Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T05:33:15.064Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Revolutionary Transformation of Ethiopia's Twentieth-Century Bureaucratic Empire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Edmond J. Keller
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Ethiopia has long been regarded as the only African state, along with Liberia, to have escaped the ravages of European colonialism, the epitome of African independence and self-determination.1 It was also considered a stable, relatively integrated, and viable political community amidst a continent of new states characterised by chronic instability.2 But by 1974, most if not all of these myths were in the process of being broken, as Ethiopia struggled for its very existence against pressures from within and without that threatened to dismember the Empire.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , June 1981 , pp. 307 - 335
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1981

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 307 note 1 Although Ethiopia was spared an extended period of European colonialism, it should be noted that the Italian Fascists did succeed in occupying the territory between 1936 and 1941. Firm colonial control, however, was never achieved, in large measure due to the guerrilla warfare waged by ‘Ethiopian patriots’ throughout the period. A good example of popular images of the Empire can be found in the New York Times, 4 November 1962, Section 13, ‘Ethiopia: Land of Promise’.

page 307 note 2 See Levine, Donald N., Greater Ethiopia: the evolution of a multiethnic society (Chicago, 1974)Google Scholar.

page 307 note 3 The term ‘contradictions’ is used merely to refer to the existence of opposing or conflicting social forces, policies, ideals, or values.

page 308 note 1 The question of the relevance of feudalism to Ethiopia has been the subject of much debate, and the issue remains unresolved. See Ellis, Gene, ‘The Feudal Paradigm as a Hindrance to Understanding Ethiopia’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies (Cambridge), XIV, 2, 06 1976, pp. 275–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar, while others such as Lemma, Legesse, ‘Review’, in Ethiopianist Notes (East Lansing), 2, 1, 1978Google Scholar, maintain that pre-revolutionary Ethiopia was feudal in character or at least ‘semi-feudal’. I do not wish to enter the debate here, and will avoid labelling the structure of pre-revolutionary Ethiopian society.

page 308 note 2 See Perham, Margery, The Government of Ethiopia (London, 1948), pp. 398–400Google Scholar; and Huntington, Samuel P., Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, 1968), pp. 140–91Google Scholar.

page 308 note 3 See Shepard, Jack, The Politics of Starvation (New York, 1975)Google Scholar, and Legum, Colin, Ethiopia: the fall of Haile Selassie's Empire (New York, 1975)Google Scholar.

page 309 note 1 Clapham, Christopher, ‘Centralization and Local Response in Southern Ethiopia’, in African Affairs (London), 74, 294, 01 1975, pp. 72–81Google Scholar; Harbeson, John W., ‘Toward a Political Theory of the Ethiopian Revolution’, mimeographed, 1978Google Scholar; and Koehn, Peter, ‘Ethiopian Politics: military intervention and prospects for further change’, in Africa Today (Denver), 22, 2, 04–06 1975, pp. 7–21Google Scholar.

page 309 note 2 Marina, and Ottaway, David, Ethiopia: Empire in revolution (New York, 1978)Google Scholar; Gilkes, Patrick, The Dying Lion: feudalism and modernization in Ethiopia (London, 1975)Google Scholar; Gyenge, Z., Ethiopia on the Road of Non-Capitalist Development (Budapest, 1976)Google Scholar; Stahl, Michael, Ethiopia: political contradictions in agricultural development (Stockholm, 1974)Google Scholar; Hiwet, A., Ethiopia (London, 1975)Google Scholar; and Markakis, John and Ayele, Nega, Class and Revolution in Ethiopia (Nottingham, 1978)Google Scholar.

page 309 note 3 Notable exceptions are the class-analysis approaches of Markakis and Ayele, op. cit. and the Ottaways, op. cit.

page 309 note 4 For a discussion of this process, see Eisenstadt, S. N., Revolution and the Transformation of Societies (New York, 1978), especially pp. 122–34Google Scholar, and The Political System of Empires (New York, 1963), passimGoogle Scholar.

page 310 note 1 This is not to suggest that traditions must succumb to the forces of modernisation – although their coexistence is dependent upon minimising potentially conflictual contradictions. See Whitaker, C. S., ‘A Dysrythmic Process of Political Change’, in World Politics (Princeton), 19, 01 1967, pp. 190–217Google Scholar. The point is nicely made for Ethiopia by Levine, Donald N., Wax and Gold: tradition and innovation in Ethiopian culture (Chicago and London, 1965), passimGoogle Scholar.

page 310 note 2 The term ‘myth’ is used in the sense suggested by Pettee, George, ‘The Process of Revolution’, in Paynton, C. T. and Blackey, R. (eds.), Why Revolution? (Cambridge, Mass., 1971)Google Scholar: ‘the constructive phase of revolution requires the power of common will guided by common ideas. Every revolution develops such common ideas, or a myth, before it accomplishes any positive political action…A community cannot shed its old form and regenerate itself by new purposes, without an accepted expression of these purposes in a myth. This means no more than that a new social order is real only when men behave regularly and coherently in the new pattern, which thereby are made the new institutions…innovations cannot be habits, and so must be ideas. These are the new myth.’

page 311 note 1 Levine, , Wax and Gold, p. 18Google Scholar. The terms ‘Abyssinia’ and ‘Ethiopia’ are often interchanged when speaking of the state before World War I.

page 311 note 2 Ibid. pp. 21–8.

page 311 note 3 Taxes were not collected in money throughout the Empire until the early twentieth century. See Pankhurst, Richard, ‘Tribute, Taxation, and Government Revenues in Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Ethiopia (Part 1)’, in Journal of Ethiopian Studies (Addis Ababa), 5, 2, 1967, pp. 55–6Google Scholar.

page 312 note 1 Pankhurst, Richard, Economic History of Ethiopia, 1800–1935 (Addis Ababa, 1968), p. 11Google Scholar.

page 312 note 2 See Gabre-Selassie, Zewde, Yohannes IV of Ethiopia: a political biography (Oxford, 1975)Google Scholar.

page 312 note 3 According to Eisenstadt, The Political Systems of Empires, an historical bureaucratic empire stands somewhere between ‘pre-modern’ and ‘modern’ political systems. Authority is still based predominantly on religio-traditional values, but there are the beginnings of secular authority, and an ever-expanding bureaucratic mode of administration.

page 313 note 1 Marcus, Harold G., The Life and Times of Menelik II: Ethiopia, 1844–1913 (London, 1974), pp. 111–214Google Scholar.

page 313 note 2 Amharisation refers to the acceptance of Amhara culture and custom by non-Amharas, a process facilitated through education, language, and the Coptic religion, and by taking Amhara names. See Levine, Donald N., ‘Ethiopia: identity, authority and realism’, in Pye, Lucian W. and Verba, Sidney (eds.), Political Culture and Political Development (Princeton, 1965), pp. 245–82Google Scholar.

page 314 note 1 The single largest cultural group are the Oromo who account for about 40 per cent of Ethiopia's 25–30 million people. The Amhara number about 20 per cent and the Tigreans about 9 per cent. The remainder of the population may be clustered into 15 separate ethnic groupings, the largest being the Somalis with 6 per cent. Approximately 40 per cent of the population adheres to various forms of Christianity, mainly the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. Islam is thought to be the second religion, but could be the largest: there is no way of telling since there has never been a religious census.

page 314 note 2 In contrast to societies without rulers, states are characterised by formal, centralised, and bureaucratised political institutions organised to carry out political and administrative functions on an on-going basis. Political and administrative rôles are clearly specified and differentiated. States may vary in size, but are all centralised and bureaucratised, although no generalisation is possible about the degree.

page 315 note 1 See Tamrat, Taddesse, Church and Slate in Ethiopia, 1270–1527 (Oxford, 1972)Google Scholar.

page 315 note 2 See Levine, , Greater Ethiopia, pp. 92–109Google Scholar.

page 315 note 3 See Weber, Max, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization (Englewood Cliffs, 1947), pp. 341–57Google Scholar.

page 315 note 4 Levine, , Wax and Gold, p. 154Google Scholar.

page 316 note 1 For a sense of the variance in estimates of church land-holdings, see Ethiopia in Revolution (Addis Ababa, 1977), p. 6Google Scholar, and Cohen, John and Weintraub, Dov, Land and Peasants in Imperial Ethiopia: social background to a revolution (The Hague, 1975), pp. 64–8Google Scholar.

page 316 note 2 Abir, Mordechai, Ethiopia: the era of the princes (London, 1968)Google Scholar.

page 316 note 3 Levine, , Wax and Gold, p. 155Google Scholar.

page 317 note 1 Ibid. p. 161.

page 318 note 1 For a concise description of national patterns, see Cohen and Weintraub, op. cit. pp. 28–75. For the best description of land tenure among the Amhara, see Hoben, Allan, Land Tenure among the Amhara of Ethiopia: the dynamics of cognatic descent (Chicago and London, 1973)Google Scholar.

page 318 note 2 For a succinct description of this phenomenon, see Hoben, Allan, ‘Social Anthropology and Development Planning — a Case Study in Ethiopian Land Reform Policy’, in The journal of Modern African Studies, X, 4, 12 1972, pp. 570–9Google Scholar.

page 318 note 3 Cohen and Weintraub, op. cit. p. 33.

page 319 note 1 Ibid. p. 34.

page 319 note 2 Cohen, John M., ‘Ethiopia After Haile Selassie: the government land factor’, in African Affairs, 72, 289, 10 1973, p. 370CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

page 319 note 3 Huntington, op. cit. pp. 155 and 162–6.

page 320 note 1 See Paul, James C. N. and Clapham, Christopher, Ethiopian Constitutional Development, Vol. I (Addis Ababa, 1967)Google Scholar.

page 320 note 2 See Markakis, John and Beyene, Asmelash, ‘Representative Institutions in Ethiopia’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies, V, 2, 09 1967, pp. 193–219CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

page 320 note 3 Spencer, J. H., Ethiopia, the Horn of Africa, and U.S. Policy (Cambridge, Mass., 1977), pp. 22–6Google Scholar.

page 321 note 1 Levine, , Wax and Gold, p. 179Google Scholar.

page 321 note 2 Ibid. p. 180.

page 322 note 1 Ottaway, Marina, ‘Social Classes and Corporate Interests in the Ethiopian Revolution’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies, XIV, 3, 09 1976, p. 472Google Scholar.

page 322 note 2 See New York Times, 8 03 1960, p. 10Google Scholar.

page 323 note 1 All gult land was made gebbar or freehold land subject to tax. See Cohen and Weintraub, op. cit. pp. 37–40.

page 324 note 1 Schwab, Peter, Decision-Making in Ethiopia: a study of the political process (London, 1972), p. 135Google Scholar.

page 324 note 2 See Cohen, John M., ‘Effects of Green Revolution Strategies on Tenants and Small Scale Landowners in the Chilalo Region of Ethiopia’, in The Journal of Developing Areas (Macomb, Ill.), IX, 3, 1975, pp. 335–58Google Scholar.

page 325 note 1 See Markakis and Ayele, op. cit. pp. 45–7.

page 326 note 1 Gilkes, op. cit. ch. 7.

page 326 note 2 See Koehn, Peter and Hayes, L., ‘Student Politics in Traditional Monarchies’, in Journal of Asian and African Studies (Leiden), XIII, 2, 01–04 1978, pp. 33–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

page 327 note 1 Markakis and Ayele, op. cit. pp. 84–5.

page 329 note 1 See Markakis and Ayele, op. cit. p. 128.

page 329 note 2 See Cohen, John M. and Koehn, P. H., ‘Rural and Urban Land Reform in Ethiopia’, in African Law Studies (New York), 14, 1977, pp. 3–61Google Scholar.

page 329 note 3 Ibid. especially pp. 24–36.

page 330 note 1 See Ottaway, Marina, ‘Land Reform in Ethiopia’ in African Studies Review (East Lansing), XX, 3, 12 1977, pp. 79–90Google Scholar.

page 330 note 2 Programme of the National Democratic Revolution of Ethiopia (Addis Ababa, 1975)Google Scholar.

page 331 note 1 Ottaway, Marina, ‘Democracy and New Democracy: the ideological debate in the Ethiopian Revolution’, in Ethiopianist Notes, I, 3, 1978, pp. 1–18Google Scholar.

page 333 note 1 Tilly, Charles, From Mobilization to Revolution (Reading, Mass., 1978), pp. 217–18Google Scholar.

page 333 note 2 Pattee, loc. cit. p. 46.