People of the Plow: An Agricultural History of Ethiopia, 1800–1990 by James C. McCann

Abstract

980 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE in 1992, engaged historians of cartography with communications theory, postmodernist criticism, semiotics, and much else. Taken to­ gether, these approaches have compromised the idea that scientific objectivity and technical prowess are the principal criteria by which cartographic advances should be judged. But these have remained Thrower’s standards. Although he cites works in the “new” history ofcartography, there is little evidence that he has tried to apply their insights to his historical narrative. Historians of technology might wish to reflect upon a comment by the author concerning the relation between practice and study. In a footnote, Thrower observes that “many who have written on the history of cartography have never actually made an original, pro­ fessional map, which is rather like passing a written driving test with­ out being able to operate a car” (p. 261, n. 7). As if to balance his remark, Thrower also observes that cartographers “are frequently so involved with a few cartographic techniques as not to be able to comprehend the larger field.” But the thrust of his remarks is to suggest that cartographers are perhaps better equipped than histori­ ans to write the history of their field. This argument is too familiar to readers of these pages to merit further comment. Taken to an extreme, it will result in the emptying out of history, with every craft telling its own story. If maps are about space and history is about time, both are neces­ sary if people are to orient themselves in the world. It is of un­ doubted importance that anyone interested in cartography under­ stand its historical development. But this is not the definitive compact synthesis we need. Josef W. Konvitz Dr. Konvitz, who heads the Urban Affairs Division of the Organization for Eco­ nomic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris, wrote this review in a private capacity. His book Cartography inFrance, 1660-1848: Science, Engineering, and Statecraft (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987) won the Nebenzahl Prize from the Newberry Library. People of the Plow: An Agricultural History ofEthiopia, 1800-1990. By James C. McCann. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995. Pp. 304; illustrations, maps, tables, appendices, notes, bibliogra­ phy, index. $54.00 (cloth); $24.95 (paper). The study of African economies is dominated by development economists whose work tends to be short-term in focus, superficial in content, apocalyptic in tone, and prescriptive in intention. Ethio­ pia, the scene of so much publicized suffering in the 1970s and 1980s, has attracted its fair share of sanctimonious policy advisers, aid donors, and development experts, whose understanding ofEthi­ opian conditions is often as shallow as their visits are short. TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 981 It is refreshing, therefore, to come across the work of a historian who is no less concerned about Ethiopia’s contemporary economic conditions but who seeks to present an understanding of the coun­ try’s agriculture that is long-term, complex, insightful, and sober. The author sets out to analyze changes in crop regimes, agricultural technology, and the labor process in the last two centuries of Ethio­ pian farming, situating them in the broader contexts of the con­ stantly shifting environment and political economy. It is a bold effort given the paucity of reliable data, especially for the earlier periods, which forces the author to rely, perhaps a little excessively, on the self-indulgent and cursory tales of European travelers. To be sure, there are wrinkles in the narrative. In the first chapter the environmental background is discussed in the eternal present as an unchanging presence. The tendency toward synchronic narrative frequendy intrudes in the second chapter on the development and operation of what the author calls the ox-plow complex. Indeed, in many of the chapters the narrative often jumps freely from the past to the present and back, unmediated by the messy ebbs and flows of historical causation. And the underlying comparativist claim that for more than two thousand years Ethiopia’s ox-plow agricultural system was the most efficient and innovative in Africa is nowhere substantiated and betrays the zeal for overgeneralization that is so common in Africanist scholarship. This does not detract from the overall merits of...