A History of Modern Ethiopia, 1855–1991. Bahru Zewde
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which can be said to have been presaged by the ominous clause of the Hewett Treaty, that Massawa was to remain ‘under British protection’. The British disposed of their responsibility the way it suited them best.
On the other hand, Yohannes was bound by Article III of the treaty to facilitate the evacuation of Egyptian troops from their posts at Kasala, Amideb and Sanhit, respectively in Sudan, near the Sudan border, and well within Bogos. This obligation Yohannes carried out with a faithfulness which provided a contrast to British duplicity. In the process, Ras Alula, who had been given the task of carrying out the relief operation, came into direct conflict with the Mahdists, inaugurating a period of bloody confrontation between Ethiopia and Mahdist Sudan that, in the end, was to consume the emperor himself. Ultimately, therefore, what Yohannes managed to achieve after two brilliant military victories and a belated peace treaty was, in the words of Sven Rubenson, to trade ‘one weak enemy [Egypt] for two strong ones, the Mahdist state and Italy’ (Rubenson, Survival, 362).
4. The road to Matamma
The years 1876-1878 might be said to have marked the apogee of Yohannes’s power. Externally he had dealt a telling blow to Egyptian expansion. Internally, he had obtained the submission of his main rival. This double victory at the same time appeared to have resolved both the external and internal challenges that Ethiopia faced in the nineteenth century. Yet it was a victory which did not last. By 1885, we can say that Yohannes had reached the turning-point in his career, which was to end with his death at the Battle of Matamma. In that year the Italians occupied Massawa. In the same year, Ethiopian forces clashed with the Mahdists (or the Ansar, as they preferred to call themselves), initiating a period of hostility which was to reach its climax in 1889. Also after 1885, the latent insubordination of Menilek began to simmer until it burst out into the open in 1888. It was in that year that the triangular tension in which Yohannes had lived reached its ultimate limits. The following year, it was resolved, with his tragic death.
Italian colonialism in the Horn of Africa combined the vigour of youth with the desperation of the late-comer. This distinctive feature arose from the late arrival of Italy on the colonial scene: Italy became a unified state only in 1871. Italy’s thrust was abetted by the British, who, themselves unwilling to get involved in Ethiopia, wanted someone to guard their interests in the region against their ancestral rivals, the French.
Nevertheless, Italy’s first territorial acquisition antedated the completion of its unification. In 1869, the port of Assab, south of Massawa, was acquired for Italy by a team which symbolically included a missionary, Giuseppe Sapeto, and a navigational enterprise, Rubattino Company. But it was Massawa which provided Italy with the base for its penetration of the Ethiopian interior. And Massawa, as we have seen, was secured through the good offices of Britain in the wake of Egyptian evacuation from the Red Sea and Indian Ocean coasts. That evacuation had also secured Zeila and Berbera for the British and Tajura for the French. But while the British and French acquisitions were to terminate with narrow coastal colonies – British and French Somaliland – the Italians, from Massawa, were to make a bid for the whole of Ethiopia. Massawa, in short, led to Adwa.
With remarkable foresight, Yohannes recognized the connection. ‘With the help of God,’ he wrote to Menilek in late 1886, ‘they will depart again, humiliated and disgraced in the eyes of the whole world’ (Zewde, 199). When he wrote this, the Italians had already pushed further inland and occupied Saati, about 15 miles (24 km) west of Massawa, and Wia, 20 miles (32 km) to the south of the port. It had thus become evident that Yohannes’s earlier hopes of containing the Italians within the coast were futile. Protests from Ras Alula, the governor of the Marab Melash, that the Italians should abandon their advance posts were ignored. It was in such circumstances that Alula opted to obtain by force of arms what he had failed to achieve through correspondence. On 25 January 1887, he attacked the Italian fort at Saati. He was repulsed, incurring considerable losses. The following day, at Dogali, between Saati and Massawa, Alula’s force intercepted some 500 Italians sent to relieve the Saati garrison. The relief force was virtually destroyed.
News of the Battle of Dogali provoked a frenzied reaction in Italy. The call for revenge was heard in the streets as well as in the government chambers. Parliament voted for an appropriation of 20 million lire for the defence of Massawa and its environs. A special force of 5,000 men was organized to reinforce the existing troops. Roads and bridges were built and repaired in an effort to strengthen the infrastructure for future military action. Simultaneously, the policy of instigating Menilek to act against Yohannes was intensified.
In an initial attempt to solve the problem through diplomatic intervention, both Yohannes and the Italians turned to the British. Yohannes wrote to Queen Victoria complaining about the violation of the Hewett Treaty. The Queen’s reply contained an implicit justification of Italian actions and a warning to Yohannes, suggesting that it was a pity that he was in disagreement with the Italians, who were powerful, though well intentioned. To the Italians, on the other hand, the British were once again obliging. A mission headed by Sir Gerald Portal was sent to Ethiopia, ostensibly to mediate between the belligerents, but in reality hoping to gain for the Italians what Dogali had denied them. Portal’s proposals for peace included a public apology by Yohannes for the Dogali incident as well as Italian occupation of Saati, Wia, Karan and the territory of the Assaorta and the Habab peoples on the Red Sea coast. The ‘mediator’ was rebuffed, bluntly by Alula, diplomatically by Yohannes.
Under cover of this diplomatic ploy, however, the Italians had reoccupied Saati. Yohannes now took the field himself to resolve once and for all the Italian problem. At the head of a large army (80,000 troops), he went down to Saati in March 1888. Hope of an early victory vanished, however, when the Italians refused to come out of their fort. Faced with shortage of supplies, news of the Mahdist sacking of Gondar, and rumours of a conspiracy between Menilek and Negus Takla-Haymanot against him, Yohannes had no choice but to return without achieving anything. That was to be his last encounter with the Italians. One year later, he died on the battlefield at Matamma, and the Italians immediately marched on to the highlands.
Like the Italian occupation of Massawa, the bloody confrontation between Ethiopia and Mahdist Sudan was a legacy of Egyptian expansion. The Mahdist movement arose as a combination of religious revivalism and Sudanese nationalist opposition to Egyptian rule. As such it was primarily directed against Egypt, in Mahdist thinking regarded as both renegade and oppressor. But Yohannes’s faithful implementation of the Hewett Treaty had the effect of redirecting Mahdist fury against Ethiopia. By coming to the relief of the beleaguered Egyptian garrisons, Ethiopia identified herself with the hated enemy. Simultaneously, the Egyptian buffer between her and Mahdist Sudan was eliminated, and the two countries were brought into direct confrontation.
2.6 The port town of Massawa towards the end of the nineteenth century
The first battle was fought at Kufit (to the east of Kasala) on 23 September 1885. The Ethiopian troops were led by Ras Alula. The Mahdists or Ansar were commanded by a no less redoubtable general, Uthman Diqna. After two reverses, in the latter of which Alula himself was wounded, the Ethiopian side was victorious. About 3,000 Ansar lost their lives. The Ethiopian losses were about half that number killed, including Alula’s lieutenant, Blatta Gabru.
Another arena of Ethio-Mahdist confrontation was in the south, in the present-day Wallaga region. In the sheikhdoms of Asosa, Bela Shangul and Khomosha, the Ansar had stepped into the shoes of the Egyptians, who had exercised some sort of paramountcy characterized chiefly by annual tax-gathering raids. Islam and trans-frontier trade had also prepared the ground for Mahdist penetration, although this did not mean that the Ansar were universally welcomed in the region. All the same, gaining influence over even some of the Oromo rulers, they had penetrated as far as the Najjo area, deep inside Oromo territory. It was there, at the Battle of Gute Dili (14 October 1888), that Menilek’s general, Ras Gobana Dache, finally stopped them.
But the most decisive battles were undoubtedly fought on the Matamma front. Matamma, known as Gallabat to the Sudanese, had been historically the most important centre of contact, peaceful or hostile,