This came from another thread asking about a Greater Ethiopia.
I wrote a scenario of this once. I sold the story, so cannot entirely reprint it here (even though they're sitting on and not publishing it at the moment), but I know more now than I did, so can rewrite it better. Here's the sketch.
As stated elsewhere, the problem for getting a prosperous Ethiopia is irregular food production, and trade. Land-based trade is slow because of the mountainous terrain of Ethiopia itself, and sea-based trade impossible since Moslems control the East African ports within reach of Ethiopia. Historically Ethiopia spent a lot of time fighting Moslem chieftains. So the PoD is that this fighting is over earlier.
BEGINNINGS
Emperor Fasiladas II by the early 1740s has put down the last of the significant Islamic chieftains, uniting the country. Though he had already been crowned by the Bishop of Ethiopia, in 1747 he had the Patriarch of Alexandria come to Gondar to crown him. He did this for two reasons - to signal that he wished to bring the Ethiopian Coptic Church closer to the Egyptian Coptic, and thus the Orthodox Church generally (bringing Ethiopia religiously closer to Europe), and because spectacle impresses; being crowned by a Patriarch is more impressive than being crowned by a Bishop.
He sent out ambassadors to what he considered the important countries of the world, including Venice and the Moghuls of India. They returned with tales of fabulous wealth, wealth based on trade and commerce with other lands. Venice sent an engineer, once Vincente Triconti (fictional). He surveyed Ethiopia from 1750-52 and reported that Ethiopia ought to build a port at Djibouti. Of course Ethiopia lacked the funds and expertise to do this.
At this time a new rebellion rose up in the Ogadeen, the Somali eastern region of Ethiopia. This took until 1755 to put down, and Fasiladas II enslaved a good part of the population, using them as labour for a "brute force" approach to engineering a port, under the sueprvision of Triconti. Then came contacts with the British East India company. They wanted ports along East Africa, those of Portugese Mozambique not always being available to them with the ups and downs of international affairs. They offered to supply funds for the port building in exchange for favourable trade concessions, etc. Clive's victories in India (1756-60) increased the Company's holdings there, making an East African port more important.
By 1764, the port was completed, more or less, and Ethiopia heavily indebted to the Company. Still, the port and its trade had brought wealth. While the port was without taxes and tariffs, the goods passing through inland and out were bought and sold throughout the country, and that could be taxed, as well as the commoners, etc. So the revenues available to Fasiladas II increased, and actual coin supply was assured by the Company.
These revenues, and of course the slave labour, were used in strengthening the defences of Gondar, and in building canals about Lake Tana (35km south of Gondar, and one of the sources of the Nile) to make easier travel and transport, and grow more crops. By 1790 the Lake Tana region grew half the country's grains and fodder, letting the population increase, and devote labour to things beyond subsistence.
PLASSEY AND GLORY
During this time the Company had raised three regiments of Ethiopians for the defence of Djibouti. During the Company's 1765 troubles in India, Fasiladas II insisted that each English officer be "assisted" by an Ethiopian officer. The Company viewed this as a meaningless gesture, at worst a slight annoyance, and agreed; it also smoothed the troubled waters of the Emperor's Rases, who were unhappy at the number of foreign "advisors" at Fasiladas II's court. He then offered Djibouti's three regiments for service in India. He reasoned that either they would do badly, in which case he could blame the English and soothe the anger of his Rases, or they would do well, in which case he could claim glory and subdue both his Rases and the Company.
Regarded as expendable, the Ethiopian Contingent sent to India ahead of the rest of the Company regiments to Plassey. About half the British officers took their leave (this did happen from time to time), but the Ethiopians and their officers stayed. 2,858 officers and men, 23 of them British, thus stood against 27,000 Moghuls, with primitvie cannon, sabers, and elephants. One Colonel Cathcart commanded, at his side, Colonel Ras Temusen. Plassey was expected to hold a week; when the main contingent of the Company’s Indian soldiers arrived six weeks later, only 321 men, and 4 officers remained, all of which, Ethiopian (including Temusen’s deputy, Shedros). Cathcart and Temusen were lauded for their courage, and years later Kipling wrote a poem concerning the Stand at Plassey. As much as the British naturally focused on their own heroism, the Company men, at least, found a respect for the men of Ethiopia.
The surviving officers and men returned to Djibouti to great acclaim and praise; Fasiladas made Shedros General of the Armies of Ethiopia, and together they set about organising the new army. This was to be a national one, uniform in equipment and dress, beholden only to the Emperor. He first tested this on a mission into Kenya, the Turkana Campaign (1773-79), where he subdued many of the local chieftans and made them swear allegiance to him. This was a messy business, and claimed some 25,000 Ethiopian lives, particularly in the March On Lake Turkana (1773, across swampy lands not meant for marching), and Galana River (1776-78, down a river valley, stopped with many falls, ambush sites, and such). Arriving at Killindini in 1779, the Ethiopian soldiers were startled to see flying from the town’s center a Union Jack; hearing of them coming, the British had decided to establish a presence to “welcome” them.
Ethiopian control of Kenya was hardly complete, but, seeing the wealth generated by civilised colonists among savages in the European and New Worlds, he was determined to emulate it; as soon as 1780, the first few colonists arrived, bringing cattle on to the fertile plains of the Masai. That this led to great bloodshed amongst the natives cannot be denied; in any case, many were hauled off into slavery.
Fasiladas II had been much disconcerted by being unable to use his great numbers of cavalry (old style, it’s true) in the Kenyan Campaign, and so one of his final acts was to order (1782) the construction of a vast road linking Gondar, Djibouti, and Kenya’s provincial capital, Killindini. As he lay on his deathbed (1785), he saw a vision of Christ, asking him to show mercy to those who would believe, and so he ordered Coptic missionaries into Kenya.
Fasiladas’ other legacy to his people was thus a vast debt. Though by taxes (which at the semi-nomadic and agricultural stage of much of his people could not raise much cash), tariffs, custom duties and port fees, not to mention the profitable transport of ivory, coffee and slaves from the interior – though by these means the equivalent of seven and a half millions pounds sterling had been raised in the thirty years between 1755 and 1785, the Gondar canals, the Djibouti port, and not least, the Kenyan Campaign, had cost over twice that sum. The difference was made up largely by the British East India Company, Fasiladas having regarded their alliance as a large money-jar for him.
EGYPT
His son, Tewodros II (reg. 1785-1809) came to power at only fifteen years of age, and was greatly influenced at first by his mother; then, after her death by the hand of an unknown poisoner, by one of his Rases, Ras Tellefi. Ras Tellefi he appointed Court Chancellor (1787, probably at Tellefi’s own urging). Tellefi was the voice of the nobles, and the various Rases were allowed many freedoms, and tax exemptions. To please the nobility, Tewodros contracted further debts to the British in acquiring from them some half-dozen Ships of the Line (1788), of very much the older sort. These hardly ventured out of port, except for Gun Salutes and such, for the next five years. The British came to reclaim them for the sake of their war with the French, but found them in such poor condition as to be not worth the trouble. In 1798 Tewodros finally married, and his wife, Makeda, proved a differing influence on him; Chancellor Tellefi was found guilty of embezzlement of the Imperial Treasury, and dragged off to be beheaded.
The ships were repaired as best could be, the privileges of the nobility slowly returned to what they were in Fasiladas II’s day, and the position of the Emperor strengthened. Plots and conspiracies abounded; other heads joined Tellefi’s in the roll. Then Napoleon came to Egypt. Tewodros knew the place to be vital to the British, and remembering his father’s tales of the days when Ethiopians ruled Egypt, he sent a force of some eight thousand, escorted by the remaining functioning four Ships of the Line. Landing at Suez in 1799, the eight thousand under Tewodros II himself (“advised” by several officers, notably a former British Rear Admiral Dempsey, now retired from the Royal Navy and working as Shipmaster in the Company), marched to Cairo.
There they were pretty soundly defeated by the French, and retreated in some confusion to Suez. The British were surprised by this effort, which was unasked for, and unwanted, but which it would nonetheless be churlish not to show gratitude for. In any case, defeat though it was, it had some small effect on the campaign, tying down several thousand of Napoleon’s troops in the south of the country, and making the British victory easier. After spending an unpleasant two years in Suez, upon the flight of Napoleon, the Ethiopians marched on Cairo. The fight was bloody, the French troops being unwilling to surrender to Africans, but in the end, Tewodros II was victorious. He immediately raised the Ethiopian lion rampant over Cairo, and Dempsey, alarmed, sent messengers to Nelson in Alexandria. Nelson asked for an “audience” with the Emperor, and, through translators, politely informed Tewodros that the British would not permit an annexation of Egypt by Tewodros. He could, however, leave his garrison there, in Cairo, under a British officer, and could treat Egypt as part of Ethiopia in terms of trade; British tariffs and dues were not to adhere there. Tewodros was impetuous and weak, but not stupid, and so readily agreed to this.
"SOLOMON TO HIS DAVID"
Tewodros III (reg 1809-1859) was a well-educated man of thirty years when he came to the throne, having been taught by the scholars who lingered about the Court of his father, and who had also travelled on the Egyptian Campaign. He shared the view of Empire held by the British Liberals of the time, essentially, “we are here just until we’ve made the natives civilised like us.” He travelled widely in the Ethiopian lands, and saw that the government’s hold on much of the country was tentative at best. He resolved to be the Solomon to his father’s David; what his father had wrought by the sword, he would till with the plow.
His reign can be characterised by its four main Proclamations. The first one (1810) sent garrisons of Amharic-speaking Oromo Coptics out to the Sudan, and Kenya. They were encouraged to settle there to live after their military service. Colonists were encouraged to the Masai to graze cattle. There were many Moslem-Christian clashes at this time, but no leader arose, and a series of minor alliances, assisting one petty Kenya or Sudanese chieftain against the other, kept the Rift Valley more or less safe for trade and travel - as safe as the Red Sea was from priacy, anyway. A unified system of laws, weights and measures of course caused further clashes, but also provided some unity between the settlers and metropolitan Ethiopia.
In the second Proclamation (1818), canals were extended from the Nile across the Sudan. This encouraged the nomads to be more settled and agricultural; not an immediate or dramatic effect, but a significant one nonetheless. All towns were to have Crown grain stores, to give some stability to the food supply, the Crown issuing special depreciating money for acquisition of the grain (the money dropped in value at the same rate grain would decay in store), this gave a money supply to the poorer towns. Perhaps the most significant act historically was that Tewodros III got the Patriarch of Alexandria to issue an edict that the Coptic Christian was to bathe regularly; this greatly improved the health of the people, and improved community as people gathered in public baths.
The third Proclamation arose from the pressure Tewodros III was feeling from senior merchants, etc, to industrialise the country, bring in railways and the like. He sent people to inspect the factories of Britain, and was horrified by the tales of grinding poverty amidst great production, sooty air and the like (certainly these tales were exaggerated by his somewhat racist advisors). He also noted the republican and nationalistic tumult across Europe around 1848, and how much of this tumult came from impoverished industrial workers, and of course saw also the Potato Famine, which his advisors attributed from a few wealthy owning most of the land, and from the poor relying on only one crop.
He recognised that some degree of industrialisation could not be prevented, and so he sought to control it. His Proclamation thus contained provisions that only individuals or the Crown could own property; that no common person may own more than one hundred acres of land (but nobles could own more, of course), each area of land must have at least seven different crops (or animals) on it; that no workplace could employ more than one hundred people, or have steam-driven machinery providing more than one hundred horsepower; and that taxes should be one-tenth the income of any person (regardless of whether they made a "profit" or not).
This produced an industrial revolution in Ethiopia which was small in scale, and dstributed across the whole country. The rate of growth of wealth was small, but spread out. Of course, slavery remained; insignificant in metropolitan Ethiopia, but very important in the Sudan and Kenya, and in building yet more roads and canals for the Crown. However, by 1856 with the Royal Navy's shelling of Zanzibar, Tewodros III got the message, and abolished the slave trade, though not slavery itself; this was the fourth Proclamation. The slave trade was abolished, and the children of slaves born from that date in metropolitan Ethiopia, and the children of the children of slaves in the Sudan and Kenya, would be free. So the last slave in Ethiopia proper would die about 1900, and about 1925 in the colonies; slavery would cease to be a significant part of the economy by about 1880. The depressed revenues from no more sale of slaves by the Crown was the most significant economic effect.
When the British Crown took over theIndian holdings of the Company in 1859, they took over Djibouti, as well; it became a sort of Hong Kong in Africa.
Overall, Tewodros III can be said to have achieved his ambition to be Solomon to his father's David. He died peacefully in his bed.
THE FALL
Tewodros IV (reg 1859-62) was more martial in intent, and invaded Yemen. This was an unmitigated disaster. He didn't survive long, since his father had lived so long, he himself was sixty-two when he came to the throne, and in poor health.
Tewodros V (reg 1862) had a brief reign of but eighty days. Under the influence of some French merchants, he wished to abolish various of the Proclamations, allowing for corporations, and so on – French ones, naturally. At this, the British Consul in Djibouti called on the garrison there to act. While the British would be happy to see most of the restrictions disappear, the idea that the French should be the ones to gain most from it distressed them. And so, the garrison marched on Gondar. Before they came within fifty miles of the place, Tewodros V was dead, killed by a group of nobles, alarmed at excessive foreign influence, whether French or British. They formed a Crown Council to appoint a new Emperor (Tewodros V hadn’t even had time to marry and produce heirs), and appointed the most inoffensive, unambitious man they could find.
Fasiladas III (reg 1863-87) found his country now subject to the British. A Resident in Gondar "advised", and essentially controlled Ethiopia's foreign affairs and trade. This was the period of "Orientalising"of the Ethiopian Crown, where the Emperor withdrew from public view, and became a figure more metaphorical than political, more symbolic than active. Ethiopia was effectively a British colony. Thus, there was no opposition to German acquisition of Tanganiyaka (1885); this land was nominally Ethiopian, but had never been really settled, there being more than enough land in Kenya.
Fasiladas IV (reg 1888-1895) was the closeted nephew of Fasiladas III, dim of mind and weak of body, and did nothing of note during his reign. When the Italians sought to supplant British influence in Ethiopia so as to acquire trading righs in Eritrea, Fasiladas IV was murdered in a palace coup by his Chancellor, who ascended to the throne as Haille I after being appointed Emperor by the Crown Council.
Haille I (reg 1896-1908) was a capable and intelligent man, but lacking much legitimacy in the eyes of the Rases and the country, faced rebellions. The Rases' War (1896-1899) was only won, ironically, by the assistance of Italian officers, the British not willing to offer much help, busy as they were with Chinese affairs. An Italian Resident (Alfredo Benedetti) was appointed by Haille I in early 1900, but had to be removed three months later when the almost-forgotten Cairo Garrison (still under a British officer, and much enriched by years of corruption in Egypt) appeared in Djibouti, threatening to march on Gondar. For ten days Haille I refused to dismiss him, and Ethiopia seemed balance on a precipice. The Benedetti Incident brought Italy and Britain to the brink of war (as the Fashoda Incident had brought France and Britain close to war a few years earlier).
The Benedetti Incident was resolved in favour of Britain, Benedetti retiring from Gondar to an estate in Tuscany, and the Cairo Garrison remaining in Djibouti (officially withdrawing from Egypt) to influence by their wealth and corruption affairs there. This incident caused Italy to resent and distrust the British, pushing them closer to Germany and Austria, and ensured that they would honour their alliance with them in future affairs.
The Rases' War and the Benedetti Incident resolved, Haille I looked weak, and this caused another uprising by the Somali Moslems in the Ogadeen and northern Kenya. The revolt spread to the remaining slaves in Kenya (though the children of the children of slaves were to be free, it seemed that under the guidance of the Oromo settlers, quite a few old slave women were mysteriously having children in their advanced age). That there was no great leader of the rebellion meant it was bound to fail, but also meant that small parts of it continued to flare up for some time. At any rate, it saw the final abolition of slavery (1906), the only real accomplishment for which Haille I is remembered. But he is also remembered for the great butchery of the Somalis and Masai, which is on a scale with the Turk butchery of the Armenians in 1919. Historians have called this "the African Holocaust," during which perhaps some two million Somalis and Masai were killed (the number is much under dispute, as censuses were never taken of nomads).
The Rases' War crushed the power of the nobility; the Benedetti Incident established British primacy in the Horn of Africa; and the Great Rebellion freed the slaves.
On his death in 1908, the Crown Council returned to the old imperial line, and brought forth a nephew of Fasiladas IV to reign as Fasiladas V (reg 1908-22).
THE GREAT WAR
Fasiladas V had a difficult reign, facing rebuilding the country after twelve years of conflict. He had not the slaves for cheap construction, nor he himself the education, of his forebears. Ethiopia looked nervously as Italy expanded into Libya, but with the Cairo Garrison in Djibouti, had no means, political, economic or military, of opposing it.
When it came to the Great War, the old Benedetti Incident was fresh in the minds of Italy, causing them to honour their treaty with the Germans and Austrians, and join in against France and Britain. Ethiopia made a pro forma declaration of war, and the British Abyssinian Division brought out of India saw service in Egypt against the Turks. A short spell in France in 1915 led to many illnesses due to the climate, and they were withdrawn for more Levantine service. Like the Indians, their contribution to the Great War is largely forgotten by the West.
The pro forma declaration of war came back to haunt Fasiladas V as von Leetow's Askaris raided into Kenya for supplies. Regiments were hastily raised and sent forth to fight him, and were defeated. In 1917, the Ethiopians placed their forces under British command, and advances were made into German East Africa. Von Leetow withdrew into Portugese Mozambique, and surrendered in June 1918 six months earlier than OTL).
In Europe, Italy's contribution to the Central Powers' war effort was not a great one overall. They fairly quickly overran French Savoy, but the lines stablised around the Rhone, and the price for Italy's success there was the loss of her Navy to the British. An Anglo-French landing at Sicily in April 1915 (setting aside another plan to land at the Dardanelles) overran that island by December 1915. A landing at Otranto - along with a brigade from the British Abyssinian Division - in March 1916 and a quick breakout by the Allies caused Italy to offer an Armistice in December 1916. They then became neutral in the war, but thanks to Austrian forces in their north, this was a neutrality benevolent towards the Allies, like that of Greece. War continued in Italy's north, without the contribution of Italian troops, who all remained south of the Po.
After the capitulation of the Italians, the last Ethiopian troops were withdrawn from Italy, for service against the Turks.
In late 1916 Karl came to the Austrian throne, and offered peace to the Allies. [In OTL, this peace chance was scuttled by the ambitions of the Italians; the Italian foreign minister told the Germans the Austrian offer. This would not be possible here.] A status quo ante bellum was accepted, and in December 1917, one month after the Bolshevik Revolution, as Germany signed the humiliating-to-Russia peace of Brest-Litovsk, Austria withdrew from the war. Hungary broke away (1917 being the time for renewal of the 1867 Compromise) and became a republic, still at war with (what was left of) Serbia and Russia, though in December 1917 there was a ceasefire with the Russians.
With the Austrians and Italians and Russians out of the war, Germany was able to concentrate its forces on the Western Front. The Germans' Operation Michael, launched in March 1918, succeeded in its initial aims and reached Paris in late May 1918. While the German offensive had split the British Army to the north, and the French Army to the south, the forces reaching Paris were the tip of a long salient into France. Foch ordered a co-ordinated attack from the French and British, to cut off the salient, leaving the Germans enricled at the Seine; the Americans agreed to come at Paris from the West. Pershing proudly announced that he would be the anvil for their hammer.
The offensive succeeded, and 225,000 Germans surrendered at Paris and around it in August 1918. The Allies followed this offensive up, and Italy joined in the war on the Allied side. In October 1918, with a general collapse of their army in the west, the Germans offered an Armistice. This was to begin at 10am on the 10th of October 1918.
VERSAILLES AND THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS
With the oft-repeated Wilsonian principles of "self-determination for all peoples" in their minds, the Ethiopians enthusiastically joined in the Versailles Conference. There were decided all the familiar questions, and in the League of Nations Ethiopia was granted a Mandate over German East Africa. Under Fasiladas V, this quickly became a second wave of colonisation, as the Crown could not afford to grant their soldiers pensions, but could grant them lands to settle.
The British Resident was officially retired in 1922 with the death of Fasiladas V, but British business interests remained paramount there. Paradoxically, Tewedoros III's old proclamation not allowing corporations to own property, only individuals and the Crown, actually increased British influence in the economy, as of course treaties meant that Ethiopian law did not apply to British citizens. The largest businesses in Ethiopia were British, and vast cattle estates were owned by them. Still, great wealth was spread about the country by the lightly-industrialised country, which was still entirely without railways, electricity and the like, but well-served by roads and canals.
I wrote a scenario of this once. I sold the story, so cannot entirely reprint it here (even though they're sitting on and not publishing it at the moment), but I know more now than I did, so can rewrite it better. Here's the sketch.
As stated elsewhere, the problem for getting a prosperous Ethiopia is irregular food production, and trade. Land-based trade is slow because of the mountainous terrain of Ethiopia itself, and sea-based trade impossible since Moslems control the East African ports within reach of Ethiopia. Historically Ethiopia spent a lot of time fighting Moslem chieftains. So the PoD is that this fighting is over earlier.
BEGINNINGS
Emperor Fasiladas II by the early 1740s has put down the last of the significant Islamic chieftains, uniting the country. Though he had already been crowned by the Bishop of Ethiopia, in 1747 he had the Patriarch of Alexandria come to Gondar to crown him. He did this for two reasons - to signal that he wished to bring the Ethiopian Coptic Church closer to the Egyptian Coptic, and thus the Orthodox Church generally (bringing Ethiopia religiously closer to Europe), and because spectacle impresses; being crowned by a Patriarch is more impressive than being crowned by a Bishop.
He sent out ambassadors to what he considered the important countries of the world, including Venice and the Moghuls of India. They returned with tales of fabulous wealth, wealth based on trade and commerce with other lands. Venice sent an engineer, once Vincente Triconti (fictional). He surveyed Ethiopia from 1750-52 and reported that Ethiopia ought to build a port at Djibouti. Of course Ethiopia lacked the funds and expertise to do this.
At this time a new rebellion rose up in the Ogadeen, the Somali eastern region of Ethiopia. This took until 1755 to put down, and Fasiladas II enslaved a good part of the population, using them as labour for a "brute force" approach to engineering a port, under the sueprvision of Triconti. Then came contacts with the British East India company. They wanted ports along East Africa, those of Portugese Mozambique not always being available to them with the ups and downs of international affairs. They offered to supply funds for the port building in exchange for favourable trade concessions, etc. Clive's victories in India (1756-60) increased the Company's holdings there, making an East African port more important.
By 1764, the port was completed, more or less, and Ethiopia heavily indebted to the Company. Still, the port and its trade had brought wealth. While the port was without taxes and tariffs, the goods passing through inland and out were bought and sold throughout the country, and that could be taxed, as well as the commoners, etc. So the revenues available to Fasiladas II increased, and actual coin supply was assured by the Company.
These revenues, and of course the slave labour, were used in strengthening the defences of Gondar, and in building canals about Lake Tana (35km south of Gondar, and one of the sources of the Nile) to make easier travel and transport, and grow more crops. By 1790 the Lake Tana region grew half the country's grains and fodder, letting the population increase, and devote labour to things beyond subsistence.
PLASSEY AND GLORY
During this time the Company had raised three regiments of Ethiopians for the defence of Djibouti. During the Company's 1765 troubles in India, Fasiladas II insisted that each English officer be "assisted" by an Ethiopian officer. The Company viewed this as a meaningless gesture, at worst a slight annoyance, and agreed; it also smoothed the troubled waters of the Emperor's Rases, who were unhappy at the number of foreign "advisors" at Fasiladas II's court. He then offered Djibouti's three regiments for service in India. He reasoned that either they would do badly, in which case he could blame the English and soothe the anger of his Rases, or they would do well, in which case he could claim glory and subdue both his Rases and the Company.
Regarded as expendable, the Ethiopian Contingent sent to India ahead of the rest of the Company regiments to Plassey. About half the British officers took their leave (this did happen from time to time), but the Ethiopians and their officers stayed. 2,858 officers and men, 23 of them British, thus stood against 27,000 Moghuls, with primitvie cannon, sabers, and elephants. One Colonel Cathcart commanded, at his side, Colonel Ras Temusen. Plassey was expected to hold a week; when the main contingent of the Company’s Indian soldiers arrived six weeks later, only 321 men, and 4 officers remained, all of which, Ethiopian (including Temusen’s deputy, Shedros). Cathcart and Temusen were lauded for their courage, and years later Kipling wrote a poem concerning the Stand at Plassey. As much as the British naturally focused on their own heroism, the Company men, at least, found a respect for the men of Ethiopia.
The surviving officers and men returned to Djibouti to great acclaim and praise; Fasiladas made Shedros General of the Armies of Ethiopia, and together they set about organising the new army. This was to be a national one, uniform in equipment and dress, beholden only to the Emperor. He first tested this on a mission into Kenya, the Turkana Campaign (1773-79), where he subdued many of the local chieftans and made them swear allegiance to him. This was a messy business, and claimed some 25,000 Ethiopian lives, particularly in the March On Lake Turkana (1773, across swampy lands not meant for marching), and Galana River (1776-78, down a river valley, stopped with many falls, ambush sites, and such). Arriving at Killindini in 1779, the Ethiopian soldiers were startled to see flying from the town’s center a Union Jack; hearing of them coming, the British had decided to establish a presence to “welcome” them.
Ethiopian control of Kenya was hardly complete, but, seeing the wealth generated by civilised colonists among savages in the European and New Worlds, he was determined to emulate it; as soon as 1780, the first few colonists arrived, bringing cattle on to the fertile plains of the Masai. That this led to great bloodshed amongst the natives cannot be denied; in any case, many were hauled off into slavery.
Fasiladas II had been much disconcerted by being unable to use his great numbers of cavalry (old style, it’s true) in the Kenyan Campaign, and so one of his final acts was to order (1782) the construction of a vast road linking Gondar, Djibouti, and Kenya’s provincial capital, Killindini. As he lay on his deathbed (1785), he saw a vision of Christ, asking him to show mercy to those who would believe, and so he ordered Coptic missionaries into Kenya.
Fasiladas’ other legacy to his people was thus a vast debt. Though by taxes (which at the semi-nomadic and agricultural stage of much of his people could not raise much cash), tariffs, custom duties and port fees, not to mention the profitable transport of ivory, coffee and slaves from the interior – though by these means the equivalent of seven and a half millions pounds sterling had been raised in the thirty years between 1755 and 1785, the Gondar canals, the Djibouti port, and not least, the Kenyan Campaign, had cost over twice that sum. The difference was made up largely by the British East India Company, Fasiladas having regarded their alliance as a large money-jar for him.
EGYPT
His son, Tewodros II (reg. 1785-1809) came to power at only fifteen years of age, and was greatly influenced at first by his mother; then, after her death by the hand of an unknown poisoner, by one of his Rases, Ras Tellefi. Ras Tellefi he appointed Court Chancellor (1787, probably at Tellefi’s own urging). Tellefi was the voice of the nobles, and the various Rases were allowed many freedoms, and tax exemptions. To please the nobility, Tewodros contracted further debts to the British in acquiring from them some half-dozen Ships of the Line (1788), of very much the older sort. These hardly ventured out of port, except for Gun Salutes and such, for the next five years. The British came to reclaim them for the sake of their war with the French, but found them in such poor condition as to be not worth the trouble. In 1798 Tewodros finally married, and his wife, Makeda, proved a differing influence on him; Chancellor Tellefi was found guilty of embezzlement of the Imperial Treasury, and dragged off to be beheaded.
The ships were repaired as best could be, the privileges of the nobility slowly returned to what they were in Fasiladas II’s day, and the position of the Emperor strengthened. Plots and conspiracies abounded; other heads joined Tellefi’s in the roll. Then Napoleon came to Egypt. Tewodros knew the place to be vital to the British, and remembering his father’s tales of the days when Ethiopians ruled Egypt, he sent a force of some eight thousand, escorted by the remaining functioning four Ships of the Line. Landing at Suez in 1799, the eight thousand under Tewodros II himself (“advised” by several officers, notably a former British Rear Admiral Dempsey, now retired from the Royal Navy and working as Shipmaster in the Company), marched to Cairo.
There they were pretty soundly defeated by the French, and retreated in some confusion to Suez. The British were surprised by this effort, which was unasked for, and unwanted, but which it would nonetheless be churlish not to show gratitude for. In any case, defeat though it was, it had some small effect on the campaign, tying down several thousand of Napoleon’s troops in the south of the country, and making the British victory easier. After spending an unpleasant two years in Suez, upon the flight of Napoleon, the Ethiopians marched on Cairo. The fight was bloody, the French troops being unwilling to surrender to Africans, but in the end, Tewodros II was victorious. He immediately raised the Ethiopian lion rampant over Cairo, and Dempsey, alarmed, sent messengers to Nelson in Alexandria. Nelson asked for an “audience” with the Emperor, and, through translators, politely informed Tewodros that the British would not permit an annexation of Egypt by Tewodros. He could, however, leave his garrison there, in Cairo, under a British officer, and could treat Egypt as part of Ethiopia in terms of trade; British tariffs and dues were not to adhere there. Tewodros was impetuous and weak, but not stupid, and so readily agreed to this.
And thus began Ethiopian influence in Egypt and the Sudan, with the Ethiopians achieving de facto control over the Sudan by the end of Tewodros II’s reign. Some protest from the Ottoman Sultan was, essentially, ignored, and with independence stirrings in Greece and elsewhere, the Sultan was otherwise occupied. Naturally, this was hardly complete control; but they garrisoned the capital, and began constructing, as best they could, roads from Khartoum, over the mountains to Gondar. Of course, this was a work of decades.
"SOLOMON TO HIS DAVID"
Tewodros III (reg 1809-1859) was a well-educated man of thirty years when he came to the throne, having been taught by the scholars who lingered about the Court of his father, and who had also travelled on the Egyptian Campaign. He shared the view of Empire held by the British Liberals of the time, essentially, “we are here just until we’ve made the natives civilised like us.” He travelled widely in the Ethiopian lands, and saw that the government’s hold on much of the country was tentative at best. He resolved to be the Solomon to his father’s David; what his father had wrought by the sword, he would till with the plow.
His reign can be characterised by its four main Proclamations. The first one (1810) sent garrisons of Amharic-speaking Oromo Coptics out to the Sudan, and Kenya. They were encouraged to settle there to live after their military service. Colonists were encouraged to the Masai to graze cattle. There were many Moslem-Christian clashes at this time, but no leader arose, and a series of minor alliances, assisting one petty Kenya or Sudanese chieftain against the other, kept the Rift Valley more or less safe for trade and travel - as safe as the Red Sea was from priacy, anyway. A unified system of laws, weights and measures of course caused further clashes, but also provided some unity between the settlers and metropolitan Ethiopia.
In the second Proclamation (1818), canals were extended from the Nile across the Sudan. This encouraged the nomads to be more settled and agricultural; not an immediate or dramatic effect, but a significant one nonetheless. All towns were to have Crown grain stores, to give some stability to the food supply, the Crown issuing special depreciating money for acquisition of the grain (the money dropped in value at the same rate grain would decay in store), this gave a money supply to the poorer towns. Perhaps the most significant act historically was that Tewodros III got the Patriarch of Alexandria to issue an edict that the Coptic Christian was to bathe regularly; this greatly improved the health of the people, and improved community as people gathered in public baths.
The third Proclamation arose from the pressure Tewodros III was feeling from senior merchants, etc, to industrialise the country, bring in railways and the like. He sent people to inspect the factories of Britain, and was horrified by the tales of grinding poverty amidst great production, sooty air and the like (certainly these tales were exaggerated by his somewhat racist advisors). He also noted the republican and nationalistic tumult across Europe around 1848, and how much of this tumult came from impoverished industrial workers, and of course saw also the Potato Famine, which his advisors attributed from a few wealthy owning most of the land, and from the poor relying on only one crop.
He recognised that some degree of industrialisation could not be prevented, and so he sought to control it. His Proclamation thus contained provisions that only individuals or the Crown could own property; that no common person may own more than one hundred acres of land (but nobles could own more, of course), each area of land must have at least seven different crops (or animals) on it; that no workplace could employ more than one hundred people, or have steam-driven machinery providing more than one hundred horsepower; and that taxes should be one-tenth the income of any person (regardless of whether they made a "profit" or not).
This produced an industrial revolution in Ethiopia which was small in scale, and dstributed across the whole country. The rate of growth of wealth was small, but spread out. Of course, slavery remained; insignificant in metropolitan Ethiopia, but very important in the Sudan and Kenya, and in building yet more roads and canals for the Crown. However, by 1856 with the Royal Navy's shelling of Zanzibar, Tewodros III got the message, and abolished the slave trade, though not slavery itself; this was the fourth Proclamation. The slave trade was abolished, and the children of slaves born from that date in metropolitan Ethiopia, and the children of the children of slaves in the Sudan and Kenya, would be free. So the last slave in Ethiopia proper would die about 1900, and about 1925 in the colonies; slavery would cease to be a significant part of the economy by about 1880. The depressed revenues from no more sale of slaves by the Crown was the most significant economic effect.
When the British Crown took over theIndian holdings of the Company in 1859, they took over Djibouti, as well; it became a sort of Hong Kong in Africa.
Overall, Tewodros III can be said to have achieved his ambition to be Solomon to his father's David. He died peacefully in his bed.
THE FALL
Tewodros IV (reg 1859-62) was more martial in intent, and invaded Yemen. This was an unmitigated disaster. He didn't survive long, since his father had lived so long, he himself was sixty-two when he came to the throne, and in poor health.
Tewodros V (reg 1862) had a brief reign of but eighty days. Under the influence of some French merchants, he wished to abolish various of the Proclamations, allowing for corporations, and so on – French ones, naturally. At this, the British Consul in Djibouti called on the garrison there to act. While the British would be happy to see most of the restrictions disappear, the idea that the French should be the ones to gain most from it distressed them. And so, the garrison marched on Gondar. Before they came within fifty miles of the place, Tewodros V was dead, killed by a group of nobles, alarmed at excessive foreign influence, whether French or British. They formed a Crown Council to appoint a new Emperor (Tewodros V hadn’t even had time to marry and produce heirs), and appointed the most inoffensive, unambitious man they could find.
Fasiladas III (reg 1863-87) found his country now subject to the British. A Resident in Gondar "advised", and essentially controlled Ethiopia's foreign affairs and trade. This was the period of "Orientalising"of the Ethiopian Crown, where the Emperor withdrew from public view, and became a figure more metaphorical than political, more symbolic than active. Ethiopia was effectively a British colony. Thus, there was no opposition to German acquisition of Tanganiyaka (1885); this land was nominally Ethiopian, but had never been really settled, there being more than enough land in Kenya.
Fasiladas IV (reg 1888-1895) was the closeted nephew of Fasiladas III, dim of mind and weak of body, and did nothing of note during his reign. When the Italians sought to supplant British influence in Ethiopia so as to acquire trading righs in Eritrea, Fasiladas IV was murdered in a palace coup by his Chancellor, who ascended to the throne as Haille I after being appointed Emperor by the Crown Council.
Haille I (reg 1896-1908) was a capable and intelligent man, but lacking much legitimacy in the eyes of the Rases and the country, faced rebellions. The Rases' War (1896-1899) was only won, ironically, by the assistance of Italian officers, the British not willing to offer much help, busy as they were with Chinese affairs. An Italian Resident (Alfredo Benedetti) was appointed by Haille I in early 1900, but had to be removed three months later when the almost-forgotten Cairo Garrison (still under a British officer, and much enriched by years of corruption in Egypt) appeared in Djibouti, threatening to march on Gondar. For ten days Haille I refused to dismiss him, and Ethiopia seemed balance on a precipice. The Benedetti Incident brought Italy and Britain to the brink of war (as the Fashoda Incident had brought France and Britain close to war a few years earlier).
The Benedetti Incident was resolved in favour of Britain, Benedetti retiring from Gondar to an estate in Tuscany, and the Cairo Garrison remaining in Djibouti (officially withdrawing from Egypt) to influence by their wealth and corruption affairs there. This incident caused Italy to resent and distrust the British, pushing them closer to Germany and Austria, and ensured that they would honour their alliance with them in future affairs.
The Rases' War and the Benedetti Incident resolved, Haille I looked weak, and this caused another uprising by the Somali Moslems in the Ogadeen and northern Kenya. The revolt spread to the remaining slaves in Kenya (though the children of the children of slaves were to be free, it seemed that under the guidance of the Oromo settlers, quite a few old slave women were mysteriously having children in their advanced age). That there was no great leader of the rebellion meant it was bound to fail, but also meant that small parts of it continued to flare up for some time. At any rate, it saw the final abolition of slavery (1906), the only real accomplishment for which Haille I is remembered. But he is also remembered for the great butchery of the Somalis and Masai, which is on a scale with the Turk butchery of the Armenians in 1919. Historians have called this "the African Holocaust," during which perhaps some two million Somalis and Masai were killed (the number is much under dispute, as censuses were never taken of nomads).
The Rases' War crushed the power of the nobility; the Benedetti Incident established British primacy in the Horn of Africa; and the Great Rebellion freed the slaves.
On his death in 1908, the Crown Council returned to the old imperial line, and brought forth a nephew of Fasiladas IV to reign as Fasiladas V (reg 1908-22).
THE GREAT WAR
Fasiladas V had a difficult reign, facing rebuilding the country after twelve years of conflict. He had not the slaves for cheap construction, nor he himself the education, of his forebears. Ethiopia looked nervously as Italy expanded into Libya, but with the Cairo Garrison in Djibouti, had no means, political, economic or military, of opposing it.
When it came to the Great War, the old Benedetti Incident was fresh in the minds of Italy, causing them to honour their treaty with the Germans and Austrians, and join in against France and Britain. Ethiopia made a pro forma declaration of war, and the British Abyssinian Division brought out of India saw service in Egypt against the Turks. A short spell in France in 1915 led to many illnesses due to the climate, and they were withdrawn for more Levantine service. Like the Indians, their contribution to the Great War is largely forgotten by the West.
The pro forma declaration of war came back to haunt Fasiladas V as von Leetow's Askaris raided into Kenya for supplies. Regiments were hastily raised and sent forth to fight him, and were defeated. In 1917, the Ethiopians placed their forces under British command, and advances were made into German East Africa. Von Leetow withdrew into Portugese Mozambique, and surrendered in June 1918 six months earlier than OTL).
In Europe, Italy's contribution to the Central Powers' war effort was not a great one overall. They fairly quickly overran French Savoy, but the lines stablised around the Rhone, and the price for Italy's success there was the loss of her Navy to the British. An Anglo-French landing at Sicily in April 1915 (setting aside another plan to land at the Dardanelles) overran that island by December 1915. A landing at Otranto - along with a brigade from the British Abyssinian Division - in March 1916 and a quick breakout by the Allies caused Italy to offer an Armistice in December 1916. They then became neutral in the war, but thanks to Austrian forces in their north, this was a neutrality benevolent towards the Allies, like that of Greece. War continued in Italy's north, without the contribution of Italian troops, who all remained south of the Po.
After the capitulation of the Italians, the last Ethiopian troops were withdrawn from Italy, for service against the Turks.
In late 1916 Karl came to the Austrian throne, and offered peace to the Allies. [In OTL, this peace chance was scuttled by the ambitions of the Italians; the Italian foreign minister told the Germans the Austrian offer. This would not be possible here.] A status quo ante bellum was accepted, and in December 1917, one month after the Bolshevik Revolution, as Germany signed the humiliating-to-Russia peace of Brest-Litovsk, Austria withdrew from the war. Hungary broke away (1917 being the time for renewal of the 1867 Compromise) and became a republic, still at war with (what was left of) Serbia and Russia, though in December 1917 there was a ceasefire with the Russians.
With the Austrians and Italians and Russians out of the war, Germany was able to concentrate its forces on the Western Front. The Germans' Operation Michael, launched in March 1918, succeeded in its initial aims and reached Paris in late May 1918. While the German offensive had split the British Army to the north, and the French Army to the south, the forces reaching Paris were the tip of a long salient into France. Foch ordered a co-ordinated attack from the French and British, to cut off the salient, leaving the Germans enricled at the Seine; the Americans agreed to come at Paris from the West. Pershing proudly announced that he would be the anvil for their hammer.
The offensive succeeded, and 225,000 Germans surrendered at Paris and around it in August 1918. The Allies followed this offensive up, and Italy joined in the war on the Allied side. In October 1918, with a general collapse of their army in the west, the Germans offered an Armistice. This was to begin at 10am on the 10th of October 1918.
VERSAILLES AND THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS
With the oft-repeated Wilsonian principles of "self-determination for all peoples" in their minds, the Ethiopians enthusiastically joined in the Versailles Conference. There were decided all the familiar questions, and in the League of Nations Ethiopia was granted a Mandate over German East Africa. Under Fasiladas V, this quickly became a second wave of colonisation, as the Crown could not afford to grant their soldiers pensions, but could grant them lands to settle.
The British Resident was officially retired in 1922 with the death of Fasiladas V, but British business interests remained paramount there. Paradoxically, Tewedoros III's old proclamation not allowing corporations to own property, only individuals and the Crown, actually increased British influence in the economy, as of course treaties meant that Ethiopian law did not apply to British citizens. The largest businesses in Ethiopia were British, and vast cattle estates were owned by them. Still, great wealth was spread about the country by the lightly-industrialised country, which was still entirely without railways, electricity and the like, but well-served by roads and canals.
