Cyber Ethiopia

Last week, dear reader, we considered the technology of traditional Ethiopian weaving; and saw how the craft was threatened, in the Nineteenth Century, by increased competition from imported factory-produced cloth: globalisation if you like to call it that. We cannot, however, leave the story quite there, for the threat to domestic production from foreign imports was felt only gradually, and not equally across the board. It may be interesting to look at developments in this field a little closer - before considering two other important aspects of the production of Ethiopian clothing: embroidery and tailoring! No Immediate Reduction in Local Weaving Increased textile imports, in the early years of the twentieth century, did not lead, as some might have expected, to a major decline in local weaving. Increased

imports may indeed have for a time had the contrary effect - because imports took the form mainly of thread rather than that of cloth; and the thread thus imported was used by local weavers using the traditional loom. This is clearly explained in a British consular report for 1905-6, which emphatically observed: "owing to the ease of introducing the cheap imported thread into the web in a native loom, the sale of the imported shamma [i.e. toga, or wrap] is decreasing." A decade or so later a United States consular report likewise drew attention to the extent of Ethiopian yarn imports, and declared: "Yarn is an important article of commerce in Abyssinia, owing to the demand from the home-weaving industries." The report, was referring, it should be emphasised, to the traditional Ethiopian looms, not to any kind of factory production. which had of course not yet started in the country. Slow Effects of Globalisation The effects of the Industrial Revolution and the working of the Market Mechanism was thus slow to disrupt the Ethiopian handicraft industry. Growing Imports - from Eritrea, and Jibuti Imports from abroad, as the years went by, began, however, to threaten local production in certain areas. In 1906 the Italian Governor of Eritrea, the redoubtable Ferdinando Martini, reported that imported cotton was crossing over the frontier of Ethiopia in substantial quantities. Statistics of the Franco-Ethiopian railway likewise indicate that textile imports by rail increased from 2,967 tons in 1910, to 4,116 tons in 1918, and 7,231 tons in 1935. By the 1920's the good Georgian pharmacist (whom we have mentioned in previous articles, dear reader!) Dr Paul Merab, also wrote about this matter. Writing, it should be noted, mainly of the Addis Ababa area, he claimed that locally produced textiles were at last being driven off the market by imported goods, particularly, he believed by cotton fabrics and muslins from Britain. The hard fact of competition, he declared, was that a piece of material which had cost a man a month's labour could no longer hold its own against the produce of Manchester which came in huge bales of 100 to 200 kilos. The last of the local produce to survive this unequal struggle, he thought, was the thickest type of cloth which was very popular in account of its warmth, but relatively expensive to import. Dr Merab's Prediction Incorrect Merab, in predicting the collapse of local Ethiopian textile production, attached too little attention to the survival in Ethiopia of a subsistence economy, which effectively prevented large sections of the community from purchasing commodities irrespective of their price. Ethiopian Weaving Held Its Own in the Countryside Local production in fact held its own in much of the Ethiopian countryside for many decades. Merab himself tells us that numerous weavers were to be seen in his day, even in the capital, while the well-known British traveller Charles F. Rey, also writing of the mid 1920's, observed that though imported cotton was much cheaper than that locally produced it did "not get far afield from the main centres". This was confirmed by another British traveller, Rosita Forbes, who travelled through Ankobar, the old Shawan capital Ankober, at the same time. She reports that local produce and the traditional system of production were still enthroned. "In front of every hut", she declares, "we saw one or two hand looms where men plied wooden shuttles on a primitive frame, the white shamma growing under the gaze of their womenfolk, who with a basket of cotton fluff beside them wound the froth on to a bobbin and spun it into thread." A generation later, in the late 1940s - after the Fascist invasion, and Liberation therefrom, the American linguist Wolf Leslau, still saw a similar sight among the Falashas, or Beta Esra'el, in what was then called Begemder, now Gondar region. And traditional Ethiopian weaving can of course still be seen today in many parts of the Ethiopian countryside. But to return, dear reader, to traditional Ethiopian handicrafts: Handicraft Skills Let us now consider two further crafts, both connected with the clothing trade: first Embroidery, which was traditionally women's work; and, secondly, Tailoring, which was men's! Embroidery Embroidery was largely carried out in the ornamentation of clothing for the aristocracy. The work was traditionally most popular with the ladies of good families. The British traveller Augustus B. Wylde, writing at the end of the nineteenth century, reported that such women, when they had superintended the household cooking, would "occupy themselves with embroidery, generally in floss silk or native cotton which they turn into cuffs, collars and pieces for stripes and edgings for the outer shirt and trousers." Elsewhere the same observer reported that embroidery work was sometimes done on a frame, and sometimes in the hand. Tailoring Tailoring in Ethiopia was, by contrast, traditionally carried out by men; and was a branch of the clothing trade particularly responsive to technological innovation. Needles, we know, dear reader, had long been made in the country, but by the first part of the nineteenth century, imported needles were already widely used in some of the more important towns of the north. The French Saint Simonian travellers Edmond Combes and Maurice Tamisier, in the 1830s, and the French Scientific mission, in the 1840's, both report that tailoring, in the principal towns of Tegray, was by then largely carried out with the help of imported European tools. Some of the most impressive, and complicated, tailoring in this period was involved in the production of fine silken cloaks for the nobility, as well as in the stitching up of the burnous, or black woolen cloak, used in particular by people in the mountains, and lands of high elevation. The Sewing-Machine An even more revolutionary development in Ethiopian tailoring resulted from the introduction, in the early twentieth century, of the sewing machine. This was the first imported machine, after the gun, to gain popularity in Ethiopia and therefore deserves considerable attention in any history of the country! The sewing machine mechanised Ethiopian the tailoring trade, but without taking it out of the field of handicraft production. Sewing machines, in the first years of the twentieth century, were imported into Ethiopia in considerable quantities. A British consular report for 1905-6 reports that 9,600 Maria Theresa thalers worth of machines were imported that year via Harar, and that Ethiopians were then "just beginning" to use these machines. Shortly afterwards, in 1909, the American firm of Singer considered it worth while to establishe a branch in Addis Ababa. The Singer company was soon supplying not only the capital itself, but also such lesser towns as Harar, Desse, Gore and Gondar. Hundreds of Singer machines, according to our old friend Dr Merab, were at this time sold in the capital - on hire-purchase - for as little as 150 thalers each, payable over many months. The tailors of Ethiopia, who thus rapidly adopted machinery, took advantage of the country's long rain-free months by installing themselves in the open air, in full view of their clients. During the rainy season, tailors might however, place themselves in an open shed, or sometimes under an overhanging roof. Merab reporting this in the pre-Italian occupation period, recalls that by then the tic-tic-tic of their mechanical needle had long since ceased to terrify or surprise the passer-by.