AHC: Ethiopian Meiji

[NKVD]

Just as it says on the tin. Preferably, with a point of divergence no earlier than 1906, and no later than 1920 or thereabouts.

 

[NKVD]

Shameful bump.

 

[SinghKing]

Shamefully bringing up one of my own threads, building on a vaguely similar premise. It may have come over a decade too late for the premise of this thread, but the events of OTL still came pretty close to achieving this, and could provide some inspiration...?

The 126th ruler of the Solomonic Dynasy Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia, and the 124th monarch of the Jimu Dynasty Emperor Hirohito of Japan, represented longstanding cultures led by royal nobility. So when it was heavily reported that Lij Araya Abebe, a nephew of the Emperor, was looking for marriage from a young noble lady from Japan, it caused great trepidation among the European powers.

Ethiopia and Japan had been communicating for some time concerning their economic and political interests. While accompanying the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Blattengetta Hiruy Wolde Selassie, on a trip to Japan in 1930 to sign a Treaty of Friendship and Commerce, Lij Araya apparently became enamoured with the people of Japan, as did others who were impressed with their rapid industrial development, and wanted to take the relationship one step further. When it was reported that the “prince” of Ethiopia was interested in marriage with a Japanese woman aristocrat, Mr. Sumioka Tomoyoshi, and other businessmen, saw an opportunity to increase relations between the two countries.

A number of trade missions were arranged to Ethiopia where the Japanese farming interests sought to secure some 500,000 hectares of land for cotton and other products, and land for immigrant families to settle. Emperor Selassie had recently signed a new constitution largely based on the Japanese model. Some young Ethiopian progressive intellectuals called “Japanizers” had been arguing that Japan was a good model for modern development and supported marriage between the upper classes of the two countries. Many Japanese nationalists thought it was necessary to unite the colored races against the white.

Mr. Sumioka impressed Lij Araya and quickly set up arrangements for a wife to be found. Advertisements for select woman in Japan were circulated. Many young ladies were attracted to proposition of marrying this handsome, royal, single Christian and about sixty applications were received. The first choice fell to Ms. Kuroda Masako, the 23yr old daughter of Viscount Kuroda Hiroyuki, a descendant from the former Lord of Kazusa, of the forestry bureau of the Imperial Household. Athletic, and trained in the English language, she immediately took up studies in Ethiopian culture, and believed herself to be the first of many to immigrate to Ethiopia.

Unfortunately for the couple, as word spread of the impending marriage, alarm bells were going off all over Europe. Ethiopia’s envoy Daba Birru, who served as an interpreter for Wolde Selassie, continued negotiations in principle for arms, and engendered the goodwill and some needed supplies from Japan. Italy was jealous of Japan’s potential alliance with Ethiopia. Russia tried to convince other European countries of the threat of an African-Asiatic force. Italy implicated Japan in sending weapons and military training to Ethiopia. England and France became concerned that their stakes in the region would be threatened. As business negotiations began to increase, both the Japanese and Ethiopian governments became concerned about the negative publicity. Already, rumors circulated at the League of Nations about opium farming in Ethiopia.

Due to Japan’s increased trade with African countries, European media reported Japan as the “Yellow Peril” and a threat to their economic interests. Japan tried to cut its losses and attempted to find common ground with Italy on business dealings in China; promising not to interfere with Italian interests in East Asia, encouraging importation of Italian wine and an exchange of students and teachers between them. Ultimately, very little business did come about between Ethiopia and Japan, due to a lack of investors and government precaution.

Alas, the “fairy-tale” marriage between the “African prince” and “Asian princess” was not to be. The symbolic threat of this union was too much too ignore. Who knows what might have become of such an alliance? As it turned out, Japan’s joining with the Axis Powers of Germany and Italy in WWII turned out to be a losing hand to say the least. Ethiopia could certainly have used the support of Japan in its fight against Italy’s attempt at colonization. On the other hand, would race prove to be a strong enough factor to prevent the European interests in Asia and Africa?

Mr. Sumioka, instrumental in arranging the whole affair, was reported to have received a Commander Class of the Order of Menelik II by Emperor Haile Selassie I, and predicted an Ethiopian victory over Italy. Not much was ever heard again of Miss Kuroda, who insisted that her marriage should go ahead as planned, but to no avail. Blattengetta Hiruy Wolde Selassie, often referred to as the father of Amharic literature and an extraordinary diplomat, was a great supporter of the alliance with Japan, and went into exile in England with the Emperor during the Italian occupation of Ethiopia. He eventually died there in 1938. Daba Birru gave himself over to the Italian side.

Lij Araya Abebe would go to the United States and work with Dr. Melaku Bayen in fundraising for the war effort against the Italians in the African American community, and with the Ethiopian World Federation. He served as ambassador to Greece and Minister of Public Works, among other positions in the Imperial government. He eventually married Woizero Mulumebet Abebe, sister of Crown Princess (later Empress-in-Exile) Medferiashwork Abebe, and had a son, Lij Amde Araya. He passed quietly in a Virginia suburb of Washington, DC in 2002.

(Primary source: Dai Nihon, Tokyo by Hiruy Wolde Selassie, 1934. Secondary source: Alliance of the Colored Peoples: Ethiopia and Japan Before World War II by Joseph Calvitt Clarke III, Professor Emeritus of History, Jacksonville University, Florida.)

 

[Tanc49]

Maybe a way to do this would be through a conflict of interest between France and England.

Basically you had England on the North (Egypt) wanting to create a Cape-Cairo axis, and France on the East and West, controlling the main port of Ethiopia (Djibouti) and wanting to create a Djibouti-Dakar link.

The king of Ethiopia manages to play one against the other to attract foreign investment and education. These foreign investments offer large shares to the local nobility, thus soothing them into advancing in the modern age (as I understand them, they were the biggest slower of Ethiopian progress at the end of XIXth century IOTL).

Ethiopia agrees to lend passage to the Cairo-Cape axis and the French lines through a technology transfer agreement. As a stable state with access into the deep Hinterland of the continent through the Suez canal, Ethiopia is at a strategic position. They have enough arable land, timber and other resources.

It might work because the UK really really wants that Cairo to Cape line and a solid Ethiopia solidifies their Egyptian deep south and a stronger, richer Ethiopia means more transit through the French port of Djibouti, which means more tax revenues.

 

[SinghKing]

Maybe a way to do this would be through a conflict of interest between France and England.

Basically you had England on the North (Egypt) wanting to create a Cape-Cairo axis, and France on the East and West, controlling the main port of Ethiopia (Djibouti) and wanting to create a Djibouti-Dakar link.

The king of Ethiopia manages to play one against the other to attract foreign investment and education. These foreign investments offer large shares to the local nobility, thus soothing them into advancing in the modern age (as I understand them, they were the biggest slower of Ethiopian progress at the end of XIXth century IOTL).

Ethiopia agrees to lend passage to the Cairo-Cape axis and the French lines through a technology transfer agreement. As a stable state with access into the deep Hinterland of the continent through the Suez canal, Ethiopia is at a strategic position. They have enough arable land, timber and other resources.

It might work because the UK really really wants that Cairo to Cape line and a solid Ethiopia solidifies their Egyptian deep south and a stronger, richer Ethiopia means more transit through the French port of Djibouti, which means more tax revenues.

Could work- but you'd probably end up with Ethiopia becoming a Thailand analogue with this option, rather than a true Meiji Japan analogue. The best option, IMHO, would have been a more complete victory for the Ethiopians over the Italians in a different First Italo-Ethiopian War- say, if Ethiopia had entered its equivalent of the Meiji Era a lot earlier. Post 1900's almost certainly too late- the best opportunity for them to have done IOTL would have been back in 1868, with the 1868 Expedition to Abysinnia ITTL serving as Ethiopia's equivalent of Commodore Perry's expedition to open up Japan in 1853 IOTL- in this instance, the POD would be the Abysinnian army holding their solid defensive positions on the plateau at Arogye rather than launching a futile suicide attack against the British expeditionary force, with a stand-off developing between the two armies, followed by the calling of a truce and the eventual resolution of the situation via the signing of an unequal treaty, akin to the Convention of Kanagawa.

Alternatively, you could have a slightly earlier POD, and avert the cause of the 1868 Expedition to Abysinnia. IOTL, this commenced after the British Consul in Ethiopia, Captain Charles Duncan Cameron, had delivered Emperor Tewodros a royal letter and presents from Queen Victoria in person, arriving at Gondar 23 June 1862, and reaching the Emperor's camp that October. Delighted, Tewedros II wrote a return letter to Queen Victoria as a fellow Christian monarch, asking for British assistance in the region. Tewodros asked Cameron to carry the letter back to Queen Victoria personally, requesting skilled workers to come to teach his subjects how to produce firearms, and other technical skills.

Cameron traveled to the coast with the letter, but when he informed the Foreign Office of the letter and its contents, the Foreign Office instructed him simply to send the letter on to London, instead than take it himself. He was to proceed to the Sudan to make inquiries about the slave trade there. After doing this, Cameron returned to Ethiopia. On Cameron's return, the Emperor became enraged when he found out that Cameron had not taken the letter to London personally, had not brought a response from the Queen, and most of all, had spent time traveling through enemy Egyptian and Turkish territories.

Cameron tried to appease the Emperor, saying that a reply to the letter would arrive shortly. But it didn't; the Foreign Office in London never passed the letter on to Queen Victoria, but simply filed it under Pending. The letter stayed there for a year, before the Foreign Office then sent the letter on to India, because Abyssinia 'came under the Raj's remit'. And apparently, when the letter arrived in India, officials filed it under Not Even Pending, where it would be lost forever.

After two years had passed, and Tewodros had not received a reply, he imprisoned Cameron, together with all the British subjects in Ethiopia and various other Europeans, in an attempt to get the queen's attention. His prisoners included a missionary named Mr. Stern, who had previously published a book in Europe describing Tewodros as a barbaric, cruel, unstable usurper. When Tewodros saw this book, he became violently angry, pulled a gun on Stern, and had to be restrained from killing the missionary. Tewodros also received reports from abroad that foreign papers had quoted these European residents of Ethiopia as having said many negative things about him and his reign.

The British sent a mission under an Assyrian-born British subject, Hormuzd Rassam, who finally came with a 'reply' from the Queen- which wasn't actually a reply to Tewedros' now three-year-old letter requesting aid at all, which had long since been lost in the mail, but a wholly new and unrelated message, sent in the hope of resolving the hostage situation peacefully. However, Tewedros understandably assumed that this was Queen Victoria's long-awaited reply to his letter. Deeply insulted by the British failure to bring the skilled workers as he had requested, and presumably also by the oblivious and obnoxious tone of Queen Victoria's message ("There's not even any mention of my reply at all! Does she think she is too big, too high and mighty to even acknowledge the message that I sent her, almost FOUR YEARS AGO now? I am Emperor Tewedros II of the Ethiopian Empire! Son of David and Solomon! Where does she get off, blanking me like this? I DEMAND A RESPONSE!") Tewodros had the members of the Rassam mission added to his other European prisoners, thereby providing the cassus-belli for the 1868 Expedition.

So, for a potential POD, WI Captain Charles Duncan Cameron had actually done as instructed, and returned to the UK in order to present Emperor Tewedros II's reply to Queen Victoria in person? Or at the very least, if the guilty culprit in the British Foreign Office had actually done their job and forwarded Tewedros' letter on to Queen Victoria when they actually received it, instead of simply shunting it off into the filing cabinet under 'Pending'?

 

[Tanc49]

That is all extremely interesting Singhking, do you have like a book on Ethiopian history? Been wanting to know more about it but I'm not sure where to start and Wikipedia doesn't give much.

I'll answer what I can here:

Could work- but you'd probably end up with Ethiopia becoming a Thailand analogue with this option, rather than a true Meiji Japan analogue.

Except France and UK double teamed to screw Siam as much as possible without actually colonising it (I mean, in its entirety). Since Africa was less stable at the time, maybe the colonisers can see an opportunity in leaving a unified Kingdom in place, with commercial ties? Especially a Christian one.
It's not like the UK never gave actual useful help to them, like during the Mahdi revolt when they armed the Ethiopian army, to an extent.

 

[Osakadave]

IMHO, you'd really need a pre-1900 POD to get the conditions that allowed Japan to pull off the Meiji reforms. Japan had a large urban population, highly sophisticated economy, and had kept up with European scientific advances, which served as a foundation. Ethiopia didn't.