A study case on coffee (Coffea arabica): Limu Coffe - IRD

maintained through the gult 32
system. Similar to the medieval fief, the gult conveyed rights
over land, the cultivators who worked it and their produce. Gult rights were acquired through
a formal grant from the monarch, or provincial rulers. Permanent gult was granted to
members of the aristocracy and higher clergy, to churches for the living of their members and
to retired officials as a reward for service. Gult served as the medium of surplus appropriation.
The gultegna was entitled to collect the tribute from the land within his gult. The tribute was
paid by the ristegna and the gultegna might keep all or part of it according to his grantee,
passing the remainder to the superior level. Moreover, the gultegna was entitled to labour
service from the peasant, and being a rist holder himself, utilized it to cultivate his own fields.
Furthermore, he was exempted from taxation on his own land whereas a plethora of other
taxes were imposed on practically everything that lived or grew on the land to peasants, and
on many forms of activity engaged in by peasants. In this way, the surplus was systematically
drained from the producers reduced to living on the borderline of subsistence and under the
menace of periodic famine.
After the conquest (Limu-Ennarea kingdom felt in 1891), the northern rulers divided
the southern lands into three parts according to the principle known as sisso 33
meaning one
third. Two thirds were confiscated, the third left to the indigenous population. The warrior
aristocracy was rewarded with massive grants of land. The warlords who governed the
occupied regions subdivided the land among their officers, soldiers and retainers according to
rank. Subsequently, all officials and agents of the state who served in the south were given
land. The shares were substantial, the smallest being no less than forty hectares. Vast estates
were set aside for the imperial palace and royal family members. The church hierarchy
claimed its share and was rewarded in the same manner as aristocracy. Settlers from the north
followed the army to obtain land on condition of paying tax on it. The undistributed part of
the confiscated lands remained state land and grants continued to be made on it until the final
days of the regime in 1974. Whereas the left third given to indigenous people was in fact
given to local defeated chiefs. They were given gult rights becoming gultegnas over their own
people. In this way the majority of the southern population found themselves on land
confiscated by the state and redistributed to northerners. They became tenants of the new
landlords. Anyway the new landlords rarely undertook to cultivate the land themselves, and
the value of a grant was measured in terms of the number of families settled on it.
32
Amharic.
33
Idem.
50