Journal of Eastern African Studies
Volume 1, 2007 - Issue 2
The Trans-Mereb Experience: Perceptions of the Historical Relationship between Eritrea and Ethiopia
Dr Richard Reid
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10 ... 0701452523
Pages 238-255 | Published online: 24 Jul 2007
Abstract
This article offers an exploration of the historical relationship between Eritrea and Ethiopia. This has been a problematic relationship, as demonstrated by the degree of conflict in this region, and, in the abstract sense, insofar as analysis of the history of the relationship has been both polemical and polarised. The region's pre-colonial history has been used either to demonstrate Ethiopia's legitimate historical control of much of what is now Eritrea, or to refute this older, more ‘traditional’, perception and to prove that Eritrea was at no time an integral part of a ‘greater Ethiopian/Abyssinian empire’. This latter, revisionist approach to the pre-colonial past is still in its infancy, the offspring of a recent and potent Eritrean nationalism. Perceptions of key periods in the region's twentieth-century history are similarly polarised. By way of illustration, the article considers four historical scenarios, key snapshots in the history of the relationship: (i) the pre-colonial era; (ii) the period of British administration in the 1940s; (iii) the Eritrean liberation struggle; and (iv) the more recent war between the two countries. Each scenario is looked at in three ways: first, for what we might call the ‘factual indisputability’ of the scenario, in other words presenting as neutral and objective a view of the period as is possible; second, the ‘standard Ethiopianist’ interpretation of the period in question; and third, the ‘Eritrean revisionist’ understanding of the scenario.
Introduction
Few peoples in Africa have had either a closer, or a more troubled, historical relationship than those of Eritrea and Ethiopia. This fact is in itself justification for a study of the relationship, and yet the project is no straightforward matter. It remains, indeed is perhaps more than ever, an emotive subject of study, characterised by polarised positions and well-defined lines of argument which resemble the trenches across which so many physical battles have been fought between the two countries. On either side, it so often seems that the maxim
is the basis for whatever discourse takes place. This is true whether the focus is on pre-colonial relations and the nature of autonomy and/or political dominance before the late nineteenth century (an era which, in particular, requires much more attention and is a major focus of this paper), or the colonial period and early expressions of identity, or the era of Eritrea's liberation war. This is true despite the fact that the story of the Eritrean–Ethiopian relationship is actually as much about co-operation as conflict, while both can often be found simultaneously, on the macro and on the micro scale. And yet there is enough contradiction and confusion in the various arguments and interpretations to suggest that there is, in fact, a great deal of room for clear-headed analysis of the historical relationship between the two countries. Such extreme contradiction is, in a strange sense, cause for optimism, if only because it suggests that, amid all the available evidence and partisan interpretation, clear-headedness has rarely been seriously attempted. It is not the purpose of this chapter to address and ‘correct’ all the contradictions which appear in both the written and the oral testimony and analysis, but rather to consider their meaning and significance, and to suggest areas in which further research might be profitable.if you are not with us, you are against us
This paper, then, offers some preliminary thoughts and observations on perceptions of the historical relationship between Eritrea and Ethiopia through time, dealing with the pre-colonial question in some detail and the more recent past a little more briefly. This has been a problematic relationship, both in real terms – as demonstrated by the degree of conflict which has characterised the region, particularly in the past forty years – and in the abstract sense, insofar as analysis of the history of the relationship by scholars and other observers has been both polemical and polarised. The region's pre-colonial history has been used either to demonstrate Ethiopia's legitimate historical control of much of what is now Eritrea; or to refute this older, more ‘traditional’, perception and to prove that Ethiopia was never in fact in control of the area, and that what is now Eritrea was at no time an integral part of a
Again, the latter revisionist approach to the pre-colonial past is still in its infancy, and is to a very large extent the offspring of a recent and potent Eritrean nationalism which has aimed at the winning of intellectual as well as physical battles. Similarly, perceptions, both contemporary and more recent, of key periods in the region's twentieth-century history reveal much in the way of particular political standpoints, and are again characterised by polarisation which is frequently manifest in open bitterness. By way of illustration, the paper takes four historical scenarios, key snapshots in the history of the relationship, which need to be considered using both contemporary and secondary sources in the analysis of how the relationship has been interpreted. We can consider each of these scenarios in three ways: first, what we might call the ‘factual indisputability’ of the scenario, in other words presenting as neutral and objective a view of the period as is possible, incorporating the bare ‘facts’ as much as this is uncontroversial; second, the ‘standard Ethiopianist’ interpretation of the period in question, with all the political implications of that interpretation; and third, the ‘Eritrean revisionist’ understanding of the scenario, based largely on the emergent Eritrean nationalism already mentioned.greater Ethiopian/Abyssinian empire.
A couple of caveats should be noted from the outset, in terms of both the wording of the title and the approaches and methodology of the paper itself. The reference to the Mereb River represents, at least partially, a symbolic notion, as this particular geographical feature marks only a section of the boundary between modern Eritrea and Ethiopia. It separates the central Eritrean plateau – the inhabitants of which are predominantly Tigrinya speakers – from Tigray in northern Ethiopia, whose population in the main also speaks Tigrinya, and therefore has no geopolitical relevance for either the western or the coastal (Danakil) lowlands of Eritrea, which must be examined, to a large degree, in their own contexts. Nonetheless the paper does focus primarily on the highland relationship between central and northern Ethiopia on the one hand, and the Eritrean highlands, or kebessa, on the other. Further, in the context of the pre-colonial era, the terms ‘Eritrea’ and ‘Ethiopia’ are clearly used for convenience only, as no states prior to the 1890s resembled the polities called by those names today. Rather, for the pre-colonial period the paper seeks to examine relations between the peoples and communities of the region, and more particularly how those relations were, and continue to be, perceived and interpreted both by the peoples themselves and by outside observers. Later, of course, the peoples of the region came to be represented by governments and political movements, and the relations between these are also examined. It should also be noted that, owing in large part to the nature of the author's ongoing work, the paper is mainly concerned to examine the relationship with particular reference to the past, present and future position of Eritrea and Eritreans.
Historic Trans-Mereb: A Pre-Colonial Survey
It is not possible, within the confines of the present project, to offer exhaustive coverage of this vast era. A clearer definition of what we mean by the ‘pre-colonial era’ is also needed, as otherwise the reader may infer that the author aims to examine several millennia of human history in the region. We are concerned here with the period since the seventeenth century, and in particular since the middle of the eighteenth century, as it is somewhat more practical to attempt to understand regional relationships within this early-modern time-frame than within one which stretches to antiquity. Our aim here is to trace cycles of conflict and co-operation, and to examine regional relations and forms of identity. In this context, it is important to note the polarised views of more recent writers on this general subject.[1]
(1. See also Reid, R. J. 2001. “The Challenge of the Past: The Quest for Historical Legitimacy in Independent Eritrea”. History in Africa, 28: 239–72.) Again, the region's earlier history has been used either to demonstrate Ethiopia's historical control over the region of Eritrea – and in particular the Red Sea coast – or to challenge this ‘Ethiocentric’ interpretation and prove the long-standing ‘independence’ of the region. In truth the pre-colonial history of Eritrea has, to date, hardly been treated with any degree of academic rigour, and it can be assumed – at least by way of a fairly safe hypothesis – that the reality was much more complex than either of the two extreme positions allow for.
Covering the approximate century and a half between the middle of the eighteenth and the end of the nineteenth centuries, our early-modern period comprises the so-called Zemene Mesafint – the ‘era of the princes’, from the late 1760s to the mid-1850s – and the subsequent era of a trio of powerful political figures, namely Tewodros, Yohannes and Menelik, who were dominant in the central and northern Ethiopian region between the mid-1850s and the early 1900s. Taken as a whole, the Zemene Mesafint was a violent era, one of political fragmentation and the rule of local military force; this was followed by an era which was in many ways just as violent as that which preceded it, but which saw the building of an imperial polity (popularly referred to as Abyssinia, and later Ethiopia) whose raison d'etre was the creation of regional unity. Many of the themes of this latter period remained pertinent, and indeed highly emotive, into the twentieth century. In particular, Yohannes would later be used as a political icon, the symbol of resurgent Tigrayan nationalism as well as wider Ethiopian nation-building (a paradox with which later politicians and guerrilla leaders would grapple, and indeed continue to), while Menelik would be perceived as the imperial ruler extraordinaire and indeed the founder of modern Ethiopia. Both men would inspire antipathy among later Eritrean nationalists, who would perceive them as the symbols of inherent Ethiopian/Abyssinian aggression.
From the standard Ethiopian point of view, the Zemene Mesafint was a period of lamentable imperial weakness, manifest in the collapse of the territorial empire and widespread catastrophe of almost biblical dimensions, as suggested by the epithet given to the era itself; but, despite all of this, the continuity so beloved of Ethiopianists was essentially unbroken, for ‘Ethiopia’ survived in fact if not in name,[2]
(2. Marcus, H. G. 1994. A History of Ethiopia, Berkeley: University of California Press.) and in any case the decline of central Solomonic authority proves temporary. The unworthy and calamitous spectacle of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is followed by a period of new-found imperial unity: ancient Ethiopia is reunited by a new generation of rulers – Tewodros, Yohannes and Menelik – whose place in the pantheon of Abyssinian nationalist heroes is further ensured through their powerful articulation of ancient and legitimate territorial claims.[3]
(3. Marcus H. G. . The Life and Times of Menelik II: Ethiopia 1844–1913 . Lawrenceville : Red Sea Press , 1995.) Success in making good these claims, however, is only partial: crucially for our study, they, and in particular Menelik, are cheated out of regaining Eritrea, an integral part of the ancient and medieval Ethiopian empire, to which it was variously ‘subject’ or ‘tributary’, because of the onset of European colonial rule.[4]
(4. Markakis, J. 1974. Ethiopia: Anatomy of a Traditional Polity, Oxford: Clarendon Press.) The Eritrean perspective, however, insofar as views on this particular period have been articulated, is rather different. The Zemene Mesafint was in fact a demonstration of the fundamental weakness of the Amhara-Tigray polity which had existed previously; this was a period of regional self-assertion and one in which the area of modern-day Eritrea was clearly autonomous from, if not wholly independent of, any central government to the south.[5]
(5. Pateman, R. 1998. Eritrea: Even the Stones are Burning, Lawrenceville: Red Sea Press.) Even the unifying efforts of Tewodros, Yohannes and Menelik were founded on systematic state-level violence, and the empire thus created was the result of wars of conquest and oppression, which rendered the new state of ‘Ethiopia’ (a product of the otherwise European-dominated ‘scramble’ for Africa) inherently unstable, if not downright unfeasible in the long term.[6]
(6. For example, see Holcomb, B. K. and Ibssa, S. 1990. The Invention of Ethiopia: The Making of a Dependent Colonial State in Northeast Africa, Trenton: Red Sea Press.) Moreover, from the Eritrean perspective, this was point, at the end of the nineteenth century, at which ‘Eritrea’ was born, thus initiating the decisive colonial phase in the growth and articulation of modern Eritrean identity.
Now, in this context, among the most problematic, overused and misleading phrases in the study of pre-colonial African history in general are ‘subject to’ and ‘tributary to’. These are clearly terms of considerable convenience, for contemporary observers and scholars alike: the present writer has also made use of them. Yet they are in truth, in certain contexts at least, frustrating and unsatisfying umbrella terms used to describe – and disguise – a wide range of political, diplomatic and military relationships, varying degrees of influence and/or control, and levels of short- and long-range regional suzerainty or hegemony. This is certainly the case in the region under study. In the contexts in which we frequently find them used, for example, they do not necessarily mean ‘under the control of’, and as studies in other parts of eastern Africa suggest, the paying of ‘tribute’ often represented a form of diplomatic interaction between mutually-recognised equals.[7] (7. See for example, Reid R. J. . “Mutesa and Mirambo: Thoughts on East African Warfare and Diplomacy in the Nineteenth Century.” International Journal of African Historical Studies 31 , no. 1 ( 1998 ): 73 – 89.)
It may indicate a large-scale form of protection money – even an insurance policy – by a smaller, weaker polity to a larger, more powerful one, in order to offset or satisfy expansionist ambitions or simply prevent limited military incursions. This does not necessarily imply ‘subject to’, any more than being in debt implies bondage. Further along the spectrum, we can identify a situation in which a smaller, weaker society or community has an overlord with political and military responsibilities imposed on it by a state lying beyond its frontiers, but even here caution needs to be exercised in assessing the position of the overlord himself, and in considering the nature of the relationship between the supposedly ‘subjugated’ society and the larger external state, as well as that between the overlord and his ‘subjects’. At the far end of the spectrum lies the society which is completely destroyed and/or absorbed into a larger polity, and is deprived of all practicable sense of separate identity.
All of these possibilities should be borne in mind when reviewing outsiders’ statements regarding relationships within the region under examination. In his study of warfare and diplomacy in pre-colonial western Africa, Robert Smith points out that the notion of ‘unconditional surrender’ seems to have been markedly rare: it was not usual practice for an army to overrun and completely destroy its enemy, thereafter remaining in permanent occupation or absorbing the defeated country's identity into its own. Rather, the hegemonic relationship was a more common consequence of outright military victory.[8]
(8. Smith, R. S. 1989. Warfare and Diplomacy in Pre-Colonial West Africa, London: James Currey.) To some degree this idea can be usefully, if cautiously, applied to the region under study. In all probability, even in periods of violent state expansionism, it was comparatively rare for weaker states and societies to be wholly absorbed and their independence completely destroyed. The reality on the ground was much more flexible and pragmatic, characterised by changing patterns of provincial and regional relations rather than outright conquests which rendered inter-polity relations unnecessary. This is in no way intended to detract from enormous significance of violence and warfare in the region's history – quite the opposite – but to suggest that ‘final solutions’ seem rarely to have been the objectives of war in the region, at least until the period of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. There are, of course, exceptions to this rule, and warfare in the region could indeed result in great destruction.[9]
(9. See for example Reid R. J. “Warfare and Urbanisation: The Relationship between Town and Conflict in Pre-Colonial Eastern Africa.” In The Urban Experience in Eastern Africa A. Burton. Nairobi : 2002 , pp. 46 – 62.) But the achievement of varying degrees of influence, the capture of commerce, the ability to exploit local resources or access pools of manpower, seem often to have been the key objectives of conflict. This said, there is, as we shall see, a great deal of continuity in the violence of the pre-colonial era and the hegemonic warfare of more recent times.
A further, and connected, problematic issue in contemporary sources lies in the usage of the terms ‘Ethiopia’ and ‘Abyssinia’, something which has continued to influence the perception of the region up to our own time in quite dramatic fashion. In this context, we need to consider the influences brought to bear on the production of the ‘knowledge’ that appears in contemporary European texts, and what certain knowledge actually meant in the local context. ‘Ethiopia’ and ‘Abyssinia’ were frequently used in their broadest, most generic sense, as mere geographical expressions in much the same way as the entire eastern African littoral, including much of the Horn, was once encompassed within the term ‘Azania’. As geographical expressions, they were at once convenient and representative of deep-seated ignorance of the region as a whole, although they may also have been informed by local indigenous ‘knowledge’. (For example, such expressions were often used on the approach to the central Ethiopian highlands, and may have been picked up from local informants whose geographical gestures were fairly generalised.) Certainly, the expressions were not always used to denote a recognisable political-territorial state, but this is how they have usually been interpreted by subsequent writers and scholars, wishing to support the concept of a continuous and ancient regional imperium with all the romantic connotations such a concept implies. Yet even within these sources, there is confusion over what the terms themselves actually mean. To take an earlier example, Jerome Lobo's assertion, in the early 1620s, that Tigray ‘was subject to the king of Abyssinia’ appears to suggest that Tigray should be considered as something separate from ‘Abyssinia’; yet elsewhere he referred to ‘the natives of Tigray’ as ‘the true Abyssins’.[10] (10. Lobo , Fr. J. A Voyage to Abyssinia. Trans by Samuel Johnson. London , 1789.) Lobo used the term ‘upper Ethiopia’ to describe the area of Nubia, ‘Ethiopia’ in this context clearly denoting a general region rather than any kind of political entity.[11] (11. Lobo, Fr. J. A Voyage to Abyssinia. Trans by Samuel Johnson. London, 1789.) But was this what Lobo actually intended? In the early seventeenth century, the myths and distortions were taking shape, as Lobo's description of ‘Abyssinia’ demonstrates:
[12]The empire of Abyssinia hath been one of the largest which history gives us an account of: it extended formerly from the Red Sea to the kingdom of Congo, and from Egypt to the Indian sea. It is not long since it contained forty provinces, but is now not much bigger than Spain, and consists of but five kingdoms and six provinces; of which, part is entirely subject to the emperor, but part only pays him some tribute or acknowledgement of dependence, either voluntarily or by compulsion.
(12. Lobo, Fr. J. A Voyage to Abyssinia. Trans by Samuel Johnson. London, 1789.)
The scale of everything in this region is enlarged beyond all reality by mesmerised European observers.
What, by the same token, was ‘Tigray’? The term was often applied in the most undiscriminating way to the entire northern chunk of this ill-defined geographical zone, incorporating both the highlands and the central coast of modern Eritrea. In the eighteenth century, le Grand, for example, claimed that
[13][t]he kingdom of Tigre is the most considerable part of Abyssinia. Its length, from Mazua to the desart of Aldoba and mount [deleted], is three hundred Italian miles.
(13. Lobo, Fr. J. A Voyage to Abyssinia. Trans by Samuel Johnson. London, 1789.)
Nonetheless, even as such dramatic arcs were being drawn, the same writers were undermining their own theses. This ‘kingdom’ of Tigray, it turns out, was actually divided into numerous governments and provinces: the ‘maritime governments’, presumably a reference to those in Eritrea,
[14]being separated from the general viceroyship of the kingdom, have a peculiar deputy assigned to them, with the title Bahr Nagus, or Intendant of the sea.
(14. Lobo, Fr. J. A Voyage to Abyssinia. Trans by Samuel Johnson. London, 1789.)
This is a reference to the nebulous position of the bahr negash, literally ‘ruler of the sea’, apparently originally appointed by the expansionist Christian kingdom of the interior in the mid-fifteenth century to govern the military colonies in modern-day Eritrea.[15] (15. Marcus, H. G. 1994. A History of Ethiopia, Berkeley: University of California Press.) The reality of political division, not for the last time, is discernible through the specious imagery of the large scale, the unified, the ‘big blocks’ of supposed regional identity. ‘Tigray’, in other words, in the sense in which it is described by le Grand, is an entity only in name. The ‘maritime governments’ are not part of the entity which such authors purport to describe. Yet this is not, clearly, to deny the existence of intertwined relations: war and ‘rebellion’ in Tigray often spilled across the Mereb and necessarily involved the Eritrean highlands, where local rulers would take refuge from imperial armies dispatched from the ‘Abyssinian’ heartland. In the early seventeenth century, the area north of the Mereb was one over which more powerful rulers further south had no lasting control, or only the most vaguely defined and ineffectively asserted suzerainty. The old Amharic term for this area – Mereb Melash, or the land beyond the Mereb – itself indicates a differentiation in the southern mind.
Political tensions, as well as political relations more generally, were at root the product of physical environment. The steep escarpment which plummets from the highland Eritrean plateau down to the Red Sea coast heralded a different socio-economic, political and cultural environment, the product of physical and climatic differentiation. In the early nineteenth century, references appear to a seemingly endemic ‘predatory’ warfare along certain stretches of the road from Massawa into the highlands, with a number of writers depicting a no-man's-land between recognisable polities, where ‘wild’ groups preyed on unsuspecting travellers and merchants.[16] (16. See for example Salt, H. A Voyage to Abyssinia and Travels into the Interior of that Country. London, 1814.) Henry Salt referred to the prevalence along the Eritrean littoral of malaria and other fevers
[17] (17. See for example Salt, H. A Voyage to Abyssinia and Travels into the Interior of that Country. London, 1814.)which produce in the minds of the Abyssinians that great dread and horror of the coast which they generally entertain.
This throws into interesting perspective the historic ‘Ethiopian’ claim over the coast itself, despite the identification of this region as essentially alien, both in terms of political organisation and physical environment.[18]
(18. The following military chorus, recited by Salt's Tigrayan companions while travelling in south-central Eritrea, is worth noting in terms of its reference to alien physical environment: ‘We are now journeying in a desert country/Surrounded by wild beasts and savages’: ibid., 235–36.) Salt, moreover, asserted that Tigray ‘proper’ was
bounded on the north by the river Mareb,
even though he also suggested that the
included Hamasien and some surrounding provinces now encompassed within Eritrea.[19]remaining portion of Tigre, commonly called the kingdom of the Baharnegash
(19. The following military chorus, recited by Salt's Tigrayan companions while travelling in south-central Eritrea, is worth noting in terms of its reference to alien physical environment: ‘We are now journeying in a desert country/Surrounded by wild beasts and savages’, 488, 491–92.) Such chronic insecurity of both body and mind explains why, as Plowden claimed in the mid-nineteenth century,
Abyssinians’ requiring salt from the area of production south of Massawa had to ‘cut it under the protection of a large armed force.[20]
(20. Plowden, W. C. Travels in Abyssinia and the Galla Country: With an Account of a Mission to Ras Ali in 1848. London, 1868.)
In the early nineteenth century, Salt drew attention to the fact that
[21][t]he inhabitants of Hamazen are said to bear a very distinct character from the rest of the Abyssinians.
(21. Salt, H. A Voyage to Abyssinia and Travels into the Interior of that Country. London, 1814.)
In the 1830s, the administration of the Eritrean coast and highlands was characterised as a number of ‘petty districts’ each of which was under the control of a ‘chief of brigands’ who led
[22]a life entirely independent of the Ras of Tigre.
(22. Gobat, S. Journal of Three Years’ Residence in Abyssinia S. Clark. London, 1851.)
Just a few years later, Plowden further described how the people of Hamasien were caught between two ‘tributary’ fires.
[23]They obey in some degree, and pay tribute to, the chief of Teegray, to avoid spoliation, but are governed by chiefs of their own, and not appointed by him’; but they also had to do the same for the Turkish authorities at Massawa.
(23. Plowden, W. C. Travels in Abyssinia and the Galla Country: With an Account of a Mission to Ras Ali in 1848. London, 1868.)
That same chief of Tigray, Wube, regularly attacked the Bogos area around present-day Keren on account of its agricultural wealth.[24]
(24. Plowden, W. C. Travels in Abyssinia and the Galla Country: With an Account of a Mission to Ras Ali in 1848. London, 1868.)
Plowden specifically dated this sense of kebessa independence to ‘the time of Ras Michael’ in the late eighteenth century:
[25]The people of [Hamasien and Serae] … though speaking the same language, are still scarcely considered by the people of Teegray as a portion of that country, whose governors, since that period, have made war on them to enforce payments of an irregular tribute. They are indeed a fierce and turbulent race.
(25. Plowden, W. C. Travels in Abyssinia and the Galla Country: With an Account of a Mission to Ras Ali in 1848. London, 1868.)
Avoiding spoliation is one thing; living in a state of self-government is another. By the mid-nineteenth century, Hamasien had defined its ‘space’, and in so doing the trans-Mereb relationship – characterised, for much of this period, by violence – had also been clearly defined. ‘Tigray’ was also now clarified, and the land beyond the Mereb was apparently not part of it. It is also noteworthy, however, that Tigray/Abyssinia is always the reference point, the entity – however difficult to define in itself – from which others are either ‘independent’ or to which they pay ‘tribute’. It is the shadowy imperium whose presence is constant, if more in the mind than in reality. The Ethiopia of the late nineteenth century, despite the perceptions of several decades earlier, was claiming the kebessa, and other areas besides, as its own. As one later contemporary chronicler observed, Menelik was
[26]quite European in his method of dividing up the native lands of the less civilised inhabitants.
(26. Berkeley, G. F. H. 1902. The Campaign of Adowa and the Rise of Menelik, London: Constable.)
The same imagery was projected by Plowden, who in the middle of the nineteenth century described a group which seems to have been the Saho as ‘a wicked and treacherous race’. As a people they were
at enmity with all men: no merchants pass their inhospitable borders, no strangers visit them, and even the elephant-hunter dreads them.
[27]The ‘Abyssinians’ who had ‘established a slight intercourse with them, recount fearful tales of their cool treachery and thirst of blood’; they were ‘ungovernable, brave, and preserve their independence’.
(27. Plowden, W. C. Travels in Abyssinia and the Galla Country: With an Account of a Mission to Ras Ali in 1848 . London, 1868.)
The use of the term ‘ungovernable’ is presumably intended to mean that they could not be governed by Abyssinians/Tigrayans, as opposed to governing themselves, as he also suggests that they defended their independence fiercely. Again, the concept of the ‘Abyssinian’ state, however loosely defined in itself, is used to define the surrounding region: it is the reference point alongside which everything else is relative. Another source places together the inhabitants of Hamasien and the ‘Shangallas’ – the generic Abyssinian term for the Nilo-Saharan or Sudanic peoples of western Eritrea and north-western Ethiopia – and describes the latter as ‘wild and uncultivated’. The peoples of this area, as a whole,
[28]are barbarous in the manners, cruel in their tempers.
By the late nineteenth century, many of the modern ideas regarding the relationship had been forged, sufficiently strengthened to survive unharmed (despite the experience of Italian colonial rule) into the twentieth century and become the mantras of modern scholarship on the region. No contemporary better encapsulated the received wisdom than Gerald Portal, the British diplomat sent to Emperor Yohannes in 1887 to bring about a peaceful resolution to the stand-off with the Italians at the coast. Portal can be seen as the transmitter of Ethiopian imperial logic, reflecting the foreign policy of Yohannes and his Tigrayan lieutenant Ras Alula which is summed up in Alula's assertion that
[29]the sea was the natural frontier of Abyssinia.
(29. Portal, G. H. 1892. My Mission to Abyssinia, London: Edward Arnold.)
By this time, importantly, the term ‘Abyssinia’ had begun to take a more tangible shape, at least in the minds of protagonists and commentators. Yohannes, Portal wrote:
[30]consistently denied the right of the Italian or of any foreign Government to be at Massowah at all. He maintained that by right of descent Massowah and all the south-western coast of the Red Sea had for centuries belonged to Abyssinia. Tradition lives long in Abyssinia; as far back as the sixteenth century, the superior armament and discipline of the Turks had driven the Abyssinians from Zeyla, and later from Massowah … [D]uring all these 300 years, argued King Johannis, Abyssinia had never given up its claim to the sea-coast; the Turks, and subsequently the Egyptians, had only held these places as they had acquired them – by the power of the sword.
(30. Portal, G. H. 1892. My Mission to Abyssinia, London: Edward Arnold.)
Yohannes understood well the power of the sword, as much of his control of the Eritrean highlands was based upon it. Nevertheless, Portal again provides evidence for the curious spatial contradiction of the Ethiopian claim, pointing to the fact that while ‘Abyssinia’ believed the coast to be rightfully part of the ‘empire’, the circumstances on the ground were more than a little inconvenient. The coastal plains between Massawa and the Hamasien plateau are depicted by Portal as a no-man's-land: lawlessness characterised the region, with ‘murder and brigandage’ so common ‘as almost to put a stop to all trade’.[31]
(31. Portal, G. H. 1892. My Mission to Abyssinia, London: Edward Arnold.)
The territory between Alula's frontier army and the Italian positions at Sahati was
[32]infested by wandering bands of brigands and evil-disposed Arab tribes.
(32. Portal, G. H. 1892. My Mission to Abyssinia, London: Edward Arnold.)
The endemic violence and instability of the area was symbolised by the settlement of Ailet, a village on the main Massawa-Asmara highway portrayed by Portal in 1887 as the de facto frontier of Alula's military occupation. The village's
When Portal passed through it, it contained a garrison of around two hundred of Alula's soldiers whoproximity to the mountains of Tigre has made it for generations … a bone of contention between the Arabs of the plains and the Abyssinians of the hills.
[33]behaved with great hauteur and even brutality to the Arab inhabitants.
(33. Portal, G. H. 1892. My Mission to Abyssinia, London: Edward Arnold.)
was the underpinning approach to the ‘Eritrean problem’ of successive Ethiopian regimes in the mid- and late twentieth century: such an approach is evident in the age of Yohannes and Alula. Indeed, Alula's occupation of Asmara demonstrates part of the same strategy.[34]The land, not the people
(34. Portal, G. H. 1892. My Mission to Abyssinia, London: Edward Arnold.)
A number of travellers’ accounts, then, dating from the Zemene Mesafint, depict to varying degrees the Eritrean highlands and both western and coastal lowlands as separate from what they understood as ‘Abyssinia’. Only later in the nineteenth century did some observers, apparently struck by the success of Tewodros and, more significantly, Yohannes and Menelik, begin to invest in the idea which all three of these rulers had articulated so forcefully, namely that of the great and timeless Christian empire which deserved some considerable respect, particularly after the defeat of the Italians at Adwa. The ‘right’ of this great empire to stretch to the coast was at times acknowledged, even if not agreed to in practice. These ideas would gather strength and momentum through the twentieth century. It is clear, however, that the one theme unifying the entire era of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is that of the use of force and of recurrent cycles of violence in the attempt to forge new states and identities, backed up by creative and romantic interpretations of the region's history. The reign of Tewodros, for example, poignantly noted as the ruler who ‘reunified’ Ethiopia, seems to have foreshadowed much of the region's twentieth-century history, in terms of the rhetoric of unity and the violence used to support that rhetoric. He and his immediate successors laid the foundations of the modern Ethiopian claim for the right of access to the sea, in the process of which Ethiopian governments have frequently laid claim to Eritrea in its entirety. At the same time, the attempt by modern Eritrea and Eritrean nationalist writers and scholars to backdate their newly found sovereignty to include the pre-colonial era may be seen as intellectually unsatisfying, not to mention unwarranted, as any critical examination of pre-colonial relations between these regions need hardly weaken Eritrea's modern case for independence.
The Colonial Turning Point
We now leap forward to our second historical scenario, namely the colonial turning point of the 1940s and the subsequent period of Ethiopian–Eritrean federation in the 1950s. Remembrance and interpretation of this era remains highly emotional. Stripped to the ‘bare facts’, this was a period of intense political debate as to the future of the region in general and of Eritrea in particular, debate which raged both inside and outside Eritrea itself. It was a time of heightened political consciousness, if not always particularly well informed, and among certain key groups in society if not among the broader populace. From the Ethiopian perspective, this was a time in which Eritreans sought reunification with the ‘motherland’, and when mother herself, Ethiopia, rightfully (and, ultimately, successfully) laid claim to Eritrea and the coast from which she had been wrongfully parted at the end of the nineteenth century. The mistakes and wrongdoings of the past were eradicated by the events of the 1940s; Eritreans expressed themselves in the most logical way, namely through the language of irredentism, and Ethiopians were happily rejoined with their brothers across the Mereb. The Eritrean nationalist point of view diverges from this interpretation quite dramatically. This was in fact an era in which modern Eritrean nationalism was first cogently and potently expressed; Eritreans desired independence, pure and simple. Yet popular resistance to Ethiopia was ultimately undermined by Ethiopian manipulation and coercion – particularly the intrigues of Haile Selassie and the extortions of the Coptic Church – foreign machinations and a small clique of Eritrean lackeys who stood to benefit from the feudal structures and patronage of Ethiopia's ancien regime. For Ethiopia – or, more precisely, the Amhara socio-political elite and Haile Selassie himself – the period of Italian and British colonial rule in Eritrea was a historical anomaly, an unfortunate blip in the natural flow of events and a contradiction of geography and demography; the decision of the United Nations at the beginning of the 1950s that Eritrea should be federated with its southerly neighbour was a rectification of this unnatural situation; or at least, considering that Eritrea was supposed to have a significant degree of autonomy within the federal arrangement, a step toward rectification.
For Eritrea, the experience of colonial rule set the territory decisively apart from Ethiopia, which – and this was an argument developed despite the undoubted indignities which Eritreans themselves had experienced at the hands of the Italians – was regarded as something of a backward, feudal, anachronistic entity with its roots embedded in the nineteenth century and perhaps earlier, disadvantaged for not having been the recipients of the European civilising mission, or at least its tangible, material benefits. Whatever the vagaries of the colonial experience, it had bred a clear Eritrean identity, which was sufficiently developed to prompt an Eritrean intellectual elite to think deeply and critically in the 1940s about their historical relationship across the Mereb, with Tigray in particular and the Ethiopian heartlands more generally. At the core of this debate lies the crucial issue of the relationship between colonialism and Eritrean nationalism. Years later, the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF) would use the Italian colonial experience as the decisive historical ‘moment’ in which Eritrea became, forever and without qualification, a separate and distinctive identity vis-à-vis Ethiopia. Colonialism, in other words, had this positive element to it: it gave birth, literally and figuratively, to ‘Eritrea’ (which raises the slightly facetious issue of who had a greater right to claim ‘motherhood’ to Eritrea – Ethiopia or Italy), and fostered the development of ‘Eritrean-ness’, identity and self-awareness. Colonialism was the sine qua non of Eritrean nationalism, as it was, indeed, for so many other African national liberation movements; yet only the Eritreans had cause to use the European colonial experience as the justification for so violently rejecting a later African colonial experience. In other words, colonialism – manifest in Ethiopian domination from the 1950s onward – was also the enemy of Eritrean nationalism and should be fought wherever it might be found.
Many of the commentators of the period were unequivocally in favour of ‘union’, and no one made the case with greater aplomb than the redoubtable Mrs Slyvia Pankhurst. In the foreward she wrote to her own book on the reunion of Eritrea with Ethiopia, she proclaimed that
and expressed her gratitude to Haile Selassie[t]he whole Ethiopian people rejoices in a restored and new-found unity,
[35]who upheld the cause of Eritrea at the United Nations even when all hope seemed lost.
(35. Pankhurst, E. S. Eritrea on the Eve: The Past and Future of Italy's “First Born” Colony. Essex, New Times and Ethiopia News, 1952.)
Furthermore:
[36][t]he Ethiopian Government worked continuously for the liberation of the Eritrean brothers and sisters from alien rule, and also to recover the ancient Ethiopian ports in the interests of the prosperity of the whole Ethiopian population, including those whom the Italians had misnamed Eritreans.
(36. Pankhurst, E. S. Eritrea on the Eve: The Past and Future of Italy's “First Born” Colony. Essex, New Times and Ethiopia News, 1952.)
Stephen Longrigg, chief administrator of the British Military Administration (BMA) in Eritrea from 1942 to 1944, was confident enough in his historical knowledge to assert that
[37][h]ad Italians never landed at Massawa, Eritrea would to-day be partly, as always before, the ill-governed or non-governed northernmost province of Ethiopia,
(37. Longrigg, S. 1945. A Short History of Eritrea, Oxford: Clarendon Press.)
the qualification being more important than he presumably realised.
Indeed, Tigray
[38]is [deleted] in language and geography, with the highlands of Eritrea which, in history as in geography, formed for centuries an integral part of it.
(38. Longrigg, S. 1945. A Short History of Eritrea, Oxford: Clarendon Press.)
For Longrigg, whose account is, in terms of focus at least, as yet unsurpassed, Ethiopia was the constant reference point in the reconstruction of Eritrea's own past. ‘Racially and culturally’, he wrote,
in any case,the Eritrean highlanders are Ethiopian;
[39]it is untrue that the highlands … either demand or reject Ethiopian union. They are divided [and] inarticulate.
(39. Longrigg, S. 1945. A Short History of Eritrea, Oxford: Clarendon Press.)
For the contemporary anthropologist Nadel, there could be little doubt that Eritrea, in large part because of its historic cultural and commercial links further south, was an integral part of both Tigray and Ethiopia as a whole.[40]
(40. Nadel, S. F. 1943. Races and Tribes of Eritrea, Asmara: British Military Administration of Eritrea.)
Yet other contemporary literature reflects a resignation to the supposed inevitable, tinged with concern that the ‘inevitable’ – the joining of Eritrea and Ethiopia in some form or another – was far from an ideal scenario. There was a great deal of ambiguity in the more sober, detached judgements; such writers recognised some considerable complexity in the relationship of the past, and for the proposed relationship of the future. Trevaskis, also attached to the BMA in the 1940s, suggested presciently that:
[41]undue Ethiopian interference in Eritrean affairs might also provoke a dangerous, if not immediate, reaction on the part of the Eritrean Abyssinians. Because the Unionist Party accepted Ethiopian instructions when it depended on Ethiopian support, it should not be supposed that the Unionists of yesterday will dance as happily to Ethiopian tunes tomorrow.
(41. Trevaskis, G. K. N. 1960. Eritrea: A Colony in Transition: 1941–52, London: Oxford University Press.)
Trevaskis did, of course, go on to suggest that Eritreans’ ‘reaction’ would be to resort to unified action with Tigrayans south of the border,[42]
(42. Trevaskis, G. K. N. 1960. Eritrea: A Colony in Transition: 1941–52, London: Oxford University Press.)
although even here we can discern an obtuse and imprecise prediction of the liberation struggle. Likewise, Margery Perham warned of the ‘cleavage’ between Tigray (by which she also meant highland Eritrea) and the rest of Ethiopia, particularly Shoa.[43]
(43. Perham, M. 1948. The Government of Ethiopia, London: Faber and Faber.)
Although again Eritreans are lumped together with Tigrayans as ‘northern Abyssinians’, Perham warned that Haile Selassie's claim on Eritrea had been made
[44]upon grounds that do some violence to history and take insufficient account of present political and religious facts. The claim is based … upon some rather indefinite references to early history and migrations, almost every sentence of which cries out for comment or correction.
(44. Perham, M. 1948. The Government of Ethiopia, London: Faber and Faber.)
Most later scholars, with a few notable exceptions,[45]
( we)
saw no such complexity, nor would they entertain much ambiguity in their analyses.[46]
(46. Zewde, B. 1991. A History of Modern Ethiopia 1855–1974, London: James Currey.)
(Negash , T. Eritrea and Ethiopia: The Federal Experience . Uppsala , 1997.) effectively summarise the argument on the Ethiopian side. (See Iyob, The Eritrean Struggle for the Eritrean case.)
Alemseged Tesfay, involved in research at the ruling People's Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ) in Eritrea, has recently produced some work on this period which is loyal to the nationalist interpretation. Unfortunately, this work is written in Tigrinya, making it extremely difficult for Western scholars and observers to evaluate it, although it has been translated into Amharic and Arabic. Rumours abound that it will be translated into English eventually. See also (Reid, R. J. 2001. “The Challenge of the Past: The Quest for Historical Legitimacy in Independent Eritrea”. History in Africa, 28: 239–72.)
If certain members of the Four Powers’ Commission and the later United Nations Commission exhibited signs that they were predisposed to recommending federation, if not unconditional unity, then later scholars already had their minds made up before broaching the subject with any vigour. And yet the confusion and diffidence of the Commissions themselves reflected more accurately the reality on the ground. Eritrea, it was true, was the victim of burgeoning ‘Big Power’ interests, an idea which nationalists have pursued with great energy and have had burned into the Eritrean national psyche; but Eritrea was also, in some ways, a premature issue in the late 1940s, suffering from being too early an entity in a colonial world which may have been changing but which was not doing so quickly enough to facilitate Eritrea itself. What was being asked about, and of, Eritreans at this time was far in advance of anything happening elsewhere in colonial Africa. At the same time, the uniqueness of the situation lay in the fact that another African state – and no ordinary state, such was the special role played by Ethiopia both inside the continent and in the wider world – was actually claiming the territory more or less in its entirety. Thus the discourse which ensued in this period – the ‘colonial turning point’ – had a dimension to it which was quite exceptional in the context of post-1900 Africa. Nonetheless, the period of the 1940s has remained one of the bloodiest academic battlegrounds in the war for the understanding and defining of Eritrean identity.
hole dry.