The Christians retreated into what may be called Abyssinia, an easily defensible, socially cohesive unit that included mostly Christian, Semitic-speaking peoples in a territory comprising most of Eritrea, Tigray, and Gonder and parts of Gojam, Shewa, and Welo. For the next two centuries Abyssinia defined the limits of Ethiopia’s extent, but not its reach, for the Christian highlands received the hinterland’s trade in transit to the Red Sea and the Nile valley. A complex caravan network linked Mitsiwa (now Massawa, Eritrea) on the Red Sea coast with the highlands of the interior. Gonder, the new capital, became a regional centre, doing business with the Sudanese cities of Sannār and Fazughli for slaves and gold, bought and paid for with coffee obtained from the Oromo-dominated lands. Demand for Ethiopian products increased considerably during the last quarter of the 17th century, as Yemen, a major trading partner on the Arabian Peninsula, sought increasing amounts of coffee for transshipment to Europe.

Revival of the Ethiopian empire

By the late 19th century the northernmost Oromo had been assimilated into Christian culture, and Abyssinia’s national unity had been restored after a century of feudal anarchy that ended with the accession of Yohannes IV in 1872. Yohannes forced the submission of Ethiopia’s princes, repulsed Egyptian expansionism in 1875–76, pushed back Mahdist invasions in 1885–86, and limited the Italians to the Eritrean coast. Meanwhile, the ambitious King Menilek II of Shewa began a reconquest of Ethiopia’s southern and eastern peripheries in order to acquire commodities to sell for the weapons and ammunition he would need in his fight for the Solomonid crown. Italian adventurers, scientists, and missionaries helped organize a route, outside imperial control, that took Shewan caravans to the coast, where Menilek’s ivory, gold, hides, and furs could be sold for a sizable (and untaxed) profit.

The economy of the Red Sea region had been stimulated by the opening of the Suez Canal, by the establishment of a British base in Aden, and by the opening of a French coaling station at Obock on the Afar coast. Britain sought to close off the Nile valley to the French by facilitating Rome’s aspirations in the Horn. Thus, after 1885, Italy occupied coastal positions in Ethiopia and in southern Somalia. This limited the French to their mini-colony, leaving the British in control of ports in northern Somalia from which foodstuffs were exported to Aden. After Yohannes’ death in March 1889, the Italians hoped to translate a cordial relationship with the new emperor, Menilek, into an Ethiopian empire.

On May 2, 1889, Menilek signed at Wichale (known as Ucciali to the Italians) a treaty of peace and amity with Italy. The Italians’ famous mistranslation of Article XVII of the Treaty of Wichale provided them with an excuse to declare Ethiopia a protectorate. To Italy’s dismay, the new emperor promptly wrote to the great powers, rejecting Rome’s claim. Since neither France nor Russia accepted the new protectorate status, Ethiopia continued to acquire modern weapons from these countries through Obock. When, by 1894–95, Italy not only refused to rescind its declaration but also reinforced its army in Eritrea and invaded eastern Tigray, Menilek mobilized.

In late February 1896 an Ethiopian army of approximately 100,000 men was encamped at Adwa in Tigray, facing a much smaller enemy force some miles away. The Italians nevertheless attacked and were defeated on March 1, 1896, in what became known to Europeans as the Battle of Adwa. Menilek immediately withdrew his hungry army southward with 1,800 prisoner-hostages, leaving Eritrea to Rome in the hope that peace with honour would be restored quickly. On Oct. 26, 1896, Italy signed the Treaty of Addis Ababa, conceding the unconditional abrogation of the Treaty of Wichale and recognizing Ethiopia’s sovereign independence.

During the next decade, Menilek directed Ethiopia’s return into the southern and western regions that had been abandoned in the 17th century. Most of the newly incorporated peoples there lived in segmented societies, practiced animal husbandry or cultivation with digging stick or hoe, followed traditional religions or Islam, and spoke non-Semitic languages. In practically every way but skin colour, the northerners were aliens. Their superior weapons and more complex social organization gave them a material advantage, but they also were inspired by the idea that they were regaining lands that had once been part of the Christian state. Menilek and his soldiers believed that they were on a holy crusade to restore Ethiopia to its historic grandeur, but they did not realize that they were participating in Europe’s “Scramble for Africa” and that they were creating problems among nationalities that would afflict the Horn of Africa throughout the 20th century.

The birth of Somali nationalism

About 1900 the first of these problems erupted in Somali-inhabited regions, under the leadership of Sayyid Maxamed Cabdulle Xasan. The rebellion was directed at the British, Italians, and Ethiopians, whom Maxamed regarded equally as oppressors and infidels. Indeed, these powers admitted their collusion by collaborating militarily against the sayyid and his forces from 1901 to 1904, forcing him to sue for peace and to withdraw into a remote and unadministered area of Italian Somaliland. By 1908 he was again on the attack, this time causing a massive civil war, during which tens of thousands of Somali clansmen died. The Italians and the British chose not to intervene, preferring to let Somali kill Somali, and limited their activities to the coast. It was not until 1920 that British air power ran the sayyid to ground, forcing him to flee into the Ogaden, where he died on Dec. 21, 1920.

Maxamed pioneered the traditions of modern Somali nationalism, which combined Islam and anti-imperialism in a movement that sought to transcend clan divisions and make all Somali aware that they shared a common language, religion, way of life, and destiny. The Somali were further informed about their potential unity by, ironically, their Italian colonizers.

Italian rule

Despite the defeat at Adwa, Rome had not abandoned its dream of an Ethiopian empire. To this end, it worked hard at economic penetration but was invariably frustrated. More successful was its infiltration from Somalia into the adjacent Ogaden, where colonial troops seized strategic wells and posed as the protectors of Islam and the Somali people. By 1932 this advance alarmed Emperor Haile Selassie I, who was building a modern state in order to safeguard Ethiopia’s independence.

As regent to Empress Zauditu from 1916 to 1930, and afterward as monarch, Haile Selassie had worked to reform the economy, government, communications, and military. His success was recognized early, on Sept. 28, 1923, when Ethiopia entered the League of Nations. These achievements presaged a modern Ethiopian state that would block Rome’s colonial plans and perhaps even undermine its position in the Horn of Africa. The potential threat of such a state, as well as considerations of European politics, led to the Italo-Ethiopian War, which began in the Ogaden, in December 1934, with a confrontation between Italian and Ethiopian soldiers at the water holes of Welwel.

Rome used Somalia and Eritrea as bases from which to launch its attack in October 1935. The issue was never in doubt; Haile Selassie had neither the armaments nor the disciplined troops necessary to fight the modern war that Italy mounted. In May 1936, after a terrible war that featured aerial bombardment and poison gas, he went into exile, and Italy proclaimed an East African empire consisting of Ethiopia, Eritrea, and its colony of Somalia.

The new regime, ignoring Ethiopia’s traditional political organization, enlarged Eritrea to incorporate most of Tigray and placed the Ogaden in Somalia. In August 1940, after Rome had declared war against the Allies, the Italians marched north and occupied British Somaliland for seven months until dislodged by an Anglo-Ethiopian victory in the Horn of Africa. In 1942 and 1944 Anglo-Ethiopian treaties left the Ogaden under British rule for the duration of World War II, although Addis Ababa’s sovereignty over the region was acknowledged. The British governed both Somalilands from a single city, Berbera, continuing the unification of the two territories.

Pan-Somalism

The Italians left Somaliland with an administrative infrastructure, communications, and towns, and the southern centres became incubators of pan-Somali ideas, which were quickly transmitted to their northern compatriots. The British allowed their subjects relative political freedom, and on May 13, 1943, the Somali Youth Club was formed in Mogadishu. Devoted to a concept of Somali unity that transcended ethnic considerations, the club quickly enrolled religious leaders, the gendarmerie, and the junior administration. By 1947, when it became the Somali Youth League, most of Somaliland’s intelligentsia was devoted to pan-Somalism. This view was echoed in the British government’s idea of Greater Somalia—a notion that was anathema to Ethiopia.

After his return to Addis Ababa in May 1941, Haile Selassie worked consistently to restore Ethiopia’s sovereignty and to fend off British colonial encirclement and the isolation of his state. He regarded British activities in Somaliland as subversive and turned to the United States, which he concluded would be the dominant postwar power, to balance the geopolitical threat. American lend-lease and other assistance permitted Ethiopia to rebuff Britain and to secure the return of the Ogaden in 1948. The vision of Greater Somaliland, however, dominated Somali political programs in subsequent years.

Eritrean nationalism

Another fixed idea, that of Eritrean independence, also derived from the Italian years. Partisans here argued that Eritrea had evolved modern social and economic patterns and expectations from its colonial experience and, between 1941 and 1952, from the political freedoms allowed by the relatively liberal British military administration. While some Eritreans, especially Muslims and intellectuals, held these views in the 1940s, the idea of union with Ethiopia attracted the largely Christian population in the highlands—arguably the colony’s majority. The Christians joined the Unionist Party, sponsored by the Ethiopian government, which simultaneously sought international support for regaining its coastal province. The Ethiopians were assisted by an international fact-finding commission that visited Eritrea in late 1948 and concluded that there was no national consciousness to nourish statehood and that its backward agriculture, crude industrial base, and poor natural resources would not sustain independence. The commission recommended some form of dependency—a decision ultimately referred to the United Nations, where the United States was the most influential power.

Washington was concerned about retaining control of a communications station near the Eritrean city of Asmera (now Asmara), which beamed intelligence information from the Middle East to the Pentagon, and it decided to support Ethiopia’s claim to Eritrea in return for a formal base treaty. With U.S. leadership, the United Nations agreed to a federation of Ethiopia and Eritrea, which came into being in 1952. One year later, responding to growing Soviet influence in Egypt, Washington decided to provide Ethiopia military and economic aid. The United States subsequently became Ethiopia’s main supplier of capital, expertise, and technology as well as military training, equipment, and munitions—a relationship that ultimately drove Somalia into an alliance with the Soviet Union.