Cyber Ethiopia

We turn today to Emperor Tewodros, and to his Cannon "Sevastapol" - about which more must be said anon. The story of the gun, like everything to do with Emperor Tewodros, is, so to speak, larger than life. Tewodros, as you will remember, dear reader, was one of Ethiopia's major protagonists of modernisation, albeit a tragic and largely unsuccessful figure. Objectives Wanting to modernise the country, he sought to break the power of the feudal chiefs, to curtail what he considered excessive ownership of land by the Church, and to abolish the old system whereby unpaid soldiers looted the peasantry. He wished also to build roads, to put an end to the slave trade, to foster the use of the vernacular tongue Amharic in place of the old ecclesiastical

language Ge'ez, and to open up diplomatic relations with the rest of the world. Tewodros's cannon Sebastopol at Maqdala The Missionaries Coming to power at a time of disunity and civil war, when the Egyptians were encroaching on the frontiers, Tewodros was in urgent need of fire-arms. Able, on account of a foreign blockade, to import only a limited number of fire-arms - and no artillery, he conceived the bold idea of having cannon cast in his own country. To this end he mobilized a group of Swiss missionary craftsmen, graduates of the St. Chrischona Institute, in Basle. He established them, together with several other foreigners, at the village of Gafat, near his then capital, Debra Tabor, and informed them of his wishes. A large - and increasing - number of Ethiopian craftsmen were also recruited for the work. They were attached to the foreigners, and did virtually all the manual work - including the eventual pulling of the cannons. "We Could Not Object" The missionaries were not too enamored of the idea of making weapons, but as one of their number, Theophilus Waldmeier, writing of the year 1861, declared: "We could make no objection for we had been recommended as people who possessed technical skill and who were ready to help with anything required. The work was therefore undertaken, a blast furnace was built, and a bellows installed". Casting the First Cannon Tewodros and the craftsmen looked forward with great excitement to the casting of the first cannon. This proved, however, a dismal failure, for the furnace began to melt before the weapon could be cast, "Your Majesty", the missionaries, crestfallen, declared, "we have neither knowledge nor experience in this matter, and are quite ignorant of it, and afraid to undertake what is beyond our ability", "That does not matter", the Emperor replied, "if you are my friends, try. If God allows us to succeed, it will be well; if not, it will also be well!". "We had to Agree" "So", Waldmeier comments, "we had to agree to the royal command, and carried out all sorts of research and experiments, but without success". Not long after this another foreign craftsman at Gafat, a Polish Jew called Moritz Hall, succeeded in casting a small cannon and some bullets. Tewodros, who, like the Ethiopian craftsmen, were much heartened by this achievement, thereupon ordered the missionaries to team up with Moritz in an effort to produce larger, and better, weapons. This order proved technically difficult to obey. The story of what followed is taken up by the British traveller Henry Dufton. He recalls that the missionaries, whose "only recourse" was to try again: then: "Went over the country to seek better fire-brick clay, and now another venture was made. The result was a flow of metal that came pouring out in a molten stream now, and all hearts are hopeful that at last their object is gained; but alas! the metal had stopped, and the mold was only half full. They tried again. To the inexpressible joy of these persevering men, and the intense delight of the king himself, their wishes are accomplished, and Debra Tabor for the first time saw the balls soaring up into the air and bursting with a loud crash, which made the hills resound with a hundred echoes". First "Industrial Revolution" This was in a sense Ethiopia's first "Industrial Revolution", and an event without parallel in the entire history of Africa. Tewodros realised as much when he exclaimed to the craftsmen: "Now I am convinced that it is possible to make everything in Habbesh [i.e. Abyssinia, or Ethiopia]. Now the art has been discovered... Praise and thanks be to God!" The missionaries meanwhile continued to improve their work. Towards the end of 1863 they cast a large mortar, or short-length cannon. Three years later, at the end of 1866, the Emperor, ordered them, as Waldmeier recalls, "to cast a mortar from which a 1,000 pound cannon ball could be shot". Sebastapol The construction of this weapon is described by Waldmeier. "I made a drawing of the gun", he states, "and showed it to the King, after which I made a model". Two thousand people were soon engaged in the work, and two large furnaces were built. "At last", he concludes, "the day came for the casting of the gun. The two furnaces were heated to melt the metal, and thousands of people assembled. When I saw that the metal was sufficiently heated, I asked the King to give orders to open the channel of the furnace, and the heated brass ran like a fiery serpent into the large mold prepared for it. After twenty minutes it was full, and the King was happy, and called the gun “Sebastopol” - after one of the battles of the Crimean War (1853-6)" The burning-hot mold was opened after three days, and "found to be well cast". "Sebastapol", according to Queen Victoria's special envoy Hormuzd Rassam, who later inspected it, "was unquestionably a wonderful piece of ordnance for its size", and, when fitted on its carriage, required as many as five hundred people to pull it uphill. No complete record of the artillery cast by Tewodros appears to exist. Clements Markham, the historian of the subsequent British expedition to Maqdala, states that it comprised a total of nine brass mortars, "some with neat inscriptions in Amharic", The official account of the campaign, by Trevenen Holland and Henry Hozier, suggests, however, that one or more of Tewodros's five howitzers were also of "native" make. "Much Superior to the British" Including artillery acquired by previous rulers, Tewodros, at the time of his heroic suicide at Maqdala in 13 April 1868, had a total of 37 heavy guns. His ordnance, in the view of Holland and Hozier, was actually "much superior, both in number of pieces and in calibre, to the artillery of the British", and, if properly manned, "must have caused much loss" to the fort's assailants. All but one, or more likely, two of the Ethiopian-made guns were unfortunately destroyed four days after the battle by British troops. The mortar "Sebastopol", however, survived. Estimated to weigh 6.27 metric tons, it can still be seen at Maqdala - and bears permanent tribute to Tewodros's imagination, to the skill and patience of his foreign and Ethiopian craftsmen, and to the remarkable story of Ethiopia's aborted "Industrial Revolution".