Published on October 23, 2005

Britain and France were carving up the 19th-century world, but in Siam and Ethiopia their machinations were thwarted by clever rulers

During the second half of the 19th century, the colonial powers of Europe divided up much of the known world amongst themselves. In Southeast Asia and East Africa, only two countries succeeded in resisting the onslaught of the colonial powers and managed to stay independent.

In Siam it was the fifth king of the Chakri Dynasty, King Chulalongkorn, who was credited with keeping Britain and France at bay. King Chulalongkorn, who died 95 years ago today, managed to preserve the territorial integrity of the biggest part of Siam by giving in to their demands and playing one against the other. This is the predominant Thai perception of the country’s recent past.

In Ethiopia the European forces were kept at a distance as well. There it was Emperor Menelik II who, also using the rivalry between the most important colonial powers, Britain and France, carved out an empire for himself in the Horn of Africa.

He not only managed to stay independent but in the process added large portions of land to Ethiopian territory.

Reading the Thai and Ethiopian interpretations of their own 19th-century history, there are at first glance striking similarities between the roles that the two monarchs played.

Both capitalised on colonial competition among the European powers, and both rulers started to strengthen their countries and modernise them in order to better face up to the colonial threat.

A closer look, however, reveals the differences. The positions that Menelik II and Chulalongkorn were in when colonial pressure on their countries mounted were quite different.

Accordingly, their strategies in dealing with imperialism were not the same. Although the outcome of their actions meant that both countries were spared colonial domination, it proved to have different implications for the future of their realms.

By the time Chulalongkorn was crowned King of Siam in 1868, the country over which he ruled was a collection of more or less autonomous cities and city-states. Most were only loosely connected to the power centre in Bangkok. Especially the outer areas of the kingdom, such as Luang Prabang in the Northeast and Kedah in the South, paid only the occasional tribute to the Siamese court and were pretty much left to themselves. Siam was not a nation state in the European sense, with set borders and a power centre from which control was extended over the outlying provinces.

When Menelik became emperor of Ethiopia in 1889 he had been fighting against rival contestants for the imperial throne for more that two decades. The remote and rugged Ethiopian heartland had for centuries been divided into three rival kingdoms. The rulers of these all claimed to be descendants of the Queen of Sheba, the legendary founder of the empire, and thus holders of the right to rule over all of Ethiopia and the outlying areas that had once belonged to the Christian Axum Empire. These lands had since the 15th century been inhabited by animistic and Muslim tribes from the south.

The colonial rivalry between Britain and France was a phenomenon that each ruler, in Siam and Ethiopia, dealt with in his own way. Britain was not looking to dominate and rule Siam or other areas in Southeast Asia as long as its trade could continue unopposed and strategic interests were not threatened. It preferred to keep the local ruler in place.

Trade would not be disrupted if there were strong rulers who could establish law and order in their territory and create favourable circumstances for commerce.

Chulalongkorn realised this and set about bringing Siam firmly under the control of the crown, trying to accommodate British interests and expanding his own power in the process.

During the last two decades of the 19th century, King Chulalongkorn succeeded in wresting power from the old ruling elite and bringing large portions of his kingdom under the effective rule of Bangkok. He thus established himself as an absolute ruler and started the process of transforming Siam into a modern nation state. It was colonial pressure that created Siam or at least made it into a unified country under one ruler.

The French threat to Siam’s independence was more worrying to him. Its imperialism was more aggressive and less predictable. Britain would not allow the French to add the whole of Siam to their colonial possessions, although large portions of Bangkok’s tributary states along the Mekong River came under French colonial rule. Britain also wrested some of Siam’s territory from the King’s power.

In the south, Kedah came under British rule. As Chulalongkorn tightened his control over what remained of his kingdom, the British managed to safeguard their commercial interests and were thus willing to keep him in power.

Ethiopia, like Siam, played a role in the Anglo-French colonial power struggle. For the British, Ethiopia was important because of its proximity to the Strait of Bab al-Mandab, the entrance to the Red Sea and hence the Suez Canal, Egypt being a major British colonial stronghold. Rather than dealing with Ethiopia directly, the British used the minor colonial power Italy as watchdog over their interests in the region.

The French tried to make use of Ethiopia in order to fulfil their ambition of counterbalancing British power in Africa.

It was the Italians who supplied Menelik with weapons. They became his allies during the years when he fought the Emperor Johannes for the imperial throne. Once he was in power the friendship did not last. Menelik did not agree with Italian ambitions to expand their colony of Eritrea on the Red Sea coast at the cost of more Ethiopian territory.

After Italian diplomats tricked Menelik into signing a treaty that made Ethiopia an Italian sphere of influence, the emperor decided to act with military force.

In March 1896, near the city of Adwa, a major battle took place. The Italian army was decisively defeated with great losses. which effectively brought Italian colonial ambitions to an end for the next four decades. It also established Menelik as a ruler to be reckoned with in the international arena.

The cost of extending colonial authority over Ethiopia had become too costly for any of the European powers. In 1906 a treaty signed by Italy, Britain and France pre-empted any future dispute over influence in Ethiopia.

It was decided to keep Ethiopia independent and to prevent conflicts among the European powers from erupting over the country which Menelik had brought under his rule.

The tactics of Chulalongkorn and Menelik in dealing with the colonial powers show great differences. Both made decisions based on local circumstances.

In the face of colonial threat, Chulalongkorn undertook substantial reform that not only guaranteed independence for Siam but in fact started the process of turning Siam into a modern nation state and established the power of the crown.

Menelik established his power through military force, and it was military might that kept the colonial powers at bay. The reforms he undertook were less substantial.

Menelik established his power over the whole of the Ethiopian empire and expanded his domain with many new lands.

This left Ethiopia with great ethnic variety and numerous different languages. All in all it was much harder to turn Ethiopia into a modern nation state, as the 20th-century history of the country clearly shows.

Jeroen Rikkerink

Special to The Nation

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