Читать книгу A History of Modern Ethiopia, 1855–1991 - Bahru Zewde - Страница 15
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The Background
1. The internal scene in the first half of the nineteenth century
The northern principalities
The year 1769 symbolizes the initiation of the period in Ethiopian history known as the Zamana Masafent. It was in that year that a Tegrean prince named Ras Mikael Sehul (the second name being an epithet to describe his astuteness) made a bloody intervention in royal politics in Gondar. He killed the reigning emperor, Iyoas, and put his own favourite, Emperor Yohannes II, on the throne. Before a year was out, Yohannes himself incurred Ras Mikael’s disfavour, and was in turn deposed and replaced by Emperor Takla-Haymanot II.
This making and unmaking of kings by Ras Mikael marked the nadir of imperial power. While the intervention of other members of the nobility was not to be so dramatic, the long-standing struggle for power between the monarchy and the nobility had been decidedly resolved in favour of the latter. Until 1855, when Kasa Haylu became Emperor Tewodros II and restored the power and prestige of the imperial throne, the successive emperors were little more than puppets in the hands of the forceful nobility. An emperor had practically no army of his own. In the 1830s and 1840s, his annual revenue was estimated at a paltry 300 Maria Theresa silver dollars, the Austrian currency then in use in Ethiopia, whereas Ras Walda-Sellase of Tegre had 75,000 thalers at his disposal, and Negus Sahla-Sellase of Shawa had some 85,000 thalers.
Ras Mikael’s domination of Gondar politics was itself short-lived. In the last quarter of the eighteenth century, a strong man by the name of Ali Gwangul had emerged as a powerful figure and kingmaker. He initiated what came to be known as the Yajju dynasty, after their place of origin in present-day northern Wallo. From their base in Dabra Tabor, successive members of this dynasty controlled the throne for about eighty years. Although Muslim and Oromo in origin, they had become Christianized, and followed other Amhara customs. The power alignments for or against them were dictated less by ethnic and religious considerations than by self-interest and regional aggrandisement. Yajju power may be said to have reached its peak in the ‘reign’ (1803–1825) of Ras Gugsa Marsu.
On the southern side of the Bashilo river, where Islam is believed to have had establishment previous to the Ahmad Gragn period, the Muslim and Oromo elements were more pronounced. Known as Amhara in medieval times, the region came to be identified by the name of Wallo, after the most important tribe that had settled in the area. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, a dynasty known as the Mammadoch and based at Warra Himanu established its hegemony over the whole region. The name of the dynasty was apparently derived from its founder Muhammad Ali (more popularly known by his ‘horse-name’, Abba Jebo, ‘father of Jebo’, his war-horse). The death of his grandson Abba Jerru Liban in 1825 marked the decline of Mammadoch power, as his descendants began to fight among themselves for supremacy. This state of affairs gradually reduced Wallo to a buffer zone which invited the expansion and interference of its more powerful neighbours.
In Tegre, a term denoting the Marab Melash (‘the land to the north of the Marab river’) and the Red Sea coastal region, as well as present-day Tegray, a strong ruler emerged in the person of Ras Walda-Sellase, at about the beginning of the nineteenth century. By reason of his region’s proximity to the sea, he was the first Ethiopian ruler to come into contact with European travellers of the nineteenth century. With total obliviousness to the Ethiopian reality, the British traveller and artist Henry Salt, who met Walda-Sellase at his capital Antalo in 1805, described him as the ‘Prime Minister’ of Ethiopia. Such a flattering appellation did not move Walda-Sellase into allowing Salt to pass on to the imperial seat in Gondar, which was then controlled by Walda-Sellase’s bitter opponent, Ras Gugsa Marsu.
Some years after the death of Ras Walda-Sellase in 1816, Dajjach Subagadis Waldu of Agame in eastern Tegre established himself as the lord of Tegre, and continued his predecessor’s bid for control of the imperial throne. This led him into a bloody clash with the Yajju lord, Ras Mareyye Gugsa of Bagemder, at the Battle of Dabra Abbay (14 February 1831). Both leaders lost their lives: Mareyye fell in the course of the battle, and Subagadis was executed by Mareyye’s victorious troops. The man who picked up the pieces was Dajjach Webe Hayla-Maryam of Semen, head of another important area of regional power consolidated by his father and predecessor, Dajjach Hayla-Maryam Gabre. The most significant results of the battle were the end of Tegrean autonomy and the extension of Dajjach Webe’s overlordship to that region. By the mid-nineteenth century, Webe had emerged as perhaps the most powerful regional lord of northern Ethiopia. The Battle of Dabra Tabor (7 February 1842) between him and Ras Ali Alula, known as Ali II, the Yajju ruler of Bagemder, was an outcome of Webe’s eventually abortive bid to wrest supreme power from the Yajju princes. This was another strange battle of the Zamana Masafent, in which, as he was celebrating his victory, Webe was captured by Ali II’s vassals.
Two principalities which were to dominate the history of southern Ethiopia in the latter half of the nineteenth century were somewhat peripheral to central politics. They were Gojjam and Shawa. Although both principalities were to have, as their distinctive feature, territorial expansion in neighbouring Oromo lands, Gojjam was not totally unaffected by the imperial politics at Gondar. Its most famous ruler, Dajjach Goshu Zawde, actively engaged in the bid for preeminence among the northern princes. Yet such was the political anarchy of the Zamana Masafent that his power in Gojjam itself was challenged by his own son, Dajjach Berru Goshu, who managed temporarily to defeat his father in late 1841. As the Zamana Masafent comes to its close, we find Dajjach Goshu in a position of vassalage to the Yajju ruler, Ras Ali II, both bent on checking the rise of a new challenger, Kasa Haylu. But, as we shall see, Kasa Haylu, afterwards Tewodros II, defeated Goshu, who died in the Battle of Gur Amba (27 November 1852), and Ali II in the Battle of Ayshal (29 June 1853); the latter victory symbolized the end of Yajju hegemony.
South-east of the Abbay river (the Blue Nile), Shawa was comparatively insulated from the wars and politics of northern Ethiopia. Its successive rulers steadfastly worked towards the strengthening of the principality by conquering the neighbouring Oromo lands. The stability of the region and the relative prosperity of its inhabitants were well attested by European visitors. Yet this is not to say that Shawan rulers were totally unconcerned with developments in the north. Their affiliation to the imperial idea was evident in their concern to show their Solomonic descent. At the same time, this claim encouraged them to regard themselves as central rather than peripheral to the Ethiopian polity. Their titles also demonstrated progressive confidence. They started with the modest one of abeto, and, passing through mar’ed azmach, ended up with the elevated style of negus, or king. This last title was rarely claimed by any of the northern princes.
Yet even the adoption of the title of negus showed an element of restraint. Shadowy as the emperors in Gondar were, they still retained the aura of ‘Solomonic’ legitimacy. The title of negusa nagast, king of kings, thus emperor, was still regarded as their exclusive preserve. The ultimate ambition of regional lords was thus not to crown themselves negusa nagast, but to gain pre-eminence by securing the position of power signified by the title ras bitwaddad, which would enable them to manipulate the legally crowned emperor. It required the audacity of a Kasa Haylu to crown himself negusa nagast. Even then, he had to resort to the legitimizing name of Tewodros – the apocalyptic harbinger of a new and just order. The regional conflicts of the Zamana Masafent thus showed scarcely any centrifugal tendencies. The moves of the regional lords were to dominate the centre, not to go away from it.
This same dialectic of division and unity was manifested in the doctrinal controversies which rent Abyssinian Christian society from the seventeenth century to the middle of the nineteenth. The controversy was ignited by Jesuit theology, more specifically the doctrine of the nature of Christ. It was the absence of a unanimous response to the Jesuit doctrinal challenge that gave birth to the diverse doctrines that have continued to baffle students of Ethiopian history. The party which still claimed to espouse the orthodox doctrine preferred to call itself Tawahedo (Union), although its opponents gave it the more pejorative appellation of Karra (Knife). The variations on the orthodox doctrine were known as Qebat (Unction) and Ya Sagga Lej (Son through Grace). The latter was also more popularly known as Sost Ledat (Three Births), in contradistinction to the Hulat Ledat (Two Births) thesis of the Tawahedo.
These doctrinal disputes had a political significance that exceeded their intrinsic value. The various doctrines came to be associated with the different regions, and thus abetted and sharpened the political divisions of the Zamana Masafent. Qebat, for instance, was a distinctively Gojjame doctrine, whereas Karra was associated with Tegre, and Ya Sagga Lej with Gondar. It is also significant that the first major attempt to resolve these differences was made by the same man who tried to forge Ethiopian unity, Tewodros. But final resolution of the doctrinal question had to await the Council of Boru Meda (1878), presided over by Emperor Yohannes IV (r. 1872–1889).
While the nobles fought amongst themselves and the priests engaged in over-refined theological disputes, the social order was sustained by the peasantry, practically the only productive class in society. Through a combination of a long-established plough agriculture and animal husbandry, the peasant supported the whole social edifice. Thanks to a lineage system of land-ownership known as rest, the peasant could claim a plot of land as long as he could trace his descent. But his control over his produce and his labour time was limited by the claims of the nobility, both lay and clerical. A system of surplus appropriation, the gult, gave the nobility rights of collecting tribute, often of an arbitrary nature, from the peasant. Hence the term gabbar (from geber, tribute), often used interchangeably with 14 balagar, peasant. In addition, the peasant had to undertake corvée (forced labour) such as farming, grinding corn, and building houses and fences. This claimed up to one-third of his labour time. One of the nineteenth-century travellers elaborated the theme:
The imposts are numerous, but vary according to the traditionary customs of each village. They [the peasants] pay a certain portion in kind to the Ras, or other great chief, and sometimes a regular tax in money; besides this, they must furnish oxen to plough the king’s lands. Their immediate governor then takes his share in kind of every grain (say a fifth), and feeds besides a certain number of soldiers at the expense of the householder: he has rights to oxen, sheep, goats, butter, honey, and every other requisite for subsistence; he must be received with joy and feasting by his subjects whenever he visits them, and can demand from them contributions on fifty pretexts – he is going on a campaign, or has just returned from one; he has lost a horse or married a wife; his property has been consumed by fire or he has lost his all in battle; or the sacred duty of a funeral banquet cannot be fulfilled without their aid.
(Plowden, 137–138)
Inasmuch as the gult was given as a reward for military service, the whole system tended to foster a military ethos. To be an armed retainer of a lord freed one not only from the drudgery of farming but also from the harassment and persecution of the soldier. Conversely, the life of the peasant became increasingly precarious. Perennial victim of the vagaries of nature – such as drought and locust invasions – the peasant was simultaneously at the mercy of the marauding soldiery. The wars of the Zamana Masafent were particularly destructive in this respect. The system of billeting or quartering soldiers in peasant households subjected the latter to numerous exactions and indignities. Mansfield Parkyns, a British traveller of the early nineteenth century, has given us gruesome details of the fate of a peasant who was roasted alive as a penalty for having hidden some butter from the insatiable soldiers billeted in his house.
Although detection entailed such frightful punishments as the one just described, hiding grain was one of the ways by which the peasant tried to ward off the human locust. Burning grain was another, although such measures were no less wasteful socially. Often, too, the peasant abandoned farm and homestead and fled for security – either to a place of less insecurity or to join one of the many bandits who mushroomed in this period. Commenting on the despoliation which such a situation created in one of the northern provinces, the missionaries Isenberg and Krapf had this to say:
[T]he Wag country . . . is decidedly one of the most important and interesting provinces of Eastern Abyssinia. It would admit a larger population and a high degree of cultivation of the soil, if a better government ruled this country. It would be necessary, however, for such a government to do away with the system of annually plundering their subjects, as this is the very means to destroy commerce, order, cultivation of the ground, and every improvement of human society. At present the Governor comes annually with his troops and takes away what he pleases; and the consequence is that the inhabitants conceal their treasures and take to flight to the mountains; whereupon the Governor destroys their houses and fields.
(Isenberg and Krapf, 486–487)
States and peoples of southern Ethiopia
The history of early nineteenth-century Ethiopia would not be complete without a description of the peoples and principalities of the southern half of the country. It was the unification of these two parts in the second half of the nineteenth century that gave birth to modern Ethiopia. The peoples of southern Ethiopia had attained varying degrees of social and political organization. The term ‘southern’ is used here not in the strictly geographical sense, but as a convenient category embracing those states and peoples which did not directly engage in or were peripheral to the imperial politics of Gondar. Their organizations ranged from communal societies to states with powerful kings and elaborate mechanisms for the exercise of authority. Examples of the latter kind were the kingdoms of Kafa, Walayta and Janjaro. They are often known by the generic linguistic term of Omotic, because of their location in the vicinity of the Omo river.
The kingdom of Kafa traced its origins back to the fourteenth century. The economy, as in both Walayta and Janjaro, as well as among a number of Cushitic and some Semitic peoples of the south, was based on the cultivation of ensat (‘false banana’, Ensete ventricosum). A class of peasants, holding their own land but being forced to give labour service, formed the human base. They were supported by slaves acquired through raiding or trading, or as payment for debt. The first written reference to the kingdom goes back to the sixteenth century, and the state reached the apogee of its power at the turn of the eighteenth century. At the apex of the political and social hierarchy was the king, the tato, assisted by an advisory council of nobles, the mikrecho. While Orthodox Christianity had managed to win many adherents among the ruling class, possession cults, headed by the ibede gudo, the supreme spiritual leader, predominated among the masses. The state obtained its revenue from taxation and customs dues on the prosperous trade with the Oromo states which emerged to the north of Kafa towards the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century. Slaves constituted the main item of export trade, followed by ivory, coffee and honey.
The kingdom of Walayta to the east also had equally remote origins, its beginnings being associated with Motolomi, of medieval fame, who according to tradition was converted to Christianity by Abuna Takla-Haymanot, the Shawan saint. Motolomi is said to have founded what came to be known as the Walayta Malla dynasty, which lasted up to the fifteenth century. It was then superseded by the ‘Tegrean’ dynasty, so called because it was reputedly established by Tegreans who had initially come to the region as settlers. The power of the king, the kawa, was autocratic, extending to a prerogative over all land, which he could grant to the class of warriors, the goqa, as a reward for military service. After a popular uprising in the middle of the nineteenth century against the excesses of the reigning king, the power of the kawa was attenuated and subjected to checks by an advisory council and assemblies of regional representatives.
3. Ethiopia in the nineteenth century
The Janjaro, who called themselves the Yam or Yamma, were an agricultural people located to the north-east of Kafa, along the western edges of the Gibe river. As in the case of Walayta, an indigenous dynasty (the Dida or Gamma) reportedly came to be replaced by one of northern origin (the Mowa). At the apex of the political pyramid was the king, the amno, who (in contrast to the case of Kafa, where political and religious powers were divorced) also acted as the chief priest and was given attributes of divinity. The lower tiers of the hierarchy were occupied by – in descending order of importance – a state council of twelve astessor, whose chairman (the waso) was highly influential, provincial governors (erasho) and district chiefs (ganna). The economy was based on land worked by a tribute-paying peasantry, with trade and crafts (more particularly iron-casting and weaving) playing a supportive role. The external relations of Janjaro in the nineteenth century were characterized by a long and bitter conflict with the neighbouring Oromo kingdom of Jimma Abba Jifar – a conflict which ended with the absorption of both into the empire of Menilek II.
Jimma Abba Jifar itself, named after its founder Abba Jifar I (r. 1830-1855), was an example of the Oromo states which emerged in south-western Ethiopia in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In one of the most interesting processes of social transformation in Ethiopian history, the Oromo, who initially had an egalitarian and republican system of socio-political organization based on age-groups and known as the gada, developed monarchical institutions. The main factors for such a transformation were the changes that the Oromo underwent from a pastoral to an agrarian mode of life, and the class differentiation that this brought about. The continuous wars of expansion that the Oromo waged in the course of their migrations and settlement also tended to strengthen the powers of the abba dula (the war-leader in the gada system) at the expense of the abba boku (the traditional titular head of the Oromo community). This evolution towards monarchical power was manifested in two regions. The first was in the area of the Gibe river, hence the name ‘Gibe monarchies’. The second was in present-day Wallaga, in western Ethiopia.
Five such kingdoms emerged in the Gibe region: Limmu-Ennarya, Jimma, Gomma, Guma and Gera. As its name suggests, Limmu-Ennarya was an Oromo state established on the remains of the medieval kingdom of Ennarya, which had existed in a state of tributary relationship to the Christian kingdom. Initially Limmu-Ennarya was the most important of the Gibe states, primarily by reason of its control of the long-distance trade that linked the region with the north. The reign of its most famous ruler, Abba Bagibo, (r. 1825–1861), marked the peak of Limmu-Ennarya ascendancy. Jimma’s successful challenge of this ascendancy resulted in its supremacy in the second half of the nineteenth century. A distinctive feature of the Gibe states, in contrast to the other Oromo states which were established in Wallaga, was their conversion from traditional religions to Islam in the first half of the nineteenth century.
There were two main centres of monarchical power in Wallaga. A leader called Bakare established the state of Leqa Naqamte, which grew even more powerful under his successors Moroda and Kumsa Moroda, later known as Gabra-Egziabher, ‘slave of God’, after his conversion to Christianity, following the incorporation of his principality in the Ethiopian empire by Menilek II in 1882. In southwestern Wallaga, a ruler named Jote Tullu emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century, combining ruthless military power with successful exploitation of trans-frontier trade.
Jote Tullu’s kingdom was in constant interaction, both hostile and peaceful, with the sheikhdoms that had emerged to the north, particularly with that of Aqoldi, more commonly known as Asosa. Like the other two sheikhdoms, Khomosha and Bela Shangul (or Beni Shangul), Aqoldi grew out of the imposition of an Arabic-speaking mercantile aristocracy of Sudanese origin on the indigenous inhabitants, the Barta. To be more precise, this new ruling class was superimposed over an earlier aristocracy of Funj origin, or at least association with the Funj, from the kingdom of Sennar in Sudan. A similar process of superimposition was duplicated on the other side of the Abbay or Blue Nile, and led to the rise of the sheikhdom of Gubba, on the Gumuz-inhabited western fringes of Gojjam. By virtue of their Sudanese origin, all these sheikhdoms were Muslim and fostered the propagation of Islam in the region.
The emirate of Harar, in the eastern part of the country, represented another important centre of Islamic power and influence. Battered by the Oromo, this successor state to the medieval kingdom of Adal, the homeland of Ahmad Gragn, had dwindled to a fraction of its medieval power and glory. Surrounded by the Qottu Oromo, the city state led a rather precarious existence, symbolized by the wall that has remained its distinctive feature to this day. Over a period of time, however, the Harari and Oromo peoples established a modus vivendi marked by trade, some intermarriage and the Islamization of the Oromo by Harari missionaries. But the growing weakness of the Harar emirate tended to invite foreign intervention. In 1875, an Egyptian force led by Muhammad Rauf Pasha occupied the city, in a bloody imposition of authority which involved the murder of the emir and the massacre of the Oromo representatives gathered in response to the summons by the invader. Egyptian rule lasted a decade.
1.1 The city of Harar as it appeared in the first decade of the twentieth century
Elsewhere in southern Ethiopia, a much lower level of sociopolitical organization prevailed. In the south-west, the Nilo-Saharan Anuak, led by their village headmen (kuaari), had an economy which combined agriculture with hunting and gathering. Their neighbours, the Nuer, were pastoralists who developed a rather complex spiritual culture around their cattle. Both were linked with the Oromo of the highlands by trade. The southern and south-eastern peripheries were inhabited by the Borana and Somali clans respectively, all pastoralists recognizing no boundaries. The pastoralist outer ring was continued by the Afar in the Danakil desert; their proverbial ferocity, coupled with their inhospitable terrain, safeguarded their independence for a long time. Independence did not rule out interaction, however, for the town of Bati, for instance, developed as a commercial rendezvous for highlander and lowlander. Neighbouring the Afar on the north, the Saho lived in somewhat similar circumstances, although they had a much narrower margin of operation because of the shorter distance 20 between the coast and the highlands.
In the present-day region of Gamo Gofa in the south-west, the Cushitic Konso developed a distinct culture characterized by terraced farming, wooden carvings and stone enclosures, while the two kingdoms that eventually gave their names to the administrative region (Gamo and Gofa) were further examples of the advanced sociopolitical organization prevalent among the Omotic peoples.
With the exception of the lowlands, the distinguishing feature of the southern peoples of Ethiopia was the predominance of the ensat culture (in contrast to the cereal culture of the north). To this culture also belonged the Gurage (fragmented into a number of tribes and hence easy victims of the slavers of the nineteenth century), the Hadiya and the Kambata. Political fragmentation was the rule among the Shawan Oromo as well. This state of affairs facilitated the expansion of the kingdom of Shawa, a process which gained impetus in the reign of Negus Sahla-Sellase (r. 1813-1847) and reached its climax under Emperor Menilek II. The Arsi to the south had an economy combining agriculture and pastoralism, and a more pronounced sense of regional identity fostered by the leadership of their hereditary abba dula.
The link: long-distance trade
The two spheres of the Ethiopian polity, which for the sake of convenience have been dichotomized into northern and southern, did not exist in mutual isolation. The unity of interest that long-distance trade created between them tempered the political and cultural heterogeneity depicted above. The network of trade routes that united north and south was one of the main bases of the process of unification that took place in the second half of the nineteenth century.
Although the trade routes which linked south-western Ethiopia to the coast had medieval antecedents, it was in the nineteenth century that they attained particular prominence. This was partly because of the revival of external trade in the Red Sea region; partly, too, their prominence reflects the better documentation we have for this period, because of a number of European travellers who penetrated the interior. Ethiopian long-distance trade in the nineteenth century had two major routes. Of these, the more important at the outset was the link between south-western Ethiopia and the north. Beginning from Bonga in Kafa, this route linked such important commercial centres as Jiren in Jimma, Saqa in Limmu-Ennarya, Assandabo in Horro-Gudru, Basso in Gojjam and Darita in Bagemder with the imperial capital, Gondar. From there, it bifurcated, one branch going to Matamma on the Ethio-Sudanese frontier, and another, via Adwa, to Massawa on the Red Sea coast.
The second major route ran from west to east. While initially of secondary importance, its fortunes rose with those of Shawa in Ethiopian politics. By the end of the nineteenth century it had become the most important artery of commerce in the Ethiopian region. From Jiren and Saqa in the south-west, this route passed through such commercial landmarks as Soddo and Rogge (near Yarar mountain, visible to the east of present-day Addis Ababa), to Alyu Amba, the commercial capital of Shawa, near Ankobar, then Shawa’s political capital. Thence, the route continued to Harar, political and commercial centre of the east, and on to the coastal Somali towns of Zeila and Berbera.
The directions of trade routes were also indicative of the origins and destinations of the items of trade. If we were to single out two commodities which dominated the long-distance trade of the nineteenth century, they would be salt and slaves. The salt, originating in the Taltal plains of Tegre, was carried to the south-west, its value increasing in direct proportion to its distance from the source. Not only was it used as a consumption item, but, in its bar form (amole), it also served as currency. Goods of foreign origin, such as glass, beads, cloth and ironware, also penetrated from the coast to the south-west.
In the opposite direction, slaves of south-western origin found their way to the north-west and east. A few were destined for internal use, but the majority were exported to Sudan and the Arabian peninsula. The modes of acquiring slaves varied: some were captives of war, others were victims of slave-raids, still others had been sold into slavery by parents rendered destitute by famine or financial stress. The prosperous long-distance trade in slaves created such towns as Yajube, near Basso in Gojjam, and Abdul Rassul, near Alyu Amba in Shawa, which specialized in the sale of slaves, often by auction. Other items which originated in the south-west and were mostly exported were ivory, gold and musk. In the second half of the nineteenth century, coffee, the commodity that was to be the main product of the south-west in the twentieth century, came to the forefront.
Long-distance trade was conducted through the agency of caravans. The leader of the caravan was known as the naggadras (head merchant), and he was entrusted with ensuring the safety of the group under his leadership. The merchants were exposed to the hazards of both man and nature. Not only did they have to cross deserts and ford rivers, but they also had to endure the whims and caprices of petty and big chiefs. The innumerable toll-stations along the route had a particularly negative effect on the trade. Conversely, the control of trade routes to augment their revenue was a matter of prime importance to political authorities.
In addition to the two main arteries of trade, there were three other types of interaction. The first was localized trade in the highlands. The second was trade relations between the peripheral lowlands and the adjoining highlands, such as between the Anuak and the Oromo and between the Afar and the highlanders. The third was what we may with some anachronism designate trans-frontier trade, such as trade from Wallaga to Sudan and from southern Ethiopia to the coast of Somalia – both precursors of the much more intense commercial links later fostered by neighbouring colonial powers.
4. Trade routes of the nineteenth century (adapted from M. Abir, Ethiopia: The Era of the Princes, London, 1968, and Guluma Gemeda, ‘Gomma and Limmu: The Process of State Formation among the Oromo in the Gibe Region c. 1750–1889’, MA thesis, Addis Ababa University, 1984)
2. The external challenge
Renewed European interest
The expulsion of the Jesuits in 1632 was followed by what amounted to a period of disenchantment with and rejection of Europe by Ethiopia. With the exception of the visits of the Scottish traveller and explorer, James Bruce, in the eighteenth century and of the French physician Charles Poncet at the end of the seventeenth, there was little interaction. This situation began to change significantly at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Europe approached Ethiopia with redoubled energy. The Ethiopians responded with a feeling combining eagerness and caution.
The revival of European interest in the Ethiopian region was not a unique phenomenon. It was part of the general European penetration of Africa in the nineteenth century, and it was multifaceted. In essence it had economic origins. The industrial revolution that transformed European society, starting from the end of the eighteenth century, at the same time ushered in a new pattern of relationship between Europe and Africa. The revolution in production could not be contained within the confines of Europe. The manufacture of industrial goods far in excess of what Europe itself could consume made the conquest of the African market imperative. Thus, in Ethiopia, as elsewhere in Africa, the European officials who came into contact with Ethiopian rulers were above all ambassadors of commerce. This was clearly the case with the first European official to set foot on Ethiopian soil in 1804: Sir George Annesley, later Viscount Valentia, from Britain. The promotion of commerce was the dominant theme of the first treaties concluded between European officials and Ethiopian authorities, such as those between Negus Sahla-Sellase and the British Captain W. Cornwallis Harris (1841) and the French Rochet d’Hericourt (1843), and between Ras Ali II and the British Walter Plowden (1849).
A second dimension of European interest in Ethiopia, as in the rest of Africa, was a resurgence of missionary activity. In spite of the bitter legacy of the Jesuit experiment of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Europeans applied themselves to the task of proselytizing Ethiopians with renewed zeal. Nor was this activity confined to the Catholics. It was the Protestants, mainly of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) of London, who pioneered this new phase of evangelical activity in the nineteenth century. Samuel Gobat was active in the north, in Tegre and Bagemder, while C.W. Isenberg and J.L. Krapf operated mainly in Shawa. On the Catholic side, the path was cleared by Giuseppe Sapeto and was followed by Giustino De Jacobis, who in 1839 founded the Lazarist mission in northern Ethiopia. Seven years later, the founder of the Capuchin order in Ethiopia, Cardinal Massaja, arrived.
Side by side with the official envoys and the missionaries came the scientists and explorers. Among the pioneers were the German Eduard Rueppell and the two French brothers Antoine and Arnauld d’Abbadie. The d’Abbadie brothers have now come to occupy a prominent place in Ethiopian studies, thanks to their prolific writings. European scientists investigated the country, ranging from its botany to its ethnography. They did so with such energy and perseverance that Dajjach Webe Hayla-Maryam of Semen is reputed to have commented: ‘One collects our plants, another our stones; I do not know what you are looking for, but I do not want it to be in my country that you find it’ (Rubenson, Survival, 54).
These facets of European interest in Ethiopia – the commercial, the official, the missionary and the scientific – were very much interconnected and reinforced each other. The scientists were not disinterested academics, but often engaged in political affairs. The missionaries enjoyed moral, and sometimes material, support from their states. Both missionaries and those who came on official missions dabbled in scientific or pseudo-scientific studies of the country. The missionary Krapf was actively involved in the negotiations for the treaty between Shawa and Britain. Sir George Annesley, who had come to Massawa with the aim of conducting botanical and geographical investigations, readily engaged in exploring ways of promoting trade with Ethiopia. Nor was missionary activity totally divorced from commercial matters. Proselytization, it was hoped, would promote trade and capitalism.
Egyptian expansion
Yet, compared with the desperate scramble that was to characterize European penetration of Africa in the last quarter of the century, these early European sallies into Ethiopia were of a tentative nature. Expansion of a more vigorous kind came from nearer home. It was Egypt, the country with which Ethiopia had had the longest foreign contact in its history, that presented the initial challenge. At the dawn of the nineteenth century, Egypt was undergoing a significant process of change which was to have an enduring effect both on its internal shape and its foreign policy. The short-lived Napoleonic occupation of Egypt (1798–1801) was not uneventful. While it lasted, it undermined the Mamlukes, who had ruled the country for nearly six centuries, and brought distant echoes of the French Revolution to the banks of the Nile. Its termination under a combined Anglo-Ottoman assault had two lasting consequences – the beginning of British interest in Egypt and the Red Sea, and the emergence of Muhammad Ali, the Albanian adventurer in the Ottoman army who established the dynasty that was to rule Egypt for a century and a half.
Muhammad Ali’s first task was to deal the final blow to the tottering Mamluke power. Then, after establishing a secure economic and military base for his own power, he turned his attention outwards. His expansion in the direction of Syria was frustrated by the British; but it was his southward expansion which was to have a lasting impact and pose a threat to Ethiopia. The defeat of the Funj kingdom of Sennar in 1821 inaugurated Egyptian rule in Sudan. At the same time, it ushered in a period of border skirmishes between the Egyptians, who were vigorously pushing eastwards, and the Ethiopian rulers of the borders, ranging from Dajjach Webe of Semen to Dajjach Kenfu of Dambya. The latter’s half-brother, Kasa Haylu, inherited these skirmishes – a situation which had considerable effect both on his rise to power as Emperor Tewodros and in the shaping of his personality.
Further, with Muhammad Ali’s conquest of Arabia, Egypt was emerging as the new power on the Red Sea, replacing the moribund Ottoman empire. This had the salutary effect of reviving the Red Sea trade. For Ethiopia, however, it meant – as in the western borderlands – the implantation of a more dangerous neighbour. Although the Ottoman Turks had occupied Massawa as early as 1557, and continued to maintain the fiction of a principality known as Habasha (Abyssinia) as part of their domain, by the beginning of the nineteenth century Ottoman authority on the coast was non-existent. Local power was exercised by their one-time viceroys, the naibs of Arqiqo, who had established over the years a mode of peaceful co-existence with the highland rulers of Ethiopia, more exactly those of Tegre. Egyptian occupation of Massawa in 1841, ostensibly on the grounds of legal right to former Ottoman possessions, changed the situation. In Ethiopian parlance, nevertheless, both Ottoman and Egyptian continued to have an identical appellation: ‘Turk’.
The sources for Chapter One are included with those at the end of Chapter Two (pp. 79–80).
