least 1300 onward, even persuading the Portuguese king
to send soldiers.
These soldiers, along with diplomats, Jesuits, and
travelers wishing to meet Prester John, left many accounts
of Ethiopia. Some of the most interesting from an
economic point of view are by Francisco Álvares, a
chaplain accompanying a Portuguese diplomatic mission,
who was in Ethiopia from 1520 to 1527. In addition, there
are accounts by Jesuit Manoel de Almeida, who lived in
Ethiopia from 1624, and by John Bruce, a traveler who was
in the country between 1768 and 1773. The writings of
these people give a rich account of political and economic
institutions at the time in Ethiopia and leave no doubt that
Ethiopia was a perfect specimen of absolutism. There
were no pluralistic institutions of any kind, nor any checks
and constraints on the power of the emperor, who claimed
the right to rule on the basis of supposed descent from the
legendary King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.
The consequence of absolutism was great insecurity of
property rights driven by the political strategy of the
emperor. Bruce, for example, noted that
all the land is the king’s; he gives it to whom
he pleases during pleasure, and resumes it
when it is his will. As soon as he dies the
whole land in the kingdom is at the disposal
of the Crown; and not only so, but, by death of
the present owner, his possessions however
long enjoyed, revert to the king, and do not
fall to the eldest son.
Álvares claimed there would be much more “fruit and
tillage if the great men did not ill-treat the people.”
Alameida’s account of how the society worked is very
consistent. He observed:
It is so usual for the emperor to exchange,
alter and take away the lands each man
holds every two or three years, sometimes
every year and even many times in the
course of a year, that it causes no surprise.
Often one man plows the soil, another sows it
and another reaps. Hence it arises that there