A Historical Survey of Jimma Town (1936-1974)
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Date
2002-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
This study deals with the history of Jimma town from 1936 to 1974. It explores
social, economic and administrative themes, but also attempts to show the
interrelationship between these themes.
Socially, the town of Jimma evolved during this period from a home-town of a
relatively homogenous society and culture to a place of residence for a diverse and
increasingly cosmopolitan population. The period of Italian occupation (1936-1941)
was socially significant because it saw the first major influx of people into the town of
Jimma from beyond the borders of the former Kingdom whose name it had inherited.
The Post-Liberation period (1941-74) was characterized by the evolution of an even
more complex social fabric than before. An even greater influx of people and greater
interaction came about partly because the imperial order retained and enhanced
Jimma’s primacy in the region and partly because economic developments in the
region attracted thousands of job-seekers to the town.
Economically, the story of Jimma during this period was one of both continuity
and change. It is a story of continuity because Jimma, which had from the very
beginning been a center of trade, continued to be so during this period also. There
was significant change, however, because unlike the previous decades in which
Jimma served as a point of exchange or transit for elite goods (like slaves, ivory and
musk) that mostly originated beyond the borders of the Oromo Kingdom, Jimma
during this period developed into the chief center for the collection, organization and
export of a cash crop (coffee) that grew in the countryside all around it. Economic
change involved, therefore, both production and exchange.
Administratively, Jimma during this period developed from the center of rule by
a local dynasty that exercised authority over a small kingdom to a capital of a whole
region. The background for this was set by the ending of the autonomous political
existence of the Oromo Kingdom of Jimma and its full absorption into the political
economy of the Ethiopian state on the eve of the Italian occupation of 1936. But the
decision by the Italians to make Jimma the chief center of their activities in the whole
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of southwestern Ethiopia was of even greater significance. The imperial system of
administration that was put in place after Liberation simply built on that beginning.
The social, economic and administrative history of Jimma are closely
intertwined, however. The admixture of peoples and cultures as well as the nature of
the urban social institutions that evolved in the town are closely tied to “the cash crop
revolution” which brought streams of permanent and temporary residents to the town;
the evolution of the town into a chief administrative center as well as the introduction
of somewhat peculiar administrative and fiscal institutions came about in part due to
the location of the town in the heart of the “coffee country” as southwestern Ethiopia
came to be referred to. In short, both the urbanity and the urbanization of Jimma can
be explained by the story of coffee production and marketing.
This thesis documents these processes extensively and accounts for the
growth of a major town in modern Ethiopia. After a brief background chapter, it deals
with three themes of social evolution, economic activities and municipal government
and administration. It argues that despite its significant growth Jimma’s development
was limited due to the fact that it served merely as an outpost for an extractive
system that removed resources from the region, not as a place of investment or
technology with generative impact on the surrounding countryside
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Survey