By Dr. Richard Pankhurst:-
We saw last week that Tewodros, from the very inception of his reign,
sought the military unification of the Ethiopian empire. Being, as we
saw, in a difficult position to import fire-arms, he soon conceived the
ambitious plan of having them cast in Ethiopia itself.
With a view to improving his military equipment he accepted an offer
by Samuel Gobat, the Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem, in 1855 to send him a
group of young craftsmen from the Chrischona missionary institute near
Basle in Switzerland. These “missionary artisans”, as they were called,
brought him gifts of religious books, for the most part in Amharic, but
as he later acknowledged to his English courtier John Bell, “he would
have been more pleased with a box of English gunpowder than, as he said,
with books he already possessed”.
Tewodros nevertheless treated the missionary craftsmen kindly,
established them near his capital, Dabra Tabor, at the village of Gafat,
where they were joined by a number of other foreigners, several of them
also artisans
“Make Me Cannon and Mortars!”
Not long after their arrival Tewodros ordered them to manufacture
cannon and mortars for him. The missionaries were unskilled in this
field, but had no option but to obey. One of them, Theophilus Waldmeier,
a Swiss, recalls that they were in “great difficulty, and helpless
vis-à-vis the moody king who sent us letter after letter asking whether
our work had succeeded. Time after time we were obliged to give a
negative answer, but the King’s patience was greater than ours; he
comforted us and sent us word; ‘Begin again from the beginning’. This we
did, but in vain”.
The craftsmen nevertheless persevered. “After unspeakable effort”,
says Waldmeier, “we made a final attempt… and, behold, for the first
time we were successful. All the Abyssinians of the area, who had for a
long time laughed at our work, now came to share our joy and to
congratulate us… The King was pleased beyond measure with our little
piece of metal, kissed it and cried, ‘Now I am convinced that it is
possible to make everything in Habesh. Now the art has been discovered
God has at last revealed Himself. Praise and thanks be to Him for it’”.
By the early 1860s, Dufton reported that “all the Europeans” at Gafat
were engaged in this work. One small mortar they had made was “a
marvel”, “considering the manner in which it was made, for “the metal
was melted in thirty crucibles, on fires in the ground, blown by
hand-bellows of the most primitive description – consisting of a leather
bag, the mouth of which is opened on being drawn up for the receipt of
the air, and closed again when the air is to be driven by pressure
through the clay tube conducting to the fire”.
“Working Like Slaves Night and Day”
By 1866, the craftsmen, Waldmeier says, were “working like slaves,
night and day”. The Emperor soon afterwards asked them to cast a cannon
capable of firing a thousand pound shell. “We were afraid to refuse and
were afraid to obey”, the missionary recalls, “but God did not abandon
us…. He let our work succeed”.
Road-Building
Tewodros’s interest in artillery, and the need to transport it, led
him to become his country’s first road-builder. He began the
construction of a rudimentary road network to link Dabra Tabor, with
Gondar, Maqdala, and Gojjam. A foreign observer of this period,
observing the traditional manner in which an Ethiopian ruler encouraged
his men to toil on an enterprise to which he attached importance,
recalls that “from early dawn to late at night” Tewodros was “hard at
work” on the road: “with his own hands he removed stones, levelled the
ground, or helped to fill up ravines. No one could leave so long as he
was there himself; no one would think of eating, or of rest, while the
Emperor showed the example and shared the hardships”.
Land Reform and Conflicts with the Church
Tewodros’s military policies also led him directly into land reform.
Needing land for his troops, he envisaged the extensive expropriation of
church land. This policy brought him into bitter conflict with the
clergy, whom most previous rulers had always sought to woo, and made him
unpopular among many of the faithful.
Dispute with the British Government
Military necessity also brought Tewodros into the dispute with the British Government, which was to lead him to ultimate ruin.
Tewodros, it may be recalled, had originally been on excellent terms
with two Englishmen, John Bell, whom he had appointed Court Chamberlain,
and British consul Plowden, whom he treated as an adviser. Both were
killed in 1860, the former fighting by the Emperor’s side; the latter on
a journey to the coast.
Plowden and his successor, Walter Cameron, had both strongly pressed
Tewodros to renew the Treaty with Britain earlier concluded with Ras Ali
in 1849. The Emperor had, however, demurred, as he felt that the
presence of a British consul, flying the Union Jack, was unprecedented,
and might infringe Ethiopian sovereignty. He preferred instead to
despatch embassies of his own, to Britain, France, and, it is believed,
Russia.
Letter to Queen Victoria
With this objective in mind Tewodros, on 29 October 1862, despatched
two almost identical letters to Queen Victoria and Emperor Napoleon III
of France. Couched in friendly terms they declared that previous
emperors had “forgotten their Creator”, who had accordingly given their
kingdom to the “Gallas”, i.e. Oromo Yejju dynasty, headed by Ras Ali,
and the Turks, then in occupation the Red Sea coast. God, Tewodros
claimed, had however “created” him, lifted him “out of the of the dust”
and “restored” the empire to his rule. Having defeated Ras Ali’s dynasty
he had ordered the Turks to leave the land of his ancestors, but they
had refused: he was therefore going to fight them.
In this letter to Victoria, which was to have important
repercussions, Tewodros went on to recall that Plowden and Bell had both
told him that she was “a great Christian Queen ‘, who “loved
Christians”, and that they could “establish friendship” with her. It was
because they had said this that he had given them his “love”.
Doubtless remembering the previous treaty with Ras Ali, in which the
British Government agreed to “receive and protect” any diplomatic
representative that the ruler of Ethiopia might appoint, and assuming
that it meant what it said, Tewodros went on in his letter to declare
that the Turks at the coast were denying him passage by sea, and that he
was therefore unable to despatch the ambassador he wished to send to
England. He therefore asked where his envoy should send the gifts he
wished to send, and appealed to Victoria to “stand by” him, “the
Christian”, at a time when “the Muslim”, i.e. the Turks, threatened to
attack him.
This letter, though largely general in character, served to support
several very specific requests, which Tewodros had made to Cameron
orally, namely that the British should (1) receive an embassy from
Ethiopia; (2) enable his envoys to pass through hostile Turkish and
Egyptian territory; (3) prevent the incursion of the Turkish fleet in
neighbouring Red Sea waters; (4) help him purchase fire-arms; and (5)
obtain an engineer to build roads.
Consul Cameron and the Letter
Tewodros requested Cameron to take the letter to England in person,
but the consul chose instead to sent it by messenger. The latter also
carried a cover letter in which Cameron assured the British Government
that craftsmen Tewodros requested from Britain should have no fear of
living in Ethiopia, for the missionaries already working for the king
were “very liberally” treated.
The two letters reached London on 12 February 1863, but did not meet
with the British Government’s approval were not considered of much
importance. The British at that time were strong supporters of the
Ottoman Empire, which they regarded as a potential ally against the
Russians, then perceived as threatening Britain’s position in India. The
Foreign Office had therefore no wish to become involved, on Ethiopia’s
behalf, in a conflict with Turkey. No reply was therefore returned to
the Emperor’s message, which the Foreign Office merely forwarded to the
India Office, which then filed it away.
Cameron’s letter, for its part, was not answered until 22 April 1863,
when the Foreign Secretary, Earl Russell, despatched an unsympathetic
response. He declared that it was “not desirable for Her Majesty’s
Agents to meddle in the affairs of Abyssinia”, and that Cameron should
return to the port of Massawa, and remain there “until further orders” –
in other words until what the Romanians call the “Easter of the
Horses”.
Source: http://www.linkethiopia.org
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