Economy
In Jimma, Maria Theresa Thalers (MT) and salt blocks called amoleh were used as currency until the reign of Emperor Menelik II.
Like the other Gibe kingdoms, Jimma was a source of slaves, who were sold openly until the reign of Menelik II. Lewis reports estimates that King Abba Jifar II had as many as 10,000 slaves. Until the 1930s, slaves continued to be sold out of the public eye, but openly owned, when Emperor Haile Selassie and later the Italian occupiers managed to abolish it. (See also African slave trade).
The condition of slaves in Jimma was usually humane, for they were allowed to marry, own property (including slaves in turn), and inherit what their parents managed to accumulate; families were rarely broken up. However, they had no official rights, could be beaten at will, and run away slaves were beaten and kept in chains.
Coffee (Coffea arabica) became a major cash crop in Jimma only in the reign of King Abba Jifar II. Another source of income was the extraction of oil from Civets, which was used to make perfume.
Read more about this topic: Kingdom Of Jimma
Famous quotes containing the word economy:
“The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get “a good job,” but to perform well a certain work; and, even in a pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its laborers so well that they would not feel that they were working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The counting-room maxims liberally expounded are laws of the Universe. The merchant’s economy is a coarse symbol of the soul’s economy. It is, to spend for power, and not for pleasure.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Cities need old buildings so badly it is probably impossible for vigorous streets and districts to grow without them.... for really new ideas of any kind—no matter how ultimately profitable or otherwise successful some of them might prove to be—there is no leeway for such chancy trial, error and experimentation in the high-overhead economy of new construction. Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings.”
—Jane Jacobs (b. 1916)