The Political Economy of Rural Rebellion in Ethiopia: Northern Resistance to Imperial Expansion,...

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The Political Economy of Rural Rebellion in Ethiopia: Northern Resistance to ImperialExpansion, 1928-1935Author(s): James McCannSource: The International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 18, No. 4 (1985), pp. 601-623Published by: Boston University African Studies CenterStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/218799 .

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THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF RURAL REBELLION

IN ETHIOPIA: NORTHERN RESISTANCE TO

IMPERIAL EXPANSION, 1928-1935

James Mc Cann

In the autumn of 1928, nearly a decade of relative political calm and economic stability in northern Ethiopia ended abruptly. In late August, the Raya and Azebo Oromo population of the eastern borders of Tigray and Lasta provinces of northeastern Ethiopia organized a massive raid on the adjacent lowland's Afar population, carrying off hundreds of head of livestock and killing those Afar who resisted. By mid-October, a kaleidoscopic pattern of raiding broke out along a belt extending from the Awash valley north to the Eritrean border. Retaliation, punitive sorties by local officials, several imperial army expeditions, and a direct military challenge to the central state produced an eighteen-month cycle of violence before the imperial state's full-scale mobilization in early 1930 forcibly put down resistance.

The 1928-1930 rebellion in northeast Ethiopia had consequences well beyond the bloodshed and economic dislocation in Ethiopia's northeast provinces. The imperial army's crushing of the rebellion led directly to Ras Tafari Makonnan's coronation as Emperor Haile Selassie, and the suppression of the north's resistance helped seal the fall of Ethiopia's northern provinces from political and economic influence in the modern state. Imperial politics provided an important framework: the rebellion began shortly after a virtual palace coup in Addis Ababa in 1928 and its end dovetailed with the death in 1930 of Empress Zawditu and Haile Selassie's coronation. Moreover, the suppression of rural unrest in northeast Ethiopia and the defeat of Ras Gugsa Wale, whose leadership of a rebel army became the political symbol of the larger pattern of violence, brought an end to any pretentions northern Ethiopia's elite might have had about dominating the emerging Ethiopian polity. However, the rebellion was more than that; it reflected a deep-seated imbal- ance between the political ambitions of a class of northern oli- garchs who had dominated the highland social formation in the nineteenth century and the increasing pauperization of their economic base, northern Ethiopia's rural economy. Examining the nature of the rebellion, its economic base, and the method of its suppression is instructive about the state of the politics and economy of Ethiopia

*This article is based on twenty-one months of research in Sudan, Britain, Italy, and Ethiopia sponsored by the Social Science Research Council and the Ful- bright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Abroad Program. Interviews in Ethiopia were carried out in migrant communities in Addis Ababa and Nazret between January and Septem- ber 1982. Copies of interview notes and tapes have been deposited at the Institute of Ethiopian Studies of Addis Ababa University.

International Journal of African Historical Studies, 18, 4 (1985) 601



602 JAMES MCCANN

in the 1928-1935 period, and it reveals an essential correlation between the rural household economy, the structure of rural classes, and imperial politics.

Despite the importance of the series of events which took place in and around northeast Ethiopia in the late 1920s, no historian has carried out a serious study of the "rebellion," nor did contemporary European or Ethiopian observers understand the full meaning of the events as they unfolded.1 The purpose of this article is to exa- mine connections between political events during the north's challenge to Shawan imperial hegemony, the nature of the imperial state itself, the organization of production and distribution at the grassroots level, and, especially, the nature of environmental and institutional changes in the rural household economy. With the aid of new data, including interview material collected in Ethiopia, I intend to follow the course of events during the rebellion and rela- te these to basic questions about the nature of production and reproduction in the northern Ethiopian rural economy.

A careful examination of the available evidence on the sequence of events and political economy of the region reveals a great deal about rural rebellion in Ethiopia as well as the state of its political and economic development during the inter-war years, a time critical to development of the colonial state elsewhere in Africa. The rebellion was not, as some have argued, a single phenomenon - or even a unified political movement at all - but a series of localized responses to economic and environmental conditions in Ethiopia's emerging social formation. Nor was ethnicity its most salient char- acteristic, although it is commonly referred to in the literature as the "Raya-Azebo rebellion." But neither was it a class-based movement determined to alter rural relations of production. The rural unrest was, however, clearly rooted in local environmental and economic conditions; the political issues that led to Ras Gugsa Wale's challenge to imperial authority were epiphenomena. Ras Gugsa's defeat and death at the Battle of Aynchem were symbolic of a whole range of losses to northern Ethiopia and its future role in the modern empire-state. Although the rural unrest did not cover all of northern Ethiopia (Western areas of Tigray, most areas of Bagamder, and all of Gojjam remained tranquil), the results of its repression demonstrated the power of the central government to all. After 1930,

lFor contemporary diplomatic interpretations of events see Zaphiro memo enclosed in Barton to Foreign Office [hereafter F.O.], 14 January 1930, F.O. 371/14589; Barton to Henderson, 7 January 1930, F.O. 401/28; Graham to Murray, 16 January 1930, F.O. 371/14587; Zoli, Cronache Ethiopiohe (Rome, 1930), 237; Park to Secretary of State, 3 April 1930, Records of the Department of State Regarding the Internal Affairs of Ethiopia 1930-1949 [hereafter Records], 884.001/191. For the emperor's hindsight on events see Edward Ullendorff, ed. and trans., The Autobio- graphy of Emperor Haile Sellassie: My Life and Ethiopia's Progress (Oxford, 1976), 161-163. For historians' views, see Margery Perham, The Government of Ethiopia (London, 1969), 202-203; Patrick Gilkes, The Dying Lion (London, 1975), 207-210. The only Ethiopian historian to touch on the issue in terms of its regional implications has been Andalem, "Begemdir and Simen (1910-1930)" (B.A. thesis, Haile Sellasie I University, 1971), 29. The best overall account to date has been the three para- graphs in Addis Hiwet, Ethiopia: From Autocracy to Revolution (London, 1975), 65-66, which emphasize that the "Raya-Azebo" ethnic label has obscured the economic nature of the uprising. Unfortunately, the author offers no specific detail. My informants tended to treat the Gugsa revolt and the raiding activity as two separate issues. The most thorough account of rural rebellion to date has been Gebru Tareke's treat- ment of the 1943 wayyane uprising in Tigray. See Gebru Tareke, "Peasant Resistance in Ethiopia: The Case of Weyane," Journal of African History, 25, 1 (1984), 77-92.



POLITICAL ECONOMY OF RURAL REBELLION

northern Ethiopia mounted no further serious political challenges to Addis Ababa's supremacy and quickly slipped into economic insignifi- cance.2

Sources of Northern Discontent 1920-1928

In the period between the 1916 coronation of Empress Zawditu and the eventful year of 1928, significant changes had taken place in the organization of Ethiopia's central state and the balance of forces within it. Power-sharing between the northern conservatives who backed the empress, the post-Menilek neoconservatives led by the minister of war, Fitawrari Habta Giyorgis, and the "Young Ethiopian" party of heir-apparent Ras Tafari had provided a stable, if at times

phlegmatic, government. Movement did take place within this struc-

ture, however, as the increasingly mature and adept Tafari campaig- ned to enlist the support of foreign legations in building a strong base of support among the tiny class of educated Ethiopians in Addis Ababa. He also maneuvered to control governorships in the rich southern and western provinces which produced coffee, the key to

Ethiopia's links to the world economy. By contrast, conservative forces in the government and in the provinces sought consistently to forestall foreign involvement in the economy and to resist policies like the abolition of slavery, Ethiopia's membership in the League of Nations, and the policing of unstable frontier zones.

During the 1920s Tafari's aggressive policies of centralization and modernization hardened political alignments between those who stood to benefit from reform and those who preferred the political and economic norms of Menilek's rough-and-tumble frontier state. The fundamental difference between conservative and reformist elements in the central government derived from their economic base and, to a

degree, from their vision of Ethiopia's future. I would argue that there were three basic groups: neoconservatives who pursued Meni- lek's vision of a loosely federated oligarchic state and primitive accumulation, conservatives - primarily northern elite families -

who sought to maintain regional autonomy, and a "progressive" party led by Ras Tafari which hoped to build a centralized fiscal and

political structure dominated by decisions taken in Addis Ababa. Neoconservatives at court tended to rely on the tribute and

military strength of regional governors engaged in extractive activities in the south and southwest like slave raiding, ivory hunting, and the rapacious collection of tribute from frontier populations, primarily Nilotic, Omotic, and Cushitic-speaking groups which occu-

pied the empire's south and southwestern regions. The aggressive imperial soldiery, usually first- and second-generation migrants from Shawa and the north, were a military entrepreneurial class which had grown wealthy on the booty and land available in the wake

2In this regard I have not ignored the 1943 Weyane rebellion in eastern Tigray, Ras Haylu's plot in 1932, or Tigray complicity during the Italian invasion. In the case of the former, Wayane leaders were concerned with local issues and did not attempt to topple the central government. Haylu's actions were never a serious challenge and there is no evidence that shifting loyalties in Tigray affected the outcome of the Italian invasion nationally. For an account of the objectives of the Weyane rebellion see Gebru, "Peasant Rebellion," passim; for coverage of Haylu's plot from American and British archives see. McCann, "Britain, Ethiopia, and Negotia- tions for the Lake Tana Dam Project, 1922-35," International Journal of African Historical Studies, 14, 4 (1981), 667-699.

603



604 JAMES MCCANN

of Menilek's conquest of his southern frontier. The wealth and prestige of these frontiersmen derived from the presence of undelimited frontier zones which allowed them to raid for slaves, to hunt, and to draw tribute from small-scale societies with limited means of defense beyond flight or submission. In the richer agricultural zones the soldiers settled on prime land and exercised control over the labor of the indigenous population who worked as serfs and, later, as tenants.3

In the north, conservative leadership came from the empress's estranged husband Ras Gugsa Wale, Ras Haylu of Gojjam, most Tigrean leaders, and the rural military and ecclesiastical classes which wished to retain their direct control over local customs and revenues in kind, cash, and labor from the bundle of income rights called gutl (and often glossed as "fief"). The power of northern conservatives derived from their ability to retain wealth within their governates by minimizing tribute transfers to the central government. Money and payments in kind retained locally were used to build constituencies among members of the rural producing class, local soldiers, peasants, and parish-level clerics. For office-holders in the north, the stakes were high, since their position at the top of the social and political hierarchy depended to a large degree on their retaining a consistent income from the perquisites which they, in turn, redistributed to loyal supporters. A strong and active central government posed a threat to this relationship.

The support of conservatives in the north relied fundamentally on parish-level officials and peasant smallholders who expected to benefit from the redistributed largesse from the regional elite. In contrast to southern producers who worked under the domination of northern soldier/settlers, peasant households in northern Ethiopia enjoyed almost universal access to land through the ambilineal rist property system. While they owed taxes, tribute, and ritual obei- sance to a hereditary church and military elite, their belief in their rights to claim land, to accumulate the means of production, and to claim a place in God's universe fostered a political and economic conservatism which resisted fiscal, administrative, or ideological change.

The moral economy of subsistence which operated in the rural economy was the result of long-standing experience with the need to balance the demands of the physical reproduction of the household unit and the requirements of social reproduction which involved the

regular transfer of surplus, in kind and in labor, to the church and civil authority. Just as military elite relied upon their incomes from gult rights, ecclesiastical authority in the north depended on the income-generating power of major churches and monasteries, called daber, which controlled tax collection, leased land (rim) to

wealthy farmers, and administered justice. Income from these sources

supported a growing ecclesiastical class, which supervised the

3For examples of anthropological literature on these societies, see Werner Lange, "Gemira (Remnants of a Vanishing Culture)" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Johann Wolfgang Goethe, 1975); Wendy James, Kwanim 'Pa: The Making of the Uduk People (Oxford, 1979).



POLITICAL ECONOMY OF RURAL REBELLION 605

spiritual well-being of the entire community, performed key rites of passage, and supported existing relations of production.4

That economic reward, Christian salvation, and social mobility were possible for those households which managed their resources well contributed to the rural producers' incentive to minimize structural change in the political system. Social mobility and the

single-generation family estate which resulted from the nature of property in the rural economy encouraged vertical ties between spon- sors and clients rather than horizontal links within a class; taxes and tribute circulated between elites and producers in ways which

generally maintained stability. Elites and officials at all levels in northern rural society manipulated these links to strengthen their own position and to resist the intrusion of the central state which sought to impose its own administrative priorities there.5

Over the course of the 1920s, Tafari and his supporters who favored fiscal and administrative reforms proved a clear threat to both conservative and neoconservative groups. Tafari's party preferred to build state power by the consolidation of resources at the center for the building of a modern army equipped with imported trappings, a state and provincial bureaucracy maintained by regular allowances - if not salaries - and the state control of customs and courts. These plans provided for direct links between the imperial state and peasant producers which diminished the economic base of rural elites. Tafari's ideas about reforms were no secret: they had been previewed by his administration of Harar since 1906 and the

beginnings of imperial administration in Wallo after 1928.6 The Ethiopian state was concerned with more than local admini-

stration in the north. In his capacity as overseer of foreign af-

fairs, Tafari appeared ready to open Ethiopia to foreign investment and to monopolize profits and fees for the central government.7 He

4For a discussion of the church's position in the rural economy and the moral

economy of subsistence see James McCann, "Households, Peasants, and Rural History in

Lasta, Northern Ethiopia 1900-35" (Ph.D. thesis, Michigan State University, 1984), chs. 2, 3. Ethiopian Orthodox theology provides a well defined niche for the poor and for the maintenance of a rigid social hierarchy on earth and in heaven. Many of Ras Kassa Haylu's writings contain discourses on the virtues of poverty and the role of peasants in the divine order.

5See McCann, "Households," chs. 2, 3. The best studies of the social and economic mobility in rural Ethiopia are Allan Hoben, Land Tenure among the Amhara of Ethiopia (Chicago, 1973) and Dan F. Bauer, "Land, Leadership, and Legitimacy among the Inderta Tigre of Ethiopia" (Ph.D. thesis, University of Rochester, 1972). Here tax is defined as wealth transferred to the state while tribute is that transferred to a member of the social or economic elite.

6For a description of Tafari's policies in Harar see Plowman to Bentinck, 29 June 1925, F.O. 371/10877; for Wallo see the Italian consul Domenico Brielli's bi-weekly reports in Rome's Archivo Storico della Ministero Africana Italiana [hereafter ASMAI1 54/6, passim. These reports comprise an excellent chronology of administrative reform in one of Tafari's "model provinces." I obtained corroborative data for the Lasta region through interviews with Fitawrari Nabiyaleul Takla Sadeq, the former personal secretary to Ras Kassa Haylu, a cousin of Tafari's and an active reformer.

7Over the course of the 1920s, Tafari and the central government negotiated a significant number of agreements with foreign interests, including a dam on Lake Tana, a British-initiated Abyssinia Corporation, and an Italian-built road from the port of Assab to Wallo. See McCann, "British, Ethiopia, and Negotiations," 667-699; Marcus, "The Infrastructure of the Italo-Ethiopian Crisis: Haile Sellassie, the Solomonic Empire, and the World Economy 1916-1936," Proceedings of the Fifth Inter- national Conference on Ethiopian Studies (Chicago, 1979); Dodds to F.O., 30 August 1920, F.O. 371/4399; Rey memos to F.O., 8 November and 1 December 1920, F.O. 371/4400.



606 JAMES MCCANN

also acted against extractive frontiersmen, albeit slowly, by coop- erating with limitrophe colonial powers to prosecute frontier raiding along the Sudan, Somali, and British East African borders, and by suppressing the more obvious aspects of slavery and the slave trade, thus shifting the central government's fiscal foundations away from irregular tribute.8 Whether from their vision of the future or as a pragmatic means of reducing his rival's economic base, Tafari and his party encouraged the shift to cash-cropping, commoditization, and a rural proletariat. In the mid-1920s, under Tafari's direction, the former soldier/serf relations in the south and west in effect after Menilek's conquest had evolved into a more manageable, and profitable, landlord/tenant relationship based on the commoditization of land and production for regional and world markets.9 In the north, the centralization process emerged more slowly and along different lines. It took the form of the regulari- zation of taxation, the control of customs by state officials, and the reduction of the financial prerogatives of the rural military class.10

Over the course of the 1920s, Tafari's supporters pursued a policy of stabilizing a production base for southern Ethiopia based on cash and commodities by placing his own loyalists in provincial governorships there. Tafari's control over southern appointments not only removed his enemies, but gave him direct access to a loyal military force. Far more than his much-touted modern personal bodyguard, southern provincial levies became the foundation of his power. In the north imperial authority had little leverage over land claimed as rist, while in the south soldiers recently settled on the land owed their tenure directly to the imperial state. The 1926 death of the minister of war, Fitawrari Habta Giyorgis, is a case in point. On the old man's death, Tafari immediately took personal control of his Borana governate on the British East African border

8Issues concerning the suppression of slavery and the exact effect of imperial interdiction of the trade are controversial. Jon Edwards argues on the basis of published travel accounts and European archival materials that prices rose and the institution diminished in the 1920s because of decreased numbers of slaves available in the south and less so because of imperial edicts. My information on the Lasta case from local documents and informants who held slaves and witnessed the trade indicates that administrative decrees were fairly effective in cutting off the north-south trade in slaves. The trade continued clandestinely, but on a rather small scale. See Jon Edwards, "Slavery,, the Slave Trade, and the Economic Reorgani- zation of Ethiopia, 1916-34," African Economic History, 11 (1982), 3-14; and James McCann, "Children of the House: Slavery, Its Suppression, and the Rural Household in Northern Ethiopia 1900-75," in Suzanne Miers, ed., The Suppression of Slavery in Africa, forthcoming.

9The most thorough account of these relations to date has been Charles McClel- lan, "Perspectives on the Neftenya-Gabbar System: The Case of Darasa," Africa (Rome), 33 (1978), 426-440. A valuable perspective on this process in the western province of Wallaga can be found in Tesema Ta'a, "State Formation in Wallega, 19th and 20th Centuries," paper presented to the African Studies Association Meeting, Boston, 1983.

10Italian consular reports and interviews with former rural officials chron- icle these changes, but the best overall source is the administrative register of Tafari's close advisor Ras Kassa Haylu entitled "Ya Ras Kassa Astadadar damb." This bound manuscript contains over four hundred separate documents concerning taxation, judicial reform, administrative procedure, and political appointments made between 1919 and 1935. I have deposited a copy of this document in the library of the Insti- tute of Ethiopian Studies of Addis Ababa University; the original is in the posses- sion of Fitawrari Nabiyaleul. See also Gasparini to Ministero delle Colonie, 16 December 1927, ASMAI 54/26.




and therefore assumed direct means of controlling his 17,000 man army as well. The central government's expansion in the north was

considerably slower, but by 1928 Tafari felt secure enough to assume direct control over Wallo province and to negotiate a treaty of

friendship and cooperation with Italy which called for the building of a motor road from Wallo's capital at Dase to the Italian Red Sea

port of Assab. In response to these challenges, already badly out- maneuvered conservative forces rallied for a series of poorly orch- estrated challenges.ll

In September 1928, the empress and her neoconservative backers

responded to Tafari's provocations and attempted a coup against him. It began with the march of the conservative governor of the southern

province of Sidamo, Dajazmach Balcha, on Addis Ababa and ended with an abortive attempt by the empress's palace guards to take Tafari

prisoner. Neither move was well conceived: Balcha surrendered with- out a shot after his troops deserted to Tafari's side, who then used his own loyal troops to stand off the imperial guard. Tafari's supporters subsequently pressed their advantage and demanded that he receive the title of negus (king), a largely symbolic, but nonethe- less important recognition of his authority. On 22 September, before a festive gathering of Ethiopian and foreign dignitaries, the empress crowned Tafari as negus.12

The response to these events outside the capital reflected the

political interests of the rural elites and the geographic distribution of power within the empirE. Few of the powerful in Ethiopia missed the significance of the coronation. Tafari's supporters in

Harar, Shawa, and many of the southern provinces were enthusiastic; in Tigray the Italian sources reported "silent diffidence"; and in

Bagamder there was open hostility from Ras Gugsa Wale, who had imperial ambitions of his own. The rural populations of the north were

probably only vaguely aware, if at all, of events in the capital. Nevertheless, as political events unfolded they became keenly aware of their own interests, especially in terms of their own developing economic crisis.

Politics and Local Household Economy in the Northeast

The local economies of northern Ethiopia, especially the north-

eastern regions of Lasta and Tigray, had long been in a state of economic and ecological decline. This economic stagnation was evi- denced by the region's inability to produce goods marketable direct-

ly into the world economy, but also by the less-recognized economic crisis on the household level. Production in northern Ethiopia took

place almost exclusively on smallholder peasant farms which relied on household labor, the single-tine ox-drawn plow, and a patchwork of scattered plots of rist land for the production of cereals and

pulses and the husbanding of small livestock herds. As noted above, this agricultural system had long been a successful formula which

11For a summary of Tafari's appointments between 1924 and 1928 and factional politics in the capital, see Annual Report for 1929, F.O. 371/14598. Also see Marsae

Hazan, "YaZamana Tarik Tezitaye Ba Negesta Nagestat Zawditu Zamana Mengest," Amharic

language typescript, n.d., where there are detailed accounts of each shum shir

[appointment/demotion proclamations] which often contradict those in British records.

12See, for example, Marsae Hazan, "Zawditu," 392, 415-432.

607



608 JAMES MCCANN

encouraged individual initiative and allowed a degree of economic mobility within each generation. Both the church and local political institutions had proven effective agents for the social reproduction of local society while providing the economic and military base for the expansion of the Amhara/Tigrean political culture over a broad area throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth century.13

Despite its success in underwriting the maintenance and expansion of an elaborate state structure over almost a millennium, the agricultural system of the northern highlands depended on an expanding pool of available land. By the mid-nineteenth century, population growth and the effects of a millennium of intensive (and extensive) cultivation had dramatically reduced pasturage, reduced the opportunities for fallowing, and exhausted fuel resources. Extensive cultivation made possible by the efficiency of the ox-drawn plow had spilled beyond the ideal altitude zones and pushed up the steep slopes of canyons and down into lowland valleys where productivity was sharply reduced and rainfall highly variable. In these conditions, the chronic rainfall shadow effects of the northeastern highland's climate and the periodic depredations of locusts and army worms common to the eastern Nile valley took a serious toll on food production. By the 1920s there is evidence that agricultural productivity had fallen drastically, household labor had intensified, the tax burden had increased, and capital shortages (especially a dearth of oxen) had forced many smallholder farms into developing a range of extra-household income-generating activities such as petty trade, the borrowing of oxen and seed, and raiding. In these circumstances the process of local and regional migration accelerated, including a dramatic increase in the number of clerics and indigent persons claiming support from church lands as well as others who relied on the largesse of rich households.14 For most of these activities, peasant producers depended on the capital and leadership of the rural elite.

The state of the northern rural economy, therefore, bore directly on political events. The increased instability of peasant household economies chronically short of seed stocks and oxen promoted a willingness to resort to violence. Their discontent coincided with elites' unease about losing to state-appointed officials their prerogatives to collect customs, control judicial procedures, and maintain their own treasuries. Dry season raids into adjacent lowland areas and the ritual war games, called wayyane, had long been prac- ticed by adolescent males; by 1928 the class interests of both producers and elites appear to have determined that raids be carried out in earnest. Leadership for such actions, however, fell to ambitious local officials who managed to channel economic crisis into political capital and violence. Those who were successful in leading raids for livestock gained prestige and could build a political following

13An excellent, although synchronic, description of the northern Ethiopian social system is Donald Crummey, "Abyssinian Feudalism," Past and Present, 89 (1980), 115-138.

14For evidence on migration, the intensification of labor, and crisis in household economies, see McCann, "Households," ch. 7. Documents regarding the increase of church-dependent populations can be found in "Ya Ras Kassa Astadadar," documents #98 and #333.




through the judicious redistribution of their booty. Rural Ethio- pians were well aware that political mobility could often be achiev- ed through banditry and the clever manipulation of grassroot support. Events during the 1928-1930 period therefore reflected both the machinations of imperial politics and the contradictions in local factors of production and reproduction in the northeast.

The Course of Events in the Northeastern Rebellion 1928-1930

The first indicators heralding the 1928-1930 crisis in northeast Ethiopia were the result of the area's capricious micro-climate and its impact on the area's productive capacity. In 1927, after a hia- tus of nearly eight years, swarms of locusts appeared in the northeast and seriously damaged food crops in the major river valleys and especially along eastern lowland zones from Wallo to Eritrea. The far eastern highlands, as always, took the full brunt of the swarms. Rains were spotty in that year and ended early in some areas. Poor harvests and locust damage meant reduced dry season forage for livestock; off-take rates increased as peasants tried to reduce herd size by selling off household capital to obtain food and seed for the next season. The cycle of micro-economic crisis accelerated when rural households sought to recoup losses by selling hides and skins from butchered livestock and found little succor. Prices in the world market were at a low ebb and the imperial government had already succeeded in driving much of the hides trade to the railhead at Addis Ababa, away from the better prices of Eritrea.15

The raids which began in August of 1928 - normally the height of the rains - first involved Raya-Azebo Oromo forays into the fringes of the desert to the east. The raiders' main object appears to have been livestock and stocks of sorghum available in some of the more fertile lowland river valleys.16 In mid-October, a group of 2,000 armed men from northeast Wag raided eastern Tigray capturing some 8,000 head of livestock (cattle and camels) before encountering the soldiers of Dajach Abarra Tadla, governor of the area. A violent skirmish followed with some five hundred casualties, but the raiders managed to steal off with most of their booty intact.17 Embolden- ed, small groups of raiders continued to replenish their diminished herds by attacks on poorly armed lowland pastoralists.

This instability along the eastern caravan routes disrupted the flow of trade and the excavation of salt in the salt plains at Tal- tal in Tigray and at Wajja in eastern Lasta. The interruption of

15For effect of low hide prices see Ufficio dell'Addeto Militare to Rome, 10 December 1930, ASMAI 54/36. While the low prices were largely the result of world market factors, some downward pressure on prices of hides and meat invariably occur during prolonged drought when lack of fodder and pasturage increases the rate at

'which livestock are brought to market. I observed such a process at work in Lasta and Wallo in 1974. For chronology of locust invasions in the early twentieth century see A. Chiaromonte, "II problema delle cavalette nell'A.O.I.," in Agricultura e Impero (Rome, 1937).

16Abba Getu Endasaw, Interview #7, 31 May 1982. Interview notes and tapes cited here have been deposited at the Institute of Ethiopian Studies. Also see Marsae Hazan, "Zawditu," 407.

17Zoli, Cronache, 256. Zoli is a particularly good secondary source for material on this period since, as governor of Eritrea, he had access to all of the on- the-spot reports of Italian agents in the north. When possible, I have used the original agent reports from the ASMAI files.



610 JAMES MCCANN

trade prompted the newly crowned Negus Tafari to take action. In mid-November, he ordered a close aide, Kagnazmach Fiqre Maryam, to form an expedition at the provincial capital of Dase to quell the violence and restore security. The negus's fears were justified. The day before the expedition departed Dase, raiders attacked a large caravan nearby, killing three merchants and making off with a cache of arms.18 By now the raiders included groups of Amhara and Tig- rean highlanders, as well as Oromo from the east. Nor were the raids purely peasant undertakings; regional chiefs blamed local officials for collusion in organizing the raids. By the end of the year, Fiqre Maryam's expedition failed, and Tafari commissioned another, this time under the command of his son-in-law, Dajach Dasta Damtaw. Dasta acted on the assumption that the raids were politically motivated and arrested some key local dignitaries.19

Violence nevertheless continued throughout the winter and spring. To avoid raids from the highlands, Afar pastoralists in the arid regions to the east of Lasta, Tigray, and Wallo gradually abandoned their normal transhumance patterns and fled toward the Erit- rean border to the north and into the Awash valley to the south. By early April, all of eastern Tigray was embroiled in sporadic rebellion, often against regional rulers. Tafari seems to have viewed the disturbances as primarily political and ordered the key figures Kabbada Gwangul, Abarra Tadla, and Ras Kabbada Mangasha (governors of northeastern districts) to Addis Ababa. Only the beginning of the rains in June, however, ended the pattern of raids. On 19 June Dasta returned to the capital, having accomplished little more than anta- gonizing local peasants by forcibly requisitioning food for his army.20

By the end of the rains Tafari took a different tack and adopted a two-tier policy which addressed local conditions as well as larger political considerations. Perhaps he recognized the crisis in the northeast as more deep-seated than he had originally thought. During the celebration of the feast of Masqal in late September, he issued a proclamation suspending for three years the collection of taxes in the northeastern areas affected by drought, a move which he probably felt would undercut the grassroots support of the political opposi- tion. On the more political level, he removed the ailing Ras Kabbada Mangasha,. a neoconservative of questionable loyalty, from Wallo and replaced him with his own son, Assafa Wassan. As resident governor, he appointed his trusted and able cousin Ras Imru.21 In Yajju, located in the key zone south of the rebellious districts, he named Ras Gugsa Wale, a descendant of that area's ruling house. He no doubt expected that these new appointments plus three months of normal rains would end the raids which had disrupted trade and been the source of some embarrassment for him with the foreign legations.

18Ibid., 257.

19Ibid., 273. Those arrested included Dajazmach Balay, the son of Wagshum Berru, and an important scion of Lasta's ruling family.

20Ibid., 273.

21Marsae Hazan, "Zawditu," 407; Notiziario Politico, Luglio-Agosto-Settembre 1929-VII, 3, ASMAI 54/26; Zoli, Cronache, 293-294.




The political dimensions of the 1928-1930 rebellion and Ras Gugsa's role specifically have long been problematic in Ethiopian historiography. The sequence of events, much less the motivation for Gugsa's challenge to Tafari, has never been delineated. Yet they are important in determining the nature of the state's response and its subsequent policies throughout the north. Ras Gugsa's appointment to his father's old dominion of Yajju signaled a final phase of events on the political level.

Why Tafari would have named Gugsa, his avowed enemy, as governor of a key province at the height of the crisis remains something of a mystery. Gugsa was clearly one of Tafari's most dangerous rivals both on the level of factional politics and personal enmity. Gugsa could rightly blame Tafari for separating him from his wife, Empress Zawditu, in 1918 and for her gradual estrangement from power at the imperial court.22 While little direct evidence exists, most Ethio- pians believed, then as now, that Gugsa aspired to the imperial throne and each move at the capital which strengthened Tafari's party therefore impeded Gugsa's own ambition. Gugsa must have been aware of his impotence in the north at considerable distance from the capital and decisions that mattered and also of Tafari's program to appoint his own loyalists to key governorships. Gugsa's appointment to Bagamder had come in 1918 before Tafari had had a chance to begin his own program of appointments and, as of 1929, he had had no cause to dismiss him.23

Gugsa's actions in his own governorate and in nearby Lasta are instructive about how local elites built support among the rural population. Despite his distance from the geographic and political center of Ethiopia, Gugsa worked hard from his political capital at Dabra Tabor to build his base of support in the central provinces. Well trained in the exercise of local prerogatives, Gugsa carefully cultivated the image of a religious ascetic by the scrupulous obser- vance of church holidays and the refurbishing of church buildings, and by allowing Bagamder's local elite to maintain control over guZt lands and local customs revenues. His Yajju family connections and relations with influential clergy helped him extend his influence far beyond Bagamder; he was a popular figure in Lasta and northern Wallo as well.24

Notwithstanding the sincerity of his religious beliefs, Gugsa also operated shrewdly in the modern political economy. He maintained a close accounting of the customs revenues which accrued from the Gallabat post on the Sudan border. He also exploited his rights over gulZt small state plantations (hudad), and corvee labor to build a following among the local clergy and soldiery; he also reportedly used public lands to produce oxen for local distribution and for

22For a discussion of Gugsa's 1912 problems with the central government and his removal from Bagamder see National Records Office [hereafter NRO], Sudan, 2/19/155 and 219/154.

23Andalem, "Begemdir," 20-28.

24As part of an agreement between the central government and the Anglo-Egyp- tian government of Sudan, Gugsa retained one half of the customs revenues from the border post at Gallabat. See, for example, Sudan InteZligence Report, #175, February 1909. For his policies in Bagamder, see Andalem, "Begemdir," 41-61; Alamu Warqnah, interview #3, 4 May 1983.

611



612 JAMES MCCANN

sale into the lucrative northern livestock trade network.25 More- over, he ingratiated himself with conservatives in Bagamder and at court by appearing to oppose foreign penetration of the north. In

particular, he made known his disapproval of Tafari's attempts to

negotiate a treaty for the British construction of a water storage dam on Lake Tana, which the local clergy feared might flood the lake's island monasteries but which had promised handsome profits for the central government. In 1929, he detained a lake survey party which included the German minister to Addis Ababa, causing extreme embarrassment to Tafari.26 Despite this public xenophobia, however, Gugsa readily accepted gifts from European visitors, agreed to receive secret payments to accede to the dam question, and regularly used the Italian consulate at Gondar to transfer payments to his bank accounts in Asmara and Addis Ababa.27

Gugsa's local fiscal and administrative policies also belied his

image as the ascetic conservative. Peasant cultivators under Gugsa in Bagamder, including some in western Lasta, paid a number of uni-

que taxes which generated considerable wealth for himself and his

military elite. In 1921 he introduced a hut tax to be paid in cash and designed to supplement payments to his loyal soldiers. He also

stockpiled money and arms in his palace treasury in Dabra Tabor.28

Despite these financial and military preparations, by 1929 Gugsa was in a weak position to offer a real threat to Addis Ababa or the heir

apparent. Tafari's ability to manipulate events and personalities at the capital had clearly eclipsed him.

In view of these factors, it is difficult to explain why Tafari chose to expand Gugsa's territory in the midst of a crisis by ap- pointing him to the key district of Yajju in the heart of the unrest. Oral sources suggest that Gugsa received his appointment as a test of his loyalty. Correspondence between the negus and Gugsa seems to support this view. In his retrospective autobiography, Haile Selassie defended his decision:

since We knew that Yajju was the district in which Ras

Gugsa had grown up and because of its proximity to Bag- amder, We transmitted orders to him to go to Yajju mak-

ing amicable appeals to the Wajjerat and Azabo Galla and

offering them friendly advice as well as urging them to abandon'their evil works; but if they refuse, he was to

fight them by military force. We thought, incidentally, that if he now tarried with his mission to Yajju it would thereby prove that everything of which he had been accused, i.e. being in consultation with the Italians, was true.29

25Alamu Warqnah, interview #3, 4 May 1982.

26Southard to Secretary of State, 6 February 1929, Records, 884.6461/Tsana dam/76; Dunbar to F.O., 3 April 1929, F.O. 371/13831.

27Southard to Secretary of State, 12 April 1929, Records, 884.00/158. Italian agents at Gondar later performed similar services for Ras Kassa and his son.

28Andalem Mulaw, "Begemdir," 28; Alamu Warqnah and Abba Getu, interviews, passim; Annaratone to Addis Ababa, 4 April 1930, ASMAI 54/6.

29Haile Sellassie, Autobiography, 161.




With the cessation of the rains in early September 1929, Italian consular officials in the north reported that the cycle of violence and raiding had begun anew. The central government responded almost immediately. On 17 September, Tafari ordered Gugsa to mobilize and march to Yajju, whose eastern regions were among the most seriously affected. The ras responded quickly by summoning his rural soldiery and the Yajju military elite which he had previously settled on gutt in Bagamder. He crossed friendly territory and arrived at Yajju's capital at Marto by the end of the month. From there he moved on to the raiders' stronghold at Zobul in the lowlands to the east of Lasta. On 1 October, the government tried to use other surrogates to suppress the raids. It ordered Gugsa Araya of Tigray to move south- east to maintain order on the Tigray-Lasta border, it asked Dajach Ayalaw to advance on Lasta from northern Bagamder, and charged Wag- shum Kabbada with policing the central plain of eastern Lasta. From Lasta the resident Lasta governor, Fitawrari Bazza, marched with his army of highland Lastans on Wajja on the main Addis Ababa-Asmara road, where he expected to recapture raided livestock.30

On 16 October, Fitawrari Bazza and his Lasta troops, composed of state officials, loyal military elite, and their retinues, arrived at the salt market of Wajja on the eastern escarpment. There they encountered some small bands of raiders returning north with captured livestock. Bazza's forces captured the rebels, disarmed them, and confiscated the captured cattle which they probably expected to distribute among themselves in the highlands. The fitawrari apparen- tly then considered his duty to the state concluded and reascended the escarpment with his soldiers and booty in tow. On their ascent above the market town of Qobbo, Bazza's force met a large group of well armed raiders from northeast Lasta and Tigray. In two days of fighting on 22-23 October, the rebels surrounded and annihilated the Lastans. The rebels, heavily reinforced by local peasant opportun- ists, killed Bazza and emasculated the bodies of the men who had fallen with him. Over 2,000 rifles and 22,000 cartridges fell into the hands of the rebels.31 The magnitude of this defeat of troops acting for the central government and the capture of arms by rebels promoted the further breakdown of state authority in the region.

Gugsa's forces in nearby Zobul took no part in helping Bazza's hapless party. In fact, published and archival accounts shed very little light on Gugsa's activities at this time. Italian sources claim he retreated from the area for lack of water, while French accounts argue that he suffered several military setbacks at the hands of rebel forces; Haile Selassie subsequently claimed that Gugsa callously led his men into dangerous and disease-ridden lowlands against imperial orders.32 Yet, what took place in late October at Zobul was none of these. What did happen determined much of the political character of the rebellion as it intensified.

30Zoli, Cronache, 295-297.

31Annaratone Report for 15-30 October 1929, ASMAI 54/26; Zoli, Cronache, 297; General Abata Bazza, interview #1, 7 March 1982.

32Mutanelli to Direzione Generale Affari Orientale, 8 November 1929, ASMAI 54/37; Ullendorff, Autobiography, 161-162. I am grateful to Harold Marcus for sharing his notes from the French archives with me on this point.



614 JAMES MCCANN

An eyewitness account from one of Gugsa's soldiers states that, far from confronting stiff resistance and poor conditions at Zobul, Gugsa and his men enjoyed a warm and festive reception. Three days of feasting - no doubt on pilfered beef and mutton - and entertain- ment followed while Gugsa held discussions with rebel leaders.33 The exact agenda discussed by Gugsa and the leadership of the rebel parties at Zobul remains unclear, but certainly they reached some sort of understanding; raiding from Zobul stopped immediately after Gugsa's mission there, causing some sources in the capital to conclude that he had defeated them militarily. Gugsa himself informed the government that he left the area because of a shortage of water for his men.34

By December and January, the crisis attained its fullest propor- tions and state authority was at its lowest ebb. The long campaign of raids and calls to arms in the northeast had disrupted the rhythm of rural life. Also, in those months the promising harvests in areas like Yajju, northern Wallo, and southeastern Lasta rotted in the fields because of unseasonable rain and fog. Italian consular reports indicated a 20 percent loss in the cereal crop, a disaster considering the small margin of surplus on which northeastern peasant households depended.35 The sporadic raiding which had begun among Oromo lowlanders had blossomed into a generalized rural revolt in which even forces representing the state participated in the requisitioning of spoils. Raids and resistance to government authority covered an area from southern Eritrea to the Awash valley and included most of Lasta, southern Tigray, and northern Wallo.36

In Addis Ababa, Negus Tafari continued to see political implications in the expanding revolt and began yet another campaign to put down the rebels using his northern surrogates. To fill the void left

by Fitawrari Bazza's death, he ordered Dajach Ayalaw of northern Bagamder to position his Bagamder troops in eastern Lasta to prevent raiding from there. He also recalled Ras Gugsa from Yajju and demanded that he meet him at Warrailu in northern Wallo. Predictably, Gugsa ignored the order and announced his return to Dabra Tabor.37 Gugsa's refusal signaled to Tafari that the heretofore general rural discontent had taken the form of a direct political challenge. For the first time since the 1916 Battle of Sagale, which had brought Tafari to power, an imperial call to arms went out in all the provinces and an imperial army began assembling.

The composition of the imperial army which assembled for the march north is instructive about the extent to which Tafari had

33Alamu Warqnah, interview #6, 10 June 1982. Alamu was a member of Gugsa's army and present during most of the events described.

34Mutanelli to Direzione Generale Affari Orientale, 8 November 1929, ASMAI 54/37.

35Annaratone Report for 15-31 December 1929 and 1-15 January 1930, ASMAI 54/26. Studies at the Institute of Development Research at Addis Ababa University indicate that northern Ethiopian peasants market approximately fifteen percent of their total grain production. This figure may be used as a rough guide to the amount of surplus production over and above the cost of the social and physical reproduction of the average household.

36Zoli, Cronache, 304-305.

37Della Stufa Report, 16-31 December 1929, ASMAI 54/26; Annaratone Report, 1-15 December 1929, ASMAI 54/26.




transformed Menilek's state. The best source of evidence is the names of leaders and points of origins of the soldiers who made up the expedition. Based on this evidence, the imperial army that head- ed north did not differ substantially from that which had advanced to Adwa in 1896, except in two aspects. First, the army which departed Addis Ababa on 23 January 1930 under the command of the Minister of War, Ras Mulugeta, consisted almost entirely of troops and leaders from Ethiopia's newly incorporated southern provinces. The soldiers were not drawn from the indigenous populations there, but were neftenya, northern settlers who depended on imperial largesse to maintain their privileged positions as landlords, petty administra- tors, and bearers of low ranking military titles.38 Although they were not a European-trained and -equipped fighting force like Tafa- ri's personal bodyguard, their presence in the imperial army suggests Tafari's success in winning southern governorships for his supporters at the expense of neoconservative elements. Second, Tafa- ri did not mobilize his own European-supplied and trained troops for the northern campaign, perhaps preferring to keep them in reserve to protect his position in the capital. He did, however, draw on his external sources of supply and sent north his small air command - two Potez and a Junkers - which he had wrangled out of his European suitors. These served the imperial army well by shuttling messages and personnel between Addis Ababa, Dase, and the imperial army camp, as well as providing invaluable intelligence on the movements of rebel troops.39

On 15 January 1930, Tafari issued orders to his northern surrogates, Ras Gugsa Araya, Wagshum Kabbada, and Dajach Ayalaw to assem- ble their troops and march further east into the troubled lowland zones. Few peasant soldiers in the north responded to the government's new mobilization call, and many had already joined small- scale raiding parties or the more organized rebel army of Ras Gugsa.40

Meanwhile, Gugsa had committed himself to a direct confrontation with the central government and had begun a campaign to win the hearts and minds of northern Ethiopians. To accomplish this task, he drew heavily on the ideological and material weapons at his dispo- sal. In the churches of Bagamder, Lasta, and northern Wallo, sermons took a decidedly political theme as large numbers of northern clergy whose education Gugsa had sponsored at Dabra Tabor's important lit- urgical center returned to their home parishes and passed on the ras s message that Tafari had sold out to the foreigners and was on the verge of a conversion to Catholicism.41 Gugsa also bid for the support of the peasant population by suspending the collection of

38See Notiziario Politico, 1? Trimestro 1930, ASMAI 54/4; see the Amharic- language newspaper Barhanna SaZam 2 Miazia 1922 E.C.

39Annaratone Report, 1-15 December 1929, ASMAI 54/26. Tafari had also reques- ted additional airpower to put down the uprisings from the British legation which denied his application. See Barton to F.O., 28 March 1930, F.O. 371/14592.

40Notiziario Politico, 1? Trimestro 1930, 6, ASMAI 54/4.

41Ibid., 7; Pollera to Addis Ababa, 5 March 1930, ASMAI 54/10; Marsae Hazan Ababa, interview #1, 25 March 1982. According to all my informants, Lasta's and northern Wallo's sympathies were with Gugsa although Kassa appointees in the area were certainly loyal to the Shawan cause.



616 JAMES MCCANN

tithe and substituting the payment of one jar of grain for each pair of oxen owned. This collection was to be made by locally elected officials (chiqashums) and not by the state agents, whom the rural population often resented.42 Gugsa probably expected this policy to win over the lower ranks of the peasantry and undermine those middle-rank officials, many of whom had maintained loyalty to the Shawan state.

These efforts appear to have had initial success. On 12 January 1930 - in the midst of harvest - local officials, large landholders (batabats), and priests from Wadla, Dalanta, and Yajju (all parts of Wallo) came together and agreed not to pay taxes to the collectors

appointed for their area by the imperial government. They vowed in the name of Ras Gugsa to fight any agents who attempted to collect revenues from the harvest. A similar group assembled at Dabra Tabor on 26 January to take oaths of loyalty to Gugsa.43

Gugsa also maintained an active secret correspondence with his

potential allies in the north, Ras Ougsa Araya and Ras Siyum Mang- asha of Tigray and Ras Haylu of Gojjam, whose own discontent with events at the capital probably led Gugsa to believe that he could count on their support when he chose to move against the government. Evidence for a general conspiracy is thin, yet some foreign observers at the capital had already concluded that the raiding constitu- ted sufficient evidence of their collusion.44 Direct evidence of a

conspiracy did, in fact, exist. In late 1929, an agent of Ras Kassa in Lasta had intercepted a message from Gugsa to Ras Siyum calling on the Tigrean to join a united northern front against Tafari.43 Italian agents with Haylu reported that the Gojjame was in constant communication with Gugsa.

At the same time as he drummed up support for his imperial ambitions in the north, Gugsa maintained a conciliatory tone with Addis Ababa. In a series of letters to Tafari and Zawditu between June 1929 and March 1930, later published in the national press, Gugsa offered reconciliation, but expressed the fear that he might be imprisoned for his disobedience. On 25 February, Gugsa telegraphed a set of conditions which he demanded in return for agreeing to meet Tafari.46 Neither side, however, had any intention of accepting a reconciliation: Gugsa had probably decided after reaching Zobul in

September of 1929 to mobilize his support and to challenge the central government. He must have realized that he had already gone too far for the central government to allow him to retain his governor- ship of Bagamder, much less allow him to extend his holdings to include Yajju. From Tafari's point of view, a reconciliation would

42pollera to Addis Ababa, 28 January 1930, ASMAI 54/10.

43Ibid; Zoli, Cronache, 316.

44Zoli, Cronache, 262; Ras Emru probably reflected the feelings of the central government when he accused both British interests and Ras Haylu for active partici- pation in the rebellion. See Bergman letter enclosed in Southard to Secretary of State, 18 January 1930, Records, 884/00/178.

45De Bono to Ministero Affari Esteri, 12 March 1930, ASMAI 54/36; Annaratone to Addis Ababa, 21 April 1930, ASMAI 54/36; Ayalaw Zallalaw, interview #1, 10 June 1982. Ato Ayalaw claims to have been present at Mujja when Kassa's agent intercepted the message for Siyum.

46Berhanna Saamn, 2 Miazia 1922 E.C.




serve no useful purpose as it would only have sustained an enemy that the negus wanted eliminated. The imperial army had mobilized and matched and there was no reason not to use the opportunity to

gain permanent control of the north. For his part, Gugsa's efforts to raise an army and to enlist the support of his northern compat- riots had continued unabated.47

Meanwhile, raiding activities continued through February and

March; most northern peasant soldiers refused to obey the imperial calls to arms, prompting an intensification of the campaign against them. On 3 February, loyal troops under Wagshum Kabbada met a group of rebels near Dayo in northeast Lasta, putting them to flight and

burning five of their villages while taking prisoners and recaptur- ing some 500 head of livestock.48 Ras Gugsa Araya, a member of the

Tigray royal family, pursued a similarly aggressive policy on the behalf of the imperial government in eastern Tigray while other

loyal troops had moved on the salt trade center of Wajja where they burned alleged rebel villages and killed bands of raiders they encountered. These forays allowed them to avenge the death of Fitawra- ri Bazza, but also to provision themselves on what remained of the livestock and grain stores of eastern Lasta.49 In most ways that mattered to rural Lastans, punitive expeditions had the same effect as raids. Wandering soldiers requisitioned food, animals, and labor.

Despite this form of repression and the approach of an imperial army from Addis Ababa, rebels continued to operate. As late as 17 March, Oromo raiders attacked and burned Dildi, an important trade settle- ment on the Lasta-Yajju road.50

On 22 February, Ras Mulugeta's army arrived in Dase. His forces numbered some 2,000 men with seven machine guns and five artillery pieces. A few days later, two additional imperial forces under Daj- ach Berru of Sidamo and Dajach Wandbawassan, Ras Kassa's son, reinforced Mulugeta.51 As these troops massed in northern Wallo, the

negus's two airplanes shuttled information about rebel movements to the imperial army camp and to Dase. Sometime between 22 and 25

March, Gugsa broke off his negotiations with Ras Mulugeta and marched out of Dabra Tabor towards the left bank of the Takkaze.52

The events of the last few weeks and Gugsa's motivation for

choosing a military solution are vague. Despite his best efforts,

Gugsa seems to have been unable to turn local movements of resistance which infected most of the northeast into a coordinated action

against the central state. Lastans and northern Ethiopians cared less who was emperor than they did about preserving the socio-economic fabric of the local community and the economic viability of

47Gugsa's soldiers at this point had a clear understanding that their leader had decided to take the imperial throne. Alamu Warqnah, interview #6, 10 June 1982.

48Zoli to Ministero delle Colonie, 7 February 1930, ASMAI 54/26; Astuto to Ministero Affari Esteri, 26 February 1930, ASMAI 54/26.

49Zoli to Ministero delle Colonie, 27 February 1930, ASMAI 54/26; Abba Getu, interview #7, 31 May 1982.

5OZoli, Cronache, 338; Annaratone to Addis Ababa, 17 March 1930, ASMAI 54/4.

51Notiziario Politico, 1? Trimestro 1930, 8, ASMAI 54/4.

52Berhanna Salam, 2 Miazia 1922 E.C.



618 JAMES MCCANN

their households. Moreover, Negus Tafari's own campaign of counter- propaganda in Bagamder, Lasta, and northern Wallo seems to have been effective in the final weeks of the rebellion and none of Gugsa's putative allies chose to join him. The Tigrean leaders waited and watched from afar. Ras Siyum played a very small role in the prose- cution of raiding from his position in western Tigray. Gugsa Araya, whose eastern Tigray constituency played a major part in raiding, had already gained considerable economic leverage by playing the role of defender of the central state. Except for his actions against raiders in the second half of February 1930, his support had amounted to a huge round-up of livestock, captured from raiders or raided by his own troops, and the consolidation of new territories which he hoped to keep once hostilities subsided. Italian sources claim that by the time he reached his capital at Maqale in March 1930, he had collected 100,000 head of livestock.53

Gugsa Wale's closest and most opportunistic ally, Ras Haylu of Gojjam, wavered until the last moment before prudently bowing out. In March the Gojjame obliquely signaled his feelings to Gugsa. Hav- ing heard that Gugsa had lost many mules - an essential part of a military force - in the Zobul campaign, Haylu sent a message with his warmest regards, saying that he had sent replacements. When the herd of gangly yearlings arrived at Gugsa's camp, Haylu's message was immediately clear: the time was not yet right and Gugsa could expect no help from Haylu.54 When he marched against the imperial army at the end of March, Gugsa was badly outgunned and outnumbered.

On 30 March Gugsa finally confronted the imperial forces under Ras Mulugeta at Aynchem, near the town of Dabra Zabit in western Lasta. A reconnaissance by the imperial airplanes showed his troops were outnumbered three to one. Even though he was aware of the odds through his own sources, Gugsa had three days earlier rejected an offer of mediation made by the priests of Lalibala. In the battle that followed, Gugsa's troops lost heavily. The ras himself died in a hail of rifle fire as he led a desperate charge on the Shawan lines well after the battle had been lost. Victorious imperial forces moved quickly to Gugsa's capital at Dabra Tabor, where they uncovered huge caches of arms and money as well as correspondence between the Gugsa and his northern colleagues.55

Why Gugsa chose to confront such overwhelming forces remains an enigma. That he desperately wanted the throne was clear to his soldiery, but he had been aware well before the battle that his allies had abandoned him. If the local unrest had been fairly general throughout northeast Ethiopia, his personal part of the resistance to central government authority was fairly narrowly based.

Gugsa's act was therefore one of pure desperation; it symbolized the impotence of the once-powerful northern elite in resisting the

53Zoli, Cronache, 338.

54pollera to Addis Ababa, 20 March 1930, ASMAI 54/10; Notiziario Politico, 1?

Trimestro 1930, 9, ASMAI 54/4.

55Alamu Warqnah and Ayalaw Zallalaw, joint interview, 10 June 1982; Zoli,

Cronache, 355-362; Notiziario Politico, 1? Trimestro 1930, 3, ASMAI 54/4. Despite some fanciful accounts to the contrary, my eyewitness informants claim the negus's airplanes played no real part in the battle. Both sides knew the inaccuracy of their

bombing and scattered when they appeared overhead. The battle was fought along traditional patterns of highland warfare.




power of the central state. Gugsa's soldiers had their own explana- tion for their leader's actions. The lament sung as they left the battlefield was classic Amharic double entendre:

Abba Daldel Gugsa anta bechhen nah Shawochu bezu nachaw:

Yiradugn belah naw yatadabalaqahachaw

Father of Daldel [his horse] Gugsa, you are alone and the Shawans are many; You fought them and pleaded for help. [You fought them and pleaded to be slaughtered.]

The song plays upon the homonym infinitive mardat, to help or to

slaughter, and clearly suggests the idea of a death wish.56 Whatever Gugsa's motives may have been, or the final outcome of

that particular battle, the northern Ethiopian elite lacked the wherewithal to resist control over the Shawan center. Lacking direct access to the Red Sea, the north could not obtain modern arms in sufficient quantity to challenge the imperial army. Nor did the northern economies of Lasta, Tigray, or Bagamder produce enough marketable commodities to pay for them. The guerilla warfare of

raiding and harrassment was counterproductive; supporting soldiers, absorbing reprisals, and having peasant soldiers away from their homesteads for long periods disrupted the delicate equilibrium of trade and agriculture.

The battle of Aynchem triggered a new round of violence, but this time in the central highlands and with the blessing of the central government. Immediately after the fighting, the Minister of War ordered the rebels punished, especially those in western Yajju and Lasta who had supported Gugsa most strongly. Indiscriminate

looting started immediately by soldiers of the imperial army search-

ing for the spoils of war. Many of the raiders were highland Lastans who had crossed the Takkaze in search of livestock.57 After eighteen months of quartering troops, responding to calls to arms, and

fighting off locust swarms, they were eager to replenish herds and to participate in the booty taking. The raiders stripped bare areas like Wadla, Dalanta, Maqet, and Shadaho before recrossing the Tak- kaze.

Epilogue: Rural Rebellion at the Grassroots

Taken as a whole, the events in northeast Ethiopia in the 1928- 1930 period and in the next five years represent more than a reac- tion to political events at the capital. Just as in an earlier 1917- 1919 rebellion in Wag and Tigray, environmental conditions were

responsible for disrupting the agricultural cycle which in better

years would have tied producers to plowing, harvesting, land litiga- tion, or the business of capitalizing an independent household.58

56Alamu Warqnah, interview #6, 10 June 1982.

57Abba Getu, interview #7, 31 May 1982; Alamu Warqnah, interview #6, 10 June 1982.

58For a description of the 1917-19 rebellion and its relationship to environmental stress, see McCann, "Households," ch. 4.



620 JAMES MCCANN

In the spring of 1927, when drought and locusts hit eastern zones of Wallo and Tigray, reduced herds and poor prospects for harvests released young men from agricultural tasks to engage in raids against the neighboring lowlands, ranging into adjacent lowland areas in search of livestock, grain, and prestige. Taxes in arrears in these zones had already put some tension on the relationship between rural

producers and elite. The delicate household economy of rural producers in the northeast could not have withstood the dual pressures of taxation and low productivity.

In these circumstances, politics first intervened at a sub- regional level when ambitious large landholders (baZabats) or military elite sought to channel producer anxiety into the opportunity to exercise power. Organizing raiding parties became a way to obtain a following which might later be parlayed into the privileges of rural elite, as bandit leaders have shown throughout recent Ethio- pian history.59 Those leaders of raiding parties who are clearly identified in the sources were, in fact, already members of the rural elite. Far from being an early manifestation of class con-

sciousness, raiding parties consisted of vertically based coalitions of rural strata. Desperate producers left their homesteads and followed their landlords, local military officers, and subdistrict chiefs in raids to enhance their prestige in the local community and to obtain the means of survival. Conditions had indeed increased the vulnerability of rural households, but the rural population expressed discontent along lines which were culturally defined. In the northern Ethiopian political culture, one sought allies in positions of power greater than one's own, not within one's own stratum.60 Peasants did not intend to react in new ways; rather they conformed to patterns of rebellion more likely to protect household subsistence and consistent with the north's ingrained political culture. Political maneuverings by Ras Gugsa, local agents of the state, and the leadership of the local raiding parties were therefore responding to the severe disruption of the cycle of production at the household and regional level.

The end results of the cycle of violence, raiding, and repression affected rural classes in Lasta in different ways; but the effects bore little relation to whether or not one supported the central state or joined a rebel group. At the top of the social system, rural elites who either led raids or punitive expeditions and the military class which accompanied them gained significant advantages by being able to redistribute raided or recaptured goods

59The question of banditry and class in northern Ethiopia has been raised by Donald Crummey and Timothy Fernyhough in recent work. Both conclude that bandit

activity in the north was less an avenue of social mobility or social protest than a

way for disaffected elites to regain access to political office. See Timothy Ferny- hough, "Bandits and Banditry in Northern Ethiopia in the Nineteenth Century," North- east African Studies (forthcoming); and Donald Crummey, "Noble and Peasant: Banditry and Resistance in Nineteenth Century Ethiopia," in Banditry, Rebellion, and Protest in Africa (forthcoming). See also Richard Caulk, "Bad Men of the Borders: Shum and Shefta in Northern Ethiopia in the Nineteenth Century," International Journal of African Historical Studies, 17,2 (1984), 201-227.

60For discussions of this issue, see Weissleder, "Political Ecology"; Allan

Hoben, "Social Stratification in Traditional Amhara Society," in A. Tuden and L.

Plotnicov, Social Stratification in Africa (London, 1970). The emphasis on vertical ties was one raised again and again by my informants.




among their followers. There is little evidence of any direct pun- ishment of raiders and few of the imperial forces or the raiders returned the goods, livestock, or grain taken during the fighting.

The process of mobilization in the countryside put a great deal of stress on the organization of production and distribution. North- east Ethiopians, for example, underwent at least three calls to arms

during the 1928-1930 period. Orders to gather arms and provisions for a campaign originated with state officials and filtered down

through the rural strata to the parish and household level. Officers and titled officials gathered their retainers around them and called on those peasant soldiers who enjoyed tax-free status. Locally elec-

ted officials, known as chiqashums, organized the call-up at the

local level and collected food from those not eligible for service. About one-third of rural males had military obligations, another

third performed labor services, and the remaining group remained on the land for agricultural work.61 Raiding or hunting parties were

organized along similar lines. Rural households not only provided

manpower for the troops or raiding parties raised from their commun-

ity, but also bore responsibility for feeding other troops passing through their area. The peculiar nature of the 1928-1930 crisis in the northeast is that household heads and young men remained mobilized throughout the planting and harvesting seasons and also supported large bands of roving soldiers.

Between November 1929 and April 1930, the army of Dajach Ayalaw occupied southern Lasta. During that half-year which included the

key harvest months of December and January, Ayalaw's troops subsis- ted on the grain and livestock of the area's peasant population. Lasta households also provided fodder for pack animals, as well as

wood and dung for fuel - two scarce commodities in the northeast.62 Given the poor harvests reported for that year in eastern

Lasta, much of the grain consumed by the soldiers must have been intended for the following year's planting. Paradoxically, grain

prices in northeastern markets dropped during the period of the crisis. Italian reports claimed that peasants rushed what grain they had to market at a low price to avoid its being requisitioned.63

In the end, those who chose to fight fared better than those who remained on the land. Herds and stocks of grain taken by raiders were a net loss to producers. Even the herds which government-

appointed forces recaptured never returned to their original owners. Ras Gugsa Araya's collection of livestock was indicative of the

activities of others, albeit on a smaller scale, who saw the break-

down of civil authority as an opportunity to augment their supply of

rural capital in the form of livestock - especially oxen and camels. In fact, many of the soldiers who accompanied these two loyal agents of the central government had themselves begun the hostilities as raiders.64 Rural elites who controlled the distribution of this

61See War Office memo, 10 March 1936, F.O. 371/20165. Raids and hunting parties were raised in a somewhat similar fashion. For a description of the organization of a hunting expedition in northern Ethiopia, see Abdulsamad Hajj Ahmad, "Burie: A Study of Long-Distance Trade 1900-35" (B.A. thesis, Addis Ababa Univer-

sity, 1975), 22.

62Abba Getu, interview #7, 31 May 1982.

63Zoli, Cronache, 329.

64Ibid., 296; Zoli to Addis Ababa, 8 April 1930, ASMAI 54/9.



622 JAMES MCCANN

booty, in effect, were able to assume influential positions when

peaceful conditions returned and the demand for draft animals resum- ed. Based on my own interviews with those who worked the land and recent data on highland farming systems, it is possible to conclude that the ability to loan oxen may have been the quickest means to economic mobility in the northeast since recent studies of farming systems in the area suggest that access to both land and labor flow- ed to those who controlled oxen.65

The southern-based soldiery which made up the bulk of the imperial army made out significantly better than their northern counter- parts. In April 1930, the Italian agent at Dase reported that the

troops returning south after the Battle of Anychem were well fed and

equipped, having looted caches of grains, arms, donkeys, and horses as booty. The raided livestock the army brought with it temporarily flooded the market at Dase where returning imperial soldiers sold cattle at one per taler and exchanged five sheep for one rifle cart-

ridge - one-fifteenth of the normal price.66 The army which had marched with the minister of war and grown

fat on booty was not the modern force built by Tafari to protect his own interests in the capital; that force had remained with him in the capital. Rather it was a Menilek-style irregular army consisting of soldier/settlers from southern provinces over whom Tafari had extended his influence. By mobilizing this force and sending them

north, the negus had stood Ethiopian history on its head by employ- ing first- and second-generation northern migrants to pacify their former home areas. By using these soldier/settlers, Tafari had also

preserved his own European-trained force and tested the loyalty of his southern governors whom he had asked to contribute to the effort. The expedition's success was an affirmation of his decade-long strategy of building a southern base of support. The entire process confirmed northern Ethiopia's move out of the political limelight.

The real losers were rural farmers who had lost much of their means of livelihood. Migration out of the area accelerated in fol-

lowing years and the conditions for agriculture never recovered. If the political end result of the 1928-1930 events was the formal end of northern political pretentions, the agonizing process of rebellion and its suppression had severely weakened the viability of the rural economy of Lasta and other affected regions.

Conclusion

Ras Gugsa's death removed the last major obstacle to Negus Tafa- ri's empire-wide consolidation of political power. That Empress Zawditu died a day after her husband of a case of aggravated dia- betes was a stroke of luck. The negus turned this peculiar piece of good fortune into political capital and was crowned Emperor Haile

65This argument about the critical role of capital, for example, oxen, in the northeastern household economy has been argued by Dan Bauer for his micro-study of

Enderta, Tigray, and for Lasta by my own research. My data based on interviews, historical documentation, and farming systems research suggests that capital shor-

tages afflicted the region as a whole. See McCann, "Households," ch. 1.

66Ministero delle Colonie, Asmara to Rome, 4 April 1930.




Selassie I with full powers of government in November 1930.67 The

policies which the central government instituted in the north between the Battle of Aynchem and the 1935 Italian invasion reflected the new Ethiopian political economy focused on the economic and administrative needs of Addis Ababa and the growing bureaucratic class resident there. The circumstances of the revolt in the northeast and subsequent maneuverings by the emperor had allowed the central government to extend its political control over a large portion of the old empire and consolidate its program of fiscal and economic control begun a decade earlier.

The politics of Ras Tafari's rise to power in the 1920s and his consolidation of the position of the central government in the 1930- 1935 period as Emperor Haile Selassie created a new environment for the political economy of northern Ethiopia. By bringing the political and economic structure of the north more directly under the

purview of the central state, Addis Ababa profoundly affected circumstances under which the rural household and institutions of dis-

tribution operated. Taken as a whole, the rural rebellion of 1928- 1930 was a frenetic last-ditch effort to resist these incursions at both the level of politics - Gugsa's rebellion - and at the grassroots level: the campaign of localized raids must be understood in the context of the goals of rural producers and the nature of the local political culture, and the weakness of the area's agricultural base. Nor did the chronic problems of population pressure on the

land, poor weather conditions, or capital dependency subside. No

longer the political force it had once been in Ethiopian history, northeast Ethiopia fell to a position on the periphery of the modern

political economy.

67Rumors that the empress had been poisoned were rife, but there is little evidence to support such a claim. It appears that her death was, for Tafari, merely a piece of extraordinary luck. Marsae Hazan Ababa interview #1, 25 March 1982. For European accounts of her death see Barton to Henderson, 2 April 1930, F.O. 371/14595; Zoli, Cronache, 379 ff.



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