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The Abyssinian Expedition of 1867–1868: Disraeli's Imperialism or James Murray's war?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Nini Rodgers
Nini Rodgers
Affiliation:
Queen's University, Belfast
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Extract

In the summer of 1867 Lord Derby's minority Conservative government, scarcely recovered from the political steeplechase which ended in the Second Reform Act, launched an expedition into Abyssinia, the declared aim of which was to free a group of British captives in duress there. This expensive little war is now remembered, if at all, as a lavish and triumphant picnic for the Indian army yet, as a recent historian has pointed out, it does not deserve to be dismissed as a ‘military curiosity’. Certainly for contemporaries its origins were a vexed issue and one which was never satisfactorily resolved. Critics in the press and parliament laid the blame on the previous Liberal administration. They maintained that back in 1863 the Foreign Office had lost an important letter from Theodore of Abyssinia. When the king failed to receive a reply, he reacted to this snub by throwing the British consul and a group of missionaries into fetters. Responsibility for any such blunder lay in the last resort with the foreign secretary of the day, Lord John Russell. Elderly, frail, and with a reputation for rashness untarnished by time, Russell's term of office (1859–65) had been marked by a series of crises which had brought Britain into dangerous or ignominious confrontation with the U.S.A. over the Trent incident, with Russia over the Polish rebellion, and with Prussia over Schleswig-Holstein.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , March 1984 , pp. 129 - 149
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1984

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References

1 Harcourt, F., ‘Disraeli's imperialism, 1866–1868: a question of timing’, Historical Journal, XXIII, 1 (1980), 99Google Scholar.

2 Hooker, J. R., ‘The foreign office and the Abyssinian captives’, Journal of African History, XI, 2 (1961), 248, 250CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Moneypenny, W. F. and Buckle, G. E., The life of Benjamin Disraeli, earl of Beaconsfield (6 vols., London, 1920 edn), IV, 336Google Scholar.

4 Hansard, Parliamentary Debates, CLXXX, 1102–13, 1151–8 CLXXIX, 726–39.

5 Ibid, cxc, 606.

6 Tilley, J. and Gaselee, S., The foreign office (London, 1933), pp. 218–20Google Scholar.

7 Valentia, G. A., Voyages and travels in India, Ceylon, the Red Sea, Abyssinia and Egypt in the years 1802, 1803, 1804, 1805, 1806 (3 vols., London, 1809), II, 249Google Scholar; Salt's observations, 10 April 1810, Foreign Office papers (hereafter F.O.), Public Record Office London, 1/1; F.O. 1/4 Plowden's memo, on the sovereignty of Massawa, 28 Aug. 1847.

8 Valentia, Travels, II, 3–7.

9 Marston, T. E., Britain's imperial role in the Red Sea (Connecticut, 1961), pp. 42, 52Google Scholar; Holt, P. M., A modem history of the Sudan (London, 1961), pp. 52–3Google Scholar.

10 Rubenson, S., The survival of Ethiopian independence (London, 1976), p. 41Google Scholar and ch. III.

11 F.O. 1/2 Palmerston to Superguardis, 6 Feb. 1832; F.O. 1/3 Palmerston to Sahle Oingil, 17 June 1839; Willoughby to Haines, 11 Nov. 1841, Letters to Aden, India Office Library (hereafter I.O.), Gen. 16a; F.O. 78/343, fo. 280; I.O. letters from Bombay to the secret committee, L/P/W/5/313, Arthurs to secret committee, 20 May 1843; F.O. 1/4 Stephen to Addington, 27 Nov. 1846.

12 F.O. 1/4 note by Palmerston 15 Dec. on Stephen to Addington 27 Nov. 1846; F.O. 1/4 Plowden's remarks, 13 Aug. 1847; F.O. 1/4 Palmerston's minute on Plowden's appointment, 22 Aug. 1847, F.O. 1/4 questions respecting Mr Plowden for Lord Palmerston's directions, 19 Nov. 1847. The salary and expenses for the new post came to £900 per annum.

13 F.O. 1/4 Plowden's memo, on the sovereignty of Massawa, 30 Aug. 1847; F.O. 1/4 questions respecting Mr Plowden's appointment, 22 Aug. 1847; F.O. 1/5 minute by Addington, 24 March 1849.

14 F.O. 1/7 Plowden's report on Abyssinian society, 20 June 1852; F.O. 1/7 Plowden's report on northern Abyssinia, 23 March 1853.

15 F.O. 1/7 Clarendon to Plowden, 13 Oct. 1853.

16 Rubenson, Survival, pp. 13–40, 172.

17 F.O. 1/9 Plowden to Clarendon, 25 June 1855.

18 Ibid. F.O. 1/9 Clarendon to Plowden, 27 Nov. 1855; F.O. 1/10 Clarendon to Plowden, 3 March 1857; F.O. 1/9 Clarendon to Canning, 6 March 1856.

19 Strong in gouty common sense and Stakhanovite in application, Hammond was to prove himself an indispensable guide and formidable adviser to successive secretaries of state.

20 F.O. 1/9 Clarendon to Plowden, 27 Nov. 1855; F.O. 1/9 Plowden to Clarendon, 25 June 1855.

21 F.O. 1/10 Theodore to Queen Victoria, 25 Nov. 1857; F.O. 1/10 Plowden to Clarendon, 25 Nov. 1857; F.O. 1/10 Plowden to Clarendon, 5 June 1858; F.O. 1/10 Plowden to Malmesbury, 2 May 1859.

22 F.O. 1/11 Plowden to Malmesbury, 20 Sept. 1859; F.O. 1/11 Russell to Plowden, 18 Jan. 1860.

23 F.O. 1/11 Barroni to Russell, 23 Jan. 1861.

24 F.O. 1/11 Russell to Cameron, 13 Nov. 1861.

25 F.O. 1/13 Cameron to Russell, 31 Oct. 1862.

26 F.O. 1/13 Theodore to Queen Victoria undated, enclosed in Cameron to Russell, 2 Nov. 1862.

27 F.O. 1/13 Cameron to Russell, 2 Nov. 1862.

28 F.O. 1/13 Cameron to Russell, 1 Nov. 1862.

29 F.O. 1/13 Cameron to Russell, 31 Oct. 1862, note by Hammond, 18 Feb. 1863.

30 Waterfield, G., Layard of Nineveh (London, 1963), p. 293Google Scholar; F.O. 1/13 Cameron to Russell, 2 Nov. 1863, note by Layard, 30 March 1863.

31 F.O. 1/15 minute on Cameron by Murray, 3 April 1865.

32 F.O. 1/13 Cameron to Russell, 2 Nov. 1862, note by Murray, 9 March 1863.

33 F.O. 1/23 memo, on Theodore's lost letter, Dec. 1867; F.O. 1/14 Shaftesbury to Russell, 15 May 1864, notes by Russell and Murray, 16 May 1864.

34 F.O. 1/13 Cameron to Russell, 2 Nov. 1862, note by Russell, 11 March 1863; F.O. 1/13 Russell to Cameron, 22 April 1863.

35 F.O. 1/13 Hertslett's memo, on Anglo-Abyssinian relations, 16 May 1863; foreign office memo. 28 July 1863, Layard papers (hereafter L.P.), British Library, Add. MSS 38989, fo. 134.

36 F.O. 1/26 Cameron to Stanley, 28 Sept. 1863; F.O. 1/15 Flad to Rassam, 26 Jan. 1865. There are numerous published accounts, contemporary and modern, of Theodore's attack upon his European community in 1863. The most useful nineteenth-century works are Stern, H., A captive missionary (London, 1869), pp: 34–5Google Scholar and Waldmeier, T., Erlebnisse in Abessinen in den Jahren 1838–1868 (Basle, 1869), pp. 27–45Google Scholar. Of the twentieth-century works Rubenson, Survival, pp. 232–6 is the most scholarly and Bates, D., The Abyssinian difficulty (Oxford, 1979), pp. 47–50Google Scholar is the most recent.

37 In both these cases, though the government could be accused of spineless betrayal, no department or minister felt directly responsible. Stoddart had been dispatched by the British ambassador to Persia and Conolly, eager to embark upon an adventurous relief mission, was at first restrained and then permitted to go to Bokhara by the governor general of India. While Lupton's presence in the Sudan was due to his appointment by Gordon when he, Gordon, was in the employ of the Khedive Ismail (1874–9).

38 Harcourt, ‘Disraeli's imperialism’, pp. 88, 95, 107, 108.

39 Ibid. p. 109; Robinson, R. and Gallagher, J. with Denny, A., Africa and the Victorians: the official mind of imperialism (London, 1965)Google Scholar.

40 Cranbourne to Stanley, 27 Sept. 1866, Derby papers (hereafter Der.), Public Record Office Liverpool, (15) 920,15/2, fo. 3h; Northcote to Lawrence, 9 Dec. 1867. Iddesleigh papers (hereafter I.P.), British Library, Add. MSS 50048, fo. 69.

41 Der. (15) 920, 15/2, fo. 3.

42 Ibid. fo. 31.

43 Der. (15) 920, 15/5, Stanley's private notes on Sir William Coghlan's visit, 4 Oct. 1866.

44 F.O. 1/14 Russell to Colquhoun, 9 March 1864.

45 F.O. 1/14 Hammond to Russell, 19 May 1864; L.P. Add. MSS 39116, fo. 399.

46 Blaming Murray for Cameron's captivity, Russell avoided using the assistant under-secretary as an Abyssinian adviser after May 1864. Increasingly he leant upon Layard as a specialist in eastern matters.

47 F.O. 1/14 Queen Victoria to King Theodore, 26 May 1864.

48 F.O. 1/14 Foreign Office to India Office, 11 June 1864.

49 F.O. 1/14 Shaftesbury to Russell, 15 May 1864, note by Murray, 16 May 1864; Hansard, CLXXX, 1002–13.

50 L.P. Add. MSS 39114, fo. 300; 39115, fo. 332; 38953, fo. 160; Hansard, CLXXXVIII, 1078–9; CLXXXIX, 726–39; CLXXX, 1102–13, 1151–8.

51 L.P. Add. MSS 39116, fos. 40, 73; 39115, fo. 367.

52 L.P., Add. MSS 39116, fo. 83; 38959, fo. 143; 38953, fo. 138.

53 Ibid. 39117, fo. 47.

54 Ibid. 38959, fo. 172.

55 F.O. 1/18 Goodfellow to Stanley, 28 Aug. 1866.

56 F.O. 1/17 Flad to Clarendon, 10 July 1866; F.O. 1/17 Flad to Stanley, I7 July 1866.

57 F.O. 1/18 minute on Queen Victoria's interview with Flad, 13 Aug. 1866; F.O. 1/18 Merewether's memo., 18 Aug. 1866; Der. (15) 920, 12/3/8, fo. 11.

58 F.O. 1/18 Flad to Merewether, 19 Sept. 1866; F.O. 1/18 Merewether's memo., 25 Sept. 1866. Flad's arrival in England in July had produced a split between Hammond and Murray on how to deal with the Abyssinian problem. Murray supported Flad and Merewether who, at this stage, pressed for conciliation – presents and artisans for Theodore. Hammond, however, wanted to resort to threats and force, believing that Theodore was only making excuses and had no intention of permitting Cameron and Rassam to leave in exchange for gifts and workmen. Der.(15), 12/3/9, fos. 2, 5. The news arriving in mid-September, that the consul and the British mission had been sent to Magdala, caused Flad, Merewether and Murray to make a volte-face which brought them into agreement with Hammond.

59 Der. (15) 920, 15/2, fo. 3.

60 Ibid. fo. 3k, 3b, 3g; 13/2/1, fo. 97.

61 Ibid. 12/3/7, fo. 24; 15/2, fo. 3h, 3e, 31, 3a. Alone among the ministers Carnarvon questioned the Foreign Office assumption that an expeditionary force should limit itself to rescuing the captives and vindicating British prestige. He suggested that Abyssinia should be occupied and perhaps permanently annexed (3a).

62 Ibid. 15/2, fo. 31.

63 Ibid. 13/2/4, fo. 21.

64 Ibid. 15/2, fo. 3a, 3b.

65 F.O. 1/18 Merewether to Murray, 1 October 1866.

66 F.O. 1/18 Flad to Hertslett, 5 Nov. 1866.

67 F.O. 1/19 Merewether to Stanley, 15 Jan. 1867, 15 Feb. 1867, 28 Feb. 1867.

68 Der. (15) 920, 12/3/9, fo. 159.

69 Ibid. fo. 160; F.O. 1/19 Merewether to Stanley, 4 March 1867.

70 I.P., Add. MSS 50047, fos. 39–40.

71 F.O. 1/19 Merivale to Egerton, 10 May 1867.

72 F.O. 1/19 Beke to Stanley, 12 April 1867.

73 Waterfield, Layard, p. 301; F.O. 1/19 Beke to Stanley, 13 June 1867.

74 Der. (15) 920, 12/3/16, Baker to Stanley, 13 June 1867.

75 I.P., Add. MSS 50047, fos. 39–40.

76 Ibid. fo. 38, fos. 90–1; Der. (15) 920, 12/3/2, fo. 69.

77 I.P., Add. MSS 50047, fo. 50; Vincent, J., Derby, Disraeli and the Conservative party: journals and memoirs of Edward Henry, Lord Stanley, 1849–1869 (Hassocks, 1978), 308Google Scholar.

78 I.P., Add. MSS 50047, fos. 51, 61, 64, 65, 77.

79 Pall Mall Gazette, 11 06 1867, p. 3Google Scholar; Hansard, CLXXXVIII, 239. Until now the Conservative government had escaped sharp criticism in both press and parliament on the Abyssinian issue.

80 F.O. 1/19 Murray's memo., 20 June 1867, note by Stanley, 22 June 1867. Historians who claim that the government's handling of the Abyssinian problem illustrates the triumphant power of the press make an important point. Marston, Red Sea, pp. 337–8; Hooker, ‘Abyssinian captives’, p. 251; Harcourt, ‘Disraeli's imperialism’, p. 1O1, n. 65. Both in July 1865 and in June 1867 public criticism was crucial in shaping ministerial decisions, but that criticism was effective because it orchestrated a potent division of opinion already in existence in the Foreign Office. In Stanley's case it is significant that on another occasion when Northcote and Derby both pressed him to alter his Abyssinian policy in order to avoid arousing public anger, he refused to do so on the strength of Hammond's advice (see below p. 145).

81 Der. (15) 920, 12/3/3, fo. 74.

82 Ibid. 12/3/12, fo. 88; Add. MSS 50047, fos. 39–40, 89, 90–1.

83 F.O. 1/20 Merewether to Stanley, 26 July 1867, note by Murray 13 Aug. 1867.

84 Vincent, Journals, pp. 315, 274, 276.

85 I.P., Add. MSS 50047, fo. 89.

86 Ibid. 50048, fo. 7; Der. (15), 920, 12/3/3 fo. 87; 13/2/4, fo. 23.

87 I.P., Add. MSS 50048, fo. 13. India supplied the troops and paid them; all other expenses were met by Britain. Ibid. fo. 25. Already in September 1867 the Treasury was disbursing money for the expedition. Ibid. fos. 7–12. But even if arrangements could have been made for Bombay to bear all the costs and be reimbursed later this would not have solved the constitutional problem, for under a statute passed in 1858 it was illegal for Indian troops to be paid for service outside India without parliamentary sanction. Der. (15) 920, 12/3/7, fo. 89; 13/2/4, fo. 66; 12/3/12, fo. 57.

88 Freda Harcourt has argued that Disraeli shaped Stanley's foreign policy ‘including the launching of the Abyssinian Expedition’ (Harcourt, ‘Disraeli's imperialism’, p. 108). But the Derby papers, which not only illustrate the influence of Hammond and Murray but show the concern of successive secretaries of state for India, Cranbourne and Northcote – Der. (15) 920, 12/3/2, fos. 22, 28; 12/3/3, fos. 31, 65, 69, 74 – leave the impression that Disraeli was not interested in Abyssinia. During the brief periods (late September, early October 1866 and September-November 1867) when there was some general ministerial interest in the problem, Derby appears to have attempted to influence his son's thinking in a way that Disraeli did not – Ibid. 12/3/7, fos. 24, 27, 78, 89 – a fact which confirms R. Blake's view that this ministry should not be seen in terms of Disraelian initiatives. Blake, R., Disraeli (London, 1969 edn), pp. 450–1Google Scholar .

89 I.P., Add. MSS 50014, fo. 132; Moneypenny and Buckle, Disraeli, IV, 568–9.

90 Hansard, cxc, 167, 314, 675; Marston, Red Sea, p. 338.

91 I.P., Add. MSS 50048, fo. 17; 1/21 Northcote to Stanley, 14 Sept. 1867; Der. (15) 920, 12/3/3.fo. 75.

92 I.P., Add. MSS 38953, fo. 132; F.O. 1/21 Stanley to Northcote, 19 Sept. 1867.

93 Der. (15) 920, 12/3/3, fo. 77; 12/3/7, fo. 78; 13/2/1, fo. 76.

94 Lang, A., Life, letters and diaries of Sir Stafford Northcote (2 vols., London, 1890), 1, 314Google Scholar.

95 Waldmeier, T., Autobiography (London, 1886), pp. 107–9, 117Google Scholar.

96 Lang, Northcote, 1, 113–15.

97 Vincent, Journals, p. 333.

98 Freda Harcourt takes it for granted that the outcome of the war marked the establishment of informal control. Harcourt, ‘Disraeli's imperialism’, p. 103.

99 Gabre-Selassie, Z., Yohamus IV of Ethiopia (London, 1975), p. 29Google Scholar.

100 F.O. 1/26 Murray's memo, on his interview with Napier, 4 Aug. 1868.

101 Rubenson, Survival, pp. 304–8.

102 Ibid. p. 362; I.P., Add. MSS 39115, fo. 465; Beke, C. T., British captives in Abyssinia (London, 1867 edn), p. 134Google Scholar. Clarendon's willingness to see Theodore take over Massawa – F.O. 1/9 Clarendon to Canning, 6 March 1856 – and Granville's determination three decades later to keep the ‘barbarians’ (the Abyssinians) from acquiring that port clearly illustrate Britain's disillusion with the earlier policies of using native rulers as agents of informal control.

103 There is no suggestion here that bureaucratic influence was sinister. Rather the facts seem to show that both Russell and Stanley were, in very different ways, rather idiosyncratic foreign secretaries and that it was Hammond and Murray who represented the norm in their reaction to the problem of Theodore and the captives.

104 Der. (15) 920, 12/3/12, fo. 32c.

105 F.O. 1/14 Foreign Office to India Office, 11 June 1864; Reade to Russell, 30 June 1864, 11 July 1864; F.O. 1/17 Hertslett's memo. 13 Jan. 1866.

106 Harris, C., The highlands of Ethiopia (3 vols., London, 1844), 1, 386CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

107 Waldmeier, Erlebnisse, pp. 7–16.

108 Alvarez, Portuguese embassy, pp. 270, 274, 283, 301, 362; Krapf, J. W., Travels, researches and missionary labours (London, 1860), pp. 106–8Google Scholar; C. T. Beke's diary in Abyssinia an d letters, British Library Add. MS S 30254, fo. 76.

109 Flad, J. M., Motesfrom thejournal of J. M. Flad (London, 1860), pp. 47–9Google Scholar; F. O. 1/10Plowden to Clarendon, 22 Nov. 1857.

110 Blanc, H., Narrative of captivity in Abyssinia (London, 1868), p. 50Google Scholar.

111 Waldmeier, Autobiography, pp. 28–30; Rassam, H., Narrative of the British mission to Theodore, King of Abyssinia (2 vols., London, 1868), II, 60Google Scholar.

112 Rassam, Narrative, I, pp, 248–53, 271, 276, 294; II, 26, 31, 36, 40, 76.

113 Ibid. 11, 31–5, 102–7; F. O. 1/17 extracts from private letters from Rassam, Cameron and Blanc, 16–18 April 1866.

114 Rubenson, Survival, p. 241; Rassam, Narrative 11, 128–30; Waldmeier, Autobiography, p. 89.

115 F. O. 1/18 Mrs Flad to Flad, 28 Aug. 1866.

116 Robinson and Gallagher, Africa, p. 463.

117 Gallagher, J. and Robinson, R., “The imperialism of free trade,” Economic History Review, 2nd series, vi (1953), 1–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

118 Robinson, R., ‘Non-European foundations of European imperialism: sketch for a theory of collaboration,’ In Studies in the theory of imperialism, ed. Owen, R. and Sutdiffe, B. (London, 1972), pp. 117–40Google Scholar.