SOAS Research Online

Abstract

The Ethiopian victory at Adwa in 1896 and the British conquest of the Sudan in 1898 determined the nature of the relationship between the two African countries in the first thirty-five years of this century. An European colony came to adjoin a politically independent Ethiopia. In 1902, the boundary between the two countries was formally delimited after four years of diplomatic wrangling and manoeuvring. The peoples of the border-land, the parties most directly affected by the issue, had little say in the final outcome of the negotiations. But some of them did try to influence it to a degree hitherto scarcely recognized. Formal delimitation aside, the frontier peoples pursued a life of virtual independence from both Khartoum and Addis Ababa. The defiance of Akwei in the south was matched by that of the Wad Mahmud family in the north. What little control the Ethiopian authorities managed to exercise in the frontier regions was achieved either through the collaboration of Anyuaa leaders like Udial and the ruthless policy of Eajid Abud, or by bolstering the position of Sheikh Khojali in the said. Such tenuous Ethiopian government control provided the setting - and the pretext - for the longstanding desire of the Sudan government to incorporate the Baro lowlands. The Gambella trading post epitomized the new relationship between Ethiopia and British-ruled Sudan. Problems of transport and communication, the ambiguous legal status of the enclave, and the general features of an economy where commodity production had scarcely begun frustrated the high hopes that the British had entertained in establishing the post. Jibouti's pre-eminence as the entrepot of Ethiopia's foreign trade remained unchallenged. Nevertheless, Gambella dislodged Matamma and the sapid as the most important channel of Ethio-Sudanese trade. Like Jibouti, it was the medium by which Ethiopia was drawn, if only reluctantly, into the world market. This process of Ethiopia's integration into the world economy was particularly underlined in western Ethiopia by the relentless quest of international capital for commercial, agricultural, and mining concessions.