3. Intensification of the external challenge
After Maqdala, the British seemed to have washed their hands of Ethiopia. Their policy of disengagement was almost scrupulously observed. Overtures from their former ally, Kasa Mercha, for closer co-operation left them unimpressed. His request for military advisers was turned down. For the procurement of arms from England, he could manage to obtain the services of only a private firm, Messrs Henry S. King & Co. An Ethiopian mission sent with the objective of recruiting instructors in skilled crafts was left stranded in Alexandria, on orders from London. Even Kasa’s seizure of the throne as Emperor Yohannes IV, after his victory over Emperor Takla-Giyorgis, Tewodros’s immediate successor, could not move the British. They deigned to respond to Kasa’s initial letter and gifts only two years after they had received his – with accompanying instructions to the British consul in Aden to inform Kasa that they were not interested in any future exchange of presents.
What made the Napier expedition something more than an episode was its indirect bearing on the internal power struggle in Ethiopia, and on the evolution of Ethiopia’s foreign relations. In recognition of his services, the departing British had rewarded Kasa with 6 cannon, 850 muskets and rifles and a considerable supply of ammunition. In addition, although the British had refused any official secondment of military advisers, a member of the expedition, a certain J.C. Kirkham, had volunteered to help train Kasa’s army along modern lines. It was the combination of British arms and Kirkham’s rudimentary training which is generally believed to have been decisive for Kasa’s victory over Emperor Takla-Giyorgis at the Battle of Assam in 1871.
Externally, the ease with which the British penetrated to the heart of Ethiopia and accomplished their mission helped to create a false idea as to Ethiopia’s capability to withstand foreign aggression. Forgetting or unaware of the internal factors which had facilitated the British victory, other countries came to feel that the experience of the Napier expedition could easily be repeated. At this early stage, it was Egypt which showed the tendency to underestimate Ethiopia’s strength to the greatest degree. In March 1871, the Swiss-born J.A. Werner Munzinger (then still French consul at Massawa), who in the future was to launch Egyptian expansion into Ethiopia, threatened Kasa Mercha with the fate of Tewodros unless he showed greater leniency towards the Catholic missionaries. The attempt to carry out this threat ultimately led to the Battles of Gundat and Gura, which ended with the crushing defeat of the invading Egyptian troops.
Munzinger’s patron was Khedive Ismail. A man who, to all intents and purposes, considered himself a European, Ismail at the same time saw Egypt’s destiny in Africa. Even more ambitious than his great predecessor, the Albanian Muhammad Ali, who, side by side with his expansions up the Nile in the early nineteenth century, had entertained territorial ambitions in the direction of the Middle East, Ismail pursued a policy of vigorous penetration of the African interior, more particularly of the Nile valley. With the help of such European explorers as Samuel Baker, he extended his sway to the equatorial regions of Sudan. The whole exercise was given the character of a crusade, as Ismail justified his expansion in terms of eradication of the slave-trade. It was the same abolitionist argument, so sweet to European ears, that Ismail evoked in his expansion into Ethiopian territory.
Ismail went about the job of realizing his dream of a north-east African empire systematically, combining military and diplomatic initiatives. He proceeded to encircle the newly crowned Emperor Yohannes territorially and to isolate him diplomatically. First to be occupied by the Egyptians was the northern territory of Bogos. The architect of this initial thrust was none other than Munzinger. The pretext was the alleged raids of a nearby Ethiopian governor into ‘Egyptian’ territory. Yohannes reacted immediately by sending a letter of protest to Ismail, and launching his first comprehensive diplomatic initiative in Europe. Kirkham, the military expert now doubling as the emperor’s roving ambassador, was sent with letters to the monarchs of Britain, Austria, Germany and Russia, and to the President of France. The requests were identical: Christian solidarity with Ethiopia, who found herself under the threat of Islamization and enslavement by Ismail. The letter to Queen Victoria, however, in whom Yohannes was to continue to place so much trust, contained additional details about Munzinger’s occupation of Bogos.
Yohannes’s plea fell on deaf ears. Kirkham was greeted with a complete lack of interest in Russia, Germany and France. The British even took it upon themselves to vouch for Ismail’s good intentions. Baffling as their reactions must have appeared to Yohannes, the European powers did not find the theme of Christian solidarity very convincing. To them, Muslim though it was, Egypt offered more opportunities for trade and investment than Ethiopia did, for in economic terms Ethiopia was a relatively unknown quantity. Particularly after the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, the strategic as well as economic value of Egypt had risen considerably, and a fair amount of European finance had come to be invested in Egypt. It was therefore inconceivable that the Europeans would do anything to antagonize a country which offered them so many economic opportunities, for the sake of another which was still very much on the periphery of the international economic scene.
For Ismail to counter Yohannes’s protests, therefore, it was enough simply to argue that, in occupying Bogos, Egypt was merely subduing a rebellious province. The Egyptians consolidated their hold by building a formidable fort at Sanhit (Karan). In an effort to make Egyptian rule attractive to the local population, taxes were waived.
The Egyptians followed a potentially even more insidious policy of internal disaffection in the south. In Menilek, the Shawan ruler who had yet to acknowledge Yohannes’s suzerainty, they thought they had found the perfect internal ally against the emperor. Menilek himself had been putting out feelers for some kind of understanding with the Egyptians. But his interest did not seem to have gone to the extent of facilitating Egyptian invasion of northern Ethiopia, and even less of creating a southern front against the emperor. The Egyptians were more successful with Dajjach Walda-Mikael Solomon of Hamasen. After fighting them in the Battle of Gundat in 1875, he was persuaded to defect to their side.
In terms of Egyptian territorial occupation, Bogos was only the beginning. Eventually, the more serious menace to Ethiopia was to come, not from this inland foothold of Egyptian expansion, but from her coastal possessions. The transfer of Massawa and other Red Sea and Indian Ocean ports in the early years of the nineteenth century from the moribund Ottomans to the more energetic Egyptians foreboded trouble for Ethiopia. The Egyptians were not content with the kind of titular hold over the coast which was all the Ottomans could manage for centuries. From Zeila, an Egyptian force in the guise of a scientific expedition, led by Muhammad Rauf Pasha, penetrated the south-east Ethiopian interior and occupied Harar on 11 October 1875. Concurrently, Munzinger, the architect of Egyptian expansionism, led a force from Tajura, on the coast, in the direction of Shawa. His expedition came to grief on the sandy plains of Awsa, and Munzinger himself was killed in an ambush laid by the Afar. Earlier in the year, however, the Egyptians had begun to probe the northern interior from their coastal bases of Massawa, Zula and Anfilla. Starting with the limited objective of controlling the lucrative Taltal salt plains, the Egyptian thrust accelerated into full-blown aggression.
Gundat and Gura: victory without peace
In the history of the Ethio-Egyptian wars of the mid-1870s, a persistent theme was the audacity of the aggressor and the moderation and self-restraint of the invaded. Thus, as late as September 1875, after the Egyptians had already mobilized for the march into the interior, Emperor Yohannes continued