Trading in slaves in Bela-Shangul and Gumuz, Ethiopia: Border enclaves in history, 1897-1938

Ethiopian imperial expansion and slavery accompanied one another through th e late nineteenth and early twentieth century, contrary to imperial justifi cations based on the abolition of slavery or the state's legal obligations to oppose the slave trade and slavery. Towards the end of the nineteenth ce ntury, the Ethiopian empire incorporated the northwestern border enclaves o f Bela-Shangul and Gumuz into greater Ethiopia. Having obtained the subordi nation of the local Muslim warlords, the emperor demanded tribute from them in slaves, ivory and gold. Slaves were used as domestics in the imperial p alace at Addis Ababa and the houses of state dignitaries and as farm labor on their farms elsewhere in the country. Responding to the demands of the c entral government as well as to their own needs, borderland chiefs raided l ocal villages and neighbouring chiefdoms for slaves. Expanding state contro l thus led to intensified slave raiding and the extension of the slave trad e from the borderlands of the empire into its centre in spite of Ethiopia's legal commitment to oppose slavery and the slave trade as a member of the League of Nations. The end of slavery in Ethiopia only came in the aftermat h of the Italian occupation in 1935.