By Dr. Richard Pankhurst:-
Foreign Drinks – and Drunkenness
We saw last week that foreign alcoholic drinks gained increasing
popularity in Menilek’s day. This impression, based on the reports of
foreign travellers, is fully confirmed in the subsequent writings of
Alaqa Lamma Haylu’s son, Maaza Lamma. Discussing this development as a
temperance advocate, he recalls that this was a time when a brisk trade
in spirits, particularly araki, or brandy, was carried out by Greeks,
who were also the first distillers on a commercial basis. Many
Ethiopians were at this time introduced to a wide variety of foreign
wines and spirits, among then champagne, marsala, and malaga, rum and
absinthe, mastica, ouso and cognac, pernot and whiskey.
A certain increase in the city’s drunkenness, according to Maaza
Lamma, was also reported, though good old Menilek is said to have
attempted to hold it in check.
Menilek, Tolerant of Tobacco
The old Ethiopian prohibitions on smoking, to which reference was
made in an earlier article, came to an end in the Menilek period. The
French traveller Jules Borelli, writing in August 1886, stated that the
prohibition was then no longer a formal one, and that Menilek (unlike
Emperor Yohannes in the past) showed himself “very tolerant” towards the
use of tobacco.
Tradition has it that Menilek introduced toleration of smoking, by
telling his men that they could smoke provided they did not do so
openly. Before leaving on an expedition for Debra Tabor, which was under
the jurisdiction of the Emperor Yohannes, he thus gave the
diplomatically couched command:
“Your vice under your loins,
“Your provisions on your donkey.”
A subsequent British Consul, C.H. Walker, gave a slightly different
version of Menilek’s injunction, namely. “Keep thy habit in thy
waist-band, thy food upon thy donkey.”
It was still customary, however, to refrain from smoking while in the presence of the Emperor.
Foreign Textiles
The story of the penetration of foreign textiles reveals an
interesting dichotomy between the need to import supplies from abroad,
and the reluctance to accept innovation. Though imported cloth was in
some areas gradually adopted for the manufacture of certain items of
clothing, the shamma, or toga, was at this time still invariably made of
local material. At the turn of the century the British traveller
Augustus B. Wylde emphatically stated: “All shammas . . . are made of . .
. locally grown cotton.”
Despite the general increase in cotton imports during the Menilek
period resistance to innovation may be seen at the turn of the century
in the tendency where possible to import thread rather than finished
cloth. This enabled the imported material to be woven in a traditional
manner on local looms. A British consular report for 1905-1906 thus
significantly observes: “Owing to the ease of introducing the cheap
imported thread into the web in a native loom, the sale of the imported
shamma is decreasing.”
The result, as the Georgian physician Dr. Merab reported, was that
the typical Addis Ababa dweller of the 1920′s, wore trousers made of
imported cloth, but locally woven shammas.
Singer Sewing Machines
An important innovation in the field of dressmaking was the advent of
the Singer sewing machine in the early twentieth century. The British
consular report for 1905-1906 states that 9,600 Maria Theresa dollars’
worth of sewing machines were imported that year via Harar, and that
Ethiopians were then “just beginning” to use these machines. Shortly
afterwards, in 1909, Singer established a branch in Addis Ababa, and was
soon afterwards supplying not only the capital, but also Harar, Dessie,
Gore and Gondar. Hundreds of Singer machines were sold for 150 Maria
Theresa dollars each, payable over many months. Three different types of
German machine were also on sale prior to World War 1.
The tailors, who thus rapidly adopted machinery, were usually
installed in the open air in full view of their clients; sometimes the
former placed themselves in an open shed, sometimes under an overhanging
roof.
Singer machines were soon so well established, Dr Merab states, that
by his day the tic-tic-tic of their needles had long ceased to terrify
or surprise the passer-by.
European Dress
Despite the large quantity of imported textiles, and the rapid
introduction of the sewing machine, European dress was slow to win
acceptance. Innovation, curiously enough, seems to have started at the
top of the body and to have only slowly made its way down. Wylde,
writing at the turn of the century, thus noted: “The Abyssinian is
beginning to take to European clothes on the upper part of his body,
such as shirts, coats and waistcoats, but as yet he has not adopted the
lower garments, and in the transition change he looks a curious and
grotesque object. European hats are getting very common, and are
generally of the bowler, wideawake or Terai patterns, and have nearly
superseded the straw and grass-made hats of the nearly identical
European shape.”
Ethiopian women, on the other hand, seem to have clung more to the
old head-gear, for Wylde, writing of the Menilek period, says:
“Some of the women still wear these straw hats, and when nicely made
and placed jauntily on a well-shaped head and shading a pretty face do
not look at all bad.”
Very few persons indeed are said to have, at this time, adopted
European clothing in its entirety. Merab, for example, estimates that,
excluding servants employed in European houses, there were by 1909 not
more than a hundred Ethiopians with European dress.
Elsewhere he gives it as his opinion that in the capital there were
only about 50 Ethiopians wearing European type trousers, mostly of
khaki.
The practice of wearing shoes was also slow to be accepted. Dr Merab
states that Menilek only began wearing them late in life, while Lij Yasu
was often seen barefoot on official occasions, though he also
frequently wore pumps or slippers. Ordinary Ethiopians, according to the
same autority, went without shoes, even in the rainy season when they
had to traverse much mud. Sandals were, however, frequently worn, and in
the three or four years prior to 1910, a new type appeared on the
market with a piece of leather at the front and back to cover toes and
heels rather like shoes.
Housing
The early years of the twentieth century witnessed the beginnings of
European type housing. Dr Merab states that between 1908 and 1913 about a
hundred such houses were constructed in the capital, mainly by Indians,
Greeks, and Italians. By the latter year, however, there were not more
than two hundred modern type houses, as against perhaps twelve to
fourteen thousand of traditional form. Foreign type housing was,
however, monopolised by Europeans and Armenians; and the only Ethiopians
to abandon Ethiopian type housing were the Emperor, three or four Rases
or Dejazmaches and Negadras Haile Giyorgis.
The first brick factory was set up outside in 1907. and three others
were established shortly afterwards, the enterprise being either Greek
or Italian.
Even more significant was the introduction of corrugated iron
sheeting, the use of which began to be considerable soon after the
Jibuti railway reached Dire Dawa at the end of 1902. A British Consular
report noted that, though corrugated iron had been unknown at the dawn
of the century, its import had increased considerably immediately prior
to the trade year 1905-1906 when it was estimated that 50,000 sheets had
been purchased. By 1911 no less than 555 tons of galvanised iron are
stated to have been imported via Jibuti.
The growth of Addis Ababa and the development of communications, both
of which have been described in earlier articles, led to a general
increase in the number and range of imported goods reaching the major
Ethiopian markets. The British traveller Percy Powell-Cotton, writing of
the Addis Ababa market at the turn of the century, for example, says
that “one long alley was entirely devoted to cotton goods from America,
India and Manchester.
Foreign Drugs
The traditional Ethiopian interest in foreign medicine resulted in a
steady increase in the import of foreign drugs. Dr. Merab, who opened
the first Addis Ababa pharmacy on December 1, 1910, states that all
European and Indian groceries in the capital stocked such items as
iodide of potassium, Ricord’s pills, quinine, castor oil, Epsom’s salts,
laudanum, phenic acid, a large number of balms and anti-septic cotton.
And Church Paintings…
An interesting development, which was discerned by another British
traveller, Herbert Vivian at the turn of the century, was the advent of
Italian paintings in the Churches, hitherto as we have seen, a preserve
of Orthodoxy.
The pasting of such imported trash over historic church murals was a
vile habit, which was to become increasingly common in later years, and
one against which we should all protest!
Imported Amharic Bibles also became somewhat more common in this
period. Their introduction received warm support from Emperor Menilek.
Source: http://www.linkethiopia.org
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