1862 been in the possession of the French, it was thereby connected with the external world. In 1843 Menelik's grandfather had signed a commercial treaty with Louis Philippe; and Menelik, continuing his policy, had in 1876 and in 1881 opened official relations with the French Republic, asking for arms and locomotives.

When Menelik first ascended the throne, the southern half of the great plateau of which old Abyssinia forms the northern half, was inhabited by independent tribes of Galla, who surrounded Shoa on the east, south, and west, extending from Harrar on the east to Wallega on the west and as far as Lake Rudolf on the south. They were a prosperous and industrious people engaged in agriculture and cattle raising; but, though individually good fighters, they possessed no powers of political cohesion, and their tribes never united for self-defence. For centuries they had been regarded as fair game by their warlike Abyssinian neighbours, who, when the Galla crops had been harvested, were accustomed to make raids upon these peaceful farmers, carrying off not only their corn and cattle, but also their women and children. The Galla, too, formed the bulk of the Shoan population, but the Abyssinian minority had for more than a century reduced them to the position of serfs, who cultivated the lands of their idle warrior lords and served as reliable soldiers in their armies.

The youthful Menelik, with his troops armed with European rifles, was highly successful in these raids, but very soon, whether guided by his own intelligence or by the advice of his European counsellors, he replaced such occasional forays by a regular system of conquest. Convinced that much more was to be made out of the helpless Galla by their permanent exploitation, he began in the early seventies to occupy the districts that he overran with permanent garrisons of his own troops, providing at the same time for their administration under a hierarchy of his own officials. In most cases he reduced the unfortunate natives to the position of gabars, little better than serfs, who in return for exemption from massacre were forced to pay tithes, to provision his troops, and to render many heavy personal services, such as forced labour for sixty or seventy days in the year or in war-time acting as baggage carriers.

All his new acquisitions and revenues Menelik steadily used for one object only-to increase his military power and prestige. With Galla money he rewarded his generals, paid his soldiers, and bought, first from the French and then from the Italians, huge supplies of arms and ammunition wherewith to equip his evergrowing armies. The details of his early conquests are unknown, but they certainly included the districts of Gurage, Kaffa, and Jimma; and in 1887, shortly after its evacuation by the Egyptians, he annexed the vast district of Harrar. The general result was that, when on the death of John in March 1889, Menelik proclaimed himself Emperor, no rivals dared to contest his claims. His supremacy was recognised by Tekla Haimanot, King of Gojjam, and the other great chieftains. Only Ras Mangasha, the natural son of the late Emperor, whom John on his death-bed had, in defiance of the agreement of 1882, nominated as his successor (Area Selassye having died in 1888), refused to submit, supported by Ras Alula, his father's famous general; the two retired together to Tigre to organise resistance. Menelik, however, though he had not yet overcome their opposition, by November 1889 felt himself sufficiently secure to have himself crowned Negus Nagasti (King of Kings) by the Abun Matewos at Entotto, the then capital of Shoa, instead of at Axum in Tigre, the traditional place for the coronation of the Emperors. Henceforward Menelik's politics, from being local, became not only national but international.

6

Since 1883 Menelik had been on friendly terms with the Italians, and on May 2, 1889, he signed the famous Treaty of Uccialli, whereby the limits of Italian and Abyssinian territory were accurately defined, and (under clause xvii) the Negus consented to avail himself of the Italian Government for any negotiations which he might have with other powers.' A further convention followed, on Oct. 1, whereby Menelik was definitely recognised by Italy as 'Emperor of Ethiopia,' and the boundaries were changed on the basis of de facto possession, which had since May been considerably altered by Italian advances in the north. A few days later Italy, relying on clause xvii, notified to the European Powers that she had by the Treaty of Uccialli been given a protectorate over Abyssinia.

Early in 1890 Menelik reduced Ras Mangasha to submission; but a squabble between Menelik's nominee, Ras Seyum, and Ras Sebhat, the ally of Italy, over their claims to Agame, the northern district of Tigre, brought the Italians on the scene. In March the Italian general Occupied Adowa in violation of the terms of the Treaty. A terrible famine for several months put an end to all military operations; but in September, at French instigation, Menelik addressed two letters to the King of Italy, in the first of which he complained that article xvii in the Treaty differed in the Italian and Abyssinian texts, the latter merely stating in permissive form 'may avail himself' as against the Italian version 'consents to avail himself'; and in the second he complained of the violation of the frontier agreement.

At this time the European Powers were busy partitioning Africa into spheres of influence. Undeterred by Menelik's remonstrances, which were never communicated to the British Government, the Italian Government, in March and April 1891, made two agreements with Great Britain, whereby Eritrea and the whole of Abyssinia, assumed by both parties to be an Italian protectorate, were recognised as within the Italian 'sphere of influence.' In reply to the first of these agreements Menelik, again acting on French advice, addressed, on April 10, a circular letter to the European Powers, which at the time seems to have travelled no further than the Italian Foreign Office. Herein, after stating that he had no intention of remaining an idle spectator while far-distant Powers were partitioning Africa, he set forth in exact terms what he claimed to be the boundaries of his Empire, and ended with the words: 'En indiquant aujourd'hui les limites actuelles de mon empire, je tâcherai, si Dieu veut bien m'accorder la vie et la force, de rétablir les anciennes frontières d'Ethiopie jusqu'à Khartoum et jusqu'au lac Nyanza avec les pays Gallas.'

The Italian alliance with Ras Mangasha in December, made with the view to detach Tigre from the Abyssinian Empire, still further further aroused Menelik's suspicions, though at the same time-to pacify him-a promise was made to hand over to him 2,000,000 cartridges in accordance with the Treaty of Uccialli. Before taking further

action Menelik waited patiently for the fulfilment of the promise; but immediately after the arrival of the cartridges in February 1893, he solemnly denounced the Treaty to all the Powers.

'Sous des apparences d'amitié,' he wrote, 'on n'a en fait cherché qu'à s'emparer de mon pays. Je n'ai pas l'inten tion de porter, en quoi que ce soit, atteinte à notre amitié avec l'Italie, mais mon empire a une importance suffisante pour ne rechercher aucun protectorat et vivre indépendant. Je tiens donc à porter à votre connaissance mon intention de ne renouveler en aucune façon ce traité.'

In the following year, while the Italians were busy fighting the Dervishes, Menelik once more made terms with Ras Mangasha, and further strengthened his military position by large importations of arms from the French. In 1895 the Italians invaded Tigre and occupied Adowa and Axum, advancing in October so far south as Makalle. Meanwhile Menelik, in an inspiring proclamation, summoned his governors to collect their forces for a great and united effort against the foreign invaders, and at the end of the year appeared in Tigre at the head of some 100,000 to 200,000 men, against whom the Italians could oppose only 20,000.

It is needless here to reproduce the details of the campaign which culminated in the disastrous defeat of the Italians at Adowa on March 1, 1896, and thus put ar end to Crispi's dream of an Italian Empire in Africa reaching from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean On Oct. 26 Italy signed a Treaty of Peace at Addis Abbaba, whereby the Treaty of Uccialli was annulled the independence of Abyssinia was affirmed, and a new delimitation of frontiers was to be made within a year.

The victory of Adowa had clearly shown to all the European Powers interested in East Africa and the Nile valley that the Abyssinian Empire, freed henceforward from all pretence of Italian protection, was a force to be seriously reckoned with and to be dealt with by direct negotiations. Menelik's court at Addis Abbaba at once became a hotbed of European intrigue. The French were the first in the field. The Italo-Abyssinian wa had coincided in time with the vast French scheme t join the Congo to the Nile by gaining an effective footing

along the Bahr-el-Ghazal so far as the left bank of the White Nile, and thus to bar for ever the Anglo-Egyptian reconquest of the Sudan, which the British Government had recently decided to undertake-partly to create a diversion in favour of Italy. Accordingly, in 1896, the French Government planned to reinforce their own policy by inducing Menelik to use his newly-demonstrated military power to make effective his earlier claims to the negro country on the west as far as the White Nile. This mission was entrusted to M. Lagarde, Governor of French Somaliland, and resulted in the conclusion, on March 20, 1897, of what M. Hanotaux, who was Foreign Minister at the time, has called un veritable traité d'alliance,' though the only document ever published (1908) was a very innocent convention regulating the Franco-Abyssinian frontier of Somaliland.

A month later a British Mission arrived under Mr (now Sir) Rennell Rodd, Lord Cromer's second-incommand at Cairo, who was successful, it is said, in convincing Menelik that the British advance then proceeding up the Nile against the Mahdists concealed no designs against himself, and in securing from him a pledge of neutrality during the operations against the Dervishes with whom he had recently been in correspondence. But the only outward result was a treaty of amity and commerce signed on May 14, 1897, and supplemented on June 4 by an agreement which accepted as the frontier between Abyssinia and British Somaliland the line laid down in Menelik's letter of April 10, 1891, thus recognising both Harrar and the Ogaden country as within the Emperor's dominions. The more burning question of the Sudan frontier was left untouched. On June 24 the Italians signed a new commercial treaty on the ordinary lines, but a few weeks later found themselves forced to accept a new frontier between Eritrea and Abyssinia in accordance with the claims of Menelik's letter of 1891, which involved considerable sacrifice of territory.

Meanwhile, apparently in conformity with the veritable traité d'alliance, but really in furtherance of long-cherished schemes of conquest, the armies of

Le Partage de l'Afrique,' pp. 133-135.