The multiplicity of locales might suggest a multiplicity of ethnicities. This is not the case, as a detailed examination by experts has revealed.4 The graph (4.4) gives a breakdown of ethnicity by gender of child, showing that the overwhelming majority of the boys (81 percent), and an even greater majority of the girls (86.4 percent), were Oromo, giving an overall Oromo majority among the entire group of 83.7 percent, an astonishing homogeneity considering the chaotic process of slave raiding.
This convincing ethnic homogeneity among the children is borne out further in examining the handful of children whose ethnicity could not be attributed as directly Oromo. Of those who were not classified as Oromo, 7 percent were Kafficho (4.8 percent of the boys and 9.1 percent of the girls); and 2.4 percent of the boys were Shangalla, Gurage, and Yambo. The ethnicity of 7.1 percent of the boys and 4.5 percent of the girls could not be determined. These few who could be classified other than Oromo were all from groups cognate with the Oromo or with strong genealogical or political links to the Oromo. The graph shows the Oromo positioned within modern Oromia with the cognate ethnicities placed in the adjacent regions. The girls had a simpler ethnic profile than the boys, with only a single exception (Kafficho) to their high Oromo majority.
GRAPH 4.3. Home countries of the Oromo children (source: Sandra Rowoldt Shell).
Why Were These Regions Targeted?
Having delineated the areas in which slave raiding was focused, the question arises, Why were these particular areas targeted for enslavement? One possible approach to answering this question is through the prism of Immanuel Wallerstein’s model of modernization, specifically his concept of the core and the periphery of empires or political systems.5 Wallerstein, who began his scholarship as an African sociologist, proposed that the modernization of any state required a core area with a powerful central government, developed bureaucratic structure, and extensive military capability. Surrounding the core were the peripheral areas, which lacked strong government as well as well-trained and well-equipped armies. Though conceived initially to explain the history of Western Europe, Wallerstein’s model may be used on the micro as well as the macro level and is applicable to any society.
In the history of Ethiopia, we can locate Wallerstein’s core area as that defined as Abyssinia, comprising Menelik’s core kingdom. The heavily subinfeudated Oromo regions lay south of Menelik’s core area, straddling the main Ethiopian rift. While demographically speaking this area had a high population density, the interfeuding and subinfeudation within the region made it a perfect periphery in Wallerstein’s terms.
In his discussion of state machinery, Wallerstein pointed to the juxtaposition of two tipping mechanisms—one where strength created still more strength; and, conversely, one where weakness could lead to further weakness. Expanding on this, Wallerstein explained that in states where the state machinery was weak, those in charge did not control the whole but simply became one set of landlords among others without any real claim to legitimate authority over the whole.6 The views of Jack Goody, noted social anthropologist, would support Wallerstein’s tipping mechanisms, pointing out that Ethiopia, which had early on adopted the plow, was the only country in Africa where there was a system of landlordism. Where there were landlords, he notes, there would also be tenants and serfs. Goody adds that where there was shifting cultivation, slavery (in which slaves were acquired mostly as war captives or through purchase) rather than serfdom would be likely to emerge.7 There were, in addition, what Goody referred to as “lords of the land,” local chiefs who had power over people rather than land and lived largely off the labor of their people.8
GRAPH 4.4. Ethnicities of the children (source: Sandra Rowoldt Shell).
Using status and the promise of wealth, Menelik succeeded in enlisting the services of the Shewa-born Gobana Dacche, who was both Oromo and Christian. Menelik promoted Gobana to commander of the armed forces with the rank of Dajazmach and later awarded him the title of Ras (head) with the hint of future promotion to the title of Negus, or king. In return, Gobana worked tirelessly toward the conquest of the Oromo territories and succeeded in bringing the Oromo territories of Illubabor, Wallaga, and the Gibe region under Menelik’s control. As these three regions constituted the wealthiest of all the Oromo territories, they considerably strengthened and consolidated Menelik’s power and economic superiority. It was Gobana, for example, who won the critical battle of Embabo for Menelik in 1882, thus creating one of the most important watershed moments in Oromo history, and marking the beginning of the collapse of Oromo power and sovereignty. Among the Oromo, of course, Gobana would have been regarded as a traitor. At lesser levels than the powerful Gobana (whom Menelik regarded—for as long as he still needed him—as his most powerful and competent general), local and regional chiefs in the conquered Oromo territories and in the neighboring regions also gradually fell under Menelik’s authority. With that co-option came the obligation to collect additional tithes and taxes from local peasant farmers and villagers. Again, in these terms the Oromo regions sit firmly in Wallerstein’s periphery.
Sociologist Solomon Gashaw endorses Wallerstein’s core-periphery dichotomy in Ethiopia in his work on nationalism and ethnic conflict. In his words:
The survival of Ethiopia has required that all—the Amhara core culture and groups at the periphery—consider themselves as belonging to one Ethiopian nation. The basic resources of nationalism, however, will erode away if a nation is engaged in a continual political conflict. The ongoing political impasse of recent years has created a crisis of hegemony for Ethiopian nationalism.9
The area of the Oromo at this time comprised a proliferation of small principalities, each vying for power. One of the Oromo teenagers, Gutama Tarafo, in his Lovedale schoolboy essay on his homeland, wrote wryly of the constant regional squabbling:
Each part of the country has got a king or a chief of its own. For instance, let us take the Jimma country. That country has got a king or a chief of its own. These Kings are always wanting to fight each other, and everyone wants to be the greatest of all the kings. If he conquers one of these kings, first of all he asks for a tax; and if that king won’t pay it, he just comes and destroys him. Sometime that king wants about 200 oxen or he wants some horses, and the other king has to give, because if he won’t he knows that his life will be taken from him, and what he has too. (appendix D)
Gutama’s firsthand evidence graphically describes the proliferation of subinfeudation that threaded through the region and provides the best evidence for Immanuel Wallerstein’s subinfeudation concept in the context of this study.
What we see in this period as Menelik rose to power is that the Oromo people increasingly became en prise. They lacked the strength of Menelik’s wealth and firearms. They had few guns and weak defenses.10 According to Mekuria Bulcha, the Oromo were prevented from purchasing guns through a system of strategic blockades and because rulers did not have the necessary arms dealer contacts in the north.11 Menelik’s biographer, Harold Marcus, cites a letter by Pietro Antonelli written in 1882, in which Antonelli alludes to the superior numbers of Menelik’s invading Amhara forces, who were armed with thousands of rifles and pistols and even the occasional cannon. The vulnerability of the Oromo was exacerbated by not having any weapons except “a lance, a knife and a shield.”12 Their potential for an effective rebuttal of the raiding forces from the north using firepower was minimal. Instead, the Oromo used the natural fastnesses of their country’s topography as their first line of defense against all comers. However, even
