Emperor Menilik, his Swiss technical advisor Alfred Ilg, Italian and French duplicity and how Djibouti came to be spelled with a ‘G’… These and more fascinating facts from modern Ethiopian history make this week’s corner a must read.
The Port of Jibuti, though one of the most important, is also one in the youngest of the Horn of Africa. It came into existence only on account of the railway to Addis Ababa, which was initiated as a result of a Concession which Emperor Menilek granted to his Swiss technical adviser and diplomatic aide, Alfred Ilg, in 1894. Work on the railway was, however, delayed until after Ethiopia’s victory at the Battle of Adwa in 1896 – because the French Government, which held a Protectorate over Jibuti and its environs, was uncertain whether Menilek’s Ethiopia would survive the impending trial of strength with Italy – and were little interested in providing railway and port facilities for the Italian colonial empire which would presumably have emerged had Italy won the Adwa war.
As it was, dear reader, Menilek, you will remember, was victorious at Adwa on 1 March 1896 – and a year and a half later, in October 1897. work on the railway duly began at Jibuti.
The coming of the railway, it has been said, lifted Jibuti out of the sand – and caused it to replace the much older port of Tajurah, which lay little more than a figurative stone’s throw away, on the opposite of the nearby bay.
Jibuti likewise contributed immensely to the modernization – almost indeed to the making – of Menilek’s Ethiopia. Image the transformation in transport wrought by the railway: how much easier it was to carry a steam-engine, a motor-car, a consignment of corrugated iron – or a portly diplomat – by train rather than by mule.
Jibuti, thanks to the railway, became – albeit unofficially – Ethiopia’s principal port; and Jibuti, for its part, would indeed have made slim pickings without the existence of Ethiopia’s export-import trade.
Many Ethiopians were however saddened, at the time of the Italian Fascist invasion of 1935-6, to see the French Government joining the British Government in its Policy of so-called Neutrality which denied arms to both sides – a policy which treated the victim of aggression on a par with the aggressor itself. Jibuti, through which military supplies for Ethiopia’s defence might have come, were, if you will pardon the metaphor, put on ice.
After the Fascist occupation of Ethiopia the question of Jibuti took a new turn, which brings us to the core of our essay today. Mussolini, you may recall, was at this time in a bellicose mood. He had, as he claimed, “conquered” Ethiopia, and was soon to invade Albania. That, however, was not enough. He started making speeches, declaring that Italy – to re-create the Roman Empire – was in immediate need of Nice and Corsica, Tunisia and Jibuti. As for the latter place Fascist writers argued that the port was profiting unduly from Italian enterprise in the newly established Italian Impero. Why, they asked, should the decadent French, with their declining population, benefit from the constructive activities of the victorious Duce? Why indeed!
It was galling moreover when Menelik’s statue in Addis Ababa had been thrown down that Jibuti should still receive an Ethiopian representative, Lij Andagachew Messa, and retain an important square, named after the victor of Adwa – the Place Ménélik.
It is uncertain how popular Mussolini’s new territorial claims were in Italy itself. Fascist Italy’s initial invasion of Ethiopia in 1935-6 had by all accounts generated great excitement – even if this was largely stage-managed. But, as the years rolled by, Ethiopian Patriot resistance continued, and the cost of the Ethiopian war – to which was added the cost of one in Spain – became increasingly apparent. Italians, for reasons of “autarchy”, or Self-Sufficiency, began drinking karkaday (a drink from rose hips) instead of coffee – and Fascist plans for mass Italian settlement in Ethiopia were scaled down.
Enthusiasm for the Empire declined, and growing ties with the unpopular Nazi German regime developed. The voices of Italy’s Anti-Fascists began increasingly to be heard – even though one of them, Carlo Rosselli (whom the present writer met as child), was gunned down on Mussolini’s order in Paris. The Duce’s claim to Nice, Corsica and the rest thus fell in Italy on increasingly unreceptive ears.
Worse still for fruition of these claims it became clear that the French, whether or not decadent, were not prepared to abandon their territories, either in Europe of Africa.
Plans for a Fascist occupation of Jibuti were however discussed in Rome -and plans hatched. A map of the town was included in the semi-official Italian tourist guide of 1938: the Guida dell’ Africa Orientale Italiana. More significantly the Fascist telegraph authorities printed telegraph forms for use in the anticipated Italian imperial port of Gibuti. These forms – one of them here reproduced -bore the Italian royal arms and spelt the expected place of issue as Gibuti, i.e. in the Italian fashion with a G rather than a J (or Dj).
The Fascist East African Empire was , however, paradoxically still largely dependent on the then French controlled port of Jibuti. The telegraph forms for use in the projected Italian-occupied Jibuti were thus shipped via that port to the Italian telegraph headquarters in occupied Addis Ababa.
The “concerned authorities” reckoned, however, without the ingenuity of M. Michel Pasteau of the French-run Chemin de Fer, who arranged for one or more crates of Italian state property to be “accidentally” broken open. The telegraph forms in question – quite an historical curiosity in their way, thus came to light – and the good M. Pasteau long afterwards presented a copy of one to the Institute of Ethiopian Studies in Addis Ababa.
(Originally published in Capital newspaper)
Richard Pankhurst 
Leave a Reply