By Alex Wodzicki
This is the fifth part of a multi-part series on the history of the Kingdom of Ethiopia. If you haven’t read it already, be sure to check out last week’s post on the Oromo migrations and the kingdom of Ethiopia during the 16th and 17th centuries.
As mentioned in the last post, the power of the Ethiopian emperor (or Negusa Nagast, meaning “King of Kings”) declined significantly in the 17th century as provincial governors and local rulers gained power and autonomy, especially on the northern and western frontiers with Egypt. However, this would begin to change in the 1850s under Emperor Tewodros II, himself a provincial governor of the western province of Qwara who raised a powerful army and seized the Ethiopian throne for himself in 1855. Tewodros would reign for thirteen years, during which time he carried out significant centralizing reforms that sought to break the power both the power of the local nobility and the church, appointing salaried district governors and judges, expanding and re-equipping the national army, and seizing church estates. These reforms were, unsurprisingly, highly unpopular among the local nobility and Tewodros’ new national army spent much of the years between 1855 and 1861 putting down rebellions. Tewodros’ difficult relationship with the church also significantly hurt his support among the common people. In 1868, following a minor diplomatic dispute, Tewodros arrested a British consul, which prompted the British to send a massive punitive expedition to Ethiopia which decisively defeated Tewodros’ army at the Battle of Magdala and subsequently looted the capital before withdrawing.
Tewodros had committed suicide following the battle of Magdala, which led to a four year civil war between rival claimants to the throne that ended when Johannes IV was crowned emperor of Ethiopia at Aksum. Johannes abandoned many of the centralizing policies of his predecessor, restoring much of the local nobility’s power. This was a necessary step to take in order to marshal enough military support to repel incursions from Egypt and later Italy, who had begun establishing the future colony of Eritrea between 1882 and 1885. Throughout Johannes’ reign he faced competition from Menelik, the ruler of the southern kingdom of Shoa centered around Addis Ababa, who had taken advantage of Johannes’ preoccupation with the Egyptians and Italians in the North to expand his kingdom to the south and the east. Johannes died in 1889 and was succeeded by Menelik, who became Menelik II, Emperor of Ethiopia, ruling until his death in 1913. Menelik moved the capital to Addis Ababa and continued his southward and eastward expansion, establishing close to Ethiopia’s modern borders. However, in the north, Menelik also had to deal with the growing imperial ambitions of Italy, who had extended its authority over Eritrea during the late 1880s. It is the Ethiopian colonial conflict with Italy, including the famous battle of Adwa in 1896 that secured decades of Ethiopian independence before their eventual conquest by Fascist Italy under Mussolini in 1935 that we will turn to in the final post of this series.