Cyber Ethiopia

Historical Article on Ethiopia and the International Situation in 1935 Concluded We took as our text last week a long-forgotten article on the "Italo-Abyssinian Conflict" of 1935-6, published in August 1935, by the notable Hungarian scholar Karl Polanyi. We now come to his conclusions: "Political or Economic Partition" Discussing British policy towards Ethiopia in 1935. Polanyi declared that when the English refused to admit that they had made partition agreements in relation to Ethiopia, this should be taken as no more than "shadow fencing". The protestation that they were thinking "only" of spheres of economic influence, and on no account of political ones, was not convincing when one considered the normal practice of the Great Powers. They normally spoke of "economic spheres" when subsequent events revealed that their

true ambitions were political in intent. In the Ethiopian case things, Polanyi argued, were different. The differences between economic and political spheres were often ones of degree, because an economic sphere could be transformed into a political one. It could, however, also happen that such a transformation was not possible, as had been the case in Ethiopia. England, Polanyi went on, had only one interest in Abyssinia, but it was an all-important one: to control the tributaries of the Blue Nile. These tributaries constituted an area of potential [Italian] settlement; and the transformation of an economic sphere into a political one here would mean the control of the whole of Ethiopia. And yet almost the whole of Ethiopia, Polanyi exclaimed, had been recognised by the agreements of 1906 and 1925 as the sphere of Italy! The agreements, he argued, could only work on the basis of cooperation between the European powers. England was thus satisfied that it could enjoy an exceptional position within the Italian sphere of influence! England, Polanyi believed, was acting on the basis of its military, naval, and economico-financial interests, but Italy, the other part to the 1925 agreement, was aiming, with all its power, at undoubtable political gain. "The Key" Therein, Polanyi argued, lay the key to the clash then taking place in Africa. A transformation of the economic clauses of the 1925 agreement into a political one was simply impossible. That Italy should nevertheless ask for it was considered in England as a diplomatically embellished announcement of Italy’s non-recognition of the agreement. The maintenance of the Kingdom of the Negus, according to Polanyi, meant the political guarantee for England of the security of the Nile waters. European settlement of Abyssinia’s fertile highlands, which Italy was then demanding, was conditional on irrigation possibilities. The Blue Nile, he commented, had perhaps sufficient water for the two countries, the Sudan and western Abyssinia, but water cooperation was possible, if at all, only when it was assured by close political cooperation. "Italian Breach of the Peace" England, though apparently indecisive, remained, in Polanyi’s opinion, a Great Power, and was still the dominating factor in the colonial power-game. Nevertheless Italy had thus far succeeded in its expansionistic policy. If nothing untoward happened Italian troops would penetrate into Abyssinia despite the protest of England. Nobody could say by what diplomatic or military means England, if pushed on the defensive, would try to secure Lake Tana,. The well-thought out and clear objective of the Italians had thus far given them great success. A limited rapprochement with France had been turned to good account through the clever exploitation of the weakening of the English naval position in the Mediterranean. That rapprochement had been just sufficient to assure French neutrality in the Mediterranean in the event of a conflict of interests about North Africa. The new Italian Air Force, Polanyi believed, had moreover robbed England of its former overwhelming naval superiority on the sea-lanes of the Mediterranean. Italy had thus succeeded in stretching the diplomatic goodwill of France to the point at which Italy was in a position to use its air force to challenge the British position at sea. England’s diplomatic front, Polanyi concluded, in the Summer of 1935, was thus in confusion. The ways and means in which England grouped its powers in Geneva would determine the framework and extent of the forthcoming conflict. An Article of the Time Such in essence was Karl Polanyi’s analysis of the Italo-Ethiopian conflict in August 1935. The article is historically interesting, we would argue, in that it shows how the international situation appeared to a serious, and essentially well-informed, European scholar on the very eve of hostilities, which broke out only a few weeks later. The article is revealing, moreover, in that its author, an acute observer, could write about the forthcoming conflict without mentioning a factor which to later historians appeared of paramount importance: the rise of Italian Fascism. This development had a direct relevance to the radical shift in Italian policy from economic penetration to military intervention which Polanyi hints at in his article. This change took place, as he says, between 1928 and 1930, i.e. between six and eight years after Mussolini’s "March on Rome", and therefore apparently independently of it. The fact that Mussolini was in power in Italy nonetheless had a profound bearing on Italian thinking after 1930. This is evident for example in Emelio De Bono’s revealing book "Anno XIIII. The Conquest of An Empire", which tells how he and his master "the Duce" planned the war. The existence of Fascism likewise gave the hostilities then just about to break an unforgettable international dimension. The imposition of League of Nations Sanctions, which were deliberately designed to be abortive, as Polanyi had anticipated, added a new dimension to the conflict. Discussions at the League of Nations after the appearance of his article transformed the conflict from the purely colonial play of forces, which he analysed in August 1935, into an international struggle into which Emperor Haile Sellassie and his advisers, among them Lorenzo Taezaz, introduced the concept of a struggle for the preservation of the League of Nations Charter and defence of its principle of Collective Security. The events following the appearance of the Polanyi article were thus so significant that one prominent British military commentator, Major-General J.F.C. Fuller, entitled his book on the invasion of Ethiopia "The First of the League Wars", while the Italian Anti-Fascist historian, Gaetano Salvemini, later wrote of the period, in the title of one of his books, as the "Prelude to World War II". The conflict, it should be argued, involved not only Collective Security, and the Sancity of Treaties, but was also part of the international struggle for and against Fascism, as symbolised by the many Italian Anti-Fascists who were soon to oppose Mussolini’s African adventure, and the few, among them Ilio Barontini and Velio Spano, who later actually joined the Ethiopian Patriots. The conflict, we should not forget, also had a no less important African dimension, as evident from the innumerable Africans and people of African descent, who later in the year rallied to the Ethiopian cause, and subsequently agitated against the British Government’s decision to recognise the Italian "conquest" of Africa’s last remaining bastion of independence, in 1938. The last word should rest with Zewde Hailemariam, Ethiopian historian in Sweden who in his contribution "La vera data d’inizio della seconda guerra mondiale"[i.e The True Date of the Beginning of the World War"] to Angelo Del Boca’s "Le guerre coloniali del fascismo" ["The Colonial Wars of Fascism"] has cogently argued that the Italo-Ethiopian war, which began in October 1935. was not in fact "The First of the League Wars" or the "Prelude to World War", but the actual beginning of that war. This view has won at least partial support of UNESCO. Its "General History of Africa" begins its volume on World War II, not in 1939, when Germany invaded Poland, in 1940, when Mussolini declared war on Britain and France, or 1941 when the USSR and USA entered the war, but in 1935, when Fascist Italy invaded Ethiopia. This dating of the beginning of World War II is one to which we may return in the future!