Interpreting Background and Aftermath of the battle of Adwa: Non-political belief System Perspective

Tsegaye Tegenu

Mar 06, 2011

I read the abridged article by Alemayehu Fentaw titled “The Ambivalent Legacy of Adwa: Cultivating Patriotic Solidarity & Cultural Diversity”. I find it refreshing to read history and came to see how history, a subject which has been ignored or considered as indifferent, began to matter. The author interpreted the aftermath of the battle of Adwa from a periphery perspective. The opposite perspective, the center perspective, is represented by the quoted statements from Professor Bahru Zewde works. Knowing that each view can defend its position relentlessly, if needed, I could not help recall the saying that he who controls the past controls the future. That feeling partly makes me write a response, even if my writing sounds anachronistic. I find it unfair to let the author feel comfortable with his “high-wire prose” interpretation. I dare say there is also another way of interpretation which is based neither on center nor periphery perspectives.

Before introducing the reader to my own interpretation of Adwa, I would like to give a passing remark about the assumption of national conflicts in Ethiopia. The author seems to entertain the idea that there was a Tigrean nationalism during the time of Emperor Yohannes and his son Ras Mengesha, which was weakened by the Machiavelli divide and rule tactic of the Shewan nobility, Emperor Menelik as a key figure of the nobility. Leave alone before one hundred years ago, where there was no middle class and expansion of mass communication, I doubt very much the existence and reality of Tigrean nationalism even in the present day Ethiopia. It is true that Tigrean nationalism, as a form of political ideology exists in the mind of some political elites. It is, however, often used for an immediate purpose of resource mobilization rather than for creating a separate political entity based on Tigrigna speaking population including those in the Bahre Negash. This is because the reality which makes the national and the political unit congruent is very complex. If the parameter of language is taken as the marker of the national unity, then what we have is that the Tigrigna language speaking people in Tigray are living together with the rest of the Ethiopian people by their free choice while unfortunately the Tigrigna speaking people in Eritrea start to live under a different constructed identity. According to Gellner (1983), nationalism is “primarily a principle which holds that the political and national unit should be congruent”. Following this theory, TPLF and EPLF, despite the opportunity that presented itself, did not work together for attaining and maintaining the autonomy, unity and common identity of the Tigrigna language speaking people. Why? Who is to be blamed for that? The very limitation of the political ideology we nurture in our mind, the missed Ethiopian reality on the ground, or the blame should go to others who do not subscribe to an ideological movement and belief system.

I think it is time to investigate the very limitation of our political ideology. It is one thing to have an imagined community and it is a different matter finding it as constructed in a reality. Without going to detailed empirical examples of parochialism, I would like to briefly mention my point of departure: what used to exist in Ethiopia and what exists now is local identity rooted in the very organization of the agricultural system in Ethiopia. Until very recently almost 90 percent of the Ethiopian population lives in rural areas. In the manipulation of agricultural resources rural people are organized at the household and community levels. Nuclear families have an overriding functional importance in the social organization. At the micro level, loyalty is based on the family, while at the regional level loyalty is owed to kinship and descent. In the case of Tigrigna speaking people, this local identity is manifested in the form of different historical regional names such as Akele-Guzai, Seraye, Hamasien, Adwa, Axum, Shire, etc.

As Collective Action Theory paradigm has demonstrated (Marwell & Oliver, 1993), social networks and locally evolving social norms have strong influence on peoples’ behavior. Individuals’ decisions are based on who supports the decisions, rather than on the merits of the ideas. In a system of local identity, people favor those from their own family, village and locality.

In a system where the behavior of the individual is primarily defined in terms of loyalty to a person or persons how can one conceive of nationalism that is conjoined in the ideas of liberty, equality and fraternity. Nationalism repudiates the very idea of personalization of loyalty. In Ethiopia we practice local identity but in our belief we construct an imagined national community. This is what the Ethiopian political elite do not collectively accept or fail to recognize. My purpose in this article is not to discuss the local identity and the consequent collective behavior of the Ethiopian political elite. This requires open discussion and writing of long article. I raised the issue in passing in connection with the aftermath of the battle of Adwa. My point of discussion was do we need to interpret history and development from a political ideology perspective? Or is there another alternative way of explanation?

I explain historical events and development issues from institutional and demographic interdisciplinary approaches, not from the perspective of nationalism, liberalism, conservatism, socialism, liberation ideology, and other variant of political belief system. I am of the opinion that wishful thinking that fosters emotional commitments based on political belief system or ideologies is not useful and interesting for our time.

Fifteen years ago, commemorating the 100th anniversary of the battle of Adwa, I wrote an article titled “The Logistic Base and Military Strategy of the Ethiopian Army”. I tried to interpret the battle of Adwa from a resource use system of the Ethiopian state and its military strategic culture. In other words I wrote the article from a non political ideology perspective. The article is long (30 pages) and deals with two central issues: why Emperor Menelik won victory, and why he could not continue his military success and drive the Italians out from their colonial possession of Eritrea.

I explained the resource base and logistic system of the Ethiopian army: the Rist-Gult system which was geographically entrenched in what was commonly called Mesafint Hager, namely present day highland Eritrea, in the regions of Tigray, Gonder, Gojjam and Wello. The second type of logistic system of the army was based on what is called the Gebar Maderiya system in central and southern Ethiopia. These two types of logistic systems had different methods of remuneration, revenue administration and provisioning. The battles against the British military expedition at Mekdela (1868), against Egypt at Gundet (1875), and Gura (1876), against Italy at Dogali in 1887 and against Mahdist Sudan at Metema in 1889 were based on the economy of the Rist-Gult system. At least two-thirds of the combat forces of Adwa were recruited through the Gebar Maderiya system. These two resource systems have their own respective capacity and limitations and they determine the military strategic thinking and culture of the period. The answer about the failure and/or success of Emperor Menelik lies in the form of the economy, the fiscal and military organization of the state.

The article basically explains the manner of the acquisition and use of resources to accomplish concretely defined strategic tasks of the Ethiopian armed forces of the time. Since the article is published and accessible for reading I do not need to go into details. I was forced to mention it to remind readers that there is also a non centrist/periphery perspective that has a different interpretation of the background and aftermath of the battle of Adwa. The author can be reached at tsegaye.tegenu@epmc.se

References
Badone, E. (1987), Ethnicity, Folklore, and Local Identity in Rural Brittany. The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 100, No. 396, pp. 161-190. Gellner, E. (1983)Nation and Nationalsim. Oxford. Marwell, G. and Oliver, P. (1993). The critical mass in collective action: a micro-social theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Smith, A.D. (1983), Theories of Nationalism. New York. Tsegaye Tegenu, (1998), "The Logistic Base and Military Strategy of the Ethiopian Army: the Campaign and Battle of Adwa, September 1895-February 1896", in Abdussamad Ahmer and Richard Pankhrust (eds.), Adwa Victory Century Conference. Institute of Ethiopian Studies. Addis Ababa University