Tewodros as modernizer
Tewodros has been described as ‘Ethiopia’s first monarch with a concept (however vague) of modernization’ (Crummey, ‘Tewodros’, 457). Given the breadth of vision and the energy that he brought to the Ethiopian scene, this is a fair assessment. The parenthetical qualification contained in the above characterization is highly appropriate, however. Not only was Tewodros’s concept of modernization vague, but his reforms also lacked consistency and method. Ultimately, they remained tentative gestures rather than comprehensive programmes of lasting importance. The social and political edifice of the Zamana Masafent proved too strong for Tewodros’s modernizing efforts. The military and administrative reforms he envisaged were bereft of economic and technological bases. The foreign assistance that he sought so avidly was not forthcoming. In the end, Tewodros remained a lone and somewhat confused prophet of change.
The lack of consistency and the force of inertia of the Zamana Masafent were also evident in his administrative policy. Tewodros did not make a clean sweep of the local dynasties. In many instances, he confirmed them in their regional bases, at best appointing those he considered pliant members of the dynasties. Thus, in Tegre, he appointed Dajjach Kasa Subagadis, the son of the Agame chief who had died fighting against Ras Mareyye of Bagemder in 1831. In Wallo, Tewodros placed first Dajjach Liban Amade and then Amade Ali, son of Warqit, an important female leader. It was later that Tewodros entrusted Maqdala to one of his most loyal followers, Grazmach Alame. In Shawa, while the resuscitation of the old title of mar’ed azmach was probably a calculated blow to Shawan royal pretensions, Mar’ed Azmach Hayla-Mikael in effect continued the Shawan dynastic line. It was only in Gojjam that, from the outset, Tewodros appointed one of his own commanders, Ras Engeda.
While such an appointment policy would appear to perpetuate the divisive tendencies of the Zamana Masafent, in actual fact it turned out that being Tewodros’s ‘own man’ was not synonymous with loyalty, nor did having a dynastic base inevitably lead to rebellion. Both Engeda and Alame eventually fell out with Tewodros. The defection of Alame, one of the Emperor’s most trusted followers, was a particularly bitter pill for him to swallow. Conversely, Mar’ed Azmach Hayla-Mikael dutifully paid his annual tribute. Dajjach Kasa Subagadis of Agame made a dramatic demonstration of his loyalty by sending the tongue of a follower of the rebel, Agaw Neguse of Semen; the unfortunate victim had bragged in front of his master that he would bring him the severed head of Tewodros. As a man who had been liberated from Dajjach Webe’s prison by Tewodros, Kasa Subagadis was understandably grateful to the emperor. Conversely, he was implacably opposed to Webe’s successors; after all, he had come out hunchbacked from prison.
Tegre’s loyalty to Tewodros had even more concrete manifestations than the dramatic gesture by Dajjach Kasa Subagadis. The largest portion of royal revenue came from Tegre, including, that is, the regions of Hamasen, Saraye and Akala Guzay. It amounted annually to about 200,000 Maria Theresa thalers (compared with the less than 50,000 thalers from Bagemder). Of this, over 35,000 thalers, some 18%, was paid by Dajjach Baryaw Pawlos, the governor of the northern part of present-day Tegray, who was married to Aletash, daughter of Tewodros. About 32,000 thalers, or over 16%, came from Dajjach Haylu Tawalda-Madhen of Hamasen and Saraye, and over 17,000 thalers, or about 9%, came from Basha Gabra-Egzie of Akala Guzay.
Tewodros’s commitment to military reform was less equivocal than his administrative policies. The army has generally been the first concern of any modernizing ruler of a country, because of its pivotal role in the conquest and maintenance of political power. Even in the case of Ethiopia’s medieval rulers, their correspondence with European monarchs was dominated by requests for the fruits of modern military technology. To Tewodros, who owed his political power more to his military prowess than to his genealogy, the central role of the army must have been even more vital. He accordingly set out to remould the military structure of Ethiopia in three important respects: organization, discipline and armament. Yet, like almost all the other reforms of Tewodros, those in the military sphere were also vitiated by lack of consistency and of thoroughness.
What Tewodros attempted to do in the organizational sphere was to replace the regional armies of the Zamana Masafent with a national army which cut across local loyalties. Thus soldiers coming from different regions were formed into one regiment. A new hierarchy of command, with military titles which are still in use in the Ethiopian army – for example, yasr alaqa, yamsa alaqa, ya shi alaqa, respectively commander of ten, commander of fifty, commander of a thousand – was introduced. Tewodros also cut down on the traditional retinue of the army, which had retarded its mobility and at the same time presented logistical problems. Although there is no evidence as to the amount and manner of payment, Tewodros is also credited with replacing the vicious system of billeting by payment of salaries. At least at the outset, before his sense of justice fell prey to his indiscriminate violence, he was severe towards any of his soldiers caught looting. Yet, when Wallo rebels killed his night guard and stole some mules, he gave his soldiers permission to loot the locality in retribution. In another situation, the uncontrollable urge of his soldiers to plunder led him into a desperate consideration of abdication.
Discipline remained a lasting concern of Tewodros; one of the lessons that he had drawn from the Battle of Dabarqi in 1848 was of its value, but he proceeded to apply a harsh version of it. During his first Wallo campaign, he had the limbs of his own soldiers amputated for unauthorized fighting in which they had lost both men and firearms. In Shawa, when some of his soldiers mutinied because of strong rumours that he planned to send them on a campaign to Jerusalem, he punished them with a severity intended to prevent further such occurrences: forty-eight of them were hacked to death or shot. The two ringleaders first had their limbs amputated, and were then hanged. Yet such measures of primitive justice, far from reinforcing Tewodros’s authority, only tended to spiral towards universalized violence. The very last letter of his life – written to Sir Robert Napier, the leader of the British military expedition, in the aftermath of the Battle of Aroge, which led to Tewodros’s suicide in 1868 – was a pathetic admission of his failure to instil discipline in his subjects. ‘My countrymen have turned their backs on me,’ he wrote, ‘because I imposed tribute on them, and sought to bring them under military discipline. You have prevailed against me by means of a people brought into a state of discipline’ (Holland and Hozier, II, 42).
The third aspect of Tewodros’s military reforms was his unrelenting drive to acquire modern arms. Although his stockpile grew largely through purchases and seizure from vanquished enemies, it was to arms manufacture that he applied himself with remarkable persistence. The first experiment came right after the Battle of Dabarqi: as Kasa Haylu, Tewodros improvised a rather crude explosive from the trunk of a tree. It was to be set off from a distance by means of a connecting thread. The whole experiment was aborted when one of Kasa’s followers, captured by the enemy, divulged the secret under torture. When Tewodros later sought foreign assistance, it was not so much the arms that he sought as the skilled manpower to manufacture those arms and to impart those skills to Ethiopians.
The upshot of this strategy appeared at Gafat, an area near Dabra Tabor which, more than any other place, symbolized Tewodros’s modernizing drive. Gafat was at the same time a symbol of the uneasy relationship between Tewodros and the European missionaries. The latter came to Ethiopia to preach the gospel of love.