State Transformation and Social Reconstitution in Ethiopia: The Allure of the South

Abstract

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Abyssinian social formation expanded, coming to encompass the entire highlands and an adjacent lowland buffer zone, thus bringing forth the present-day Ethiopian state. With a territory tripled in size and a population at least doubled, the enlarged unit possessed considerable potential in both scale and resources to resist threats to its own integrity, both internal and external, while simultaneously providing an opportunity to transform the state structurally. In both endeavors, the state attained success. That formation to which a conglomeration of new peoples was added reflected a variety of production modes, the dominant of which was a feudal variant.1 While the Ethiopian model differed substantially from its European counterpart, it was at base a decentralized structure promoting land exploitation by an administrative/military elite that collected tax in services and/or in kind from peasant communitites bound together by a kinship charter.2 A union of indigenous elites and administrative-military appointees produced, over time, local and regional aristocracies with strong ties downward to local communities, and upward to the emperor. Given the rugged terrain of the northern plateau, local communities demonstrated considerable independence from the monarchy and evinced important regional identities and loyalties.3 The unity and