In the second half of the nineteenth century, British and French rivalry for colonial domination of the Red Sea posed a threat to Ethiopia greater than historical Egyptian and Turkish hostilities. In growing control of Egypt and promoting its interests in the Suez Canal, Britain was encouraging Italy to occupy parts of Ethiopia. Though Italy had emerged as a unified country only in 1861, an Italian company had bought the coastal town of Assab from its local ruler in 1869, thus providing it with a foothold in the region, and Britain was intending to use this to stop the French making overland links between Fashoda on the White Nile and Djibouti on the Red Sea. At the same time, the British, French and Italians were divisively calling the northern parts of the country ‘Abyssinia’, using the country's proper name, Ethiopia, only in their diplomatic communications with its rulers. From about 1875, Emperor Yohannes IV had been repulsing attacks from Egyptians, who were coming under the hold of the British. He was insisting on the restoration of Senhit and Massawa, and had his governors collecting taxes and politically relating to the local population along the Red Sea coast. His ruler of Hamasien, Ras Alula, encountered five hundred Italian soldiers marching treacherously from the Red Sea coast in January 1887 (having promised not to march inland) and duly wiped them out at Dogali, near Massawa. In 1889 Yohannes routed an Egyptian-supported attack on Metemma, but he lost his life to a stray wing of the retreating Mahdist army.

Such European hostility could not have come at a worse time for Ethiopia. Famine, pestilence and drought (1888–92) made internal conditions difficult. The emergent warrior leaders were unable to provide feasts, encourage their followers and threaten their potential competitors as they could neither put together supplies for large forces nor distribute firearms for ambitious would-be followers. Ecological disaster and rinderpest, probably introduced from India around 1880, wiped out 90 per cent of the cattle. Cholera devastated Akele Guzay and the north during 1889 and 1890, and locusts were persistent in Tigre from 1888. Lack of rain and smallpox hit Harar and Shewa (1888–90), with food shortages in Begemder and the highlands of Hamasen. People migrated to Massawa, while others in Shewa, Gojam, Begemder, Wello, and Tigre migrated to the south, and (to Menelik's chagrin) some were apostatizing in Jimma.