Menelik II

Emperor of Ethiopia (r. 1889-1913)

• Born: August 17, 1844
• Birthplace: Ankober, Shoa (now in Ethiopia)
• Died: December 12, 1913
• Place of death: Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Menelik unified Ethiopia after it had experienced centuries of political fragmentation, consolidated the ancient Christian heritage against growing Muslim influence, and saved Ethiopia from European colonialism. He laid the foundations for Ethiopia’s transformation from a medieval, feudal empire to a modern state.

Early Life

Emperor Menelik II (MEHN-eh-lihk) was born Sahle Mariam in the court of his father, Haile Malakot, a leading prince of the Ethiopian province of Shoa. Chronicles and oral tradition reflect some uncertainty as to the details of the birth: Sahle Mariam may have been born out of wedlock, possibly the result of Haile Malakot’s infatuation with a concubine. However, the traditional sources, while almost ignoring Sahle Mariam’s father—whose reign appears to have been less than illustrious—often make much of the piety and reputation of the child’s mother.

In Ethiopia, where the nobility put much importance on genealogy, these were matters of enormous concern for Sahle Mariam’s career. These concerns caused Haile Malakot’s father, the mighty Sahle Selassie who had led the resurgence of the Christian, Amharic-speaking nobles in Shoa earlier in the nineteenth century, to intercede. Sahle Selassie and his influential queen, Bezzabbesh, saw that the parents of Sahle Mariam were married in a civil ceremony shortly after the child’s birth. In order to erase any further question of Sahle Mariam’s pedigree, Sahle Selassie rechristened the child Menelik II. He prophesied that Menelik would restore the empire of Ethiopia to the ancient greatness wrought by Menelik I, the offspring of a legendary union between Solomon, the king of ancient Israel, and Sheba, Queen of south Arabia.

In Menelik’s youth, however, there were others with similar aspirations. Ethiopia was just emerging from the Zamana Masafent (age of the princes), a long period of disunity and internal chaos. The most notable of the early unifiers was Theodore, ruler of the province of Gonder. In 1856, Theodore’s forces defeated the Shoan levies and incorporated the province. Menelik’s father died of malaria during the final campaign against Theodore. Menelik himself, now the designated heir to the throne of Shoa, became a ward of Theodore at his fortress capital of Magdela. There, Menelik received the favored treatment and education due a noble. He completed religious training and developed excellent military skills. Above all, Menelik obtained the practical experience necessary for success as a ruler and statesman in his own right. He also formed lasting alliances with other noble children from far-flung parts of Ethiopia.

Theodore’s enterprise began with great promise. He envisioned an Ethiopia of law and order and of conciliation between Muslims and Christians. As his reign progressed, however, he resorted increasingly to force, infuriated by the resistance of Muslim principalities and deeply suspicious of intrigue. Theodore may well have been demented in his final years. After 1864, he executed members of the court on a whim and imprisoned members of the British diplomatic mission. The latter indiscretion brought a British military expedition; Theodore committed suicide as it was about to storm Magdela in 1868.

Life’s Work

The disintegration of Theodore’s authority set the stage for Menelik’s emergence. In 1865, the Shoan nobles revolted and beseeched Menelik to return. He escaped Magdela under cover of darkness to return to Ankober. By 1866, Menelik was firmly in command in Shoa. From the moment of his return, Menelik dreamed of succeeding where Theodore had failed, in ruling a united Ethiopian empire.

In 1872, after four years of intrigue and dynastic struggles, Yohannes IV was crowned emperor of Ethiopia at the ancient capital of Aksum in the north. Yohannes managed to hold together the tenuous unity imposed by Theodore. Only Menelik’s homeland of Shoa remained outside the empire.

Menelik’s ambitions—indeed his durability as an independent ruler—required outside support. Theodore’s notoriety, and the British punitive expedition of 1868, had shattered Ethiopia’s isolation and exposed the country to outside pressures. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 greatly increased European interest in the countries along the Red Sea. Egypt , ruled by the ambitious modernizer Ismā ՙīl Pasha, pushed its authority deep into the Sudan, west of Ethiopia, and in 1865 occupied the old Turkish port of Mesewa on the Ethiopian coast. Menelik cultivated an alliance with the Egyptians in the hope of forcing Yohannes IV to divide his attention between two opponents rather than concentrate on Shoa. The Egyptians, however, were devastated by Yohannes’s forces when they attempted to move inland in 1875. Yohannes’s predominantly Greek advisers urged him to articulate a pan-Christian front in the Middle East against both Egyptian and Turkish ambitions. Yohannes also had reached an understanding with the British, who were alarmed at the pace of Egyptian expansion in northeast Africa.

In 1883, tribes in the Sudan rose in rebellion against Egyptian rule. Under the leadership of a Muslim cleric who styled himself as Mahdi (savior), tens of thousands of Sudanese Muslims invaded western Ethiopia in 1887 and sacked Gonder, massacring its inhabitants. Yohannes retaliated the following year by butchering sixty thousand Mahdist troops, but he was wounded in the battle and died shortly thereafter.

The throne now went to Menelik II, and his reign proved among the greatest in Ethiopian history. Menelik immediately set about pushing Ethiopia’s frontiers west toward the Nile and south toward Lake Victoria. He incorporated vast quantities of trade into the empire, thus filling his usually extended exchequer. Menelik departed from the crusading ways of his predecessors by restoring religious liberty and ending the persecution of Muslims and pagans. His method of establishing a dominant culture in Ethiopia was economic and diplomatic rather than military. When new regions were added to the empire, he sowed them with strategically placed settlements of lesser Amhara nobles and Christian clergy, whose increasing control of commerce provided an incentive for the Christianization of many areas. Even tribes who remained Muslim adopted the trappings of Christian, Amhara noble etiquette and fashion.

One of Menelik’s most lasting contributions to modern Ethiopia was the establishment of a new capital at Addis Ababa (new flower) in a relatively sheltered location on the central plain. The region around Addis Ababa contained many of the oldest and most venerated Christian monasteries in the country. Founding the capital there not only reiterated Menelik’s commitment to the Christian tradition of Ethiopia but also brought to an end the practice of changing capitals each time a new dynastic line or regional nobility assumed power. Eucalyptus trees, imported by Menelik to provide shade for government buildings in Addis Ababa, soon spread throughout Ethiopia and helped reforest some of the barren and denuded hillsides of the country. Telegraph communication, and later the beginnings of a telephone system, tied together the outlying regions of the huge, mountainous country. In 1897, a French firm completed a direct railway link between Addis Ababa and the Red Sea coast at Djibouti.

Menelik is best known for transforming Ethiopia’s role in international affairs from that of potential prey of European colonialism to that of a factor in the regional balance of power. He did so by successfully confronting Italy’s bid to incorporate Ethiopia into its colonial domain. In 1882, the Italians purchased the port of Aseb from a private trading company and began to expand along the Red Sea coast. Italian ambitions triggered British occupation of northern Somalia and a French landing at Djibouti in 1885. At first, Menelik deferred to the Italians. Under the Treaty of Uccialli of May, 1889, Menelik recognized Italian sovereignty on the coast and agreed to link his foreign policy with that of Italy. Four years later, however, with Italian columns steadily pushing inland and nearby provincial governors calling for assistance, Menelik prepared for war. After several inconclusive skirmishes, the decisive battle came at Adwa on March 1, 1896, where the Ethiopian army crushed an Italian force.

The news of Adwa electrified the world; it was a stunning reverse of the forces of colonialism hitherto judged irresistible. Within months, a new treaty finalized the Italian colonial frontier with Ethiopia. Emboldened, Menelik pushed his borders westward, joining with France in 1898 in an effort to control the Upper Nile by planting his flag alongside the French at Fashoda (modern Kodok). Ethiopia thus became a factor in a major Anglo-French diplomatic crisis. In 1902, Menelik agreed to the Treaty of Addis Ababa, in which Great Britain and Ethiopia, negotiating on equal terms, reached agreement on placement of the western frontier.

Menelik grew frail in his final years. In 1909, he relinquished the government to a regency in the name of his grandson, Lij Yasu, whose Muslim leanings led to renewed strife and political intrigue. Menelik’s new imperial administration and cultural latticework of Christian-Amhara tradition survived the crisis, however, and continued to support Ethiopia as a nation.

Significance

Menelik II ruled Ethiopia at a crucial time in its history, when the country was emerging from its own dark age and opening itself up to the world. He accomplished the rarest of feats in assimilating the military and technological advances of Europe while turning religion, tradition, and an antiquated class structure toward productive ends. In doing so, he saved Ethiopia from the fate of the rest of Africa, which fell under European rule. For nearly a century, the culture, economy, and political system of Ethiopia bore his stamp.

Bibliography

Abir, Mordechai. Ethiopia: The Era of the Princes, the Challenge of Islam, and the Reunification of the Christian Empire, 1769-1855. New York: Praeger, 1968. Analyzes the crucial period of disunity from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century, when the power of the traditional Christian nobility was in decline and Ethiopia faced the challenge of a revitalized Islam. Excellent on the importance of trade expansion and fiscal control.

Berkeley, George Fitz-Hardinge. The Campaign of Adowa and the Rise of Menelik. Reprint. New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969. A reprint of a 1902 edition that examines the enormous impact of the Ethiopian victory at Adwa, and the consequent rise of the country’s international prestige on the intellectual and political environment of African American society.

Caulk, Richard A. “Minilik II and the Diplomacy of Commerce.” Journal of Ethiopian Studies 17 (1984): 63-76. Discusses the emperor’s commercial and diplomatic aplomb in gaining control of the productive means of his country and in balancing the opportunities and dangers of increased trade with Europeans.

Darkwah, R. H. Kofi. Shewa, Menilek, and the Ethiopian Empire, 1813-1889. London: Heinemann, 1975. Monographic coverage of the period with emphasis on the later portion. Extensive coverage of agriculture and other economic issues, suppression of the slave trade, and military organization. Contains a useful bibliography.

Horvath, R. J. “The Wandering Capitals of Ethiopia.” Journal of African History 10 (1969): 205-219. Discusses the locations of the capital in various periods; also useful as a brief synopsis of Ethiopian politics and society prior to the nineteenth century.

Marcus, Harold G. A History of Ethiopia. 1994. Updated edition. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. An overview of Ethiopian history from prehistoric times through 1991. All but the first eighty of the book’s 394 pages deal with Ethiopia since the country’s reunification under Menelik II in 1889.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. The Life and Times of Menelik II of Ethiopia: 1844-1913. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1975. Reprint. Lawrenceville, N.J.: Red Sea Press, 1995. The primary focus is on Menelik’s relations with Ethiopian noble dynasties and European powers. Extensive political narrative. Excellent bibliography.

Rosenfeld, Chris Prouty. A Chronology of Menilek II of Ethiopia, 1844-1913. East Lansing, Mich.: African Studies Center, 1976. A diary of the life and reign of Menelik gleaned from many different sources. Major foreign developments correlated with those in Ethiopia. A must for research on the period.