The Fortunes of Africa: A 5,000 Year History of Wealth, Greed and Endeavour

by Martin Meredith

  Tewodros too was preparing for war. He pressed the remaining group of missionaries at Gefat to increase their production of cannons. But as rebel activity flared all around, he decided to destroy Gefat, its workshops and mission school and take the Europeans to his encampment at Debre Tabor. Amid mayhem and starvation, they were put to work there constructing a monster, seven-ton mortar. It became Tewodros’s pride and joy. When it was finished, he said it was the happiest day of his life.

  With war imminent, Tewodros made plans to concentrate his forces at Magdala and turn it into an impregnable fortress. In October, he set fire to Debre Tabor and headed for Magdala, leading a great procession of soldiers, camp followers, prisoners, hostages and gun-carriages across the mountains. Their progress was slow. It took five hundred men to haul the giant mortar up steep slopes. On some days they covered less than a mile. By the end of December, Tewodros was still fifty miles from Magdala.

  A British expeditionary force was fast approaching. In October, an advance party had landed at Zulla, a derelict village about thirty miles south of Massawa, near the site of ancient Adulis. The main army began arriving in December. Three hundred ships were commissioned to ferry men, stores and transport animals to a new port built at Zulla. In all, some 64,000 people and 55,000 transport animals joined the campaign – all for the sake of rescuing a handful of European hostages. Hoping to avoid hostilities, the British commander, Sir Robert Napier, prepared for the 400-mile march across the mountains to Magdala by issuing proclamations addressed ‘To the Governors, the Chiefs, the Religious Orders and the people of Abyssinia’, stressing the limited purpose of his expedition.

  It is known to you that Theodorus, King of Abyssinia, detains in captivity the British Consul Cameron, the British Envoy Rassam, and many others, in violation of the laws of all civilized nations. All friendly persuasion having failed to obtain their release, my Sovereign has commanded me to lead an army to liberate them . . .

  When the time shall arrive for the march of a British Army through your country, bear in mind, people of Abyssinia, that the Queen of England has no unfriendly feeling towards you, and no design against your country or your liberty.

  To assist his progress, Napier sought a meeting with Kassa Mercha, the 36-year-old ruler of Tigray who had taken up arms against Tewodros two years before. Kassa looked on the British expedition as a convenient means of ousting Tewodros and opening the way for him to rule a united Abyssinia from Tigray, and agreed to provide supplies of wheat, barley and fodder and to secure its supply lines. Another rebel leader, Wagshum Gobeze, the ruler of Wag and Lasta, was more distrustful of British intentions, but decided to let the expedition pass without challenge. The fighting force that Napier led – a contingent of 5,000 men – advanced towards Magdala unhindered, but struggled as much as Tewodros in dragging their heavy guns across the mountains. Without the use of trained elephant transport from India, said an official report, ‘it would have been impossible’.

  Tewodros arrived at Magdala on 25 March. He summoned Rassam, Blanc and Prideaux to watch his cannons and mortars being hauled up the cliff face. ‘I have lost all Abyssinia but this rock,’ he remarked. Napier was close behind. On 3 April he sent a message to Tewodros from Bet Hor, fifteen miles away, warning: ‘I am approaching Magdala with my army in order to recover from your hands Envoy Rassam, Consul Cameron . . . and the other Europeans now in your Majesty’s power. I request your Majesty to send them to my camp . . .’

  By 9 April, Napier had received no reply and began his advance. Tewodros ordered his European hostages to be freed from their chains and released several hundred more prisoners, but, in a fit of drunken frenzy, had several hundred others dragged to the edge of the cliff and thrown over. The next day, Good Friday, he bombarded British troops with artillery and rocket fire, but to little effect; the giant mortar was never used. On the battlefield, Tewodros lost 700 men, the British, two. Facing defeat, he spared the European hostages, sending them down from the mountain top to the British camp below, but he refused Napier’s demand for his personal surrender. As the British stormed up the slopes of Magdala, Tewodros pulled a pistol from his belt and killed himself. He was buried in the local churchyard.

  The British did not tarry in the highlands. Napier’s only objective now was to get the expedition back to the coast as rapidly as possible. In return for the help that Kassa had provided, he handed him artillery, muskets, rifles and munitions worth half a million pounds, then embarked for England. Every moveable object at the port of Zulla was taken away. By July, there was little to show that the British had set foot in Abyssinia.

  Following the death of Tewodros, three contenders vied for the throne: Kassa of Tigray in northern Abyssinia; Gobeze of Lasta in central Abyssinia; and Menelik of Shoa in southern Abyssinia. Gobeze moved first, proclaimed himself emperor, took the title of Tekla Giyorgis and organised a coronation ceremony in August 1868 on the plain of Zebit in Lasta where his father had been hanged by Tewodros. He offered Kassa the governorship of Tigray, the title of ras, and exemption from tribute, but Kassa refused the offer and made clear his intention of taking the throne. In June 1871, Gobeze marched into Tigray at the head of an army of 60,000 men, but was roundly defeated by Kassa’s better-equipped forces and taken prisoner.

  Kassa duly pronounced himself emperor. He was crowned Yohannes IV at a ceremony at the Church of Mary in Aksum in January 1872 that was carried out in accordance with ancient rituals and attended by 3,000 priests. His principal objective was to reintegrate the warring provinces of Abyssinia and to unify the Church torn apart by decades of theological disputes. He gained the support of the rulers of Gojjam and Wollo. But he still faced opposition from Menelik in Shoa. During Gobeze’s interregnum, Menelik had claimed the title of king of kings for himself. However, he lacked the military strength to take the throne. When Yohannes’s army advanced on Shoa in 1878, Menelik was obliged to seek negotiations. At an elaborate ceremony at Yohannes’s camp at Dembaru, Menelik acknowledged Yohannes as emperor of Abyssinia. In return, Yohannes offered to crown him as king of Shoa. On 26 March, after days of festivities, Menelik was crowned on a throne only slightly lower than that of Yohannes.

  Yohannes was the first emperor in centuries to wield authority from Tigray in the north to Shoa and Gurage in the south. But just when it seemed that Abyssinia was secure from internal upheaval, foreign predators appeared on the Red Sea coast. In an attempt to establish an empire of its own in north-eastern Africa, Egypt leased the port of Massawa from the Ottoman government and then used it as a base to invade the northern highlands in 1876. Yohannes managed to beat back the Egyptians. But another predator, Italy, hoping to establish itself among the ranks of Europe’s imperial powers after unification in 1870, also began to take an interest in the region. An Italian steamship company had purchased the port of Assab in 1869 from the Danakil people for use as a coaling station. In 1882, Italy declared Assab a colony. Three years later, the Italians took possession of Massawa, making clear their own territorial ambitions.

  PART VIII

  Egypt’s Empire

  30

  THE KHEDIVE

  The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 was accompanied by a flurry of spectacular celebrations that lasted for three weeks. Egypt’s khedive, Ismail, spared no expense, inviting thousands of guests from around the world to enjoy a series of ceremonies, feasts and entertainments. At the top of the guest list were European dignitaries whom Ismail was particularly keen to impress. Among them were the Empress Eugénie of France, the Austrian emperor Franz Joseph, the king of Hungary and princes from Prussia and the Netherlands. There were, however, no Muslim sovereigns. Ismail explained to his prime minister, Nubar Pasha, that he wanted to invite the likes of the sultan of Morocco, the bey of Tunis and the shah of Persia, but that accommodation was too limited. ‘With the best intentions on earth, and opening all my residences, I could not have more than eighty palaces ready for the sovereigns and princes who would like to honour me with thei
r presence.’

  The legion of other guests included financiers, scholars, scientists, artists and writers, among them the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, the French painter Jean-Léon Gérôme, the Prussian Egyptologist Richard Lepsius and the French writer Théophile Gautier. A large group was accommodated at Shepheard’s Hotel, renowned for its grandeur and opulence. ‘The guests would group at tables according to their affiliations or professions; there was the corner of painters, the corner of scholars, the corner of literary people and reporters, the corner of worldly people and amateurs,’ wrote Gautier. ‘They visited one another . . . The conversation and the cigar blended all the ranks and all the nations; one saw German doctors talking about aesthetics to French artists and serious mathematicians listening to the tales of the journalists with smiles.’

  Not all of Ismail’s ideas for the opening ceremonies fell into place. Ismail had hoped that the Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi could be persuaded to write a hymn for the occasion, but Verdi declined. ‘I do not compose occasional pieces,’ he replied. Nevertheless, as part of the celebrations, it was Verdi’s musical drama Rigoletto that was chosen for the inaugural performance at Cairo’s new Opera House in November 1869. The following year, Verdi agreed to compose an opera for the khedive for a fee of 150,000 francs. The opera, Aida, was based on a story about an Ethiopian princess who was captured and brought into slavery in Egypt. It was first performed in Cairo in 1871.

  The plan for the opening of the canal on 17 November was for a fleet of ships to sail southwards from Port Said carrying the chief guests to meet another fleet of ships sailing northwards from Suez at a halfway point on Lake Timsah named Ismailia, thus linking the Mediterranean to the Red Sea for the first time. To the sound of gun salutes, military bands and street jamborees, the Empress Eugénie arrived in Port Said in her royal yacht Aigle. ‘Magnificent reception,’ she cabled Napoleon III. ‘I haven’t seen anything like it in my lifetime.’

  Three elevated pavilions with broad stairways had been set up for the opening ceremony. One housed seats for the khedive and his royal guests; the second was for the Catholic Church; and the third for Muslim ulema. The ceremonies began with a Muslim prayer, followed by a Catholic mass and a speech by Empress Eugénie’s confessor, Monsignor Bauer. Then, with the yacht Aigle leading the way and Ismail following aboard the Mahrousa, the fleet set sail for Ismailia, arriving at sunset.

  Ismail had built a palace facing Lake Timsah there, with grand reception rooms replete with stained-glass windows and intricate woodwork. The guests were housed in a temporary encampment of some 1,200 tents furnished, according to one French guest, with ‘the most beautiful carpets in the world’. The main reception hall, large enough to accommodate a thousand tables, was built on dunes facing the palace. Abutting the hall was a dining room for the visiting sovereigns, transformed into a tropical garden and decorated with chandeliers, paintings, fountains and mirrors. ‘Thirty-five centuries ago, the waters of the Red Sea drew back at the words of Moses,’ said Eugénie, in her toast to the khedive. ‘Today, at the order of the sovereign of Egypt, they return to their bed.’

  The driving force behind the construction of the Suez Canal was the French entrepreneur Ferdinand de Lesseps. In 1854, he convinced the Egyptian pasha, Muhammad Said, to give him a concession to form a financial company to build a canal across the Isthmus of Suez and to operate it for a period of ninety-nine years from its opening. A second concession, granted in 1856, required the Egyptian government to provide most of the labour for the project. In 1858, de Lesseps duly launched the Compagnie Universelle du Canal Maritime de Suez. But he encountered difficulty in raising enough capital. The British government opposed the project from the outset, fearing that it would weaken the Ottoman state and draw Britain and France into conflict over Egypt. British investors steered clear, believing the project would fail. Although French investors took up 52 per cent of the shares, the Egyptian government was obliged to come to the rescue of the company, buying up 44 per cent of the shares. Construction did not begin until 1859 and took ten years to complete, nearly twice as long as expected. Much of the work was initially carried out by forced labour, amid much controversy. The cost also soared.

  Once in operation, however, the Suez Canal rapidly became a commercial success. Britain, which possessed the world’s largest and most modern merchant shipping fleet and had by far the largest share of Europe’s trade with Asia, gained huge benefits. British ships were soon producing the bulk of the company’s business and profits. Between 1871 and 1895 British tonnage passing through the Canal was never less than 70 per cent and remained above 50 per cent until after the Second World War. Egypt fared less well. It lost the transit trade across the Isthmus; and it was also compelled to pay compensation of more than £3 million to the Canal Company to rid itself of the obligation of providing labour for the project.

  The Suez Canal was but one of the grand projects that Ismail hoped would transform Egypt into an imperial power. He shared the same ambition for modernisation as his grandfather, Muhammad Ali. After succeeding Said in 1863 at the age of thirty-three, he ruled first as pasha but managed to persuade the Ottoman sultan to accord him the title of khedive, a Persian-Turkish title meaning viceroy, signifying a higher status for Egypt in the Ottoman domain. Educated in part in France, a graduate of the French officers’ cadet school at Saint-Cyr, Ismail acquired an admiration for European methods and sought a partnership with European powers to propel forwards his plans for modernisation.

  The speed of change was dramatic. Ismail commissioned railways, roads, harbours, irrigation projects, sewage systems and electricity plants. With the help of French planners, he began to transform Cairo into a modern capital with all the trappings that European cities enjoyed: boulevards, plazas and public gardens, an opera house, a national theatre, a national library, a national museum. He installed himself in a vast rococo palace at Abdin where he devoted his time to producing ever more plans, welcoming a stream of foreign visitors with courtesy and charm. Europeans were encouraged to take up residence and to participate in Egypt’s great revival. By 1876, more than 100,000 Europeans lived there.

  Ismail’s attempts to carve out an empire for Egypt in north-east Africa were equally ambitious. He recruited European and American military advisers, expanded his army to 93,000 men and embarked on no fewer than ten military campaigns in the region. But the cost of all this served as a huge drain on Egypt’s resources.

  Both Ismail’s grand projects and his military adventures were financed by a borrowing spree. A cotton export boom during the American civil war provided a boost to revenues but also encouraged Ismail to embark on yet more borrowing. European financiers and their agents in Egypt seized on the opportunities with relish, charging exorbitant rates of interest. On average, Ismail’s government received no more than £7 for every £10 of nominal debt that it incurred. The national debt rose from £3.3 million in 1863 to nearly £100 million in 1879. The cost of servicing the debt by then amounted to £5 million a year, nearly two-thirds of the government’s annual revenue. Each new loan was swallowed in an ocean of borrowing.

  In desperate straits, Ismail was obliged in 1875 to sell Egypt’s shares in the Suez Canal Company in an attempt to keep up interest payments. The British government, seeing a bargain on offer, snapped them up for less than £4 million. But for Egypt the funds raised brought only temporary relief.

  Egypt was now facing the calamity of being at the mercy of European financial interests. European creditors, mainly banks, appealed to their governments for help in recovering their loans. European governments responded in 1876 by establishing an international commission, the Caisse de la Dette Publique, with the power to take charge of Egypt’s revenues. In 1878, they went further. In return for a new loan, they stripped Ismail of his autocratic powers and forced him to accept the role of constitutional monarch. His personal revenues and estates were placed under the control of a new administration headed by Nubar Pasha, an Armenian Chri
stian. Two European ministers, one French and one British, joined the cabinet, enabling France and Britain to exercise what was called ‘Dual Control’. The British nominee, Charles Rivers Wilson, was a taxation expert given charge of running the Ministry of Finance.

  European intervention produced a groundswell of resentment among Egyptians. Within the military, there was mounting anger over European insistence that the size of the army had to be reduced to a token force of 7,000 men. In February 1879, a group of army officers and cadets facing dismissal staged a demonstration outside the Ministry of Finance protesting about their arrears of pay and demanding payment in full. As the prime minister, Nubar Pasha, passed by in his carriage, he was ambushed and assaulted.

  In a desperate gamble, Ismail, aggrieved by his own loss of power, sided with the protesters. First, he sacked Nubar Pasha and replaced him with his son Tawfiq. Then, he dismissed his Council of Ministers, including Rivers Wilson and the French minister of public works. He claimed that unless his old powers were returned he could not protect the safety of the state.