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Ethiopia's Links With the Outside World, 1

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  • Ethiopia's Links With the Outside World, 1

    Addis Tribune (Addis Ababa)
    Sept 3 2004

    Ethiopia's Links With the Outside World, 1

    Visit The Publisher's Site

    ANALYSIS
    Richard Pankhurst


    Early Ties with Russia

    In this page we attempt at times to look at Ethiopia's contacts with
    the Outside World. We have seen that ever since the Middle Ages many
    of Ethiopia's rulers were preoccupied with their country's
    technological backwardness, particularly in the military field. We
    have seen further that this was more especially true after the advent
    of fire-arms. We have seen Ethiopian rulers seeking to innovate by
    obtaining assistance from Western Christendom. They thus imported, or
    attempted to import, cannons and rifles from the monarchs of the
    West, and asked the latter for men who could make gunpowder, or train
    Ethiopian warriors in the use of fire-arms.


    Ethiopian rulers, however, also requested their Western
    co-religionaries for help in two other significant fields: palace and
    royal church building on the one hand, and medicine and surgery on
    the other.

    And now Russia

    Contacts between Ethiopia and Russia - and indeed Armenia! - they
    were apparently less materially-oriented. Like those with the West,
    they had begun in Medieval times with meetings in Jerusalem between
    ecclesiastics from the two countries. Perhaps because Russian
    technological backwardness, however, they do not seem to have
    included any Ethiopian request for military or other assistance.

    This was also true of the next historic highlight in
    Ethiopian-Russian relations: the arrival at Peter the Great's court,
    in St. Petersburg, early in the

    18th. century, of Avram Petrovich Hannibal. He was a slave of
    presumed Ethiopian origin, whom the Tsar sent to Paris for education,
    and who became posthumously famous as the great-grandfather of the
    Russian poet Alexander Pushkin. There is no record of Avram taking
    any serious interest in Ethiopia - or for that matter any other part
    of Africa.

    It is, however, worth noting that Peter, whether on account of his
    ex-slave or not we do not know, considered sending an expedition to
    Ethiopia in 1718-19. Nothing, however, came of the idea.

    19th. century Russian interest in Ethiopia did not really begin until
    the early part of the century. It started with the foundation in 1845
    of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society. Two years later one of
    its members, Colonel E.P. Kovalensky, visited the country, and wrote
    a two-volume account of his travels.

    More influential, however, was the work of a Russian Orthodox monk,
    Porfiry Uspensky, who travelled to Jerusalem in 1848.There he
    befriended the Ethiopian community. Interestiing himself
    ininternational affairs, he urged his fellow Russians to support
    their co-religionaries in Christian Ethiopia. This, he argued, would
    help to weaken Russia's major enemy, the Ottoman Empire, and also the
    British, who had given it their support.

    Tewodros

    Ethiopian interest in Russia emerged shortly afterwards. It was
    initiated by Ethiopia's pioneer modernising ruler, Emperor Tewodros
    II. Confronted with the aggressive ambitions of the Ottoman Empire,
    he tried to open up relations with the Russians who he recognised as
    itsenemies. Nothing came of his initiative either. It was, howeverm
    significant that he called the largest of his weapons, the huge
    mortar "Sevastopol", after the battle in the Crimean war.

    And for a new replica of this famous mortar take a drive up Addis
    Ababa' Churchill Road!

    Yohannes Emperor Yohannes IV (who duly succeeded Tewodros) was also
    threatened by Ottoman expansion, and likewise sought an alliance with
    Russia, besides other Christian powers of Europe. The Russian
    response, as his distinguished Ethiopian biographer, Dejazmach Zewde
    Gabre-Sellassie, notes, was, however,"particularly unhelpful"

    Awareness of Ethiopia on the part of the Russians nevertheless
    escalatein the latter part of the 19th. century. A Cossack leader,
    Nikolai Ivanovich Ashinov, visited Emperor Yohannes IV's military
    commander Ras Alula, and landed, early in 1889, at Sagallo, on the
    arid Gulf of Aden coast of Africa.

    Ashinov hoped, unrealistically in view of the torrid climate, to
    found aRussian Orthodox colony and monastery, called "New Moscow".
    The project, not surprisingly, was a failure, but generated much
    publicity in Russia. This was important as it bore fruit in years to
    come.

    Menilek

    Really important relations between Ethiopia and Russia had their
    roots towards the end of the 19th. century. They owed much to Menilek
    the founder of the modern Ethiopian State. He believed that his
    country's age-old independence could be preserved only through
    European-style technological innovation.

    He was passionately interested, like many of his medieval
    predecessors, in the acquisition of fire-arms, but was also anxious
    to foster innovation in other areas, notably the traditional ones of
    medicine and surgery

    Menilek was confronted by the threatened expansion of his three
    European colonial neighbours: Italy, Britain and France. Together
    they surrounded his country on all sides, thereby preventing direct
    access to the sea. Each of the three Powers at one time or another
    sought to expand their territories at Ethiopia's expense. Menilek,
    however, realised that he needed European technology to ensure
    Ethiopia's survival: he required European assistance of Europe to
    save his country from European expansion.

    The Wechale Treaty with Italy

    Menilek's relations with Europe became crucially important towards
    the end of 1889 when the Italian Government claimed a Protectorate
    over his country. This claim was based on Article XVII of the Wechale
    Treaty, which he had earlier signed with Italy, on 2 May 1889.

    The agreement, as is now widely known, had two texts, one in Amharic;
    the other in Italian. Though otherwise identical, these two differed
    materially in the said article. The Amharic text stated that Menilek
    could avail himself of the services of the Italians (who had by then
    seized the Red Sea port of Massawa) for all communications with other
    Powers. The Italian version, on the other hand, made it obligatory.
    This text theoretically isolated Menilek from direct contact with
    other countries (for example Russia), but, more importantly, was used
    by the Italian Government to claim a Protectorate over Ethiopia. This
    claim, though dubious in validity, was recognised by virtually all
    the European colonial powers

    Menilek's Diplomacy

    Menilek, in the years which followed, conducted his diplomacy - and
    sought military and other assistance, at two distinct levels. On the
    one hand, and most directly, by playing off the three adjacent (and
    potentially-threatening) Colonial Powers, Britain, France and Italy,
    against each other; and, on the other hand, by devloping diplomatic
    and commercial relations with more distant (and hence seemingly less
    dangerous) countries, of which there were noless than seven, i.e.
    Russia, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, the Austrian and Ottoman
    Empires, and the United States.

    Land of the Tsars

    Russia, the land of the Tsars, was for a time the most country
    Menilek most favoured. There were perhaps reasons for this:

    Firstly, Russia was a far-off, relatively technologically advanced
    country without colonial ambitions, and a potential rival to at least
    one of the surrounding colonial powers, i.e. Britain.

    Secondly, Russia was a fellow Orthodox Christian country, and as such
    at odds with Ethiopia's then principal enemy, Roman Catholic Italy

    Thirdly, Russia had, like Ethiopia (but unlike Republican France), a
    monarchical form of government: this was significant in selecting a
    country whither Ethiopian students should be sent for further study.

    The faith of Orthodox Russia was, however, significantly different
    from that of Orthodox Ethiopia. Russia and the Russians were
    accordingly regarded with no small suspicion by the Ethiopian
    priesthood.

    Mashkov

    Ethiopian contacts with Russia began only a few months after the
    Wechale Treaty, with the arrival of a Russian adventurer, Lieutenant
    Vasilij Mashkov. Entering Ethiopia in October 1889, he was the only
    non-Italian European then in the country. He was warmly received by
    Menilek, who graciously referred to him as the envoy of "my brother,
    the King of Muscovy"

    Relations between the two countries developed rapidly. The Russian
    Government firmly rejected Italy's interpretation of the Wechale
    Treaty. When the Italian Foreign Minister, Alberto Blanc, told the
    Russian ambassador in Rome, in 1894, that he did not believe that the
    Tsarist government could regard the whims of "African chiefs" as on a
    par with the policy of Italy, a European Power, the Russians replied
    that the rulers of Ethiopia were "powerful kings - one of whom
    [Emperor Tewodros] had even made war with Britain". He added that
    they sent and received embassies, were Christian, and belonged to a
    country with which Russia "had long maintained relations" -
    interesting testimony from an outside source!


    In the Spring of the following year, 1895 Menilek despatched an
    Embassy to Russia. On that occasion his court chronicler, Gabra
    Selassie, wrote of the "friendship between the Ethiopian and Russian
    Empires". The monarch's Swiss adviser and confident Alfred Ilg
    shortly afterwards observed, in July, that the Italians and English
    were both "furious" at Ethiopia's opening up of relations with
    Russia, and went further, declaring that Italy was in consequence
    "contemplating war".
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