Trading in Slaves in Bela-Shangul and Gumuz, Ethiopia: Border Enclaves in History, 1897-1938
Author(s)
Ahmad, Abdussamad H.
Abstract
Ethiopian imperial expansion and slavery accompanied one another through the late 19th and early 20th centuries, contrary to imperial justifications based on the abolition of slavery or the state’s legal obligations to oppose the slave trade and slavery. Toward the end of the 19th century, the Ethiopian empire incorporated the northwestern border enclaves of Bela-Shangul and Gumuz into greater Ethiopia. Having obtained the subordination of the local Muslim warlords, the emperor demanded tribute from them in slaves, ivory, and gold. Slaves were used as domestics in the imperial palace at Addis Ababa and the houses of state dignitaries and as farm labor on their farms elsewhere in the country. Responding to the demands of the central government as well as to their own needs, borderland chiefs raided local villages and neighboring chiefdoms for slaves. Expanding state control thus led to intensified slave raiding and the extension of the slave trade from the borderlands of the empire into its center in spite of Ethiopia’s legal commitment to oppose slavery and the slave trade as a member of the League of Nations. The end of slavery in Ethiopia only came in the aftermath of the Italian occupation in 1935.
