasta killed by rebels in the 1928-30 rebellion.
A close relative of the Ras Kassa family, General Abata' provided useful
information about the administration of trade, taxation, and the political
history of Lasta in the 19203.

Fitawrari Abebe Siyum; born 1913 A.D., Gursum, Hararge; place of interviews: Addis
Ababa. Fit. Abebe served as governor of Lasta awraja 1962-71. His term of
office coincided with a serious famine in 1965-66 and bandit raids on
Lalibala. He offered particularly valuable information on the relationship
between the state and religious authority in the area, the introduction of a
money economy, the geographic distribution of famine in Lasta, land tenure,
and recent political history.

Adhana Mengestab; born 1941 A.D., Keren, Eritréa; place of interviews: Addis
Ababa University campus. A native of the Agaw-speaking district of Bilen,
Adhana was very helpful in sharing his research materials on the historical
traditions of migration of Agaw speakers from Lasta during the Zagwé

 

Alamu

Al'a'mu

294

period to Eritréa. He provided useful comparative traditions which clarified
Lasta oral and written tradition. Adhana was a librarian at the Institute of
Ethiopian Studies.

Ch'akola; born 1942 A.D. at Sadek Maryam, Wag; place of interview: his
home, Nazrét. Alamu was a teacher at the Nazrét Bible Academy and son
of Ch'akola La'mma. Raised in rural Wag, he provided useful information on
agriculture, settlement patterns, political traditions, and culture of
southwestern Wag awraja. Al'a'mu and his salaried job provided an important
focus for migrations of his Wag relatives out of the north and into the more
prosperous Nazrét area.

W'arqn'ah; born c.1895, Abuna Aron, Maqét; place of interviews: church
compounds, Ras Kassa safar. The son of a b'a'laqamis soldier, Al‘a’mu served
in the Italian army in Libya and as one of the personal guards of Ras Gugsa
at the battle of Aynchim. In his home district of Maqét he served as a tax
assessor before migrating to Arsi where he married an Oromo woman and
raised a family. Alamu offered candid and vivid memories of his own life
history and of conditions in rural Lasta during the entire period of this
study.

Abba Alama'ra'w T'a'sfayé; born 1912, Fiché, Sh'a‘wa; place of interview: Church

office of Gann'at'a Iya'sus monastery, Ras Kassa safar. Now chief
administrator at the Maryam church in Ras Kassa S'af'ar, Alamar‘ciw began
service with Ras Kassa as a bookbinder and silversmith. Just before the
Italian occupation, Al'am'araw moved with Ras Kassa to Addis Ababa where
he witnessed the growth of the community around Kassa's court. Abba
Alamaraw also offered information on the process of collection and recording
of administration at Kassa's court and the development of reform procedures.

Wayzero Almaz Mulat; born c. 1940, Lalib‘a‘la, Lasta; place of interviews: home of

Wagshum W‘a‘ss'an, Addis Ababa. Wayzero Almaz is the present wife of
Wagshum W'ass'an Haylu. Since her mother had migrated to Lasta from Bilen,
she was a good source on folk traditions of migration between Lasta and the
north. She was also a good source of information about Lasta migrants in
Addis Ababa and elsewhere in Shawa.

Abba Asfaw Atna; born c. 1880, D‘a’gaga, wallo; place of interviews: Ras Kassa

Asra's

safar. Now an alms collector at Ras Kassa safar, Abba Asfaw has served in
the armies of Menilek, Iyasu, Z'awditu, and Hayl'a Sellasé. He provided
information on military events during his lifetime and political traditon in
Lasta from the perspective of Sh'a'wa.

walda Gabraél; born c. 1907, Qeddus Harbé, Bugna; place of interview:
Mikael Méda, Ras Kassa siifiir. Asra's grew up in rural Bugna where he
was a part-time farmer and soldier. After the Italian war he migrated to
Addis Ababa to the court of Ras Kassa who named him his treasurer and an
absentee mesla'né over a small district in southern Lasta. He provided
information on the financial structure of Kassa's taxes, conditions in Lasta
agriculture, the slave trade, and rural administrative practices.

Ay'a'l'a'w Z'al‘al'aw; born 1908, Mujja, Lasta; place of interview: Mikaél church

compound, Ras Kassa safar. Ayal‘a'l'aw was a soldier in the service of Da'jach
W'andbaw'ass'an, Kassa's son, at the time of the 1928-30 rebellion. He offered

 

295

useful details of the battle of Aynchem from the perspective of the victors.
He was also privy to information regarding the alleged conspiracy between
Ras Haylu, Ras Siyum, and Ras Gugsa.

Wayzero Ba‘yy‘anach Telahun; n.d., Addis Ababa; place of interviews: her home,
Addis Ababa. Daughter of the regent for Lej Eyasu, Wayzero Bayy'an'ach
provided some insights into the nature of political tradition and its
preservation and political purposes.

Ch'a'kola L'amma, born c. 1907, Sedeb, Wag; place of interviews: Nazrét. Ato

Ch'akol'a grew up with his uncles who served at the court of the governor of
Wag. At age seventeen he went to Addis Ababa with the Wagshum for the
coronation of the emperor and then went west to W'ala'ga where he entered
the service of a Wag landlord and received a parcel of land. There he
participated in slave raids, the mining of gold, and the distribution of
alientated land. He offered valuable information on the structure of taxation
and administration in Wag, on slavery and the slave trade, and on Lasta
political tradition.

Débakullu Z'awde, born 1937, Y‘a'merhan'a' Kristos, Lasta; place of interviews: Addis
Ababa. Déb'akullu was church educated in rural Lasta where he lived until
age 15. His family still lives in Lasta. He provided good information on the
Lasta ecclesiastical administrative system, political traditions, pre-war
taxation, and farming systems.

Abba Gabra Ma'sq'al, born 1939, Lalibala, Lasta; place of interviews: his home, Ras
Kassa s'af'ar. Abba Ga'bra' M'asqal is a monk trained in the major ecclesiatical
centers in Lasta. He has served as an administrator at two of its major
daber and is a long-time resident of Ras Kassa Siifa'r. He was an important
point of contact for meeting key informants and offered important
information on ecclesiastical administration, political tradition, taxation, oral
poetry, and the family history of Ras Kassa.

Abba Gétu Endas'aw; born 1912, Kurkur Iyasus, Wadla; place of interviews:
G'annata Iy'asus compound and cemetary, Ras Kassa safar. Abba Gétu grew
up at the court of Fitawrari Yifat, governor of Lasta in the early 19203. He
was a soldier as a young man and took up the priesthood on retirement.
Abba Getu is extremely knowledgeable about the political history of Lasta,
court procedures, slavery, administrative reforms, and patterns of trade.

M'a'rsaé H'a'za'n Ababa; born 1938, Lalib'a'la, Lasta; place of interviews: his office
on the Ministry of Information compound. The son of the chief cleric of the
Lalib'a‘la monastery, Ato Marsaé H'a'za'n is perhaps the best known Lastan in
public life. He is now a journalist with the Ministry of Information. He
provided some interesting information on church education in Lasta and
political tradition in the area.

Fitawrari Nabiy'aleul T'akla Sadeq; born 1908, Shinkurt Mikael, Séilalé; place of
interviews: his home in Ras Kassa safar. The Fitawrari served for many
years as the personal secretary of Ras Kassa and maintains his own private
archive of historical documents, photographs, and memorabilia. He is
presently married to Bazuna'sh Kassa, one of the Ras' daughters. Fitawrari
N'abiy’aleul accompanied the ras into exile during the Italian occupation and
possesses an intimate knowledge of the day-to-day affairs of Ras Kassa's

 

 

296

administration of Lasta. the original of the "Ya Ras Kassa Ast'adad'a'r Da'"mb"
manuscript is in his possession. In addition to interviews, the Fitawrari
transcribed a number of documents from his personal archive for me.

Sagayé S'ategn; born c. 1932, G'ann'ata' Maryam, Lasta; place of interviews:
Mikael church compound, Ras Kassa s'af'a'r. Currently the resident priest on
duty at Chaqugn‘ci Mikael church (Ras Kassa's former residence), S'a'gayé
provided an excellent life history account of the breakdown of subsistence
agriculture in Lasta. After the Italian occupation, Sagayé and his family
attempted to maintain their $3.2 holdings without access to oxen. When the
family broke up, he migrated to Addis Ababa where he joined the priesthood
and entered the service of Ras Kassa. He offered important testimony on
rural institutions.

Abba Saga (father's name unknown); born c. 1942, Amda W‘a'rq, Wag; place of
interviews: Maryam church compound, Ras Kassa s'afa'r. Blinded by disease at
an early age, Abba Saga entered the priesthood and became an expert at
oral poetry. He provided useful information on the location of important
daber in Wag.

Q'agnazmach T'a‘f'ar'a Siyum; born 1909, Teriba, Arsi; place of interview: his home in
Nazrét. Q'agnazmach T'a'f'a'r'a was descended from Gond'a‘r and M'a'nz
parentage. Tafar'a spent his younger years as an imperial land measurer in
the Arsi region. He provided precise accounts of land measurement
procedures, patterns of migration, and the nature of imperial rule in Arsi--an
area where Ras Kassa drew an important portion of his income.

Tefera Berhe, born 1954, S'aqota, Wag; place of interviews: Addis Ababa University
campus. Ato Tefera is presently the business manager of Addis Ababa
University Press. Having grown up in rural Wag and kept in touch with his
family there until their move further south, Tefera was a useful source for
comparing and contrasting rural institutions of the 19203 and 19303 with
more recent trends of the late fifties and sixties.

Wayz'aro W'al'at‘a' Israél Siyum; no personal information available; place of
interview: her home in Ras Siyum s‘af'ar, Addis Ababa. The daughter of Ras
Siyum, governor of eastern Tigre, she married D'ajach G'a'bréi Sellasé Barya
Egziabher and later the Crown Prince Ass'afa W'assan. A historian in her own
right, Wayz'aro walata Israel offered information on political tradition and
on political marriages between the ruling houses of Lasta and Tigre.

Wagshum wassan Haylu; born c. 1915, Addis Ababa; place of interview: his home in
Addis Ababa. Wagshum W’ass’a'n is the current holder of the ancient title. He
provided useful information on Wag political tradition, the politics of the
relationship between the emperor and Wagshum Kabb'a'd'a, and the political
history of Wag in the twentieth century.

 

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Periodicals

Bollettino dell'istituto coloniale fascista (1933-34).

Bollettino Ufficiale delle Colonie

Bollettino ufficiale del governo dell'Amara (1936-39).

Berhanna S'alam (1925-35).

 

 

 

 

 

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