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The Feudal Paradigm as a Hindrance to Understanding Ethiopia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Gene Ellis
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Extract

Several years ago A. O. Hirschman wrote an article entitled ‘The Search for Paradigms as a Hindrance to Understanding’ in which he attempted to ‘delineate various areas in which an impatience for theoretical formulation leads to serious pitfalls’ He reviewed two books which used opposite ‘cognitive styles’ in seeking to elucidate Latin American political development. One author was eager to set forth a paradigm of Columbian politics, and to show that all events–past, present, and future–are explained by the model (which is reducible to 34 stated hypotheses); the other wrote a study of Emiliano Zapata and the Mexican Revolution in which he was extremely reluctant to explain, moralise, or draw conclusions, but whose book is such that ‘whoever reads through [it] will have gained immeasurably in his understanding not only of the Mexican Revolution, but of peasant revolutions everywhere’.

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Articles
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , June 1976 , pp. 275 - 295
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1976

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References

1 Hirschman, A. O., ‘The Search for Paradigms as a Hindrance to Understanding’, in A Bias for Hope (New Haven, 1971), p. 342.Google Scholar

2 Ibid. p. 344.

3 Ibid. p. 357.

1 Cohen, John M., ‘Peasants and Feudalism in Africa: the case of Ethiopia’, in Canadian Journal of African Studies (Ottawa), VIII, I, 1974, pp. 155–7;Google Scholar and ‘Ethiopia: a survey of the existence of a feudal peasantry’, in The Journal of Modem African Studies (Cambridge), XII, 4, December 1974, pp. 665–72.

2 Historically, travellers have noted the ‘feudal’ nature of Ethiopian society – for example, Alveres, de Almeida, James Bruce, Walter Plowden, and Major Harris. The press has frequently chosen to use the feudal paradigm – for example, Ottaway, David, ‘Shaken Ethiopia at Crossroads: reform or violence?’, in The Washington Post, 24 03, 1974.Google Scholar And the present military Government proclaimed, in deposing Emperor Haile Sellassie, that ‘the feudal system of government has mismanaged the affairs of the country’. See also Gamst, Frederick C., ‘Peasantries and Elites without Urbanism: the civilisation of Ethiopia’, in Comparative Studies in Society and History (Cambridge), XII, 4, 1970, pp. 373–92;Google Scholar and Hoben, Allan, Land Tenure Among the Amhara of Ethiopia: the dynamics of cognative descent (Chicago, 1973), p. 1.Google Scholar

3 Perham, Notably Margery, The Govemment of Ethiopia (London, 1948), pp. 76 and 268.Google Scholar

4 The aim of this article is to demonstrate that the feudal paradigm fails to fit, and that its use may cloud our vision. For a more detailed examination of the effects of the interplay of technology and techniques of power on stratification and development, and of the dynamic of Ethiopian imperialism, see my forthcoming ‘Feudalism and Peasantry, Social Structure and Development in Ethiopia’.

5 Deutsch, Karl, ‘On Communications Models in the Social Sciences’, in Public Opinion Quarterly (New York), 16, Fall, 1952, p. 356.Google Scholar

6 Brown, Elizabeth A. R., ‘The Tyranny of a Construct: feudalism and historians of medieval Europe’, in American Historical Review (Washington), 79, 10 1974, p. 1070.Google Scholar

1 Ibid. pp. 1063–88.

2 Bloch, Marc, Feudal Society (Chicago, 1961), p. 6;Google Scholar and Ganshof, F. L., Feudalism (New York, 1961), p. 1.Google Scholar

3 Bloch, op. cit. p. 446; Hoben, op. cit. p. I; Goody, Jack, ‘Feudalism in Africa’, in The Journal of African History (Cambridge), IV, I, 1963, pp. 1–18;Google Scholar and J. M. H. Beattie, ‘Bunyoro: an African feudality?’, in Ibid. v, I, 1964, pp. 25–36.

1 Cohen, , ‘Peasants and Feudalism in Africa’, p. 155.Google Scholar It must be emphasised that in practice Cohen (whose provocative notes stimulated this writer's initial interest) uses the expanded feudal paradigm as well as other approaches. See Cohen, John M., Land and Peasants in Imperial Ethiopia (van Gorcum, 1975).Google Scholar

2 Perham, op. cit. P. 267.

1 Ibid. p. 268.

2 Alvarez, Francisco, The Prester John of the Indies, Vol. I, translated by Lord Stanley of Alderley (1881), revised and edited by Beckingham, C. F. and Huntingford, G. W. B. (Cambridge, 1961), p. 320.Google Scholar

3 de Almeida, Manuel, ‘Extracts from the History of High Ethiopia or Abassia’, in Some Records of Ethiopia, 1593–1646, Series II, Vol. CVII, translated and edited by Beckingham, C. F. and Huntingford, G. W. B. (London, 1954), pp. 88–9.Google Scholar

1 Hoben, op. cit. P. 88.

2 Perham, op. cit. p. 268.

3 Ibid. p. 76.

4 Markakis, John, Ethiopia: anatomy of a traditional polity (Oxford, 1974), pp. 38–9.Google Scholar

5 Levine, Donald N., Greater Ethiopia: the evolution of a multiethnic society (Chicago, 1974), p. 115.Google Scholar

6 Howard, J. E. H., Public Administration in Ethiopia: a study in retrospect and prospect (Groningen, 1955), p. 64.Google Scholar

1 Alvarez, op. cit. p. 228.

2 Hoben, op. cit. p. 17.

3 Ibid. p. 9.

1 Ibid. p. 4. The breakdown of the ‘feudal’ class structure was not incidental to, but an integral part of, the political system.

2 There were, of course, practical limits to the exercise of this freedom. As Walter Plowden noted in Travels in Abyssinia (London, 1868): ‘But though the judgement may be just, the poor do not often profit by it. Almost all the subordinate governors being rapacious, justice must be sought at the fountain-head; and then with the distance they have to travel, over the worst roads, the net-work of retainers and favourites about the great man, who render it difficult to obtainadmission, and the local infiuence of the chief against whose decision they appeal – they seldom return home without, in some shape, repenting their success. Still it gives them pleasure to succeed; nor is there any nation that so delights in litigation.’ Quoted in Hotten, J. C. (ed.), Abyssinia and its People; or Life in the Land of Presley John (New York, 1969 edn.), p. 183.Google Scholar

3 As the Ethiopian state dissolved into the Era of Princes in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, this freedom was partially circumscribed. Plowden noted that there was a law empowering the village chiefs to seize deserters, forcing them to either cultivate or give security for their share of imposts; Ibid. p. 156. Since payments by a village were usually fixed, villagers had a practical interest in preventing the entire tax base being shifted onto those remaining. Nevertheless, desertion was widespread during the period, with many previously cultivated areas falling into disuse.

1 Perham, op. cit. pp. 296–7.

2 Ibid. p. 296.

3 Ibid. p. 279.

4 There was some reluctance on the part of the Christian community to enter into the selling of (but not ownership of) slaves, since this was forbidden by the Kibra Negest. But selling did go on, and Christians could still profit from the slave trade by market fees and bribes.

5 Perham is of the opinion that policies on slavery were changed, not so much because of government decree, but because depopulation had made the people more valuable as cultivators than as slaves. Op. cit. pp. 219–20.

1 Ibid. p. 220.

1 Brown, loc. cit. p. 1077.

2 White, Lynn Jr, Medieval Technology and Social Change (London, 1962), p. 2.Google Scholar

3 Ibid. p. 2.

4 Ibid. p. 29.

5 Ibid. p. 31.

1 Ibid. p. 19.

2 Pankhurst, Richard, Economic History of Ethiopia, 1800–1935 (Addis Ababa, 1968), pp. 554–6.Google Scholar

3 Ibid. p. 560.

4 Perham, op. cit. pp. 160–1.

5 White, op. cit. p. 31.

6 Perham, op. cit. p. 161.

7 Pankhurst, op. cit. p. 548.

1 An example of the confusion is given by W. C. Harris: ‘[The military system of Shoa] is entirely feudal, each governor in the realm is required to furnish his contingent of militia in proportion to his landed tenure – the peasantry being at all times ready for the foray, and expected to purvey horse, arms and provisions without payment from the state.’ The Highlands of Ethiopia (London, 1844), Vol. II, pp. 176–7, as found in Abir, Mordechai, Ethiopia: the era of the princes (London, 1968), p. 169.Google Scholar

2 Perham, op. cit. p. 163.

3 Ibid. p. 164.

4 Plowden, loc. cit. p. 156.

5 Steer, G. L., Caesar in Abyssinia (1936),Google Scholar quoted in Perham, op. cit. p. 164.

1 White, op. cit. p. 44.

1 Duby, Georges, Rural Economy and Country Life in the Medieval West (1962), translated by Postan, Cynthia (London, 1968), p. 36.Google Scholar

1 Coleman, James S., ‘The Resurrection of Political Economy’, in Uphoff, N. T. and Ilchman, Warren F. (eds.), The Political Economy of Development (Berkeley, 1971), p. 9.Google Scholar

2 Hoben, op. cit. p. 8.

3 Ibid. p. 9.

1 Cohen, , ‘Ethiopia’, p. 666.Google Scholar

2 Warriner, Doreen, ‘Results of Land Reform in Asian and Latin American Countries’, in Food Research Institute Studies in Agricultural Economics, Trade and Development (Stanford), XII, 2, 1973.Google Scholar

3 Joseph W. Elder, ‘Cultural and Social Factors in Agricultural Development’, in Uphoff and Ilchman (eds.), op. cit. p. 48.

1 Hess, Robert L., Ethiopia: the modernization of autocracy (Ithaca, 1970), p. 139.Google Scholar

1 David Ottaway, a journalist for The Washington Post, once described to me how when he first arrived in Addis Ababa, all the informants insisted that the ‘feudal’ lords subject to arrest would raise large armies (up to 50,000 men) in their defence. It was only with difficulty that he learned to ignore such predictions.