Bridging and Breaking Links: Balabbatnät and “Bargains of Collaboration” in Imperial Ethiopia, 1920–74

Balabbatnät—an Amharic appellation of the office of balabbat, local elites recruited from the indigenous people—was in imperial Ethiopia a powerful tool of the link between local peoples and the central imperial authority. The balabbat were offered social positions within the empire’s architecture of domination, making them candidates for assimilation into the privileged and dominant Amhara stratum. In simple terms, they constituted an essential bridge between the Amharic-speaking government and the Oromo-speaking society in Qellem, western Ethiopia. However, the balabbat also created cracks, exploited their social and economic positions as much as they bridged the system. When they felt their economic benefit and social status were threatened, the balabbat turned on the imperial system, challenged its hierarchies and broken ties with its architecture of domination. Balabbatnät was therefore vital in imperial Ethiopia’s state architecture and in the state’s interaction with its subjects, particularly in the conquered south, in this case, Qellem. Through the analysis of the roles of balabbatnät in local contestations over the control of land and labour, this research examines crafts, tools and subtle processes of state construction in imperial Ethiopia. Drawing largely on imperial Ethiopia’s archives, oral interviews and other primary sources, this article seeks to examine the role balabbatnät played in local contestations over the right to access land and control labour were significant in demonstrating bargains of power in imperial Ethiopia and how the Ethiopian state was imagined, negotiated, partially legitimized.