Ethiopia: A Political History

Political Era

The Era of Princes (Zemene Mesafint)

1769 – 1855

Draft — not yet source-verified

A period of decentralization in which regional lords held effective power while the emperor at Gondar reigned with little real authority, until reunification began in the mid-nineteenth century.


Schema-test stub (draft). Lens: the dispersal of sovereignty among regional lords and the hollowing-out of the imperial center. Full content to follow.

Sources

  1. Harold G. Marcus, A History of Ethiopia, updated ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002).