In 1870 only about 10% of Africa was under European control. However by 1914,
that number was 90%; just two countries—Liberia and Ethiopia—were free from their rule.
Liberia though still was something of a colony, albeit an odd one;
it was founded in 1847 and was led by freed slaves from the US. It existed
because of American support, but Ethiopia had no foreign state propping them up. So then why,
with two of Europe’s greatest colonial powers at its doorstep was Ethiopia able to maintain
its independence? How did the Ethiopians, until Mussolini came along anyway, avoid colonialism?
Well, first and foremost it wasn’t that Europeans just didn’t care to conquer
the place. The Ethiopian Empire (also known as Abyssinia) survived the scramble for Africa in
opposition to the goals of Europeans. The Empire existed for about seven centuries, but as Europe
began to take an active interest in Africa in the 1800s, Ethiopia was not a centralized state.
Instead, during a period known as the Age of Princes, Ethiopian Emperors possessed virtually
no power outside of their capital, Gondar. The princes, or more accurately, warlords,
who often came from other branches of the imperial Solomonic dynasty, controlled different bits of
the country and constantly fought one another over territory. To oversimplify, that made everyone
pretty miserable, as war tends to, but luckily for Ethiopians by 1855 the Age of Princes had
come to an end with the rise of Emperor Tewodros II, who, through military force, unified Ethiopia.
So, Tewodros claimed the throne through divine right. Unlike most African Christians,
whose ancestors were converted by colonial European missionaries, Ethiopian Orthodox
Christianity had been Ethiopia’s predominant faith since late antiquity, and Ethiopian emperors,
Tewodros among them, claimed descent from the Biblical King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.
In fact, Christianity was the state religion of Ethiopia even before it was adopted by Rome.
Making it, along with Armenia, the oldest Christian nation on earth.
Of course, that didn’t stop Ethiopia’s fellow Christians in Europe from interfering in their
affairs. Not by a long shot. Good news though, Tewodros II, as Emperors go, was pretty decent,
and is well regarded by ordinary Ethiopians to this day. The bad news? Unity enforced by military
rule only lasts for as long as one has a military. Speaking of, Tewodros’ army was reasonably
powerful and he was a skilled tactician, but it was also kept quite busy. For most of his reign,
Tewodros was on campaign within his own country making sure that it stayed his
However, in 1866 he sent a letter to the British government complaining about raiding on the
outskirts of his kingdom. Britain promptly did nothing, so Tewodros arrested British
representatives in Ethiopia. The prisoners were treated pretty terribly, and that,
along with the arrests in the first place, was taken as an insult to Britain’s honour. So, 30,000
mostly British Indian troops were dispatched to Ethiopia. The Emperor was defeated by the British
at the Battle of Magdala, and rather than become a prisoner himself, Tewodros committed suicide.
Without him, and his army, Ethiopia descended into civil war again,
a war that would eventually be won by a new emperor, Yohannes IV. Britain, by the way,
had always considered the expedition to be a punitive measure. It was never meant as a
conquest. So with Tewodros dead, they had left. Like Tewodros, Yohannes IV was mostly stuck
dealing with internal problems, but during his reign, he did manage to slightly expand Ethiopia.
Yohannes was followed by Menelik II, who was arguably the single most successful Ethiopian
Emperor. Menelik modernized Ethiopia’s government, began to transition the state from absolute to
constitutional monarchy and founded the modern Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa. Importantly he
also used their common Orthodox Christianity to get military aid and advisers from the
Russian Empire. It didn’t hurt that Russia, unlike western powers, had no stake of its own in Africa.
Under Menelik, Ethiopia expanded to this. Just about its modern borders. It was surrounded
though, on all sides, by European colonies. Most notably the Italian possession of Eritrea.
In 1889 Menelik and representatives of Italy signed the treaty of Wuchale,
in which Ethiopia recognized Italian control over Eritrea. But the versions of the treaty in Amharic
and Italian differed slightly, which gave the Italians the impression that they had just gained
all of Ethiopia as a protectorate, while the Ethiopians believed that they had only entered
into a treaty of friendship with Italy. When the disagreement became clear, Menelik tore
up the treaty in 1893 and prepared to face an Italian invasion. Which went really badly, for,
certainly to their surprise, the Italians. They were decisively defeated by Menelik’s reformed
army at the battle of Adwa in 1896, and then recognized Ethiopian sovereignty in the Treaty
of Addis Ababa. Britain and France followed suit with their own treaties shortly afterwards, and
just like that, Ethiopia was a fully recognized, independent part of the international community.
They would go on to be a member of the League of Nations, and later a founding member of the UN.
Ethiopian sovereignty would only come under serious threat once more. In 1936,
Italy’s fascist dictator Benito Mussolini started the 2nd Italo-Ethiopian War and occupied Ethiopia,
but the Ethiopians never accepted his rule, and despite Mussolini’s nominal creation
of the colony Italian East Africa, Italy never properly controlled
Ethiopia and had to contend with armed resistance for its entire stay there.
With the help of British Imperial troops, Ethiopia was liberated during WW2. In the decades since,
it has faced a myriad of complex challenges, but its independence has remained intact.
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and as always, I’ve been James, and thank you for watching Look Back History.