78 ERYTHREA - AGRICULTURAL ECONOMY IX GENERAL 



Besides resti there is another from of ownership, gidti. This tenure is 

 feudal by origin and nature! the sovereign grants seigneural investiture with 

 a certain holding to a person he favours. The gulti is therefore less repre- 

 sentative of a right than of an office, a public charge, a delegation of the sov- 

 ereign prerogative. The gtiUegna who has been invested with the gidti receives 

 the tribute and pays it in whole or part to the sovereign ; he assembles and 

 commands the armed men in war, administers justice in the first instance 

 and declares to the sovereign the causes as to which there may have been 

 an appeal. Therefore while resti is economic occupation and the restagna an 

 individual who occupies for his own profit, gulti is pohtical occupation and 

 the gultegna holds a public office. The gnltegna retains for himself a part 

 of the tribute (a tenth) and causes part of the lands of the gidti to be culti- 

 vated on his behalf as the appanage or salary of his post, a fact which in no 

 way changes the nature of his occupation. 



The sovereign's economic right and that which be delegates to the feu- 

 datories is chiefly the right to receive the tribute. The sovereign — the 

 government — cannot reach the gulti except in fully determined cases. An 

 absolute respect is thus shown to private property. These cases are those 

 of i) the total extinction of the gultegna s line ; 2) his confiscation for rebel- 

 lion or felony ; 3) his failure to pay tribute ; 4) his abandonment or volun- 

 tary renunciation by permanent absence of his land. 



Finally we must recall that this organization of property, of which we 

 have described the chief features, does not affect the vast regions inhabited 

 by Mussulman and Pagan tribes, such as the districts of the Gasc, the Setit, 

 the Barca, the Senhit, the Sahel, the Assaorta and the Dankalia, in which 

 private property does not exist and the pastoral tribes have a customary 

 right to pasture their animals freely on all of the territory not intended to 

 be arable. In these districts property in the soil may really be considered 

 to be vested in the State, so true is it that the peasants occupying lands, in 

 order to grow cereals, have to pay a due or domainialtax which- has no re- 

 semblance to a tribute. 



Without going back to the political and historical vicissitudes, which 

 characterized the first period of the Itahan occupation of Erythrea and 

 reached their last stage during the war against Abyssinia in iScj^-iSgG, 

 it is well to recall, as an explanation of and a commentary on the decree 

 of 31 January 1909 organizing land in Er>i;hrea, that in the period from 

 II May 1893 to 12 July 1895 a series of decrees, promulgated in the 

 colony, declared vast tracts of land to be domanial and reserved. 



In view of the organization of property in Er5rthrea, as this has been 

 briefly described, it is easy to understand how profoundly these decrees, which 

 authorized {he creation of a domain, disturbed the minds of the popula- 

 tion of the high plateau. They contained an entirely new conception of the 

 regulation of property, according to which the State had the right to claim 

 lands for itself not only for objects of utiHty — a case which might within 

 limits have been allowed b}' Abyssinian law — but also in order to appropriate 

 these lands to colonization by white men, by the invading people. It was 

 natural that violent confiscation, although in fact it affected only restricted 



