The Wandering Capitals of Ethiopia
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8977034 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ronald J Horvath (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1969 |
| Volume | 10 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 205-219 |
| Publication date | 1969-04-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Journal of African History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-8537 • E-ISSN: 1469-5138 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0021853700009488 |
| OpenAlex | W2092872702 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 27 |
| References cited | 8 |
The purpose of this essay has been twofold: first, to describe the wandering capitals of sixteenth and seventeenth-century Ethiopia, and secondly, to offer an explanation for the pattern of movement. Ethiopian wandering capitals possessed many of the characteristics that are often used to distinguish cities from other forms of settlement. Roving capitals were large and densely populated enough to qualify for city status, they performed an essentially urban role of administration, the capitals were heterogeneous socially, and representatives of the Ethiopian literati were present. The population of these capitals were for the most part only seasonally urban and seasonally rural. And yet, these capitals were not permanent. The explanation offered may be succinctly summarized as follows. Initially, military motives prompted the Ethiopian éite to change their capitals from fixed to mobile settlements. These guerilla cities were adapted to in several ways. First, capitals moved to food supplies rather than supplies being moved to the capital. Secondly, capitals impoverished their current hinterlands. And thirdly, political integration of Ethiopia came eventually to depend on a mobile centre of polity. These three factors not only represent adaptations to nomadic capitals, but they in turn made a stabilization of capitals difficult. In other words, the very adaptations to the wandering capitals themselves had a feedback effect on the pattern of movement, and therefore contributed to a continuation of capital movement
Archaeology · Capital (architecture · Development economics · Geography · Human settlement · Political science · Politics · Polity · Population · Settlement (finance · Sociology · African history and culture analysis · African history and culture studies · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · Law
Urbanization in Africa
Shifting Sedentism in West Africa
Administrative and military impediments of medieval Ethiopian economy
Urban Labels and Settlement Trajectories
The Naming of Parts
Bringing the Country to Town
Voluntary Camps and Practical Machine Sites
The archaeological study of neighborhoods and districts in ancient cities
Alternatives to Urbanism? Reconsidering Oppida and the Urban Question in Late Iron Age Europe
Characterizing vernacular practices facing state-led planning in urbanizing Lake Tana area, Ethiopia
Cités oubliées
Externality and Incorporation in the World-System
Signs of power
Urban growth and the housing problem in Ethiopia
Beyond Iron Age ‘towns’
Gone with the wind. Urbanization and deurbanization processes in the medieval Muslim Horn of Africa
The Ethiopian Population
Articulating Economic Modernization and National Integration at the Periphery
The Process of Urbanization in Africa (From the Origins to the Beginning of Independence)
Archaeology, politics and nationalism in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Ethiopia
Lalibela in its landscape
A Re-Examination of the Sources of Inspiration of Ethiopian Concentric Prayer Houses
Power and permanence in precolonial Africa
From Warriors to Urban Dwellers
Capital of the imperial borderlands
The histories buildings tell
Nomads and mobile places
| Unique citing works | 27 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,66 |
| Citation span | 1985 - 2025 (41) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 27 |