Rethinking Property and Society in Gondarine Ethiopia

The historiographic question that this article asks is: Flow can historians uncover actual social and economic practices without imposing anachronistic standards and terminologies on the available evidence? The analysis focuses on the relationship between landlords and zegoch-a hitherto unrecognized and socially subservient class of peasants in the context of social, economic, and cultural realities in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Ethiopia. The thesis is that during this period the Ethiopian ruling classes gained their power and income primarily From ownership of run land a form of private property and die labor of zegoch.