A History of Modern Ethiopia, 1855–1991. Bahru Zewde
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his regional position, and thereby to present a stronger bid for the throne; partly also from his trust that the British would honour their promise to leave the country once their limited objectives had been achieved. At any rate, the result of such internal support for the invading force was that it was able to reach Maqdala from the coast in less time than it took Tewodros to traverse the distance between Dabra Tabor and Maqdala, although the invaders’ journey was three times as long.
As it turned out, the British did keep their word to leave the country once their mission was accomplished. This prompt withdrawal of the British has remained somewhat enigmatic to students of Ethiopian history. Why, it is often asked, did the British withdraw after they had managed to penetrate to the very heart of Ethiopia? The puzzle ceases to be a puzzle when we recall the fact that the Napier expedition antedated the European scramble for African colonial possessions by almost two decades. The expedition was what we may describe as pre-colonial, in a country where Britain had not yet established vital interests worthy of defending by continued political and military presence. The British point of view was unambiguously put forward by Lord Stanley (later Earl of Derby), the British Foreign Secretary:
Her Majesty’s government have no concern with what might befall Abyssinia from the removal of King Theodore from the country . . . it will in no way concern them what may be the future that awaits Abyssinia; what Ruler may hold power in the country; what civil wars or commotions may arise in it. On grounds of humanity Her Majesty’s government would desire the country to be well governed, and the people to be contented and prosperous; but they do not consider it incumbent on them to set up or to support any form of government or any particular Ruler under which it shall be carried out, in a country in which they have really no British interests to promote.
(Rubenson, Survival, 275; emphasis added)
As for Tewodros, his last word to his countrymen and the world at large was contained in the letter he wrote to Napier on the day after the British victory on 10 April at the Battle of Aroge, which preceded the storming of Maqdala and the emperor’s suicide. It is a document quintessentially Tewodrosian, crystallizing as it does his lifelong dreams and ambitions. Although it is addressed to the British general, the thrust of the message is a castigation of Tewodros’s countrymen for their insubordination. It is a document that combines his compassion for the weak and the aged with lamentation for the frustration of his dream of freeing Jerusalem; pride at his record of invincibility with regret for the discipline which he tried to inculcate among his countrymen and which eluded him to the end. It also has a poignant line about the artillery on which he had staked so much, and which ultimately proved so useless: ‘Believing myself to be a great lord, I gave you battle; but by reason of the worthlessness of my artillery, all my pains were as nought’ (Holland and Hozier, II, 42). In short, the letter is Tewodros’s testament to posterity, indicating what he had set out to do and how and why he had failed to do it.
2. A new approach to unification
The death of Tewodros opened once again the issue of the throne. Three persons emerged as the chief contenders for it. Wag Shum Gobaze of Lasta had emerged as Tewodros’s bitter opponent. Wag Shum Gobaze’s victory over his rival, Tesso Gobaze of Walqayt, a few days before the British storming of Maqdala, had greatly enhanced his chances of supremacy in the historic centres of political power. But his lack of contact with the Napier expedition deprived him of access to the modern arms which were to prove so vital to his future rival, Kasa Mercha. Starting from his base in Tamben, an area bordering on Semen, this latter contender had extended his sway through a large part of Tegre by 1867, and had begun expanding beyond the Marab river. To the south, after managing to escape from the Maqdala prison in 1865, Menilek of Shawa had reasserted his claims as the lord of that province, and was expanding in the direction of Wallo, to the north.
But it is a measure of the new era ushered in by Tewodros that there was to be no return to the Zamana Masafent, to puppet kings controlled by one powerful ras after another. The coronation of Tewodros in 1855 had symbolized the end of the divorce between political power and political authority. Military muscle became as legitimate a ground for claiming the throne as Solomonic descent, if not a better entitlement. Thus, soon after the death of Tewodros, Wag Shum Gobaze had himself crowned as Emperor Takla-Giyorgis. Although Menilek had already started styling himself negusa nagast, he reached some kind of agreement with Takla-Giyorgis whereby the Bashilo river became the boundary between their respective spheres. The new strong man of Gojjam, Ras Adal Tasamma, also submitted to Emperor Takla-Giyorgis and, to cement the relationship, received the emperor’s sister in marriage.
Marriage links, however, did not deter Kasa Mercha from challenging Takla-Giyorgis, who happened to be also his brother-in-law. Their rivalry culminated on 11 July 1871 in the Battle of Assam, near Adwa. Although outnumbered in the ratio of 5 to 1 (60,000 troops against 12,000), Kasa had the telling edge in armaments and discipline. The battle was over two hours after it began. The emperor’s losses were estimated as 500 killed, 1,000 wounded and about 24,000 captured, including the emperor himself. Thus came to an end the brief and largely uneventful reign of Takla-Giyorgis. Six months later, on 21 January 1872, Kasa ascended the throne, with the name of Yohannes IV.
2.3 A sketch of Dajjach Kasa Mercha, the future Emperor Yohannes (r. 1872–1889)
While the imperial idea so dramatically resuscitated by Tewodros was to endure, Yohannes nevertheless followed a policy of unification substantially different from that of his predecessor: his choice of the title of r’esa makwanent (head of the nobility) as he bid for the throne set the tune of his policy. He continued to regard himself as primus inter pares (first among equals), a negusa nagast (king of kings) in the strict sense of the word, not an undisputed autocrat. Tewodros had once styled himself ‘husband of Ethiopia and fiancé of Jerusalem’, and he was to prove himself a jealous husband indeed! Yohannes, in contrast, was ready to share Ethiopia with his subordinates, provided his suzerainty was recognized. In place of Tewodros’s head-on collision with regionalism, Yohannes followed a more cautious approach, which amounted to a conscious toleration of it. While this more realistic approach had the merit of recognizing the objective impediments to establishing a unitary state, it had the disadvantage of encouraging the latent centrifugal tendencies of the Ethiopian polity.
2.4 Negus Takla-Haymanot, hereditary ruler of Gojjam from 1881–1901
Side by side with his policy of controlled regionalism, Yohannes pursued another of maintaining a political and military equilibrium between his two main vassals, Menilek of Shawa and Adal of Gojjam. In view of the fact that the actual as well as potential challenge to the throne came from Menilek rather than from Adal, this policy in effect meant that the emperor found himself more often on the side of the Gojjame rather than on that of the Shawan ruler.
Initially, however, relations between Adal and Yohannes were anything but smooth. This is not surprising, as Adal had been Takla-Giyorgis’s protégé. But the emperor’s campaigns to subdue the Gojjame lord were frustrated by the latter’s resort to guerrilla tactics – a pattern of confrontation that was to be repeated in later times. In an effort to undermine Adal’s authority in Gojjam, the emperor then made Dasta Tadla (son of the rebel Tadla Gwalu, who had given Tewodros such a hard time) ras and governor of Gojjam. Adal’s victory over Dasta in July 1874 ensured his supremacy in Gojjam, and induced both the emperor and Adal to seek a rapprochement. After assurances from Yohannes that he would honour Adal’s legitimate rights to the throne of Gojjam, Adal submitted at Ambachara in October 1874.
Thereafter, Yohannes began to support Adal as a counterweight to Menilek. He also apparently gave his blessing to Adal’s expansion south of the Abbay river in order to forestall the Shawan ruler. Adal reciprocated by suppressing rebellions in Bagemder and Semen in 1875–1876, while Yohannes was engaged with the Egyptians. In 1878, at Leche, as a member of the emperor’s entourage,