James Bruce, a Scottish traveler who lives…

James Bruce, a Scottish traveler who lives in Ethiopia from 1769 to 1772, describes some of the bloody conflicts and personal rivalries that consume the kingdom in his five-volume Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile.

During the most confused period, around 1800, there are as many as six rival emperors.

Provincial warlords are masters of the territories they control but are subject to raids from other provinces.

Peasants often leave the land to become soldiers or brigands.

In this period, too, Oromo nobles, often nominally Christian and in a few cases Muslim, are among those who struggle for hegemony over the highlands.

The church, still riven by theological controversy, contributes to the disunity that is the hallmark of the Zemene Mesafint.

After the mid-nineteenth century, the different regions of the Gondar state will be gradually reintegrated to form the nucleus of a modern state by strong monarchs such as Tewodros II, Yohannes IV, and Menelik II, who will resist the gradual expansion of European control in the Red Sea area and at the same time stave off a number of other challenges to the integrity of the reunited kingdom.