Hey guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I'm here today down in Florida at I.O. Inc,
Inter Ordnance, taking a look at a pair of rifles that are part of this
big stash that they found and brought into the US out of Africa.
These are particularly interesting because we have a Gewehr 88
and a Karabiner 88, early German Commission Rifles,
that are actually stamped as property of Emperor Menelik II of Ethiopia.
Now Ethiopia has actually a particularly interesting history.
It is perhaps the only substantial African nation that managed to avoid becoming a colonial protectorate
of one of the European powers during the ... late 19th century and early 20th century.
And it did this largely thanks to the foresight and thoughtfulness of Menelik II.
So, he ... came to power in 1889 and he would rule for 20 years, ultimately dying, well, he had a stroke.
He died 1913, power transitioned from him to his wife in 1909. So a 20 year reign.
And during this period he did quite a lot to modernise Ethiopia. He ... founded a national currency,
he ... formed a ministerial system of government instead of the traditional feudal system that Ethiopia had up to then had.
Started building infrastructure, telephone, telegraph, running plumbing, railroad lines.
He really did a lot to ensure that Ethiopia would be its own independent state for the next foreseeable century, really.
Now he did this largely by arming Ethiopia.
... Ethiopia had international relations that really kind of varied quite a lot.
So early on, in fact before Menelik's time, Ethiopia was most closely associated with Russia,
because these were both Orthodox Christian countries, unlike the rest of Europe.
And Russia didn't really like the idea of a fellow Orthodox country being subservient to, say, Catholic Italy.
So they assisted, and they sent Ethiopia aid in the form of things like Berdan rifles.
Traditionally Ethiopia would have fairly rocky relations with both Italy and Great Britain,
both of whom were very interested in having Ethiopia as a protectorate state.
The French and the Belgians were a little more friendly to them, not being directly interested in
Ethiopia themselves, and wanting to see limitations on the power of their European rivals.
Now, arms into Ethiopia would really run the gamut of all sorts of things, including Commission Rifles like this.
So let me show you the markings on here, because they're really pretty cool.
I'm gonna start with the carbine because the carbines are rarer than the rifles, and very cool.
As you see up on the top here, this was never refitted to use stripper clips,
and it was never recut for longer ammunition like a great many of the Commission Rifles,
the Gewehr 88s, that are available in general were the ones that stayed in Europe.
We have a Kar or Karabiner, carbine, 88 marking on the side.
And this is a rifle that was made at the Erfurt Arsenal in 1893.
And right there down the side is in ... clearly hand inscribed markings,
a crown and then a few letters in Amharic signifying that this is the property of Menelik II.
Really quite remarkably it's actually still all matching. Serial number 3000 g there on the barrel and receiver,
and the bolt,
and the last two digits on the safety flag,
and on the barrel band.
And it has a unit marking up here on the nose cap which suggests that it was actually in German service before it came to Ethiopia.
I don't have any way to know exactly when these guns reached Ethiopia.
Menelik was in power until 1909, which is plenty of time for Commission Rifles to have been supplied as military assistance.
Our other rifle here is the full-length Gewehr 88 made by Loewe in Berlin in 1890.
And it's got ... basically the same markings,
clearly hand inscribed, or hand carved, by someone different and on the opposite side of the receiver.
So here they are both side by side,
you can see that the letters are the same, a little bit of a different style in the crowns,
and clearly done by different people at different times
When Menelik II first became Emperor in 1889, the Italians were just in the process of forming and taking the colony of Eritrea,
which is directly adjacent to Ethiopia. And it basically makes Ethiopia a landlocked country.
Eritrea is this basically narrow strip of land on on the eastern coast of Africa.
So there was some friction, shall we say, back and forth and ultimately a treaty was signed in 1893
between the Italians and Menelik on behalf of the Ethiopians,
acknowledging that the Italians could keep Eritrea and Ethiopia would remain its own state.
However, there were two versions of the treaty, there was one in Italian
and there was one in Amharic, the native language of Ethiopia.
And Menelik didn't speak Italian, so he signed a version in Amharic being assured that ... both were the same.
Well, they weren't actually the same. The technical wording ... in the Amharic version said that Ethiopia
would be welcome to use Italy's diplomatic connections to make discourse basically with the rest of the world.
The Italian version said that Ethiopia was required to use Italian diplomacy to talk to anybody else.
In short, the Italian version made Ethiopia a formal protectorate of Italy.
And when Menelik discovered this, when he realised this, basically he went to start talking to
some of the other European powers and got back letters saying,
"We can't establish diplomatic relations with you because you're a protectorate colony of Italy."
And he basically went, "I'm a what the hut now?"
And this led to refutation of the treaty and a war with Italy.
Italy sent something like 17,000 men in, basically, an invasion force to go put down this rebellious Ethiopian self-determination.
What they didn't realise was Ethiopia had a military of greater than 200,000 men when it was fully mobilised.
Menelik brought together a lot of guys, and more than half of them had modern breech-loading repeating rifles like these.
He was also quite good at logistics and organisation, and understood how to actually field a ... modern army for the time.
And at the Battle of Adwa the Italians dramatically underestimated both his numbers,
his arms and his capabilities and got themselves thoroughly beaten.
Which prevented Italian occupation of Ethiopia for about thirty years until they came back in the 1930s.
Now that's a story for another time, but it really is ... one of the relatively few stories of a native African force
being sufficiently capable and well armed and well led to thoroughly defeat a European force,
even if they did have the advantage of significant numbers.
So a very cool piece of relatively I think unknown history. And rifles like these are a very cool tangible connection to it.
So stuff like this of course rarely ever shows up in the United States, because why would it?
Until a company like Inter Ordnance finds a huge cache of guns like this,
brings them into the US and makes them available to people.
So the best of the bunch, the most interesting of these, are going to be sold directly through Inter Ordnance's website.
I can't link to that directly because of YouTube's rules, but it shouldn't take you very long to figure out
how to find them on the web and check out all of the really cool stuff that they have.
Thanks for watching.