Entire Volume 17 issue 1 - Journal of World-Systems Research ...

179 JOURNAL OF WORLD-SYSTEMS RESEARCH
Portuguese sailors, soldiers, even artisans 9
and priests began to penetrate into Ethiopia in the
latter half of the fifteenth century, reintroducing Ethiopia to Europe and bringing the networks of
the two systems into greater contact (Marcus 1994, Munro-Hay 1991).
By the start of the sixteenth century, Ethiopia was a developed state at the heart of a
significant regional sub-system. It was a feudalistic conglomerate state centered on the northern
highlands with a population sharing linguistic, religious and economic similarities. Beyond this
core region was a ring of more recently conquered provinces with a similar administration and
whose people were nominally Christian. At the outer periphery were tributary states with
traditional rulers governing peoples that were culturally distinct, but often economically tied to
the heartland. As long as the core was profitable and stable, the system could be held together.
With the weakening of the central state toward the end of the fifteenth century, revenues
decreased, garrisons withered, and increased friction between church and crown resulted in a
reversion to Christian heterodoxy (Marcus 1994).
Pankhurst (1997) clarifies the mutually-beneficial economic relationship between the
borderlands and the core of the Ethiopian state, as political stability promoted trade. Taxation
and tribute was important for the central state, but also for the political entities nearer the
periphery as they were able to levy duties on goods carried from the interior or the coast.
Nevertheless, the trade of the interior was heavily dependent on the borderlands since “all such
commerce passed either through the Red Sea or Gulf of Aden ports, on the northern or eastern
periphery, or by way of Sudan, on the western borderland” (Pankhurst 1997:432). The type of
goods carried reflected the importance of the periphery: “Gold, ivory and civet came largely from
the rich lands on the south-western periphery, while myrrh and other resins originated in the arid
lowlands in that of the east”. The borderlands were also a major source of slaves, which were
“one of the region’s most valuable exports” (Pankhurst 1997:432; cf. Lewis 1990). The currency
of the interior – the bars of rock salt known as amolés – originated in the salt plains of the
northeastern borderlands, and the gold for international trade was primarily obtained from the
western and southwestern periphery. Control of the trade routes, and especially access to the sea,
was therefore crucial to the maintenance of empire. This was reinforced with the arrival of
Europeans and the coincident introduction of firearms that became crucial to determining the
balance of political power throughout the region (Pankhurst 1997; Marcus 1994).
Dynastic Decline (1500-1769)
Is it mere happenstance that the beginning of Solomonic decline coincides with the emergence of
European power in the Indian Ocean? No, though it does possess a certain amount of historical
irony. The arrival of the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean exacerbated internal political problems
for Ethiopia. Because one Portuguese squadron blocked the Red Sea trade and no longer allowed
Muslim traders free access to the Indian Ocean network, disruptions were felt in the Red Sea
economy. Pressures in the Muslim territories of the Ethiopian hinterlands, which had been
building for years, were made worse by the disruption of trade revenues. As an empire dependent
9 While most travelers were turned away by Egypt, some managed to get through and even impacted local
artistic styles. The painter Niccolo Brancaleone, “whose fluid renaissance style influenced traditional
Ethiopian artists to graft a more natural modeling of faces and bodies onto their previously stylized
religious scenes” (Marcus 1994:28).