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The Foreign Policy of the Emperor Menelik 1896–1898: a Rejoinder

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Harold G. Marcus
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Extract

In contrast to Dr G. N. Sanderson's belief that ‘down to the collapse of the Mahdist state itself, the Mahdist alliance was the central feature of Menelik's diplomacy’, this article shows that Ethiopia's détente with the Sudan after 1896 was only one part of a carefully constructed, non-committal foreign policy designed to protect Ethiopia against all foreseeable eventualities. If there were anything central in the minds of Ethiopian policy-makers, it could only have been their uncertainty about the outcome of the events which were rapidly reaching a crisis point in the Sudan. Menelik therefore chose not to commit himself to any one policy toward the Sudan until the complicated situation there ran its course. At the same time, he pursued a line of diplomacy in the east and the south which would consolidate his victory over the Italians and which would materially strengthen his Empire.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , March 1966 , pp. 117 - 122
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1966

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References

1 Sanderson, G. N., ‘Emir Suleyman Ibn Inger Abdullah’, Sudan Notes Rec. XXXV (1954), 1;Google Scholar‘Contributions from African sources to the history of European competition in the Upper Valley of the Nile’, J. Afr. Hist. III, no. I (1962).Google Scholar Dr Sanderson has also made an important contribution in ‘The European Powers and the Sudan in the later nineteenth century’, Sudan Notes Rec. XL (1959).Google Scholar

2 Sanderson, G. N., ‘The foreign policy of the Negus Manalik 1896–1898’, J. Afr. Hist. V, no. I (1964), 95–6.Google Scholar My view ‘that Menelik was using Abdullahi's war with the British as a convinient blind for his own expansion into the north and south-west’ is thus only partially correct (Marcus, H. G., ‘Ethio-British negotiations concerning the western border with Sudan’, J. Afr. Hist. IV, no. I (1963), 86).Google Scholar

3 I am indebted to Mr R. Caulk for this excellent thought which allowed me to distinguish the forest from the trees.Google Scholar

4 Sanderson, ‘The foreign policy of Menelik’, 87.Google Scholar

5 Silberman, Leo, ‘Why the Haud was ceded’, Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines, II, no. 5 (1961), 63.Google Scholar It is interesting to note that until 1896 official British maps called Ethiopia ‘The Italian Sphere of Influence’, and thereafter this designation was lined out and replaced by ‘Abyssinian Boundaries’. See F.O. 1/32, Map of East Africa.

6 Langer, William L., The Diplomacy of Imperialism (New York, Alfred Knopf, 1956), 537.Google Scholar

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8 The British themselves did not exclude the possiblity. See Sanderson, ‘European competition’, 71.Google Scholar

9 General Baratier, A., Souvenirs de la Mission Marchand (Paris, Editions Bernard Grosset, 1941), 7;Google Scholar and Stengers, J., ‘Aux origines de Fachoda: l'Expedition Montiel’, lère partie, Revue Belge de Philologie et d'Historie, XXXVI, no. 2 (1958), 439, 448.Google Scholar

10 France had always considered Ethiopian assistance necessary for the success of its policy in the Nile Basin. See Maistre, C., ‘Le Président Carnot et le plan d'action sur le Nil en 1893’,l'Afrique Française, XLII, no. 3 (03, 1932), 156.Google Scholar

11 Giffen, Morrison Beall, Fashoda, the Incident and its Diplomatic Setting (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1930), 15.Google Scholar

12 Menelik's Circular Letter of 1891 to the Powers, concerning the extent of his domains. F.O. 40/155, Circular Letter, April 1891. For the original Amharic version see F.O. 1/32, Menelik to Rodd, 13 May 1897.Google Scholar

13 See below, fn. 35, p. 122.Google Scholar

14 Sanderson, ‘European competition’, 84–6.Google Scholar It is interesting to note that Menelik rushed to safeguard his claims as soon as the authority of the Mahdist state broke down in its border regions. This is particularly evident in the case of Beni Shangul, and might also explain why Menelik ordered Dejaz Tesamma to mount an expedition to the area of the Nile–Sobat confluence, although fear of the Macdonald Mission of 1898 also played a role in the latter case. See Sanderson, G. N., ‘Foreign Policy’, 92Google Scholar, and ‘European competition’, 87.Google Scholar

15 Menelik had suggested such a treaty in March 1895 when he sought French aid against the Italian claim to a protectorate over Ethiopia. Note from the Political Director, 30 September 1896, Gouvernement de France, Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, Documents Diplomotiques Francais, XIII (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1945), fn. 62;Google Scholar and Menelik to Felix Faure, March 1895, DDF, XIII, 133.Google Scholar

16 Agreements of 29 and 30 January 1897, DDF, xiii, 147.Google Scholar

17 Frontier. Treaty, 20 March 1897, DDF, XIII, 277.Google Scholar

18 Pierre-Alype, , l'Empire des Négus (Paris: Librairie Plon, 1925), 94.Google Scholar

19 Sanderson, G. N., ‘Emir Suleyman’, 63.Google Scholar

20 Convention for the White Nile, 20 March 1897, DDF, XIII, 278.Google Scholar

21 Sanderson, ‘Foreign policy’, 88.Google Scholar

22 Michel, Charles, Vers Fachoda (Paris: Librairie Plon, n.d.), 241.Google Scholar

23 Sanderson, ‘Foreign policy’, 93.Google Scholar Professor Sanderson takes me to task for making precisely this same point but in another way: ‘Had the whole venture been successful, there seems little doubt that Menelik would have made territorial claims from the French.’ See Marcus, ‘Ethio-British negotiations’, 86.Google Scholar

24 For a listing of diplomatic contacts between Sudan and Ethiopia, 1895–1898, see Sanderson, ‘European competition’, passim.Google Scholar

25 F.O. 403/239, Cromer to Salisbury, 1 December 1896; Wingate to Intelligence Division, 23 November 1896, and 6 December 1896.Google Scholar

26 Sir Rodd, James Rennell, Social and Diplomatic Memories, 1884–1901, 2nd series (London: Edward Arnold and Co., 1923), 609.Google Scholar

27 F.O. 403/239, Ferris to Rodd, 1 September 1896.Google Scholar

28 F.O. 403/255, Salisbury to Rodd, 24 and 25 February 1897.Google Scholar

29 Italiano, Governo, Ministero degli Affari Esteri, Trattati, i (Roma, 1906), 156;Google Scholar see also F.O. 403/255, Rodd's draft Treaty and Menelik's counter draft.

30 Ibid.

31 F.O. 403/274, Memo, by J. C. Ardagh, Director of Military Intelligence, 28 February 1898.Google Scholar

32 F.O. 403/255. Government of India to Lord Hamilton, 28 July 1897.Google Scholar

33 Rodd, Memories, 382–3.Google Scholar

34 Sanderson, ‘Foreign policy’, 93.Google Scholar

35 Here I am largely in agreement with P. M. Holt, who wrote in 1958 that ‘although relations between Menelik and the Khalifa were strengthened between 1895 and 1898, and even approached cordiality in the summer before ‘Abdallahi's overthrow, a formal alliance or indeed any scheme for mutual assistance against European pressure was totally absent… Menelik's policy of… balancing… [European] rivalries in order to preserve Abyssinian independence, shows more sophistication and deeper subtlety. This greater political finesse of the Abyssinians as compared with the Sudanese ruler in part accounts for the different measures of success in their dealings with the aggressive European imperialism of the period’ (Holt, P. M., The Mahdist State in the Sudan, 1881–1898 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958), 210).Google Scholar