Upon becoming Regent, Ras Gugsa reasserted the central power of the Empire (although keeping the Emperor as a figurehead) by dispossessing the nobility of the parts of Ethiopia he controlled, primarily Begemder. He accomplished this by proclaiming in 1800 in the name of the Emperor the legal title of land tenure would be converted from freeholds to state property, held at the will of the Emperor. At first the peasantry welcomed this egalitarian measure, believing that they would benefit from the loss of their masters. However, as Ras Gugsa proceeded in dispossessing the great families each year under one pretext or another, the peasants lost their last defenders. "The dispossessed nobles," writes Pankhurst, "meanwhile, almost all became soldiers of fortune. They were so rapacious that sometimes whole villages abandoned their lands and emigrated to neighbouring territories, many of the peasantry enrolling in the army, as they preferred the perils and independence of a military life to the servitude of the field."[4]
In 1803, Ras Gugsa entered into the ongoing doctrinal disputes that was dividing the Ethiopian Church by joining the Ichege Walda Yona in expelling the advocates of the Qebat from Begemder. About the same time, the Ras exploited the helplessness of the ecclesiastical structure on the death of Abuna Yosab III by plundering the episcopal properties 12 September of that year.[5]
Ras Gugsa had a non-violent death and was buried at the church of Iyasus in Debre Tabor.[6]
Notes
^ Pearce, The Life and Adventures of Nathaniel Pearce, edited by J.J. Halls (London, 1831), vol. 1 p. 70
^ Bahru Zewde, A History of Modern Ethiopia, 1855-1994, second edition (Oxford: James Currey, 2001), p. 12; Henze, Layers of Time (New York: Palgrave, 2000), p. 122.
^ Mordechai Abir, Ethiopia: The Era of the Princes; The Challenge of Islam and the Re-unification of the Christian Empire (1769-1855) (London: Longmans, 1968), p. 32.
^ Richard P.K. Pankhurst, Economic History of Ethiopia, 1800-1935 (Addis Ababa: Haile Selassie I University Press, 1968), pp. 137ff.
^ Donald Crummey, Priests and Politicians, 1972 (Hollywood: Tsehai, 2007), p. 25; the date is from H. Weld Blundell, The Royal chronicle of Abyssinia, 1769-1840 (Cambridge: University Press, 1922), p. 474
^ Richard P.K. Pankhurst, History of Ethiopian Towns (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1982), p. 266.
