Introduction

Ethiopian historiography has often given attention to political and military history. Regions and Economic history have particularly been sidelined. Arssi is one of such regions. The purpose of the study is thus to reconstruct the economic history of one of the neglected regions in Ethiopian historiography. Arssi is/was one of the most productive regions in Ethiopia in both animal husbandry and crop production. This is an Introductory Chapter of the book that consists of seven chapters. The chapter attempts to provide historical analysis of the period up to 1941 for the book, viz. The Political Economy of Land and Agrarian Development in Ethiopia: The Arssi Region since 1941. The author employs almost all the available sources at his disposal. Archives, oral traditions and various types of literature in a number of languages and applied historical evaluation of sources for the writing of this volume. This introductory chapter also goes out of economic history into the background of the region and the Arssi Oromo. In this regard, it assesses the pre-conquest land tenure system, Arssi Oromo’s genealogical chain, a history of agriculture in Arssi and the socio-economic organization of the Arssi Oromo before Menilek’s conquest in the second half of the 19th century. Agriculture and agrarian development have been defined. The former is related with the technical aspect while the latter is complex that includes land and other aspects like social, economic and political that governed the right to land and all other aspects related with production and productivity. In contrary with former studies, the chapter finds out that the Arssi were not only pastoralists in their original homeland and after they settled in what came to be Arssiland (Arssi, Balè, West Arssi zones, among others). The proof for this is that in present-day Jajuu and Shirka districts, long before the conquest of Šäwa, the Arssi Oromo used to produce crops. The same was true when they were in their original homeland in the Madda Walabu region of the present Balè zone. But it is to be underlined that the expansion of crop production was an event of the post-conquest period. The conquest changed almost all social, political, economic and other aspects of the life of the Arssi Oromo. The study also discovered that the pre-1941 period land appropriation could not limit access to land but came up with tribute payment, corvèe labour and other exactions. Land was largely granted on temporary (madäriya) basis in lieu of salary. It in general imposed the gäbbar-näf?äñña system on the local population. The Arssi Oromo underwent relatively better times only during two interludes: the Iyyasu interlude (1911–1916) and the Italian occupation. Otherwise, the study establishes that not only the imposition of exactions and taking away of land, but also what sources state belongs to the Arssi rulers, the balabbat (or intermediary post) of local administration, was taken by the Šäwan Amhara settlers in many areas. The Italians among others abolished the gäbbar-näft’äñña system. Moreover, the chance given for the Islamization of the Arssi Oromo, the encouragement of Afaan Oromoo (the Oromo language) and the exposure to modernization drew the attention of the native Arssi Oromo positively.