Introduction
Objectives of the Study
The central purpose of this study is to identify and explain the resource base of the Ethiopian state during its process of organizing into a centralized power in the period 1696 to 1913.
In the period under discussion, military campaigns were the major means for extracting and distributing social surplus. Particularly after the sixteenth century, there was a change in the mode of military organization and in techniques of warfare which depended heavily on extensive use of manpower and land. However, the needs and demands of continuous campaigns could not be met by the old resource allocation system which was characterized by communal and collective ownership rights in land, territorial assessment and collection of taxes, and by private methods of revenue administration. By the beginning of the 18th century in central regions of the country, a new type of resource acquisition and use appeared that was more in harmony with the size, frequency and mode of organizing military campaigns. The new type of resource acquisition and use was characterized by the principles of private ownership rights in land, individualized registration and payment of taxes, tenancy arrangements, the conducting of land surveys, and consolidated and centralized methods of revenue administration. These principles spread and developed country-wide when the capitalist world economy and an international state system was formed on the Horn of Africa during the second half of the nineteenth century.
This study has two interrelated tasks to accomplish. The first is to explain the reasons behind the emergence of the necessary preconditions for the rise of a centralized state power. The sustainability of the old resource allocation system was severely strained by the changes in scale, frequency and organization of military campaigns. The present study explains the new demands on the resource system and the conditions which favoured the development of a centralized regional power. The second task is to explain why and how the new type of resource system developed country wide and came to serve as the,economic base of a centralized state during the second half of the nineteenth century.
The mechanisms of the economic life of the society, and the social, institutional and economic basis of the state, are identified through an analysis of collection of hitherto only tangentially and partially approached socio-economic phenomena such as: the system of taxation (tax assessment and distribution, tax collection and administration, preferences for tax introduction:and property relationships (manner and conditions of land ownership). Thes elements are here analysed from both synchronic and diachronic perspective as they hinder or facilitate the logistic needs and demands of the state. Unde
logistic needs are included recruitment of manpower and means of remuneration, methods of provisioning, transportation system, and the supply of war materials and equipment. This study attempts to explain the functional and structural relationships between the fiscal imperatives (the revenue) of the government and its war endeavours (patterns of expenditure).
This study emphasizes what is called the 'system of acquisition, distributioin and use of social surplus'. No systematic focus has been placed on the legal and ideological aspects of the system which transfer social surplus. The development of the state organization and institutions is explained primarily interms of the structural changes and continuity in the fiscal and military functions of the state. In this study, therefore, institutions, ideologies and legal relations are discussed only when necessary for the analysis of the resource and objectives of the state.
The selection of the time period for this study was not arbitrary. It corresponded to a distinct problem of periodization in Ethiopian history and the appearance of a new historical process. 1696 is a year that traces the genesis of the fiscal military state. In this year, King Iyasu I (1682-1706) came to the region of Shewa, reconciled the local notables, and appointed a governor called Nagasi Kiristos who founded the Shewa aristocratic dynasty. From this time onwards the Shewan aristocrats began to build the new mode of military organization on a different type of resource allocation system that favoured development of a centralized power. The qualities and properties of this enclavistic regional development spread, becoming standardized and unifom country-wide in the second half of the nineteenth century. During this time, new phenomenon appeared, qualitatively divergent from the past, namely, the formation of a capitalist world economy and an international state system or the Horn of Africa. As a result of the new opportunities and pressure, King:Tewodros (1855-1868), Yohannes (1872-1889), and Menelik (1889-1913) undertook a number of reforms to create the material basis of the state and the centralization of power. The reign of Menelik II was the pinnacle of the full development of the fiscal military state, and the end of his reign in 1913 marked a transition to an enlightened absolutist state |
