Articulating Economic Modernization and National Integration at the Periphery: Addis Ababa and Sidamo's Provincial Centers

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Addis Ababa, founded a century ago, has exerted influence over its periphery like no other Ethiopian town before it. From a straggling, disjunctive village in the 1880s, Addis Ababa (New Flower) developed into one of the largest urban centers in Africa. By the end of World War II, it was a city of over a half million people and home to the Organization of African Unity and several other international bodies. The growth of this metropolis was phenomenal, particularly since it emerged within an economy that was 90 percent agricultural and largely feudal.1 After serving initially as Shewa's provincial center, Addis Ababa became the imperial capital in 1889 with Menilek's accession to the Ethiopian throne. Addis Ababa also became the geographic center of an Ethiopia that in the 1880s was in the process of constituting itself both physically and culturally. The twentieth century provided Addis Ababa and its imperial resident with the technological and economic means with which to dominate and defend a state that was larger than that of any previous Abyssinian ruler. Modern firearms permitted the conquest of areas never before subject to the Abyssinian monarch; improved communications in the form of roads, transport vehicles, telegraph, and telephone gave the center the means with which to supervise a distant periphery; new export crops and improved access to international markets insured the financing of these modern innovations. Addis Ababa was at the heart of these changes. Its own evolution and development reflected the efforts of both Menilek II (r. 1889-1913) and Haile Sillassie I (regent 1917-1930; emperor 1930-1974) to modernize and centralize the feudal state.2 The patterns of Addis Ababa's evolutionary growth and development were reflected, albeit to a lesser degree, in the peripheral centers, particularly in the newly incorporated regions of the south. In a number of ways these centers were as new as Addis Ababa itself; although none would approach the magnitude in either size or influence of the national capital. Over time each was linked more tightly to the imperial center and, while each retained its own unique spirit and style, each carried out Addis Ababa's directives. Just as Addis Ababa's showcase development magnified and glorified the emperor, each peripheral center reflected the authority of its local lord. Much depended upon the personality and resources of the individual local ruler who could either support or impede imperial objectives. But these individuals, appointed by the