Aida Edemariam is moved by Philip Marsden's vivid exploration of the
founding of Ethiopia, The Barefoot Emperor
Aida Edemariam
Saturday January 12, 2008
Guardian
Tewodros appeared in the Zemene Mesafint, the time of judges, when the Ethiopian
highlands were riven by war and prince followed ineffectual prince in a self-
destructive cycle of elevation and deposition. Only 12 when the monastery at which
he was studying was attacked, he was forced to become an outlaw - and thus
discovered his calling as a brilliant military leader. By the 1850s, he had defeated all
putative kings and crowned himself emperor of more land than any other Ethiopian
leader before him. He had a larger vision, too: to make this new empire function as
one peaceful entity and to make contact with the outside world, especially Europe. It
was vastly ambitious, especially for a man whose great gifts and ideals were matched
by faults as great; who came to fear, with good reason, that he was going mad.
Early in his reign Tewodros met two adventurous young Britons, Walter Plowden and
John Bell. Both were killed by rebel leaders, and Plowden was replaced as British
consul by Charles Duncan Cameron, disaffected, unsympathetic and reluctant. The
British had a desultory interest in trade, and a foothold on the Red Sea; what
Tewodros wanted from Europe were ideas and guns, and the support of Christian
governments against the Muslim armies who threatened him. It took about two years
for the British to reply to Cameron (not to Tewodros himself) with a terse refusal. So
Tewodros imprisoned Cameron. Cameron wrote desperately to the India Office;
Tewodros's letter was unearthed and finally an answer was sent with an envoy,
Hormuzd Rassam, who was accompanied by a soldier and a doctor, and charged with
rescuing Cameron. Though initially friendly, the increasingly distrustful and paranoid
Tewodros imprisoned Rassam too.
Already mercurial and capricious, Tewodros became unable to control rages that
could result, for instance, in the slaughter of 7,000 prisoners of war. Yet it is both
Marsden's achievement and a measure of Tewodros's charisma, reported by all who
met him, that we maintain a horrified sympathy with an insecure, embattled king
desperately searching for allies and personal peace, but unable to see how to achieve
his goals except through violence.
Eventually, five years after Cameron's arrival in the Ethiopian court, and 20 since
Plowden had first persuaded Britain to open diplomatic relations, Lieutenant-General
Sir Robert Napier, military commander-in-chief of India, was dispatched to sort out
Tewodros. As Marsden points out, in effect Napier took 64,000 people (including
12,000 fighting men), tens of thousands of mules and 44 elephants across the Red
Sea and into the Ethiopian highlands in a £9m campaign to rescue one man.
By this time the emperor was losing control of the lands he had conquered: 30,000
men waited to attack from the cliffs; an army was marching from Shoa; the Egyptians
- and now Napier - were encroaching. So he fell back to Meqdela, a flat-topped
mountain fastness, taking with him his court, his army, and Sevastopol, a large bell-
shaped cannon. He had to carve a road for it out of the mountains; it took five and a
half months, and amazed the British forces when they eventually caught up with him.
Napier assailed the 45-degree slopes of Meqdela on Good Friday, 1868.
Tewodros knew how to deal with matchlocks, and his men could not be faulted for
their bravery, but the British had new guns, which did not need pauses for reloading.
Tewodros had to admit defeat. He released his captives, sending them on their way
with heartfelt tears; Rassam especially he considered a friend. "Surely," he said, "it is
peace now." But he was tricked. Napier had made a deal with the encroaching
warlords, so although technically he had only come to release the captives, he had
promised the warlords regime change. Tewodros denied him the pleasure. In a scene
every Ethiopian schoolchild learns to picture, he put a gun to his mouth and fired.
Napier's forces took so much booty - filigree crowns, vellum manuscripts (350 were
bought by the British Museum, which had sent a representative), silver crosses - that
15 elephants and 200 mules were needed to carry it.
In a tale of such extremes, Marsden keeps his head, letting massacre and vulnerability
speak largely for themselves. Despite what must have been a distinct temptation, he
does not caricature. He separates, for example, attitudes to the Ethiopians according
to individual personality: Rassam initially thought them "a lazy, indolent race"
because they refused to take messages for him; a soldier who accompanied him,
however, thought them "fine, powerful fellows with well-knit limbs and excellent
horsemen"; quietly he shows how racist assumptions about Africans had to change
when actual encounter brought respect.
The book suffers a little from the fact that most of the written records and diaries are
British - thus the private Tewodros appears only in flashes; his emotions and the
perspective of his Ethiopian followers are often frustratingly absent. Of his final days
and battles, however, there is so much documentation that they seem thrillingly,
tensely immediate; his end, surrounded by just five followers, is as moving as either
he or his biographer could wish.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2008
founding of Ethiopia, The Barefoot Emperor
Aida Edemariam
Saturday January 12, 2008
Guardian
- There are scholarly studies of Tewodros, the 19th-century
king who carved an Ethiopian empire out of warring tribes
and implacable landscape, into which he then drew Queen
Victoria's army to fight an elaborate and expensive war;
there are contemporary accounts; there are countless
Ethiopian retellings that hail his patriotism and noble death,
looking for something in his bloody reign of which to be
proud. But, it seems, there has never been much in the way
of full-scale attempts to understand Tewodros in all his
tragic, quixotic, complicated glory. Philip Marsden is well
placed to try. He has written about Ethiopia before - his
first book was about his travels there, as was his most
recent; he is both seduced by and thoughtfully critical of
Ethiopia's rich, backward-gazing culture - and he knows a
great story when he sees one.
Tewodros appeared in the Zemene Mesafint, the time of judges, when the Ethiopian
highlands were riven by war and prince followed ineffectual prince in a self-
destructive cycle of elevation and deposition. Only 12 when the monastery at which
he was studying was attacked, he was forced to become an outlaw - and thus
discovered his calling as a brilliant military leader. By the 1850s, he had defeated all
putative kings and crowned himself emperor of more land than any other Ethiopian
leader before him. He had a larger vision, too: to make this new empire function as
one peaceful entity and to make contact with the outside world, especially Europe. It
was vastly ambitious, especially for a man whose great gifts and ideals were matched
by faults as great; who came to fear, with good reason, that he was going mad.
Early in his reign Tewodros met two adventurous young Britons, Walter Plowden and
John Bell. Both were killed by rebel leaders, and Plowden was replaced as British
consul by Charles Duncan Cameron, disaffected, unsympathetic and reluctant. The
British had a desultory interest in trade, and a foothold on the Red Sea; what
Tewodros wanted from Europe were ideas and guns, and the support of Christian
governments against the Muslim armies who threatened him. It took about two years
for the British to reply to Cameron (not to Tewodros himself) with a terse refusal. So
Tewodros imprisoned Cameron. Cameron wrote desperately to the India Office;
Tewodros's letter was unearthed and finally an answer was sent with an envoy,
Hormuzd Rassam, who was accompanied by a soldier and a doctor, and charged with
rescuing Cameron. Though initially friendly, the increasingly distrustful and paranoid
Tewodros imprisoned Rassam too.
Already mercurial and capricious, Tewodros became unable to control rages that
could result, for instance, in the slaughter of 7,000 prisoners of war. Yet it is both
Marsden's achievement and a measure of Tewodros's charisma, reported by all who
met him, that we maintain a horrified sympathy with an insecure, embattled king
desperately searching for allies and personal peace, but unable to see how to achieve
his goals except through violence.
Eventually, five years after Cameron's arrival in the Ethiopian court, and 20 since
Plowden had first persuaded Britain to open diplomatic relations, Lieutenant-General
Sir Robert Napier, military commander-in-chief of India, was dispatched to sort out
Tewodros. As Marsden points out, in effect Napier took 64,000 people (including
12,000 fighting men), tens of thousands of mules and 44 elephants across the Red
Sea and into the Ethiopian highlands in a £9m campaign to rescue one man.
By this time the emperor was losing control of the lands he had conquered: 30,000
men waited to attack from the cliffs; an army was marching from Shoa; the Egyptians
- and now Napier - were encroaching. So he fell back to Meqdela, a flat-topped
mountain fastness, taking with him his court, his army, and Sevastopol, a large bell-
shaped cannon. He had to carve a road for it out of the mountains; it took five and a
half months, and amazed the British forces when they eventually caught up with him.
Napier assailed the 45-degree slopes of Meqdela on Good Friday, 1868.
Tewodros knew how to deal with matchlocks, and his men could not be faulted for
their bravery, but the British had new guns, which did not need pauses for reloading.
Tewodros had to admit defeat. He released his captives, sending them on their way
with heartfelt tears; Rassam especially he considered a friend. "Surely," he said, "it is
peace now." But he was tricked. Napier had made a deal with the encroaching
warlords, so although technically he had only come to release the captives, he had
promised the warlords regime change. Tewodros denied him the pleasure. In a scene
every Ethiopian schoolchild learns to picture, he put a gun to his mouth and fired.
Napier's forces took so much booty - filigree crowns, vellum manuscripts (350 were
bought by the British Museum, which had sent a representative), silver crosses - that
15 elephants and 200 mules were needed to carry it.
In a tale of such extremes, Marsden keeps his head, letting massacre and vulnerability
speak largely for themselves. Despite what must have been a distinct temptation, he
does not caricature. He separates, for example, attitudes to the Ethiopians according
to individual personality: Rassam initially thought them "a lazy, indolent race"
because they refused to take messages for him; a soldier who accompanied him,
however, thought them "fine, powerful fellows with well-knit limbs and excellent
horsemen"; quietly he shows how racist assumptions about Africans had to change
when actual encounter brought respect.
The book suffers a little from the fact that most of the written records and diaries are
British - thus the private Tewodros appears only in flashes; his emotions and the
perspective of his Ethiopian followers are often frustratingly absent. Of his final days
and battles, however, there is so much documentation that they seem thrillingly,
tensely immediate; his end, surrounded by just five followers, is as moving as either
he or his biographer could wish.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2008
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