Tropical History,Yohannis iv (John iv)

Revision notes

YOHANNIS IV (JOHN IV)

The successor to Tewodros, II, Emperor Yohannis IV fought his way to the throne with arms obtained from the British, who had encouraged him as a rival of Tewodros (Theodore). In the 1870s the main external enemy of the Empire of Ethiopia, which was still a collection of semi-independent provinces than a united kingdom, was Egypt.
The expansionist policies of the Khedive Ismail, directed towards the Red Sea and Somali coasts, threatened to revive the previous long isolation of the Christian lands in the interior mountains. Egypt took over control of Suakin and Massuwa in 1865 from the Ottoman Sultan and occupied much Eritrea. In 1875 Ismail extended an Egyptian protection over the Muslim rulers of Zeila and Harare, and launched and Egyptian attach upon Ethiopia from both north and the east.
The Emperor Yohannis was successful in halting the Egyptian invasion, but the continued Egyptian occupation of the more important Red Sea and Somali parts severely curtailed the supply of arms and other goods to Ethiopia. This weakened Yohanns in his conflicts with Menelik; the powerful ruler of Shoa, wik whom he had to coatend for the title of Emperor. Shoa, which lies to the south of Tigre and Amhara, had suffered great, from the Galla invasions of the Sixteenth to eighteenth centuries.
The two rulers of Shona before Menelik had been engaged during the previsions fifty years on a similar course of re-armament and expansion (at the expense of the Galla and other pagan or Muslim people) to that undertaken by Tewodros.
In 1878, Yohannis had to make terms by which Menelik married his daughter and was recognized as his successor. Even so, concealed hostility and competition continued between the two, until Yohannis‟ death in the battle against the Khalif Abadallah in 1889 when Menelik at last became emperor.

More to follow