Peasantries and Elites without Urbanism: the Civilization of Ethiopia

Abstract

Agricultural or nonindustrial civilization is customarily defined by social scientists in terms of urbanism and a dual social organization. Such a definition is not recent and, like many other concepts in Western thought, can be traced back to the Greeks, to Strabo for example, if one wishes to do so. Another way of considering the definition is in terms of two complementary societal components, neither existing without the other. One component is an elite in an urban setting with an elaborate high culture or Great Tradition based on literacy, and the second is a large rural peasantry with a Little Tradition or illiterate folk manifestation of the Great Tradition. However, civilization with its elite and peasants is also found when cities are absent, as in Mayan Mesoamerica; nonexistent or not vital, as in early Dynastic Egypt; or atrophied into uninhabitable ruins, as in Ethiopia. Indeed, cities were neither numerous nor large throughout the time of Bronze Age civilizations. Cities and civilizations are thus not always related. As shown above, the latter may exist without the former, and in preliterate western Africa urbanism existed without civilization.