Tewodros II

Emperor of Ethiopia (r. 1855-1868)

• Born: c. 1818
• Birthplace: Qwara, Ethiopia
• Died: April 13, 1868
• Place of death: Magdela, Ethiopia

After rising from obscurity to become emperor of Ethiopia, Tewodros tried to restore order and unify a country that had suffered from decades of feudal anarchy. He ultimately failed, but his vision inspired his successors to work for national reform and reconstruction of the empire.

Early Life

Ethiopia’s Emperor Tewodros II (teh-WOH-drohs) was born Kassa Hailu, the son of a minor nobleman in northwestern Ethiopia. After losing his father at an early age, he grew up with his mother in poverty. As a young man he entered into the service of an uncle who was the governor of a frontier province. When his uncle died, he returned to his birthplace of Qwara and started a new career as leader of a bandit group, a favorite occupation for ambitious young men in war-torn Ethiopia during the early nineteenth century.

Contemporary accounts of Kassa portray him as a sort of Robin Hood figure with a keen sense of social justice who used his exploits as a bandit to benefit the local population. He also built a reputation for bravery and good leadership and was able to attract a large following within a few years. By the mid-1840’s, Kassa’s fame had spread so wide as to attract the attention of the great lords in the country. The most prominent of these, Ras Ali, sought to win Kassa over to his side by giving him his daughter in marriage and confirming him as governor of Qwara. This, however, did little to curb Kassa’s ambition. He continuously clashed with Ali and fought with neighboring lords, strengthening his army and expanding his domain at their expense.

Life’s Work

By 1850, Kassa had emerged as one of the most powerful contenders for power. He continued to enjoy successive victories against the major regional lords who had dominated Ethiopian politics over the previous several decades, including Ras Ali. In February, 1855, he defeated Dejazmach Wube of Semien, the last remaining warlord, thereby bringing to an end the Era of Princes (Zemene Mesafint), during which political decentralization and feudal warfare had gripped Ethiopia for nearly a century.

On February 11, 1855, Kassa had himself crowned as “King of Kings” of Ethiopia under the throne name of Tewodros II. His choice of regnal name reflected his vision and ambition. Popular Ethiopian prophecy foretold the coming of a king called Tewodros who, after a period of great suffering, would restore the ancient glory of the Ethiopian Empire and establish a millennium of peace and just administration. Tewodros believed himself called upon to lift Ethiopia from the abyss of the Era of Princes and attributed his spectacular rise to power to divine intervention.

Immediately after his coronation, Tewodros declared his desire to unify Ethiopia and reform its administration. To that end, he set out to create a modern army that would be disciplined and integrated into a national force under his command. He also initiated a movement toward a modern form of government in which he sought to replace traditional feudal chiefs with salaried, loyal, and competent administrators. However, he lacked the resources to implement his reform plans and also faced other formidable obstacles. Entrenched feudal interest groups strongly resisted his efforts to reform the system on which their livelihood depended.

Uprisings led by disgruntled members of the nobility flared up almost everywhere throughout the empire. The embattled Tewodros was forced to spend inordinate amounts of time and resources to suppress rebellions. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church on which he relied for ideological support turned against him when he sought to limit its control over land. With the clergy turned against him, Tewodros found himself increasingly estranged from his own people. Frustrated by his failure to realize any of his visions, he resorted to increasingly harsh measures to deal with his detractors and merely multiplied his enemies.

Other challenges to Tewodros’s position came from his relations with European powers. He greatly admired the technological advances of European nations and counted on their support for his planned modernization, hoping that fellow Christian nations would come to the aid of a Christian African state that was surrounded by hostile Muslim neighbors. He wrote letters to several European rulers soliciting their support, but his overtures were rebuffed in all the European capitals. Tewodros saw their rejection as a personal affront. He was particularly enraged by Great Britain’s failure even to reply to a letter he sent to Queen Victoria in 1862 and had the British consul and several other Europeans in his country arrested. His relations with Great Britain reached a crisis level in 1866, when he imprisoned members of the British diplomatic mission sent to secure the release of the diplomats he had detained earlier.

The British government could not continue to ignore this affront to its prestige. Many in British political circles worried that Britain’s reputation would suffer in the Middle East and Asia if Tewodros continued to defy its government. By 1867, all diplomatic efforts to resolve the hostage issue had failed, and the British government decided on military intervention to secure the release of the captives and restore British honor. An expeditionary force of thirteen thousand British and Indian soldiers, who were equipped with the latest weapons, was organized in India sent to Northeast Africa under the command of General Robert Napier. In early 1868, this massive expedition reached the African coast and began to work its way inland, toward the Ethiopian capital. Including soldiers, auxiliary workers, and camp followers, the total force numbered sixty-two thousand people, and it was supported by thirty-six thousand animals.

The British expeditionary force had to cross some four hundred miles of rugged terrain to reach Magdela, the mountain fortress in which Tewodros was holding his European captives. However, the terrain was the only serious challenge that the expedition faced. By the time it arrived at Magdela, Tewodros had virtually lost control of his empire. The entire region through which the British expedition passed had already fallen into the hands of Tewodros’s enemies, who were happy to cooperate with the British in return for promises of arms and other support.

The expedition reached Magdela in early April without meeting any serious resistance. On April 10, 1868, Napier scored an easy victory over the handful of soldiers that constituted Tewodros’s remaining army. Realizing the hopelessness of his situation on April 13, Tewodros released the captives and committed suicide a few minutes before British forces stormed his fortress.

Significance

Tewodros’s reign marked the opening of a new era of Ethiopian history. Although he did not succeed in realizing his objectives during his lifetime, he resurrected the ideal of a strong unitary state so effectively that Ethiopia never reverted back to its previous decentralization and feudal disorder. Almost all of the strong political actors that arose after Tewodros aspired to continue his work of centralization. His two immediate successors, Emperors Yohannes IV and Menelik II, followed the path that he had charted. Both succeeded to a large extent in building a highly centralized and effective Ethiopian state. Tewodros was also the first monarch with a concept of modernization and set the stage for the incorporation of European technology in his country, the only sub-Saharan native African state not to fall under European colonialism.

Bibliography

Abir, Mordecai. Ethiopia: The Era of the Princes—The Challenge of Islam and the Re-Unification of the Christian Empire, 1769-1855. New York: Praeger, 1968. A well-researched book that provides excellent background information on the rise of Emperor Tewodros.

Bates, Darrell. The Abyssinian Difficulty: The Emperor Theodorus and the Magdala Campaign, 1867-1868. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1979. An excellent account of the rise to power of Emperor Tewodros and the challenges he faced, with a detailed description of the British campaign against him.

Beyene, Tadesse, et al., eds. Kasa and Kasa: The Lives, Times and Images of Tewodros II and Yohannes IV, 1855-1889. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: Institute of Ethiopian Studies, Addis Ababa University, 1990. A critical evaluation of the reigns of Tewodros and his successor, examining Tewodros’s policy of reform and modernization and its legacy in modern Ethiopian thought.

Crummey, Donald. “Tewodros as Reformer and Modernizer.” Journal of African History 10, no. 3 (1969). An excellent analysis that connects Tewodros’s political troubles and his ideas of reform and modernization.

Debterā Zaneb. The Chronicle of King Theodore of Abyssinia. Translated and edited by Enno Littmann. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Library, 1902. Account of Tewodros’s reign by his private secretary, who was an eyewitness to many of the events described in the chronicle. This is one of the best local sources on the personality of Tewodros and the challenges he faced.

Plowden, Walter. Travels in Abyssinia and the Galla Country with an Account of a Mission to Ras Ali in 1848. London: Longmans, Green, 1868. Plowden was one of the few Europeans who followed the career of Tewodros closely. His book about Ethiopia is now difficult to find, but it is a credible work based on Plowden’s intimate knowledge of the country and personal access to Tewodros.

Rubenson, Sven. King of Kings: Tewodros of Ethiopia. Addis Ababa: Haile Selassie I University Press, 1966. The most authoritative account of the life and career of Emperor Tewodros.