An Unequal Recovery, 1893–1913

Serels, Steven

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-94165-3_5

An Unequal Recovery, 1893–1913

Steven Serels³

Chapter
First Online: 24 August 2018

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Part of the book series: Palgrave Series in Indian Ocean World Studies ((IOWS))

Abstract

The process of recovering from the devastation of the 1880s and early 1890s took place as British, French, Italian, and Ethiopian officials were dividing the ARSL between their respective empires. Though these officials were eager to establish and delineate the new colonial borders, they were not interested in effectively administering their newly claimed territory. Instead, colonial officials created systems of indirect rule modeled upon the previous Egyptian administration. Traditional pastoralist leaders and Islamic religious elites were given salaries and made into agents of the various colonial states. This exogenous source of wealth and privilege allowed traditional pastoralist leaders and Islamic religious elites to guide the process of reconstructing their destroyed communities. They leveraged their relation to the state to create exploitative, hierarchical communal structures based on non-reciprocal relations of dependence. Without a social safety net, non-elites had no protection from structural poverty.

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Notes

1.
Pankhurst, The Great Ethiopian Famine of 1888–1892, 53.
2.
Shaykhs of Zula and Macallile to Governor of Eritrea, 4 November 1896, Pacco 236 Archivio Storico Diplomatico Archivio Eritrea, Rome (ASDAE).
3.
‘Notes on the Outbreak of Bovine Typhus at Suakin and in the Neighbouring Districts’ reprinted in Intelligence Department, Egyptian Army, Sudan Intelligence Report, No. 62 (16 February to 30 April 1899), 17, SAD.
4.
Comando della Zona del Serae Hamasen to Commandante delle R Truppe, 18 February 1898, Pacco 292, ASDAE.
5.
In Eritrea, officials recorded that 100,000 head of cattle died from the disease in 1904 and 1905. However, these officials recognized this number as a gross underestimate. A census of the domesticated animal population in Eritrea taken during the outbreak counted approximately 296,000 head of cattle. Gaetano Conti, ‘Il Servizio Veterinario in Eritrea’ in Ministero degli Affari Esteri, Comitato per la documentazione dell’opera dell’Italia in Africa, Italia in Africa: Serie Civile, Volume II: Il Servizio Veterinario Nell’Africa Italiana (Rome, 1965), 8.
6.
Wingate, ‘Memorandum by the Governor-General,’ in Reports on the Finances, Administration, and Conditions of the Sudan (RFACS), 1906 (1906), 9, SAD.
7.
F. U. Carr, ‘Annual Report, Veterinary Department, 1909,’ in RFACS, 1909 (1909), 568, SAD.
8.
Agnus Cameron, ‘Annual Report, Kassala Province, 1911,’ in RFACS, 1911, Vol. II (1911), 90, SAD.
9.
Agnus Cameron, ‘Annual Report, Kassala Province, 1912,’ in RFACS, 1912, Vol. 1 (1912), 92, SAD.
10.
C. H. Townsend, ‘Annual Report, Kassala Province, 1913,’ in RFACS, 1913, Vol. 1 (1913), 96, SAD.
11.
R. D. Brown, ‘Rinderpest Immunity in Calves,’ Journal of Hygiene, 56:4 (December 1958): 427–434.
12.
Istituto Agricolo Coloniale Italiano, L’Economia Eritrea, 37.
13.
Marchi, Studi sulla Pastorizia della Colonia Eritrea, 16.
14.
Intelligence Department, Egyptian Army, Intelligence Report: Egypt, No. 32 (November 1894), 9, SAD.
15.
Ma rchi , Studi sulla Pastorizia della Colonia Eritrea, 17.
16.
Istituto Agricolo Coloniale Italiano, L’Economia Eritrea, 37.
17.
Graham C. Kerr, ‘Annual Report, Red Sea Province, 1905,’ in RFACS, 1905 (1905), 121, SAD.
18.
Istituto Agricolo Coloniale Italiano, L’Economia Eritrea, 37.
19.
Previously, Italian imperial ambitions had been narrowly focused on conquering the Ethiopian highlands. This changed with the signing of the Treaty of Wuchale in 1889. Through this treaty, Menelik II of Shewa ceded the northeastern highlands to Italy and Italian officials agreed not to press further into Ethiopia. However, the treaty said nothing about Sudan. Further, Italian officials believed that the British and Egyptians had given up their claim to Sudan in a proclamation issued from Sawakin in December 1889.
20.
Anthony D’Avray, Lords of the Red Sea: The History of a Red Sea Society from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1996), 67–68.
21.
Wingate to Kitchener, 7 April 1890, Wingate Papers, Box 1, c.1, Duke University Library.
22.
To hide their true aims, this group of officials began to tell the senior British politicians that taking the delta was necessary to secure Sawakin. They argued that British control over this delta would push the frontline of the rebellion back across over 400 km of desert to Kassala. However, privately the architects of this plan acknowledged that their real motives were different. In a letter from 17 April 1890, shortly after the plan to take Tawkar was rejected, Reginald Wingate, the Director of Intelligence in the Egyptian army, wrote to Herbert Kitchener, the Governor of Sawakin, that conquering the delta “was the one thing necessary to show our hand and would have been an effective topper to Italian penetration.” Wingate to Kitchener, 17 April 1890 Wingate Papers, Box 1, c.1, Duke University Library. There is no indication that Wingate, Kitchener, or any of their collaborators told senior British politicians that the goal of the advance on Tawkar was to frighten the Italians. Instead, over the next half year they just sent repeated memos arguing that taking the delta was necessary for securing Sawakin from rebel threat. Grenfell, Memorandum [n.d. November 1890] FO407/102/24, NA; Dormer to Horse Guards, 3 November 1890 FO407/102/24, NA.
23.
Ford to Baron Blanc, 24 July 1894 FO 407/127/36, NA.
24.
Hardinge to Salisbury, 16 July 1891 FO407/107/16, NA.
25.
‘Proposta di soluzione per gli Habab [n.d. 1890]’ reprinted in The Nakfa Documents, 156.
26.
Governor of Eritrea to Ministero degli Affari Esteri, 29 March 1893 Posizione 4/3, ASDMAI.
27.
Hardinge to Salisbury, 16 July 1891 FO407/107/10, NA; Arbuthnot to Governor Kassala, 18 October 1942 SAD849/7/19-28.
28.
Lloyd to Baratieri, 6 February 1895, reprinted in The Nakfa Documents, 198.
29.
Lamb to Kimberly, 9 February 1895 FO 407/131/60, NA.
30.
Angherà to Governor, 10 March 1895, reprinted in The Nakfa Documents, 202–205.
31.
Lam to Kimberly, 16 March 1895 FO407/131/77, NA.
32.
Lamb to Cromer, 18 May 1895 FO407/131/110, NA.
33.
Appendix to Protocol signed by the Egyptian and Italian Delegates at Suakin, 1 May 1895 FO407/131/110, NA.
34.
Rodd to Salisbury, 3 September 1895 FO407/132/19, NA.
35.
Appendix to Protocol signed by the Egyptian and Italian Delegates at Suakin, 1 May 1895 FO407/131/110, NA.
36.
Traite avec Hamed ben Mohammed Sultan de Tadjourah, 21 September 1884, FM SG CFS//6, ANOM.
37.
“Letter from his Excellency the Governor General to Sultan Ali Dinar” reproduced in Intelligence Department, Egyptian Army, Sudan Intelligence Report, No. 83 (1 to 30 June 1901), 10, SAD.
38.
Governor of French Somaliland to le Ministre des Colonies, 3 February 1899 FM 1AFFPOL/121, ANOM.
39.
Oberlé and Hugot, Hitoire de Djibouti, 103.
40.
Norès to le Ministre des Colonies, 10 April 1911, FM 1AFFPOL/133, ANOM.
41.
Serels, Starvation and the State, 97–108.
42.
Cromer to Salisbury, 25 December 1897, FO 407/143/132, NA.
43.
Giorgio della Croce, Note sul Commisariato Regionale di Cheren [n.d.], FASC3123, IAO.
44.
Governor of Eritrea to Ministero degli Affari Esteri, 29 March 1893, Posizione 4/3, ASDMAI.
45.
Boari to Governatore, 13 November 1894, Pacco 4, ASDAE.
46.
Stralcio dalla proposta di Tibuto per l’esercizio 1899–1900 del Commissariato di Massaua, 28 November 1898, reprinted in The Nakfa Documents, 264–265.
47.
Henry St. George, ‘Annual Report, Kassala Province, 1903,’ in RFACS, 1903 (1903), 53, SAD.
48.
Boari to the Governor of Eritrea, reprinted in The Nakfa Documents, 272–286.
49.
Missione Ademollò, 30 June 1897, reprinted in The Nakfa Documents, 260–262.
50.
Henry St. George, ‘Annual Report, Kassala Province, 1903,’ in RFACS, 1903 (1903), 53, SAD.
51.
The Red Sea line was part of a relatively extensive for African standards rail network. The first two lines of this network were built during the British-led conquest of Sudan. Both of these lines began at Wadi Halfa, on the Egyptian border. One line hugged the Nile and terminated at Karma. The other line bypassed the Sudanese bend in the Nile, rejoined the river near Wadi Halfa and reached the banks of the Blue Nile across from Khartoum. At the start of the twentieth century, the line to Karma was closed, and in the years before the First World War, the main Nile line was extended south and then west through the fertile Jazira plain and into the rainlands of Kordofan. In addition, branch lines were built linking the main line to Dongola in the west and the Red Sea in the east. In the 1920s, an additional branch line was constructed to link the main line in the Jazira via Qadarif and Kassala to the Red Sea line. To further extend the modern communication network, officials developed an extensive steamer service that was frequently used by merchants to carry goods on private account between major inland ports and rail terminals along the Nile and its tributaries. For a history of the construction of the Sudanese railroad, see Richard Hill, Sudan Transport: A History of Railway, Marine and River Services in the Republic of the Sudan (London, Oxford University Press, 1965).
52.
Work on the Eritrean railroad began in October 1887 with the construction of 27 km of rail between Massawa and Saati. The railroad was subsequently extended to Ghenda in 1904 and to the new Eritrean highland capital in Asmara in 1911. Following the First World War, the line was further extended to Keren in 1922, Agordat in 1928, and then to Tessenei near the Sudanese border in 1929. Redie Bereketeab, Eritrea: the Making of a Nation, 1890–1991 (Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press, 2007), 101.
53.
In 1896, Menelik II designated the new French port as the official port for all of Ethiopia’s export trade. The following year work began on a railroad from Djibouti to Ethiopia. Progress on the railroad was slow and commercial service did not begin until 1901. Five years later, Compagnie Impériale des Chemins de fer d’Éthiopie, which held the railroad concession, failed. The company’s assets, including the section of the railroad that had already been built, were transferred to the newly established Compagnie du Chemin de Fer Franco-Éthiopien. Work extending the rail line was eventually resumed and the railhead finally reached its terminus in Addis Ababa in 1917. Service Intercolonial d’information et de documentation, Ministre des colonies. Côte des Somalis, 1940, FM 1AFFPOL/2681, ANOM.
54.
Situazione della Colonia, 1905, Possizione 3/20, ASDMAI.
55.
Rapport Mensuel, April 1917, FM 1AFFPOL/122, ANOM.
56.
Michele Checchi, La Palma Dum e l’Euphorbia candelabra nella colonia Eritrea (Rome, Istituto Coloniale Italiano, 1910), 15.
57.
Report on the Soudan by Lieutenant-Colonel Stewart (C3670, 1883), 35.
58.
‘Annual Report, Sudan Customs, 1913,’ in RFACS, 1913, Vol. 2 (1913), 198–199, SAD.
59.
Between 1898 and 1913, cultivators on the Sudanese Nile between Khartoum and the Egyptian frontier invested nearly 6.25 million Maria Theresa thalers back into their farms. Serels, Starvation and the State, 123.
60.
British officials further sought to stimulate this trade by setting a preferential rate on the carriage of grain. The grain freight rate was set in 1906 at 25 percent below the lowest rate. Wingate, ‘Memorandum by the Governor-General,’ in RFACS, 1906 (1906), 40, SAD.
61.
Reports by His Majesty’s Agent and Consul-General on the Finances, Administration, and Condition of Egypt and the Soudan in 1901 (Cd1012, 1902), 70.
62.
N. F. Playfair, ‘Annual Report, Suakin Province, 1902,’ in RFACS, 1902 (1902), 339–341, SAD.
63.
P. M. Saville, ‘Annual report, Kassala Province, 1902,’ in RFACS, 1902 (1902), 296, SAD.
64.
G. B. Macauley, ‘Annual Report, Railways Department, 1903,’ in RFACS, 1903, Vol. 3 (1903), 119, SAD.
65.
Graham Kerr, ‘Annual Report, Red Sea Province, 1909,’ in RFACS, 1909 (1909), 778, SAD.
66.
For a complete retelling of the economic collapse of Sawakin, see Roden, ‘The Twentieth Century Decline of Suakin.’
67.
Luigi Cufino, La Parabola Commerciale di Assab (Naples: Stab. Tip. Francesco Golia, 1913), 5.
68.
Riepilogo del movimento carovaniero di importazione ed esportazione avvenuto durante l’anno 1907 nella piazza di Assab, 1908, Pacco 508, ASDAE.
69.
Cufino, La Parabola Commerciale di Assab, 3.
70.
Serels, Starvation and the State, 117–118.
71.
Ochsenwald, ‘The Commercial History of the Hijaz Vilayet,’ 65.
72.
Wingate to Kitchener, 16 January 1911 SAD300/1/63; Wingate to Kitchener, 24 January 1911 SAD300/1/77; Wingate to Hamilton, 9 December 1908 SAD284/5/8-9; Cromer to Wingate, 1 January 1906 SAD278/1/2.
73.
Reports by His Majesty’s Agent and Consul-General on the Finances, Administration, and Conditions of Egypt and the Soudan, 1899 (cd95, 1900), 62; E. B. Wilkinson, ‘Annual Report, Kassala Province, 1904,’ in RFACS, 1904 (1904), 77, SAD.
74.
Residente del Sahel to Governor of Eritrea, 26 June 1905, Pacco 454, ASDAE.
75.
Elenco degli Schiavi Liberati dalla Autoriza della Colonia dal 1905 al 1913, Pacco 193, ASDAE.
76.
Residente del Sahel to Governor of Eritrea, 26 June 1905, Pacco 454, AEMAE.
77.
For a study of the history and communal structure of the Rashayda, see W. C. Young, The Rashaayda Bedouin: Arab Pastoralists of Eastern Sudan (Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1996).
78.
Il Regente di Residenza del Sahel to Governor of Eritrea, 4 July 1907, Pacco 440, ASDAE; Il Direttore Degli Affari Civili, Schiavi Liberati nell’anno 1907, 10 January 1908, Pacco 520, ASDAE.
79.
Corsi, Relazione riguardante gli schiavi liberati durante gli anni 1905 e 1906 dalle varie autorità della Colonia, 15 May 1907, Pacco 440, ASDAE.
80.
Il Direttore Degli Affari Civili, Schiavi Liberati nell’anno 1907, 10 January 1908, Pacco 520, ASDAE.
81.
L’Agente Italiano in Tigré to Governor of Eritrea, 31 August 1913, Pacco 580, ASDAE.
82.
Serels, Starvation and the State, 121–123.
83.
F. R. Wingate, ‘Memorandum by the Governor-General,’ in RFACS, 1904 (1904), 35, SAD.
84.
H. W. Jackson, ‘Annual Report, Dongola Province, 1903,’ in RFACS, 1903, Vol. 4 (1903), 27, SAD.
85.
H. W. Jackson, Behind the Modern Sudan (London: Macmillan, 1955), 94.
86.
Bonham-Carter to Wingate, 1 August 1913 SAD187/2/1.
87.
R. Wingate, ‘Memorandum by the Governor-General,’ in RFACS, 1906, Vol. 2 (1906), 39, SAD.
88.
F. R. Wingate, ‘Memorandum by the Governor-General,’ in RFACS, 1904 (1904), 35, SAD.
89.
Serels, Starvation and the State, 119–120.
90.
Noel Edward Noel-Buxton, ‘Slavery in Abyssinia,’ International Affairs, 11:4 (July 1932): 517; Pankhurst, Economic History of Ethiopia, 111.
91.
Ethiopian cultivators did not widely own slaves, and slave labor was rarely used to resume cultivation after the famine. Cultivation in the grain-producing regions in northern Ethiopia continued to be limited by insufficient animal labor resulting from repeated outbreaks of rinderpest. See James McCann, From Poverty to Famine in Northeast Ethiopia: A Rural History 1900–1935 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987), 80–81.
92.
Philip Zaphiro, Memorandum on the Slave Traffic between Abyssinia and the Coast of Arabia [n.d. November 1929] IOR/R/20/1/1560, BL.
93.
Governor of French Somaliland to le Ministre des Colonies, 3 February 1899, FM 1AFFPOL/121, ANOM.
94.
Norès to le Ministre des Colonies, 10 April 1911, FM 1AFFPOL/133, ANOM.
95.
This case was only brought because of unusual international circumstances. In April of that year, a boat belonging to the government of Aden discovered a dhow anchored off al-Hudayda with eight slaves on board. The crew, which was comprised entirely of Afar protégés from the Côte Française des Somalis, was arrested on suspicion of engaging in the slave trade and turned over to French officials in Djibouti for prosecution. The next anti-slavery case was brought in 1922. Rapport sur la Traite des Esclaves à la Côte Française des Somalis, 16 February 1923, FM 1AFFPOL/402, ANOM.
96.
Philip Zaphiro, Memorandum on the Slave Traffic between Abyssinia and the Coast of Arabia [n.d. November 1929] IOR/R/20/1/1560, BL.
97.
Il Commissariato Regionale di Assabb to Affari Civili, 18 February 1913, Pacco 580, ASDAE; Barton to Henderson, 8 July 1930, IOR/R/PS/12/4088, BL.
98.
Grant, Rulers, Guns, and Money, 67.
99.
Grant, Rulers, Guns, and Money, 76.
100.
The French engaged in contraband sales of modern weapons throughout Africa, despite being a signatory to the 1890 Brussels Protocol that prohibited the sale of modern firearms in Africa. The continuation of arms sales in French Sudan, Nigeria, Gold Coast, Ivory Coast, and Sierra Leone has been well documented. See James J. Cooke, ‘Anglo-French Diplomacy and the Contraband Arms Trade in Colonial Africa, 1894–1897,’ African Studies Review, 17:1 (April 1974): 27–41.
101.
Istituto Agricolo Coloniale Italiano, L’Economia Eritrea, 37.
102.
‘Notes on the outbreak of Bovine Typhus at Suakin and in the Neighbouring Districts’ in Intelligence Department, Egyptian Army, Sudan Intelligence Report, No. 62 (16 February to 30 April 1899), 17, SAD.
103.
Conti, ‘Il Servizio Veterinario in Eritrea,’ 8.
104.
G. R. Griffith, ‘Annual Report, Veterinary Department, 1906,’ in RFACS, 1906 (1906), 526, SAD.
105.
St. C. M. G. Macewen, ‘Annual Report, Kassala Province, 1909,’ in RFACS, 1909 (1909), 705, SAD.
106.
Agnus Cameron, ‘Annual Report, Kassala Province, 1911,’ in RFACS, 1911, Vol. II (1911), 90, SAD.
107.
J. D. M. Jack, ‘The Sudan,’ in A History of the Overseas Veterinary Services, G. P. West, ed. (London: British Veterinary Association, 1961), 127–128.
108.
C. H. Townsend, ‘Annual Report, Kassala Province, 1913,’ in RFACS, 1913, Vol. 1 (1913), 96, SAD.
109.
Grain yields in Sudan had shrunk because the Mahdist Rebellion had caused the Sudanese slave plantation system to collapse and because the Mahdist state implemented a series of policies that hindered recovery in agricultural areas. Similarly, grain yields in the Ethiopian /Eritrean highlands decreased sharply when rinderpest killed 90 percent of the cattle. Agriculture in this region was dependent on cattle-driven plows. Rudolf von Slatin, Fire and Sword in the Sudan: A Personal Narrative of Fighting and Serving the Dervishes, 1879–1895, translated by F. R. Wingate (London: Edward Arnold, 1896), 456; Pankhurst and Johnson, ‘The Great Drought and Famine of 1888–1892 in Northeast Africa,’ 63; Serels, Starvation and the State, 13–43; Pankhurst, The Great Ethiopian Famine, 39; Gino Bartolimmei Gioli, ‘La Produzione Frumentaria in Eritrea di fronte alle relazioni doganali fra Metropoli e Colonia,’ Atti della R. Academia dei Geografili, Series V, 1:1 (1904): 86–88.
110.
Jackson to Wingate, 22 December 1893, SAD255/1/854.
111.
Report for the Year 1897 on the Trade of Suakin. Commercial No. 1859 (C8648, 1898), 8.
112.
J. H. Neville, ‘Annual Report, Agriculture and Lands Department, 1903,’ in RFACS, 1903 (1903), 165, SAD.
113.
A. F. Broun, ‘Annual Report, Agriculture and Lands Department, 1904,’ in RFACS, 1904, Vol. 3 (1904), 11–12.
114.
G. de Ponti, Il Cotone in Eritrea, 27 August 1930, FASC1962, IAO.
115.
Intelligence Department, Egyptian Army, Intelligence Report: Egypt, No. 8 (December 1892), 3.
116.
Report for the Year 1896 on the Trade of Suakin. Commercial No. 1859 (C8277, 1897), 2.
117.
E. B. Wilkinson, ‘Annual Report, Kassala Province, 1904,’ in RFACS, 1904 (1904), 74, SAD.
118.
E. B. Wilkinson, ‘Annual Report, Kassala Province, 1905,’ in RFACS, 1905 (1905), 88, SAD.
119.
E. B. Wilkinson, ‘Annual Report, Kssala Province, 1906,’ in RFACS, 1906 (1906), 648, SAD.
120.
E. B. Wilkinson, ‘Annual Report, Kassala Province, 1908,’ in RFACS, 1908 (1908), 545, SAD.
121.
G. de Ponti, Il Cotone in Eritrea, 27 August 1930, FASC1962, IAO.
122.
Istituto Agricolo Coloniale Italiano, L’Economia Eritrea, 42.
123.
E. B. Wilkinson, ‘Annual Report, Kassala Province, 1905,’ in RFACS, 1905 (1905), 87, SAD; Riepilogo del movimento carovaniero di importazione ed esportazione avvenuto durante l’anno 1907 nella piazza di Assab, Pacco 508, ASDAE.
124.
Marchi , Studi sulla Pastorizia della Colonia Eritrea, 15.

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Serels, S. (2018). An Unequal Recovery, 1893–1913. In: The Impoverishment of the African Red Sea Littoral, 1640–1945. Palgrave Series in Indian Ocean World Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94165-3_5

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