Addis Tribune (Addis Ababa)
Sept 3 2004
Ethiopia’s Links With the Outside World, 1
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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”.