The treaties of 1897 with Ethiopia
The Italian defeat at Adowa in 1896 completely destroyed the Italian claim to a protectorate over Abyssinia: the irksome treaty of Ucciali had served Menelik well. The Christian state of Ethiopia to which Menelik’s genius had contributed so much, had now become a sovereign power whose position and aspirations had to be taken seriously if European imperial interests were to prosper. This France had long appreciated and had already reaped the fruits of conciliation. Britain, however, remained unconvinced until the Italian débâcle at Adowa drove the point home. Then events in the Sudan, and increasing Ethiopian encroachments in Somaliland, made it imperative for the British government to treat directly with the real masters of the hinterland. Accordingly in 1897, Rennell Rodd, the First Secretary in the British Agency in Cairo, was instructed to go to Addis Ababa to settle these and other wider issues with the Emperor.
By this time, as has been seen, the ‘Ise and Gadabursi clans were divided between Britain, France, and Ethiopia in their affiliation. Some of the ‘Ise were under French ‘protection’, some under British, and others, further to the interior, open to the de facto influence of Ras Makonnen at Harar. The Gadabursi were similarly divided between the British and Ethiopians; their clan-head, Ugas Nur, paid an annual fee of 100 sheep to Ras Makonnen on the understanding that his clansmen would not otherwise be disturbed. He received gifts and drew a salary from both the Ethiopians and the British. In the centre of northern Somaliland, the Isaq clans, which in the course of their grazing movements in the Haud encounter the Ogaden clan, were experiencing periodical Ethiopian raids. Some of the Habar Awal clan had been threatened with attack unless they offered tribute. Even the religious centre at Hargeisa was regularly menaced.
To the south, Ethiopian raiding parties had penetrated as far clown the Juba River as Lugh. Here the head of the local Somali clan had requested protection from the Sultan of Zanzibar and had been provided with ten muzzle-loaders which enabled him to maintain his position for a time. About 1893, however, his village was overrun by an Ethiopian attack and he sought help from the Italians on the coast. The pioneers Bottego and Ugo Ferrandi reached Lugh in 1895 and occupied the town after beating off an Ethiopian attack. Bottego then continued his trek towards Lake Rudolf and Shoa where he was killed, while Ferrandi stayed to administer the Company’s new station at Lugh, later known as Lugh Ferrandi. In 1896 a further Ethiopian attack was successfully repulsed.
Thus, with Russian officers attached to their forces,9 the Ethiopians had continued their forward thrust and enlarged their sphere of influence since 1894. Now, not merely in the north, but over most of their western periphery, the Somali clansmen were experiencing Ethiopian pressure, which though for the most part irregular and spasmodic in its application nevertheless produced a considerable effect. And caught between the conflicting ambitions of the Ethiopians on the hinterland, and the French, British, and Italians, on the coast, individual Somali clans and lineages sought to profit from this rivalry by playing one side off against another. The effect of this was to weaken the general position of the Somali and to encourage the entrenchment of foreign interests.
In the north, the 1894 Anglo-Italian delimitation of territory, which had not been communicated to Menelik, had not in any way improved the growing tension between the Protectorate authorities and Ras Makonnen at Harar. With the increasing Ethiopian pressure, matters indeed had worsened, and by the beginning of 1897 were moving towards a climax. Ras Makonnen refused to allow the British Protectorate administration to act against the ‘Ise over an incident which had occurred on territory which he claimed belonged to Ethiopia, and he reinforced his point with a threat to assert Ethiopian authority by force. The British Resident at Aden, who had been trying to settle the dispute with Makonnen, was instructed by his government to refrain from further communications with Harar, since the whole issue of the Protectorate’s frontiers would be dealt with by the Rodd mission to Menelik.
In a statement in the House of Commons, the Rodd mission was described as being sent to Ethiopia: ‘to assure King Menelik of our friendly intentions, to endeavour to promote amicable political and commercial relations, and to settle certain questions which had arisen between the British authorities on the Somali Coast and the Abyssinian governor of Harar’. Although the wider aims of the Mission were to reassure Menelik as to Britain’s interests in the context of Anglo-French rivalry on the Nile, and to secure at least Ethiopian neutrality in the war against the Khalifa in the Sudan, the settlement of the British Protectorate’s frontiers was described as one of the principal objects of the negotiations. However, the actual terms in which the Protectorate’s frontiers were to be defined and the concessions which might have to be made were of relatively minor importance if Rodd could succeed in establishing friendly relations with Ethiopia. Britain was not prepared to defend the 1894 frontiers if this would entail any considerable expenditure: indeed the possibility of abandoning the Somaliland Protectorate altogether had already been raised. The Aden authorities, however, had insisted that this drastic course was impossible, and so the problem remained of retaining the Protectorate in a form sufficient to satisfy Aden’s requirements in meat imports but within boundaries acceptable to Menelik.
Several French missions had already preceded the British Mission to Addis Ababa, but Menelik received Rodd hospitably. And Rodd was impressed by the Emperor, of whom he records somewhat patronizingly, that he ended ‘by feeling a great respect for the strong man of Ethiopia, who made a genuine effort to understand the position and overcome his mistrust of his own inexperience’.10 Menelik’s conduct of the negotiations, however, suggest that he required little tutelage in diplomacy. Although Rodd succeeded in getting Menelik to pledge himself to prevent the passage of arms to the Mahdists whom he declared the enemies of Ethiopia, subsequent events show that the Emperor continued to conduct clandestine negotiations with the Dervishes.
No agreement was reached on the definition of Ethiopian boundaries in the Sudan. And the price Rodd had to pay was considerable. Britain authorized the transit of arms and ammunition for the Emperor’s use, and waived customs duties at Zeila on goods destined for the use of the Ethiopian state. On the other hand, the ancient caravan route between Harar and Zeila which was already threatened by the proposed railway from French Somaliland, was to remain open to the commerce of both nations, and in Ethiopia itself Britain was to be accorded most favoured nation treatment in trade and commerce. However striking these trade arrangements may have seemed at the time, in practice they amounted to little; French commerce was already strongly entrenched in Ethiopia, and the Jibuti railway soon completely eclipsed Zeila’s trade.
The discussion of the Protectorate’s frontiers proved exceedingly difficult. The Emperor advanced claims for a reconstitution of the ‘ancient frontiers’ of Ethiopia and referred to his circular letter of 1891, a document of which Rodd disclaimed knowledge. At first Menelik pressed for the inclusion of the British Protectorate within his empire, but he eventually yielded ground and agreed to Rodd’s proposal that the actual definition of the Protectorate’s boundaries should be left for settlement to Rodd and Ras Makonnen at Harar: Article II of the Treaty provided that the frontiers thus decided should be attached to the treaty as an annex. A prior annex agreed to at Addis Ababa, foreshadowed the concessions that Rodd was to make at Harar. This stipulated that such Somali clansmen who, as a result of any adjustment of boundaries might eventually become Ethiopian subjects, were to be well treated and assured of ‘orderly government’.
The discussion of boundaries with Ras Makonnen at Harar was again tedious and difficult. But in the end a compromise was reached by which, while abandoning her claim to some 67,000 square miles of land in the Haud, Britain was able to retain Hargeisa and part of the hinterland within her Protectorate. This represented a considerable concession to the Ethiopian claims which, though not in 1897 supported by any firm Ethiopian occupation on Somali soil beyond Jigjiga,11 could not be challenged without the use of force, a course which Rodd rightly understood his government would