{"title":"Abolitionist Decrees in Ethiopia: The Evolution of Anti-Slavery Legal Strategies from Menilek to Haile Selassie, 1889–1942","authors":"Takele Merid, Alexander Meckelburg","doi":"10.1017/s073824802300055x","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Slavery and the slave trade were fundamental institutions in Ethiopian history. Their abolition was a protracted process that involved developing, debating, passing, and applying multiple anti-slavery and anti-slave trade edicts and decrees under successive rulers. While slavery existed in various societies that were later integrated in the Abyssinian empire since the second half of the nineteenth century and took different forms based on different legal traditions, this article focuses specifically on the Christian kingdom and its successor empire. It analyzes changes and continuities in legal approaches to slavery and its suppression through consecutive Ethiopian governments starting with a discussion of slavery's regulation in the ancient Christian law code, the <jats:italic>Fetha nagast</jats:italic> (“The Law of the Kings”). The article then considers how successive Christian emperors developed anti-slavery policies in response to both local and global dynamics.","PeriodicalId":17960,"journal":{"name":"Law and History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8000,"publicationDate":"2024-02-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Law and History Review","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s073824802300055x","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"HISTORY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Slavery and the slave trade were fundamental institutions in Ethiopian history. Their abolition was a protracted process that involved developing, debating, passing, and applying multiple anti-slavery and anti-slave trade edicts and decrees under successive rulers. While slavery existed in various societies that were later integrated in the Abyssinian empire since the second half of the nineteenth century and took different forms based on different legal traditions, this article focuses specifically on the Christian kingdom and its successor empire. It analyzes changes and continuities in legal approaches to slavery and its suppression through consecutive Ethiopian governments starting with a discussion of slavery's regulation in the ancient Christian law code, the Fetha nagast (“The Law of the Kings”). The article then considers how successive Christian emperors developed anti-slavery policies in response to both local and global dynamics.
期刊介绍:
Law and History Review (LHR), America"s leading legal history journal, encompasses American, European, and ancient legal history issues. The journal"s purpose is to further research in the fields of the social history of law and the history of legal ideas and institutions. LHR features articles, essays, commentaries by international authorities, and reviews of important books on legal history. American Society for Legal History