In this doctoral thesis I advance a new interpretation of the social and economic history of
Ethiopia beginning with the turn of the twentieth century and ending with the third decade of
that century. One of my achievements in this study is the careful utilization of property
documents in the reconstruction of the modern social history of Ethiopia, more precisely
Däbrä Marqos (Gojjam) in northwestern Ethiopia. Besides original use of property
documents in my study, I have used new and less conventional genre of sources, viz.,
courtroom observation, images, biblical references, private documents, and old sayings.
Combining these genre of sources and oral data helped me to provide a plausible story and
advance a new interpretation of the property system and the socioeconomic and power
relations arising from modern Däbrä Marqos (Gojjam). I emphasize the continued relevance
of tax appropriation in contemporary Däbrä Marqos (Gojjam). This is to counter an adverse
claim to tribute in kind and services as well as the resilience of old practices relating to land
use, political power, exploitation, social domination, landholding and violence. All these
served as the background to impede changes, in the course of progress of the imperial policy,
mostly, between liberation in 1941 and revolution in 1974. As the main argument embedded
in my study is that despite the attempt of the imperial state to figure out what the content of
land tenure and surplus appropriation in Däbrä Marqos (Gojjam) was like, in actual fact
what the effort produced was the people's multiple reaction. New measures relating to
property reform which the imperial state tried to codify and fix failed to achieve stability and
order, precipitated a revolution leading to the end of the imperial rule with broadly similar
historical trajectory to what many scholars viewed on the subject. / History / D. Phil. (History)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:unisa/oai:uir.unisa.ac.za:10500/26795 |
| Date | 02 1900 |
| Creators | Daniel Dejene Checkol |
| Contributors | Tesema Ta'a |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 1 online resource (xxvii, 392 leaves) : color illustrations, maps (chiefly color), application/pdf |
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